All Art Friday

All Art Friday

Kazaan Viveiros at Athenaeum

Artist Kazaan Viveiros's exhibit of paintings that look like collage opened yesterday at the Athenaeum (201 Prince St., Alexandria, Virginia 22314; 703-548-0035) and runs through February 28. A reception is scheduled for Sunday, January 17, 4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. Don't miss Viveiros's show. Hers are stories in paint, evocations of memory made large yet deeply intimate.

According to her Artist Statement, Viveiros creates her works from "assembled images stemming from a rich library of personal and cultural references, ranging from literature and natural science to personal experience, travel, and drawings centuries old." The images, she explains, "emerge slowly, appearing, disappearing, shifting and transforming, until the right combination manifests itself. The process is intuitive. The structure refers to inextricable links, a piecing together, and an interconnectedness of elements. The surfaces strike a balance between impulse and restraint, natural erosion and precise draftsmanship."

Currently, Viveiros is focusing on the natural world and incorporating in her paintings images of landscapes, animals, and plants, as seen above in the diptych Galapagos (36x48 inches, Acrylic, conte crayon on panel) and immediately below, in the diptych Life and Death (40x60 inches, Acrylic, conte crayon, pencil on panel), which Viveiros kindly made available for my post. She is particularly interested in the effects of environmental changes on plants and animals and aims to explore, through "observing, remembering, and internationalizing the idea of Nature", the "connections that are immanent between mental state and visual environment."

Viveiros, a resident of Charlottesville, Virginia, with a master's degree in printmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute, is represented by galleries in Richmond, Virginia; New York City; Scottsdale, Arizona; and Oak Park and Nevada City, California. Since 1991, she has exhibited around the country in numerous group shows, most recently in "Postcards from the Edge: A Benefit for Visual AIDS", at Zieher Smith Gallery in New York City. She has had solo exhibitions in Virginia, Georgia, Arizona, California, and Italy. Her work is in many corporate and private collections, including those of the Department of State, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Time/Warner, Capital One, and Nippon Express.

Ongoing

At Black Rock Center for the Arts, you'll find Personal Armor! Artists' Concepts of Aprons, comprising 31 works by artists from Washington, D.C., Maryland, Virginia, Colorado, Florida, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania. The show, called a "hoot" by its curator Trudi VanDyke, runs through January 29.

Black Rock's address is 12901 Town Commons Drive, Germantown, Maryland 20874. For hours or other information, telephone 3031-528-2260 or e-mail info@blackrockcenter.org.

Looking Again at Mosaics

Two more mosaic artists who will floor you with their accomplishments: Laurel Skye and Ellen Blakeley.

When you're done looking at what those artists have to offer, check out The Treatment Rooms, a privately owned home whose exterior is transformed by mosaics.

Coming Up

On January 30, Turner to Cezanne: Masterpieces From the Davies Collection, National Museum Wales, opens at the Corcoran Gallery of Art (500 Seventeenth St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20006). The exhibition of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings and works on paper by the great 19th Century and 20th Century masters — Cezanne, Manet, Monet, Pisarro, Renoir, Turner, and van Gogh — runs through April 25.

A discussion with Paul Greenhalgh, Corcoran's director and president and the exhibition's curator, is scheduled January 29, 7:00 p.m., in the Alden Theater at McLean (Virginia) Community Center.  Greenhalgh will share some behind-the-scenes stories about the show, as well as images of the works on exhibit. The talk is free but reservations are required. Contact: info@mpaart.org; 703-790-1953. The McLean Project for the Arts is a Partner of the Corcoran College of Art & Design.

Bach in the Moment

Below is a teaser for the disc Bach: Flute Sonatas, performed by Joshua Smith, principal flutist for the Cleveland Orchestra, and Jory Vinikour, harpsichordist. Smith likens the music to graffiti; both, he says, are "all about color" and "living in the moment" and "small, beautiful little arcs" and gestures. To listen to several excerpts from the album, click here.



Christmas Cards as Chapbooks

Click here and you'll understand why I think this is a real (if late) Christmas "find" and something to look forward to next December 25.

He Said It!

"[S]tarting this blog . . . is probably the most important work-related decision I've made in the past three years. . . ." ~ Ian David Moss at Createquity

Moss blogs about the role of the arts in a creative society. To find out what opportunities he's been given since he began blogging, click here.


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