Center For The Arts - Caton Merchant Family Art Gallery

The Caton Merchant Family Gallery, located on the first floor of the Candy Factory building, shows nine art exhibits each year. The exhibits feature regional artists as well as works by world-renowned artists such as sculptor Joseph Henry Lonas. The Center sponsors a yearly juried youth art exhibit, featuring artwork created by local high school students. With an open floor plan, the gallery also accommodates a wide range of other activities, including art lectures and music recitals.

Current Exhibit

December 22 – February 1, 2012
Off the Wall #8
Sponsored by Lockheed Martin

The annual exhibit of artwork by local area high school students reaches year number eight. Just as committed as sponsor Lockheed Martin is to making this incredible event happen each year, our area students rise to the challenge to present a body of work that continues to amaze. These students are gaining first-hand experience at showing their work in a professional gallery and do so with great style and grace. How to Enter.

Upcoming Exhibits

February 8 – March 22
A Palette of Paper – the Collages of Megan Coyle
Gallery Talk with Megan Coyle- Feb. 18. 1pm
Snow date Feb. 25
If you can imagine how scissors plying through everyday magazines can give an outcome of surprising and masterful art, then you might imagine the incredible collages of Megan Coyle. Working in classic art genres, Megan breaks down her images piece by piece, evolving them from bits of magazines into whole new, amazing compositions.

March 28 – April 27
Leslie M. Nolan
Outliers
Leslie M. Nolan creates personal, contemporary imagery painted in oil, acrylic and watercolor. Her imagery explores emotional themes through dynamic figures and landscapes, conveying the energy and spirit of modern life by using pattern and intense color and line. Her use of unusual perspective, strong angles and subjects of emotional ambiguity are consistently inviting.

May 3 – June 14
GMU Printmakers Guild
PrintInterest
The George Mason University Printmakers Guild, founded in 2009, is composed of students, faculty, and professional artists from the Washington D.C. area who are skilled in a wide range of printmaking media. The GMU Printmakers Guild focuses on learning, collaboration and sharing printmaking knowledge. They provide demonstrations and hands-on workshops about their techniques for people of all ages.

November 4 – December 16
Jinchul Kim
Segment
An associate professor of painting at Salisbury University, Maryland, Jinchul Kim also has the viewer motion-stopped on viewing his highly realistic work. With his oils capturing moments in space and time, Jinchul Kim says his works are momentary impacts that act as a ‘sparking plug for his inspiration.’ The transitional afterimages are completely stilled in time, frozen in anecdotal ways and executed in a highly mastered and formal style.

September 8 – October 26
Terry Dixon
Re-enslavement Revisited
Telling us that slavery did not end with the Civil War, Terry Dixon presents a body of work depicting African-Americans being forced to work for free from 1865 to 1945. His work is created through abstract digital images with acrylics, oil pastels and inks. Born in Washington D.C., Terry Dixon lives in Chicago where he continues his artistic discipline and is as associate professor of computer arts. Gallery Talk

July 21 – September 1
Joseph Holston,
Prints from Color in Freedom:
Journey Along the Underground Railroad

Seventeen etchings and working studies in the cubist/abstractionist style from Joseph Holston’s series “Color in Freedom,” tells an important story of the chronology of the lives of those who forged the passage to freedom in America. Holston, whose art career spans nearly forty years, is a nationally and internationally exhibited artist.

June 22 – July 15
Multiple Exposures Gallery
Sacred Spaces
A unique blend of quality photographic images representing “Sacred Spaces” from Multiple Exposures Gallery of the Torpedo Factory Art Center, Old Town Alexandria, will be on view. These fine art photographers express an infinite range of creativity from the greatest of sublime to the most tension-poised in their imagery

May 6 – June17
The Artists’ Atelier
Up to sixteen member artists of the Artists’ Atelier of Great Falls, VA present traditional works in oils and photography. Notably, figurative, still life and landscape interpretations dominate this exhibit from an eclectic group of artists, who work in complementary styles.

March 23 – May 2
One/Off
Printmaker and Longwood University art professor Kelly Nelson returns to the CMFG with an even broader view of her aesthetic by introducing the artist group she is a member of, known as One/Off. This group of printmakers has been organizing collective exhibits since their founding in 1983. They embody more than 30 artists who explore their shared interest and versatility in innovative approaches to printmaking. Artwork created by these members is diverse and represents a wide range of singular and combined techniques.

February 9 – March 18
Steve Lessick + Historical Images
Photographer Steve Lessick brings contemporary images in response to his work as a local area Firefighter/EMT. In contrast, this exhibit shows historical images on loan from former Prince William Co. fire fighting days and the MVFC Museum Archives. This unique juxtaposition of our current and former times will bring us all an opportunity for a closer look at our humanity.

Dec. 23 – Feb. 2, 2011
Off the Wall 2010
Sponsored by Lockheed Martin

Going into its seventh year, this annual exhibition from local area high school artists is a fine opportunity to see our youth’s creative talents on display in what is usually for them a first-time professional gallery setting. This yearly juried exhibition has students rising to the challenge of bringing their most insightful and well executed art to be presented to a public audience. Open House: Jan. 8, 3-5pm, Snow date Jan 15th.

The Center for the Arts/Caton Merchant Family Gallery (CFA/CMFG) in support of the mission of the Center for the Arts, serves to enrich the quality of life among all the populations in our area through diverse educational and presentational arts programming of the highest quality. Exhibitions are selected on the extent to which they enhance the Center’s mission and the exhibition policy of the CFA/CMFG.

The Center for the Arts/Caton Merchant Family Gallery will review for the purpose of exhibition all contemporary artists, in any medium, who submit a proposal. By committee, each exhibit will be determined and selected artists will be notified. Any proposal that must be returned to the artist should be labeled as such when submitted along with sufficient return postage. Proposals must be submitted with images for review, these may include slides, CD, photographs or high quality laser printed sheets.

Due to the sensitivity of an adapted re-use building the CFA/CMFG will hold restrictions on size, proportions, weights of objects and installations. Installations will be considered on a very limited basis.