Sakeena Alkateeb, “Stick Drawing.”

On a recent Project Runway episode, Tim Gunn challenged the competing designers to construct garments using only items from a hardware store. Good thing the contestants didn’t have to go up against St. Anne’s-Belfield students Hannah Velie and Katelyn Coyner, whose dresses are among the standout pieces in this year’s High School Art Show, currently on view at the McGuffey Art Center.

Velie’s mini-dress, “Far Out,” pops with swirls of blue, green, purple, and yellow paper paint swatches spiraling outward on the front and back of a yellow oilcloth shift. Velie’s piece is not only fun, it’s also dead-on in its retro pop-art sensibility. Meanwhile Coyner’s “Lucky Strike” dress wows with a fringed bodice made of red-tipped cardboard matchsticks, a wide cummerbund of layered blue Diamond matchbooks, and a fringed skirt created with long wooden fireplace matches.

Can you find all of Velie and Coyner’s components at a hardware store? Why, yes, you can— and Project Runway judge Nia Garcia would never deem their innovative designs “boring.”

Innovation and mastery of technique are the keys to several students’ successful work in this year’s show. Renaissance School student Sakeena Alkateeb’s “Stick Drawing” is simultaneously raw and sophisticated. The quick India ink marks that Alkateeb has used to create her simple figure are free and energetic, but she has softened the composition and given it presence through varied weights of charcoal shading.

Western Albemarle student Ally Slechta also dazzles with technique in her batik, “April in Paris.” Even the darkest areas of Slechta’s Eiffel Tower, rising skyward behind stylized cherry branches, feature rich detail and texture. Further down the hall, another Renaissance School student, Marian Stevenson, has created a monochromatic red block print of a heron spreading its wings while standing above a fallen women that’s both strange and compelling.

Among the ceramic pieces, St. Anne’s-Belfield student Greg Wise’s whimsical creature is especially charming. Resembling a humorous cross between a dog and an alligator, the four-legged being’s body comprises parallel discs of bisque-colored clay. But it’s the movement in the scaly tale and expression of the painted-on eyes that bring the piece to life.

Also noteworthy for their outstanding technique are Western Albemarle students Reid Meador for her hand-tinted photograph of thread spools, and classmate Aly Baker for her watercolor, “Mrs. Roy.”

They may be young, but these local high school students combine fresh imagination with mature execution. As Tim Gunn would say, they “make it work.”

The annual High School Art Show is on view through March 31 in the upstairs hall gallery at the McGuffey Art Center. 201 Second St. NE. 295-7973.

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Mary Schepisi, “Guns, Birds, and Words #8: No Violence.”

My father made a profound observation while visiting PVCC’s “Cut and Paste” show last week. He said he likes art that has meaning but which also offers “mystery,” prompting contemplation and allowing viewers to bring to it their own interpretations and associations. His words resonated when I took in Second Street Gallery’s current “Conflict/Interest” exhibition, in which war-inspired works are laden with meaning, but— with a few exceptions— not much mystery.

The nine artists who contribute to the show take an iconic approach to dealing with war by working and re-working the standard symbols: machine guns, uniformed soldiers, helicopters, etc. And many stick to a standard palette— red, black, gold, and army green— although two artists, Mary Schepisi and Eyal Danieli, opt for an in-your-face irony by using pink in two pieces.

A running theme in “Conflict/Interest” is the anonymity of war. Not only do soldiers lose their individuality in uniform, but battles also blur together in their repetition of violence. Richard Kraft’s four oversized silhouettes, printed in graphic red ink on white paper, depict uniformed men from various historical conflicts. Their outlines vaguely suggest context, such as the shape of a WWI-era trench coat or Fidel Castro’s cap, but for the most part, they’ve been reduced to action figures, a point driven home by Kraft’s entire project, “100 Soldiers for a Revolution,” printed on 2″ x 1.5″ cards that call to mind children’s trading cards or stickers. (Collect them all!)

Kraft’s piece illustrates another thread running through the exhibition’s works: a concern for how war has become an accepted part of our everyday lives. Mona Hatoum uses casts of toy soldiers in two pieces to convey war’s repetitive futility, and Mary Shepisi sews small needlepoint tapestries of guns and helicopters. Eric Parnes takes a slightly more specific approach by using gold leaf, popular in Middle Eastern homes, to gild weapons.

But with the exception of Naomi Falk’s “Re (Called) Quilt Project,” in which the artist sews vertebra-like pieces of porcelain, each representing a U.S. soldier killed in Iraq, under sheer organza in a seemingly endless quilt, the works in “Conflict/Interest” are mostly one-trick ponies. Once the viewer “gets it,” there’s little reason to keep looking. Which is a shame since SSG’s past war-themed shows by Sandow Birk, Andrew Schoultz, and Anne Kessler Shields offered multivalent reflections on armed conflict that were both relevant and rich with mystery.

“Conflict/Interest,” featuring work by Eyal Danieli, Naomi Falk, Mona Hatoum, Tim Hetherington, Richard Kraft, Eric Parnes, Steven Rubin, Mary Shepisi, and Suara Welitoff, is on view through March 27 at Second Street Gallery. 115 Second St. SE. 977-7284.

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Davette Leonard, “Tangerine.”

Most people maintain romantic notions about the lives of artists and writers. But the truth is we all have to make a living. That guy and gal who sell you cabernet and beer at the Market Street Wineshop? He’s an accomplished poet, and she’s a brilliant actor. The woman who manages the dairy case at C’ville Market? She paints jaw-dropping still lifes in the manner of Renaissance artists.

In the case of the latter, Davette Leonard may keep you in yogurt and cheese by day, but her true passion lies in using oils and glazes on masonite to realistically depict small tabletop scenes, often involving fruit. Twelve of Leonard’s paintings, plus a portrait and a still life in egg tempera, are currently on view at the McGuffey Art Center.

Although her compositions involve fewer elements than those of the 16^th century Dutch masters who inspire her work, Leonard uses a similarly rich palette with careful attention paid to light. She arranges her objects on a simple cream-colored tablecloth— sometimes creased, sometimes folded— against monochromatic backgrounds.

