An arts-inspired Earth Day celebration is coming to Reston Town Center.
Organized by the Reston Town Center Association and Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art, the inaugural event on April 20 will feature a variety of activities, including a special art installation at the Mercury Fountain Plaza by Arkansas-based artist Danielle Hatch.
The installation, called “All Is in Motion, Is Growing, Is You,” is inspired by Reston’s origins and founder Bob Simon’s vision of community building.
“Art often serves as a lens to help us understand the world around us, and artists have the unique ability, through their work, to spark conversation around contemporary issues, including the earth, land, and environment,” Tephra ICA Executive Director and Curator Jaynelle Hazard said. “This collaborative event with RTCA presents a special opportunity to celebrate reverence for the natural world and the impact that art and artists can have in shaping sustainability.”
Hatch is expected to build on the installation with a performance during the Tephra ICA Arts Festival, which is scheduled to take place at Reston Town Center in May.
Other festivities include:
- Curator-led tours of the “Pressing” exhibition at Tephra ICA
- An environmentally themed concert with George Mason University professor Victor Provost’s steel pan ensemble
- Afternoon art activations in Reston Town Square Park, such as poetry readings, a meditative sound bath, plant repotting and rehabilitation, printmaking workshops, community composting and face painting
- A free screening of the documentary “Anthropocene: The Human Epoch,” with an introduction and post-film Q&A led by GMU professor Jeremy Campbell
The movie screening is sponsored by and will be held at Reston Town Center’s LOOK Dine-In Cinema (11940 Market Street).
RTCA Executive Director Robert Goudie says the Earth Day celebration aligns with the association’s desire to promote “art experiences that both enrich and educate.”
“We always welcome the chance to partner with Tephra ICA, a content leader in the DMV,” he said in a statement. “With support from Reston Community Center, ArtsFairfax, George Mason University, and LOOK Dine-In Cinemas at Reston Town Center, we think we have something that will capture the imagination and bring forward the importance of this day in a compelling way.”
An opening ceremony is set for 10 a.m. The event is free and open to all.
A regional staple in the arts community is returning to Reston Town Center this May.
Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art is organizing the Tephra ICA Arts Festival — formerly known as Northern Virginia Fine Arts Festival — on May 18 and 19, bringing more than 200 artists from across the country to RTC.
“Tephra ICA Arts Festival has a long-standing reputation for excellence, yet every year we seek to hone and find ways of advancing its impact, audience reach, and onsite experience as a beloved community event,” festival director Hannah Barco told FFXnow.
This year, the festival will include thematic guided tours of artist booths and designated hours for artist demonstration.
Reston Town Center Association will also simultaneously launch its summer concert series — Reston Concerts on the Town — with a free public concert at the pavilion (1825 Discovery Street) on the night of May 18. Attendees will be able to take advantage of the association’s sip and stroll offering, which allow customers to drink alcoholic beverages from select restaurants within a pre-designated zone.
As in previous years, RCC will present a contemporary performance. This year’s selection is “Danielle Hatch’s All is in Motion, Is Growing, Is You,” a site-specific textile installation with an accompanying performance at the RTC Fountain Plaza. Both pieces draw on the founding of Reston, particularly the idea of the collection in the process of community building.
Volunteers can sign up online. Sponsorship slots are also available.
The Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art is gearing up for its next art exhibition in Reston Town Center.
Scheduled for March 16-May 19, the exhibit, titled “Pressing,” features work by Kansas-based artist Rena Detrixhe and D.C.-based painter Katherine Tzu-Lan Mann. An opening reception and artist talk is set for Saturday, March 16 from 5-7 p.m. at Tephra’s gallery (12001 Market Street, Suite 103).
“Each of the works in this exhibition is a landscape — a vision of a place formed through careful observation and mark making,” Tephra Associate Curator Hannah Barco said. “And each artist’s departure from traditional modes of landscape painting offers a lesson in how to reconfigure our relationship to the natural environment.”
Here’s more from Tephra on the exhibition:
At a moment when much of the social discourse around climate change is politicized, reactionary, and focused on increasingly concerning storms, sea levels, fires, and heatwaves, Detrixhe and Tzu-Lan Mann create intricate and meditative works that reinsert slowness and contemplation back into the conversation about human impact on the environment. While the exhibition title points to the urgent need to address environmental preservation and climate change, it also refers to the gesture of a hand, an intimate touch, that as exemplified by these artists can have great significance.
Detrixhe’s work combines repetitive processes and scavenged materials to produce objects, installations, sculpture, performances and drawings. She received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Kansas in 2013.
Tzu-Lan Mann got her bachelor’s degree from Brown University and a master’s degree from the Maryland Institute of College of Art. She received a Fulbright grant to Taiwan and has exhibited across the world.
