We’re excited to announce our upcoming Mixed Media Salon this December First Friday 2019, featuring a variety of Richmond artists’ works!

For our October 2019 First Friday, Nicola Merriman, a local Richmond artist, presented Artemis Gallery guests with models clad in her Hand Painted Art History Denim Jackets and puzzle piece earrings. The event was a HIT! Not only was the gallery packed, but we sold many of Nicola’s pieces. Here are some fun shots from the night! Photo Creds to Graham Jennings Media and Valeria Moreno.

More about Nicola: Nicola Merriman was born in the United Kingdom and spent most of her childhood growing up in West Virginia, USA. She attended Davis & Elkins College to study art education. What Nicola enjoys most, is doing emotional portraiture using oil paints. She plays with layers, light, and color in these paintings. Currently, Nicola is working on a wearable art series. The first jacket showed the image “Hygeia” by Gustave Klimt. The wearable art series allows her to refer to her passion for art history. https://nicolajaymerriman.com/

Ceramic is an old art form dating back to the bronze age. in 3,500 BCE the first wheel was made out of ceramic. The art form continued to be used for functionality. It wasn’t until much later that ceramics started being created simply for aesthetics. Our exhibition, “Ceramic Contradictions”, explores the dichotomy between simple use and art form ceramics. We had the pleasure of hosting many talented, experienced ceramic artists as seen on our press release. The show was hit and was repeated for July First Friday! 

Artemis Gallery presents “Eros & Arrows ” Our February First Friday Valentines themed exhibition. Regional artist create outlandish and sassy Valentine Day cards that Hallmark would never print! Store bought cards just never express the intensity of despair or the joy that accompanies Valentines Day. This exhibition was filled with humor and camaraderie, the way Valentines Day should be celebrated.    
Following artist participants:

• Camille Robinson
• Elissa Rumford
• Jeri Hiraldo 
• Morgan Leigh
• Mikki Thompkins
• Charles Sharp
• John T Crutchfield 
  

Artemis Gallery celebrates the Winter Solstice January First Friday with original live music, new paintings, and mixed arts & crafts!
Artist:

• Elina Yuuka
• Megan Pollard
• Shana Cave
• Klylie Newcomb
• Elisssa Rumford
• Jenna Thacker
• Rebecca Holt
• Cindy Marks
• Kelly Johnston
• PaytonGrady
• Emily Gartner
• Kest Schwartzman

One of Artemis Gallery’s main goals is to act as a launching pad for new artists trying to get established. Typically galleries charge a substantial application or jury fee for exhibitions, let a lone a display fee if your work gets accepted, and on top of all that a hefty commission if you’re lucky enough to sell anything. obviously most new artists can’t afford this, only leaving room for the already established artists. However, everyone must start somewhere. There have been countless incredibly talented artists, who’s profound creations deserved our attention, but they never got the opportunity to be exhibited. Bills must be paid and sooner or later these artists resort to full time jobs to make ends meat, making it difficult or impossible to continue the pursuit of art. Here at Artemis, we are dedicated to fighting against this repeated tragedy. 

This calling was our inspiration for our November 2018 (and past years) Mixed Media Salon. We reached out to many young artists for submissions. The poster above was hung in all the VCU Arts buildings to give students a chance to exhibit their work outside of academia possibly for the first time. The Response was tremendous! We accepted all mediums, hence “Mixed Media”, making for a vibrant show of great variety. With the Holiday season approaching, we wanted to give gallery patrons a chance to pick out handcrafted gifts that would have sentimental value in contrast to something bought off Amazon last minute. Our artists were proud to display their work and many of them sold multiple pieces. Talk about a confidence boosts!

This was such a popular concept we had another artist call to replace what was sold in November and ran the exhibition, “Mixed Media Salon 2” for the December First Friday. 

Read what they wrote! “Shoe Fetish: Artemis Gallery reaches out to artists to recycle shoes for an exhibit”

Marilyn Monroe said, “Give a girl the right shoes and she can conquer the world.”

Give a group of artists the right shoes and the result is “Exoctica: Stilettos and Street,” a new show of re-imagined footwear at Artemis Gallery.

Owner John Crutchfield has a tradition of doing workshop shows, inviting a diverse group of artists and would-be artists to participate in a day of creativity that results in an exhibit. In 2013, the medium was bras and corsets, in 2014, masquerade masks. Sunglasses were the starting point in 2015 and boots in 2016. After a year off, he was eager for another show.

“I got the idea from fashion shows in Europe where I saw the wildest shoes I’d ever seen,” he recalls. It was enough to inspire him to scour antique shops in search of shoes to use as starting points for creating whimsical objects, although they sat unused for a year when he got busy with other projects. Finally, this summer, inspiration arrived.