Leonard replicates the Renaissance tradition of “vanitas” paintings, which visually lecture against worldly desire by alluding to the impermanence of life and material wealth. But rather than paint a skull amid wilting flowers and accoutrements spilling off a table, as earlier painters were wont to do, Leonard takes a subtler approach. Her sliced fruits are alluringly juicy but also show the first signs of decay in the darkened edges of their peels and slight browning of their flesh. Leonard often includes desiccated leaves, shells, and twigs to punctuate these tableaux.

Using colors that are true-to-life and luscious, Leonard keeps evidence of her brushwork to a minimum. Her objects’ edges, though not diffuse, have a softness that seductively pulls viewers into each painting, where meticulously observed details create small dramatic moments.

In “Clementine,” a dried-out leaf curls in front of an unpeeled fruit, the arc of the leaf’s central vein echoing the pulpy lines on the backs of nearby citrus slices. Elsewhere, Leonard’s interpretation of vanitas turns toward sensual aspects of desire. In “Tangerine,” the interior of a cut-open, tempting fruit whisperingly recalls female genitalia. The suggestion is quiet, yet a central crease in the tablecloth leads the viewer’s eye to it.

Luminous and exquisite, each precisely observed painting invites contemplation. If only Leonard could quit her day job, but, alas, still life isn’t real life.

Davette Leonard’s exhibition is on view through February 28 in the downstairs hall gallery of the McGuffey Art Center. 201 Second St. NW. 295-7973.

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Matthew Lively, “Thermo Baller.”

You may not know what “albedo” means, but, trust me, you’ve experienced it big time in the past week. Albedo is the amount of solar radiation reflected back into space from the earth’s surface, and it’s essential to planetary health. The best promoter of albedo? Snow with an underlying layer of ice (see, it’s good for something!), which is why the polar icecaps’ melting is such a threat.

Scientists offer myriad solutions for combating the planet’s diminishing albedo, from painting roofs white to launching mirrored satellites to generating cloud cover. Such visually intriguing ideas provide the impetus for artist Matthew Lively’s exhibition, “Odebla,” currently on view in Piedmont Virginia Community College’s North Gallery.

Collaborating with sculptor David Culpepper, Lively imagines the domestic consequences for a world where scientific intervention is necessary to maintain life. “Odebla” includes several paintings and small sculptures, but its heart is a floor-to-ceiling installation, “Satellite,” that extends across a 22-foot length of wall.

“Satellite” offers a bird’s eye— or rather a satellite’s eye— view of a modern subdivision, with several key differences. Clustered around gracefully arcing cul-de-sacs drawn in graphite, 72 nearly identical miniature houses are painted a uniform white and interspersed with 72 latticed brown “Radio Derrick” towers. The aerial perspective emphasizes the piece’s poetic rhythm and flow, and the shadows cast— particularly by the derricks— create an additional visual component.

The two-story houses in “Satellite” are similar to the houses that provide the focus for several of Lively’s oil paintings. In each case, he depicts mechanisms, such as a satellite tethered to a roof or an accordion-like ventilation pipe with red bellows, attached to cartoon-like homes, which otherwise are emblematic of story-book happiness.

In two pieces, Lively moves away from imagining methods of engineering the earth’s atmosphere and toward considering how to keep its potential toxicity at bay. In the small sculpture, “Albedo Dome 1,” he places a cheery little house surrounded by stylized green shrubs under a blown-glass bubble. The dome’s strange frosted portals have a roundness that visually echoes the spherical bushes. Lively takes this vision into two dimensions in the large oil painting, “Thermo Baller,” which offers viewers an aerial view through brown-flecked clouds of bubble-protected domesticity.

Lively’s ideas are rich, but his execution is equally interesting, incorporating drips in his paintings and allowing sculpted elements to remain off-kilter. Consequently, “Odebla” offers both fuel for thought and entertainment for the eye.

Matthew Lively’s exhibition, “Odebla,” is on view through March 3 in the North Gallery of the V. Earl Dickinson Building at Piedmont Virginia Community College. 501 College Dr. 961-5362.

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Ross McDermott, “La Faquetigue Courir de Mardi Gras.”

Ah, the road trip: an all-American tradition, often undertaken with a friend and a theme, say, visiting minor-league ballparks or driving the length of Route 66. Local photographers Ross McDermott and Andrew Owen set off on their own odyssey in a camper fueled by veggie oil with an artistic agenda: to drive cross-country attending festivals and competitions— large and small, the odder the better— in order to document what McDermott feared was a vanishing aspect of American life.

Fourteen months, 40,000 miles, and 37 gatherings later, the duo has returned with a transformed outlook.

“Festival life is strong,” they write in the statement accompanying their exuberant exhibition, “The American Festivals Project,” currently on view at The Bridge.

A giant green map of the U.S., crisscrossed with dotted white lines indicating McDermott and Owen’s circuitous route, dominates the main gallery. Hundreds of sticky notes, each with a thumbnail snapshot of a memorable moment, plaster the map and offer insights into the photographers’ personal journey, doing away with their anonymity behind the camera.

On the surrounding walls, oversized photographs capture the color and spirit of the myriad events they witnessed, often encapsulated in a portrait of a participant. For instance, McDermott’s picture of a little girl in a pink pajama-like costume standing in the middle of a two-lane road, the mask over her eyes slightly askew, captures the homespun aura of La Faquetigue Courir de Mardi Gras in rural Louisiana.

Many of the photographs have a National Geographic sensibility— not surprising since Natty Geo helped fund the trip— but many also succeed as stand-alone images beyond their documentary context. Owen’s shot of a fish-catching demonstration inside a glass tank at the Okie Noodling Festival in Paul’s Valley, Oklahoma, is particularly stunning. In this surreal composition, a disembodied human leg and the tail of a large fish jut from left and right into the center of the frame, hazy with refracted golden sunlight.

The exhibition extends into The Bridge’s anteroom, where hundreds of 4″ x 6″ photos are clipped to five tiers of monofilament. Viewers can flip each image up to read a caption noting the festival and location. Another area features smaller portraits, and in a niche, a monitor screens a video of interviews with festival participants.

The two intrepid, road-tripping photographers conclude, “Americans love to find their tribe and celebrate.” Jump in with McDermott and Owen— they’ll show you where all the best parties are!

Ross McDermott and Andrew Owen’s “The American Festivals Project” is on view through January 30 at The Bridge. 209 Monticello Road (across from Spudnuts). 985-5669.

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Peter Krebs, “May 19.”

