From Sunday’s column:

Lindee Katdare

Roanoke artist Lindee Katdare, a recent transplant from Chicago, is holding a series of workshops titled “Wine and Art” at the Fincastle Vineyard and Winery.

The concept is as simple as the title. Katdare has created four simple paintings exclusively for the vineyard, and will show interested apprentice artists how to re-create them. The $55 fee covers instruction, supplies including a 16-by-20-inch canvas, a gourmet lunch box and wine tasting. Additional wine purchases are available.

“You don’t have to have any talent at all,” Katdare said. “It’s just something that’s fun to do.”

Linda Katdare has created “Love Birds” (detail above) for the “Wine and Art” workshop at Fincastle Vineyard.

The first “Wine and Art” that Katdare will hold at the winery takes place from 2 to 5 p.m. June 9, with additional workshops scheduled June 30, July 21, Aug. 11, Aug. 25, Sept. 15 and Sept. 29.

For more information and to register, visit thelindeetree.com.

Katdare may be a familiar face. She has made appearances on the noontime talk show “Daytime Blue Ridge” on WSLS (Channel 10.)

To see a gallery of the murals made so far by the Roanoke Art Mural Project, click the picture below. Click this link to visit RAMP’s Facebook page.

Photo by Kyle Green. “Stampede” adorns the wall of Appalachia Press adjacent to the Taubman Museum of Art.

Roanoke is in a state of renewal — but that state’s not reflected in the fading murals that have adorned its public walls for decades.

Florida native and Grandin Village resident Mim Young, a dynamo who’s passionate about Roanoke’s art scene, saw this as a problem to tackle and took it on herself.

“I felt that it was time that Roanoke updated its image through its imagery,” she said.

In 2011 she visited Miami’s Wynwood Walls, a former dilapidated warehouse district that turned into a tourist destination after a developer purchased buildings and allowed them to be covered with curated murals.

Her hopes that something similar could happen in Roanoke were heightened as the city went through the process of creating its Arts and Culture Plan, unanimously adopted by the city council that same year. The plan provided a blueprint for a resident like her to get actively involved and bring about the changes she wanted to see.

In Roanoke, “there’s a sort of a renaissance thing that’s happening,” she said, citing the efforts of developers and entrepreneurs Bill Campbell and Ed Walker. “We don’t have the same visual vitality that I feel we have economically.”

Click here to read the rest of the story.

From Sunday’s column:

Photo by STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS | The Roanoke Times. Dianne Smith of Harlem, N.Y., used butcher paper and rope to create her installation for the newly reopened Harrison Museum of African American Culture in Center in the Square.

Butcher paper represents a number of things for Harlem, N.Y., artist Dianne Smith.

“It’s at once durable and yet there’s a fragility to it,” she said. She has used it in her art as a way of representing the treatment of black people in America through history, showing how the paper can be manipulated and pushed into corners. It also calls to mind elders, aging, and the way history leaves marks.

Yet she also sees beauty in the abstract organic forms she can shape the paper into. “I’m hoping the viewer can engage with the work to find a number of things.”

She used butcher paper and rope to create the site-specific installation “No Limits,” pieces of which hang inside the entranceway to the newly reopened Harrison Museum of African American Culture in Center in the Square and in the hall just outside it.

She deliberately suspended the long, crumpled strands of butcher paper in spaces where art doesn’t normally hang in a museum. A configuration in one corner resembles a fisherman’s net, weighed down by pieces of old wood found here in Roanoke. Another paper construct rises in a column from floor to ceiling like a thick tree trunk.

The pieces in the hall sport more color, twined and knotted from long strips of patterned fabric, breaking away from somber monochrome to amplify a sense of spontaneity. “At the end of the day all of this is about life,” she said.

Smith chose to call the piece “No Limits” after meeting with school groups and Harrison Museum board members. She saw Roanoke as a place undergoing rebirth, with no limits to the directions it can go.

Click here to read the rest of the column.

Courtesy Virginia Tech. Chromatmos I (top) and Chromatmos II by Truman Capone. Each piece measures 5 inches by 19 inches.

Blacksburg artist Truman Capone, a professor emeritus and former director of Virginia Tech’s School of Visual Arts, had works “Chromatmos I” and “Chromatmos II” selected for “SMALL WONDERS, Piccole Meraviglie,” a juried show that took place at LINEA Spazio Arte Contemporanea (the LINEA Contemporary Art Space) in Florence, Italy from April 20 to May 4. Though being selected for the show was an honor in its own right, the show’s jury awarded Capone the grand prize, full participation in the Florence Biennale, to be held Nov. 30 to Dec. 8 in the Fortezza da Basso. Capone’s art competed against artists from 20 other countries.

According to a bio provided by Tech, Capone received his bachelor’s degree from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, a master’s degree from Virginia Tech, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from Radford University.

Composer Philip Glass and his orchestra, the Philip Glass Ensemble, will kick off the Center for the Arts’ first season held in its newly-built home.

The Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech will open its first full season in its new home with a performance by a legendary American composer, end with a multimedia theater performance for children by an Italian troupe, and in between will host professional dance companies, experimental plays, a popular NPR host, a bluegrass festival and even a Pops performance by the Roanoke Symphony Orchestra.

