The Creative Habit

This week, I went to the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to talk with Michael Taylor, the museum’s chief curator and deputy director for art and education. Michael is a relative newcomer to Richmond, and he doesn't take this jewel of an art museum for granted. We talked about the ways that museums are changing, as people expect to experience the art and the space differently, how contemporary art is front and center, and enlivening the galleries by challenging the art history status quo.

When John Freyer spoke at TEDxRVA, he was the only speaker to roll a large tricycle bike onto the stage while drinking ice water from a blue Mason jar. John’s many projects have appeared in many places, from New York City galleries to the Richmond Street Art Festival. Recently, he even took his fancy bike and Recovery Roast coffee to the Capitol Square and shared a cup with Governor Terry McAullife. His work involves performance, film and video, photography, and social practice. He also teaches at VCU and mentors and advises groups that support college students who are in recovery from addiction. At any one moment, it seems, he has five things going. But the connection is always the thing.

Why do people collect art? We have talked with a lot of artists about why they make art and what that work means to them. But collecting art can also be a creative act, when done with thought, curiosity and passion, maybe with a little bit of obsession thrown in. The New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman wrote that the consolation of art comes in many forms. For some, it is making; for others it is having. I’ve wondered what inspires people to spend time and money filling their homes, and sometimes private galleries and even warehouses, with works of art. Is it prestige? A desire to be a part of a creative endeavor? An effort to engage with a community of artists? Is it an obsession? An investment? Or something else all together? This week, we visited the home of Ted Elmore to talk about what inspires him to collect art. He is a passionate collector of art, mostly the work of Richmond artists. We talked about why he collects.

This week, we talked with Houston-based artist Natasha Bowdoin. Natasha grew up in coastal Maine, and love of the rhythms and patterns of nature courses through her work. But she is also inspired by the texts of surrealist and magical realist writers. She explores the idea of taking what is familiar, altering it in her work just enough to distance the viewer from it, and using the resulting ambiguity to open minds to new ways of looking. We were lucky to get to talk with Natasha as she was in the process of making a large-scale installation that now fully occupies the largest gallery at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond and is on view now.

VMFA Chief Curator Michael Taylor on why Duchamp comes with him everywhere.

Sasha Waters Freyer is a filmmaker whose work blends original and found footage and she works in both 16 millimeter film and digital media to makes documentaries and short films. She is currently working on a feature documentary on the American photographer Garry Winogrand. She continues to make lyrical short films that explore motherhood. Afraid of Everything, a solo exhibition of four short films completed between 2006 and 2016, opens tonight at the ADA Gallery in Richmond.

Many of us are riveted and repelled by the presidential election right now. The campaigns have raised a lot of issues that we sometimes want to turn away from. The new exhibition at Candela Books and Gallery uses photography to make us look through the lens of art. The 7 photographers in the show each use the camera as a tool to move us, galvanize us, and provoke us to think about these issues and to have difficult conversations about them.