I confess. I occasionally feel jaded by the local art scene and drift into a been-there-seen-that attitude of lassitude. But then someone like Sonjia Weber Gilkey comes along and shatters my ash-colored glasses by turning my expectations upside down.

Tall and elegant, Gilkey always cuts a striking figure among the “usual suspects” at art openings. But now she’s given me something to admire beyond her style and presence. Gilkey, it turns out, is not just an art-lover, but also an art-maker, and her monumental wall sculptures of crocheted rope are among the highlights of the “New Members Show,” currently on view at the McGuffey Art Center.

Working in an atelier in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, Gilkey has created abstract vertical works inspired by Kundalini spiritualism that incorporate objects gleaned from beachcombing, such as fishermen’s nets, shells, feathers, worn glass, and driftwood. Gilkey skillfully balances her textural elements, introducing movement via spirals and carefully draped ruffles. Her minimal use of color– for example, a bit of purple woven into the upper tier of “Soul Traveling”– and contrast of layers with negative space enhance the impact of each piece.

Hanging at the south end of McGuffey’s upstairs hall gallery, Gilkey’s organic-feeling wall pieces complement Amber Zavada’s sculptures, crafted from natural materials, atop pedestals running the length of the hall. Although Zavada has several cast-bronze pieces on show downstairs, her upstairs work features twigs, seedpods, and twine combined in precariously balanced structures that allude to social relationships with ladders, nets, and nests. Charming yet dark and otherworldly, her small-scale sculptures create Zavada an aesthetic like the lovechild of filmmaker Tim Burton and sculptor Andy Goldsworthy.

Another new McGuffey member engaged with nature is recent New York transplant Peter Krebs, who previously exhibited in Charlottesville at the now-defunct Migration gallery. Krebs has continued his series of skyward-looking portraits of trees painted on stained wood for the McGuffey show and added several small pen-and-ink drawings of tree roots. His large nighttime image, “May 19,” featuring a starlit sky seen through a lacy black canopy of charcoal, is particularly engaging.

Rounding out the stellar upstairs-hall fare are Aaron Eichorst’s mixed-media compositions that digitally mix photography, well-known artworks, and flowers in humorous and surprising ways. Meanwhile, downstairs, highlights include Bethany Pierce’s small cosmological oils, Darrell Rose’s image-packed abstracts, and Susan Haley Northington’s minimal yet effective landscapes.

Thanks, new McGuffey members, for dispelling my local-art doldrums.

The McGuffey Art Center’s annual “New Members Show,” is on view through January 31. 201 Second St. NW. 295-7973.

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Michael Underwood, Escapement.

Occasionally, a non-filmmaking artist decides to take a stab at the cinematic art form. Sometimes the results are shockingly good. For instance, painter Julian Schnabel’s Basquiat, Before Night Falls, and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly are breathtaking films. Other times, as in the case of Michael Underwood’s Escapement, currently screening at the Niche in the Fine Arts Library, well, not so much.

A photographer by training, Underwood and his brother, Matthew, set out in 2002 to make a documentary examining whether or not four dams on the Snake River, a tributary of the Columbia, should be removed to allow dwindling salmon populations to recover. In 2009, the brothers completed the project, although it’s unclear from the 28-minute video what was filmed when and how the situation may have changed over the seven-year span.

Escapement contains all the elements of a standard documentary. Shots to establish a sense of place? Check. “Talking heads” expressing contrasting viewpoints? Check. A map for geographical reference? Check. Archival photographs enlivened by camera pans, a la Ken Burns? Check. Successful documentaries, though, require attention not just to visual components but also to sound, editing, and storytelling.

Escapement’s biggest technical problem is its sound. One minute the spoken words are clear, the next they’re layered with interference. In at least two places, the stereo abruptly shifts to single channel. This inconsistent quality is jarring, distracting, and screams “amateur.” In addition, when Escapement includes voiceover, the narrator reads the script in a sing-song-y cadence that undercuts the words’ meaning.

The editing is also uneven. Interviews last too long, and the narrative thread does not un-spool smoothly. Also, the map is a visual snooze, and the use of black frames to divide the film into sections is overworked. In one instance, an interview subject’s words are inexplicably voiced over a black frame for several seconds before he is revealed.

Which is not to say Escapement doesn’t have redeeming aspects. Chief among them: every shot is beautifully composed, often contrasting the geometric lines of manufactured structures with the organic flow of nature. Underwood also skillfully imbues the video with a strong palette of red, blue, yellow, and green that provides unity.

Escapement is most successful when its compelling shots wordlessly tell the story. Underwood’s images of glass windows at a dam revealing fish swimming upstream through green water are particularly memorable.

But he probably shouldn’t quit his day job.

Michael Underwood’s documentary, Escapement, is on view through December 31 at The Niche in the Fine Arts Library. Fiske Kimball Fine Arts Library, Bayly Dr. (across from the Architecture School). For more information, visit http://thelibraryniche.blogspot.com.

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Steve Taylor, “Corn Field.”

The last time Steve Taylor exhibited at the McGuffey Art Center, he filled the main gallery with oversized oil-on-canvas landscapes. He reserved one wall, though, for a collection of small studies on paper. Taylor’s large paintings were competently executed, but these smaller works, created quickly and with less concern for control, sang with a vital lyricism.

So I smiled when I learned the title of Taylor’s current show in McGuffey’s downstairs hall gallery: “The Small Stuff.” For this body of work, Taylor combines oil, acrylic, ink, and oil pastel on paper to create landscapes from memory. All of the semi-abstract works, save two, are limited in scale and express Taylor’s affection for the Blue Ridge Mountain vistas of his present and a poignant nostalgia for English landscapes from his youth.

Many of the pieces offer Taylor’s evocative recollections of Huntcliff, a striking sheer-sided promontory that juts into the sea in northeast England. The artist provides two large photographs of the landmark for reference, but his lovely and widely varied impressions don’t rely on viewers’ familiarity with Huntcliff for their success. Taylor’s gestural strokes and deft layering of colors give viewers all the information necessary to emotionally respond to the work.

For instance, in “Huntcliff Rain,” Taylor offers an almost monochromatic painting that compels with its subtle color variations. A peach-grey sky hangs above the blue-grey cliff, quietly enlivened by green along its ridge, while a stretch of green-grey beach arcs in the foreground. The overall effect is melancholy and atmospheric.