Executive director Ruth Waalkes has said one of the goals of the new $100 million institution with its state-of-the-art 1,260-seat performance hall has been to complement, not duplicate, the programming that already exists in the Roanoke and New River valleys . Sure enough, the lineup of 21 acts sports little overlap with the Jefferson Center’s jazz offerings or the Roanoke Performing Arts Theatre’s comedians and Broadway in Roanoke shows.

The acts are also chosen based on their potential to involve community members and create opportunities for educational programming, Waalkes said.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

Jeff Goldberg/Esto Photographics

From Sunday’s column:

A Virginia Tech architecture professor and her students created a technologically interactive art installation modelled on Japanese lanterns at the Smithsonian.

Part of a series called “The Lantern Field,” the installation consisted of swaths of paper folded into flowery shapes hung from bamboo poles. Motion sensors caused the lighting to change colors and electronic bamboo chime sounds to change rhythm as people moved through the space beneath the “lanterns.”

“The Lantern Field” was on display at the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art during the National Cherry Blossom Festival in April. The seeds that grew to become the installation were planted before Aki Ishida joined the Tech faculty.

The project was inspired by the lantern festivals Ishida saw while growing up in Japan.

“Public parks would transform overnight into magical landscapes,” she said. Yet that magic was ephemeral. “These were paper lanterns that would go away after the days of the festival.”

“The Lantern Field,” too, was ephemeral. The installation went up April 5 and came down two days later after the gallery closed.

Ishida, 42, came to the United States when she was 11. By 2004 she was a New York architect teaching part-time at the Rhode Island School of Design. Japanese architecture has a tradition of using paper to modify lighting.

Click here to read the rest of the column.

(Here as promised in Sunday’s column is the video of the making of “The Lantern Field” at the Smithsonian’s Freer Gallery of Art.)

Nelson Gallery, a nine-member artist co-op in Lexington, is putting out a call for submissions for its 14th Annual Juried Show, prizes for which include a $1,000 Best in Show award. Other prizes include a Members’ Choice Award of a solo Nelson Gallery show in 2014.

The juror is painter Langdon Quin, a Washington & Lee University alum who is a professor emeritus of painting and drawing at the University of New Hampshire.

There’s an entry fee of $30 for up to three digital submissions. The deadline is June 11. For more information and to download a prospectus, visit www.Nelson-Gallery.com or call (540) 463-9827.

From Sunday’s column:

Cornelia Marin of Saint-Lo, France, standing before one of her murals.

A French artist visiting through an arrangement with Roanoke Valley Sister Cities will take part in Roanoke’s Art by Night studio tour from 5 to 9 p.m. this Friday.

Cornelia Marin of Saint-Lo in Normandy, France, just arrived in town Saturday. The Roanoke-Saint-Lo Sister City committee received a Mini-Arts and Cultural Plan Implementation Grant from Roanoke and the Foundation for Roanoke Valley to help fund Marin’s trip.

This is Marin’s first visit to the United States, according to a news release from the Roanoke-Saint-Lo Sister City committee.

Marin will create a temporary installation at the Wilson Hughes Gallery at 117 Campbell Ave. S.W. called “L’Evolution de la Femme (The Evolution of Woman).” Marin brings a lot of excitement and enthusiasm to her work, said Roanoke-Saint-Lo committee chairwoman Mary Jo Fassie. It’s been 15 years since the committee last brought an artist to Roanoke from Saint-Lo, Fassie said.

Marin’s artworks include paintings, sculpture, mosaics and performance pieces. Her subjects are usually women. A native of Romania, she moved to France after Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu was overthrown in 1989. She’s exhibited in Paris, Germany and Italy.

She’s staying until May 13, and has a full itinerary ahead. She’s taking part in an “Explore the Galleries” program at 4 p.m. Thursday at Taubman Museum of Art and the museum’s Spectacular Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Roanoke-Saint-Lo committee member Janice Kaufman will be on hand as a translator.

Click here to read the rest of the column.

Over the past weekend, the Roanoke Destiny youth group helped make the latest Roanoke Art Mural Project a reality. To read more about the project, click here.

Click the picture to see photos of the project in progress.

Click image for an enlarged view of the tour map.

Click here for a Google Map tour of Open Studios of Roanoke 2013.

Spring has come to Roanoke, which means it’s time for artists to open their studios once again to a weekend’s worth of visitors.

This year’s Open Studios of Roanoke tour features 26 artists at 13 stops, including new arrivals and familiar faces in new places.

Max Mitchell, 26, has opened Roanoke Art Works, abbreviated “R.A.W.,” at 26 Church Ave. S.W. His father, potter Steve Mitchell, has been a mainstay of the Open Studios tour for many years. Max Mitchell, a painter, has moved back to Roanoke after attending Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and living in Philadelphia for seven years.

“I never really liked being in the city,” he said. “I always liked being in the mountains.”

Steve Mitchell will have work on display in Roanoke Art Works this weekend, as will Roanoke painter Greg Osterhaus.

The father-son duo made waves in the regional art scene even before Max Mitchell moved back — in 2011, he won the grand prize at the Biennial Juried Exhibition at Roanoke College, and his father won second place.

Click here to read the rest of the story.