The exceptional world that Aggie Zed creates is operatic on a miniature scale. Her little characters may be human or animal, or a therianthropic combination of the two, but they share the same tenderness, cautions, pains and paranoias as they confront the terms of life; fragile beings just trying to make it through. There is always, always Zed's wit and compassion baked into their deeply expressive porcelain faces. 

The "Scrap Floats", Zed's larger mixed media constructions, give physical form to the covert psychological machinations it can often require to overcome and progress.  In confronting her work, one is always torn between chuckling at one's own follies and trials, and feeling a guilty sense of  bad manners for wanting to do so. Because, for certain, these characters know what we are thinking.

My drawings are based on objects in the collections of science and medical museums, drawn in colored pencil on paper.
I often cut into the drawings, creating forms found in science and mathematics.
My work explores the connection between the physicality of memento mori and the enduring abstraction of ideas.

Beverly Ress (MFA, Rinehart School of Sculpture, Maryland Institute College of Art, AB, Earlham College) has a deep background in sculpture, and a current focus on drawing. Her work is exhibited throughout the US, and abroad. It has been included in two national invitational drawing exhibits - Art on Paper at the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, NC, and in the 10th National Drawing Invitational at the Arkansas Arts Center. Among her solo exhibitions are the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, The Kentler International Drawing Space in Brooklyn, The Simons Center for Geometry and Physics at Stony Brook University, and Chroma Projects Art Laboratory in Charlottesville, VA. Most recently her work is included in a traveling exhibition in Germany in support of immigrants and refugees, entitled “Hope is Maybe” (2018-19). Her work has been shown in group exhibits at Schema Projects and the Rush Corridor Gallery in Brooklyn, Central Booking in New York City, Heiner Contemporary, and Curator’s Office in Washington, DC, and Liber Mundi in Antwerp, Belgium among many others

Ress’ drawings and prints are included in the collections of The Arkansas Arts Center, Georgetown University, Davidson College (NC), The Library of Congress, Georgetown University, The American University at the Katzen Arts Center, Sheppard Pratt Health System in Baltimore, The Art Bank of Washington, DC and many private collections. She has received a Pollock-Krasner Grant, as well as four Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council, and was a Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA.

Michelle Gagliano has been painting for over 25 years and has had extensive solo exhibitions regularly throughout the U.S. and Italy. She divides her time between Charlottesville and Rome with studios in both locations. Gagliano’s work is held in numerous private and corporate collections throughout the United States and Europe, including Amsterdam, London, Paris, Beverly Hills, New York, Houston, New Orleans, Charlottesville and Washington, DC. Gagliano was born in Jamestown, NY, and studied painting at North Texas State University with painter Vernon Fisher. She has a degree in painting from Plymouth State University (New Hampshire).

Michelle Gagliano’s body of work has, for quite a number of years, been involved in painting scenes of evanescent and earthly beauty, visually expressing Dante’s ideas about his Purgatorio and Paradiso in the Divine Comedy. Particularly through her use of golden light revealing in the clouds and beyond the opening thickets of foreground vines and trees. The viewer finds a mysterious beckoning to draw deep into the painting. Michelle draws much pleasure from the act of painting this ongoing work, imagining our existence as having a radiant spirit just beyond our human reach.

Michelle Gagliano

Leigh Anne Chambers' work considers how society determines what is tasteful, engaging domestic/building materials to challenge traditional notions of art.  

Altering familiar items like vinyl flooring and carpeting she exploits these mundane materials, re-purposing them and reconsidering them as a source of inspiration and backdrop to her environments. The result is a dynamic eruption of fluid planes as Chambers continually reinvents the forming of the planet.

Artist Statement

For most of my professional life I have been chiefly a writer. Over the past ten years, however, I have returned to an early devotion to art. I have been doing traditional photography, cameraless photography (chlorophyll prints, scanography), letterpress printing, and am combining media in hand-made artist’s books. My collaboration with Binh Danh, who taught me his chlorophyll print process, has been an influence. And my writing and reading life has influenced my art decisively, especially my deep involvement with poet Walt Whitman and the American Transcendentalists for whom knowledge starts in the contemplation of nature. My chlorophyll prints, and especially the portraits, enact Whitman’s central trope of leaves: death falls into the ground and life rises, renewed, from it. And my specimen scans seek to acknowledge both beauty and terror, capturing ephemeral beauty against a deep black background.