Particularly interesting is the way Taylor uses the page itself as a frame for his images. The borders of his landscapes remain diffuse and raw, often revealing the intricate layering of his palette. Although the edges of the tiny “Corn Field,” suggest a series of horizontal sweeps across the page, the center of the image thrills with scratch-like furrows of green and reddish-pink running through a yellow field beneath a late-evening mountain skyline.

“The Small Stuff” also includes several monoprints, which are a new endeavor for Taylor. What is noteworthy is how each print is barely there and yet succeeds in evoking a landscape. For instance, “Essex” reads as a plowed field despite being essentially a faint, multi-colored blot on the page.

When it comes to Taylor’s work, contradictions rule: the less literal, the more evocative, and the smaller, the greater the impact. Less is beautifully more.

Steve Taylor’s exhibition, “The Small Stuff,” is on view through November 22 at the McGuffey Art Center. 201 Second St. NW. 295-7973.

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Still from Kevin Everson’s Erie.

One thing I look forward to during the Virginia Film Festival is the chance to view edgy, experimental pieces that usually only screen in urban centers like Chicago or New York. But this year the arty offerings are few and far between. Two exceptions are Kevin Everson’s new feature, Erie, and a group exhibition by Everson’s art students at the former C-Ville office on the Downtown Mall.

Erie contains elements familiar to Everson fans: a focus on middle-class African-American labor and leisure, an ambient soundtrack, and indications of the filmmaking process, such as scratched ends. Nevertheless, it’s a departure from the UVA art prof’s previous features. Shot in northern Ohio and Buffalo, NY, the 81-minute black and white film is a series of single takes, lasting between 10 and 11 minutes— the amount of time a film spool moves through a camera’s magazine- that are unrelated narratively.

Everson says he’s been thinking about one-take filmmaking for some time, but when he was in Europe last year he began to conceive of a piece that would string together disparate scenes, connected only by their subjects’ focus on a task at hand. Alternating between static shots and ones involving action, interiors, and exteriors, Erie is a meditative visual poem.

Opening on workers putting up a Volkswagen billboard intended to appeal to African Americans, the film cuts briefly to Niagara Falls, and then settles into a prolonged shot of a young girl in a white shirt staring at a flickering white candle. The composition is beautiful, but as the minutes tick by, with next to nothing happening, the small things— the twitch of the girl’s mouth, a drip of wax, the sound of a dog barking— become enormous.

And so it goes for the rest of the film, slow and ponderous. Which is not to say there aren’t breathtaking moments. In one memorable shot, Everson’s camera pulls back from a vocalist and pianist practicing a sentimental song on a tinny upright to follow a dancer krumping to music blasting from a CD player in another part of the warehouse-like room.

Erie screens on Thursday night, but 18 of Everson’s University of Virginia students carry the filmic art torch through the weekend with a series of video installations at 106 E. Main Street. According to fourth-year student Vashti Harrison, the eighteen pieces “are made for people to walk in and of,” and several are site-specific.

Erie, screens at 10pm on Thursday, November 5, at Regal 3 on the Downtown Mall.  For more information, call 1-800-UVA-Fest. Everson’s UVA art students’ video installations are on view Friday and Saturday, 9am-10pm, at 106 E. Main St. (former office of C-Ville). 434-242-4211.

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Bob Anderson, “Jungle Ridge Above Rio Frio.”

A recent article by Benedict Carey in The New York Times addresses how being thrown out of one’s element sparks intellectual growth and concludes, “at least some of the time, disorientation begets creative thinking.” For Bob Anderson and Cynthia Burke, who both have exhibitions at the McGuffey Art Center, disorientation also begets creative production.

Each artist’s work emerged from traveling abroad. Anderson found himself trekking through Costa Rican jungle on a bachelor-party expedition that preceded his son’s wedding. The tropical lushness captured his imagination and reminded him of his childhood in Hawaii. Burke, for her part, traveled to China and became enamored with the historical mystery of ancient objects, what they contained and who might have used them. When Anderson and Burke returned home, they both put brush to canvas.

Anderson’s “Green Mansions” consists primarily of oversized oil-on-linen “junglescapes.” The artist cum architect cum illustrator cum book publisher adopts a not-quite-realistic painting style that seems to mix Rousseau’s stylized jungles, comic book art, and an approach to primordial forests reminiscent of children’s dinosaur books. The colors are exaggerated, and a certain flatness prevails.

Although Anderson is clearly invested in his subject matter, too often his paintings veer toward being simply “green walls.” His most successful works provide viewers with a focal point, such as a root-laden tree trunk or spider monkeys scampering through the canopy.

By far, the strongest piece in the show is “Dicerorhinini,” a spellbinding rapidograph pen-and-ink that Anderson began nine years ago. Three quarters of the drawing depicts a jungle rife with flora and fauna. The more one looks, the more animals one sees, including a portrait of the artist au naturel. The drawing’s right edge, however, provides a bleak comment on deforestation, as an overweight family in Mickey Mouse ears sits on a stump in front of a bulldozer and steam shovel.

In contrast to Anderson’s scenic paintings, Burke’s “China,” offers a more interior response to travel. The show comprises three of Burke’s familiar animal portraits, three large mystical paintings, and numerous small oils of beautifully rendered containers-a brass-inlaid wooden box, a blue-and-white chinoiserie vase-that invite contemplation.

Dedicated to meticulous presentation, Burke surrounds these smaller images with stenciled frames meant to replicate the eaves in China’s Forbidden City. Unfortunately, the frames’ intense blue, green, and gold stencils distract from the delicately colored paintings.

Shortcomings aside, by stepping outside the studio, both Anderson and Burke travel in new artistic directions.

Bob Anderson’s “Green Mansions” and Cynthia Burke’s “China” are on view at the McGuffey Art Center through November 1. 201 Second St. NW. 295-7973.

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Punk and shoegaze from Worn In Red drummer Brad Perry. Also featuring Tennessee indie rockers Gamenight. Forecast is “loud as hell,” so bring earplugs or show up early to make sure you can snag one of the free pairs they’ll have available. DJ Nano plays them both out at the end, presumably at saner volumes, but if he’s had enough sake bombs, anything goes.

Forensics - Boat Day At The Marina

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Michael McGurk, “Curvaceous.”

It’s no secret that I like my art “new.” Give me artists who wrestle with ideas, who rework the expected into something startling, or who experiment with surprising media. When it comes to more traditional fare, such as figure studies and still lifes, more often than not I glaze over and take a pass (yawning as I go).

