This Spring 2019 Visiting Artist is Michael Booker.  Michael is a Maryland based artist originally from Mississippi.  Currently a Professor at Montgomery College Michael is known for his painting, 2D and sculptural work showcasing a wide range of skills.  The “Reprise” show represents work done mostly with fine liner pen on paper showcasing glimpses into a mythology created by the artist addressing the idea of storytelling as passed down through generations.

FULL ARTIST’S STATEMENT

Using Concrete, plaster and casting plastic Prof. Jackson explores ideas of the mental struggles encountered through stress.  Each sculpture represents a different individual that was interviewed by the artist regarding their mental stress issues.

The exhibition is open from Jan. 22nd to Feb. 23rd in the WAS Gallery on the Woodbridge Campus.

We Are very excited to open the 2018-19 year with a traveling Exhibition from Prof. Jessica Gardner at the Alexandria Campus title “Crowns”.  From the release about the show.

“We are literally crowned by our mothers hips as infants in the womb, the role of motherhood might be described as a crowning moment for some.

The impacts that caring for children have on artist mothers expands beyond new time constraints and into physical, emotional, and spiritual crossings.

During the monumental shift of crossing into motherhood, artist mothers redefine who they are as humans, but also who they are as artists.

Cowns asked women to create work that reflects on their experiences through the currents of motherhood.”

The ceramic based works are on view until September 28th when there will be a closing reception with Professor Gardner in attendance to speak about the work.  

For the first time the powerhouses of Fine Arts Club and Photography Club have joined forces in unholy unity to create a Joint Student Show.  The Gallery has been looking for ways to include more student work in it shows every semester and this first effort was very well received and attended.  Each Club went through a selection process and prepped the work themselves.  This show increased the level of student engagement in the Art Gallery and will lead to future shows featuring both clubs.

Please come by and view the current work of Artist Justin Strom.  These massive prints are really sight to see up close and personal.

Self/Non-Self is an exhibition of mixed-media works by Baltimore artist Justin D. Strom. Strom’s series Self/Non-Self investigates a deep curiosity of the human body, creating a digital landscape of our unseen inner-spaces by combining elements of the real with those of the imagination.

Engaging with issues of microbiology, cloning, and genetic sequencing, Strom uses a hybrid of photography, digital printmaking, and 3D composite imagery to build luminous 2D works. Dense abstract forms with no clear boundaries create an alternative interior with scenes of rich color, frozen explosions, and conglomerated forms that act as symbolic reminders of transformation and impermanence in a volatile world. These multi-layered works offer a microbiological investigation of forms in imagined space that revel in the structures and processes of the body by exploring it from the inside.

Bio:  Strom is a mixed-media artist, an Associate Professor in Printmaking and Digital Imaging, and the Graduate Director of the Arts Department at the University of Maryland, College Park. Born in Columbia, Missouri, he received his BFA in Painting at Columbia College-Columbia, and his MFA in Studio Art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has worked as an Assistant Printer at Highpoint Editions in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and a Production Assistant at Tandem Press in Madison, Wisconsin.

Website: www.Justindstrom.com

Currently on view in the Gallery is the Annual Faculty Group Exhibition. Featuring works by our Fine Arts and Photography Faculty.  Please come by and see what your Instructors are up to in their own personal practice.

Works By:

Fred Markham, Veronica Melendez, Amanda Sauer, Julia Kwon, Gail Rebhan, Roxana Geffen and Zac Jackson

Structure(d) Observations was co-curated by Gallery Director and Associate Professor of Art History Erin Devine and Assistant Professor of Sculpture Zac Jackson. NOVA-Woodbridge’s Sculpture program was initiated with the arrival of Jackson in 2013. Sculpture classes have added an additional understanding of design concepts in the program’s foundational areas, furthering materials and processes from which art students can create. Sculpture(d) Observations was intended to invite artists who stretch the boundaries of sculpture from object of contemplation to an awareness of material and space in how we experience our surroundings.

Artist, writer, curator, Erin Devine is also the Director of the New Gallery for Contemporary Art. Her muse trilogy, their selected still images, and the introduction of a new piece, Mnemosyne, her first work in Epic Red Film, were part of her first solo endeavor at NOVA. Four encaustic “non-modernist” objects supplemented an exhibition that investigates the gaps between gender, history, creative partnership, and questions the stereotype of “the muse.”

The Muse Trilogy on monitors, and Mnemosyne projected

It was a wonderful evening with Iranian cartoonist Kianoush Ramezani, who came from Paris to join us in the gallery for a closing reception to his mid-career retrospective. His artist talk in the Lakeside Theater drew an interesting dialogue among students and visitors from the DC community.

We are grateful to our co-sponsors, our Campus & Community Life Fund and our Visiting Artist Fund made possible through the Chadab Foundation for Visual and Performing Arts.

Guests to the reception for Contemplating Candy II took away some of the artist-made lollipops to reveal, one letter at a time, the literal subtext of the exhibition. Between now and the show’s end on December 10, come grab a lollipop and see the hidden meaning unfold!

A lecture with the artist will be held Wednesday, Nov 18 at 4:30pm in the Black Box.