Shockoe Bottom is an area in Richmond, Virginia, just east of downtown, along the James River. Located between Shockoe Hill and Church Hill, Shockoe Bottom contains much of the land included in Colonel William Mayo's 1737 plan of Richmond, making it one of the city's oldest neighborhoods.
Sonya Clark is an American artist of Afro-Caribbean heritage. Clark is a fiber artist known for using a variety of materials including human hair and combs to address race, culture, class, and history. Her beaded headdress assemblages and braided wig series of the late 1990s, which received critical acclaim, evoked African traditions of personal adornment and moved these common forms into the realm of personal and political expression. Although African art and her Caribbean background are important influences, Clark also builds on practices of assemblage and accumulation used by artists such as Betye Saar and David Hammons.
Willie Anne Wright is an American photographer known for her colorful cibachrome and grayscale pinhole photography.
Visual Arts Center of Richmond, also known as VisArts, is a not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) arts center in Richmond, VA. It is located at 1812 West Main Street in Richmond, VA, and was founded in 1963. The organization serves 40,000 people annually and its core programming includes art classes for adults and children, a free admission gallery with at least 4 exhibitions annually, and multiple outreach programs providing arts learning to children and seniors in need. The Visual Arts Center of Richmond has been awarded funding from the National Endowment for the Arts. and is also supported by The Virginia Commission for the Arts.
Theresa Pollak was an American artist and art educator born in Richmond, Virginia. She was a nationally known painter, and she is largely credited with the founding of Virginia Commonwealth University's School of the Arts. She was a teacher at VCU's School of the Arts between 1928 and 1969. Her art has been exhibited in the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Boston Museum of Fine Art, and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C. She died at the age of 103 on September 18, 2002 and was given a memorial exhibition at Anderson Gallery of Virginia Commonwealth University.
James Bumgardner (1935–2015) was an expressionist/figurative painter, multi-media artist, and stage set designer who was a Virginia Commonwealth University professor of art in the VCU School of the Arts. As an undergraduate student at Richmond Professional Institute (RPI), Bumgardner was encouraged by his mentor Jewett Campbell to study with the notable Art Students League of New York instructor Hans Hoffman (1880–1966), and Bumgardner received the last scholarship given by Hoffman, a German-born American abstract expressionist painter. Using his scholarship, Bumgardner studied with Hoffman in Provincetown in 1957, during which time he became friends with gallery director Richard Bellamy and artist Jan Müller. In 1963 in Richmond Jim Bumgardner and Jon Bowie co-directed a series of multi-media events or "happenings". The first was called "Synthesis" and was influenced by the productions of Allan Kaprow and the ONCE Festival of New Music of Ann Arbor, Michigan. After "Synthesis" Bumgardner and Jon Bowie invited notable outside performance and visual artists who joined in a series of annual "Bang, Bang, Bang Arts Festival" happenings in Richmond.
Richmond Artists Association (RAA) (1955-2005) was a twentieth-century incorporated organization of artists active in Virginia well into the 21st century. Organizational plans began in 1955, and RAA was founded and started building up its membership during 1955–1965, securing its first certificate of incorporation in 1956. Artist/lawyer Westwood Winfree was the first president. RAA was allied with the Richmond Federated Arts Council, Arts Council of Richmond, Artists Equity Association, and the Southern Arts Association. The group brought to Richmond the show Three Modern Painters: Hartley, Feininger, Beckmann, featuring the art of Marsden Hartley, Lyonel Feininger, and Max Beckmann on January 6–27, 1957 and Max Ernst Works on Paper in 1968. The RAA remained active until 2005 when some of the membership merged with another art organization to form the Richmond Metropolitan Artists Association.
Aggie Zed is a Virginia-based American painter and sculptor known for her animal-human hybrid ceramic sculptures and "scrap float" mixed-metal and ceramic constructions. She was born in 1952 in Charleston, South Carolina and grew up on Sullivan's Island, South Carolina. As a sculptor and painter she worked and exhibited in Richmond, Virginia from 1976 to 1998 and also lived in Gordonsville, Virginia. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting and sculpture from the University of South Carolina in 1974. In 1982 she received a Virginia Commission for the Arts Professional Fellowship in Sculpture, and in 1986 she was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Professional Fellowship in Sculpture.
Art6, also spelled art6, (2004–2014) was a non-profit (501C-3) member-run art gallery and performance space located at 6 East Broad Street in Jackson Ward in the area which would eventually be designated the Arts and Cultural District of Richmond, Virginia. Four of the artists who previously established the original Artspace 1306 Gallery were joined by two other artists to become the original six founders of the new gallery Art6. The original six co-founders of Art6 were Henrietta Near, Mitzi Humphrey, Marian Hollowell, Doug Hayes, Chuck Scalin, and Thomas MacGillivray Humphrey, Jr. Art6 Gallery had its first organizational meeting at Café Gutenberg in Shockoe Bottom.
