margaret – Reynolds Gallery

t e s t i m o n y

margaret — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 18:02:06 +0000

t e s t i m o n y

Pernille Braun • Emily Culver

Emily Hermant • Abi Ogle • Nikki Rayburn

Curated by Jack Wax

Reynolds Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of “testimony”, a group exhibition curated by Jack Wax, showcasing work by Abi Ogle, Emily Culver, Nikki Rayburn, Emily Hermant, & Pernille Braun. The exhibition opens on Friday, March 20, 2026 with a public reception from 5 – 7 pm at our Main Street Gallery. The show runs through May 8.

“Testimony is the most high because in doing it we seek nothing for ourselves. It is the unguarded, immediate public revelation of where, what, and who we have been. It is holy and profane. To testify is to be of service to something larger than oneself. It is the faithful act, which reminds us that though the world is on fire, and we are the flesh and the spirit of pain and relief, we can live with such strife. It is the substance of what we hope for—that we are not alone.”

Excerpt from THE BROKEN KING, Michael Thomas

“The tangible/analog “world,” is so chock-full of perceptual shifts that we rarely take the time to dwell upon, and so it is wonderful, and wonderous to have in this exhibition artists who have concerned themselves with efforts at distillation, discernment, and discrimination. They all showcase a remarkable acuteness of judgment with deep and uncanny understanding. The works shown act to slow-the-world-down and can effectively forge gently concentrated antidotes to all the cacophony and the frenzy taking place outside the gallery walls. Here within there are quiet declarations, and hushed reminders to pay closer attention, to take notice, and to take the time to reflect”

-Jack Wax, Curator

Abi Ogle, Ruby Pt. II, 2025, Red human hair embroidery on Great-Great Grandmother Ruby’s tablecloth, 14 3/4 x 14 1/2 inches

About the Artists

Abi Ogle

Abi Ogle uses bodily materials such as human hair and grapefruit membranes to diffuse grief and explore hope, memory, and loss. Often characterized by the familiar-made-strange, her practice is built on the belief that art makes us more human, that materials matter, and that if we take the time to listen to the stories of others, they change us.

After earning her B.A. from Covenant College in 2018, Abi was invited to residencies at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Vermont Studio Center, and Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions at The Louise Hopkins Underwood Center for the Arts (Lubbock, TX), the Harrison Center (Indianapolis, IN), and Lone Star College (Houston, TX). In 2023, she received her M.F.A. in Craft/Material Studies with a focus in fiber from Virginia Commonwealth University and completed a fellowship at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. She currently lives and works in Houston, Texas.

Emily Culver

Existing primarily as sculpture, jewelry and objects, Emily Culver’s work explores notions of intimacy, (non)functionality, gender and identity through corporeal qualities. Through these works she considers how interactions among objects are interpreted, translated, and mutated by negotiations with the body and anthropocentric tendencies.

Culver actively exhibits her creative work nationally and internationally and is the recipient of various awards and residencies, including a 2017 Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship, a 2022 residency at the James Castle House and grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Art among many others.

She holds a MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, a BFA from Tyler School of Art and is an Assistant Professor of Jewelry and Metalsmithing at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA.

Nikki Rayburn

Nikki Rayburn received an MFA in Craft/Material Studies from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2013 and a BFA in Woodworking and Furniture Design from Maine College of Art in 2011. Her work embraces traditional craft techniques, with training in woodworking, textiles, and basketry construction, and aims to honor the laborious and physical nature of one’s making practice. Nikki has exhibited her work throughout the United States, and has work included in multiple permanent collections including the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, VA. She has worked in exhibitions management and art handling, taught in universities and schools of craft, and currently serves as an administrator at Maine College of Art & Design in Portland, ME.

Emily Hermant

Emily Hermant (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the materiality of communication. She holds a BFA in Studio Arts from Concordia University in Montréal, and an MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received a Trustee Merit Scholarship. Hermant has participated in over 50 exhibitions, including 20 solo exhibitions. Her work has been featured in TimeOut Chicago, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, Espace Sculpture, ArtSlant, and The Village Voice, and has been supported by numerous grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the BC Arts Council, Québec Arts Council, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She has participated in residencies at BoxoProjects in Joshua Tree, the Burrard Arts Foundation, Haystack, Ox-Bow School of Art, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Nordic Artists’ Centre in Norway, with a forthcoming residency at the International Studio & Curatorial Program in New York in spring 2026. Hermant is based in Vancouver, BC, Canada, where she is Associate Professor of Sculpture + Expanded Practices at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. She is represented by Monte Clark Gallery in Vancouver.

Pernille Braun

Working with glass for more than two decades, Danish artist Pernille Braun has participated in numerous international exhibitions and has held solo exhibitions in France, the United States, Belgium, and Denmark. In her practice, Braun investigates notions of time, place, and materiality, which she explores through glass with a high level of technical and conceptual precision.

She studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, Bornholm, and received an MA from the Royal College of Art in London in 2008. Her work is represented in several public collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), the Danish Arts Foundation, the Ariana Museum (Geneva), Bornholm Art Museum, and Design Museum Denmark.

In 2024, Braun was awarded a three-year working grant from the Danish Arts Foundation. She lives and works in Copenhagen, Denmark.

In conjunction with

t e s t i m o n y

w e l t e r

A collection of work by artist and curator Jack Wax.

