New shows, new galleries at this week’s First Friday

Riverviews Artspace’s first-ever Juried Art Show leads the First Friday charge this month.

The show, in the Craddock-Terry Gallery, will feature 34 works of art — everything from paintings and photographs to sculptures, video and live art, including a graffiti demonstration and a belly-dancing performance — from 28 artists who live within 150 miles of Lynchburg.

Thirteen live in Lynchburg.

“We show art from all over the country, all over the world. We’ve had a lot of Virginia artists as a part of that,” says Erin Stover-Zumwalt, Riverviews’ exhibitions and program manager. “(But) we wanted to have something specifically devoted to this area, to show the art and artists we interact with every day.”

Juror Robin Nicholson, deputy director of exhibitions at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, chose the pieces from a field of almost 90, he says.

“I was looking for interesting works that weren’t derivative and were trying to say something new,” says Nicholson, who will be on hand to discuss his selection process at 6 p.m. tonight at Riverviews.

“With a show like this, you’re not just looking for things you like. You’re trying to shape it, to create something where certain works follow a certain theme.”

Throughout the process, he says, he felt a number of themes emerged, including “a lot of what I felt was natural imagery, in terms of the use of plants, landscapes.”

Stover-Zumwalt says Nicholson’s process was very organic.

“It was interesting to watch him cycle through (the submitted work),” she says, “watching it evolve and build on itself.”

The result, she says, is “a really good survey of what’s going on in the area. There are contemporary pieces, but then there are some really traditional works, too.”

The First Fridays reception runs from 5:30 to 8 p.m.

It will also include the Urban Art Bazaar downstairs; the Reading Room Gallery’s “Exhibit 492,” by Liberty University’s Visual Communication Arts program; and the Coop Gallery’s “Reflections,” featuring the watercolor, oil and collage work of Karen Bowden.

Here’s what else is going on for First Fridays in November:

The Academy of Fine Arts, 900 Main St.

The name of the Academy Gallery’s latest, “Revisitations,” comes from artist Lyall Harris’ approach to her work.

Harris, a Lynchburg native who now lives in San Francisco, usually sketches en plein air first, and then goes back to the studio to paint from those studies.

“I really kind of reinvent my experience,” she says. “It’s really the experience — why is that place magical to me? Why did I sketch that?

“It’s about those specific places I go back to over and over. They’re really special places that hold a certain magic for me.” 

Before moving to California, Harris lived in Florence, Italy, an experience that changed her life.

She says the architecture and scenery there inspired her; there’s actually one tower in Tuscany that she’s painted somewhere between 50 and 100 times.

Harris loves to play with color and unexpected combinations in her paintings.

“I’m not interested in depicting a totally representative view of the landscape,” she says. “I didn’t want it to necessarily be the trees green and the houses brown. That wasn’t interesting to me. I was interested in how (the scene) came to life to me.”

Her exhibit at the Academy will also include several pop-up books, which evolved out of cards she began making in Italy.

“There was so much beautiful paper there, (and) I couldn’t paint on it,” she says. “I started making these pop-up and sculptural cards, but I didn’t know anything. I had no training, so I was learning as I went along.”

Harris, who studied art history at Northwestern University, always intended to go back to school to earn her master’s in painting.

But “living in Italy, I kind of felt like I got it there,” she says. “After this many years of painting, I know who I am as a painter.”

Instead, Harris is now working toward a master’s in creative writing and book art at Mills College in California.

“I’m not interested in leaving anything behind,” she says of her many artistic interests. “I’m interested in bringing it all together.”

The Academy’s reception is from 5 to 8 p.m., with folk music by Mark Baskind and catering by Avenue Foods.

It will also open the Up Front Gallery’s “Contrast, Collaboration, Transcendence” exhibit, featuring montage collages, photography and ceramic work of John Moon, Alex Monetti and David Emmert.

Avenue Arts Studio Gallery, 1206 Rivermont Ave.

Mike Twery’s “Mikigami” — glow-in-the-dark shapes inspired by folded candy wrappers to create objects that, at first glance, look very abstract and can change depending on the viewer’s imagination — will be on display alongside Larry Bowden’s paintings. Bowden describes his work as a balancing act of lines, forms and color that he hopes creates a quiet place free of clutter, distraction or pretense. His work, inspired by a devotion to Zen and Modernism, plays in the ambiguity between abstraction and design.

The reception will run from 6 to 8 p.m.

Artifacts, 4327 Boonsboro Road

Lois Virginia Babb, who paints en plein air and alla prima, is the featured artist through December. Her ethereal paintings — laced with soft edges and filled with vibrant life — are reminiscent of turn-of-the-century masters like John Singer Sargent. The reception is from 6 to 8 p.m.

blackwater creek gallery, 845 Belmont St.

The gallery will continue to show the work of outsider and visionary artists, including Joe Aulisio, Raymond J. Ferguson and Walter T. Hudson, with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m.