Artspace in Richmond, Virginia began in 1988 and is a non-profit, artist-run 501-C3 gallery and performance space currently located south of the James River in the Manchester area of the city at Zero East 4th Street in the art complex Plant Zero. The gallery began as Artspace 1306 in a donated, rent-free space at 1306 Cary Street in Richmond's historic Shockoe Slip. Upon the loss of its free space, the gallery moved to North 18th Street in Shockoe Bottom, retaining its original name of Artspace 1306. The gallery's next move as Artspace 1306 was to a much larger building at 6 East Broad Street in Jackson Ward, and the name of the gallery was changed at the request of the Richmond post office to Artspace, removing its former street number to prevent confusion at the new location. Artspace was the first of the Shockoe Bottom art galleries incorporated as non-profit organizations to locate on Broad Street, and it became an anchor gallery for Richmond's First Friday Art Walk and a popular and long-lasting venue for the Arts and Cultural District formed for Broad Street and Downtown Richmond.
Davi Det Hompson (1939–1996), also known as David E. Thompson, born in Sharon, Pennsylvania, and raised in Warren, Ohio, was a Fluxus book artist, concrete poet, creator of mail art, sculptor and painter living and working in Richmond, Virginia. Hompson's chosen professional name was a nom d'art for David E. Thompson and a transposition of the letters of his name.
One/Off Printmakers (1983-2017) was a group of professional printmakers formed in 1983 based in, but not limited to, Richmond, Virginia, who exhibited together for over thirty years in many venues throughout the world. The name of the group derived from the members' mutual interest in frequently creating portfolios of one-of-a-kind original prints as opposed to the usual printmaker artist's multiples. The group began at the Richmond Printmaking Workshop and was instrumental in the success of that instructional studio workshop. In addition to the RPW, many of the One/Off Printmakers were faculty members or M.F.A alumni at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Studio School, the Hand Workshop, Sweet Briar College, Richmond City schools, or the University of Richmond.
Joseph H. Seipel is an American sculptor and conceptual artist. He was Dean of the VCU School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University, ranked during his tenure as the number-one public university graduate arts program by U.S. News and World Report. He was a member of the VCU faculty for over 40 years, leaving briefly for several years to serve as Vice President of Academic Services at the Savannah College of Art and Design. As Dean of VCU arts, he also had oversight of the VCU School of the Arts branch in Doha, Qatar. He administered VCU exchange programs with art and design schools in Finland, India, Israel and Korea. He retired in 2016 to work on his own in-progress sculpture projects.
Institute for Contemporary Art, Richmond (ICA), also known as the Markel Center at the VCU Institute for Contemporary Art, is an arts center at Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia. It was designed by architecture firm Steven Holl Architects, and built by Gilbane Building Company. Steven Holl Architects was selected from 64 competing architectural firms worldwide, along with local architect, BCWH Architects. Virginia Commonwealth University President Michael Rao, in announcing plans for the ICA in 2011, said that the prominence of the museum's location, "bordering the city's Arts District and in the Broad Street Corridor which links the VCU Monroe Park Campus with VCU's Medical Center" would have symbolic significance. The ICA opened to the public in April, 2018.
Jack Glover is an American artist living and working in Richmond, Virginia.
Lora Beldon is an American artist, curator, and arts educator. Her primary body of work explores the culture, history, and the effect of combat PTSD on U.S. military brats. She is founder of the Military Kid Art Project (MKAP), which provides customized art programming for military children and teens. She lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.
Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts is a public non-profit art and design school located in Richmond. One of many degree-offering schools at VCU, the School of the Arts comprises 18 bachelor's degree programs and six master's degree programs. Its satellite campus in Doha, Qatar, VCUarts Qatar, offers five bachelor's degrees and one master's degree. It was the first off-site campus to open in Education City by an American university.
Richard Carlyon (1930–2006) was an American artist living in Richmond, Virginia and teaching at Virginia Commonwealth University's School of the Arts, where he became a professor emeritus.
Diego Sanchez, is a practicing artist and chairman of the visual arts department at St. Catherine's School, a private, independent Episcopal diocesan school for girls in Richmond, Virginia. He is married to Jennifer Garvin-Sanchez, from Arlington, Virginia.
Anne Savedge is an American photographic artist, art educator, and art curator. In 1979 she served as president of the Richmond Artists Association.