Jack was born in 1954 in the Hudson River Valley region. He received his BFA from Temple University’s Tyler School of Art and MFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design (1978, 1983). He has held teaching positions at the Tyler School of Art, Ohio State University, The Cleveland Institute of Art, RISD, and Toyama Institute in Japan. Currently, he is a professor in Richmond at VCUarts, where he is head of the Glass Section in Craft and Material Studies. He is a two time recipient of Individual Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, was nominated three times for a Tiffany Foundation Grant, was a recipient of an Illinois State Council of the Arts Grant, and he has held residencies in Istanbul Turkey at Cam Ocagi, at The Corning Museum in Corning NY, and on the Island of Bornholm in the Baltic Sea. His work is in the collections of the Los Angeles County Museum, CA; Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, NY; Tittot Museum, Taipei; Smithsonian Institute, Washington, DC; and in the corporate collections of Altria Group and Markel Corporation, both, Richmond, VA.

James Hyde & Bailey Santaguida: A Two-Person Exhibition

margaret — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 20:17:04 +0000

James Hyde & Bailey Santaguida:

A Two-Person Exhibition

Reynolds Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of a two-person exhibition featuring works by James Hyde and Bailey Santaguida. The exhibition opens on Friday, February 13 at our Libbie location and runs through April 17.

Hyde presents five paintings composed of acrylic over inkjet prints, in which vivid geometric forms are layered onto photographic images of florals in nature. These shapes disrupt the normal viewing process, reconsidering the relationships between foreground and background, and abstraction and representation. Santaguida exhibits her signature oil paintings, which function as visual journals. Translating personal reflections and written thoughts into richly colored compositions, her work offers vibrant interpretations of the places she loves the most.

Statements from the Artists

“Flowers and painting share geometry and color as a powerful attraction. I like to think this opticality is something of a home for painting that predates humans by millions of years.

-James Hyde, 2026

“As a young adult, I am constantly at a crossroads. I long to move back home to Pennsylvania, where fields are idyllic and forever, but I also want to stay in the city, where friends are close and dreams are warm. I want to savor the period of life that I am in, but I also crave radical change.

While this ambiguity begs to be resolved, it also feels ethereal and precious. These paintings carry the magic of my childhood and the fairytale of a next chapter; they carry wonderful experiences from my past and the excitement I hold towards my future. In these paintings I don’t have to choose a path; instead, I can have it all. There is magic in the liminal.”

– Bailey Santaguida, 2026

About the Artists

James Hyde

James Hyde (b. 1958) currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. His work ranges from paintings on photographic prints to large-scale installations, photography, and abstract furniture design. Hyde has lectured as a visiting professor at a number of institutions, including Yale University, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Bard College, and Cooper Union. He is represented by galleries in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, and Copenhagen.

Recent solo exhibitions include Pyramid Lake, Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, Virginia, US (2016); Observatory and other recent painting, David Risley Gallery, Copenhagen, DK (2015); Landscape, Luis de Jesus, Los Angeles, CA, US (2015); Varieties of Useful Experience, Volume Gallery, Chicago, IL, US (2015); 20 Year Survey of James Hyde’s Paintings, C.Ar.D., Magazzini, Pianello Val Tidone, IT (2014); Reservoir, Freedman Gallery, Albright College, Reading, PA, US (2013);

James Hyde’s works are included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, NY, among others. He is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, including the Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship in 2000 and the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008. Hyde is presently Faculty Critic at The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and at The Cooper Union for Advancement of Science and Art.

Bailey Santaguida

Bailey Santaguida (b.2000) graduated with a B.A. in Visual Art and Media Practices and Psychology from the University of Richmond. In May of 2023 and participated in the Reynolds Gallery 2023 group exhibition “Boundless” and the 2024 exhibition “Making Waves.” She was an artist in residence at Vermont Studio Center in August 2023. She currently lives in NYC working as a CGI artist and animator.

Andrea Donnelly: Transient Phenomena

margaret — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 17:26:01 +0000

Reynolds Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Transient Phenomena, a solo exhibition of work by Andrea Donnelly. The exhibition opens on Thursday, January 8, 2026 with a public reception from 5 – 7 pm at our Main Street gallery. The show runs through March 6.

Andrea Donnelly’s Transient Phenomena, presents a series of woven paintings that center on natural objects — leaves, feathers, dried plants — forms so ubiquitous they often do not grab our attention. By enlarging these forms into her meticulously woven compositions, Donnelly encourages the viewer to take a moment and recognize the intricacy, complexity, and beauty of these “little miracles”. By magnifying what is typically overlooked, her works allow you to see in full color what might be missed in the everyday.

Hydrangea Puff #1, 2025 (left); Hydrangea Puff #2, 2025 (right)

A sense of intimacy is found not only in Donnelly’s objects, but her process as well. The act of examining a small found object gives it weight, meaning, and becomes a gesture of respect. Similarly, weaving on a traditional loom is an intimate, time-intensive practice, one defined by repetition, patience, and care. In Transient Phenomena, these two versions of attention intertwine, resulting in a body of work where material and method are at the forefront.

My studio is full of artifacts from the natural world. Feathers, stones, nests, bones. Shells and nutshells, all manner of dried seed pods, leaves, flowers. Elegant shapes in shades of cream and tan and brown. For me, the dried skeleton of a leaf or a seed pod holds a complex and layered kind of beauty; a beauty which lies first in the formal structure of its stark and sparse wintertime architecture, second in the memory of its living vibrancy, and finally in the inevitable quality of its impermanence.

