High Society

Despite its highly-developed social structure, sophisticated hunting tactics, athleticism, and intelligence, the hyena has been portrayed as perpetually deviant. Traditional folklore depicts the hyena as an unkempt, uncivil trickster. Often overlooked in animal rights dialogue and snubbed by zoos, hyenas dwell within a narrow stereotyped existence, misunderstood and marginalized. Popular culture persists in portraying the hyena as the villain, a proxy for the human thief to be held in contempt, whereas other animals such as the lion receive respect as noble creatures. This misinformed perception parallels the under-appreciated reception of handcraft in the visual arts. Embroidery has long been associated with women’s work and the cult of domesticity, and has most often been excluded from the annals of art history. In bringing together two historical miscasts—the hyena and the practice of sewing—objects of minimal prestige may be reexamined as subjects worthy of empathy and awe. In representing this nontraditional pariah through traditional embroidery, this series of “drawings” seeks to challenge our aesthetic prejudices and to reclaim the hyena as a complex creature of the natural world.

Elizabeth Holtry received her BA in studio art from the University of Maryland, College Park, and her MFA in painting from the University of Cincinnati. She has exhibited her work in regional and national venues, including: Hillyer Art Space, The Delaplaine Fine Arts Center, The Jones Center for Contemporary Art, Signal 66, Hooks-Epstein Gallery, The Delaware Center for Contemporary Art, American University, Stephen F. Austin State University, and the University of Delaware. She is currently an Associate Professor of visual art at Mount St. Mary’s University, and she lives in Frederick, Maryland.

Visit Holtry’s website at www.elizabethholtry.com.

The Corrections: Prisons and Mental Hospitals

Sanabria is drawn to the walls and spaces of old buildings by the perception that they are filled with and colored by the spiritual remnants of the lives lived in them. Thus, they are haunted by such memories, heavy with the presence of the past. She wishes to draw the viewer into the painting to discover the mystery there, by creating the illusion of structure, light and space, coupled with a sense of quiet and timelessness.

The Corrections: Prisons and Mental Hospitals are images of historic buildings where many people were often held for months, years and sometimes for life. Sanabria uses the word “corrections” with irony because I doubt many were corrected at these institutions.

Born in Washington, DC, Sherry Zvares Sanabria holds a BA from The George Washington University, and a MFA from The American University. She is an artist of national and international reputation; for most of her career the focus of her luminous paintings has been those spaces and locales where people have experienced profound moments in their lives, places that seem to hold the spirits of those who inhabited them.

During her professional life she has had 30 solo exhibitions at public and private spaces, including the Phillips Collection, Washington, DC; The American Institute of Architects, Washington, DC; Ellis Island Immigration Museum, New York; Washington County Museum of Fine Arts, MD, as well as at galleries in Washington, DC, Virginia, Georgia, New Jersey and New York City.

Visit Sanabria’s website at www.sherrysanabria.com.

December 2013

Paint as Object

In her most recent body of work Farrar uses materials from daily life, objects that have cultural associations and points of reference for viewers. She explores the tension between the cerebral concerns of minimalism and an investigation of humanity: emotional, spiritual, symbolic, and narrative. At its core, the work is a meditation on entropy, time, loss, decay, renewal, and survival.

Farrar’s background in painting informs her interest in the materiality of paint and how its physical properties can be explored beyond two dimensions. The artwork changes with time; it is a mirror that invites viewers to consider their own mortality. Materials off-gas, break down and decay, just as our own bodies do. I ask the viewer to feel raw and vulnerable and to delve into their own emotional landscapes.

Annie Farrar was born in Wheeling, West Virginia and grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and Nashville, Tennessee. She earned her BFA in Painting in 2004 from the Maryland Institute College of Art and her MA in Museum Studies in 2009 from the George Washington University. Annie is a Baltimore artist whose process-oriented work is a meditation on decay and renewal.

Visit Farrar’s website at www.anniefarrar.com.

Pamela H. Viola, Having a Ball 3, 2013

Pamela H. Viola, Endless, 2013

Pamela H. Viola, Ornamental, 2013

Pamela H. Viola, Lite Brite, 2013

November 2013

Having a Ball

Having a Ball grew out of Pamela Viola’s desire to loosen up her work, and the result are works that are light and whimsical. Using images captured from an iPhone and composited on an iPad, this series is full of layered metaphor, symbolism, and subtle mystery, creating a narrative that is a world of dreams and memories.

Viola earned her BA from in St. John’s University before getting certificate in film making from New York University. After spending 15 years in the film industry, working as a freelance Production Coordinator and Production Manager on feature films such as Black Hawk Down, Hannibal, Natural Born Killers, Nell and Six Degrees of Separation, she returned to still photography as both a commerical and fine art photographer. Her work is regularly featured in galleries throughout metropolitan Washington, DC and New York, and is held in public, private, and corporate collections worldwide.

Visit Viola’s website at www.pamelaviola.com.

D.B. Stovall, McKeesport, Pennsylvania October 2011

D.B. Stovall, Hazleton, Pennsylvania June 2011

D.B. Stovall, Hazleton, Pennsylvania May 2012

D.B. Stovall, Roanoke, Virginia, October 2010

D.B. Stovall, Youngstown, Ohio October 2011

November 2013

A Slower Way of Seeing: Photographs of the American Vernacular

Although D.B. Stovall calls his work “American Vernacular,”  it is important that it be understood what it is and what it isn’t. Although some have termed it “old buildings,” that is selling it far too short. Stovall does tend to look for older buildings, but that is more due to the fact that older structures, like whiskey or cognac aging in a barrel, acquire a certain color and flavor after many years. This is enhanced by the various hands that have put their own touches onto the structure, like an artist on a canvas over a long period.

Stovall tries to capture that sense, as well as highlight the subjects that others tend to overlook. The view camera is a perfect tool for this work. It enforces a discipline on my vision, what he calls a “slower way of seeing” that highlights the sharp detail that would otherwise be lost in the camouflage of the everyday.

D. B. Stovall, a Washington, DC area native, bought his first camera at age 10 – a Rosko purchased for 88 cents at Murphy’s Five and Dime. Quickly moving on to various Instamatics, an old Leica D, and finally Japanese 35mm SLRs, Stovall explored various aspects of black and white photography, becoming adept at all kinds of darkroom work by the time he entered high school. Stovall was introduced to the view camera at the Rochester Institute of Technology in the early 1970s and eventually moved on to large format color transparency in a realism-based vision, which he still practices today. With today’s technology making it easier to obtain high quality archival prints from transparencies, Stovall returned to the view camera in the mid 2000′s and has since then been in over 100 juried group and solo shows.

Visit Stovall’s website at dbstovall.com.