According to Tephra, “Pressing” will be presented in conjunction with “Double 194 Years,” a 2019 drawing by artist Steven L. Anderson that the gallery has loaned from the Microsoft Collection.
“Anderson describes his Tree Rings series as ‘a way of growing a drawing,’ mimicking the growth patterns of trees adding layers of bark season after season,” Tephra said in a press release.
The exhibition is supported in part by Lindy and Richard Brewster, ArtsFairfax, and Reston Town Center Association.
A nonprofit formerly known as the Greater Reston Arts Center, Tephra offers free admission to both its main gallery and a second space, Tephra ICA at Signature (11850 Freedom Drive). The main gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Wednesday through Saturday, though Saturday visits must be scheduled in advance.
The Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art is launching an art exhibition featuring D.C.-based artists this week in its satellite gallery.
“Restorative Gestures” will bring new work by artists Leslie Holt and Rose Jaffe to the Signature apartments in Reston Town Center from Friday, Feb. 16 through June 23.
According to Tephra ICA, Holt is an artist and educator with teaching experience at the college level for more than 15 years. She is also co-director of Red Dirt Studio, a warehouse studio for independent creative professionals in Mt. Rainier, Maryland.
Her previous work includes “Neuro Blooms,” a project that attempts to use mixed-media art to shed light on mental health conditions. The project has visited organizations and schools in Maryland, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands.
A visual artist, Jaffe’s preferred media include mural painting, printmaking and digital illustration. She previously taught middle and high school art — a career path she dropped after pursuing art full-time.
She has painted more than 30 murals nationally and internationally, including 20 in the District. Her work often explores themes related to “political activism, natural healing, and spiritual grounding” to push for social change, Tephra ICA said in a press release.
Here’s more from Tephra on the work:
Holt’s Brain Stains, draped in the language of clinical technology, use emotionally resonant color palettes, PET scan imagery, and hand stitched text, to create expansive views of mental health conditions. A number of Holt’s works in the exhibition also draw from her personal involvement as a caregiver to her ailing parents at the end of their lives.
In a series of recent monoprints, Rose Jaffe explores her own journey of healing and thriving with stylized figures that fill the page with comfort and ease. The sensuous curves of the bodies along with growing plants and her vibrant use of color–including deep purples, bright greens, and radiant oranges–give these works a sense of jubilance and peace.
Together, the work from the two artists forms a restorative gesture that challenges common narratives of illness and recovery. This exhibition aims to inspire viewers to cultivate compassion for their own interior lives and the varied experiences of others.
The satellite gallery is open from Wednesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. It’s located inside the Signature apartments at 11850 Freedom Drive, where Tephra will host an opening reception and artist talk for “Restorative Gestures” on Thursday, Feb. 22 at 6 p.m.
A solo exhibition by sculptor and microbiologist Kendall Buster will descend on Reston’s Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art on Dec. 9.
The exhibit, SEED, is presented in conjunction with Buster’s SOLSTICE, which will be on view at The Kreeger Museum in D.C. An opening reception and artist talk will be held at Tephra ICA (12001 Market Street, Suite 103) on Saturday, Dec. 9 from 6-8 p.m.
The exhibits will be on display through Feb. 25.
Both exhibits were curated by Tephra ICA Executive Director Jaynelle Hazard and belong to a series of three shows organized to mark the 50th anniversary of Tephra, a nonprofit previously known as the Greater Reston Arts Center.
In a press release, Tephra says the exhibits are fitting anniversary tributes because they emphasize “the significance of place while examining themes of life, future, and innovation.”
“We’re so pleased for this first-time partnership with The Kreeger Museum, through their guest artist program The Collaborative, to uplift and celebrate the work of D.C. art star Kendall Buster,” Hazard said in a statement. “Tephra ICA deeply values partnership and collaboration to help thoughtfully contextualize an artist’s work in the canon and it’s wonderful to work with institution that shares these values.”
Here’s more from Tephra on Buster’s work:
Trained as a microbiologist, Kendall Buster’s work suggests ideas of budding, merging, and hybridization, using abstract forms and high-tech materials to create objects that expand what we know of natural and made environments. Her practice examines the microscopic and the monumental, from works that allude to intimate, botanical illustrations to architectural drawings to life-size biomorphic vessels. With the gallery often assuming the role of a laboratory, Buster’s work interrogates the edges of free expression and posits new ways of thinking about what can and cannot be expressed.
SEED features a large-scale sculpture called “Radial Spin.” The exhibit — which was last on display in 1997 in Berlin, Germany — has accessible spaces and envelopes the viewer, intending to challenge viewers’ sense of perception.
SOLSTICE features “Model City (Constraint),” which uses “geometric abstraction” and modernist architecture to suggest an “unpopulated cityscape that seems filled with talking shadows.”
Buster received a bachelor’s degree from the Corcoran College of Art and Design in D.C. and a master’s in sculpture from Yale University. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at American University’s Katzen Museum and the Kemper Museum in Kansas City.
