Exhibitions present ideas through a fusion of painting, drawing, sculpture, and craft
The Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech’s latest presentation of three one-person exhibitions highlights internationally recognized artists who reinvent and merge various disciplines, including painting, drawing, sculpture, and craft, through inventive uses of thread and fabric.
This suite of exhibitions, titled “Threaded,” debuts with an opening reception on Thursday, Feb. 12, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. in the Moss Arts Center Grand Lobby, 190 Alumni Mall. The event is free and open to the public. The exhibitions run from Feb. 12 to April 12.
The artists featured include:
Shinique Smith
- Ruth C. Horton Gallery
- Based in upstate New York, Smith is known for her boldly-colored paintings, sculptures, and installations. Made with fabric, paint, found objects, and used clothing, her paintings and sculptures incorporate elements of abstract expressionism, graffiti, Japanese calligraphy, and collage in densely patterned and textured works that brim with dynamic energy.
- For this exhibition, Smith creates a site-specific installation with new paintings and hanging sculptures that evoke concepts that involve body, energy, and transcendence while building on metaphors of stretching, tethering, binding, and opening.
- Smith will discuss her work during an informal artist gallery talk on Wednesday, March 4, at 5:30 p.m. in the Ruth C. Horton Gallery.
Angelo Filomeno
- Sherwood Payne Quillen '71 Reception Gallery
- New York-based artist Filomeno creates opulent paintings stitched with luxurious threads. Embroidered on richly colored panels of shantung silk, his paintings portray a fantastical world of baroque floral patterns intertwined with exquisitely rendered fragments of plants, peacocks, crystals, skulls, scarabs, and insect forms. Drawing on a vast range of historical art influences, Filomeno’s works are steeped in allegorical references.
- Prevalent throughout most of the works are scorpions — unnerving and portentous — though beautifully depicted with embroidered threads against shimmering silks. Filomeno’s works are enchanting and seductive while juxtaposing exquisite beauty with unnerving undertones of the macabre.
- Filomeno will discuss his work at two separate events on Wednesday, March 25. He will give an illustrated talk, which is presented in collaboration with Virginia Tech’s School of Performing Arts, at 3 p.m. in Theatre 101, as well as an informal artist gallery talk on at 6:30 p.m. in the Moss Arts Center’s Sherwood Payne Quillen '71 Reception Gallery.
- Complementing this exhibition is a “My Take Talk” by Jane Stein, assistant professor and director of Virginia Tech’s Master of Fine Arts costume design and technology program, on Tues. Feb. 17, at 6:50 p.m. in the Sherwood Payne Quillen ’71 Reception Gallery.
Polly Apfelbaum
- Miles C. Horton Jr. Gallery
- For more than three decades, Apfelbaum has created "fallen paintings," large-scale hybrid works of art, which are experimental in nature and offer new approaches to sculpture, painting, drawing and installation art. Best known in the past for her crushed velvet pieces arranged in expansive patterns on the floor, Apfelbaum’s work explores issues of domesticity, femininity, decoration, space, and perception.
- For her site-specific exhibition, titled “City of Lights” (2015), Apfelbaum debuts a new floor-based installation made of metallic fabric and spray paint. Featuring 16 different colors of metallic fabric and 40 different colors of spray paint, the installation will respond to the space in an intuitive and improvisational way, transforming the gallery into a field of light and color.
- Apfelbaum will discuss her work during an informal artist gallery talk on Thursday, Feb. 12, at 7 p.m. in the Miles C. Horton Jr. Gallery.
Large-scale photographs of Arab women from Moroccan-born artist Lalla Essaydi will also be on view in the Francis T. Eck Exhibition Corridor. Two “My Take Talks” will be held as part of this exhibition — on Tuesday, April 7, at 10 a.m. and on Thursday, April 9, at 10 a.m. Both talks will take place in the Francis T. Eck Exhibition Corridor.
The center’s galleries’ regular hours are Tuesday-Friday, 10 a.m.to 6 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The galleries are free and open to the public. The center’s gallery exhibitions are curated by Margo Crutchfield, the Center for the Arts’ curator at large.
Parking is available in the North End Parking Garage on Turner Street. Virginia Tech faculty and staff possessing a valid Virginia Tech parking permit can enter and exit the garage free of charge. Limited street parking is also available. Parking on Alumni Mall is free on weekdays after 5 p.m. and on weekends.
