> Past Exhibits
RECURRING DREAM
National Fly Killin' Week by Chance Murray
National Fly Killin' Week
June 21 - August 4
First Friday Receptions: July 7 & August 4
Artist Talk: TBD
One day I walked into my house and it was full of flies. “ have mercy, I am going to need a whole lotta fly swatters” so I made some, 100 to be exact. Later that same day, the interior of my house looked like World War two for flies. The next thought was, there ought to be a national damn holiday for this. So I now present you with how opening day for National Fly Killing Week would look, kinda like Disney world if it was opened by your Uncle Bubba. complete with parade, a celebratory hornworm drop at midnight, souvenir fly swatters and pointers on how you may wish to decorate your own home for National Fly Killin week.
National Fly Killin’ Week is real. Believe it. If you still don’t believe it, come see for yourself. After all, there’s a week for everything else…
ARTIST BIO
Chance Murray is a Southerner first, and an artist second. Using skills grafted from farming his large-scale mixed media works cobble together traditional painting, woodworking, and pure redneck engineering, producing vivid and slightly skewed scenes of rural life. these conjured images often come from a place both hard to describe yet somehow familiar, casting the viewer into a crudely altered world. Roughly scribbled text, often severing as comic relief, sprawl across the surface enhancing these scenes, sometimes providing description while sometimes, or simultaneously, flipping the image on its head, changing and confounding any sense of meaning. Chance is the recipient of the 2011-2012 Ella Fountain Pratt Emerging Artist award, He lives and works in Cedar Grove, N.C.
Under Pressure: The Performance Exhibition
Under Pressure: The Performance Exhibition
July 7 - 27
PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE
First Friday, July 7 - Various
July 8 - Ginger Wagg & Charles Chace - Drum Power
July 12 - Reflex Arc - Crowmeat Bob & Ginger Wagg
July 14 - Cara Hagan - The Body in the Breath (In Color!)
July 15 - Heather Gordon and Chris Vitiello - Typeface
July 19 - Chandler Thomas - /Skein/
July 20 - Andi Steele - Ignorance is Bliss
July 21 - Stephanie Leathers - Valve
July 22 - Debra Wuliger - Wisdom Collects
July 26 - The Upward Dogs
July 27 - Julia Casten - Privilege Coffee
Performance Exhibition Project Seed Grant
As a part of the Under Pressure: Performance Exhibition, VAE gave away two $250 grants to artists whose work is performance based and are looking for resources to begin new projects, further their current practice, and continue their creativity.
Grant Recipients
Stephanie Leathers
Bio-
Stephanie Leathers is a choreographer, educator, photographer, performer and Durham native. In addition to connecting and collaborating with members in the community, she is the organizer of Sunday SITES, a site-responsive investigation to infrastructural change. Currently, Stephanie teaches at American Dance Festival’s Samuel H. Scripps Studios and is a Dance Educator for Durham Public Schools. Learn more about her work at stephaniepleathers.com.
Maria Lindseth
Bio-
A kaleidoscope human, born in the USSR, grew up in Prague and residing in the US since 2005, I've had formal art education as a youngster but swayed away to freedom of my own art soul. An enthusiastic artiscientist with solid background in diverse fields, I enjoy challenges and a fast paced environment. I've received BS in Microbiology from Arizona State University and worked as a scientist before returning to art full time. I've always regarded art as this absolute freedom and joy. Similar to that feeling when you are Skipping and catching wind on your face. My goal is to bring that feeling to viewers through my work. To achieve the goal, I use acrylics and mixed media with a variety of application methods including palette knives, household objects and palmar action. My abstract work is centered on diversity and beauty of People and Nature, and the complexity in human souls. The elements of exploration and discovery in my often vibrant and dynamic work facilitate connection and exploration in viewers.
