Situated across the street from King Family Vineyards in Crozet, nestled among a stand of trees at the edge of pasturelands, a 1929 farmhouse offers the opportunity to explore exciting visual art within a vibrant and welcoming domestic setting.
Visitors to the non-traditional gallery at Folly Farm won’t find paintings of hunt scenes or hayfields often seen in this type of rural residence. Instead, contemporary works featuring bright, saturated colors in geometric compositions mingle with large-scale mixed media pieces, executed in natural palettes. A dynamic tension emerges between interior decoration and thoughtful curation where skill in aesthetic pairing shines. The conversations between artworks and architectural elements in and across space draw the eye, creating connections between framed works and door frames, furnishings and fine art. Passing through the home’s front door, visitors are met with warm wooden floors and woven-grass wallpaper. Photographs of Black cowboys and color fields rendered in thousands of shimmering beads adorn the entryway, communicating the tone of the interior in a bold and purposeful manner.
The new art space launched earlier this year as Pennsylvania-based art historian and curator Susanna Gold began splitting her time between the Philadelphia area and Central Virginia. A native of Richmond, Gold has been tied to Crozet through her in-laws for many years, but recently began establishing connections with artists, collectors, corporate clients, and arts institutions in the region. The gallery emerged as a means to expand her advisory practice in the Charlottesville area, beginning as just a single room on the first floor of her home.
“Building a showroom of sorts allowed me to have a space where I could meet with collectors, understand what their art needs are, and have space to show them lots of different kinds of work within an art environment rather than an office,” Gold says. “As the art that I wanted to introduce to the Charlottesville area continued to expand beyond the ‘showroom’ space I had carved out, it began to creep into other spaces of the house.”
Artworks quickly came to occupy the majority of the home—living room, dining room, family room, three upstairs guest rooms, hallways, stairwells—and Gold began inviting clients and visitors to freely walk throughout the house to see what might resonate with them. “[It] proved to be a very helpful approach for showing work, since viewers could envision how the art could look in their own spaces,” she says.
Gold, who holds a Ph.D from the University of Pennsylvania and served on the art history faculty at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art for nearly a decade, has produced exhibitions and events in a wide variety of forms. She has curated pop-up exhibitions, temporary storefront spaces, art fair booths, and shows in museums and galleries, including several as the former Director of NoBA Artspaces in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. “The Crozet space is very different because it’s not only permanent, it’s personal,” Gold says. “I love the intimate aspect of the space—it’s very relaxed and comfortable, and not at all intimidating.”
The ability to engage with an evolving and varied body of work outside of a white-cube gallery setting, where the interplay between domestic and artistic aesthetics creates opportunities to experience the artworks within an everyday context, isn’t an everyday occurrence. Yet Gold is adamant that the “private” nature of the site shouldn’t be a deterrent to exploring new artists and artworks. “When visitors enter your home to view art, rather than a storefront space, it is a much more personal experience,” she says. “It fosters conversation and can lead to new relationships—that’s exciting for me.”
To the left of the entryway, the former showroom now serves as a dedicated exhibition space, displaying the work of a featured artist in shows that rotate seasonally. Neutral walls and furniture and fixed lighting allow the artwork to take center stage, forming an insulated presentation within the larger, evolving installation of works throughout the house. “Still,” the inaugural exhibition which opened in June and ran through mid-October, featured sculptures and photographs by Pennsylvania-based artist Paul Cava, including images of highly detailed autumn leaves in minimalist arrangements.
Most of the artwork at the Folly Farm gallery comes from living, practicing artists—many of whom Gold has worked with for a number of years. “The work I currently have in the gallery is by artists from all over the country, but I have recently started introducing work by Virginia-based artists,” Gold says. Her first experience showing an artist of the region was an immediate success, with a collector acquiring a large-scale painting by Central Virginia-based VM Fisk the same day Gold introduced it in the space. (Full disclosure: The author of this article has a personal relationship with Fisk).
