Welcome to Artful Weekend

-our listing of area art exhibits and events-

This weekend: April 2024 Open Exhibit and And Sew It Goes by Susan Lapham at the League; Inner Gardens by Abol Bahadori at McLean Project for the Arts; Secret Places: Photography by Claire Wright at Washington Printmakers Gallery; and When Tomorrow Arrives We Will Love Life by Abed Elmajid Shalab at Hamilton Artists.

April 2024 Open Exhibit

Diverse artworks by member artists are the feature of Open Exhibits at The Art League. This month, 99 artworks—painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, fiber art, ceramics, and mixed media—are on view. The April 2024 Open Exhibit was juried by Margaret Winslow, Head Curator and Curator of Contemporary Art at the Delaware Art Museum, and is on view in The Art League Gallery through May 6.

And Sew It Goes by Susan Lapham

In her solo exhibit, And Sew it Goes, Susan J. Lapham displays a collection of large-scale sewn collages, playfully constructed from dozens of small bits of fabric. Inspired by eclectic architecture, complex machinery, and outlandish arrangements, her work pushes the limits of balance, proportion, and symmetry to evoke delight, humor and joy within its viewers. And Sew It Goes is on veiw in The Art League Gallery through May 6.

Inner Gardens: Works by Abol Bahadori

Abol Bahadori has won accolades in recent Art League exhibits for his striking, multi-layered, mixed media abstracts. Now, paintings from his Architectural  and Perspective series are featured in Inner Gardens, part of the Spring Solos exhibition at McLean Project for the Arts (MPA).

Abol describes the paintings in his exhibit as an interplay between artificial and natural, solid and fluid, geometrical and organic, and abstract versus real. “I explore the space between the recognizable and unfamiliar, unveiling the unknown or forgotten. I am honored to be selected by the McLean Project for the Arts for this show.”

MPA is hosting an artist talk with Abol and fellow Spring Solos artists Osvaldo Mesa and Laura Grothaus on Saturday, June 1 at 11 a.m., and a Tea & Talk on Tuesday, June 4, at 11 a.m. Inner Gardens is on view through June 15; 1234 Ingleside Avenue, McLean, Virginia.

Secret Places: Photography by Claire Wright

Self-taught photographer Claire Wright believes places are primarily experienced, and the best pictures are taken in familiar places that are truly known. A place can be a memory, a feeling, a physical experience; and the image created is an effort to convey these feelings or experiences. Photographs in Secret Places, Wright’s solo show at Washington Printmakers Gallery, weaves the macro and the micro, the static and dynamic, the cold and the warm to represent a special place, special in a personal sense. It is on view through April 28. Write will be in the gallery discussing her work on Friday, April 12 and Sunday, April 8, during gallery hours; 1675 Wisconsin Avenue NW, Washington, D.C.

Abed Elmajid Shalabi: When Tomorrow Arrives We Will Love Life 

Hamiltonian Artists presents Abed Elmajid Shalabi’s solo exhibition When Tomorrow Arrives We Will Love Life. Titled after Mahmoud Darwish’s poem A State of Siege (2002), this solo exhibition will present new and recent sculptural works that confront the realities of the post-oil Arab world and lean into the question of the future.

Shalabi’s material vernacular ranges from fragile ceramics to commercial concrete. Castings of vehicular and industrial objects, like construction truck seats, gas pumps, shock-resistant rubber mats, and truck beds function as emotional provocations—interrogating the illusions of progress, safety, and direction that have been prescribed by the Western gaze. By exposing surface cracks, emptiness, and other moments of vulnerability, Shalabi pushes against the speed of modernity and the ways in which its false promises alter our connection to the body, gender, and self.

Join Shalabi for an Artist Walk-through, Saturday, April 13 at 3 p.m. When Tomorrow Arrives We Will Love is on view through May 4; 1353 U Street NW, Washington, D.C.

Enjoy the weekend!