Photo by JOEL HAWKSLEY | The Roanoke Times. Taubman Museum director Della Watkins.

You never see Della Watkins without a notebook.

As the Taubman Museum of Art’s new executive director races through days “slammed straight through with meetings, crisis management, problem solving,” as she puts it, she has to have a steno pad with her, for data collection. “I keep it with me all the time.”

In her office, when she opens her planner, her schedule’s neatly mapped out by the month, day and hour. Yet in the unpredictable world of the arts, she’s ready to adjust that schedule on the fly. Though she admits spontaneity can be “scary,” when her plans have to change, “we alter it and we get ’er done,” she said.

She keeps a quick pace, marching through the galleries on a daily inspection, meeting with employees — and personally delivering them birthday cards. That’s when she’s not driving out to meet with benefactors, artists, volunteers or other interested community members for the sake of what she calls “friend raising.” After her employees leave for the day, she spends a couple of hours more in the office, tending to phone calls and emails and setting the next day’s agenda.

In between, she’s living in a downtown Roanoke condo and house hunting. “I’m just busy night and day, learning and getting to know the folks and places here.”

Divorced with two grown children, Watkins is making a fresh start in Roanoke in what’s arguably one of the city’s most high-pressure positions.

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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

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.

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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.

Photographer Joel Hawksley walked with the 2013 Marginal Arts Parade this past Saturday. Click the photo below to go to his gallery of the parade.

Last year’s octopus float will be a giant sugar skull this year in the Roanoke Marginal Arts Festival Parade, which starts at noon on Saturday, March 30 at Community High School in downtown Roanoke. Anyone is welcome to join in.

MIKE ALLEN | The Roanoke Times. Marginal Arts Festival founder Brian Counihan demonstrates one of the Easter Egg masks he’s making for the festival parade on March 30.

The Roanoke Marginal Arts Festival decided not to take chances this year.

That doesn’t mean there won’t be odd, bizarre, cutting-edge art experiences mixed into the festivities. It’s the weather they don’t want to gamble on.

For the past four years, the festival has tied its schedule to Mardi Gras, which meant it sometimes has taken place in the heart of winter. Founder Brian Counihan counts his blessings that the colorful and strange Marginal Arts Parade through downtown Roanoke has never been snowed out.

“We dodged a bullet every year,” said Roanoke artist Ralph Eaton, another of the festival’s organizers. So the artists running the festival decided to move it back a few weeks. (Eaton joked that he wished it could be held April Fool’s Day.)

The lineup this year includes an appearance from the Society for Creative Anachronism, famous for wearing medieval garb and battling with rattan swords, a contest to write a novel in 48 hours, experimental poetry, experimental art, experimental theater, and workshops that might help you understand what all these experiments are getting at. “We have a lot of professional artists involved,” Counihan said.

Of course there’s the parade at noon March 30 and the absurdist street carnival that immediately follows. This year, the festival ends with Vaudeville Night, a performance at the June M. McBroom Theater in Community High School at 302 Campbell Ave. S.E. Themes for the festival include Easter eggs, the Mexican holiday Day of the Dead, and lucha libre, the sport of Mexican professional wrestling.

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Festival organizers could use help decorating this giant clown shoe. Click the image to go to the Marginal Arts Festival page on Facebook.

Roanoke-based artist Susan Jamison has curated a new art exhibition, “Circus Pony,” that will open 6 p.m. Thursday, March 28 in Liminal: Alternative Artspace as one of the kickoffs of the official Roanoke Marginal Arts Festival events and last through Friday, April 12.

“Fine Young Cannibal” by Lori Field

Here’s a description from the exhibitions Facebook event page:

A circus inspired group exhibition of art from national and regional artists along with vintage circus ephemera organized as part of Roanoke, Virginia’s Marginal Arts Festival. Including works by Edward del Rosario, Lori Field, Marla Rutherford, Rob Tarbell, Jack McCaslin, Jessika Dené Tarr, John Reburn, Ursula Dilley, Rabiah Khwaja Gohar and others. During the reception there will be a performance by Tif Robinette.

Here’s Susan providing further elaboration on what’s gone into this show:

It is called “Circus Pony” and it includes contemporary art alongside vintage circus ephemera on loan from Appalachia Press. Artists in the show are from New York, DC, Colorado, and around VA: Lori Field, Edward del Rosario, Jessika Dené Tar, Marla Rutherford, Jack McCaslin, Rob Tarbell, and some regional artists as well, John Reburn, Ursula Dilley, Rabiah Khwaja Gohar. Also a strange clown pillow by an unknown artist has been loaned to the exhibition by Amy Moorefield, the director of the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum. The reception will be on March 28th from 6-9. At the opening we will have a performance by regional artist, Tif Robinette who will be dressed like a pony and Tyler Godsey will be there making cotton candy.

“Exquisite” by Edward del Rosario

I selected the circus theme because people in circus culture are marginalized in a similar way that artists can be marginalized, the people involved in these professions have been seen historically as outsiders or freaks. To the general public artists can be oddities. I remember this every time I try to make cocktail party conversation and people ask me what I do for a living. Perhaps that is why so many artists are drawn to circus or side show imagery. I also selected this theme because this festival itself can be a bit of a three ring circus with many activities going on at once. It can be hard to focus on any one thing. All the activity and chaos create excitement for the art community though, so the analogy is a positive one.