More changes may be on the horizon for Reston’s Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art, following a brand and name change in recent years.
The institute — which was founded in 1974 as the Greater Reston Arts Center by local artists and residents — is actively fundraising for a new home in Reston as it celebrates its 50th anniversary.
“Armed with a clear vision of the type of space we will need to house Tephra ICA for the next 50 years, the funds we raise today will help us begin the design and procurement process when the site for that new home is identified,” Sofia Blom, Tephra’s senior manager of gallery and communications, told FFXnow by email.
The institute has launched a “Tephra ICA at 50” capital campaign to raise $300,000.
According to Blom, Tephra hasn’t determined what it will do with the current space in Reston Town Center once it moves to a new location. The existing facility at 12001 Market Street, Suite 103, is owned by the gallery and was secured 20 years ago through a condition, or proffer, from town center developer Boston Properties.
The current facility requires improvements like exterior signage to prominently identify the space, along with enhanced visibility, accessibility accommodations, and information technology and audio visual upgrades to accommodate digital, film and media artwork, according to Tephra.
“We have been creative in pushing our current facility beyond its limits to present the ambitious exhibitions and programs we have hosted the past several years,” Blom wrote. “But to reach remaining unfulfilled goals, we eventually will need a new and expanded facility that offers capacity/capability we cannot secure in our current space.”
In the long term, Tephra hopes to secure accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums, a national organization that provides resources and serves as an advocacy group for museums and their workers.
To achieve that milestone, Tephra ICA will need to get a centralized, 24-hour temperature and humidity control system, UV-filtered window systems and an automated light level system that Blom says are not possible in the current space.
The timeline of the project depends on the outcome of the fundraising campaign. Discussions are underway with developers on securing a possible new space.
“We are currently planting seeds and preparing for the future but we are several years away from moving into a new facility,” Blom said.
(Updated at 1:45 p.m. on 11/3/2023) The Blue Ridge mountains are the focus of the latest exhibit at the Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art in Reston.
The exhibit “Metopic Ridge” by Eleanor Mahin Thorp, an artist and educator, features paintings of the mountains that explore stability and change.
An opening reception and artist talk is slated for Friday (Nov. 3) from 6-8 p.m. at Tephra ICA at Signature (11850 Freedom Drive). The exhibit ends on Feb. 4.
Here’s more from Tephra on the scope of the exhibit:
Through her discerning gaze rocks are more than geological entities; Instead, they metamorphose into vessels of history and human connection. Drawing inspiration from the fascinating transformations depicted in Persian miniatures, Thorp traces the hidden figures and forms in the rocks. Her paintings reveal the duality of rocks’ existence as both a firm witness to time and a medium for that which is intangible.
Thorp, who works in Richmond, approaches her work through the lense of Persian animism and constructs images of stone faces by searching for figures in rock. She received master’s degree in fine arts from Virginia Commonwealth University and is a 2023-2025 visual arts fellow with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
“It is often said that the world is built by the way you see things around you. Thorp’s painting asks us to contemplate the layers of reality that exist beyond the surface – the palpable, the invisible, and the divine,” said Sandy Cheng, 2023 ArtTable curatorial fellow at Tephra ICA and the exhibit’s curator.
The exhibit is being presented in partnership with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Visual Arts Fellowship program.
(Correction: There was no members-only preview for “Metopic Ridge” as initially stated in this article. The exhibit is free and open to the general public.)
The exhibit is located at Tephra’s satellite gallery in the Signature apartment building. Visitors are welcome Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
A new exhibit at the Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art in Reston delves into the metaphor of portage — the act of carrying a boat or goods over land between two bodies of water.
Created by five artists — Ashley Freeby, Noella Garcia, Jeff Huckleberry, Jackie Milad and Michael Rakowitz — the exhibit “Choosing to Portage” will open on Sept. 8 with an artist talk from 6-8 p.m. It’s the second in a series of three exhibitions that mark the institute’s 50th anniversary.
According to Tephra, the included artworks investigate issues like the “absurdities of white masculinity, the erasure of indigenous cultures, police killings of Black men, the visibility of Iraqi culture in the US, the ravages of war, and the need for public acts of grieving.”
“The featured artists wield agency as they navigate the turbulent waters of contemporary identity,” Tephra wrote in a press release. “In doing so, they forge paths for us to embrace the complexity of cultural heritage and embody our collective inheritance as simultaneously burden, responsibility, and empowerment.”
Here’s more from the institute on what’s in the exhibit:
In material and imagery, the artworks index the lived experience of cultural heritage. Gallery visitors will first encounter a meticulously made quilt of bold pink, black, white, and blue squares made by Ashley M. Freeby’s grandmother; and around the corner is Freeby’ Attempt #1 to Remake Grandma’s Square Quilt in which the squares do not quite line up. Imported jars of date syrup – some full some empty – and a glass cutting board emblazoned with a logo using the colors of the Iraqi flag are among the objects set on a table as part of Michael Rakowitz’s Enemies and Kitchens installation.