A little seed pod can speak very loudly. It demands that I pay attention, remember to be present and appreciative before I miss something vital and mysterious about this world. For over fifteen years I have, with reverence and respect, plucked feathers from sidewalks and gathered dried plant stalks from the winter woods. I’ve adorned my spaces with hundreds of these artifacts, organized on shelves, in frames, in bottles. This act feels instinctual and imperative; it is my attempt to catalog their heartbreaking beauty and complexity, to articulate the huge sense of awe and wonder they inspire within me. I call them treasures. This show marks the first time I have ever used my treasures directly as the basis for a body of work.

The works in this show explore the connection I feel between the act of weaving and the way I think about and interact with these little miracles of the natural world. It is through the lens and physicality of my processes as a weaver that I explore what a seed pod or a curled flower petal embodies: the inevitability of transformation, the continual rhythms of growth and destruction and growth again. Actual pieces from my collection were used as contemplation objects for each artwork, becoming catalysts for a journey recorded in the structure of woven cloth. Like my treasures, my making process itself is an embodiment of a transient phenomenon. It is through the repetitive, meditative processes of weaving a cloth by hand, painting it, taking it apart, then weaving it again, that each work comes to be. For example, I study a tiny dried mimosa frond for a large-scale line drawing on paper. The drawing is translated into a painting in greens, blues, and oranges, on cloth I have woven by hand. This handwoven painting is then carefully destroyed, pulled apart into its vertical warp and horizontal weft threads. What used to be a painting is now only piles of green, blue, and orange-pigmented threads. These pigmented warp and weft threads are then rewoven separately, thus two paintings re-emerge on the loom from the original one. Both are entirely unique, yet intensely correlated.

Through the performance of this process, I feel deeply connected to the metaphors of growth and destruction, to the dance between intention and chance that occurs when pulling on hundreds of threads and falling into the bodily rhythms of weaving. Ultimately I am always seeking some kind of deeper understanding through the facilitation and contemplation of such actions of transformation. My hope is that each piece in this body of work captures and conveys at least a little of the complex choreography and private magic that took place in the collaboration of their creation.

– Andrea Donnelly, 2025

Columbine #2, 2025, Handwoven cotton, pigment, cotton backing, 35 3/4 x 23 1/4 inches

Treasure #4 Warp, 2025, Handwoven linen, silk, pigment, cotton backing, 17 x 12 1/2 inches

About the Artist

Andrea Donnelly received her MFA in Fiber from Virginia Commonwealth University and earned dual bachelor’s degrees in Art and Design and Psychology from North Carolina State University. She has held solo exhibitions at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Visual Arts Center of Richmond, Reynolds Gallery, and Quirk Gallery, among others. Select group exhibitions include Virginia Commonwealth University’s Institute for Contemporary Art, Workhouse Arts Center, Muskegon Museum of Art, Textile Arts Center, and Museum Rijswijk.

Donnelly has received grants and awards from the Ruth and Harold Chenven Foundation, the Elizabeth Firestone Graham Foundation, CultureWorks, Surface Design Association, and the Center for Craft Windgate Fellowship. She is a recipient of a Theresa Pollak Prize for Excellence in the Arts and a Brandford/Elliot Award for Excellence in Fiber Arts. Her work is included in collections such as the North Carolina Museum of Art, the Virginia Museum of Fine Art, the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Capital One, Dominion Energy, and Markel Corporation.

Amy Pleasant: WITHIN

margaret — Fri, 19 Dec 2025 17:25:35 +0000

Reynolds Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of Within, a solo exhibition of work by Amy Pleasant. The exhibition opens on Thursday, January 8, 2026 with a public reception from 5 – 7 pm at our Main Street gallery. The show runs through March 6.

Heads, 2024, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 72 x 62 inches

Pleasant’s work explores the human figure, turning form into shape. She focuses on the formal elements of a body breaking it down to its basic components. The abstraction of the figure to these bold silhouettes allows the viewer to analyze more than the body’s form or identity; movement, sensation, emotion, and function become the composition of the work. The weight in the arms as they hold up the reclining figure or the intimacy of one body turning towards another, these nuances become more evident due to Pleasant’s graphic style. She is able to create these beautiful moments and say so much while showing so little.

Fragments of shared existence contextualize her body of work. The visual language of her pieces can be universally understood, all it takes is being human. Being present for the work and seeing it in person unveils even more layers to her process that are lost when viewing them through a screen. While there is a boldness to her work upon further inspection you will notice subtle nuances in the colors and shapes that change with the lighting and environment. Qualities that can really only be appreciated in person.

Artist’s Statement

At the core of Amy Pleasant’s work is her drawing practice. With ink and gouache, and a quickness of pace, Pleasant’s repetitive and calligraphic drawing process documents essential, universal motions and human behaviors. This process allows the figurative gestures to unfold across the surface, each one informing the next, developing a visual language, similar to an alphabet. These forms of the body ultimately transition into large scale paintings, wall drawings and sculpture, moving between the intimate and the monumental. Pleasant crops, fragments and flattens out the figure, re-envisioning archetypes of human representation, while speaking to the collective human experience.

