The LCVA Exhibition & a shark in my suitcase.

Phew… back from travels and enjoying refreshing Georgian Bay with family. It has been just about the busiest month I’ve ever had and while fun, it is SO good to be home with my kiddos. I am going to break this up into 2 posts. One on the LCVA and one on the Mazza.

On July 3rd Simon and I took the kids to their Grandparent’s place and headed to Virginia to set up my exhibition at the Longwood Center for the Visual Arts. The exhibition is called Chasing Shadows (July-November, 2016). We spent a week with some of the nicest people. I am so happy to have met the staff and friends of the LCVA. It is in Farmville, a town between Richmond and Charlottesville. I was so impressed… everyday people were in and out of the gallery going to classes and peeking in as we set up. It is a thriving, well loved, well used center. In October I will be back when Farmville hosts the Virginia Children’s Book Festival. I will be holding my workshops right in the gallery. We’ll be playing with paper, light and shadow. The festival is going to be AMAZING: http://vachildrensbookfestival.com/

The installation in the front window gallery was quite the challenge. I have never worked larger than about 3ft by 3ft and the window had to be 2 sided so it could be viewed outside from the street but also inside from the gallery space. The final piece is 33ft by 10 ft and is 3 ft deep. I learned so much from doing this and would likely do something completely different if I had the chance now but I like the way the room feels in the morning light and how it glows at night from outside. Here is a little animation of the set up.  So much Yupo paper and all inked and cut by hand! You can see lighting a space like this is tricky.

Here is BETTER view of the install… a time lapse. I am so thankful that Yupo sponsored the show by supplying the paper… that is a lot of paper! (Thanks Bill and Kevin!) I made all the coral, rocks, fish and squid at my studio and brought them with me. I even had a shark in my suitcase. 😉

Installation Time Lapse LCVA

I thought I’d post some photos from the set up and the exhibition. Excuse the quality… many were taken with a cell. The exhibition includes about 70 photographs, 9 light boxes, some early tunnel books, a cabinet of weather, process work for my books and an installation. To read about the exhibition follow the link.

I am so grateful for my best friend and husband, Simon. He not only made the boxes for the show but came with me for the whole week to do install… he even fit in a date to a nice restaurant on my birthday. (And thanks Candy and Les for looking after the kiddos!)

Also, a big thank you to Rachel Ivers, the LCVA, the amazing staff and the sponsors of the show: The exhibition and related programming are made possible through the generosity of Candice Jamison Dowdy ’69 and Charles H. Dowdy III, Northwestern Mutual, the Sansom Foundation, the Virginia Commission for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts,  and Yupo Synthetic Paper.