Biography
Mark St. John Erickson covers Hampton Roads museums for the Daily Press. In addition to sifting through new exhibits and other museum events ...
Watercolor artists strut their stuff
May 11, 2013
Like many of their fruity brethren, pears and strawberries have provided the subject for innumerable watercolor still lifes in the past — yet most of these earnest efforts have produced middling if not worse results at best.
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Art teachers shine in juried exhibit
March 24, 2013
Hampton painter Christi Harris is nothing if not an artist who knows how to get the most out of unpromising subject matter.
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X-Ray art bewilders and beguiles
March 9, 2013
Thomas B. Kinraide was an electrical engineer first and only secondly an artist.
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Keyboards enriched colonial lifestyle
February 24, 2013
Even before they opened Colonial Williamsburg's first exhibition buildings, the pioneering stewards of the Historic Area recognized the importance of music in recreating the look, sound and feel of 18th-century life in an Anglo-American setting.
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Newport News arts center features workplace posters
February 10, 2013
When Frenchman Jules Cheret perfected the printing process that produced the first modern full-color poster in the late 1800s, he quickly combined with such talents as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec to turn the streets of Paris into an art museum.
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'Tramp art' grew from available supply of materials
January 27, 2013
Few things say more about the potential of home-grown artistic talent than the eye-popping procession of richly carved and layered "tramp art" that cropped up in America between the Civil War and the Great Depression.
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Chrysler showcases treasures at Willoughby-Baylor House
January 12, 2013
Inside the late-1700s rooms of Norfolk's historic Willoughby-Baylor House, curator Alex Mann of the Chrysler Museum of Art is carrying out an experiment in perception that's well worth seeing.
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Best 2012 art shows: Hampton Roads had some stunners
December 29, 2012
Five is far too small a number to encompass all the visual arts shows that stood out from the crowd in what was a remarkably good year in Hampton Roads and Southeast Virginia.
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Peninsula Glass Guild mounts annual show in Hampton
December 22, 2012
Few people imagined where it all might lead when the newly organized Peninsula Glass Guild staged its first juried exhibition at the Charles H. Taylor Arts Center in Hampton 25 years ago.
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New exhibit casts Tiffany in fresh light
December 9, 2012
Before the Chrysler Museum of Art broke ground on a $24 million expansion and renovation project this summer, it packed up one of the nation's broadest and most select collections of work by Art Nouveau genius Louis Comfort Tiffany.
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Black art from the Smithsonian visits Williamsburg
November 25, 2012
African-American art didn't spring to life fully formed during the 1920s.
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Miniature art explores big world of small works
November 11, 2012
Virtually any way you want to slice it up, a painting, drawing or photograph that measures no more than 20 square inches in size is unusually small.
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'50 Great Americans' marks PFAC's 50th birthday
October 27, 2012
A lot of art exhibits get their impact from various individual works strung out on the walls like islands.
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Folk portraits span range of approaches
October 13, 2012
Nearly 173 years after the invention of photography transformed the way we see ourselves and the world, it can be hard to understand the simple folk art portraits through which so many Americans of the late 1700s and early 1800s hoped to be remembered.
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Virginia landscape shines in Hampton exhibit
September 29, 2012
Landscape painting has such wide and seemingly natural appeal today that it's hard to imagine a time when it didn't.
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Ancient Greeks remade human figure
September 15, 2012
More than 2,600 years after Athenian artists started one of the most influential revolutions in the history of art, few people recognize that there was ever such a consequential war of taste — or that so much of what distinguishes Western art today reflects the triumph of the victors.
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Veterans' uniforms make potent artwork
September 1, 2012
Four years after his last day of combat duty in Iraq, former army field artilleryman Drew Cameron donned his desert fatigues and picked up a pair of scissors.
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Dark humor marks best in show
August 4, 2012
Start with the mischievous humor found inDr. Seuss' children's books.
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Self-taught artists chase inner visions
July 8, 2012
What drives a person to pick up a chain saw, welder or tin snips and wield them as an artist might instead of for a utilitarian purpose?
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Warhol portraits still look new
June 23, 2012
Twenty-five years after his untimely death in early 1987, Pop Art pioneer Andy Warhol is still best known for the subversive, strangely deadpan way in which his paintings and prints make you think twice about the most familiar icons of American consumer culture.