Artist’s Bio

Robert Schultz has authored six books in three genres and is an exhibiting artist. He has received a National Endowment for the Arts Award, Cornell University's Corson Bishop Poetry Prize, and, from the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Emily Clark Balch Prize for Poetry. He has been a regular contributor to The Hudson Review, VQR, and many other journals. He has spoken by invitation at the National Gallery of Art, Oxford University, the Library of Congress, at colleges and universities across the U.S., and at book festivals and other venues. For over a decade he has collaborated with the photographer Binh Danh, producing two art exhibitions and publishing two books, most recently War Memoranda: Photography, Walt Whitman, and Memorials. Schultz’s artwork is held by the U.S. Library of Congress, the University of Virginia special collections library, the Phillips Museum at Franklin & Marshall College, and private collectors in the U.S. and abroad. He lives in Salem, Virginia.

My work is inspired by sacred geometry, which is thought to convey sacred and universal truths by reflecting the fractal interconnections of the natural world. By reiterating these patterns and ratios, my work unlocks the language of abstraction through the collective recognition of geometric perfection that is evident in ethnic patterns all around the world. This commonality creates connections. As such, my work is a perfect conduit for cross-cultural conversations that embrace and celebrate diversity.

Reni Gower has over 40 years of professional experience in the fine arts. Her work has been showcased internationally in Qatar, UAE, Australia, Italy, Peru, Korea, Israel, Belgium, England, Moldova, and Moscow. Additional national venues include the Mesa Contemporary Art Museum, AZ; Zukerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw, GA; Muskegon Museum of Art, MI; Rawls, Museum, Courtland, VA; Taubman, Museum, Roanoke, VA; Kimball Art Center, Park City, UT; McLean Project for the Arts, McLean, VA; Erie Museum of Art, Erie, PA; Villa Terrace Decorative Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI; South Carolina State Museum, Columbia, SC; Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, NC; Virginia Museum of Art, Richmond, VA; Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, NY; Everson Museum, Syracuse, NY; Tweed Museum of Art, Duluth, MN; The McKinney Avenue Contemporary, Dallas, TX; Tinney Contemporary, Nashville, TN; and Chroma Projects, Charlottesville, VA.

Ms. Gower has received numerous grants and awards including a 2020 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant; 2017 SECAC Award for Outstanding Artistic Achievement; 2014 College Art Association Distinguished Teaching of Art Award and the 2014 Virginia Commonwealth University and VCUarts Awards of Excellence in Teaching; as well as NEA / SECCA Southeastern Artist Fellowship; Virginia Commission for the Arts Project Grants; SECAC Awards of Excellence in Teaching and Outstanding Catalogs of Contemporary Materials; VCUarts Faculty Grants for Curatorial Projects; and two Ford Foundation Grants awarded through Syracuse University. Her work is represented in various collections including the Library of Congress Print Collection; Pleasant Company / Mattel, Inc; the American Embassies in Lima, Peru and Osaka, Japan; Media General, Inc; Capital One; and the Federal Reserve Bank.

Floating Worlds: The Art of Sherrie Hunt

Two themes are represented in this collection with the common thread of floating imagery.  I have immense passion for nature and the well being of our planet from the tiniest of creatures and flora to the oceans and forest.  The beauty and mystery of nature feeds my soul and awakens my creative spirit endlessly and at the same time, on a daily basis, I am reminded of it’s fragility for I am an advocate of species in jeopardy.

 As I paint or create photographic images I pull up the visuals in my mind of the twisting vines, soft velvety petals, undulating foliage, familiar and foreign shapes and colors or perhaps the beauty and spirit of a bird.  These images pass through a filter of my imaginationand then float out into my art so to speak.

 Most of my pieces are laced with metaphors, some obvious, some not so obvious, of our connection with nature and the fragility of our planet.  The wings of a bird or petal of a flower not being fully painted would be examples of metaphors for the threat of extinction.  

I desire to put beauty with an element of mystery out in the world with my work to engage the viewer and at the same time an underlying quiet message of the importance of cherishing our planet.  

 A second theme is work over the years inspired by tiny Chinese puppet heads I continually return to for inspiration.  The photo-based mixed media pieces perhaps will stir the viewers imagination and connect with them on an emotional level as will the more recently photographic collage prints.

