“Jonquil” at the Smith House

December 21st, 2009

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The Arts Council of the Valley will feature Jonquil by Leslie Bellavance, highlighting photography and works on paper. The exhibition opens Friday, January 8 from 5-7p.m. with refreshments and a chance to meet the artist. Everyone is welcome to come and experience first-hand these thoughtful and clever pieces.

On display will be selections from two bodies of work, Wall, a series of digitally montaged photographs, and A Yellow Smell, a series of mixed media works on paper. Both collections were made in response to the well-known American short story, The Yellow Wallpaper, by Charlotte Perkins Gillman. Though the story is considered part of the horror genre, it is known for influencing 20th-century feminist discourse. In order to reflect the confusion of the protagonist, Bellavance combines found images and recreated backdrops with different depictions of yellow wallpaper. Bellavance explains that she does this “in such a way as to imagine a space where figure and ground become confounded and patterns shift. The series also serves as an exploration of the paradoxical color yellow.” These formal photographs appear austere with the exposed limbs but also inviting with the antiquarian wallpaper designs one expects to find in a grandmother’s parlor.

Leslie Bellavance is currently a professor of art and the director of the School of Art and Art History at James Madison University. She has exhibited her artwork extensively in the United States and in Europe and has received numerous grants and awards including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Her book, analemmic, was awarded a residency and published by Nexus Press in Atlanta, Georgia. She has written and lectured extensively on contemporary art. From 1981 until 2005 she served on the faculty of the Department of Visual Art in the Peck School of the Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she also served as head of the Photography Program, and director of Graduate Studies in Art. She received a BFA from Tyler School of Art at Temple University and an MFA from the University of Chicago. She lives in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

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