Bi-annual celebration of local arts highlights artists, galleries, cultural hotspots
Posted on November 5, 2007
Twice a year the Harrisonburg Museum and Gallery Walk showcases Shenandoah Valley artists. Musicians, painters, playwrights and other artists who work in a variety of mediums exhibited their work last Friday in local shops. Students, residents and art-loving travelers were treated to an evening of creative output, broad in scope yet intimate enough that admiring fans could discuss their favorite pieces with the work’s creator.
The artists’ divergent backgrounds are a unique aspect of Shenandoah Valley’s artistic community. Ceramic artist Suk Jin Choi has won numerous accolades for her sculptures as well as the way she utilizes traditional Korean techniques in her work with contemporary materials. Choi exhibited her Onggis, traditional Korean pots, at the Franklin Street Gallery. For Choi, pottery and sculpture have a different emotional significance.
“Rather than make a functional pot I make pots as my expression; there is a lot of drawing on the surface,” Choi said. “That is my language.”
As an assistant professor of art in JMU’s school of art and art history, Choi uses the cross-cultural language of ceramics to express her belief that “there is something we need to learn between different cultures.”
This was the first Museum and Gallery Walk for media arts and design professor Dietrich Maune, whose paintings were on display at the Joshua Wilton house. Having grown up with a father who was both an artist and architect, Maune’s appreciation of art runs in his family and into his classroom. Maune came to James Madison with an MFA and BFA from East Carolina University. Here he has been able to put his experience in multimedia and design to good use while maintaining his aesthetic principles. His art is “[a] certain way of representing the world...my little vision.” Maune’s background in fine art guides his teaching philosophy. He suggests that students “look for something singular and intimate within the context of whatever the problem is.”
JMU graduate J. Brooke Chao showed a collection of her photographs at downtown retailer La De Da. Chao has no formal training in photography. However, being proud of her flourishing garden, she decided to photograph it and found herself drawn to the medium.
“Usually something catches the eye; you just see it in a certain light at a certain angle and you want to capture the beauty that might otherwise go unnoticed,” Chao said. Originally from Richmond, Chao graduated from JMU in ’96 and decided to stay in Harrisonburg.
“Being a college town really helps bring in art lovers...and fosters that kind of community,” Chao said. Achool of art and art history professor David Ehrenpreis underscores the importance of this kind of growth.
“When I first arrived at JMU, there was very little connection between the town and the university, and gradually that has been changing,” Ehrenpreis said. “That’s what art does; it connects people and helps us realize what we have in common.”
Born and raised in the Shenandoah Valley, collage artist Wes Way has displayed his works at the Artful Dodger as part of the Art Walk for years.
“I really like the idea that downtown Harrisonburg is evolving in the ‘Art Walk’ direction,” Way said. Way’s work pushes the boundaries established by typical Shenandoah Valley artwork, associating more with pastoral watercolors than abstract impressionistic collages.
“I prefer when people will interpret it as they will...if I talk freely about what my interpretation is then that becomes what [the work] means,” Way said.
Way began making collages when he was fifteen, and although he dabbled briefly in painting and sculpture, he always found himself drawn back to collage.
“It seems to be a purely organic thing, and I just kind of go along with it,” Way said.
Aside from drawing the masses downtown with free food and live music, the Art Walk establishes an understanding of the individual expression that is integral to residents of the Shenandoah Valley.
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