Focus Exhibiitons: Joseph Barbaccia / Craig Kraft / Judy Southerland

Joseph Barbaccia: Currents
Craig Kraft: Unintentional Drawings
Judy Southerland: Borderland
 

January 9 – February 20, 2010
Opening Reception, Saturday, January 9, 5:30 – 7:30 pm
Gallery talk at 6:30 pm

Greater Reston Arts Center presents three Focus Exhibitions: Currents featuring Joseph Barbaccia’s fantastical, sequined sculptures, Unintentional Drawings comprised of Craig Kraft’s experimental, neon sculptures, and Judy Southerland’s mixed media, narrative prints in Borderland.

Currents, Joseph Barbaccia’s aquarium-like installation, takes the viewer on a deep sea dive into a dazzling underworld filled with magical creatures. Six glittering, biomorphic sculptures are set in a dimly lit, dark-green gallery. Their names, Praise, Ridicule, Happiness, Suffering, Loss, and Destruction, refer to six of Buddhism’s eight worldly concerns. While traditional teaching advises one to avoid these concerns, Barbaccia’s shimmering surfaces and erotic shapes make the effort nearly impossible.

Nationally recognized neon sculptor, Craig Kraft, departs from his iconic linear forms in a bold experimental project, Unintentional Drawings. Reducing his palette to shades of blue, Kraft expands the limits of neon by transferring his seemingly random doodles into drawings made of light. "Unintentional Drawing I", a free-standing eight-foot tall sculpture, features words like a commercial neon sign but it uses them in a haphazard way, as though the drawing was first conceived on the back of a napkin. Both "Unintentional Drawings II" and "III" continue the random, scribbling theme but as smaller, wall-mounted works.

Borderland, the title of Judy Southerland’s exhibition of mixed-media prints, refers to both her intention and her process. “To make a picture, I start with the space in-between,” she reveals. Southerland’s “in-between” is often an open field, a blue sky, or an empty wall. Into these nebulous places she combines human gestures with other images estranged by time and style. Gradually, like the artist’s laborious process of developing each screen-print, a narrative emerges.

Greater Reston Arts Center
12001 Market Street Suite #103
Reston, VA 20190
Gallery Hours: Tuesday through Saturday 11am-5pm
703.471.9242

Touring Outdoor Sculpture at Foggy Bottom

This Saturday, August 9 at 11am Sculptor Craig Kraft and Philippa Hughs of Pink Line Project will lead the tour.


Guided tours are held the second Saturday of each month – June through October – at 11:00 a.m. Each tour starts at New Hampshire Avenue and Eye Street, NW (a few blocks from the Foggy Bottom Metro) and there will be a reception to follow at the Watergate Gallery. 2552 Virginia Ave NW, 202.338.4488

Foggy Bottom Outdoor Sculpture Exhibit

Opening on Saturday, May 3, 2008Shirley Koller is curator for the exhibition. Ms. Koller has curated exhibits for the Art and Science program at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) at the DC Headquarters building for the past ten years. She has also curated sculpture shows for the Tri State's Sculptors Education Association at Washington Square in Washington, DC for the past 20 years.

A six-month exhibit will showcase 12 area sculptors whose work will be displayed in the front yards of private residences in the Foggy Bottom Historic District. To commemorate the opening there will be a curator-led tour starting at 4:00 p.m. at the corner of New Hampshire Avenue and I Street NW. The tour will end with a reception at the Watergate Gallery from 5 to 8 p.m. located in the Watergate Shopping Mall at 2552 Virginia Avenue NW. Both the tour and reception are open to the public.

Sculptors selected include Alan Binstock, Pamela Burris, Robert Cole, Alonzo Davis, Nancy Frankel, Craig Kraft, Philippe Mougne, Sam Noto, Ethan Rochmis, Craig Schaffer, Garrett Strang, and Mike Shaffer. All of the artists live or have studios in metropolitan Washington area. During the run of the exhibit, artist-led tours will be offered on the 2nd Saturday of each month at 11 a.m. Brochures may be picked up at each sculpture site for a self-guided tour -- they provide photos of sculptures on display with a corresponding map of the neighborhood.

Please check the Arts in Foggy Bottom page for upcoming events to be announced in the coming weeks or contact arts@savefoggybottom.com for more information.