Working across a variety of media, from photography to painting to collage, Sherrie Hunt constructs images that reflect the gentle beauty and ephemerality of our physical world. Her works are marked by an exploration of the changing moods and lights of nature. A veteran commercial photographer, Hunt has also seen her work exhibited in public and private institutions, including the Long Beach Museum of Art and the Alexandria Museum of Art in Louisiana.

Sara Conca, is a contemporary abstract artist of Native American and French- Italian descent. She has sold her works to many collectors in Europe, Asia, and the United States. Her paintings can be found in private chateaus and hotel lobbies in France, as well as in many exclusive celebrity homes and museums.

By the age of 17, Sara was living and working in Paris. A life changing experience that reinforced her need for movement, energy and art. While in Paris, Sara studied sculpture at Ateliers D’Art De St Maur Des Fosses, and further continued her education in South Florida as an assistant of the critically lauded artist Purvis Young.

 Sara Conca has spent her last 18 years in Manhattan, Living solely off her painting sales, Extensive international travels, and the influence of New York City has given her an insightful appreciation for her ever- changing environments and settings, as well as heavily influencing her.

Sara Conca has returned to her roots in Florida, which has inspired her to create a fresh new aquatic mystical series involving natural mixed media such as raw silver dust and 18k gold leafing, raw pigments colors, mica flakes and natural crystals.

“My work is intended to instantaneously immerse the viewer into the visual and emotional energies that I have devoted to each piece. Depending on one's ability and willingness to be guided by the senses, these paintings can lead one away from the mind and into an alternate and self-made reality filled with color and feeling. My new series features gold. I love working with this color because it changes in the light and I can manipulate the textures and layering; thus affording each piece movement and energy from the reflecting and refracting light.” ~ Sara Conca

Nina Ozbey's work is about spontaneity, about opening herself up to the unexpected. In this ongoing series of non-objective paintings, she relinquishes subject matter to explore composition, color and line, blending elements of design with intuition. The process of putting paint onto canvas or paper, and the choices that unfold as each work builds and evolves are Ozbey's main interest. As Ozbey explains, Working off the first brushstroke, which often that dictates the rest of the work, I take pleasure in making marks, observing how each stroke relates to and energizes the next. The paintings are records of my brushes’ actions, webs of gestures that I hope embrace something raw and unseen.Ozbey's paintings tend to reveal the season they were painted in as the ambient light and surroundings slip into and influence the consciousness of her work.

Nina Ozbey began her studies at Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK, later  receiving her Masters of Education at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. She has taught art throughout her career, while studying independently to advance her own artistic direction and skills. Ozbey is a fellow at the VCCA and has participated in art residencies at Hambige in Georgia as well. Her work has been curated into numerous exhibitions nationwide, and is included in the Emily Couric Cancer Center, University of Virginia Hospital, and Martha Jefferson Hospital collections in Charlottesville, Va., as well as private collections in Florida, New York, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia, as well as England and Turkey.

Nina Ozbey

Ephraim Rubenstein was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1956. He received his B.A. in Art History from Columbia University and his M.F.A. in Painting from Columbia University’s School of the Arts. In addition, he attended the Brooklyn Museum Art School, where he studied with Francis Cunningham, the National Academy of Design School of Fine Arts, with Harvey Dinnerstein, and the Art Students League, with Robert Beverly Hale.

Mr Rubenstein has had eleven one-person exhibitions in NY; seven at Tibor de Nagy, one at Tatistcheff & Co and three at George Billis Gallery. He has exhibited at the Butler Institute of American Art, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Maier Museum of Art, and the National Academy of Design, where he won the Emil and Dines Carlsen Prize in painting. His work is represented in numerous public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Exxon Corporation, and Deloitte & Touche. His work has been featured in American Artist Magazine, American Heritage Magazine and Architectural Digest, among others. Several of his paintings have been on loan to the United States State Department as part of its Art in Embassies Program.

Mr. Rubenstein is an active teacher, as well. He was Associate Professor of Art at the University of Richmond from 1987–1998, where he received the Distinguished Educator Award and The Commonwealth’s Outstanding Faculty Award. He taught at the Rhode Island School of Design, Maryland Institute College of Art and the National Academy of Design School of Fine Arts. He is currently on the faculty of The Art Students League of New York, where he teaches Life Drawing and Artistic Anatomy, the Seminar in the Literature of Art and numerous workshops in various aspects of painting, drawing and materials. He also teaches at Columbia University’s Department of Narrative Medicine, where he teaches the Seminar in the Literature of Art to graduate students in Narrative Medicine, as well as Life Drawing to first year medical students at the College of Physicians and Surgeons.

