Tag Archives: Featured

21st Annual Art Safari

An Alexandria tradition for more than two decades, Art Safari returns for a day of hands-on activities for kids and families. Dozens of artists lead budding arts enthusiasts in 12 hands-on projects from plein air painting to silkscreen printing. Get messy constructing a giant papier-mâché tiger or squishing clay between your fingers. The Art League and the Alexandria Archaeological Museum will offer even more engaging programming.

Children should wear clothing that can get a little dirty. Most activities are appropriate for kindergarten age, with parental supervision, through middle school.

List of Activities

  • Potomac Riverfront – Plein Air Tiny Paintings – Led by the Torpedo Factory Artists Association
    Painters from the Torpedo Factory Art Center sit with visitors along the riverfront and create miniature paintings together while enjoying the fall weather.
  • Union and Cameron Street Alley – Relief Printing – Led by the Mobile Art Lab
    Children can check out Alexandria’s one-of-a-kind art truck while making colorful prints.
  • 1st Floor Hallway – Giant Papier-Mâché Tiger – Led by Lisa Schumaier
    In only four hours, children use simple paper and paste to transform a wire frame into a new sculpture. Many of Schumaier’s previous Art Safari sculptures, such as the iconic camel, are on view in the first floor throughout the year.
  • Studio 16 – Bottlecap Necklaces – Led by UpCycle Creative Reuse Center
    Bottlecaps are transformed into sparkling necklaces with the help of sequins and glitter glue.
  • Studio 21 – Gallery scavenger hunt – Led by The Art League Gallery
    This year, The Art League’s scavenger hunt explores the exhibition Op-Ed. Each completed scavenger hunt can be shown at the gallery desk to receive a special prize.
  • Studio 22 – Clay Experience – Led by Susan Greenleaf
    Children play and experiment with a piece of wet clay to mold and shape into any form they can imagine. Potters will demonstrate their technique for throwing clay on a pottery wheel.
  • Studio 29 – Fiber collage – Led by Potomac Fiber Arts Gallery
    Artists help children create a dynamic image using bits of fabric and fiber.
  • 2nd Floor Hall – Easel stations – Led by Christine Cardellino
    With acrylic paint and paper, children paint anything they can imagine at the open easel stations located along the 2nd floor.
  • 2nd Floor Catwalk – Community Weaving Project – Led by Hannah Elmer
    By weaving strips of fabric through the crisscrossed wires along the 2nd floor railings, visitors create a beautiful design that will take form through the course of the afternoon.
  • 3rd Floor Hall – Coloring Tables – Led by the TFAA Community Outreach Committee
    Torpedo Factory artists created black and white line drawings for children to embellish with color.
  • Studio 325 – Silk screen printing – Led by Patrick Sargent
    Children progress through four different color stations to create their own full-color silk-screen image.
  • Studio 327 – Potter’s Art – Alexandria Archaeology Museum
    The Alexandria Archaeology Museum will have a selection of china and pottery from their collection on view. Children create their own sketches and learn to identify 19th-century Alexandria potters from the designs on stoneware pottery.

Film Screening: Imber’s Left Hand

The Torpedo Factory Art Center welcomes the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia to the New Project Studio in September as part of the 5th Annual ReelAbilities Film Festival: Northern Virginia. Throughout the month, there will be short-film screenings, talks, and workshops associated with the festival in the New Project Studio.

On September 21, see Imber’s Left Hand. This documentary traces the life and work of charismatic painter Jon Imber. Despite his ALS, a degenerative condition, adversity only makes him more determined to paint. His undying passion for painting leads him to create more than 200 portraits in three months.

Follow the festival via #GetReelNV.

Purchase Tickets

 

Workshop: StorySpaces and Visual BioScapes

Post-Graduate resident, Danielle Smith, conducts a series of free writing and painting workshops designed for girls aged 8-16. The goal is to provide a space for girls to discuss aspects of society that affects their lives directly while channeling their emotions–both positive and negative–into artistic processes.

Workshops will run for one hour in the Post Graduate Studio (Studio 12) at the Torpedo Factory, and are two parts: a writing exercise and a painting exercise, followed by a discussion.

RSVPs are encouraged to ensure participation.

  • September 17 and 18 will be part of the King Street Art Festival.
  • September 24 and 25 will have a special focus in honor of the opening of the Smithsonian African American Museum.

Choose Your Dates

The Art of the Book: Second Thursday Art Night at the Torpedo Factory Art Center

Second Thursday Art Night: The Art of the Book

#2ndThurs

Enjoy an special after-hours event at the Torpedo Factory Art Center every month. Browse open studios and galleries, interact with artists, and enjoy special programming. Stop by on your way to dinner and make an evening of it!

September: The Art of the Book

A Dream Within a Dream: Madness

On view in Sites 2 & 3

The stage is set for the theatrical production of A Dream Within a Dream in Sites 2 & 3 (hallway by the elevators on the 2nd and 3rd floors).

Site 2 is imagined to be the poems The Raven and Dream Within a Dream. The curved wall has a variety of clocks and vintage mirrors along with works by TFAA artists Guy Jones and Greenway.

