Group Exhibit Binds Visual Art, Dance

BlackRock’s next exhibition “Above/Below” explores the integration of dance and visual arts.

The collaborative multimedia show features visual artists Beverly Ryan, Alison Sigethy and Marsha Staiger, and performing artist Karen Reedy Dance. The artists offer creative extrapolations from the theme “Above/Below” with the hopes that the unified whole of the project would be greater than the sum of its parts.

“Above/Below” opens Wednesday, Jan. 4, in BlackRock’s main gallery and continues through Saturday, Jan. 28. The site-specific dance performance occurs at the opening reception 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 7, and at the closing reception, 5 to 7 p.m.  Saturday, Jan. 28. The visual artwork will hang the entire month in the gallery.

About the Artists

Beverly Ryan is a painter whose works feature rich painted layers punctuated by painted line work and gestural drawing. Ryan teaches at The Art League School in Alexandria, Va., and is an adjunct professor in the art department of Montgomery College in Germantown.

Alison Sigethy creates forms out of salvaged materials. These forms are organic but abstract. For “Above/Below,” Sigethy will construct giant pods out of glass and natural materials. The pods will be suspended from the ceiling, allowing them to move.  She is on the faculty of the Washington Glass School, is a Torpedo Factory Resident Artist and was the Torpedo Factory Artist of the Year (2010), with Marsha Staiger.
Marsha Staiger creates abstract acrylics that retain the physicality of how and with what she applies paint. She works and reworks a piece until it “seems to stay on the canvas and still breathe.”  She is chairwoman of The Target Gallery and teaches at The Art League School in Alexandria.

Karen Reedy will “respond kinesthetically” to the visual art in the exhibit. She is continually inspired by how to express the range of human emotion through dance.  In “Above/Below,” she is pondering “concepts of heaven and hell, light and dark, seen and unseen and reality and fantasy.” Reedy’s dance company is also slated to perform at BlackRock’s DanceFest in May 2012.

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BlackRock’s main gallery is on the ground floor and is open Monday through Friday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Please see BlackRock website www.blackrockcenter.org for a detailed weekly schedule. BlackRock also has a Terrace Gallery, featuring encaustics by Jorge Bernal through January.

BlackRock Center for the Arts is located at 12901 Town Commons Drive, Germantown, near the intersection of Middlebrook and Germantown roads. For further information, call 301-528-2260.