What to do on First Friday, November 6th

Map out your own path through the RVA Arts District tonight, with these haps that are definitely happening.

November 6, 2015; 3:31 PM • by RVANews staff

It’s First Friday–the monthly celebration of RVA’s Arts District. And how will you live it? Well, we hope!

Here are the highlights for tonight’s festivities.

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1708 Gallery

319 W. Broad Street

In “Not Acquiescing,” Tameka Norris weaves together autobiographical references and wider cultural narratives that engage questions of gender, race, and socio-economics. Norris’s post-Katrina-inspired works invite the audience to consider the cultural landscape of New Orleans in the aftermath of the hurricane. Themes of reinvention and resilience run deep!

9WG

9 W. Grace Street

“Perception,” featuring the work of Emily Whittaker from Middle Ground Creative, will be on view at 9WG Studios for the duration of November and December. Come look at newly rendered illustrations incorporating elements of geometry, forms of nature, and the human figure. An opening reception will take place on November 6th from 5:00 – 8:00 PM.

ART 180

114 W. Marshall Street

“Standing Out,” an exhibition opening at Atlas (ART 180’s teen center) in November features new sculptures and lyrics by youth in programs at Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Facility. For eight weeks this summer, the young artists studied their own lives as well as their facial features. Working with professional sculptor Morgan Yacoe and program assistant Dusty Brayshaw, the group learned through dialogue and sculpting as they created self-portrait busts in an exercise of patience and perseverance. This exhibition shows you what they realized themselves–each one of them is an individual that deserves respect.

Candela Books + Gallery

214 W. Broad Street

Candela Books + Gallery has released its sixth book, Direct Positive, by Richmond native and fine art photographer, Willie Anne Wright. The accompanying exhibition opens this week at the gallery. Beginning in the 1970s, Wright’s focus shifted from painting to pinhole photography as her primary medium–yes, pinhole photography! You may remember it from “history” or “your ninth grade photography class.” There’s a lot of amazing things you can do with a pinhole camera. Direct Positive explores Wright’s innovative use of Cibachrome color material and her production of unique direct positive images.

Coalition Theater

8 W. Broad Street

Witness musical history in the making this Friday at the Coalition Theater, as MUSICAL! the Musical makes up brand new, never-before seen musical theater on the spot!

Gallery@23

23 W. Broad Street

Mahnaz is an emerging artist working primarily with acrylic paints on canvas. She employs bold colors to make revealing and emotional statements in abstract form. Her approach is guided by worldly curiosity and thoughtful reflection on a life fully lived–she only began painting 20 years into a non-artistic career, after having raised two grown children with her husband of 33 years. As she says, she did not find painting, painting found her.

Depot Gallery

814 W. Broad Street

Opening this Friday at the Depot Gallery, “Projected Claims,” is the largest solo exhibition in the U.S. for Nir Evron, the internationally-acclaimed Israeli artist, who is currently in residence at VCU School of the Arts. Evron’s work in film, video, and photography focuses on the contested status and shifting borders of his native Israel and the surrounding area. Rather than illustrating explicit images of conflict, Evron concentrates on architectural sites and pristine landscape.

EDIT

8 E. Broad Street

Asher Imtiaz is a native of Pakistan and draws inspiration from many cultures with a keen eye for creating strong portraits from unexpected settings. Gallery EDIT’s November show presents special collection of Asher’s work, “God at ‘I’ Level,” an exhibit that evolved around the idea that to “hold a gaze, to look at one another, is to witness the presence of the fingerprints of God on the person before us” (Michelle Rachel Samuel).

Elegba Folklore Society

101 E. Broad Street

“Shack City” continues at Elegba Folklore Society’s Cultural Center this Friday with a public reception from 5:00 to 9:00 PM. “Shack City” encourages the viewer to explore the link between necessity and resourcefulness while walking with the “little girls” along a transformative passage from isolation to community. In framing each little painting with an assortment of discarded materials, including color from Virginia clay, Nigerian artist Bolanle Adeboye stimulates the contrasts of within and without, aloneness and family, a scrap pile or a city.

Gallery5

200 W. Marshall Street

Gallery5 does it up right, as usual, making their First Friday celebration last all weekend! Art, music, fire spinners, and food trucks.

