Welcome to Artful Weekend, our guide to fun and interesting ways to enjoy art in person or virtually.

This weekend: Bryan Sieling: Re|Context and the August Open Exhibit at the League; Stephen Lewis at Terzo Piano; Robert Schultz’s Memorial Leaves at Athenaeum; and Andrea Limauro’s American Civil War at Culture House.

August 2021 Open Exhibit

Our August Open Exhibit, juried by Eisner Award-winning author and former Library of Congress graphic arts curator Martha Kennedy, is now on view! Open exhibits are a great way to view the range of mediums and styles of our member artists.

This month’s show features some dynamic streetscapes, including Hidden Beauty, a photograph by Soohyun Kim that received an honorable mention; Chinatown, D.C., an oil painting by Sally V. Parker; Evening View of the City, an acrylic painting by Cecily Corcoran that also received honorable mention; and Baltimore Street, Cida Berry’s moody black-and-white photograph framed on vellum with gold leaf.

Portraiture is also prominent this month. They include The Wayfarer, an oil painting by Ann Wallace; Olivia, Edward Stolar’s red chalk drawing; Woman in Madina, a color photograph by Dian McDonald; and Lucy at the Beach, a gouache painting by Ralph Paine. See the entire exhibit in-person in the Gallery, through Sunday, September 5, or view it online.

Bryan Sieling: Re|Context

Stephen Lewis

Stephen Lewis first came into the D.C. art scene in the late 1990s and early 2000s with scathing satirical paintings depicting political figures and corporate giants. His current exhibit at Terzo Piano is a departure from topical themes and features more than 70 of Lewis’ newer works—oils on canvas and ink wash paintings—that focus on landscape and the world as he observes it; on view through August 29, 1515 14th Street, N.W.

Robert Schultz: Memorial Leaves

Artist and poet Robert Schultz responds to Walt Whitman’s war writings in Memorial Leaves. The exhibition probes the secret history of the U.S. Civil War, face by face, in portraits of combatants and those who mourned their loss. The chlorophyll print process used here enacts Whitman’s central
metaphor of leaves and life’s renewals, and many of the portraits have been made using leaves that grew from ground once soaked by the blood of combatants, northern and southern, black and white; on view through September 19 at The Athenaeum Gallery, 2o1 Prince Street, Alexandria, VA, and online.

Andrea Limauro: American Civil War

Silver Spring, MD-based artist Andrea Limauro speculates that the bloodiest conflict fought by the United States did not end in 1865 at Appomattox Court House, but instead moved to a prolonged 150 year “cold war” that culminated but did not end with confederate flag waving rioters storming the Capitol on January 6 of 2021. American Civil War, a body of work that Limauro created during the tumultuous past year, explores how the battles of the American Civil War continue to be fought, not in trenches by two conventional armies but with laws and law enforcement, courts and Congress, presidential campaigns and protest signs, pop culture and billboards, protests and acts of terrorism, acts of individual resistance and defiance; on view at Culture House through August 28, 700 Delaware Avenue, SW.

Enjoy the Weekend!