Under Pressure: The Print Exhibition
Under Pressure: The Print Exhibition
June 30 - July 27
VAE sought artists to submit works that had been created through any and all of the printmaking processes that utilize pressure. Pressing ink into paper has served as a catalyst for reproducing ideas in both in text and image throughout history and VAE wants to show how artists are using these techniques today.
HUNG
June 2 - 22, 2017
Opening Reception: June 2, 6-10pm
Project Statement
Liz Kelly and Sarah Tector have come together in this collaborative effort to explore their mutuality while pushing each other towards new ideas. Tector is known for her clean, geometric and architecturally influenced jewelry and Kelly for her elegant and strong functional pottery. Turning their attention towards home adornment, H U N G explores pendant lighting and functional wall pieces. This exhibit reflects a partnership of craftspeople exploring new processes and each other’s visual language.
Anthony Garcia-Copian
AJ Fletcher Foundation
Anthony Garcia-Copian / AJ Fletcher
May-July
When I paint, I paint abstract memories. Sometimes the memory is foggy and has been replaced by an imaginary sediment, a residue that has made one memory solid and the other fluid.
Everything in art is a memory.
I have empathic traits, therefore I paint the images of the emotions that I am able to absorb from strangers and from those who surround me.
The only expectation that I have from my art is pleasure.
- AGC
SCOPE '17
SCOPE '17
June 2 -22
SCOPE is a survey of the southern landscape. While being bold, beautiful, provocative, and enticing the landscape is also set in histories, cultures, and people. These histories, cultures, and people affect and are affected by the political and societal landscapes, that make the South as we see it and talk about it today.
Sheila Hall
United Arts Council
Sheila Hall / United Arts Center
The bold and vibrant hues of SJ Hall’s art give us pause as we go about our otherwise busy routines of life. Passionate crimsons, royal purple and gold denote culture and ceremony. Bright yellows and orange reflect the warmth of the sunlight or floral gifts of nature. Hall paints and creates from experiences, memories, dreams and visions.
Originally from North Carolina, SJ Hall ventured to Alaska in 1981. For eighteen years she taught art to children and adults of all ages. Having retired after thirty plus years as an educator, principal and supervisor Hall now paints for enjoyment and on commissioned works. Sheila Judge Hall is best known as an Alaskan artist whose work can be found in several art collections in Anchorage Alaska. She has been a featured artist in Anchorage Wild Salmon on Parade Sculpture Project, Transformed Treasures Salvation Army Benefit art exhibitions and has donated art to many charitable silent auctions. Her colorful artwork is among many private art collections from Anchorage to North Carolina. Living and working in Alaska for over twenty years exposed Hall to a multitude of nationalities and cultures, which influenced her art. Visit sjhallartwork.com to see some of her work and shopvida.com/collections/sheila-j- hall for wearable art. Hall has returned to her native state and now works from her home “Color Speaks Studio,” in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Sheila Judge Hall is a graduate of East Carolina University, School of Art and Design, and the University of Alaska Anchorage. Hall is currently a professional artist in Raleigh, NC and a member of NC Artspace. She is a proud wife, mother and grandmother.
Can I Keep You by Erin Canady
The Lived Body
ULTRALIGHT
Exhibition run May 5-25, 2017
ULTRALIGHT is an exhibition of artwork about disability, created by artists living with disabilities. VAE is offering a platform for artists who identify as living with disabilities to take back the narrative that is so often controlled by the medical field, media, and stereotypes. ULTRALIGHT seeks to exhibit work that challenges the viewing public to leave their preconceived notions and sympathy at the door, and experience artwork that tells the real story of living disabilities and the current state of access. The exhibition breaks access into three parts: physical, communication, and attitude.
Collective Behavior by Maggie Evans
April 22 - June 3, 2017
Maggie Evans is an artist based in Savannah, Georgia. Using drawing, painting and site-specific installation her work examines human collective behavior and the hierarchies, homogeneity and social divisions that result.