Aulisio, a self-taught artist, is in prison, so most of his work — acrylics on watercolor paper — comes from pictures in magazines; Ferguson creates sculptures made out of matchsticks and scrap wood and, in his paintings, recreates images taken from picture books; and Hudson works primarily in acrylics on canvas or found objects, creating images from dreams and visions.

Dancing Leaf Gallery, 409 Fifth St.

Their November show will feature “Intaglioware,” handcrafted pottery that’s created with impressions of leaves and flowers in a delicate, china-like medium. The designs come from Harriett Hellewell and Gail Kowalski. The exhibit, with a reception scheduled from 5 to 8 p.m., will also include the photographs of Appomattox’s Charlie Dalton, and music by Code Blue.

The Firehouse Gallery, 1210 Rivermont Ave.

“Fun, Foolish and Festive: The Things We Do To Amuse Ourselves” are photos of just that: bands, bars, circuses, dances, restaurants, festivals, parades, plays and more.

The photos are from Nancy Marion’s digital collection of more than 30,000 Lynchburg photos, many of which come from the Jones Memorial Library, City Hall, the Lynchburg Parks and Recreation Department and the Lynchburg Museum System.

All of the photos — 25 large and about 100 small — are for sale. The reception runs from 5 to 8 p.m. Friday, with another one scheduled from 8 a.m. to noon Saturday.

Light Wings Gallery, 849 Belmont St.

The “Inspirational Paintings” of Willie Green will be on display, with a reception from 5 to 8 p.m. He works in both realistic and abstract styles, and his medium includes acrylic, oil and pastels.

The Lynchburg Art Club, 1011 Rivermont Ave.

“Perspectives” will feature the work of Jata Brown, who does large-scale landscapes; Karen Lisle, whose work is partly inspired by photographs she took while growing up in the Middle East and Africa; and Patsy Wilkinson, who arranges images on her canvas using the same artistic devices she uses arranging flowers.

Brown says nature and landscapes have always inspired her — from her time living in New Orleans, when she painted marsh, plantation and river scenes, to her current home in Lynchburg.

“I am so inspired by the landscapes of Virginia,” she says. “I will spend the rest of my life painting (here).”

Lisle’s surroundings were also instrumental in her pursuit of art, she says in an artist’s statement. Growing up in the Middle East and Africa, she documented everything she saw with photographs and, now, a lot of her paintings come from those photos.

“It makes me very happy to share ancient sites, and I also enjoy painting local landscapes and buildings,” says Lisle, who graduated from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in 1982 and lived in Maryland for three years and Egypt for five before moving back to Lynchburg in the early 1990s.

Wilkinson has also traveled extensively. She studied art in Florence and, after graduation, taught art classes in the public school system for five years. She then redirected her love of art into creating living landscapes as the owner of The Flower Pot for 13 years, but eventually picked up the paintbrush again.

The club’s First Fridays reception is scheduled from 5 to 8 p.m.

Oxide Pottery, 1337 Main St.
The newest kid on the First Fridays block, Oxide Pottery will be open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday, with a reception from 6 to 9 p.m. (Regular hours will be 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday.)

Oxide includes a retail space, where pottery and jewelry will be for sale, and a vast workspace in the back that’s home to two potters wheels, a kiln and lots of owner Joe Monk’s works-in-progress.

Monk bought the building, a former barber shop, five years ago, but didn’t have a specific plan for it.

“I just bought it because there was a lot of early action downtown,” he says. “The more I worked on the building, the more I saw the possibilities there.”

About a year ago, he got serious about opening up a pottery studio and teamed up with his daughter, Chatham, and her boyfriend, Justin Rice, both artists with degrees from the Cleveland Institute of Art.

In addition to the pottery, Joe Monk also makes Memory Vases, which are decorated and painted with found items.

He’s used that same recycling spirit on the building itself; one of the back sinks is actually an old shark tank, and the front counters are built from old lumber and flooring from a company in Forest.

The pottery is “all one-of-a-kind,” he says. “As we sell, new stuff will take its place, and it’s all different.”

They’ll also sell jewelry made by Chatham and Rice, including a series of earrings Rice created using pages from old comic books.

For more information, call (434) 845-5656.

Rivermont Gallery, 1204 Rivermont Ave.

“Lure” features photographs, mixed media and paintings by Pam Fox, a fine arts professor at Hampden-Sydney College.

In an artist’s statement, Fox says people are drawn to animals for their symbolic powers — representing more primal versions of themselves. In this exhibit, she’s orchestrating the illusion of a fleeting encounter with a wild creature in the landscape.

“I am interested in the tension between representation of these idyllic (fake) animals,” she says, “and the consequence of what might lie outside of the frame.”

The reception is scheduled from 6 to 8 p.m. Friday, with an artist’s talk at 11 a.m. Saturday.

Thomas A. Johnson Furniture Company/James River Furnishings

The company will offer light refreshments and guided tours of its 75,000-square-foot, turn-of-the-century warehouse from 5 to 8 p.m. and will introduce new items in their collection, including a line of handpainted furniture and canvas art by Taylor Darrone.