“Goat and Girl” by Jessika Dené Tarr

I planned the exhibition to be a great mix of regional art, art from around Virginia and DC, along with work from artists with national profiles from New York and around the country. In other words, the best work I can get my hands on from emerging artists to the more established artists, in our region and beyond. The exhibition includes a wide variety of media; oil painting, encaustic, graphite drawing, drawings done with smoke, photography, printmaking, textiles and performance.

The show runs from now to April 12 at Liminal Artspace, but I curated it specifically for the festival. The reception during the festival will be the only time that you can see the performance piece by Tif Robinette, get your cotton candy and your letter pressed take-away souvenir of the exhibition made by myself and John Reburn of Appalachia Press.

UPDATE 3/21: Organizer Amanda Agricola shared this schedule with me:

The majority of live performances will take place from 5:00-8:30.

5-10 Cherisse Gray, “White Choice”
6-6:30 HeJin Jang, “Migrant-self the Speed of a Door”
7- 8:00 Tif Robinette “Love me Tender”
7- 8:00 Mr. Thursday, “Strutt Stream”
7- 8:00 Olchar Lindsann, “untitled”
8- 8:30 Amanda Agricola, “Come Inside”

Susan Jamison and Matt Ames have visual works up

Sarah Ingel, Erica Buechman, and Annie Waldrop have video performances playing for the duration of the show.

From Sunday’s column:

A sketch for “Love Me Tender” by Tif Robinette

Roanoke artist Amanda Agricola has organized “Cycles~,”a performance art and video exhibition that focuses on “cyclical occurrences in femininity.”

“I had a couple of women come to me with ideas for performances and I had also been thinking about planning an event in conjunction with Women’s History Month, so I decided that it would be a good occasion to have a performance exhibition,” she wrote in a Facebook message.

Participating artists include Matt Ames, Erica Buechner, Warren Fry, Cherisse Gray, Sarah Ingel, HeJin Jan, Susan Jamison, Olchar Lindsann, Tif Robinette and Annie Waldrop, with music by Mateo Marquez Marquez. Admission is free. Performances contain adult subject matter.

Agricola and Marquez previously organized “Exclamations!” a cutting-edge series of exhibitions that debuted at the Roanoke Marginal Arts Festival last year and received a Perry F. Kendig Award from the now-defunct Arts Council of the Blue Ridge.

“Cycles~” takes place 5 to 10 p.m. Saturday in the former Pamela Jean Gallery at 115 Salem Ave S.E. in Roanoke. For more information, visit http://c-y-c-l-e-s.net/ or the “Cycles~” event page on Facebook.

Click here to read the rest of the column.

From my Inbox to you:

Dan Estabrook Artist-in-Residence and Tanja Softić: Migrant Universe open on March 14

Dan Estabrook, Small Fires (detail), 2012. Gum bichromate with watercolor and gouache. Courtesy of the artist.

Tanja Softić, The Map of What Happened (detail). Acrylic, pigment, charcoal and chalk on handmade paper mounted on board. Courtesy of the artist.

The Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University is pleased to announce the opening of two new exhibitions.  Dan Estabrook: 2013 Frances Niederer Artist-in-Residence and Tanja Softić: Migrant Universe will both open on Thursday, March 14, with an opening lecture by artist Tanja Softić at 6:00 pm, in the Niederer Auditorium of the Visual Arts Center.  Artist-in-Residence Dan Estabrook will present a lecture on Thursday, April 18 at 6:00 pm, also in the Niederer Auditorium.

Estabrook is a leading expert on 19^th century photographic processes.  In recent years, he has added pencil and paint to his negatives and prints to create contemporary work that explores universal themes such as love, sexuality and death.  Estabrook attended Harvard University and earned his MFA from the University of Illinois.  He has exhibited widely and received several awards, including an artist’s fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.  Estabrook lives and works in Brooklyn. The Frances Niederer Artist-in-Residence program allows Hollins University to bring a nationally recognized artist to campus every year.  While in residence, the artist creates work in a campus studio and teaches an art seminar open to all students. During their time at Hollins University, the Artist-in-Residence is a vital part of the campus and greater Roanoke community.

While many Americans think of immigration in terms of recent politics, Tanja Softić focuses on human migration in a global sense.  Merging appropriated visual material within her drawings and paintings, she addresses concepts of cultural hybridity, chaos and memory.  Softić earned her MFA in Printmaking from Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, following study at the Academy of Fine Arts at the University of Sarajevo.  She received the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2009 and her work is included in collections worldwide. Tanja Softić: Migrant Universe was organized by the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art, College of Charleston School of the Arts.

EVENTS:

Thursday, March 14, 6:00 pm

Exhibition opening and lecture by exhibiting artist Tanja Softić, who will discuss the concepts, influences, and process of making the Migrant Universe cycle.  Niederer Auditorium, Visual Arts Center.  Reception to follow.

 Thursday, April 18, 6:00 pm

2013 Frances Niederer Artist-in-Residence Dan Estabrook discusses his artistic process in conjunction with his exhibition at the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum. Niederer Auditorium, Visual Arts Center. Reception to follow.

For more information visit www.hollins.edu/museum or call 540.362-6532.