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100 Hampton Roads painters
June 9, 2012
With all the artists working in Hampton Roads, you'd think there'd be a lot of shows conducting in-depth surveys of this talent.
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Peninsula talent tops TAA show
May 27, 2012
At 6 inches tall and just 8 across, James Warwick Jones' small studies of ancient Indian pueblos in the American Southwest may not have the immediate impact of some art show award winners.
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Telling stories with an artist's brush
May 12, 2012
Any time you stumble across paintings as lush and full of texture as those of Nicole McCormick Santiago, knowing where to start isn't the problem.
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Precise realist works rule watercolor show
April 28, 2012
The last time North Carolina artist Dan Smith visited the Charles H. Taylor Arts Center in Hampton, he conjured up a striking solo exhibit that left more than a few gallery goers shaking their heads.
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Exhibit showcases artists who teach
March 31, 2012
In a world where slick bumper sticker maxims are often mistaken for profound thinking, it can be hard to get past the time-worn cliche about teachers.
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Muscarelle prints grab the eyes
March 3, 2012
When you leaveFrance'sfamous Ecole Des Beaux Arts after just one day, you're probably marching to your own drummer.
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ARTIST OFFERS UP HIS VISIONS FROM THE SOUTHERN SWAMP
February 12, 2012
By MARK ST. JOHN ERICKSON Daily Press
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Animal art gets a boost from Nature
February 6, 2012
Most American wildlife artists don't think twice when it comes to taking the super-realistic path pioneered so spectacularly by the great John James Audubon in the early 1800s.
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Chrysler gives new life to post-war holdings
January 21, 2012
Despite the high regard in which his namesake museum is held, Walter P. Chrysler Jr. didn't always have it so good when it came to his standing among other art collectors.
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Designer crafts from a Newport News home
October 22, 2011
Most people furnish their homes with comfort and utility in mind and give only a passing nod to matters of style and design.
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Secrets revealed in NC slipware exhibit
October 8, 2011
The first collectors of North Carolina slipware may not have known much about their prey when they began snapping up "Moravian" pottery in the late 1800s.
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Small town memories from the Dismal Swamp
September 25, 2011
Corapeake, N.C., is the kind of small rural Southern town that you can easily miss if you sneeze while you're driving.
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New England landscapes build on tradition
September 11, 2011
If you could gather all the artists who have been infatuated by the rugged New England coast over the years, you'd have a pretty good American art museum.
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Newport News shipyard photos reach back 125 years
August 28, 2011
If you've ever taken a good look at the battleship USS Wisconsin outside Nauticus and the Hampton Roads Naval Museum in Norfolk, it probably didn't take long to recognize that you were in the presence of something special.
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Peninsula Fine Arts Center exhibit explores the Virginia landscape on paper
August 13, 2011
Look closely at one of Maruta Racenis' charcoal drawings of a Virginia landscape and you could be surprised by its depth and muscle.
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Virginia Artists gains ground again
July 30, 2011
If there's one juried show that Hampton Roads artists and art lovers alike should keep their eyes on, it's the Virginia Artists competition at the Charles H. Taylor Arts Center in Hampton.
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Art of paper unfolds at Courthouse Galleries
July 15, 2011
Recycled newsprint and magazines hardly seem like the most promising of materials when it comes to making high art.
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Chrysler Museum explores Civil War images
July 1, 2011
Ulysses S. Grant had just taken command of the Union army when — in March 1864 — he posed for photographer Mathew Brady.
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Assemblage and collage enrich Hampton art show
June 19, 2011
When pioneering French artist Marcel Duchamp unveiled his most influential work in New York nearly a century ago, even the avant-garde artists who organized the exhibit were stunned.
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Architectural prints obsessed by detail
June 4, 2011
Long before connoisseur Walter P. Chrysler Jr. brought his vast holdings to the Norfolk Museum of Arts and Science in 1971, the museum was making its mark as a collector of prints and drawings.
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Retrospective showcases W&M artist
May 22, 2011
In any estimation of Hampton Roads' best and most influential artists, you have to have Marlene Jack.
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Tidewater Art Alliance flexes some muscle
May 8, 2011
For more than 100 years, the Tidewater Art Alliance and its precursors have played an indispensable role in nurturing the visual arts in Hampton Roads.
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Movement and energy in Pfac sculpture show
April 22, 2011
No matter how many times you walk around one of Richard Hunt's sculptures, chances are you'll find yourself wanting to go back and take another look.
