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.

Staff writer Duncan Adams visited Center in the Square during “Family Day of Discovery,” and reported back (click this link to read,) and Rebecca Barnett took photos. Did you go yourself? What did you think?

Click the images below to go to the various galleries.

Center in the Square grand reopening

Harrison Museum of African American Culture

History Museum of Western Virginia

Science Museum of Western Virginia

Photo by JOEL HAWKSLEY | The Roanoke Times. A monarch butterfly perches on a flower in the garden at the Science Museum of Western Virginia.

Don’t touch the butterflies.

Don’t pick them up. Don’t try to catch them. Don’t step on them. Don’t leave with any of them on your clothes.

Entering and leaving the new butterfly garden at the Science Museum of Western Virginia isn’t like a simple traipse into a field. There are rules you have to follow — many of them required by federal law.

The butterfly garden with its fragile resident monarchs and painted ladies will open its doors to the public Saturday during Center in the Square’s Family Day of Discovery that serves as its grand reopening. Enforcing the rules will keep volunteers fluttering.

Derek Kellogg, the museum’s lead animal care specialist, explained that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has strict rules designed to prevent non-native butterfly species from escaping from the garden.

The no-escape rules apply to unregulated butterfly species as well, as the USDA sees potential for those butterflies to become carriers of germs and parasites contracted from more exotic tropical butterflies that will eventually join them.

To minimize chances of escape, there are two vestibules that function like air locks. One is for entering, one is for exiting. There will be volunteers stationed at each vestibule. A visitor will be escorted inside, then asked to remain in the vestibule while the volunteer explains the rules.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

Photo by STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS | The Roanoke Times. The Science Museum of Western Virginia, on the fourth and fifth floors of Center in the Square, is still unveiling its exhibitions in preparation for the May 18 opening.

Aquariums, iPads and flat screen televisions. Chandeliers and sculpted ceilings. Floor tiles arranged to make the shape of a giant butterfly. A skylight with colored glass in irregular shapes that seems to match the late Dorothy Gillespie’s aluminum sculptures ascending toward it.

There’s no question that more than $27 million in renovations has transformed Center in the Square.

At a Tuesday morning news conference, Center President and General Manager Jim Sears talked about how the days are gone for good when all a visitor saw in Center’s atrium were two volunteers seated at a desk.

“This project was a great labor of love,” said David Bandy , president of Roanoke architecture firm Spectrum Design, which designed the building. Flourishes such as allowing the science museum’s new butterfly garden to rise through the roof had to be balanced with conservation of historical features to meet requirements for tax credits, he said.

Center has less than two weeks to go until its May 18 grand reopening, with a preview Grand Affair gala scheduled for Saturday. Though on schedule and on budget, the project’s hectic pace to put on finishing touches has become more frantic than ever.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

Photo by STEPHANIE KLEIN-DAVIS | The Roanoke Times.
The newly renovated Center in the Square building features a rooftop deck with a restaurant space, a koi pond still being lined, the skylight for the butterfly exhibit, and a glass railed staircase to an upper deck with a view of downtown Roanoke.

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.

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.

From Sunday’s column:

One week prior to its grand reopening, Center in the Square in Roanoke will hold a black-tie gala from 8 p.m. to midnight on May 11 called “Grand Affair” — not unlike the Affair in the Square fundraisers held in the Campbell Avenue building in years past.

Those who buy the $75 tickets will get a preview of Center’s 5,500-gallon live coral reef aquarium, as well as three other salt water and one fresh water aquarium. Live music will play in the building and on the institution’s much-touted green roof. The History Museum of Western Virginia, the Science Museum of Western Virginia and the Harrison Museum of African American Culture will also take part.

Center has also announced that it will hold its ribbon cutting at 9:30 a.m. May 18 and then an open house event called “Family Day of Discovery” from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m.

For more information, call 342-5700 or visit www.centerinthesquare.org.

Click here to read the rest of the column.

From Sunday’s column:

Painter Elizabeth Sauder is one of the artists taking part in the Lexington/Rockbridge Studio Tour. Photo courtesy of Jean Tremmel.

The Lexington/Rockbridge Studio Tour has added a few more artists and a bit of barbecue to its second go-round.

The free self-guided tour features 11 studios along a 20-mile loop. Participating guest artists from North Carolina, West Virginia, New Mexico and several cities around Virginia bring the total number of exhibiting artists to 36. The tour hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and April 21.

Artist Susan Harb, whose treehouse studio is part of the tour, said that the Effinger Volunteer Fire Department on Collierstown Road will be selling barbecue dinners “to add even more authentic Rockbridge County flavor to the tour.”

Harb organized the first tour in April 2012, acting on a suggestion by fellow Lexington artist Marsha Heatwole, who will demonstrate printmaking in her studio at 1125 Sugar Creek Road. Other ongoing activities include portrait painting by Marcia Germain at Harb’s studio at 62 Brushwood Place and photo shoots at Ellen Martin’s photography studio at 876 Enfield Road.

The kinds of arts and crafts for show and sale on the tour include painting, sculpture, silversmithing, pottery, photography, hand-loom weaving, basket weaving, stained glass and jewelry making, with prices ranging from $20 to $20,000.

Click here to read the rest of the column.

From Sunday’s column:

MATT GENTRY | The Roanoke Times. Art photographer Dan Estabrook — as seen through his antique view camera — is an artist in residence at Hollins University. Estabrook makes multi-layered gum bichromate prints with a 19th-century Victoria era feel and presentation.

Black and white or sepia, presented inside oval mattes that appear yellowed with age, Dan Estabrook’s photographic prints look so much like 19th-century artifacts that it’s easy to mistake them for old photos at first glance.

Yet a closer look reveals tell tale details. A man shown in silhouette in an image called “Loss of Appetite” has a digestive tract shaped like a hangman’s noose. Another called “Shortness of Breath” shows, from the shoulders up, an apparently nude couple kissing. In “Small Fires,” what looks like a classic portrait of a woman turned slightly away from the camera sports a curious addition: a band of fire drawn through her hair that at first resembles a normal hair band.

Estabrook, 44, creates his prints with 19th-century methods using chemicals like gum arabic. “Like everything I’ve done, it’s a slow, painful process.”

He’s the 2013 Frances Niederer artist in residence at Hollins University, and has a show in the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins that provides samples from his career. The show runs through April 20.

Wilson Museum director Amy Moorefield describes Estabrook as one of the world’s leading experts on photographic techniques of the Victorian era.

“A lot of people who do these processes, they’re simply trying to re-create the past,” Estabrook said. His art involves investigating how the people of today perceive that past. “Your interpretation says more about you now than it does about anything that really happened.”

He became fascinated with historical methods of creating prints in part because of the way making them feels like working magic, using “a little bit of alchemy.”

Click here to read the rest of the column.

Extra bonus link: In case you missed it, Estabrook also turned up a couple weeks ago in our Style Street blog.