As her three-month post-grad residency comes to a close, Fanni Somogyi talks with moderator Leslie Mounaime, Curator of Exhibitions at the Torpedo Factory Art Center, about her experiences during her time at the Torpedo Factory . Hear her speak about how her residency inspired her work and process and hear more about her explorations of organic and inorganic networks and experiments with lost-wax casting.
Join us for a live virtual conversation on facebook.com/torpedofactory.
˜Celebrate the season with us online! On Saturday December 5, watch exclusive artist videos with hands-on projects for you to to do with your loved ones at home.
Plus, watch a special message from Santa and Mrs. Claus to you.
Shop from our various Art Center artists through their online shops.
Download our annual Holiday Helper guide to show you all the various holiday-related gifts available both online and when you visit studios while practicing social distancing.
Full videos available on Saturday December 5.
Schedule of videos:
12pm: Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus virtual holiday greeting
2pm: Virtual Walkthrough of the Art Center’s holiday lights
3pm: Sermin Ciddi (Studio 328) teaches viewers how to make a holiday greeting card
4pm: Veronica Barker-Barzel (Studio 320) shows viewers how to make their own holiday prints
After Black Friday and before Cyber Monday, there’s Small Business Saturday. All artists in the Art Center are also small, independent business owners and they help shape the distinctive and creative personality of Old Town Alexandria.
Now more than ever, it’s important to support small business who have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Give creatively this year and give art. Torpedo Factory Art Center is the region’s best place to find unique gifts, from handmade jewelry and ceramics to paintings and custom ornaments. Shop small and buy local from nearly 200 artists on all three floors.
Torpedo Factory Art Center teams up with Alexandria’s Office of the Arts for another professional development series for artists. Learn practical tips from Danielle Glosser, founder and principal at Client Raiser.
Top 10 Business Strategies for Artists: Increase Your Client Volume and the Visibility of Your Work
Learn to identify the essential elements of promoting, marketing, and selling your work. This interactive live session covers the business of sustaining and growing a visual arts practice, including branding tactics, effective marketing materials, and sales strategies. By the end of the session, have information that you can use right away to enhance your creative business and client base.
Thursday, December 10
Mind Your Art Business: How to Sustain Your Art Practice During COVID-19
The global pandemic has been a challenging time for everyone and artists are not excluded from this struggle. This interactive live session explores untapped options to increase online presence. By the end of the session, have a host of new ideas to put into practice right away.
Workshops are free and held live online beginning at noon. Register via arts@alexandriava.gov to access the link.
Client Raiser is a business dedicated to helping artists to increase their client volume and the visibility of their art. Since 2014, Glosser has worked with artists across the country in support of their professional goals.
About Danielle Glosser
Danielle has been a Washington resident for more than 25 years. She has led workshops with arts organizations across the region, including the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Hamiltonian, Transformer, Washington Project for the Arts, Halcyon, Superfine! DC, D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Gateway Arts District, VisArts, Washington Sculptors Group, Women’s Caucus for Art, Artomatic, District of Columbia Arts Center, Montgomery Arts Association, and Capitol Hill Arts League. She also is a member of ArtTable, a leadership organization for women in the visual arts.
About Alexandria’s Office of the Arts
A division of Alexandria’s Department of Recreation, Parks, and Cultural Activites, the Office of the Arts is the managing body for Torpedo Factory Art Center. It promotes the value of arts and culture in Alexandria by nurturing, investing in, and celebrating the creative contributions of artists and arts organizations. Through engaging the community, encouraging participation, and facilitating access to the arts, the Office of the Arts works with local artists and arts organizations to build a vibrant community for all of the City’s residents, workers and visitors. Learn more at alexandriava.gov/arts or follow @alexartsoffice on Instagram and Twitter. Add to the conversation with #artsALX.
For more information or reasonable disability accommodation, contact cherylanne.colton@alexandriava.gov or 703.746.5565, Virginia Relay 711.
In this all-media group exhibition, the artwork delves into the human psyche to explore themes surrounding mental health and its relationship to your physical health. This exhibition will challenge common misconceptions about the topic as well as allow space for the selected artists to express their experiences, struggles, and triumphs through their work.
*Artwork on view online only. Digital Catalog available Saturday, November 14.