But occasionally, the sheer competence of an artist yanks me out of my been-there-seen-that slouch of apathy. Which is the case with Michael McGurk, whose oil pastel works are on display at the New Dominion Bookshop.

The 12 realistic still lifes— each 12 x 17” and presented in a gilt frame— break no new ground in terms of content, but they are nevertheless compelling, thanks to McGurk’s accomplished hand and passion for color. In “Curvaceous,” a simple tabletop composition of vegetables and fruit becomes lush via McGurk’s deft approach to pigment.

At the show’s First Friday opening, I asked the artist about the background of  “Curvaceous,” wondering if he began with black paper. He said, “No,” and excitedly explained he combined blue, brown, and black to create the velvety color. McGurk’s enthusiasm for manipulating his medium to create precise hues and effects is what elevates his otherwise mundane images out of the ordinary. An eggplant becomes subtly more saturated and an acorn squash more luminous than in real life.

Such skill only results from years of practice. Thousands of strokes, some evident, some not, power each painting. Another central component of McGurk’s work is his ability to convey light. Whether creating a convincing shadow from violet with a tinge of royal blue or using a bit of green and lilac to capture a reflection in a martini glass, McGurk revels in confronting lighting challenges.

In “Screw Can,” a label-less coffee can with a red plastic lid stands near an array of tools. McGurk uses purple and white (and, no doubt, other colors) to persuade the viewer of the circular indentations on the metal can. Meanwhile, the primary-colored handles of the tools— blue wire snips, a yellow box cutter, and a red vise— are not as straightforward as they initially seem. Yet the overall result is satisfying, with the right-to-left diagonal of the composition— sloping from the can across a funnel to the tabletop tools— carrying the eye through the composition.

Willfully not cutting-edge, McGurk relies on color and old-school skills to turn heads.

Michael McGurk’s exhibition of pastel paintings is on view at New Dominion Bookshop through April 29. 404 East Main St. on the Downtown Mall. 295-2552.

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Still from Craig Baldwin’s Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies Under America.

In the past, the Virginia Film Festival has attracted its share of celebrities, but this year it’s boasting true stars. No. Real. Stars. Really real—the kind you might admire through a telescope at UVA’s McCormick Observatory, where the Festival will offer some of its most scintillating, dare I say stellar, “Aliens”-themed programming.

Jumping into the “microcinema” trend—which takes art-house to a new level by showing experimental films in venues like basements and storefronts (think the last few scenes of Be Kind Rewind)—Festival director Richard Herskowitz plans to screen films in a small 40-seat room as well as in the larger dome room at the Observatory. It’s unclear what films will show in which space, so show up early to make sure you get a seat.

Two of the leading microcinema impresarios, Craig Baldwin and Ed Halter, have curated programs for the unusual venue. Baldwin, whose Other Cinema operates out of a former bakery in San Francisco’s Mission District, has put together a series of shorts entitled, “Space Brothers and Others,” (Thursday, 8:15pm) which includes his own cult classic, Tribulation 99: Alien Anomalies under America, a pastiche of found footage crafted into a narrative about CIA intervention in Central America. “He has an encyclopedic memory for shots,” says Herskoqwitz. “And he writes this narrative that’s very hyperbolic sci-fi, but also political.”

Halter, a Bard College prof. who operates Light Industry in Brooklyn, N.Y., will give a clip-illustrated lecture, “Ancient Astronauts,” (Saturday, 7pm) examining Sun International, the source of numerous hokey, pseudo-science documentaries in the 1970s. Halter will show Sun International’s Chariots of the Gods in its entirety. Particularly appropriate for the Observatory, the film postulates alien responsibility for Stonehenge, the Egyptian pyramids, and other ancient structures.

Other McCormick offerings include a 70th anniversary radio broadcast of War of the Worlds (Thursday, 7pm), and a collection of astronomy-themed artistic shorts, “Desired Constellations,” curated by experimental filmmaker Jeanne Liotta (Friday 7pm). Two other Observatory programs feature George and Mike Kuchar, the mad scientists of underground movies: “Blips, Demonoids and JuJu Cults” (Friday, 9:30pm) celebrates the Kuchars’ distinctive lowbrow, sci-fi cinema from the late ‘70s and early ‘80s; and Secrets of the Shadow World (Saturday, 9:30pm) documents George Kuchar’s wacky world via his trying to make a UFO feature (be forewarned, it’s a rambling 140 minutes).

Herskowitz says the Observatory offers unique potential as a venue, “We’re hoping these very strange films we’re showing in the microcinema will attract alien visitors.”

The University of Virginia’s Leander McCormick Observatory is located at 600 McCormick Road. The box office opens one hour before scheduled screenings.

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Jeff Eisenberg, “A Journey to the General’s Map, Reverse Engineered.”

Every artist has a method. Before showing up at the canvas or page, he or she first goes through an individualized process to generate ideas and prepare for the work ahead. Take, for example, Jeff Eisenberg, whose exhibition, “Internal Logic,” is currently on view at Second Street Gallery.

Eisenberg begins his projects with stream-of-consciousness writing, riffing on words and their associations until he has what her terms, “a book of information.” He then searches for images that reflect his words, picking out shapes and lines to create computer-generated visuals, which he hand-draws in graphite and colored pencil on paper and translucent Mylar overlays.

The results are futuristic landscapes, with defined horizons, where structures soar or float in mid-air. In Eisenberg’s conjunctions of utopia and dystopia, it’s often hard to distinguish whether scenes are mid- construction or mid-destruction. Frequently, there is an unfinished aspect, which gives the works the feeling of schematics lifted from the drafting table of some post-apocalyptic architect.

Eisenberg’s palette choices also seem otherworldly. His drawings contain neon-bright elements (with a predilection for cadmium yellow, safety orange, and hot pink) in surprising combinations with muted tones like grey, mauve, olive green, and brown. The juxtaposition seems odd yet appropriate in his fractured worlds.

Using Mylar, Eisenberg creates the illusion of dimension and spatial relationships  between elements. For instance, in “The Everlasting Gobstopper Reverse Engineered,” arches begin on the top layer and continue on lower sheets, giving the impression that the shapes are physically receding in space. The translucence of the medium also imbues shadows and objects in the distance with convincing diffuse edges.