Within the edges of the canvas and paper, figures perform like actors on a stage, their gestures contained and activated by their painted borders. Figures from her series Fold, close in on themselves while the central shape in Lift, presses upwards into a precarious balancing act.

Color plays an important role in this exhibition. The earthy, red of Untitled (Hands 4), is reminiscent of Alabama red clay or terracotta. Pleasant uses this dry, matte color to reveal the hand gestures that populate this large-scale painting. Painting the negative space to reveal positive shapes touches on her interest in archeology and the slow unearthing of an object, or in her case, the shapes.

Pleasant’s images, graphic in nature, are drawn on carefully considered stained and layered surfaces to create complex, yet nuanced, grounds. Visitors to the gallery will experience these subtle shifts in color, tone and texture, aspects of the work that are often lost in the digital sphere.

Lift, 2025, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 62 x 54 inches

About the Artist

Amy Pleasant received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (1994) and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art, Temple University (1999).

Her awards include a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Award, and the South Arts Prize for Alabama.

She has held solo exhibitions at Sheet Cake Gallery, Memphis, TN, whitespace gallery, Atlanta, GA, Laney Contemporary, Savannah, GA, Birmingham Museum of Art, AL, TOPS Gallery, Memphis, TN, Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN, Geary Contemporary, Millerton/NYC, Institute 193, Lexington, KY, Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson/NYC, Atlanta Contemporary, GA, among others.

Her group exhibitions include Bernay Fine Art, Great Barrington, MA, Taymour Grahne Projects (online), Stove Works, Chattanooga, TN, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Omaha, NE, KDR, Miami, FL, Pamela Salisbury Gallery, Hudson, NY, Knoxville Museum of Art, TN, Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw, GA, Hesse Flatow, New York, NY, SEPTEMBER, Hudson, NY, Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami, FL, Tif Sigfrids, Athens, GA, Adams and Ollman, Portland, OR, Lamar Dodd School of Art, Athens, GA.

Her work has been reviewed in Art in America, Art Papers, Artforum, The Brooklyn Rail, Burnaway and Sculpture. Recent interviews include the podcasts Modern Art Notes with Tyler Green and Sound & Vision with Brian Alfred.

Amy Pleasant’s first monograph, The Messenger’s Mouth Was Heavy, was released in 2019, including essays by Daniel Fuller and Katie Geha, and was co- published by Institute 193 and Frank.

Her work can be found in the collections of the Coca-Cola Fine Art Collection, Birmingham Museum of Art, Hunter Museum of American Art, Zuckerman Museum of Art, Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts, Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection, Knoxville Museum of Art, U.S. Embassy, Dubai, The Columbus Museum of Art, The Progressive Art Corporation, and The Cleveland Clinic, among others.

Laura Snyder: Currents

margaret — Wed, 19 Nov 2025 21:01:53 +0000

Pulpo (triptych), 2018, Handmade watercolor and beeswax on paper mounted to cradled wood panel , 20 x 30 inches, 20 x 10 inches each

Reynolds Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of “Currents”, a solo exhibition of work by Laura Snyder. The exhibition opens on Friday, December 5 at our Libbie Avenue location. There will be an artist talk on Saturday, December 6 at 2pm. The show runs through February 7.

“Currents” follows the threads of Laura Snyder’s practice as they diverge and come back together in unexpected ways. The exhibition includes works on paper and panel that shift between symmetry and disruption as the artist explores the give and take of our relationship to the natural world. Together, these works all form a type of cartography that maps rhythm and flowing movement.

After Rivera, 2025, Watercolor on paper, 11 x 11 inches

In my work I explore memory, emotion, and cognition through visual abstraction. I inquire into the ways in which the signs and symbols found in our physical environment–from signal flags to the smell of rain–influence the movements of our minds and bodies. The imagery in my recent work is drawn from analog charts of ocean currents and a guide to weather symbols used for maritime navigation. These symbols conform a language which I reference and transform through a material-driven process.

The rhythmic mark-making in much of my work carries the memory of the movement of my hand across the page or panel, the lines shifting from dark to light as the paintbrush leaves its trace. I often source materials from my surroundings and process them to make paint. Bright or contrasting colors on grounds of earth pigment serve as beacons or signs and punctuate the continuous rhythmic flow present in my larger, meditative pieces as I question how we in turn make our mark on our environment.

The “Traveling Drawings” can be folded and unfolded like old road maps as I work on them, creating creases and wear on the paper. In referencing maps, I point to the history of cartography and counter cartographies, and I reinsert memory and the body into the space of the map. The drawings begin as two stenciled lines, mirror images of one another. I slowly build the drawings, working from one side of the paper and then the other until the undulating lines join and overlap. In this meeting of the two sides new shapes are formed, offering answers to the questions posed by the first stenciled pencil lines. The shapes which emerge in the drawing process speak to the Surrealist notion of a “third mind” or a “third memory” created in the space between an event and its retelling. The lines hold the trace of the passage of time.

The visual disruption created by the overlapping lines causes the work to vibrate before the viewer’s eyes. Creased and stained, these works display an imperfect symmetry which encourages the viewer toward contemplation and focus. By looking to the slow-moving cycles present in the natural world and sourcing many of my materials in nature, I engage with place and open-up space from which new patterns of thought and movement can emerge.

– Laura Snyder, 2025

Inquire

Laura Josephine Snyder (b.1983, Charlottesville, VA) is a visual artist whose work explores cognition and movement through a material-driven practice.

