Patricia Bellan-Gillen says that somewhere in my brain, personal narrative mixes with fairytales. Historical events intertwine with the imagined and a veil of nostalgia blurs the border between fact and fiction. Sacred imagery moves about in the temporal lobe with iconic characters from children's stories and recent news flashes picked from the internet join the sagas of black and white television. My mixed media drawings and collages use these bits and pieces of visual history...the stones and bones of memory... to suggest a narrative and to engage the viewer's associative responses.
The drawings combine imagery generated through reading and study with imagery that is personal and intuitive. Iconic figures from book illustrations and cultural, religious and dream symbols share the platform with the characters that appear and press on my mind with no explanation.
Patricia Bellan-Gillen was born in Beaver Falls, PA and lives and works in rural Washington County, Pennsylvania adjacent to the West Virginia border. She is retired from Carnegie Mellon University after 29 years as a professor in the School of Art where she held the Dorothy L. Stubnitz Endowed Chair. The university honored her with the Ryan Award for Meritorious Teaching in 2000.
Patricia has been active in the Pittsburgh art scene since 1977 as an exhibitor, educator and mentor. In 1995, she was the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts “Pittsburgh Artist of the Year.”
Lingering: Contemplations in Clay is a collection of ceramic sculptures of predominantly female figures and faces with abstracted forms and dreamlike components. The works in this exhibition were created in contemplation of the lasting impact of profound life experiences – among them my mother’s dementia and the isolation of a global pandemic. These pieces are psychological self-portraits, but despite ties to personal experience they are rooted in themes familiar to almost everyone: grief, anxiety, self-doubt.
I am interested in how our memories are stored; the neural pathways and chemical interactions that write the invisible maps of our emotional lives. The symbols and markings on my figures form a kind of legend, alluding to milestones or meaningful events that would otherwise remain concealed. Overall, these pieces invite the viewer to linger, to feel something familiar, and to consider the shapes of the stories that persist in our minds
Jessica Bloch-Schulman is a figurative ceramic sculptor living in Greensboro, NC. After completing a BFA in Design at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, she worked in digital media for more than 20 years before discovering clay in 2021. Her work explores the landscape of the mind, memory and the connections that bind us.
Paula Melton captures the beautiful vistas and colors of the Blue Ridge Mountains that have been the main focus of several of her watercolor and acrylic paintings. Known also for her garden floras, wild plant life and old time mountain life scenes, Melton is constantly drawn back to the basic beauty of the natural “blue” shades of the mountain ridges. The Blue Ridge Parkway is the base of most of Melton’s ridge scenes, mostly unspoiled views that allow her to capture the essence of what the most ardent lovers of the Parkway enjoy.
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.
Curated by master quilter Linda M. Fiedler and quilter Betty Blessin, The Art of the Quilt is a showcase of quilted works by artists from across the Southeast. More than 40 artists participate in this biennial exhibition, displaying work from bed coverings to quilted clothing, to non-utilitarian art pieces made purely for the love of the craft.
Click here to RSVP for the opening reception on November 8.
"I use the visual arts to express my interpretation of the world, and photography to open unexplored spaces between the subject and viewer exposing them both to a world of opportunities and experiences. This objective can best be obtained with a focus on our commonalities which keeps us in the moment and stops us from fretting about the future or regretting the past."
2019 Duke Energy Grant and Z Smith Reynolds Lead Artist for the Presence Absence Project awardee Owens Daniels is a visual artist/photographer, educator and the face behind ODP Art+Design Bold, Creative and Innovative artwork that builds bridges, promotes cultural exchanges, and artistic endeavors between organizations, institutions and the diverse communities they serve.
His photographic career started at the U.S Army Photographic School of Cartography, learning the basics of photography and photo printing. In addition to this formal training, he worked for several years as a freelance photographer and extended his photographic career by fine-turning the art of visual storytelling and developing a distinctive, decisive and intimate photojournalistic signature style which has led to various opportunities that include: Artist in Residences, Public Art Installations, Grants and varied other commissions.
Presented with support from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Statewide Partners program.
Words Matter underscores the richness and diversity of the contemporary Native experience, highlighting nine artists who have combined text and image. Native lives, regardless of tribal designation, are intrinsically linked by a common oppression of their culture by outsiders, facilitated through the use of the written word, which was, and continues to be, a powerful weapon used against Native people. These works provide a means for chronicling the tragedies of history, and to supply messages of hope, humor, survival and prosperity.
Shan Goshorn and Diego Romero reference, both directly and indirectly, some of the most destructive documents written by colonizers: the Doctrine of Discovery and the Indian Removal Act. Melanie Yazzie juxtaposes Navajo, ancient hieroglyphics, and English as a reminder that there are languages far older than those spoken by Europeans in North America. Marie Watt uses words as a design element, weaving stories together both literally and ?guratively. Robert Houle and Larry McNeil appropriate older literary and pop culture writings while providing humor and astute cultural commentary. Lynne Allen, Rick Bartow, and Demian DinéYazhi likewise borrow from pop culture to amplify a reimagining of Indigenous history and culture.
Threads, Folds, and Rabbit Holes is a traveling exhibition featuring paintings from Kristy Deetz’s series Holidays Unfolding and Through the Veil.
Threads, Folds & Rabbit Holes features two series of works by Kristy Deetz, an Emerita Professor at the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay. Her Holidays Unfolding series investigates the historic use of decorative drapery and the artistic category of still life. The paintings examine the contradictory feelings that accompany loss or nostalgia and, as a result, become meditations on life’s transience. Deetz says, “I explore new possibilities between a complex interface of painting, textiles, and digital technology, while producing a product that maintains the richness of slow work by hand.”?
Each painting in Deetz’s Through the Veil series begins with a rendering from a closely observed fabric with wrinkles and folds. These works draw upon the structures of art by artists from both the past and the present. The artist says, “The fabric in these paintings acts as a limen or threshold that places the viewer into multiple, often conflicting, layers of space and meaning.” Deetz’s paintings good-humoredly deconstruct imagery from pop, outsider, and high culture to create new “spaces” of meaning. A shape-shifting rabbit recurs throughout the artworks, moving between images and spaces.
Along with writer/scholar, Edward Risden, whose pen name is Edward Louis), Deetz has published the books The Singular Adventures of Rabbit and Kitty Boy and Holidays Unfolding: The Continuing Adventures of Rabbit and Kitty Boy. Risden creates stories in response to Deetz’s paintings. They two enjoy presenting their books together.?
Expressions is an annual exhibition of work by artists from southern Virginia and the surrounding regions. This showcase of regional talent features an eclectic mix of work from hundreds of artists working in watercolor, oil and acrylic, mixed media, drawing, photography and sculpture.
Visit the museum to vote for the People's Choice Award. Winner will be announced after the close of the exhibit.
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