The Floyd Center for the Arts will be debuting a new round of art exhibitions in the three gallery spaces. In the Hayloft Gallery, Elemental: Clay and Glass will feature regional ceramics and glass artists. Cheng Fen Yeh, a watercolor painter and Radford adjunct professor, will be showing in the Falcon Gallery. Printmaking Exhibition will be in the Breezeway Gallery as a group exhibition of a variety of printing processes. The Center invites the community to join us in celebrating these artists with an opening reception on Saturday, April 9 5:00-7:00pm.
Elemental: Clay and Glass will be a group exhibition featuring regional artists who specialize in the media of clay and glass. Each piece exhibited is meant to show viewers the extensiveness of the medium, as well as inspire them to take a class at Center to learn how to work with either clay or glass in these ways. We are welcoming large number of artists to this exhibition and are incredibly grateful for the support of participants. Some of the mediums featured include wheel-thrown clay, hand built ceramics, blown glass, fused glass, flameworked glass, and more. Both functional pieces and fine art pieces will be exhibited.
Opening the same night in the Center’s Falcon Gallery, Cheng Fen Yeh will showcase her exhibition of watercolor paintings. Cheng Fen Yeh was born and raised in Taipei, Taiwan. She received a B.S. degree in art from Campbell University in North Carolina, a M.S. degree in art, and a MFA degree in drawing and painting from Radford University, where she is currently an adjunct faculty of art since 2012. Cheng’s painting is an adaption of eastern training to western styles. She incorporates her early youth training in Chinese brush painting into her Western-styles landscapes, still-life, and portraits.
In the Breezeway Gallery, a group exhibition of printmaking is opening. Through a variety of artists and media, this exhibition is meant to showcase printmaking as a wide-reaching practice with multiple outlets. The Printmaking Exhibition will include works done by screen-printing, eco-printing, rust printing, cyanotype, and more. Becca Imbur, one of the featured artists, says this of printmaking, “I find the practice grounding and meditative. I love being able to find things that people view as trash and turning them into beautiful works of arts. I can use nature to print and I love the science behind it.”.
Additionally, the current exhibition at the Appalachian Center for Photography will remain on display. An extensive collection of large format cameras, along with a specially curated exhibition of photographs done via traditional printing processes is being shown. The large format cameras, on display throughout December, possess unique characteristics, unfamiliar to the modern iPhone photographer of today. The sizing of the equipment allows for a larger image size, extending from 4x5 inches up to 20x24 inches. Photographs featured offer the viewer a fresh look into the history of photographic printing processes. The audience is able to learn about and understand the labor behind platinum palladium prints, albumen prints, gelatin silver prints, and more.
The Appalachian Center for Photography is located adjacent to the Floyd Center for the Arts in Floyd, Virginia. It showcases photography exhibitions from both internationally and regionally known photographers. Founder and Managing Director of the Appalachian Center for Photography, Russ Young, holds a Master's degree in photography from The University of Texas and a Doctorate from Saint Andrews University in Scotland. The Appalachian Center for Photography will be open to the public from March 15th through December 15th every year, and always by appointment, both for individuals and class groups.