Local artists and writers respond to nature in Center for the Arts summer exhibitions
The beauty and mystery of nature inspires the art featured in the Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech’s summer exhibitions. Created by local artists, as well as student and faculty writers at Virginia Tech, the exhibitions bring together paintings, works on paper, poetry, and works of short prose that respond to the natural world, both real and re-imagined.
Showcasing area talent, the suite of three exhibitions features paintings and works on paper from New River Valley artists, as well as pieces from local writers and Virginia Tech students and faculty members.
The exhibitions open with a reception on Thursday, June 4, from 6-8 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 June 4 through Aug. 8.
The featured exhibitions are:
“Tangled,” Pat West
- Ruth C. Horton Gallery
- An established artist throughout Blacksburg and the New River Valley, West is known for her bold, richly-textured, expressionistically-rendered paintings. West lives in Pembroke, Virginia.
- A journey through landscape — both real and metaphoric — is the subject of this one-person exhibition of paintings. Thick paint and vigorous brushstrokes lend a density to works that exude vitality and are interlaced with underlying traces of chaos. Movement, insistent and relentless, conveys a beautiful, but restless and complicated world of exterior landscapes in nature, while suggesting a complexity of interior landscapes in the mind and heart.
- Curated by Margo Ann Crutchfield, curator at large, Center for the Arts.
“Wanderings,” Charlotte Chan, Marie Collier, and Betty Moore
- Miles C. Horton Jr. Gallery
- Artists Chan, Moore, and Collier live and work in Blacksburg.
- This group exhibition presents works in oil, watercolor, and oil pastel by artists Chan, Collier, and Moore. Each of these artists draws from a depth of individual experience and technical skill to represent visions of the evanescent world of the garden, fields, and rolling hills.
- Curated by Margo Ann Crutchfield, curator at large, Center for the Arts, in collaboration with graduate student Lauren Henson.
“Unleashed”
- Sherwood Payne Quillen '71 Reception Gallery, Frances T. Eck Exhibition Corridor, and Grand Lobby.
- Area writers and Virginia Tech students and faculty members respond to the metaphor of the garden, exploring concepts related to paradise, refuge, and retreat. Their words, reimagined and transformed into visual elements, interrupt, envelop, and meander along the gallery walls and floors.
- An experiment in collaboration, design, and interpretation, this exhibition presents words and language as a visual and dimensional experience, inviting viewers to move through text and space simultaneously.
- Curated by author Matthew Vollmer, assistant professor, Department of English, and designed by Meggin Hicklin, curatorial graduate assistant, Center for the Arts.
- This multi-disciplinary exhibition also features readings by participating writers on Thursday, June 4, from 7-7:30 p.m. and Friday, June 5, from 5-7:30 p.m. in the Sherwood Payne Quillen '71 Reception Gallery.
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.
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.
