Andrew Wyeth at Kuerner Farm: The Eye of the Earth

LaChapelle: Dear Sonja, a special retrospective exhibition featuring more than 80 works spanning 40 years of the artist's career. An opening reception with the artist and curator will be held Thursday, Feb. 27 from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.<p>David LaChapelle was born in Connecticut in 1963 and attended high school at the North Carolina School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. Originally enrolled as a painting student with a reverence for art history, he developed his analog photograph-editing technique by hand painting negatives to achieve an abstract spectrum of color before processing his film.</p><p>At age seventeen LaChapelle moved to New York City. Following his first photography show at 303 Gallery, he was hired by Andy Warhol to work at Interview magazine. Through his mastery of color, unique composition, and imaginative narratives, LaChapelle began to expand the genre of photography. By 1997 the New York Times predicted he "is certain to influence the work of a new generation ... in the same way that Mr. [Richard] Avedon pioneered so much of what is familiar today" in portrait and fashion photography.</p><p>In the decades since, LaChapelle has become one of the most published photographers globally, and many of his works have become iconic archetypes of America in the twenty-first century. Featuring over eighty prints, drawings, and videos across the NCMA's two campuses, David LaChapelle: Picture Show (NCMA) and Dear Sonja, (NCMA Winston-Salem) honor the artist's journey over the past four decades. This section of the artist's retrospective surveys many of his iconic, staged tableau works and interpretive series, including Deluge and Jesus Is My Homeboy.&nbsp;</p><p>David LaChapelle: Dear Sonja, is co-curated by David LaChapelle Studio and Maya Brooks, and organized by the North Carolina Museum of Art. This exhibition is made possible, in part, by the North Carolina Department of Natural and Cultural Resources; the North Carolina Museum of Art Foundation, Inc.; and the William R. Kenan Jr. Endowment for Educational Exhibitions. Research for this exhibition was made possible by Ann and Jim Goodnight/The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Fund for Curatorial and Conservation Research and Travel.</p><p><br></p>" />

artist Leigh Ann Hallberg</a> creates large-scale abstract paintings inspired by her journey through local landscapes, including the Reynolda landscape. Hallberg, who has taught painting at Wake Forest University since 1999, chose a square format for the series, which she says leaves the viewer’s understanding of the work open—the abstract painting is neither portrait nor landscape. Instead, it is a pretend space in which the viewer is able to reconsider and reimagine their experience of nature through the works.</p><p>Hallberg employs a variety of color palettes and metal leaf. She uses the medium of watercolor in order to pull out its inherent qualities of flow, dripping, and puddling, which she considers nearly indexical with substances of the natural world: water, soil, and vegetation. In fact, most of the watercolor pigments are derived from materials found in the earth. The metal leaf invokes the idea of time and its passage, as the viewer’s perception of the leaf (reflective, a void, a light) shifts over the course of the day, under various lighting conditions and viewing angles.</p><p><br></p>" />