The Gallery at Black Iris Music

321 W. Broad Street

Black Iris Gallery presents an introduction to the Republic of Georgia in a dream show on the cosmos by artist Nanuka Tchitchoua. Featuring her films, tapestries, groupings of drawings, paintings, and illustrative studies, this exhibition is an offering of Eurasian heritage to the Commonwealth of Virginia. “Dream Corridors” are vibrant retellings of mythical night-time galavanting, heroic refuge, private tomorrows, warzone escapery, distilled fevers, and collected promises.

Linden Row Inn’s 1708 Gallery Satellite Exhibit

100 E. Franklin Street

1708 Gallery presents “Speed: New Ideas/Old Terrain,” a satellite exhibition at Linden Row Inn through January 10th, 2016. Using techniques spanning from painting and drawing to intimate and large sculpture, the artists examine vehicles of motion, the conveyance of energy, and concepts of time and transformation to construct a broad interpretation surrounding the word speed.

mOb + Storefront

205 E. Broad Street

Starting at 5:30 PM this Friday at Storefront for Community Design and mOb (middle Of broad), join a community discussion to talk about the beauty and baggage of Monument Avenue.

Quirk Gallery

207 W. Broad Street

Quirk Gallery is back! The ongoing show “Head Heart Head,” by Eric Yevak is in the main gallery space, and “Early Signs” by Travis Robertson is the inaugural exhibit as the Shop Show in the new space.

Richmond Public Library Main Branch

101 E. Franklin Street

The Richmond Public Library hosts four new exhibits for November. An opening reception will be hosted from 6:30 – 9:00 PM. In the Gellman Room: “Meditations on Community,” figure paintings in oil on canvas by Richmond artist Judy Holloway
In the Dooley Foyer: “In Admiration…Recollecting Women,” a series of collages by Richmond painter and collage artist, Eleanor Hughes, who uses painted and found papers that she cuts, tears, and pastes to build unique portraits. In the Dooley Hall: “Southern City: Tension in an Urban Evolution,” a collection of paintings by Richmond abstract expressionist, Curtis Bowman, that conceptually interpret social change. In the 2nd Floor Gallery, photographs of trains and sanctuaries in black-and-white and sepia tones by Petersburg photographer Charles Lee III. The library’s permanent collections include works by David Freed, Helen & Alvin Hattorf, and Anne Newbold Perkins.

Sediment Arts

208 E. Grace Street

In July of 2015, the NASA satellite New Horizons imaged Pluto in an unprecedentedly close flyby. Sediment Arts’ invitational art exhibition “To: Pluto” is organized under this theme of historic exploration, expanded understandings, and loss of innocence.

Turnstyle

102 W. Broad Street

The Turnstyle series continues to rock the streets of downtown RVA for First Fridays in November. This month, Turnstyle welcomes Moody Moore back to the decks, alongside Dj Seven and Kinetiks MC. Also featuring Turnstyle’s Joanna O. and RVA’s Butch Amos. Jesse Split provides the warmups.

University of Richmond Downtown

626 E. Broad Street

Learn the power of sharing your story. Chaz and Megan from “I AM MY LIFE” team up with UR Downtown and the Bonner Center for Civic Engagement this Friday for an interactive program to honor personal stories and help you share your own. Stop by UR Downtown between 5:00 and 7:00 PM to learn more. While you’re there, check out the photo essay “All Our Sorrows Heal: Restoring Richmond’s East End Cemetery.”

UNOS Gallery

700 N. 4th Street

“Painting with Light” is a group show at the Gallery at UNOS (the United Network for Organ Sharing), featuring photography by heart recipient Debra O’Hearn and members of the Virginia Plein Air Painters. The opening reception is this Friday, November 6th, from 5:00 -7:30 PM.

Verdalina

325 W. Broad Street

Verdalina has lots of recent additions for you to scope out, and maybe new clothes or new jewelry will help turn your night into its own work of art? Who knows! Verdalna does, probably.

Virginia Repertory Theatre

114 W. Broad Street

Opening this Thursday at Virginia Repertory Theatre’s Theatre Gym, Equus runs through November 28th. This whirlwind thriller presents a provocative view of the Apollonian and Dionysian conflict between logical reasoning and chaotic emotional obsession as a psychiatrist endeavors to comprehend his young patient’s shocking brutality.

Visual Art Studio

208 W. Broad Street

The Visual Art Studio presents the 16th Annual Art2go, Artistic Gifts Exhibition of Small Works, Miniature Art, Sculpture and Fine Art Crafts in the Main Gallery, and they’ve got a reception going on tonight. Music by Elana Lisa & True Tonic.

November 6, 2015 3:31 PM · in Greater Jackson Ward News 0