Some works are brought in on consignment, but largely, what is on view comes directly from the artists’ studios. “If artists are already represented by other galleries, or if I get to know an artist’s work through other art advisors, it offers an opportunity for collaboration,” Gold says. “I have really enjoyed getting to know Charlottesville’s other art advisors, advocates, and gallerists—everyone I’ve gotten to know here has been so welcoming and open to new ways to collaborate.”
There’s a great deal of diversity within the works on view, and a variety of price points for seasoned and new collectors alike. “Since each collector is different and has their own personal tastes and interests, I work with a wide range of artists to meet the varying needs of each collector rather than represent a small group of artists, as some galleries do,” Gold says. Photography at varying scales, mixed media works, assemblage, prints, and paintings all commingle with sconces, armoires, and house plants where every inch feels considered, but not overwrought or overthought.
To the right of the entryway, a dining room space with floral wallpaper hosts the first piece Gold mounted in the Crozet gallery: a geometric abstraction by Thomas Paul Raggio complemented by its decorative backdrop, as both the canvas and wallpaper traffic in the same palette. Likewise, Gold has strategically installed Keith Breitfeller’s painted abstractions with impasto marks against the wallpaper, connecting artwork and interior design through pattern and a palette of pink and blue hues.
In the adjoining common space, gestural abstractions by Elyce Abrams offer slick, gloss-surfaced energy, across from a series of linear-based works by Jay Walker mounted below another piece by Fisk, whose works on panel straddle the line between painting and sculpture. The hues of these paintings and their sharp edges come into conversation with colorful books that line built-in shelves within a comfortable atmosphere.
The woven-grass wallpaper found in the entryway extends to the landing upstairs, where Gold has installed works with more subdued natural palettes accented with pops of saturated pinks, reds, blues, and greens. Antonio Puri’s small-scale works in natural inks are perfectly activated by the ecru grass wallpaper, creating a subtle yet elegant conversation between material, art, and architecture situated in their white frames between two white doors.
This consideration of how artworks relate and converse with each other and their setting in and across space is wonderfully apparent in the upstairs bedrooms. In the first of three guest rooms, works by Walker, Claes Gabriel, Joseph McAleer, and Lavette Ballard each feature warm tones with healthy doses of yellow pigment, brightening a space that features light yellow walls and a single bed dressed with a blanket featuring natural patterns in yellow and green. The second bedroom pushes into a cooler blue palette, where paintings by Breitfeller, Kirby Frendenhall, and Deirdre Murphy complement a mixed media tryptic by Puri, all set against blue-and-white-striped wallpaper and patterned bedspread in blue and white fabrics. The third bedroom leans into its floral wallpaper with representational prints and paintings that evoke the natural world—including a striking monoprint of a silhouetted Larkspur flower by Murphy and meditative cloud paintings by Frenddenhall—as well as abstract compositions on canvas and paper, like McAleer’s energetic canvas reminiscent of dense foliage and Paula Cahill’s gestural gauche paintings that evoke swirling water.
Gold has worked with and against the features of her home when choosing where to hang artwork, teasing out subtle connections between shared aspects of art and decor in some instances while acknowledging more obvious associations in others. She’s achieved a thoughtful balance where the works on view feel naturally situated among the elements of everyday habitation, making it easy to move throughout the quarters and consider how these art objects might live within your own home, or how you might try to borrow from Gold’s expertise to curate your own personal collection.
The venture is a wonderful addition to Central Virginia’s arts scene, strengthening a creative culture in the region that is already robust. “Being a Richmond native, I have seen that city blossom into a thriving arts scene, and that same passion for the arts infuses the Charlottesville area with a strong artist community, and dedicated museum and nonprofit arts patrons,” Gold says. “I am excited to have become a part of such an enthusiastic and supportive community.”
The gallery at Folly Farm is open by chance or appointment. Open hours for drop-in visitors change weekly. To learn more, preview artworks, review open hours, and book appointments visit susannawgold.com.