She has shown her work nationally and internationally. In 2024 she had solo exhibitions at Second Street Gallery in Charlottesville and Reynolds Gallery in Richmond, Virginia. She has a MFA from the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de México (UNAM) and a BFA in Printmaking from the Rhode Island School of Design.

Nancy Blum: Stars and Stripes

margaret — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 19:58:33 +0000

Reynolds Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of “Stars and Stripes”, a solo exhibition of work by Nancy Blum. The exhibition opens on Friday, November 14, 2025 with a public reception from 5 – 7 pm. The show runs through December 23.

"Entanglements 4", 2025, Graphite & Colored Pencil on Paper, 42 x 30 inches

"Stars 7", 2025, Graphite & Colored Pencil on Paper, 28 x 22 inches

"Stripes 2", 2025, Graphite & Colored Pencil on Paper, 28 x 22 inches

Nancy Blum’s works on paper explore the interconnectivity of things, material and non-material. Her intent is to conjure through drawing the natural world as an active, forceful agent. Her drawings present a view of life that pulses with curiosity and engagement as she illuminates and mingles the underlying ways she experiences the world through plants, geometry, science and devotional practices. Each drawing is a reflection of these elements as they are interpreted through her imagination.

Beginning as a maker in ceramics, her education at Cranbrook Academy of Art furthered her reverence for the values of craft, and deepened her interests in devotional imagery. Since then she has become known for her large scale botanical drawings and more experimental “Black Drawings”. The latter, an ongoing series of hundreds of abstract leaning coloured pencil drawings on paper, express the contingency of fixed representation, serving as a gateway to all the possible ways of not only expressing being, but actively being. More recently her meanderings have led her further toward abstraction and investigations exploring consciousness.

My recent experimentation has led me towards investigations concerned with consciousness: science, abstraction, and meditation, all subjects that deepen our sense of being. Recently black paper has become the best canvas to work through these ideas. Spatially it takes on a liminal quality that allows drawn objects to create their own spontaneous logic and therefore take on more liberated and unpredictable organic structures. The objects searching for form reflect my own journey toward realizing agency and balance, reflecting a kind of agility that feels necessary, especially within this cultural climate.

When making art for public spaces, I strive to invest these commissions with similar content, while bringing beauty and a high level of craft to a particular environment. As I conceive and develop each piece, I respond to the specifics of the surrounding architecture, ecosystem, and community in an effort to compellingly meet the needs of the site. My studio practice, in turn, is invigorated by opportunities to design work in relationship to an existing framework, and the special demands and responsibilities this process entails.

– Nancy Blum, 2025

“Entanglements 3”, 2025, Graphite & Colored Pencil on Paper, 42 x 30 inches

About the Artist

Brooklyn-based artist Nancy Blum is well known for her public art commissions. For New York City’s MTA Arts in Transit program she recently created a suite of large-scale botanically themed mosaics. Located at the historic 28th St. Station, they celebrate flowering plants that can be found in the nearby Madison Square Park Conservancy’s Perennial Collection. For the San Francisco General Hospital, she completed an installation of monumental glass windows that feature her robust botanical imagery. Previous projects include 50 hatch covers designed for the streets of Seattle and a sculptural installation for the city’s airport; a 40‐foot freestanding sculpture in Philadelphia; and artwork and architectural components for three light-rail stations in Minneapolis/St. Paul.

Blum’s drawings and sculptures have been represented in numerous exhibitions at galleries and other venues across the US such as the Weatherspoon Art Museum, UNC Greensboro; the International Print Center, New York; and the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens. Her most recent solo show, Wonderland, appeared at the Ricco Maresca Gallery in New York City. Blum’s work is held in two dozen private and public collections, including the World Ceramic Exposition Foundation in Icheon, South Korea; the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art; and the Boise Art Museum. Also among these projects is a permanent installation at the residence of the American Ambassador to Belgium.

Blum received her MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art and has since become a widely sought-after visiting artist, critic, and lecturer at universities nationwide. Residencies have taken her to Bowdoin College, Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts, Alfred University, Ohio State University, Kansas City Art Institute, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Archie Bray Foundation, Hunter College, University of Michigan School of Art, and the Banff Centre for the Arts, among many other institutions. Her work has also been recognized through fellowships from the Pollock‐Krasner Foundation, Peter S. Reed Foundation, Mid‐Atlantic Arts Foundation, and New York’s Lower East Side Printshop.

Matt Phillips: Teenage Poems

margaret — Tue, 04 Nov 2025 19:46:17 +0000

Reynolds Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of “Teenage Poems”, a solo exhibition of all new paintings by Matt Phillips. The exhibition opens on Friday, November 14, 2025 with a public reception from 5 – 7 pm. The show runs through December 23.

Phillips employs a distinctive method of painting, applying a minimal amount of paint to create delicate surfaces. The thin layers of pigment act as inner sources of light. His strokes pool and meet to form wavy edges, resembling crinkled paper. The implied texture in his work imbues each luminous piece with a sense of breath – they are full of life and animation.

“High Tide (for B.J.)”, 2025, Pigment and silica on canvas, 30 x 24 inches

“Furl”, 2025, Pigment and silica on canvas, 30 x 24 inches

This exhibition marks a shift for Phillips, presenting a more intimate and focused exploration through a series of uniformly sized works. Though still grounded in his ongoing practice, the show is a departure from his previous large-scale installations. The consistent dimensions create a cohesive and contemplative viewing experience. With the words, “teenage poems”, at the forefront of his mind, Phillips allows his emotional responses and vulnerability to guide him through his process, resulting in compositions of colorful, deeply personal reflections that encourage introspection.

