MARTINSVILLE, Va. (July 11, 2025) — Piedmont Arts will host an opening reception in honor of its new exhibits from 5:30-7:30 p.m., Friday, Aug. 8 at the museum. The exhibits “What Memory Wears: Works by Barbara Hardy and Bob Ray,” “In a Different Light: Photographs by Russell Hart” and "Eyes on the Wild: Photography by Artemisia Blankenship” will be on display.
The reception will feature live music, light refreshments and a gallery talk starting at 6:15 p.m. This event is free and open to the public. An RSVP is required by Wednesday, Aug. 6 to 276.632.3221 or online here.
What Memory Wears explores the minds of partners Barbara Hardy and Bob Ray. The pair have been living and working together for more than 25 years. They are inspired by found objects, patterns and designs discovered in nature. Through their intimate, creative and artistic bond they have created a diverse body of work full of rich textures and layered patterns.
Hardy says that art has always been an important part of her life. From an early age, she drew, painted and made things. She studied art education at Appalachian State University and painting and metal at Eastern Carolina University. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions across the Southeast and is part of many private collections.
Ray works in a variety of media from drawing, painting, collage and sculpture to performance works. His aesthetic borrows heavily from the Dada and Fluxus movements, with a strong combination of word, gesture and image. Since 1990 he has been active in international correspondence art activities and projects in Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Egypt, Japan, United States, Bolivia, Spain, Hungary, Switzerland and Latvia. He is a 2015 recipient of the North Carolina Arts Fellowship.
In a Different Light features work by photographer, teacher and author Russell Hart. He uses his medium to explore the ways in which humans occupy and alter their environments and the landscape, but his photographs aren’t meant to be documentary or even realistic. “My work is based on observation,” Hart explains. “It doesn’t express a world view or share an intimate experience in the manner of so much contemporary art. It’s intended to show familiar things in a new way.”
In recent years, however, his work has ventured into more personal territory in the form of a project called “As I Found It: My Mother’s House,” newly released as a large-format coffee-table monograph by German art book publisher Kehrer Verlag. The project tells the story of his mother’s descent into Alzheimer’s and dementia, but not with the customary images of the disease’s sufferers and their caregivers; instead, it features photographs he made as he emptied out his mother’s house of forty years when she could no longer live there. The images include not only the home’s increasingly empty interiors but also delicate still lifes taken from the massive yet ordered, deeply idiosyncratic collection of sentimental and practical objects and materials his mother left behind. Making these photographs was a way for Hart to mitigate his grief and extract something positive from the experience.
Hart previously exhibited his environmental photographs at Piedmont Arts in 2017, and his work has been shown at galleries and museums including the Addison Gallery of American Art, the Hudson River Museum, the DeCordova Museum and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts,
which has awarded him three traveling fellowships. He has taught photography at Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He currently teaches in the master’s in digital photography program at New York’s School of Visual Arts. Hart was for many years the executive editor of American Photo magazine, and received the Griffin Museum’s Susan Sontag Scribe Award for best writing about photography. His writing on photographic subjects has also appeared in The New York Times, Men's Journal and La Repubblica del Donne, among other publications. Hart grew up in Charlottesville, Va. and now lives in Lexington, Va.
Eyes on the Wild: Photography by Artemisia Blankenship will be on display in the Lynwood Artists Gallery. This 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.
These exhibits will be on display Aug. 9-Oct. 11. Exhibit admission is always free.
The exhibits and reception are sponsored by Marty Gardner, Olivia and Pres Garrett, Helen S. and Charles G. Patterson Jr. Charitable Foundation Trust, Janet Lewis and Brad Johnson, Lynwood Artists, Sovah Health, Barbara and Guy Stanley and What's Your Sign.
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