Site 3 is based on the short story Eleonora and has eight large floral paintings by Niki Pickett (338).

About the Play

The Torpedo Factory Artists’ Association commissioned Through the 4th Wall for a site-specific, interactive theatrical production.

A Dream Within a Dream: Madness is a surreal interpretation of the life, works, and mad genius of Edgar Allan Poe. The year is 1849 and since the death of his wife, Virginia, Poe has become increasingly unhinged. He’s been all over the city, seemingly disoriented, possibly inebriated, reciting passages from his darkest of works—and always searching for his beloved. The audience becomes part of the story, interacting with characters and traveling with Poe between waking and dreaming, sanity and madness.

Tickets are on sale now. Find more information at torpedofactory.org/poe or follow the production via #PoeFactory.

Questions and comments should be directed to: [email protected] or (703) 980-2948.

A (Mis)Perceived Physique: Bodyscapes by Three Women Artists

Public Reception: Thursday, September 8, 6-8 pm
Talk with Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell at 7 pm

This exhibition contains work that is explicit. Parental discretion is advised.

Target Gallery, the contemporary exhibition space for the Torpedo Factory Art Center, presents work by three women who use the female body to explore issues of equity, power, politics, and memory in A (Mis)Perceived Physique: Bodyscapes by Three Women Artists.

Artists Allana Clarke, Lauren Kalman, and Carolina Mayorga implement the body in desperate ways and contribute to a common narrative about body imagery—past and present. These women assert their own agency and address body politics as another construct of power, both internally and externally driven.

The trio was brought together by D.C.-based curator Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell, who organized the exhibition as part of Target Gallery’s second annual Open Call for Curatorial Proposals competition.

“History surrounds the viewer in this exhibition, as the past is made present and the present reflects the woes of the past,” said Bryant-Greenwell. “How far have body politics come since the height of the odalisque? What is the new role of the female body in art? These women do not offer concrete answers, but enlist the past to enflame the zeitgeist toward inclusive and critical exploration.”

Clarke’s eerie photography series Then and Now Seem to Shift Inside Me, and I Wonder How do you Imagine We Can Live Together in the Future sees the image of a black female body disappearing into the ocean. Her work acknowledges a failed social system, but also speak to an art-historical context that has used bodies like hers for the inclination of the male gaze, as well as male-dominated practicum.  Visitor are challenged to think and look beyond the art gallery itself, and into current events to consider the discourse around body imagery and rights for black women.

Kalman’s video work highlights the uncomfortable connection of body image, class, and style in relation to dominance, corruption, and identity. Her videos feature strange nude figures balancing oversized objects, affecting their movements, suggesting an unbalanced relationship between adornment and the female body. By highlighting the conflict of ornamentation and identity, she provokes the viewer to consider societal obsession with both.

Mayorga’s photographic series references art-historical images of the Madonna. She turns commentary of the male obsession with the restrictive moral expectations and behaviors of women toward issues of consumerism, gentrification, and class. By using her own face as the Madonna’s, she courts deeper engagement with viewers.

Bryant-Greenwell’s exhibition was selected as part of the 2016 Open Call for Curatorial Proposals competition by Virginia Treanor, associate curator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.

“This exhibition provides a space for curators to present ideas to us that generate cross-cultural dialogue,” said Leslie Mounaime, Target Gallery director. “Kayleigh’s brought together work that reflects the ongoing debates and struggles to control women’s bodies. We are looking forward to the opportunity to present this exhibition in Target Gallery.”

About the Artists
Allana Clarke is a conceptual artist working in video, sculpture, installation, and performance. She has completed residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, Madison, Maine; The Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont; and the Ordinary Projects in Chicago. At Maryland Institute College of Art, Clarke was the recipient of the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture matching fellowship and the Peter W. Brooke Fellowship. She also was awarded the Vermont Studio Civil Society Fellowship. She holds a master’s of fine art from the Mount Royal School of Art at MICA and lives and works in New York and New Jersey.

Lauren Kalman is a visual artist based in Detroit, whose practice is invested in contemporary craft, video, photography, and performance. Her work has been on view at the Renwick Gallery, Museum of Contemporary Craft, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the deCordova Museum. She has work is in private and museum collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and the Renwick Gallery, and has been featured in the publications Hand + Made: The Performative Impulse in Contemporary Craft as well as 40 Under 40: Craft Futures. She holds a master’s of fine art from the Ohio State University and participated in residencies at the Corporation of Yaddo, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and Santa Fe Art Institute. In addition, she has received grants from Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, Puffin Foundation West, and ISE Cultural Foundation. She has taught courses at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design and is currently an assistant professor at Wayne State University in Detroit.

