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Rebecca Kamen, NeuroCantos , an installation at Greater Reston Arts Center  Six years ago, The Elemental Garden , an exhibition at Greater Reston Arts Center (GRACE) prompted me to start blogging about art. Like TED talks, the news of something so visually fascinating and mentally stimulating as Rebecca Kamen's integration of art with sciences needs to spread.  GRACE presented her work in 2009 and did a followup exhibition, Continuum , which closed February 13, 2016. Rebecca Kamen, Lobe , Digital print of silkscreen, 15" x 22" Like the Elemental Garden , Kamen's new works visually evoke and replicate scientific principles.  For the non-scientist and the scientist, the works and their presentation are fascinating.  Kamen worked with a British poet and a composer/musician from Portland, Oregon, each with similar intellectual interests. Two prints included in the show create a dialogue between her design and the words of poet Steven Fowler. I like how the idea of gray m...

Fred Tomaselli, Woodpecker , 2009, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond gouache, acrylic, photo collage and epoxy resin on wood, 72" x 72"   I love talking about birds in my Art Appreciation classes, though with a focus very different from from the current SAAM (Smithsonian American Art Museum) exhibition, "The Singing and the Silence: Birds in Contemporary Art."  The exhibition's message is about man's relationship to birds, with the accent on environmental issues.  My class talks about birds in flight, to symbolize our human aspirations.  Flying birds remind us that humans can soar even if we don't literally know how to fly. Chris Allen, A Grand View ,  2010, Stone, beads, fetish Photo from Pinterest, Bonin Smith This exhibition and another excellent exhibition called "Bead," at GRACE (Greater Reston Arts Center), honor the minutia of creation in thousands or millions of the small details that make up the birds.  Both exhibitions are breath...

Rania Hassan, Pensive I, II, III , 2009, oil, fiber, canvas, metal wood,  Each piece is 31"h x 12"w x 2-1/2"  It's currently on view at Greater Reston Arts Center. There's a revival of status and attention given to traditional, highly-skilled arts and crafts made of yarn, thread and materials. "Stitch," a new show at Greater Reston Arts Center ( GRACE ), proves that traditional sewing arts are at the forefront of contemporary art, and that fiber is a forceful vehicle for expression.  Meanwhile, the National Museum of Women in the Arts puts the historical spin on traditional women's art in " Workt by Hand ," a collection of stunning quilts from the Brooklyn Museum which were shown in exhibition at their home museum last year. Bars Quilt , ca. 1890, Pennsylvania; Cotton and wool, 83 x 82"; Brooklyn Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. H. Peter Findlay, 77.122.3; Photography by Gavin Ashworth, 2012 / Brooklyn Museum Quilts are normally very lar...

           William Alburger , Forest, 2013, 65" x 108" x 9"  rescued spalted birch, in an solo exhibition at GRACE       Eco-friendly art is meeting the world of high art, if we're to take a cue from what's showing at local art centers and galleries.  It can be stated that the earliest environmental art started with the artists' visions and applied those visions to the environment, with little interest in sustainability.        Quite the opposite trend is developing now.  Several emerging  artists, the “environmental artists” of the 21 st century put nature in the center--not the artist or the idea.  Nature is the subject and the artist is nature's follower. The following artists' creations are about the land and earth; other artists interested in the environment have been more concerned with a world under the sea .   William Alburger, Non-traditional Backwards One-Door, ...