Arts This Week – Ruffin Distinguished Visiting Artist
By Ben Larsen
Ben Larsen
The University of Virginia Art Department hosted a regenerative somatic workshop at Visible Records as part of the Ruffin Distinguished Visiting Artist lecture series. For Arts This W eek, we spoke with Elena Yu.
Elena Yu
I’m Elena Yu, and I’m the Ruffin gallery and visiting artist coordinator for the Department of Art at UVA. This year, the Department of Art received a grant from UVA Arts Council and the Vice Provost for the arts office to bring a visiting artist from California, and her name is Sandra de la Loza, and she is going to be hosting two public events next week. The first is on Tuesday at Visible Records, and it’s a one hour workshop called Into The Night: A Regenerative, Somatic Workshop. So she’ll be just holding a space for creative people and people working in activists and artists spaces in particular, to come together, have a relaxing moment and just be in touch with our bodies and enter the sort of night space which is related to her own artistic research practice into night practices.
The workshop is at Visible Records on Tuesday, November 12, from 6pm to 7pm and the workshop will be an hour long. And then there’ll be a casual space after where we’ll be sharing some Guatemalan food and tea and just have casual conversation with each other and the artist.
Ben Larsen
So for those who aren’t as familiar, could you tell us more about the other types of events that take place in Ruffin Hall?
Elena Yu
So the Art Department holds a number of events that involve undergraduate students, but also many artists who are visiting and exhibiting in Ruffin Gallery, which is a small gallery in Ruffin Hall, which is our studio art department building, and we have about three to four exhibitions a year of visiting artists from Virginia, but also the wider country and even international artists. And those exhibitions are open five days a week to the general public to just walk into the building and check them out. And we also have exhibition opening receptions and other public programs like artist talks and panel discussions. Our current exhibition is called New Growth, 10 years of Art Lab at Mountain Lake Biological Station. It was curated by two Richmond based curators and artists named Sarah Irvin and Tracy Stonestreet, and it brings together nine artists, largely from the northeast and Virginia area, who participated in Art Lab, which is a residency that brings artists together with scientists in a beautiful, mountainous setting for them to make their work. And on Friday, we have the opening reception and a panel discussion in which two UVA biologists will be on a panel with three of the exhibition artists. The current exhibition at Ruffin gallery will be open through December 6. It’s open Monday through Friday, from 9am to 5pm
Ben Larsen
More information about the gallery and the visiting artist lecture series can be found on art.as.virginia.edu. Arts This Week is supported by the UVA Arts Council and Piedmont Virginia Community College, PVCC Arts presents a rich array of dance music, theater and visual arts programming. Learn more@pvcc.edu