About the Juror
Shanti Norris is chief curator for the Integrated Arts and Healing program at the Inova Schar Cancer Institute in Fairfax, Va. The project includes a permanent art collection of over 500 works of art, an onsite permanent art gallery and an artist-in-residence program with 16 artists working with patients on a daily basis. Shanti is Co-Founder and Executive Director emeritus of Smith Center for Healing and the Arts, where she founded the Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery, one of the first of its kind in the country. She initiated Smith Center’s hospital Artist-in-Residence programs at area hospitals and Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Shanti is a former board member of the Society for the Arts in Healthcare and Chaired their Annual Conference in 2004. She is a Distinguished Fellow of the Alliance for Arts and Health. She is a frequent speaker on the healing power of the arts nationally and internationally, including lectures at NYU and the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.
Shanti has an extensive background in complementary medicine and mind-body approaches to healing. She has taught meditation, yoga philosophy and stress reduction for over 35 years and underwent a formal ten-year mentorship with a renowned yoga master. For over 20 years, she has guided creativity sessions for adults with cancer.
Shanti is an alumnus of NYU and The Cooper Union in New York City. She authored a chapter on providing arts for adults with cancer in the 2016 Managing Arts Programs in Healthcare published by Routledge. She is a member of ArtTable, the mother of three adult children, and is a painter, sculptor and curator.
Image Credit: Jeremy Diamond, Graellsia, 2019. Photography, nylon, silver, paint.
An Alexandria tradition for 25 years! Art Safari moves online this year for an afternoon of hands-on activities for kids and families. Artists lead exciting and creative projects in both live and recorded sessions via Facebook Live.
This fall, Torpedo Factory Art Center is featuring the work of AlexRenew Artist-in-Residence sTo Len in an exhibit called RENEWAL, in Studio 13. Commissioned through the City of Alexandria’s Public Art Program, Len’s work aims to elevate the public’s personal connection to the wellbeing and sustainability of local water systems.
RENEWAL provides a behind-the-scenes perspective into the AlexRenew water recovery process. In Studio 13, Len displays his active and growing crowdsourced archive. The exhibition will evolve with a water-themed radio show and a public engagement opportunity called SEEWATER.
A physically distant photo scavenger hunt, SEEWATER engages audiences and raises awareness for the smallest details of water, from Alexandria’s sewer system to local waterfront habitats. The full photo scavenger hunt list is available here. It contains 40 items for people to photograph and email to Len at seewaterarchive@gmail.com tobe included in the exhibition.
Capacity for Studio 13 is two people at a time within the space. Those who wish to visit the Art Center are asked to adhere to current Virginia Safer at Home guidelines, including maintaining a social distance with people from different households, wearing face coverings indoors, and frequent handwashing for 20 seconds or use of hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol.
Hear the Artist
About the Residency
Originally from Alexandria, now based in New York, Len is Alexandria Renew Enterprises’ (AlexRenew) first artist-in-residence. Since the start of his residency in September 2019, Len has spent time with various AlexRenew scientists and engineers and local conservationists and at local waterfront locations in Alexandria, including Hooffs Run and Oronoco Bay. His artwork brings to light the water recovery process at AlexRenew and the public’s relationship to their local waterways. This program is the first phase of a collaboration with Alexandria’s Office of the Arts to bring a public-art perspective into AlexRenew’s commitment to fulfilling its vital mission to healthier waterways.
“Renewal documents the ways in which I have witnessed and been inspired by the water recovery process,” said Len. “From the behind the scenes access at AlexRenew to exploring the shorelines of the Potomac, this body of work showcases the imprints that I have collected along the way.”
Using suminagashi marbling, block printing, gyotaku fish printing, and cyanotype printmaking techniques, he captures imprints and impressions from pollution, bacteria, and other waste found in wastewater and local waterways. The resulting natural patterns and abstracted forms spotlight the unseen and ignored environmental impact humans have on the Potomac River watershed.
About the Artist
Sto Len is a printmaker, sound, and performance artist from New York by way of Virginia and Vietnam. Len works within this cultural dichotomy by incorporating issues of place, identity, history, and the environment. Growing up in Alexandria, Sto was influenced by the art and activism of the local punk scene in Washington DC, which he continues to embody through artwork that combines those ethics with experimental takes on traditional craft. Adapting traditional printmaking techniques, Len creates an updated visual language that engages in our relationship to water, waste and its interconnectivity to a multitude of injustices. Sto has exhibited his work internationally including exhibitions in New York, Vietnam, Japan, London, France, Germany, Australia, Denmark, and Canada. He co-founded the alternative arts space Cinders Gallery in New York, which has exhibited hundreds of artists since its inception in 2004. Learn more at stoishere.com and follow him on Instagram via @stoishere.
