This year’s exhibition season at Hunt Gallery begins with a show that involves collaboration with the exciting community-based art project, “Quilts: Past, Present, and Future.” This ambitious month-long project is a community-wide effort engaging numerous arts organizations and galleries, businesses, and individuals. Involving the cities of Staunton, Waynesboro, and Harrisonburg, and Augusta County, “QPPF” features a series of exhibitions and lectures about the tradition and future of quilts, and hosts a national conference that explores the medium.
The exhibition at Mary Baldwin, “The Quilt: Contemporary Riffs by Carole Garmon and Katherine Shaw Sweeney” lends a contemporary focus on aspects of quilt-making. In jazz, a riff is a type of musical phrase associated with improvisation, and it is usually a distinct and innovative variation on a theme. The two prominent Virginia-based artists featured in the show, Garmon and Sweeney, appropriate processes and materials associated with quilt-making, so their work is very much in dialogue with quilt-making’s diverse traditions, but their “riffs” also expand the possibilities for quilts aesthetically and conceptually. The exhibition will be on view at Hunt Gallery from September 4–26, 2008.
Carole Garmon is associate professor of art at the University of Mary Washington, Fredericksburg, Virginia. She received her BFA and MFA from the Department of Sculpture in the School of the Arts at VCU, Richmond. Garmon has an extensive exhibition record, with her most recent exhibition being a two-person show at the Kunstoffice Gallery in Berlin, Germany. In addition to her work as an artist, Katherine Shaw Sweeney is curator of the Flippo Gallery at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia. She received her BFA in sculpture from The School of the Arts at VCU, and earned her MFA in sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art in Michigan. She had a solo show at Hunt Gallery in 2006, and it is exciting to have her return to Mary Baldwin.
A reception for the artists will be held on Thursday, September 4, from 4:30 – 6 p.m. in Hunt Gallery, which is located in Hunt Hall on the Mary Baldwin University campus. The public is invited to attend. Hunt Gallery is dedicated to the exhibition of contemporary work in all media by regionally and nationally recognized artists. The gallery is open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. during the College’s academic year. Hunt Gallery’s schedule for the 2008-09 academic year can be found online at https://go.marybaldwin.edu/arts/huntgallery.php.