Composed of undulating, organic shapes, Alice Baber’s abstract paintings and watercolors vibrate with color. To achieve this luminous effect, she applied transparent layers of diluted oil paint to her primed canvases, a time-consuming process that often required further thinning with a turpentine-soaked rag. While Baber used a variety of abstract forms in her work, she preferred elongated circles, as she believed they conveyed the greatest sense of motion across the composition.

Weaving is a sensory and meditative experience for textile artist Andrea Donnelly. Four Exposures, for Anna (No. 6 Aspidium angulare) originated from a collaboration with Cassilhaus Gallery in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, in which artists were asked to respond to historical images. Donnelly was deeply impacted by nineteenth-century English botanical artist and photographer Anna Atkins’s style and reworked her images in cloth form. “As a weaver, I see my threads as conductors: of language, of pattern, of structure, of order and chaos…My quietly insistent message is ‘Come closer, closer, closer. Stay for a while with this moment.’ The materials and process of weaving by hand form a living, adaptive, tactile language which speaks to this message at the molecular level of my work,” Donnelly says.

Primarily a painter, Lori Elliott-Bartle also works in woodcut and linoleum prints, art books, and mixed media pieces. She spent fifteen years as a journalist and in the field of higher education public relations before pursuing painting full-time. As a result, her works communicate stories and visual vocabularies. Her artistic inspiration stems from nature—skies, prairies, and small urban gardens—and fleeting moments of everyday life.Read More

Botanical artist and illustrator Lara Call Gastinger features elements of the Virginia ecosystem that show signs of change or decay. She “finds great inspiration in a carrot that has gone to flower, a broken seed pod, twisted roots or insect damage to a leaf. She strives to make a plant portrait in such a way that it reveals its character and uniqueness.” Her art focuses on nature’s minute, overlooked details that inspire.

Using watercolor, pastel, and oil, Jean Jensen conveys the “raw emotive power of brilliant colors” in her paintings of flowers, wildlife, people, and landscapes. Her work is deeply informed by her world travels and the untouched natural beauty of her home in Western Nebraska. “Like the Impressionists, I hope to capture the energy of my subjects, rather than striving for a literal representation. I’ve always loved color, and over the years—and through guidance from several instructors—I developed a much better understanding of color theory and began using stronger colors. I want to enhance the boldness of what I see, to capture a little of the magic in my subjects—their essence or spirit,” Jensen said.

Throughout her forty-year career, Ellen Kochansky has “actively promoted the arts, the preservation and extension of craft traditions, and environmentally responsible practices.” With experience as a textile artist, designer, and quilter, she transcends the traditional definition of craft and creates experimental fiber and mixed-media art, public and private commissions, and community-based and site-specific installations. Kochansky designed and manufactured custom-made quilts for her company, EKO, and she founded the Rensing Center, a nonprofit environmental residency program intended “to connect the creative process to our need to live more gently on the earth.”

Don Resnick was a landscape painter enchanted by the beauty and magnificence of Long Island, New York’s terrain, sea, and sky. He would sketch and draw from nature, but he never painted outdoors. Depicted with loose brushwork and “watercolor-like lucidity,” Resnick’s luminous paintings sought to communicate his vision of the environment. According to Resnick: “the inspiration for my paintings is the intense experience of a place—its particular light, its particular space—at a unique moment in time.”

Sarah Gibson Wiley blends her interior design background and passion for all things miniature in her textile works. “My pieces are created layer by layer,” she says. “By repurposing interior design memo samples and used fabrics, I create a composition. The details build slowly as I assemble, choose, and place each successive piece of fabric. I have a keen eye for detail, and take special care to drape the fold of a curtain or to stuff a cushion.” Her bright, distinctive pieces capture portraits, special rooms, and places in a highly stylized way. By creating areas that she can feel a part of, her hope is for the viewer to inhabit those spaces.