Particularly striking is the way Eisenberg contrasts his precise re-creation of digitally generated lines with evidence of his human hand. The strokes of his colored-pencil shading remind the viewer of the artist’s presence.

In addition to the exhibition’s eight drawings, Eisenberg has also installed a kiosk with a CD player, headphones, and CD-sized booklets of “bad high school poetry,” that promises visitors an “Audio Tour.” But rather than a description of the works on display, the viewer hears modulated human-made sounds inspired by other drawings Eisenberg previously made. And in a strange circular sequence, these sound pieces are, in fact, the sources for several works that are included in “Internal Logic.”

Eisenberg’s method is undeniably complex. But if a picture is worth a thousand words, in Eisenberg’s case, a thousand words— and sounds— are worth a picture.

Jeff Eisenberg’s exhibition, “Internal Logic,” is on view in the Dové Gallery at Second Street Gallery through November 1. 115 Second St. SE (in the Charlottesville City Center for the Arts). 977-7284.

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Shelby Fischer, “Scrumtrulescent.”

When we last left Shelby Fischer, she was excited at the prospect of showing her artwork in Les Yeux du Monde’s new West Main space. The small rooms, she thought, would create an intimate atmosphere for experiencing her collages, which use found images and small items to explore childhood memories, mystical experiences, and the omnipresence of death.
And she was right.
Whereas Fischer’s past shows in the gallery’s former downtown location featured giant mosaic arrangements, where individual pieces often got lost in the sheer profusion of work, her current exhibition, “The Eternal Now,” offers viewers the chance to appreciate each image’s intricate construction and narrative moment. That said, Fischer is nothing if not prolific, and the show’s 118 pieces are a challenge to absorb in a single visit (I was attentive through about no. 47, but the remaining 71 works— with a few exceptions— are a blur).
Meticulously composed, Fischer’s often humorous works visually express her own mental ramblings, which wander through nursery rhymes, emotional quandaries, supernatural experiences, and spiritual speculation. The clipped images and small objects she incorporates are often laden with nostalgia. What emerge are fantastical moments of magical realism, in which humans and animals often interact as equals and the miraculous is commonplace.
Fischer’s technical method is complex. In her two-dimensional works, she pieces together dramatic scenes against backgrounds created from carefully chosen handmade papers, extending the colorscapes into the surrounding frames with tiles or painted wooden blocks. Sometimes she augments these outer edges with found objects or tiny skulls. Although the glitter that characterized her earlier work still occurs here and there, Fischer has become more judicious about where she adds sparkle.
She also now allows her imaginings to extend into three dimensions, sometimes creating sculptural mixed-media pieces (including several music boxes). In “Je Langer,” a memory box-like cabinet of tiled compartments contains suspended porcelain doll appendages, jeweled items, carved blocks, and a small jar of skulls, all surrounding a central image of young boys playing beneath a compass. The meaning is enigmatic, but the way Fischer echoes color, line, and shape throughout the composition is compelling.
Less successful are the five pieces that involve woodcarving. The crudeness of execution seems at odds with Fischer’s otherwise refined technique, even when using rustic elements.
But that’s a small complaint given the dazzling wonders Fischer has packed into “The Eternal Now.” It’s a show well worth viewing more than once.

Shelby Fischer’s exhibition, “The Eternal Now,” is on view through November 1 at Les Yeux du Monde. 500 W. Main St. 973-5566.

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Kristina Glick Shank, detail of two magnolia necklaces.

The truth is I fall in love on a daily basis. A color may catch my eye (fall is particularly dangerous for me). Or the way a shadow drifts across a wall. Or the inward curl of a dried-up leaf. Whatever the prompt, my heart suddenly leaps into anguished ecstasy over a brush with fleeting beauty. Many friends roll their eyes when I gush over the blue-green sheen of a fly that’s landed on my water glass.
But I know Kristina Glick Shank would understand. In her statement accompanying “How I Walk,” Shank’s McGuffey Art Center exhibition of fine art jewelry, small enamel abstracts, and gélee prints, she writes, “Beautiful things have always affected my life, and I believe beauty is a powerful force in the world.”
Encounters with nature are a reservoir of inspiration and ideas for Shank’s exquisitely crafted work. Abstract branches extend across enamel surfaces that shift with colors drawn from an autumn day. Elsewhere, the lunar surface—milky white with faint green mottling—underlies a series of 16 round pendants entitled “Imagination Moon.” And in the McGuffey foyer, four stunning necklaces incorporate actual dried magnolia scales.
Particularly in her jewelry, Shank generates visual energy by playing with contrasts. She mixes symmetry and asymmetry, concave and convex surfaces, accretive shapes with pierced holes, and highly refined craftsmanship with organic shapes formed either naturally or by electrochemical reactions.
For instance, in one pendant in the “Infinity’s Shadow” series, a rim of oxidized electroform copper surrounds a perfectly round dome of glistening, carmine enamel, Shank has manipulated the copper to mimic the beauty of corrosion, extending metallic bits and blooms seemingly haphazardly onto the surface of the enamel.
This innovative approach to materials and composition runs throughout “How I Walk,” but nowhere is it clearer than in Shank’s magnolia-scale necklaces. In each, coppery leaves, revealing silvery undersides, radiate in a circle interspersed with pearls, tiny snail shells (the kind commonly found Virginia creeks), or beautifully set stones. Shank meticulously attends to every detail. Especially noteworthy is “Memory’s Pieces: Arboreal Shores,” which features a graceful, sculptural assemblage composed of an enamel square, a shell fragment, two snails impaled on curving copper spits, and a single, dangling, pearl-studded magnolia scale.
In her statement, Shank says she aspires to create “a poetry of the actual.” Her material lyricism is like a siren’s song. Its power is compelling, and I swoon yet again.

Kristina Glick Shank’s exhibition, “How I Walk,” is on view at the McGuffey Art Center through November 2. 201 Second St. NW. 295-7973.

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Above, Rick Weaver, “Monday Morning.” Below, Rick Weaver, “Morning on the Teatro.”

