Blake Hurt plays with perspective in two collections

Charlottesville is a cozy little city. Most of the time, we know our neighbors—enough to recognize their kids or their pets, maybe catch snippets about their lives at work or play. But what if the guy down the street turned out to be the commander of an invading fleet of warships? Or the girl next […]

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 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, […]

Refugees make new connections through art

Rarely do so many Americans feel divided, separated and isolated from one another as they have during this political season. Our inability to communicate and connect with one another as countrymen feels like an affront. For the thousands of refugees who flee violence, persecution, human trafficking or torture in their native countries in crisis, then […]