About AlexRenew
Led by a five-member citizen board, Alexandria Renew Enterprises (AlexRenew) is a special-purpose wastewater authority serving over 300,000 people in the City of Alexandria and parts of Fairfax County. AlexRenew treats an average of 35 million gallons of wastewater per day at its Water Resource Recovery Facility, located in Alexandria, Virginia’s southwest quadrant. For more information, please visit http://www.alexrenew.com.
About Alexandria’s Office of the Arts
The Department of Recreation, Parks and Cultural Activities promotes the value of arts and culture in Alexandria by nurturing, investing in and celebrating the creative contributions of artists and arts organizations through the Office of the Arts division. By engaging the community, encouraging participation, and facilitating access to the arts, RPCA works with local artists and arts organizations to build a vibrant community for all of the City’s residents, workers and visitors. Within the division, the Events and Public Space Activation team strengthens and builds the social fabric of Alexandria. Learn more at alexandriava.gov/arts or follow @alexartsoffice on Instagram and Twitter. Add to the conversation with #artsALX.
About the Public Art Residency Program
The City of Alexandria’s Public Art Program, in collaboration with Alexandria Renew Enterprises (AlexRenew), developed the city’s first Public Art Residency program. This residency is an opportunity for artists to engage deeply with the work of AlexRenew (a special purpose authority that treats wastewater for the City of Alexandria) and its RiverRenew project – a major initiative to improve the health of Alexandria’s waterways.
This all- visual media group exhibition presents work by artists who illustrate contemporary interpretations of mythology, folklore, and legends. This exhibition takes the symbolism and allegory of mythology and recontextualizes them in terms of current perspectives. The juror for this exhibition was Dr. Michele Greet.
About the Juror
Dr. Michele Greet is Professor of modern Latin American art at George Mason University and Director of the Art History program. She is also president of the Association for Latin American Art. She is the author of Transatlantic Encounters: Latin American Artists in Paris between the Wars, 1918-1939 (Yale University Press: 2018) and Beyond National Identity: Pictorial Indigenism as a Modernist Strategy in Andean Art, 1920-1960 (Penn State University Press: 2009). She is co-editor, with Gina McDaniel Tarver, of the anthology Art Museums of Latin America: Structuring Representation (Routledge: 2018). She has lectured widely on modern Latin American art and published articles in national and international journals including Papers of Surrealism, Journal for Surrealism and the Americas, Artelogie, and Journal of Curatorial Studies. She has also written exhibition catalogue essays for MoMA (New York), Museu de Arte de São Paulo, El Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes (Mexico City), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and El Museo del Barrio.
Image Credit: Virginia Maksymowicz, Panis Angelicus, 2012. Fiberglass resin, hydrostone.
Tuesdays, September 15 – October 20 11 am – 12:30 pm
Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts’ Creative Entrepreneurs Series is for creatives who want to create and advance their own businesses. Six online sessions cover copyrights, contracts, taxes, grants, and more. Sessions are $20 per person.
Artists affiliated with Torpedo Factory Art Center or living in the City of Alexandria are eligible for free admission. Use the links below to register.
Sessions are open to all visual and performing creatives, but content will be tailored to the greater Northern Virginia region.
This series is a collaborative effort between WALA, Alexandria Office of the Arts, Torpedo Factory Art Center, Arlington Arts, and ArtsFairfax. Join the conversation online with #walanova.
Artists affiliated with Torpedo Factory Art Center or residents of City of Alexandria can attend for free using these affiliate links. Artists in Fairfax County please contact ArtsFairfax. In Arlington County, please contact Arlington Arts for your local affiliate codes.
Torpedo Factory Art Center
105 N. Union St.
Alexandria, VA 22314
Email: torpedofactory@alexandriava.gov Get Directions
Open Daily
Visit Daily
10 a.m. - 6 p.m.*
Masks are optional for visitors, artists, and staff, though may be required in some studios and galleries. Check Today’s Hours for expanded information.
The Torpedo Factory Art Center is closed for New Year's Day, Easter, Independence Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.
* Periodic 5 p.m. closure for private events. See dates on Today’s Hours.
Studio and Gallery Hours
Artists maintain their own studio hours. It's best to confirm availability before your visit.