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Watercolors conjure potent view of Christ's life
March 18, 2011
When French painter James Tissot unveiled his ambitious new depiction of "The Life of Christ" at the Paris Salon of 1894, the epic though still unfinished series of nearly 300 watercolors was a sensation.
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Sculpture fools the eye and disarms the mind
March 11, 2011
Not long after stepping into the eerie new show of ultra-realistic sculpture at the Contemporary Art Center of Virginia you may start to feel like you stumbled into a world where time stands still.
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Ife portrait show offers astonishing realism
February 25, 2011
Once-in-a-lifetime art exhibits don't come along very often.
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Peninsula Glass Guild shines again in juried exhibit
January 14, 2011
When the fledgling artists of the Peninsula Glass Guild staged their first juried show 23 years ago, it was hard to feel encouraged about their future.
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Mark Erickson's top art shows of 2010 Hampton Roads
December 30, 2010
If any single visual arts attraction should rank at the top of heap in 2010, it has to be the May 1 opening of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' new James W. and Frances G. McGlothlin Wing. The $150 million structure not only added 165,000 square feet of space but also went a long way toward taming the confusing knot of traffic patterns that left many visitors feeling lost as they tried to navigate the mishmash of four previous additions.
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Miniature artwork produces big show at Hampton arts center
November 7, 2010
In a world where size almost always matters, it can be hard to understand the appeal of the small.
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Pfac stages competitive show with Biennial 2010 selections
October 24, 2010
A lot of juried exhibitions have an unpredictable bent, with out-of-town jurors choosing artist after artist whose name is unfamiliar or unexpected among the host venue's regular patrons.
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Chrysler photo show plumbs the national character
September 11, 2010
Few things attract our attention more than the face of another human.
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Peninsula Fine Arts Center explores strange world of outsider art
August 14, 2010
In the big, bustling and unruly world of contemporary folk art, it's sometimes hard to get a handle on what you're seeing.
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Virginia Artists struts its stuff at Hampton art center
July 31, 2010
When the Bay Days Juried Art Exhibition revamped its name and focus in 2007, the tired, 25-year-old show not only picked itself up but also pulled off an unexpected resurgence.
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Self-taught artists explore sacred landscape in ODU exhibit
July 10, 2010
For more than a thousand years, Christian imagery and ideas dominated the landscape of Western art.
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Hampton Roads artists excel in watercolor
June 12, 2010
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Landmark photos explore anguish of mercury poisoning
May 29, 2010
Sad is too small a word to describe the depth and complexity of the feelings prompted by W. Eugene Smith's landmark 1970s pictures of mercury poisoning victims.
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Uncommon paintings focus on common object
May 15, 2010
If you think there are no more surprises in the world of art, go take a good hard look at "The Common Object."
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Simple and familiar subjects become new in Pfac photo exhibit
April 18, 2010
Most people don't think of the simple and the familiar as promising artistic subjects.
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Hampton Roads photographers shine in 26th Suffolk juried exhibit
April 4, 2010
Being in the right place at the right time certainly helped Newport News photographer Robert Brooks last summer when he stopped to snap a shot of rolling grassland from a deserted Colorado highway.
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2010 Spring Season: 5 Upcoming art exhibits in Hampton Roads
March 21, 2010
Despite the rotten economy and a lot of belt tightening in exhibit schedules, Spring 2010 is shaping up to be an usually good season for Hampton Roads and the visual arts. Here are five upcoming shows and events you'll want to put on your "must-see, must-do" list.
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Living Museum showcases famed modernist wildlife artist Charley Harper
March 6, 2010
Most American wildlife artists don't think twice about following the super-realistic path blazed by pioneering talents Mark Catesby and John Jay Audubon in the 1700s and 1800s.
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Installation artist stumbles in Old Dominion University exhibit
February 20, 2010
Like many good contemporary artists, Annette Lawrence knows the hidden value of working with humble materials.
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Newport News artist blows up traditional woodcut print to send a message
February 7, 2010
John Miles Runner's medium of choice may be the traditional woodcut print rooted in 19th-century Japan.
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Chrysler Museum rediscovers the visionary energy of action painting
January 24, 2010
Action painters turned the art world upside down when their big, bewildering canvases began showing up in New York City during the early 1950s.