Workhouse Arts Center is presenting an art installation featuring local artists whose inspirations are directly reflected in their work. The installation, “Reference,” which runs through April 5, aims to engage the viewer with both the artists’ work and the creative processes behind them; focusing on how artists draw inspiration and artistic processes from one another.
“I’m interested in the multitude of processes and materials contemporary artists can bring around a central theme,” says Erin Devine, curator of the exhibit.
Presenting artist Sue Wrbican, of Alexandria, exemplifies the idea that inspiration is contagious in her photographs entitled “Biography of Catastrophe” that were inspired by the work of surrealist painter Kay Sage. “I sensed a resonance with Sage’s painting ‘In the Third Sleep’ with some of the work I’d been doing previously and wanted to experience something close to the conditions and physicality of her vision,” she says. In one photograph, Wrbican worked towards the atmosphere of Sage’s work by incorporating the hanging sails and desolate landscape from “In the Third Sleep” but made them her own by adding an acrobat and a sense of wild movement to the piece.
Fairfax artist Dana Cibulski is also presenting her piece “The Caged Bird Sings,” which is a multi-media work inspired by both Maya Angelou’s death and Vincent Van Gogh’s final painting. Rather than a simple painting, Cibulski includes objects she finds at antique stores and yard sales as well as incorporating her background as a writer by including some kind of text in her work.
“Reference” will make its viewers think not only about the art presented but also about how artists are constantly building off one another’s work and creating something new out of something old. —Sophia Rutti
(March 2015)
