June 24 – July 17, 2016

An opening reception will take place on Fourth Friday, June
24, 2016, from 7:00-10:00pm and will be Free and Open to the Public.

A closing artist talk will take
place Sunday, July 17, 2016 at 2:00pm. This event will also be Free and Open to the Public.

The Main Gallery will show SEW AND SO, a contemporary art exhibition mixing the work of Jennifer L.
Hand, Simone Paterson and Amelia Salisbury, all professors from the Virginia Tech School of Arts.
Each artist uses the sewing process to inform their art, as well as creative technologies as part of their
visual language. The combined work, “brings to mind a quiet contemplation; something that is hand
made and joins pieces or fragments together, suggesting a unifying activity. However, sewing can also
be done by machine and can incorporate high-end technology for mass production,’ explains Simone
Paterson. The title SEW AND SO also references other meanings, according to Patterson. “The
phrase ‘so and so’ implies a forgotten name of an individual. We embrace this meaning as many artists
have labored without recognition, particularly female artists. Additionally, the colloquial phrase ‘you
mean old so-and-so’ may also reference a person who is disliked or is considered to have a negative
or unfavorable characteristic,” she says. The artists are happy to adopt this inference because they
feel it empowers them to make the art they want to make. “Sometimes what is considered powerful
and meaningful is not necessarily thought of as pretty.”
In the Frable Gallery, Helena Davis Gallery and smallspace Gallery, PEOPLE AND PLACES:
PHOTOGRAPHS FROM 50 YEARS (1966-2016), Photography Retrospective by Dan Mouer. Mouer’s
career in photography began in 1949 when he was 4 years old. His babysitter gave him his first
camera – an original Brownie box. By age 10, he was using a root cellar as a darkroom, at age 12 his
father gave him a 35mm Argus C-Twenty for his birthday, and at age14 he had his own real darkroom.
In high school he was president of the camera club and official photographer for the school
newspaper. In the late 1960s he used the G.I. Bill to get professional training in photography and film
production and went on to work as production manager for a radio, television and film company. He
later worked as a writer, photographer and managing editor for various print media in New York City
before returning to university to pursue a doctorate in anthropology. He has shown his work
sporadically throughout his adult life, and since retiring in 2002, has had nine solo or small-group
shows and has shown work in dozens of group shows in Central Virginia as well. Having recently
started his eighth decade of life, Mouer has begun re-evaluating and consolidating elements of his
creative life. “It seemed appropriate to mount something of a retrospective of my work in photography,”
he says. “As it happens, the vast majority of work I have saved in the form of negatives or
transparencies comes from almost exactly the past 50 years, beginning with Kodachromes I carried
home with me from my time in Vietnam in 1966-67.” He has selected pieces that represent his best
work in two main categories: People and Places. Many of his favorite shots of “People” are candid, unposed
portraits of friends, family, and folks he has met in his travels or professional activities. Some
are from his occasional venture into “street” photography and are meant to capture expressions,
gestures and other components of what Henri Cartier-Bresson called “decisive moments.” He has
travelled extensively in South and Southeast Asia, Mexico, and the West Indies, and many of the
“Places” he exhibits are from these locations. “I have also carried my cameras with me for decades
through streets of Richmond, and the countryside of central and eastern Virginia,” he says, “so many
of my ‘Places’ aren’t quite so exotic. If there is a common theme in the works I wish to exhibit, it is one
best expressed by qualities like peacefulness, quietude, relaxation, playfulness, humor, and harmony.”
Mouer prints his own work on archival-quality paper, mounted without frames using contemporary
coating materials, which prevent atmospheric chemicals, dust, and ultraviolet light from degrading the
imagery in a work of art.
The Suzanne Foley Gallery will feature OBJECTS MAY APPEAR, works in all media by Richmond
artists.
Gallery hours are Tuesday through Sunday from 12-4pm. The gallery is also open by appointment.
artspace is partially funded by CultureWorks, the Virginia Commission for the Arts and the National
Endowment for the Arts. Please contact the gallery administrator at artspaceorg@gmail.com, or phone
the gallery at 804-232-6464 for additional information. The gallery is located at Zero East 4th Street in
Richmond, Virginia 23224, and online at www.artspacegallery.org.