When I wrote about Rick Weaver’s small wall sculptures last May in a review of the exhibition, “Three Realists,” at the Nichols Gallery Annex, I didn’t mention a large painting of an Italian restaurant that Weaver also had on display. But the piece has stayed with me because it veered away from the artist’s meticulous realism into an impressionistic style of painting that hummed with energy.
So my heart beat a little faster when I saw the image accompanying Angelo’s announcement of Weaver’s current show, “The Piazza: Life Sketches in a Tuscan Hill Town.” Entitled “Monday Morning,” the painting is nothing more than a series of quick dabs and strokes of color that combine to yield a lively Italian street scene filled with light. What’s particularly stunning, though, is the image is a watercolor.
To be blunt, I am not a watercolor fan, although I appreciate the technical skill the medium requires. That said, I have never seen watercolors like Weaver’s! Rather than manipulate fluid bleeds and translucent shades, Weaver treats watercolors like oils, building up almost opaque layers with colors that are unexpectedly saturated and vivid. Yet a closer look reveals Weaver also takes advantage of the medium’s transparency to create shifting shadows and variations in the play of light.
Angelo’s exhibition presents a series of mostly small vignettes Weaver painted during two summers in Italy. Each has the energy of an impromptu sketch that captures a fleeting moment. Unlike the frozen stillness of a snapshot, though, the way Weaver applies paint to the page creates the illusion that the movement continues. It’s spellbinding, especially considering how abstract his strokes are—a splotch of turquoise here, a streak of violet there, a small arc of green, a few dots of orange.
Yet these impressionistic images are unmistakably drawn from life (the Italian tourism board should consider commissioning Weaver since he makes the viewer want to step into each scene). One of the most evocative works is “Morning Light on the Teatro.” A few strokes indicate people milling about a darkened town square as sunlight illuminates the clay-tiled roof and upper region of a stucco building in the background. The same teal and lavender Weaver uses to create the sky, he uses again to convey shadows beneath the building’s arches and overhang. It’s a mastery of color that’s simply jaw dropping.
Weaver’s paintings are literally strokes of genius. And to think they’re watercolors.

Rick Weaver’s exhibition, “The Piazza: Life Sketches in a Tuscan Hill Town,” is on view at Angelo through October 31. 220 E. Main St. on the Downtown Mall. 971-9256.

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Dave Moore, detail from “the legacy of my precedents (my own and others).”

Practice. We all know it “makes perfect” and is the punch-line way to get to Carnegie Hall, but as any Zen master will tell you, practice is also an end in itself. Beginners generally view rehearsals as a tedious but necessary means for reaching a goal. More experienced practitioners, however, know that repetition itself opens up endless possibilities and thrilling variations. Any fear of failure vanishes with absorption in the familiar act of doing.
Just ask Dave Moore, whose abstract paintings are currently on view at The Bridge. “Any time I am surprised by the content,” he says, “that is what I want.”
An accomplished artist, Moore has never let financial challenges disrupt his practice. He scrounges old canvases from junkshops, sometimes letting colors from the original works surface in his own compositions. Recently,he’s started cutting up industrial drop cloths because he likes how the untreated canvas actually resists paint.
Moore’s methods for beginning his artworks are equally unorthodox. A favorite approach is to place canvas on the ground and then throw acrylic paint on it from his porch. Moore then lifts the canvas to manipulate how the paint moves across it or folds it to distribute the color. He explains he finds these methods “a better way to communicate with the painting.”
The results give Moore an idea for how to proceed. For instance, the large diptych, “In the Fruiting,” grew out of a fluid mingling of yellow and olive paint at the center of the left panel. From there, Moore used an array of techniques to create a profusions of diffuse-edged tubers and vines that emerge like a genie from a vase painted below the original spill. Moore’s developed sense of color, line, and surface (the man is a master of varnish) all contribute to the painting’s success.
Such raw yet skillful energy recalls the combustible power of Robert Motherwell’s abstracts. But unlike Motherwell, who preferred swaths of black, Moore constantly explores how colors interact. In perhaps his strongest work, “the legacy of my precedents (my own and others),” a central red panel, energized by a riotous interplay of texture and color—cobalt blue, white, violet, turquoise, pink, orange—extends elements into calmer, cream-colored panels on either side that continue the composition in more minimal terms.
Zen-like, Moore’s practiced ability enables him both to know and not know where a painting is going as he works, which infuses his art with excitement.

Dave Moore’s paintings, along with photography by Andy Acquaro, are on view through September 28 at The Bridge. 209 Monticello Road (across from Spudnuts). 984-5669.

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Rosamond Casey, “Power Stroke: Act One.”

In the introduction to “Men In Suits: A Day on the Hill,” currently on view at the McGuffey Art Center, artist Rosamond Casey notes she grew up in Washington, D.C. surrounded by suit-wearing men. The ritual vestment of Capitol Hill high rollers, the suit symbolizes the relationship of masculinity to power for Casey. “By design,” she writes, “it expresses unassailable authority while concealing a myriad of behaviors.”

            Interested in exploring how the physical suit might express the psychology of its wearer, Casey spent a day roaming Washington’s balustrades, and marble halls (the architectural equivalents of power suits) photographing men as they went about their daily business. These snapshots then served as a springboard for Casey’s creation of a quasi-narrative, told through 10 mixed-media pieces, tracing an Everyman’s odyssey through Washington’s shadowy old boys’ world.

            A multi-faceted artist, Casey brings to the project an arsenal of skills, ranging from calligraphy to letterpress mastery to painting to collage. Her thoughtfully yet intuitively composed pieces reflect Casey’s obsession with shape and gesture combined with meaning-laden materials such as brass (evoking masculine clichés like “top brass,” “getting down to brass tacks,” and “showing one’s mettle,” as well as offering a shiny, hard yang to suiting fabric’s soft yin).

The current exhibition circumnavigates McGuffey’s main gallery with a clockwise sequence of stations, beginning with “Initiation.” Each piece consists of a photomontage overlaid with painted glass and often other materials and works as a self-contained individual composition but also speaks to the show’s other images. For instance a lyrical series of arched shapes in “Chinese Whispers” finds echoes in the architectural backdrops of other pieces. Likewise, the gesture of a phallic microphone in “Chinese Whispers” recurs in the line of an even more phallic severed deer’s leg in “Power Stroke: Act One.”

Interspersed with these larger works are the 4”x 6” photographs Casey took in D.C. Her subjects’ heads are often out of frame or obscured, but their jackets and pants crease and flap to create calligraphic strokes as they walk. Although Casey’s imagined storyline is often elusive, her pieces are nevertheless riveting and evocative, conveying a rarified universe fueled by fabric-swathed testosterone and flop sweat.

