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Ben Larsen:

The Fralin Museum of Art is hosting a Miniature Abstract Painting Workshop on May 15 to pair with the Joan Mitchell exhibition up until July. For Arts This Week, we spoke with art instructor Ursula Bell and curator Jordan Love.

Ursula Bell:

My name is Ursula Bell. I’m the studio Program Specialist at the Fralin and Thursday, I’m going to be teaching a workshop based off of the Joan Mitchell exhibition that we have, and it’s just kind of based off of her process of painting and how she creates her artwork. So we’re going to kind of explore that look at the piece of artwork, and then everyone will get a chance to make their own miniature artwork that we’ll get to go, if people would like, can go into our little museum that we have outside of the Fralin. So it’s kind of an event to understand the artist, but also make something that will maybe contribute to the museum itself. So any UVA students, members, I believe the website says it’s 16 plus. So if you have a teen, local teen, who wants to join the workshop too, they are absolutely welcome.

Jordan Love:

My name is Jordan Love, and I’m the Carol R. Angle Academic Curator at the Fralin Museum of Art. So I work with faculty and students, and I also do some curating. So I curated the Joan Mitchell exhibition to highlight kind of three aspects. And one is that the Joan Mitchell foundation is celebrating the 100th anniversary of her birth, and wanted as many museums as possible to participate in getting all their Joan Mitchells out on view in celebration of her and her impact. And so we said we would be happy to participate. We have five Joan Mitchell paintings, plus a photograph of her. And so it was an opportunity to get that on on view. But also we wanted to tell the story of conservation, because we had recently had many of the Joan Mitchells that we have conserved by Scott Nolley, who is the chief conservator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, and he had found a lot of interesting things in the process of cleaning and repairing her works. So we wanted to tell that aspect of the story, which is not something a lot of the public know about. It’s really behind the scenes, and it’s really kind of fascinating to learn about the kinds of things you can find out from conservators. And the third thing we wanted to talk about was how these Joan Mitchells came into our collection. They came via a UVA alum, Alan grow who was class of 1949 who went on to run the stable Gallery in New York City in the 1950s which became a champion of many modern artists who are household names today. So we wanted to kind of honor that as well. The exhibition will be running through mid July, that second Sunday in July. So feel free to come and take a look, and also go to the Joan Mitchell Foundation website, because they have a list of all 70 museums who are participating. So if you’re a huge Joan Mitchell fan, I suggest that you take the ultimate road trip and use the map that the foundation has laid out and you can see a whole slew of Joan Mitchell’s this summer.

Ben Larsen:

Could you tell us more about your roles at the museum.

Ursula Bell:

Well, I can say I’m very new to the Fralin the studio position is something that came up. I’ve been a practicing artist, but also an art teacher, a high school art teacher, for the past seven years. So that’s my experience. I went to VCU in Richmond, so that’s where I have my art training. So I think of myself both as a teacher and an artist, but I love teaching art, so I’m kind of taking that experience I have in the public school classroom and bringing some of that to the Fralin for especially for this workshop. But I’m excited to work with a lot more. Like ages the museum kind of gives that inspiration, having, like, the actual pieces of artwork there to work with is very, very cool, and I’m enjoying bringing that into, like the classroom now with this position.

Jordan Love:

So a lot of people don’t know what an academic curator does, and so I’ve been here at at the Fralin for 13 years, so it’s been a while. Now what I do is I work directly with faculty to connect their expertise with objects in our collection, so that our objects can be part of their teaching, they can be part of their research. And I also teach a museums internship class that both uses Museum Studies themes, but also the class interns with the Fralin and our sister institution, the Kluge-Ruhe Aboriginal art collection, and kind of get that hands on experience to potentially go out and then have a career in museums. So I teach that every year, and also run medical school art observation training programs. So we’ve partnered with the medical school. We train all 161 first year med students with art observation workshops. And we also do a program called Heart of Medicine, where we use art to talk about end of life care and issues of death and dying. We’ve worked with Hospice of the Piedmont, we’ve worked with medical and nursing groups, and really found that art is a great entry point for having those tough discussions, and that art can contribute to a broader category of learning. So that’s what I do, a whole slew of things on top of curating.

Ben Larsen:

And how can people stay up to date on everything that you all do?

Jordan Love:

Keep your eye on the website, because we always have a lot of fun things going on, from wine tastings to art making to family events to just new exhibitions opening every semester.

Ursula Bell:

And you can visit the Fralin website to sign up for the workshop Thursday at 5:30 and all the registrations on the website under the events at the Fralin.

Ben Larsen:

You can attend the Miniature Abstract Painting Workshop on May 15th and see the Joan Mitchell exhibition until July 20th. More information about the museum and its initiatives can be found uvafralinartmuseum.virginia.edu. Arts This Week is supported by the UVA Arts Council and Piedmont Virginia Community College. PVCC Arts presents a rich array of dance music, theater and visual arts programming. Learn more at pvcc.edu.