Rousseau on the Studio Art Faculty of Montgomery College

Capitol Arts Network, the Washington area’s fastest-growing organization for professional and emerging artists, will explore the impact of “significant encounters” on artists and their work during March, with an exhibition produced by studio art faculty members at Montgomery College.

“For this exhibit, we have defined a ‘critical contact’ as an encounter that has had a significant impact on an artist,” said Claudia Rousseau, Montgomery College.  “Such encounters might be with a place, a book, a person, a particularly galvanizing moment. The exhibit could also be a consideration of critical encounters between or among species, cultures, technologies, economies, natural elements and many other things.”

The March show opens on March 3rd with a First Friday opening reception on Friday, March. 7, from 6 to 9 p.m. at Capitol Arts Network’s Urban By Nature Gallery at 12276 Wilkins Avenue in Rockville.  The exhibit runs through the end of the month.

 “The variety of approaches among the 22 participants in this exhibit is extensive,” Rousseau said.  “Among the most prominent subthemes are memories of certain places and the ways in which contacts with those places have had a lasting impact. This can be seen, for example, in the ceramics of Vidya Vijayasekharan, who also relates the theme to the globalization of things once limited to a small part of the world.” 

“From a very different part of the world, Megan Van Wagoner’s Standing Production recalls her childhood in the American Midwest.  Judy Stone’s installation titled Transmission also carries memory of a pivotal trip to Mexico,” she said.  “Another subtheme concerns specific contacts with a person or persons.  Perhaps most striking in this group are the works of Kate Kretz for whom the birth of her daughter had a significant impact.”  

“The often silent interaction between men in India is the point of contact for Daniel Venne.  The theme of exploration, whether physical or emotional is also the key for a group of artists including painter Wil Brunner,” she continued.

“Critical contacts between elements of nature are also a common theme, as in the photographs of Mary Staley and Grace Graham. Yet, perhaps the most compelling results of setting out this theme are the numerous interpretations of it in terms of the contact of the self with inner self or introspective examinations, as evidenced in the work of exhibit participants David Carter and Michaele Harrington.”

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The Capitol Arts Network’s Rockville headquarters features studio space for more than 70 working artists artists plus classrooms, work and meeting areas and gallery and exhibition space where artists can work individually or side-by-side in a collaborative community setting. The center is conveniently located near Rockville’s Twinbook Metro station, in Montgomery County’s developing “Twinbrook Arts Zone,” which also includes the home of the Washington School of Photography.