Compulsory Measures

Sponsored by Liz and Doug Goldstein, Annette and Paul Huckfeldt, Susan and David Morris, Anne and Eric Smith, Barbara and Guy Stanley and Lynwood Artists

The antidote for an over-stimulated, stupefying and simulated culture... is discovered through the artist’s hand.

In response to a culture saturated with devices that distance, digitize and disembody, the artists in Compulsory Measuresembrace repetition and ritual as mindful strategies to ascertain meaning. 

Bordering on the obsessive, Jorge Benitez, Kristy Deetz, Al Denyer, Joan Elliott, Reni Gower, Steven Pearson, Jennifer Printz and Tanja Softic provide lifelines for “making sense” out of the chaos entrenched in contemporary culture. By utilizing complex systems, intricate patterning, repetitive marking or minute detail, Compulsory Measures offers revelatory and celebratory works slowly crafted by hand.

With social media fictions and rampant consumerism triggering excessive anxiety across most demographics, the artists in Compulsory Measures offer a contemplative slowing down even as they urge acknowledgement of some of the most pressing issues (environmental crisis to global marginalization) facing civilization today. Enticed by touch, the artists counter visual skimming and encourage quiet reflection. As such, the exhibition is a perfect conduit for diffusing unease while generating conversations that embrace cultural awareness through mindfulness.

Photographs by Rick Dawson

Sponsored by Liz and Doug Goldstein, Annette and Paul Huckfeldt, Susan and David Morris, Anne and Eric Smith, Barbara and Guy Stanley and Lynwood Artists

The Lynwood Artists Gallery features work by Rick Dawson. Dawson's photography articulates the magic of the mundane and has the power to turn a glance into a lingering, thoughtful gaze. From the iridescent wings of butterflies basking in the sunshine to the glow of a full moon on a tranquil night, Dawson ensures every hue and shade is shown and appreciated to the fullest. Dawson has been painting pictures with his camera lens, capturing the world's beauty and unveiling layers of beauty that often go unnoticed for more than four decades. He is from Bassett, Virginia.

The Lynwood Artists Gallery is curated by Lynwood Artists, an organization for practicing artists in the Martinsville-Henry County area. Its members share a desire to stimulate understanding and enjoyment of fine art and the artistic process, while providing area artists with opportunities to exhibit and further develop their talents.

Venus Inferred

Sponsored by Olivia and Pres Garrett, Charlie Knighton, Blanche and Tom Mahoney, Kim and Jason Spratley, Kerry Y. Tillery and Lynwood Artists

“Living day-in-and-day-out attending to works of art, one begins to tune into the needs of each individual piece like a child who will ask for what he or she needs in order to evolve. ” — Annie Waldrop

Featuring work by award-winning Roanoke-based artist Annie Waldrop, this collection is an outcome of her decades-long quest to use bookmaking, painting, assemblage, collage and other mediums to explore femininity through themes like spirituality, Buddhism, motherhood and creativity. Waldrop's work represents the culmination of a process she likens to tending a garden or raising a child — a labor of love which has its own organic course to follow, including unpredicted detours and clearly defined destinations.

Watercolors by Z.L. Feng

Sponsored by Olivia and Pres Garrett, Charlie Knighton, Blanche and Tom Mahoney, Kim and Jason Spratley, Kerry Y. Tillery and Lynwood Artists

Signature member of the American Watercolor Society, the National Watercolor Society and the Pastel Society of America.

Z.L. Feng's watercolor portraits, landscapes and illustrations have been exhibited in juried shows around the world. An artist-signature member of the American Watercolor Society, the National Watercolor Society and the Pastel Society of America, Feng has won more than 200 national and international awards and been recognized at numerous watercolor exhibitions.

Growing up in Shanghai, China, Feng began painting at age seven and never stopped, experimenting with different mediums, including pastel, oil and egg tempera, before choosing his favorite, watercolor. Before coming to the United States in 1986, Feng received his BFA from Shanghai Teacher’s University and taught in its art department for four years. He completed his MFA in 1989 at Radford University, where today he is a professor of art.

Gee's Bend Quilters

“Some of the most miraculous works of modern art America has produced.” — The New York Times

Known for bold, improvisational designs and use of recycled fabrics, Gee’s Bend’s patchwork quilting tradition — which began in the 19th Century — continues to this day. Gee’s Bend quilts constitute a crucial chapter in the history of American art and today are in the permanent collections of over 30 leading art museums.

The residents of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, are direct descendants of the enslaved people who worked the cotton plantation established in 1816 by Joseph Gee. After the Civil War, their ancestors remained on the plantation working as sharecroppers. In the 1930s, the price of cotton fell, and the community faced ruin. As part of its Depression-era intervention, the Federal Government purchased ten thousand acres of the former plantation and provided loans enabling residents to acquire and farm the land formerly worked by their ancestors. Unlike the residents of other tenant com­munities, who could be forced by economic circumstances to move — or who were sometimes evicted in retaliation for their efforts to achieve civil rights — the people of the Bend could retain their land and homes. Cultural tradi­tions like quiltmaking were nourished by these continuities.

Antiquity Second Hand

Jonathan Lee is an artist and librarian living and working in Richmond, Virginia. His studio practice explores ephemeral memory, secret histories and social constructions; often through abstracting activated materials. His social practice utilizes multi-modal approaches to engage individuals, small groups, and communities with ideas through discussion, art making and display.

Lee's work is made predominantly from used, discarded or repurposed materials. Charged by exchanges and interactions of often unknown consequence, these materials have the power to reveal things about our past, present and future, not just because of what they are, but who we are. By altering their original form and function, Lee investigates how information is created, interpreted and renewed through individuals, communities and systems. By engaging in both art making and the research process, he solves problems of his own design while reflecting on problems in the world.

In the studio, Lee is engaged in at least two conversations. One is with himself (What am I feeling and thinking?) The other is with the materials (What are they doing and saying?) Where these dialogs overlap is where the work takes shape; a product of following small details to unexpected places.

Lee's work responds to both the materials and the maker, a collection of personal and communal experiences where patterns and connections are both made and broken. These abstractions offer an alternative apparatus for taking in and questioning information. An opportunity to consider things differently.

Salvador Dali Etchings

Featuring 44 etchings that the Spanish Surrealist artist Salvador Dalí created in Paris in 1934, as well as a portrait of the artist by Carl Van Vechten from the same year, this exhibition presents the unique proof set for the complete series of etchings that make up the first edition of Les Chants de Maldoror – the infamous 1869 prose poem by Isidore Ducasse. Curated by Dr. Michael R. Taylor, Chief Curator and Deputy Director for Art and Education, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

Citizens and Soldiers: The Mostly World War II Paintings

A compilation of mostly World War II illustrations created by Ken Smith for the Advanced Squad Leader board game, originally reproduced on game boxes, magazines and folders. The exhibit contains 15 paintings spanning the era of 1939 (Kollaa Holds) to 1950 (Frozen). 

Smith is an associate professor of graphic design at Radford University. He is a current or former member of the Society of Illustrators, the Society of Publication Designers, the AIGA, the Salmagundi Club and the Coast Guard Art Program, where he has won the prestigious George Grey Award of Artistic Excellence on three separate occasions. His paintings and illustrations are featured at both the East Tennessee Historical Society and the McClung Museum in Knoxville, Tennessee, as well as at Fort Loudoun State Historic Area museum in Vonore, Tennessee.