Off Route Journals
Off Route Journals
presented by Betsy Peters Rascoe, Mike Cindric, & Sam Cox
Join us as we celebrate the unique people and landscapes of Eastern North Carolina.
April 7 - 27, 2017
Opening Reception: April 7, 6-10pm
Project Statement
North Carolina’s coastal plain has a fertile landscape and rich agricultural and cultural history. Yet, the counties between Interstate 95 and the coast remain a blank spot on many North Carolinians’ mental maps. Most experience the region as a blur of pine trees, fields, and gas stations as they rush towards the beach. What can we learn by slowing down and engaging Eastern North Carolina in a conversation on its own terms?
Click here to continue following the conversation on Facebook.
Michael Bambuch / United Arts Council
Micheal Bambuch
United Arts Council - March
I'm not cool enough to talk about myself in the third person. I'm a photographer, original from the northeast(New Jersey and Massachusetts), that has landed in Apex, North Carolina.
I shoot people. I love conceptual. I want my photos to be dynamic, to shape a perception, whatever you feel it might be. I do not have formulas and I never went to art school. I won't be able to explain or defend my work with gregarious themes and deeper meanings. I subscribe to the idea that you can just shoot something and like it. It doesn't have to go further than that. If you find something deeper, kudos, I've done something to elicit a response. I suppose that's what art is about? My photographic inspirations are Ritts, Lagrange, Blumenfeld, Wolf, Avedon and Walker. I don't think my work necessarily looks like their images, but they drive a lot of what I do.
e1ev1n I Warren Hicks
e1ev1n
Warren Hicks
February 22 - April 8
Artist talk, April 8, 11 am
A conceptual self-portrait composed of time, events, locations, and professional and social interactions — all relative to the times and number 111 and 1111 — captured by 170+ iPone screenshots over a 2 year period.
Read Moreinterface I Ely Urbanski
interface
Ely Urbanski
February 3 - 23, 2017
I have been collecting clothes from friends, family and my previous exhibitions visitors. These clothes are the matrices for my monoprints on fabric. Most of the clothes have a story, they were worn for a long time, the person who owned the clothes had an emotional attachment to it, they only used them in special occasions, etc. What I noticed is that those clothes have one thing in common: they are stories of relationships. A material reminder of an interaction with a living person, with someone they missed or a particular situation in their lives.
I believe that what I transfer to the substrate (a piece of fabric, a reclaimed sheet) is not only the material image but also part of the memory|energy of the clothes and their owners|users.
Read More
SEE ATTACHED / DEPTH / FLUSH
Triple Threat
January 6-26
First Friday (redo) January 13 6-10pm
For the month of January VAE will be showcasing three exhibitions in our Main Gallery.
Read MoreDreams Deferred
A community art project inspired by Langston Hughes' poem, "Harlem"
Documented by Ariyah April & Veronique Moses
Read More
Janet Coleman / Aloft on Hillsborough
Janet Coleman
January-March
Animals, landscape, people and objects are often common themes in my work. By defining forms through layering of texture and color, I search for the accidental image. These images often serve to guide the piece, and ignite inspiration from memory, experience or dreams.
Read More
Brian Davis "Elevation V2"
December 21, 2016 - February 3, 2017
First Friday Receptions: January 6 & February 3, 2017 6-10pm
Brian Davis lives and works in Northern Virginia. Born in Ft. Walton Beach, Florida, Mr. Davis was raised in Guam and South Carolina. He has taught New Media and Sculpture at The George Washington University and American University. Mr. Davis has a B.F.A in General Studio from Winthrop University and an M.F.A in Sculpture from the University of Florida.
Read More
George Gregory / Open Gallery at Red Hat
George Gregory / Open Gallery at Red Hat
My production process often leaves me with scraps of wood that are too small to incorporate into my work, but too big to throw away. I find myself saving these scraps for potential use in the future. After much deliberation, I found myself dipping these scraps into acrylic paint and laminating them together. This process was the inspiration for Pixel-ed.
Read More