Shockoe Artspeak

In his 1875 novel The Mysterious Island, Jules Verne wrote that “solitude, isolation, are painful things, and beyond human endurance.” For anyone who has experienced real isolation, it is very easy to agree. Isolation can be pure hell, so why do we as artists and designers romanticize the idea of being by ourselves, struggling against everything in ...

You can almost hear Capt. James T. Kirk say it: “Space: the final frontier…” The thought behind the opening lines to Star Trek are pretty clear: there is a lot of nothing out there and there is bound to be something in it. And while the classic television show may have posited space as the ...

Summertime has a lot of connotations. We all think of beaches, long weekends, cookouts and being just a bit more carefree. And you likely have a few songs that get you in the mood for ducking out of work early. Music has a lot of power, and it may not be that different from other ...

After a short hiatus, we are back! And this week’s conversation is entirely fitting to bring up after a break. We all have busy seasons in life: some are for work or school or because we just let things pile up all around us. Whatever the reason is, we need a break some time and ...

Do you remember when you were a kid and someone turned you on to all the great things about art? Do you remember when you were told you could do anything? And then do you remember when everyone started walking that back little by little? They said things like “except you can’t do X” or ...

It seems that the older you get the more you forget. Names, ideas, lines from that song you used to love: no matter what it is, forgetting is difficult to deal with. But what else do we forget? Is it just the inconsequential stuff, or do we have a tendency to get so much into ...

Tell me you’ve heard this word thrown around like it fills every need and gives every artist immediate credibility. If you haven’t, consider yourself lucky. Just like an As Seen on TV product boasts “New and Improved,” innovation seems to be the clarion call of academia. Just like original. Just like unique. Just like… Just ...

“When is the last time you used your imagination?” That’s probably a strange question to hear or read if you are like most folks. In our culture, imagination is something that is weird, off-the-wall, childish or even something you think people should eventually grow out of. But what if it is actually a larger part ...

It’s fair to say that we don’t all find our way into the arts through the same pipelines. While schools and our society push children toward the arts for different reasons, those initial categorizations don’t always shake out over time. Just because you like to draw, just because you might be a bit different from ...

“The world, huh? Kind of ambitious, don’t you think?” You may have a point, but if it makes sense to consider your career or relationships, then it’s not very far-fetched to take an hour and rethink how you understand the world. Besides, big ideas and terms like this are the things we rarely work to ...

This month we held an opening exhibition celebrating the first ten years of our gallery, Shockoe Artspace. We have had an incredible outpouring of support and help as we have weathered the decade-long storm of building, maintaining and growing a non-profit art space dedicated to the holistic flourishing of artists and designers. We wouldn’t be ...

“The world, huh? Kind of ambitious, don’t you think?” You may have a point, but if it makes sense to consider your career or relationships, then it’s not very far-fetched to take an hour and rethink how you understand the world. Besides, big ideas and terms like this are the things we rarely work to ...

Titling work can be stressful. For some, the title of a piece is just an add-on that doesn’t affect the process of making the work very much. For others, it’s hard to even finish a piece before it has a title. Whatever the case may be, titles are no small matter, even though many of ...

When we all start out, whether in school or as a hobbyist, there is a large burden of originality. As our careers progress originality is supplanted by “new” and “next.” Whatever we call this perceived need for constant change, it is exhausting and it might actually make us harder to identify with. For the average ...

It’s kinda hard to be an artist or designer without a studio, right? Conventional wisdom would say yes, but there are more than a few of us who are working out of closets or off kitchen tables. While a dedicated studio might feel like a luxury, any place you get your work done is a ...

There’s that scene in the film Moulin Rouge! where you get a glimpse into the broken down apartment and living conditions of a group of artists who are scraping by in Paris at the start of the twentieth century. There is something oddly romantic about how the artists are relying on each other and scraping ...

It’s January, and everyone tends to be pretty quick to make resolutions, plan out the year, and promise that this one will be better. We’re no different, because we sit down each January and plan out what the next year will look like for the gallery, the podcast and all the hopeful things that are ...

We are a busy society. Whether it is work or school or hobbies, we are constantly in a state of movement. We scroll and consume; we click and binge. We rarely stop and think. And in this perpetual state of movement we can mistake our busyness for productivity and our activity for progress. At times ...

Effort-wise, art school is no walk in the park, but art school doesn’t even compare to the work and sheer number of hours that will be exerted after you receive that little slip of paper from your university. Where art school starts you off on the right foot with a deep skillset and many years ...

While 2020 was not the year any of us planned to have, we have finally found ourselves in a 2021 with a hopefulness that things will turn around. A new year is a time for many of us to make resolutions and start new habits, and, as we enter into the New Year season, it ...