“Refuge”, 2025, Pigment and silica on canvas, 24 x 30 inches

There is something mildly embarrassing about the implied vulnerability that these two words carry. When combined, they become almost dangerous in their earnestness. This collection of recent paintings has little to do with nostalgia or literature. Rather than providing insight into my imagery, the phrase “Teenage Poems” became something like an emotional compass I held onto while making this body of work. As my life as an artist unfolds, I find myself constantly curious about the moments when I feel surprised or naïve within my practice. What once felt like something to generally avoid is now something I actively seek out and explore.

While these new paintings are squarely rooted in my ongoing studio practice, they also offer fresh glimpses into new worlds and visual situations. The surfaces of these pictures are intimate and painted with small brushes. They are delivered from the wrist and at times feel as much written as painted. These paintings often start using rational visual motifs such as the grid or one point perspective. These impersonal scaffoldings are quickly altered and amended to include more complex shapes, less stable compositions, and forms that are reminiscent of things in the observable world. I am most excited when my personal involvement with the formal concerns of composition, color, and illusion give way to the metaphorical and human.

– Matt Phillips, 2025

About the Artist

Matt Phillips is a painter living in Brooklyn, NY. His works often employ fundamental elements of painting: simple shapes, modulated values and color relationships. These rather rudimentary components are combined and remixed to produce unexpected outcomes. Color, shape, mark and form engage one another in both strange and familiar ways, becoming tense, humorous, quirky and ultimately meaningful.

Matt Phillips has had solo exhibitions at Louis Buhl & Co, Detroit, MI; Anna Zorina Gallery, New York, NY; Mindy Solomon Gallery, Miami, FL; The Landing Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Reynolds Gallery, Richmond, VA; Direktorenhaus Museum, Berlin, Germany; Studio d’Arte Raffaelli, Trento, Italy; Devening Projects, Chicago, IL; Zillman Art Museum, Bangor Maine; and Steven Harvey, New York, NY. He has participated in group exhibitions at The Pit, Los Angeles, CA; Harper’s, New York, NY; The Hole, New York, NY; Nino Mier Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Hollis Taggart, New York, NY; and Jeff Bailey Gallery, Hudson, NY. Phillips has been an artist-in-residence at The Fores Project, Yaddo, and the MacDowell Colony. He is represented by the Reynolds Gallery, Mindy Solomon Gallery and The Landing Gallery.

Group Show: Shelf Life

margaret — Tue, 09 Sep 2025 15:00:39 +0000

Reynolds Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of “Shelf Life”, a group exhibition featuring the work of Hampton Boyer, Carolyn Case, Tori Cherry, Kevin Ford, Lou Haney, Jack Kenna, Andrew Leventis, Sylvio Lynch III, and Nick McPhail. The exhibition opens on Friday, September 26, 2025 with a public reception from 5-7pm at our Libbie Avenue location. The show runs through November 26.

Reynolds Gallery presents “Shelf Life”, a group exhibition featuring nine artists who reimagine the still life for the present moment. “Shelf Life” explores how contemporary painters are transforming traditional visual languages into fresh and unexpected forms. Historically a meditation on mortality, domesticity, and material abundance, the still life has long served as a stage for both restraint and excess. In “Shelf Life”, that tradition is expanded and reshaped—sometimes with reverence, often with humor — into something distinctly of now.

Kevin Ford paints familiar objects with softened edges, rendering them with a hazy intimacy that sits somewhere between memory and presence. Andrew Leventis’ hyperrealist works depict lavish cakes in jaw-dropping detail, creating lush images that hover between celebration and decay. Jack Kenna finds unexpected elegance in utilitarian objects—beer cans, milk crates, and other castoffs—treating them with the compositional care of a Dutch master. Lou Haney, Carolyn Case, and Hampton Boyer each approach the interior space through completely different lenses: Haney’s vibrant, maximalist rooms are filled with pattern and play; Case layers abstract forms into moody, intimate splices of environments; Boyer’s bold, graphic paintings channel storytelling and nostalgia through color and character. These artists, along with Tori Cherry, Nick McPhail, and Sylvio Lynch III all push the boundaries of the genre, expanding the definition of what a still life can be in today’s visual and cultural landscape.

Nick McPhail, “Window”, 2025, Oil on paper, 30 x 22 inches

About the Artists

Hampton Boyer

Born in Pittsburgh and raised in Hampton Roads, Hampton Boyer layers bright, geometric forms to create his figurative paintings and collages. He juxtaposes inspiration pulled from African folklore and literature with his own experience as a contemporary artist. The flow that he achieves through his artistic practice fills his work with reverberating energy and intimate emotion. He has exhibited in numerous group shows and solo exhibitions, including one at Omni Gallery in London (2023). He also had a piece recently acquired by the Chrysler Museum in Norfolk, VA.

