FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

THE BEACH PICTURES: BY ELEANOR RUFTY AND TELL ME AGAIN, THE WORLD WILL BE BEAUTIFUL: BY ALYSSA SALOMON AT THE PAGE BOND GALLERY
FRIDAY OCTOBER 1, 2010

Eleanor Rufty’s new series of large-scale drawings reference memory, sighting figures and interior spaces in a motif of unfolding recollection. Offering heightened color and a fragile surface; Rufty uses pastels paralleling the elusive quality of visual recall.

Alyssa Salomon uses nineteenth century photographic processes as a call to inactive action. In our consumer culture with its excess of societal anxieties, her work reminds us to sit, to see, to acknowledge sensory experience, and to reminisce.

These works will be at the Page Bond Gallery, 1625 West Main Street with an opening reception honoring the artists, Friday October 1, from 7 to 9 PM. On Thursday September 30, from 6 to 8 PM the gallery will host a preview and an artist talk. The exhibition will remain on view through Saturday, October 30, 2010.

Eleanor Rufty approaches these drawings as a kind of visual memoir. The imagery is based upon the memory of a place and upon a series of events that happened – or were dreamed of or imagined – over a long period of time. Each work is made up of two or more images – existing separately – but also as a part of the whole
– as a place might exist in various layers of time in one’s memory.

Rufty received her Bachelors of Fine Arts from Richmond Professional Institute (now Virginia Commonwealth University). This Richmond based artist has an extensive international exhibition record beginning in the late 1950’s. Her work is included in numerous private and public collections including the Federal Reserve Bank in Richmond, VA; the Virginia State Legislature, Richmond, VA; the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, the Jackson L. Blanton Collection, University of Longwood, Farmville, VA; among others. In 2002, she received a Teresa Pollak Prize for Excellence in the Arts. In 2006 Rufty became a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Fellow. Rufty continues to be a prominent artist in Virginia and internationally.

Alyssa Salomon’s series of large-scale photographs on handmade paper speak of our place in the natural world, the longing for the wild, and a desire to catalog wonders and experiences for future reference. Salomon’s process requires her to be attuned to sight, patience, and chance. Her final images, with velvety surfaces inherent to the van dyke and cyanotype photographic methods, have a fluidity and spontaneity that is more often attributed to painting and drawing. Celebration of beauty and its pursuit is an overarching theme.

Salomon received her BA from Kenyon College in Ohio and her MBA from the University of Chicago. In 2006 Salomon received a Theresa Pollak Award for Excellence in the Arts, she is a fellow of the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and in 2000 was awarded a Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Professional Fellowship. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States and is represented numerous corporate and private collections including, Capital One, the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, the Longwood Center for the Visual Arts, Markel Corporation, among others.