March/February exhibitions at artspace March 23, 2013

Artspace gallery is pleased to present exhibitions by Elaine Rogers, Santa Sergio De Haven, Linda Laino & Suzyn Kelly, Mim Golub and group show that features works by Richmond artists celebrating Earth Day. Exhibits open on March 22, 2013 from 7-10pm and continue through April 21, 2013.

Elaine Rogers will present her solo exhibition, "Sweet Life", in the Main Gallery. Elaine’s paintings are color–based abstractions that record her response to subject matter over a period of time. Elaine states: "My paintings begin with colored marks. The colored marks transition into shapes and areas. After a while forms start to emerge and problems present themselves as needing to be solved. I focus on something from my experience. Relationships, situations, personal events, and current events are my subjects. I try to find visual equivalents of color, shape, and form to represent my experiences." Elaine received her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in painting and has exhibited her paintings nationally in group shows. She has had one-person shows in Richmond, Charlottesville, and Norfolk, Virginia. Elaine received a Virginia Museum Professional Fellowship in 1989 and is currently an adjunct faculty member at the University of Richmond where she has taught studio classes since 2001. She has also taught at VCU, Collegiate schools, and the VMFA studio school. Elaine has been a member of artspace since 2008.

Linda Laino and Suzyn Hutton Kelley will exhibit "Corpses and Cartography" in the Frable Gallery. Longtime friends and colleagues, both of these artists find inspiration in nature and in the materials and techniques of mixed media paintings. Linda Laino will exhibit mixed media watercolors. She states: "Art-making, in part, requires noticing, seeing, admiring, and recording patterns in all forms. The exquisite patterns in nature draw my eyes like nectar. I find comfort in the structure." Linda has recently moved to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico for a teaching position. Linda received her MFA in textiles from VCU. Suzyn Hutton Kelley will have small mixed media works that were painted in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and inspired from "the exquisite corpses of hundreds of dead butterflies, which were proudly delivered to me daily by my grade one and two students at Saigon South International School." Suzyn uses the butterfly corpse as a material in the work but states: " I am concerned with images as simulations: marks that attempt to refer to something or someplace else and have been on a quest to discover work that is its own entity. I want to make a painting that is about itself and somehow nothing much else." Suzyn has been a Richmond artist for 24 years but has recently embarked on an international teaching career in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam and Jeju, a Korean Island.

Santa Sergio De Haven will be showing "Drawing Lessons-Works on Paper" in the Helena Davis Gallery. Santa states: "I use drawings and the shape, color and line in found images in my collage. The "real" surfaces and shadows of the found images play against the drawn elements and lead the viewer to a shifting and suggestive still life or landscape. This exploration has led me back to real landscape ideas in watercolor." Santa is a member of artspace and has shown widely in Virginia. She graduated with a degree in studio art from Rutgers University and has studied at Parsons School of Design and Pratt Institute, as well as the Virginia Museum studio school.

Mim Golub will be showing "Tiny Town" in the smallspace gallery. "Tiny Town" is a group of prints, based on her collages using Maurice Utrillo’s painting of a street in Sannois, France, as their base. The actual painting is in the Mellon Collection at VMFA. The actual collages have been disbursed through out the world via the United States Postal Service. These are part of Mim’s Mail Art 365 project, where she created a piece of Mail Art daily for a year. Mim has exhibited work in solo and group shows in the United States and internationally. She has degrees from the University of Illinois and VCU. Trained as a painter/printmaker, she was making large-scale paintings, but has now embraced collage and small format work. She taught at VCU in the art foundation program for 18 years; and currently is on faculty at the Studio School of the Virginia Museum of Fine Art.

A group show, "Earthly Delights", features works by Richmond artists celebrating Earth Day in the Suzanne Foley Gallery.

Official Website: http://artspacegallery.org/exhibitions.shtml