Alice Anne Ellis’ contribution, “Temple of the Foot” began life as a burgundy suede platform pump before she added ivy sprouting from the shoe and a wine glass from which tumble slips of paper with quotes. Leah Anderson’s “Hermes, the Messenger” grew out of a low-top sneaker adorned with feathers, splashes of gold and pink and orange triangles of Plexiglas.

For Crutchfield, the workshops offer a means to utilize supplies he has on hand, items as varied as seashells, artificial flowers, clocks, crystals and fans. “I’ve been collecting materials for 25 to 30 years,” he explains. “These workshops are a way to recycle and create something new from them.”

To glean who might be interested in participating in the workshops, he sends out feelers on Facebook and Instagram, puts out the word to artists he knows and mentions the workshop to everyone who comes in the gallery. Despite the heat and vacations, when the call for artists went out in August, enough people showed up to create 18 shoes for the exhibit.

“Exoctica: Stilettos and Street” occupies a central location inside Artemis Gallery, an eclectic gallery space established on Main Street in 1997. Unlike most local galleries, which, according to Crutchfield, “focus on walls,” Artemis features arts and crafts created by artists from all over the country. Funky and colorful, the gallery is home to things as varied as detailed pencil drawings of rock royalty such as the Who, the Stones, Led Zeppelin, mosaics, ceramics and hand-blown glass. In this catholic atmosphere, a shoe show makes perfect sense.

“There Was an Old Shoe Mother,” crafted by Crutchfield and Charles Sharp, brings together an army boot with vintage cardboard cutouts of children popping up all over the boot and decorated with brightly colored plastic beads and shapes. “We even made a little door for Mother to come out from,” he says, pointing to a flap on the boot’s side.

Far more ethereal, “Starry Night USA” by Emily Saez features a boot painted an inky blue and covered in stars and sequins with a gold pipe cleaner for a shoelace.

The flamboyance of the gallery’s arts and crafts, along with lower prices, tends to attract a younger audience. Often, he sees people drop in expecting to spend 10 minutes but getting lost in the gallery’s fantasy world and wind up spending an hour or more.

“So many older people’s houses are already full of art. Millennials can afford us, so we appeal to people with their first apartment or house who’ve just begun collecting.”

For Crutchfield, the appeal is not just who comes to see the myriad objects in his gallery, but that the workshops for exhibits such as the high heel show attract a wide-ranging and different group of artists every time.

“A show like this reaches people beyond VCU’s art school,” he says. “It reaches people who want to be artists, who want to be part of an artistic process based on their interest in creativity. The fact that we make things in groups makes us a different kind of gallery.” S

“Exoctica: Stilettos and Street” runs through Oct. 26 at Artemis Gallery, 1601 W. Main St. artemisgalleryrichmond.com.

https://www.styleweekly.com/richmond/shoe-fetish-artemis-gallery-reaches-out-to-artists-to-recycle-shoes-for-an-exhibit/Content?oid=11707616&fbclid=IwAR1RbxbLm4BE0zfDuznxV-3wTfs7VxZ9Pc-YL-nBGLfoLDqdYCnn_RPuR7Q

The show was a HUGE hit! So much so that we decided to leave it up through October so more people would get to see it. 

For about a year we have been thinking about doing a handmade shoe show show at Artemis Gallery. Using the same workshop concept we’ve used in the past for our group artist themed exhibitions (i.e. Boots Show of 2016, Sunglasses Show of 2015, Masquerade Mask Show of 2014, and Bra/Corset Show 2013)

Everyone wears shoes on a daily basis its one of the most essential elements of our society. “No shoes, No service”. So why not create a fine art gallery show based on the shoe and all its connotations!?

The idea fully formed when we found the most outrageous high heels in an antique store during a quick trip to New York. We bought an entire box full so there’d be plenty four our artists to turn into masterpieces. We began organizing a unique cast of artist/characters to be participants in out show, by reaching out through Facebook and email. The response was tremendous! we ended up with 13 participants some om whom designed more than one shoe. The studio session was a blast! We enjoyed music, food, wine, creativity, and conversation with fellow artists. Some artists’ friends came to observe and ended up sitting down to make their own shoe because the energy was just too contagious to resist. by the end of the session we had 18 shoe masterpieces! 

Participating Artists: 
Elissa Rumford
Leah Anderson
Tori Radday
Charles Sharp
Emily Saez
Ellie Ellis
Priyanka & Anora Chakerwarti
Dana Frostic
Alice Anne Ellis
Shawnda Harper
Cindy Marks
John Teal Crutchfield