Artspace is a non-profit gallery for the visual and performing arts promoting the understanding and awareness of contemporary art.
Artspace began in 1988 as an association of artists interested in exhibiting their work and providing a space for other artists to reach a wider audience in the greater Richmond, Virginia area. Since then, Artspace has maintained a gallery committed to showing first quality visual art in a variety of innovative styles and media and has hosted numerous performances each year until this past December when we moved out of the Plant Zero Art Center.
A variety of reasons including lack of parking and COVID restrictions influenced this decision. During this time of transition, while we work to finalize our new space, Artspace has a temporary office located at The Collaboratory of Virginia, 2101 Maywill St., Richmond, VA 23230. Visit our website at artspacegallery.org for more details about the gallery and contact information.
Artspace’s programming is powered by its artist members and community volunteers. This exhibition includes work in a variety of media by eleven of our artist members including Susanne K. Arnold, Santa Sergio De Haven, Alice Anne Ellis, Steve Ferretti, Jeffery Leving, Lisa Lezell Levine, Michelle McGrath, Carol Meese, Chris Rudasill, Ed Tepper, and Paul Terrell.
About the Artists:
Susanne K. Arnold — A painter and sculptor, Susanne K. Arnold exhibits her work regionally and nationally. She holds a BFA, an MA in Museum Studies, and an MFA in Painting from Virginia Commonwealth University. Honors include a Virginia Museum Fellowship and national artist grants from the Ludwig Vogelstein and the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundations. Solo exhibitions include the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Portsmouth Museum, and Artspace Gallery. Her lecture on “Ephemeral Figures in Wax,” was presented at the 6th and the 7th International Encaustic Conferences in Provincetown, MA. A retrospective of her artwork was held in 2013 at the McLean Project for the Arts in McLean, Virginia.
Ms. Arnold’s work explores the overlay of cultural history and personal experiences, utilizing a vocabulary of images and the ancient painting technique of encaustic.
Santa Sergio De Haven — “Information is carried by my work. The connections are to our experience of the world and how we ‘know.’ The images are familiar and take advantage of the concrete – shape, color, surface, shadow, and edge – and then ‘tilt.’ The ground shifts and that wobble in expectations changes context, creates a possibility and another way to see.”
Alice Anne Ellis — “All my work references to nature. I find I am drawn to the microcosm and the particular, rather than broad views – like dry leaves on moss, or a beetle on a flower. I’m always looking down!
After a canoe trip on the James River, I began my “River Bed” series. I spent a lot of time looking down through the clear water, watching the granite river bed slide by. The age of a river puts our lives in perspective. How many lifetimes has it taken for the water to smooth those rocks we covet for our yard landsca[ing?
My process involves multiple layers, where the media (water, ink, acrylic, wax) have their role in determining how the painting develops.”
Steve Ferretti — Steve paints from his studio in Westover Hills, Richmond, Virginia. The majority of his current works are abstract acrylics and watercolor paintings. His work has been exhibited throughout the Richmond area including Artspace, Richmond Art Garage, Crossroads Art Center, Artworks, Capital One Bank, SunTrust Bank, Uptown Gallery, Downtown Hilton Hotel, Glen Allen Cultural Art Center and Project Space@Plant Zero.
In 2016 he left the design profession after a successful career as an exhibit designer and creative director in Washington DC. Over the course of Steve’s professional design career, he provided strategic planning, content development, and physical design for exhibits and branded environments throughout the United States. He is a graduate of the Philadelphia University of the Arts. www.steveferretti.pictures
Jeffery Leving — Jeffery Leving is a passionate artist and accomplished attorney, advocate, and the author of three ground-breaking books. His most recent book, How to Be a Good Divorced Dad, received an endorsement from Cardinal Francis George of the Archdiocese of Chicago and praise from President Barack Obama.
A highly esteemed visual artist, Leving first revealed his talent in a solo art show at Southern Illinois University in the early ’70s. His work has since evolved into a unique painting style with mythological content inspired by primitive and surrealistic art. In Leving’s pieces, the artist combines figures and faces with abstract forms, using visceral mark-making and serene compositional economy. These paintings possess irresistible energy as a product of Leving’s innovative aesthetic.