A limited-run art book, bound in brass and Versace pinstripe wool cashmere, accompanies the exhibition. As beautifully produced as the volume is, though, the flat pages cannot capture the complexity of Casey’s layered originals, revealing the bravado and insecurity encased in every suit.

Rosamond Casey’s “Men in Suits: A Day on the Hill” is on view at the McGuffey Art Center through September 28. 201 Second St. NW. 295-7973.

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Aaron Noble, “Rainbow 6: Relayer,” 2008, gouache on watercolor paper, 22 x 26.75 inches.

By Laura Parsons

When I was in grade school, my parents lured my brother and me into  going to church with the bait of being able to buy any comic book we wanted if we’d sit through the sermon. I always went for the defiantly un-churchy horror comics—Eerie and The Witching Hour—but my brother opted for superheroes like Batman and The Incredible Hulk. After one read, we’d swap and then talk about what frames we liked best.

 So, perhaps nostalgia underlies my rapture for Aaron Noble’s works on paper, currently on display in Second Street Gallery’s Dové Gallery. Combining Noble’s interests in comics, graffiti, and collage, the show’s nine abstract images blur the line between painting and drawing.

Noble, like me, grew up reading superhero comics in the 1960s and 1970s. As a young artist in his 20s, he became interested in the mid-century French Lettrist movement’s radical approach to collage. Then during the 1990s, murals and graffiti caught Noble’s eye. He was particularly intrigued by how graffiti worked without backgrounds and bucked political responsibility.

At the same time, superhero comics were becoming more ambivalent and decadent even as the artwork began to change through computer-generated imagery. Drawing on all these influences, Noble started cutting comic books into fragments, reassembling the de-contextualized bits into abstract collages, and then painting them large on the walls of buildings. Using the same method, he also began creating smaller works on paper.

Noble’s images at Second Street Gallery rip across their frames, twisting and turning in violent motion against blank backgrounds. Using a brush and gouache (sometimes sparkling with metallic flecks), Noble precisely mimics the black holding lines, cross-hatching, and inking of his source material. The resulting works pull viewers in with an almost-familiarity, as the eye grasps at references— blue metallic machinery, sinewy body parts, spiked armor— that ultimately prove elusive.

The compositions seem at once industrial and organic. While assembling collages, Noble says he thinks of them as “entities,” and the subsequent paintings reflect this sense of self-propelled dynamism. Often the image shoots onto the page from outside the frame. In the compelling “Pawn Checks King,” layered shafts of blue and violet extend from the upper left corner to the center of the page where they conjoin with other elements— blue knees? silver-studded red manacles?—to form a contorted ribbon.

Free of background and narrative context, Noble’s superhero-inspired artwork packs a vivid punch. Kapow!

“Aaron Noble: Drawings” is on view at Second Street Gallery through September 27. 115 Second St. SE (in the City Center for Contemporary Arts). 977-7284.

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Ruffin Hall plans by Schwartz/Silver Architects

By Laura Parsons

If you haven’t driven on Culbreth Road recently, you’re in for a visual shock. Where once an empty hillside overlooked a little-used amphitheater, a 560-space parking garage now looms. Meanwhile, the former paved lot in front of Culbreth Theatre has transformed into a not-quite-grown-in grassy lawn sloping up to a massive three-story brick building jutting with angular skylights: Ruffin Hall, the University of Virginia’s studio art department’s impressive new digs (cue the “Moving on Up” theme song from The Jeffersons).

After being evicted from Fayerweather Hall during its renovation, the art faculty squatted in what were essentially tin shacks behind the Curry School for several years. So, the shift into a $27 million building specifically dedicated to art production, with studios designed to meet individual professors’ particular teaching needs, is a dream come true.

 Almost.

Like any new building, Ruffin’s reality needs a few tweaks and adjustments. Chief among them: remedying more than 50 leaks that sprang forth during late August’s heavy rains. Plus, there are equipment issues. Mechanized computer tables stand wrapped in plastic in the second-floor hall, waiting to head back to the factory, because the digital lab’s state-of-the-art monitors are too large for the tables. Elsewhere, a giant hood intended to absorb fumes from printmaking processes involving nitric acid, currently has a yellow legal-pad page taped to it with “Do Not Use” scrawled in red.

Visiting artist Clay Witt jokes that he’s started calling Ruffin’s sub-contractors “sob contractors.” Nevertheless, he’s quick to point out the building’s strengths outweigh its temporary flaws. “Look at the light!” he says enthusiastically gesturing in the gargantuan third-floor painting studio.

“Whatever problems we have, they’re all fixable,” says department chair Larry Goedde. “It’s just an inspiration itself to be in this building.”

Ruffin’s interior aesthetic is decidedly un-Jeffersonian and industrial chic, with cement-block walls, poured concrete floors, and girders and pipes crisscrossing the ceiling. Huge glass-paneled garage doors roll up on the papermaking and sculpture studios on the ground floor, and lounge areas boast clean-lined Herman Miller furniture.

On the third floor, a welded metal pocket door opens onto Ruffin Gallery, a venue with soaring walls. The gallery’s inaugural exhibition premiers September 22, with a public reception September 26, and features woodcuts by Finnish artist Annu Vertanen and Nebraska-based artist Karen Kunc.

With their move into Ruffin, the UVA studio art faculty seems to have finally gotten a piece of the pie.

For more information about lectures, exhibitions, and other events at Ruffin Hall, contact UVA’s McIntire Department of Art. 924-6123.

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As a high school student, prom may be the ultimate school-related clich�, one that New York photographer Mary Ellen Mark explores in her latest exhibition, “Prom.” Traveling around the country over the past three years, Mark attended several proms— including Charlottesville High School’s 2008 prom— capturing the magic the night entails. For four CHS prom-going couples, inclusion in Mark’s project meant more than a night of memories— the couple’s portraits were recently showcased in both the McGuffey Art Center and People’s June 16 issue (shown at left).

“Prom is just a great American ritual, so incredibly visual,” Mark says. “I wanted to show the rite of passage. It’s very much an important American custom.”

Mark, who claims to still own her prom pictures, captured the magic of prom throughout the country, stopping in places such as Houston, Texas, Pacific Palisades, California, and Brooklyn, New York, before coming to Charlottesville. After (more)

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