New exhibitions to open at Art After Hours

WMA will open new exhibitions on the evening of Thursday, April 21 at its monthly Art After Hours event, which will be on view until June 25, 2022.

Sonya Yong James: The Eye of a Needle features an installation of works from the Atlanta-based artist, with a focus on repurposed cloth and thread as mediums to examine the intersection of shared cultural mythologies and domesticity. Meticulous manipulation of materials, like combining techniques like weaving, knitting, spinning, dyeing, felting animal hair and sewing, juxtapose these with ceramic and found objects.

Sonya Yong James has exhibited in galleries and museums such as the Zeitgeist Gallery, Nashville; Whitespace Gallery, Atlanta; Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia; Atlanta Contemporary; Ogden Museum of Southern Art; Albany Museum of Art, Albany, GA; and the Zuckerman Museum of Art; Kennesaw, GA. She was formerly a resident at the Studio Artists Program at Atlanta Contemporary and is represented by Whitespace Gallery. Sonya Yong James: The Eye of a Needle was originally organized by the Abroms Engel Institute for the Visual Arts at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and curated by Tina Ruggieri.

A second exhibition highlights an Alabama artist in Exquisite Disorientation: Sarah Marshall, featuring hand-dyed fabric works and quilts, which incorporate various printmaking techniques like screenprinting, cyanotype, and relief printing. Influenced by interests such as language, reading and book objects, architecture, and biological science, Marshall focuses on the processes of printmaking and drawing. Her works on paper and fabric show organic forms that become portraits and characters; repeated in various environments, these characters examine our ideas about decision-making and the ways we treat each other.

The daughter of a reference librarian and a composer, Marshall grew up near Baltimore, Maryland. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Carnegie Mellon University in 1992 and, in 1999, her Master of Fine Arts degree from The University of Iowa. Sarah is currently employed as an Associate Professor of Art at The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa.

Additional exhibitions on view include the Helen Keller Art Show of Alabama, a juried exhibition of work created by Alabama students with visual impairments, blindness, and deafness (on view until May 21, 2022), Sara Bowen: The Witch Doctor’s Chapel, and Selections from the Permanent Collection, an ongoing display of works held in the public trust by WMA.

Exhibitions will open during Art After Hours on Thursday, April 21st, from 5:30 p.m. until 8:00 p.m. Admission is free for members, and $5 for not-yet members. Art After Hours will offer a cash bar and artmaking stations.

Above: Sonya Yong James, Spirit is a Bone (detail), 2020, Handspun bedsheets, wool, linen, cotton, coyote teeth, crow bones, dog ashes, and mixed media, 6′ feet x 24 feet

Image courtesy of the artist.