Alexandria Searls is an award winning photographer and filmmaker, as well as the Director of the Lewis & Clark Exploratory Center in Charlottesville, VA. There she teaches about the relationship of art and nature, and introduces her students to seeing through the lens of a camera.She has taught filmmaking and photography to college students and to third graders.

Searls’ own films have been shown at the International Film Festival Rotterdam, International Fine Arts Festival in Los Angeles, DAS NYC Experimental Microshorts, Singapore Childrens’ International Film Festival, Barcelona Spring Dancefilm Festival, London Experimental Film Festival, Belgrade Underwater International Film Festival, Equinox Mountain Environmental Film Festival, Denali Park’s Highway Walkers Film Festival the Big Muddy Film Festival, the Jefferson Library at Monticello, James Madison University, the Tom Tom Festival and at Chroma Projects.

Her current films are short, experimental underwater films about the river and its spirit, but she has also focused on films about social issues: a documentary of the protests during the George W. Bush Inauguration, and another on the devastation from mountain top removal.

Searls’ emphasis in her work is in finding joy and beauty, and helping others to develop their own methods of observation and paths to that joy.

Rick received his formal art training in New York at the National Academy of Design, the New York Academy (now known as the Graduate School for Figurative Art), and the Art Students League.  He studied painting and drawing with a number of notable art instructors, including Robert Beverly Hale (anatomy), Ted Seth Jacobs (painting), Ron Sherr (painting), and Harvey Dinnerstein (painting).  Subsequently he earned his Master of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, where he was influenced by the sculptor Billy Lee. 

Rick has shown his work in a number of venues nationally, including galleries in Chicago, Washington DC, and New York.  He has received recognition for both his sculpture and painting.  Recent awards have included grants from the Vogelstein Foundation (2009), Finalist in the Peer Gynt Konkurransen (2007), Outwin Boochever Portrait Finalist (2006), Bader Fund (2005), the George Sugarman Foundation (2005) and a fellowship from the Virginia Commission for the Arts (2005). 

The artist lives in Charlottesville with his family.  He teaches privately in his River Road studio and at Piedmont Virginia Community College.  He also gives workshops through the Art League in Alexandria, VA, and Beverly Street Studios in Staunton, VA.  

Susan Jamison’s feminine iconography spans several media, including painting, drawing, textile based sculpture, and installation, all steeped in ritualistic and mythological associations. She is best known for her intricate egg tempera paintings, which present a mystery cult of florid women who foray into the wild and commune with animal spirit guides or familiars.

Jamison earned a B.F.A from James Madison University, and a M.F.A in painting from Rhode Island School of Design where she received the Award of Excellence. Her paintings have been featured in three volumes of New American Paintings. She was a recipient of the Lillian Orlowsky and William Freed Foundation Grant for painting in 2014. Her works are held in the collections of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, The Mint Museum, The Eleanor D. Wilson Museum at Hollins University, Longwood Center for the Visual Arts, Try-Me.org, Capital One, POM Wonderful LLC, and numerous private collections. Jamison lives and works in Roanoke, Virginia.

Using the latest technological imaging tools along with his deep background in graphic design and photographic illustration, the work of John Grant captivates the viewer and brings new attention to the beauty that lies within our daily reach. From the cover of Stephenie Meyer’s New Moon to the gallery walls at Kew Gardens, London, where he recently placed in two categories of the International Garden Photographer of the Year competition, Grant's work is found in many major collections, including The United States National Institute of Health, The United States Federal Reserve Board, the permanent collection of Capital One, and many other private collections.

John Grant

Tanja Softic employs printmaking, drawing, photography, painting and poetic text to explore questions of cultural belonging, hybridity, and memory.  A transplanted native of Sarajevo, Softic is compelled to explore these subjects in a continuing story of place and being, using the visual language of the organic world. In this particular series of work she also considers how electronic surveillance is slowly insinuating itself into our body of culture, becoming in a sense another organism.

In her work the the paper functions as a traditional "substrate that civilizations are recorded upon, the last bastion of tactility in our world of virtual images."  The marks made upon the paper are recordings and metaphors that endeavor to anchor, recall and clarify events that are difficult to resolve or rectify. By softly floating her imagery in its field she speaks to the conditions of change and evanescence she has personally observed in her life. Tanja Softic lives in Richmond Virginia, and teaches at the University of Richmond.