First Fridays: December 1

First Fridays: December 1 “Every artist starts with something inside themselves that feels true to them,” says sculptor and installation artist Ivy Naté. “I’m not sure what came first for me…balancing chaos and order, or reinventing the obvious.” “I feel lucky that at times I am able to take some abstract shit in my head, interpret […]

First Fridays: November 3

First Fridays: November 3 Ann Robertson made her first art quilt more than 20 years ago, as a way of working through her experience in the Great Hanshin earthquake that hit Kobe, Japan, in the wee hours of January 17, 1995. With no prior quilting experience and only one American quilting book and some Japanese quilting […]

First Fridays: October 6

When Georgia Webb draws, she tends to draw things that are close to her—her mother, Ali, her grandpa Jim or her friend Sidney. She draws her favorite cartoon characters, iconic items like Spam cans, and often reinterprets famous paintings, such as Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” in her own distinct black line-and-marker style. A […]

First Fridays: September 1

Annie Gould Gallery 121 S. Main St., Gordonsville. An exhibition of work from 12-plus regional and out-of-state artists. FF The Bridge PAI 2019 Monticello Rd. “Domestic Alchemy,” in which artists Amanda Wagstaff, Chicho Lorenzo and Will Mullany find creative potential in familiar household objects. 5:30-7:30pm. FF Chroma Projects 418 E. Main St. “Landmarks,” an exploration […]

First Fridays: August 4

Sperryville artist Adam Disbrow isn’t interested in mimicking realism; after all, “a camera can do that,” he writes in an email. Instead, he communicates with his audience through abstract, minimalistic images, using layers of objective symbols to create a wholly subjective piece of art. His latest exhibition, opening at the Music Resource Center on August 4, […]

First Fridays: July 7

First Fridays: July 7 Photographer Ashley Florence experiments with materials, situations, emotions, narratives and curiosity in her show “Body and Bread,” on view at Studio IX this month. From a chromogenic print of Florence herself sitting in a traditional Madonna pose and wearing a full-body suit sewn out of blue book linen, to 19 Polaroids […]

First Fridays: May 5

First Fridays: May 5 Lily Erb spends a lot of time outside, taking stock of the natural world for images, information and patterns to use in her steel sculptures, some of which are on view this month in “Epitaxy” at the Welcome Gallery at New City Arts. Sometimes she’ll focus on abstracting a certain natural form—for […]

First Fridays: April 7

Sarah Grace Cheek wants viewers to ponder the true nature of the objects she’s created out of wood, wheels, metal baskets, illuminated light bulbs, electrical cords and other common things for “Unmanned Surface Vehicles,” her show on view at The Garage this month. Are these objects functional? Are they furniture or art? Does this one […]

First Fridays: March 3

First Fridays: March 3 In “Drawings, Old and New,” at the downtown Mudhouse through the month of March, Mae Read exhibits a series of nudes, mostly women, drawn either from life, or from photographs. When Read draws, she connects deeply to her subject and herself. “Spending that many hours staring at almost any person will create […]

First Fridays gallery listings: February 3

First Fridays: February 3 When Kemi Layeni was a child, she asked her mother to do her hair “like the fishies,” to fit her thick, kinky hair into a sleek ponytail. “I so desperately wanted to be anyone but me,” Layeni says, “whether that meant trading in my kinks for blonde hair, changing my name, Oluwakemi, […]