Carolina Mayorga has received awards in Colombia and the United States. Her work is represented in private and public collections including the Art Museum of the Americas and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.; Andres Institute of Art in Brookline, New Hampshire; and Kronan Sculpture Park in Sweden. She participated in the Fifth Annual Sculpture Symposium of the Andres Institute, the Lulea Winter Biennial in Sweden, and the 4th International Sculpture Symposium in Sweden. Her work has been reviewed in publications in Colombia, Sweden, Spain, and the United States including in The Washington Post, Washington City Paper, Baltimore City Paper, Winston-Salem Journal, The Nashua Telegraph, The Union Leader, Norrländska Socialdemokraten, and Norrbottens-Kuriren.

About the Curator
Based in Washington, D.C., Kayleigh Bryant-Greenwell is a curator, writer, and arts advocate. She explores the intersection of women, arts, and social change through her role as public programs coordinator with the National Museum of Women in the Arts. She has curated shows in conjunction with Project 4 gallery, VisArts, and The D.C. Arts Center in the greater Washington, D.C. region, as well as Peephole Cinema in San Francisco and CUE Art Foundation in New York. She strives to advance the careers of local artists and also developed a professional development seminar as well as residency program for local emerging artists in the Greater D.C. metro area. An arts writer, her work has been featured in The Washington Times, Examiner.com, CBS, Brightest Young Things, and Plinth, among others. Bryant-Greenwell earned her bachelor’s in art history from the University of Maryland, College Park and her master’s in museum studies from the George Washington University.

ReelAbilities Short Film Festival

The Torpedo Factory Art Center welcomes the Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia to the New Project Studio in September as part of the 5th Annual ReelAbilities Film Festival: Northern Virginia.

The New Project Studio will screen a selection of short films that explore and celebrate the shared human experience. There is no charge to see the films in the New Project Studio.

Throughout the month, there will be talks and workshops associated with the festival.

September 8

As part of September’s Second Thursday Art Night, The Art of the Book, author and journalist Glen Finland will hold an author talk and read from Next Stop, her memoir about raising a son with autism to adulthood and then learning to let go.

September 21

Imber’s Left Hand. This documentary traces the life and work of charismatic painter Jon Imber. Despite his ALS, a degenerative condition, adversity only makes him more determined to paint. His undying passion for painting leads him to create more than 200 portraits in four months. Watch a preview and purchase tickets to the screening here.

Follow the festival via #GetReelNV.

ReelAbilities promotes awareness and appreciation of the lives, stories and artistic expressions of people with different abilities.

Art Materials Market

At the 4th Annual Torpedo Factory Artists’ Association Art Materials Market vendors and Torpedo Factory Artists will be selling or trading a variety of art supplies for use across all visual media. You can expect to find common items like brushes, paints, easels, and fabric, but also be prepared for more unique finds!

The market will also feature artist demonstrations and a school supply donation area for FACE; Alexandria City Schools Family and Community Engagement Centers. The market is free and open to the public.

If you are interested in selling at the Art Materials Market, tables are available for purchase here. Visual artists and artist organizations from all media are encourage to participate. All spaces must be reserved in advance and are available on a first-come, first-served basis. The reservation deadline has been extended to Wednesday, August 15 at 5:00 pm.

For information contact [email protected].

Visiting Artists Talks: Cynthia Bickley-Green and Monica Stroik

The Visiting Artist Program is a professional development opportunity for emerging and experienced visual artists. Hear them speak about their work and inspirations before the end of their visits.

August presenters are Cynthia Bickley-Green and Monica Stroik. Bickley-Green, a painter based in Greenville, NC, teaches at East Carolina University and is in Studio 317. Stroik, based locally in Alexandria, is a painter, who also mixes video for live musical performances. She will be in Studio 322 .

Second Thursday Art Night

Enjoy a special after-hours event at the Torpedo Factory Art Center every month. Browse open studios and galleries, interact with artists, and enjoy special programming. Stop by on your way to dinner and make an evening of it!

Before the season wraps up, enjoy an Endless Summer evening during the August Second Thursday Art Night. With five exhibition openings, live music and outdoor painting, it will be quite a diverting evening.

  • 6:30, 7:30 pm: Learn about Alexandria’s Civil War hospitals, including the real Mansion House Hospital, made famous by  the PBS series Mercy Street,  in the Alexandria Archaeology Museum (Studio 327).
  • 6:30 pm: Public reception for Magic and Color in Sites 2 & 3 (located on the 2nd and 3rd floor hallway by the elevator) with treats provided by Tango Pastry.
  • 7 pm: Wade Kramm talks about his minimalist installations in Dotted Space in Target Gallery (Studio 2).
  • 7:30 pm: Opening reception for Landschap and Taking Shape in The Art League Gallery (Studio 21).

Attend receptions and meet the artists in Decathect: a verb in The Associates Gallery (Studio 311) and Materialized Magic: Mythical Creatures in a Yarn Artistry Habitat in the New Project Studio (Studio 8).

The Glimpses, an Alexandria folk rock/Americana duo, performs all evening in the main hall. The 8 pm set features video projections of visiting artist Monica Stroik‘s work.

At 7 pm, Hector Munoz play harp at Site 3 and Rowan Clarke plays covers and originals on her ukulele in Studio 7.

Outside, sit side-by-side with some of the Torpedo Factory’s artists to paint plein air by the waterfront.