Presenting a broad survey of disciplines and conceptual concerns, McGuffey Art Center’s “All Member Summer Show” highlights the diverse output made by studio residents of Charlottesville’s downtown arts hub. From unexpected and eccentric assemblage and sculpture to alluring paintings in lush oil and vivid watercolor, the two-floor showcase offers an incredible amount of art to investigate and enjoy.
Parsing through the artworks on view, a snapshot of what McGuffey artists are currently exploring comes into focus. Sculpture and textile-based pieces are elevated into position alongside representative and abstract painting. Carved wood, hand-built ceramic, cast bronze, and mixed media compositions occupy pedestals that run down the center lines of the First and Second Floor galleries, balancing what’s on the walls with intricate expressions that invite closer inspection.
Alan Box Levine’s contributions stand out in a series of whimsical and bizarre bicycle-based sculptures featured throughout the show. Levine’s playful pieces anchor a selection of delightfully weird works—mostly executed in sculpture and mosaic—that often incorporate found objects and ephemera. Deborah Davis’ appropriately titled “A Strange Atmosphere” combines shattered ceramic with found objects to evoke a surreal western landscape. Joe Vena’s “Sloth Prayers and Mop Dreams” presents a sculptural vignette of two uncanny little creatures that are endearingly odd—and a little unsettling—which are watched over by the somewhat stern
portrait portrayed in “Mary’s Parakeet,” another of Davis’ mixed media mosaics.
Across media, portraiture and figurative subjects abound, illustrating the return to more “traditional” expressions following a protracted hot period for abstraction in the wider art world. Highlights of representative painting include Mary Jane Check’s ornate “Dare to Dream,” Michael Powers’ subversive “The Hunt,” and the nostalgia-tinged “Army Man No. 3” by Michael Fitts, all of which employ a measure of the surreal.
Several pieces by landscape artist Giselle Gautreau carry the dreamlike quality of the aforementioned output in studies of the natural world, while Marcia Mitchell’s exacting watercolor rendering of floral forms in “Dahlias, Anemones, Goldenrod” captures the enduring allure of botanical plates in a beautifully rich and measured natural palette.
It can be difficult to design an exhibition featuring so many varied voices working in diverse artistic media, but an obvious effort has been made to curate the exhibition into small cohesive collections and conversations.
Intimate moments of curation elevate each piece within a particular instance of aesthetic connection. Pink hues are attuned in a grouping of paintings including Lisa Macchi’s affectively unbridled abstraction “Melting Light,” Andrea Echeverri-Gent’s gesturally fluid “The River Styx in Pink,” and Todd Daggett’s untitled sci-fi scene on the second floor.
Likewise, a quartet of works by Jane Skafte, Lauren Williams, and Claudia Cappelle on the first floor teases out peachy tones in Skafte’s botanical watercolor “Amherst,” Williams’ delicately handwoven textile diptych “Recto/Verso,” and Cappelle’s “Summer Radiance,” a colorfield piece with patches of flower petals peaking through swaths of soft acrylic wash.
These moments allow viewers to draw aesthetic—and, in some cases, emotional—connections between media, and realize how disparate expressions elevate and complement each other. When connections aren’t immediately apparent, it’s recommended that viewers take care to shift their vistas, to change their point of view to reveal new perspectives within the exhibition, both literally and figuratively.