Other objects are in vitrines, such as Noelle Garcia’s Revolver (Cowboy Gun), a beaded recreation of the classic gun in sparkly silver and lavender glass beads, drawing critical attention to how Western museums, in the legacy of colonization, have represented indigenous cultures.
Photo documentation selected from Jeff Huckleberry’s performances over the last 20 years, show the artist toiling with the “tools of the trade”: lumber, power tools, cheap beer, coffee grounds, and paint.
With jewel tones, bright yellows, pinks, and lush greens, and even some rainbows, the vivid colors in Choosing to Portage provide a sense of vitality and persistence to the work of building a better world out of the one we have inherited.
The exhibit is on display through Nov. 18. It will be accompanied by “a diverse set of public lectures and workshops,” including an indigenous beading workshop led by Noelle Garcia and a closing performance by artist Jeff Huckleberry.
Located in Suite 103 at 12001 Market Street in Reston Town Center, the institute is open to the public Wednesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
The work of a Haitian American artist who explores historical and contemporary imagination will expand horizons at Reston Town Center, starting this week.
“Flare,” an exhibit by Charles Phillipe Jean-Pierre will be on display at Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art‘s satellite gallery in the Signature apartments (11850 Freedom Drive) from Thursday (June 29) through Oct. 15.
An exploration of how memory, color and light shape imagination, his mixed-media paintings aim to shed light on the lack of synergy between social perceptions and reality.
The Signature gallery, which is dedicated to regional artists, is a perfect location for the exhibition, Tephra ICA Associate Curator Hannah Barco says.
“I see it as a wonderful opportunity to look across an artist’s practice and find connections between the different ways an artist is making work,” Barco said. “Jean-Pierre’s upcoming exhibition is another great example of this, and I am so excited to see how the conversation unfolds around his abstract painting, his mono-print collage portraits, and his new series of photographs of found objects that he has painted black.”
According to Tephra, Jean-Pierre is a Haitian American artist who was raised in Chicago. His other work has explored the intersection of community, spirituality and socio-political systems. He is also an adjunct professor at American University and a U.S. State Department Art in Embassies Artist.
The gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. in the lobby of the Signature apartments. An opening reception and talk with the artist will be held there this Thursday at 6 p.m.
Here’s more from Tephra on Jean-Pierre’s background:
His works are featured the U.S. Embassy in Benin, Malawi, and Niger. He also serves as a guest curator for exhibitions at The Embassy of Haiti. He has been featured in three Smithsonian exhibitions and was a Barack Obama invitee to the White House to speak on the role of the arts in youth justice. In 2021, he was an invited featured artist for the 2021 Atlantic Festival.
His collaborations include: Alvin Ailey, Boys & Girls Club, DC Commission on the Arts, International Monetary Fund, Inter-American Development Bank, Minnesota State Arts Board, Something In Water Music Festival, and West Elm, among many others. His works have been featured in The Atlantic, Black Enterprise, BET, Ebony Magazine, NBC, Netflix, The New York Times, and The Washington Post.
Jean-Pierre’s public art has been featured in South Africa, New York, Chicago, DC, Istanbul, Panama, Port-au-Prince, London, and Paris. Jean-Pierre holds a Master of Arts from Howard University, and his atelier & Galerie D’Art is located in Washington, DC.
The work of local school students will be on display in the latest exhibit at the Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art (Tephra ICA) in Reston
Part of a partnership with local schools that’s in its fifth year, the “Emerging Visions” exhibit will feature work created in response to an exhibit put on by artist Dominic Chambers last fall.
Titled “What Makes the Earth Shake,” Chambers’s exhibition featured vibrant paintings that focused on contemporary concerns related to race, identity, leisure, color field theory and gestural abstraction.
‘Through the Emerging Visions program, Tephra ICA extends its mission beyond the gallery walls, creating opportunities for students to engage with contemporary art in the classroom,” Tephra ICA wrote in a statement. “Students and educators are invited to participate in this unique, ongoing program designed around Tephra ICA exhibitions or projects.”
Every year, Tephra works with Fairfax County Public Schools art educators on classroom materials with themes and supporting concepts that can be integrated into their curricula for all students. Lesson plans are designed by art educators and Tephra ICA staff.
This year’s exhibit features work by students from Cunningham Park Elementary School in Vienna, Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, and Justice High School in Lake Barcroft.
The program is free and open to all. This year’s exhibit is on view from June 17 through July 15 at Tephra, which is located at 12001 Market Street, Suite 103.
An opening reception that is open to the public is slated for Saturday, June 17 from 4-6 p.m.
