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.

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.)

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:

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.

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.

Click here to read the rest of the story.

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

 From my Inbox to you:

A sample from Simone Paterson’s “Diametric”

BLACKSBURG – “Diametric,” an exhibit by Virginia Tech School of Visual Arts  (http://www.sova.vt.edu/) faculty member Simone Paterson, will be on exhibit at the Perspective Gallery  (http://www.studentcenters.vt.edu/perspectivegallery/index.php) March 19 through May 11.

An opening reception will be held at the gallery on Friday, March 22, from 5 to 7 p.m. Both the exhibit and the reception are free and open to the public.

The Perspective Gallery is located on the second floor in Squires Student Center (http://www.studentcenters.vt.edu/squires/index.php). Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday, noon to 9 p.m., and Sunday, 1 to 5 p.m. The gallery is closed on Mondays.

Paterson is an associate professor of new media art and chair of studio in the School of Visual Arts, College of Architecture and Urban Studies (http://www.caus.vt.edu/). “Diametric” is a collection of sculpture and digital media artwork created by Paterson. She wrote that the quality of light is dramatically different in the Appalachian Mountains than in the land of her birth.

“In Australia the light is intense, sharp and at times blinding. Here, the mountain light is filtered through a veil of moisture, a gentle caress of pastel hues as vistas open up before you on the trail.” Paterson is also concerned with the aesthetic possibilities of technology and her work addresses the impact of technology on our lived experience. Read more »

I visited sculptor Ralph Eaton’s studio in Southeast Roanoke this morning to chat with him and artist Brian Counihan about this year’s Marginal Arts Festival, with events that start with the 48-Hour Novel Contest from March 23 to 25 and end with the Marginal Arts Parade and Vaudeville Night on March 30. I thought I’d share some of the goodies Counihan and Eaton are making for the parade.

By the way, Eaton could use some volunteer help. If you’re interested, contact him through the Marginal Arts Festival page on Facebook.

From my Inbox to you:

The Market Gallery

Featured Artists:

Little House” by Barbara Norman Lashley

“Among the Copper Field for the Queen” by Kim Lashley Sutliff

Ann Hale, Barbara Norman Lashley, Kim Lashley Sutliff

March 26 to April 27, 2013

Opening Reception: Friday, April 5, 2013

The Market Gallery featured artists are Ann Hale, Barbara Norman Lashley, and Kim Lashley Sutliff. Please join us to meet and chat with the artists at their reception Friday, April 5, Art by Night, 5:30 to 9 p.m. Hale will provide a gallery talk at 6:30 p.m. and Lashley at 6:45 p.m., and Sutliff at 7 p.m.
Mother-daughter artists Barbara Norman Lashley and Kim Lashley Sutliff will be featured in a joint exhibit.  Their show is titled “Book Ends”. Lashley and Sutliff have collaborated by making sculptures and collages from discarded books. Some of the works are books which have been cut, torn, folded or have added collage elements to make unique wall pieces. Other works are collages using torn or cut pages from books or magazines.

Lashley graduated from Averett University with a B.A. in art.  She also holds a M.A.L.S. from Hollins.  Sutliff also graduated from Averett with a B.F.A. and also completed her M.A.L.S. at Hollins

“Millennium Square” by Ann E. Hale

Ann E. Hale is currently at work on color-filled new paintings in a variety of sizes and media for her April Featured Artists show titled, “Cycles in the Universe.”  Ann is known in the Valley as primarily an artist who draws and paints realistically.  Her lively abstract artwork is often in intimate sizes, and includes her popular fold-out “personal galleries.”  The work in this upcoming show exhibits a new approach for this 70-year old artist. Ann is the Market Gallery’s co-president and a charter gallery member.

The Market Gallery, a regional artists’ cooperative, is open 10 am to 5:30 pm Tuesday – Saturday. And is located at 23 Salem Avenue, Roanoke, VA 24011, the corner of Wall St and Salem Ave in Roanoke’s historic downtown market.

For additional information call The Market Gallery (540) 342-1177 or visit www.marketgalleryroanoke.com