Carolyn Case

Carolyn Case uses rich patterning and intense colors to convey a spiritual and psychological experience. Based in Maryland, Case has travelled extensively to Iran and Egypt, incorporating Middle Eastern textiles into invented landscapes. Establishing texture through varied, layered line work, she allows aggravated strokes to form strange plants and ombre urns, collaged against a pointillist sky or indiscernible figure. Her indiscriminate use of color and compiled symbols intentionally muddles distinctions between East and West, Earth and Space, Physical and Spiritual. Recently, Case has begun to incorporate ceramics into her work. The idea came from the need to frame her pastels and not liking how the pastels looked in a conventional frame. The ceramic work has now evolved with the pastels shrinking, the ceramics growing, and the combination morphing together. Case received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from California State University and Master of Fine Arts from Maryland Institute, College of Art (1994, 1997). She is the recipient of fellowships from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, the Maryland Institute of Art and Vermont Studio Center, as well as a residency from the Kanoria Art Center in Ahmedabad, India. She has exhibited at the Katzen Art Center, the Corcoran Gallery, Hemphill Fine Arts in Washington, DC and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California. She currently lives in Baltimore where she teaches painting and drawing at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Tori Cherry

Tori Cherry is an artist based in Charlottesville, VA. She is a former Aunspaugh Fellow (2021-22) at the University of Virginia (CLAS’21) where she double majored in Cognitive Science and Studio Art. Her paintings and drawings inspired by her loved ones, her surroundings and herself serve as sites for personal documentation, reflection, and connection. Through figurative and still life work, she highlights the paradoxical uniqueness and universality of quotidian experience. When she is not painting, she works as Welcome Gallery Manager for New City Arts Initiative’s Welcome Gallery space in downtown Charlottesville.

Kevin Ford

Kevin Ford is interested in intense looking. Using a combination of delicate brushwork and loose airbrushing, he blends the languages of Spanish still lifes, cartoons, and color field abstraction to bring a sense of historic urgency to overlooked, everyday objects. Kevin received his BFA in Painting from Boston University and his MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale. His work has been included in solo exhibitions at 12.26 Gallery, Dallas, TX, Hesse Flatow, New York, NY, Semiose Galerie, Paris, FR, Kate Werble Gallery, New York, NY, and Tops Gallery, Memphis, TN. Kevin’s work has been exhibited in group exhibitions at The Center for Maine Contemporary Art, ME, Inman Gallery, TX, Reyes Finn, MI, Casey Kaplan, NY, The Islip Art Museum, NY, Tops Gallery, TN, and elsewhere. He has attended residencies at Millay Arts, Austerlitz, NY, Chateau d’Orquevaux, Champagne-Ardenne, France, and the Vermont Studio Center, Johnson, VT. His work has been featured in V Magazine, included in the book Artists II, published by Steidl, and has been reviewed in Artforum, The New York Times, and other publications.

Lou Haney

Lou Haney creates paintings of domestic spaces that employ nostalgia as a means of temporary escape from the corrupt and chaotic realities of present day life. Using oil, acrylic, fiber art, and mixed media, she explores themes of memory, yearning, and femininity to evoke tension between fantasy and reality. Born in Decatur, Alabama, Haney received her BA from Rhodes College in Memphis and her MFA in Painting from Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, CA. Haney has attended MacDowell as well as the Vermont Studio Center. In 2022, she was a resident at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Amherst, VA.. Haney was the recipient of the Mississippi Art Commission Individual Artist Fellowship in 2008. Her work has been exhibited in solo shows in California, Virginia, Massachusetts, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Kentucky and in over 70 juried group exhibitions. Haney’s work was shown at the Spring/Break Art Fair in New York City in 2022, 2023 and 2025.. In 2024, Haney had solo shows at Second Street Gallery in Charlottesville, VA and Spectrum Fine Arts in Seattle, WA. Most recently, Lou’s work was featured in a solo exhibition at IA&A Hillyer in Washington, DC and One Rivers School of Art and Design in Hartsdale, NY. Haney currently teaches Studio Art and Art History at Piedmont Virginia Community College, Sweet Briar College, and Buford Middle School. The artist lives and works in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Jack Kenna

Jack Kenna (b. 1994 in Durango, CO, USA) is a visual artist currently based in Brooklyn, NY. Working across painting, drawing, and sculpture, his work often depicts or directly incorporates found images, objects, and text amongst highly considered and unconventional compositions looking at impermanence, perception, and everyday life with humor and playfulness. Kenna is represented by Equinox Gallery in Vancouver, where he will open his second solo show with the gallery in the fall of 2025, and has recently exhibited work in group exhibitions at Harkawik in New York City and Plan X Gallery in Milan. He received a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design in 2019.

Andrew Leventis

Andrew Leventis makes meticulously detailed oil paintings of contemporary vanitas, a motif popularized in early still life in which food, flowers, and other perishable objects represent the fleeting nature of life and the passing of time. Often he utilizes objects reflecting his queer identity. Leventis received an MFA in Fine Arts from Goldsmiths College, University of London, and an MA in Fine Art from Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts London. He earned a Bachelor of Fine Art in Painting from the American Academy of Art, Chicago. He has exhibited internationally at museums and galleries, most recently at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Krakow, Poland (2024); Novilla, Berlin (2023) the Mint Museum Uptown, Charlotte, NC (2022); the Venice Arsenale, Italy (2021); and York Art Gallery, UK (2021). Leventis’ work is represented by SOCO Gallery. He lives and works in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Sylvio Lynch III

Based in Richmond, Virginia, Sylvio Lynch III is a contemporary realist artist. Including the practice of traditional portraiture, still life drawing, and sketching via graphite, charcoal and colored pencil, Lynch creates hyperrealistic expressions of the ordinary. His influences include the illustrations of Norman Rockwell, the historical legacy of American architecture, popular culture, as well as the legacy of pioneering hyperrealist painters such as: Robert Bechtle and John Salt, and Barkley Hendricks. In addition, Lynch is ever inspired by the technical discipline of architectural sketching and draftsmanship. Lynch holds a PhD in American Culture Studies from Bowling Green State University and a M.A. in American Studies from the University of Alabama. From academic rigor in these fields as well as architecture, Lynch creates from his observations of the built environment, and the decadence of otherwise ordinary people, places, things, and forms.