Lisa Lezell Levine — Lisa has been very active in the greater Richmond community-she had her own design studio, taught children at various public schools, held charity shows, and exhibited in galleries all over the city including United Network for Organ Sharing(UNOS), Weinstein Jewish Community Center(JCC), Richmond Public Library (Downtown), and Artspace. In 2008 she received the Southeastern Region Elementary Art Educator of the Year Award from the National Art Education Association. As active as she’s been, she’s concentrating on polishing and refining a more introspective message. ” I want to create empathy so that anyone who views my expressionist landscapes and figures can feel what it’s like to be part of the scene, the gathering, and communal spaces.” Learn more online at www.lisalezelllevine.com/work
Michelle McGrath — Michelle McGrath currently resides in Richmond, VA. She has been a middle school art teacher for the past twenty-one years and has won several awards for teaching, throughout her career. Since completing her Masters of Interdisciplinary Studies in Studio art at VCU, she has also been maintaining her career as a working artist. Abandoning her long tradition of using realistic imagery, she now embraces a non-representational approach. Her work focuses on strong texture and high contrast color. She is a gallery member and a past executive board member of Artspace, a non-profit gallery for contemporary arts in Richmond, VA. Her artwork has been exhibited throughout the region and is also in the collections of both Capital One Bank and VCU’s Cabell Library.
Carol Meese — “Sometimes blind, always intuitive, these works are records of my response to land and sea as I walked the vastness of Iceland and the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Open vistas, big skies, wild nature and storms, all help to transcend and lift away from everyday care. Influenced by found detritus, the paintings are organic in nature and intuitive in approach. Sometimes storms, sometimes star, sometimes I paint, sticks and stones. Gesture holds the imprint of the hand, the rapture of the spirit. Plaster and acrylics are imprinted with found debris. Ink, chalk, graphite, and oil sticks may be added. Work may be presented along with some of the found objects of their origin. Without forethought, my marks are spontaneous and sometimes seem channeled as if coming from some ancient and sacred source.”
Chris Rudasill — “I paint traditional subjects including nature images and still life in several different manners, including realistic, abstract, and non-objective.
In my drawings and paintings of natural objects, I often work from photographs. I use the photograph as a resolved compositional device that allows me to focus on the development of the other elements of the drawing or painting including strong contrast, higher key color, and detailed texture. I have also made paintings that are very different from my realistic paintings and the photographs that they are based on. These abstract paintings have little contrast but focus more on the use of line and a looser brush stroke which gives them a dynamic and more all-over composition.
In my non-objective work, I enjoy experimenting with paint applications including varying the viscosity of the paint resulting in unexpected outcomes. These experimental works have allowed me to apply my knowledge about the composition of my more realistic works. These compositional devices include a variety of line types, forms, textures, and contrasting colors. One example is the choice to use smaller support in order to more effectively handle and control the direction of the lines by tilting the surface.
I find working in all these different styles of painting incredibly exciting because there is always a new problem to solve or an unexpected image that emerges.”
Ed Tepper — Ed Tepper is a recovering accountant turned photographer whose passion is to create photographic stories that impact you, the viewer. It may make you feel happy or sad. It may astonish you. It may make you angry or at peace. It may create conflict or harmony. Different viewers will have different reactions to his photos and that’s ok. His goal is that you will feel something.
Ed learned about the art and craft of photography from on-line courses, books, seminars, videos, from a lot of experimentation, trial, and error, and using the latest technology available. He expanded his learning to include how to do his own printing, matting, and framing and very much enjoys controlling the entire artistic process.
Ed lives in the Richmond, VA area and is actively involved in the robust arts community there. He is a juried member of Artspace Gallery and the Metropolitan Richmond Artists Association. His photos have been exhibited at Glave Kocen Gallery (Richmond, VA), Montpelier Center for Arts & Education (Richmond, VA), Anne’s Visual Arts Studio Gallery (Richmond, VA), Columbus (GA) State University Rankin Arts Photography Center, 311 Gallery (Raleigh, NC), Lagrange Art Museum (Lagrange, GA), The Athenaeum Gallery (Alexandria, VA), Taubman Museum of Art (Roanoke, VA), and others.
He shares his knowledge by teaching courses on photographic techniques and how to use digital editing programs. Most importantly to him is that he donates his photographic talents to the Richmond SPCA, the American Red Cross, Paws for Purple Hearts, and The Appalachian Great White Pyrenees Rescue Center, helping those great organizations accomplish their missions.
Paul Terrell — Paul Terrell is an Artist-Educator, Vice President of Membership at Artspace Gallery, and adjunct Art Ed faculty at VCU. Known to friends and colleagues as “Buddy”, he taught Art in Central Virginia for 39 years including 7 at the University of Richmond Governor’s School for the Visual and Performing Arts and Humanities. Buddy has shown his sculpture in galleries around Virginia since graduating from VCU in 1974. His works are in collections around the United States and Canada, including two pieces that are in the permanent collection of the Savanna College of Art and Design.
