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Mid-Atlantic
Art Exhibition
at d’Art Center
BY TERESA ANNAS
THE VIRGINIAN PILOT
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NORFOLK With a juried show like the d’Art Center’s Mid-Atlantic Art Exhibition, the gallery necessarily loosens its reins. The annual show, one of the center’s most popular offerings, depends on artists choosing to enter. And in late spring, some of the better artists might opt to stockpile work for the outdoor shows. Secondarily, the center relies on judges to pick works for the show from the submitted slides. Later, when the show is hung, awards are chosen. This year, 63 artists applied and 37 were selected by Nancy Sausser, exhibitions- director at the McLean Project for the Arts in Northern Virginia. The top awards were named by Joyce Howell, professor of art history at Virginia Wesleyan College.
It’s a pretty tight show. Anyone might have guessed that more would enter this year, since it is d’Art’s first normal Mid-Atlantic in its new downtown home at Selden Arcade. Last year, construction delays meant the show opened seven weeks late with the art set on easels in the pedestrian walkway; the show was later rehung in the new center’s galleries.
Still, this year’s show is rich in its range of media, styles and subjects. Artists came from six states, though more than half are local. There is much to appreciate, especially from the realist painters who got in.
Best in show went to “Pepsi and Pork,” a painting of a grocery store by Christi Harris of Hampton. Her piece evokes the 1960s pop art era, when artists focused on the new flood of mass-produced goods. Four decades later, it’s still amusing to see such painstaking detail applied to such a mundane subject.
Hampton realist painter James Warwick Jones gave center stage to a starfish in his simple still- life arrangement. Cleverly, he used a theatrical stage-lighting effect to spotlight the starfish — as if it were, indeed, a celebrity.
“Ascension,” by Charles Franklin Bryan of Smithfield, stands out for its arresting image and the artist’s sure hand in a brushy, expressive style of realism. The mysterious
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‘ASCENSION’ OIL ON CANVAS, CHARLES FRANKLIN BRYAN
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painting, which won an award of distinction, depicts a girl floating in space, eyes closed, her blue wings tinged with heavenly gold. Was this painted in memoriam to a deceased youngster — or is it an allegorical portrayal of a treasured child?
R,J. Clark of Virginia Beach contributed an obsessively detailed painting capturing every rock, leaf and blossom in a grand mountain vista. Because such detailing is so rarely seen anymore, it’s fresh to the eye — as fresh as the atmosphere depicted in “Valley Trail.”
The show is contained in the main gallery and a second hallway gallery. The 42 resident d’Artists also hang their work on the walls outside their studios. If the Mid-Atlantic show leaves you wanting more, take the time to stroll the hallways and visit the working artists.
Reach Teresa Annas at (757 446 or Teresa.aflflas@pjIotoflIifle.com.
If you go
What Mid-Atlantic Art Exhibition
Where D’Art Center, 208 E Main St, Norfolk
When Through June 25 2006; 10a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, 1 to 5 p.m. Sundays
Cost Free
Info (757) 625-4211
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