Nick McPhail

Nick McPhail is a Los Angeles-based painter and sculptor using renaissance techniques to consider the peripheral mundanity of urban life. Born and raised in Laingsburg, Michigan, Nick attended Michigan State University where he studied painting and ceramics, graduating with a BFA in 2006. Since then, he has maintained a consistent practice that has evolved to rely on personal observation and photography as the basis for his intuitive compositions. Recent solo exhibitions include: Reynolds Gallery in Richmond, VA (2023); Massey Klein in New York (2023); Amélie Maison d’Art in Paris (2022); Ochi Projects in Los Angeles (2020); Untitled_1983 in Geneva (2019); and Holiday in Los Angeles (2018). He has completed residencies at Untitled_1983 in Geneva (2019); Ochi Gallery in Ketchum, Idaho (2019); and 100 West Corsicana in Corsicana, Texas (2018). He is a 2023 Hopper Prize Finalist and in 2017 he was awarded a grant to attend a residency at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont. His work is in private collections throughout the United States, Europe, and beyond.

Carolyn Case, “Easy Bake”, 2025, Glazed stoneware and chalk pastel on pastel card, 17 x 19 x 2 inches

Laura Vahlberg

margaret — Fri, 29 Aug 2025 19:18:06 +0000

Laura Vahlberg’s work has been exhibited around the U.S. and internationally (Australia, Los Angeles, New York, Alabama, Pennsylvania, and Virginia). She has studied with artists including Israel Hershberg, Elana Hagler, Ken Szmagaj, and Susan Jane Walp. She now lives in Roanoke, Virginia and received her Bachelors in Fine Arts at James Madison University.

Steven Cushner: CLOUDLAND

margaret — Tue, 12 Aug 2025 17:23:44 +0000

SUN AND CLOUD, 2024, Acrylic on canvas, 70 x 75 inches

Reynolds Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of CLOUDLAND, a solo exhibition of all new paintings by Steven Cushner. The exhibition opens on Friday, September 5, 2025 with a public reception from 5 – 7 pm. The exhibition will run through October 24, 2025.

THUNDER AND LIGHTING, 2024, Acrylic on canvas, 56 x 47 inches

THUNDER AND LIGHTNING (detail)

Incorporating repetitive strokes, pattern-like forms, and the drip and splash of paint, Steven Cushner creates works both gestural and concrete. Playing with abstraction and representation, he invents imagery inspired by the natural world. Circular, spiral, fan-like, or open-ended shapes vibrate with intensity as their fluid lines emerge from watery backgrounds to shape meditative, sinuous patterns. His dynamic compositions capture this organic energy, mimicking nature with their cyclical, ordered quality. Loosely rendered forms and splashy backgrounds allow for open interpretation of Cushner’s imagery. Whether the viewer discovers clouds in the sky, the flow of the tides, or patterns of leaf and flower in his playful abstractions, an electric energy and a quirkiness emanates from his paintings….. perhaps conveying the root of Cushner’s passions and spontaneity.

Photo sourced from the Washington Post

CLOUDLAND is defined as a realm of imagination and visionary speculation, far removed from the everyday and the practical.

Clouds are like paintings. A cloud is almost something, never still, always changing shape, form, color, and mood. Clouds can be calm and peaceful, but can also be a threat, a warning, full of trouble.

Paintings are like clouds. A painting is never still, never fixed, constantly changing shape, form, color, direction. Paintings occupy a liminal space, a transitory place, following a wandering path of possibilities.

I hunt for transitory spaces in nature and these become starting points for paintings. These could be an incoming tide, a racing river, clouds floating across the sky. The world of nature is full of change and possibility, and so is each painting. My paintings and I wander in these spaces. At times we are moving forward, or backwards, or sideways, or not at all. We follow false leads, or find ourselves back where we began. If the painting and I are lucky, we arrive at someplace new, someplace unexpected, and someplace surprising together.

– Steven Cushner, 2025

Cushner was born in Cleveland, and later moved to receive his Master of Fine Arts from the University of Maryland and Bachelor of Fine Arts from Rhode Island School of Design (1980, 1976). He currently lives in Washington, DC, where he teaches at George Mason University and previously taught at the Corcoran School of Art. He is the recipient of two Visual Artist Fellowships from the DC Commission on the Arts Humanities, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and the Distinguished Alumni award from University of Maryland. This is Cushner’s 6th solo exhibition with Reynolds Gallery; his first solo show with the gallery was in 1995. Steve has had a long and prosperous relationship with Reynolds Gallery, and we are excited to showcase his work once again.

SOLSTICE, 2024-2025, Acrylic on canvas, 41 x 88 inches