CommuniTEA Salon
This salon seamlessly weaves together meditation, cultural exploration, and community discussion, offering participants a “Think & Do” experience where they not only reflect on critical issues but also co-create solutions for a healthier, more connected future.
Tea will be available to blend and sip and heal.
Co-work at HOME
February 19-April 15 at Mason Exhibitions Arlington
Every Thursday (between the above dates): 12-4pm
Come for collaboration, quiet, research, or just new walls to be surrounded by.
Celebrating Lisa Brown, Melani Douglass, and Former Anacostia Arts Center Creative Director- Terence Nicholson
Living the Prescription brings together the photographic work of Lisa Brown and the multidisciplinary visual practice of Terence Nicholson to explore how home becomes a site of care, memory, and cultural continuity when lived day to day. In conversation with Melani N. Douglass’s The Prescription is HOME: A Manifesto, this parallel exhibition shifts from declaration to presence—revealing how the manifesto’s call is embodied in the everyday acts that shape our lives and relationships.
3-3:15: Assemble and walk over to Founders Gallery (3351 Fairfax Drive, Arlington VA)
3:15-3:45: Tour Living the Prescription- Lisa Brown and Terence Nicholson
Head back to Mason Exhibitions Arlington: 3601 Fairfax Drive, Arlington VA
4-5pm:
Moderated panel discussion
Moderators: Alissa Maru + Jess Randolph
Panelists: Carole Robinson
Artists: Melani N. Douglass, Lisa Brown and Terence Nicholson
5-6pm:
mix and mingle with libations and snacks
Mason Exhibitions hosts GMU School of Art Professor Emerita, Maria Karametou for a celebration of her debut novel, The Amalgam at Gillespie Gallery in the GMU Art and Design Building on Tuesday, April 14th from 2-4pm. Refreshments will be provided.
Maria Karametou, a first-generation immigrant to the U.S. from Athens, Greece, is a visual artist, writer, curator, and professor whose mixed media works are exhibited internationally in numerous museum and gallery shows that, aside from the U.S., include Germany, Greece, Russia, Bulgaria, Turkey, China, and Korea, and are also in various museum, private, and public collections, including at the Holter Museum, Helena, MT; The Vorres Museum of Contemporary Art, Athens, Greece; the Freddie Mac Corporation; and the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Her most recent solo exhibition, “Kallos,” was at the Katzen Museum, Washington, D.C. Karametou has organized and curated several international projects, such as EcoReflections (Resim ve Heykel Müzesi Galerisi, Ankara, Turkey) and participated in international collaborative projects, like Penelopeia, sponsored by the Presidency of the European Union. Her long career as a university professor includes, among others, a Fulbright Research Scholar award.
As a writer, Karametou has published short stories and poems in literary magazines, including Poet Lore, The RavensPerch, A Bilingual Anthology of Greek American Poetry, and Bethesda Magazine, after receiving an award in the Washington Metropolitan Area Short Story Competition. Other publications involve numerous artist statements, artist books, and essays. Presentations include reading her poems at the D.C. Embassy of Greece.
She is a Professor Emerita, having recently left her tenured position at the School of Art, George Mason University, Virginia, where she directed the Drawing Division to devote more time to her studio work and writing.
Inspired by her experiences and history of migration, mobility, and displacement, her work, both visual and literary, relates to identity and our personal journey of self-discovery. The Amalgam is her first novel.
About the Book:
Athens, 1984. All Meta wants is to escape her tyrannical father and the future he demands of her. But when her dying grandmother, Metaxia, presses a mysterious heirloom into her hands—begging her to return it to the lost Greek village in Asia Minor from which she was violently expelled during World War I—Meta makes a promise she doesn’t fully understand.
Fleeing to America in a desperate bid for freedom, Meta must survive on her own after her father cuts her off—penniless, hungry, and clinging to her dream of becoming an artist. Yet the heirloom wrapped in her grandmother’s handkerchief refuses to be forgotten. Years later, a shattering moment forces Meta to confront the life she has built—and the history she has tried to outrun.
Her journey to Turkey becomes a pilgrimage across continents and across time, echoing Metaxia’s own flight from violence decades earlier. As their parallel stories converge, Meta must finally face the truth: can we ever return to the places that made us—or only to the person we were meant to become?
Sweeping, intimate, and deeply human, The Amalgam is the tale of two women bound by survival, exile, and the unbreakable pull of home.
Co-work at HOME
February 19-April 15 at Mason Exhibitions Arlington
Every Thursday (between the above dates): 12-4pm
Come for collaboration, quiet, research, or just new walls to be surrounded by.
This exhibition underscores the deep understanding of paper as a lasting, portable, and democratic vessel for information—one that is easily altered, recyclable, or even destroyed. This notion is manifested in a diverse array of works, including paintings, prints, artist books, graphic designs, collages, and sculptures.
Paper as Politic acts as a cultural petri dish, capturing not only the darker aspects of our times but also interrogating the nuances of deception, criminality, and potential restoration, all while inviting satirical, sublime, judgmental or non-judgmental perspectives. Through various personal explorations, the exhibition consolidates the power of paper as a medium of expression. Its honesty stands in stark contrast to the distortions often present in social media, ultimately recognizing the importance of sustainability in artistic practice.
Co-work at HOME
February 19-April 15 at Mason Exhibitions Arlington
Every Thursday (between the above dates): 12-4pm
Come for collaboration, quiet, research, or just new walls to be surrounded by.
Co-work at HOME
February 19-April 15 at Mason Exhibitions Arlington
Every Thursday (between the above dates): 12-4pm
Come for collaboration, quiet, research, or just new walls to be surrounded by.
Join us for a celebration of the exhibition “The Art of Silence,” a collaborative sculpture installation from art & design and American Sign Language students. Learn more at https://masonexhibitions.org/exhibits/art-of-silence.
Tuesday, March 24, 4:00–6:00PM
Fenwick Gallery (Fenwick Library), George Mason University
Public parking is available at the Rappahannock River or Mason Pond parking decks. Accessible parking is also available behind Fenwick Library on Chesapeake River Lane.
Mason Exhibitions ArlingtonArlington, VA
Sunday, Mar 22 from 2 pm to 4 pm
Please join us for a guided community meditation and sound bath, centering rest and rejuvenation, ease and uplift and the power of presence
Please join us for what will be an amazing gathering for communal rest, ancestral celebration, love, sound and meditation!
Pulling from the tradition of her celebrated CommuniTEA events, artist and curator Mēlani N. Douglass will host a special guided ancestral meditation in tandem with her new exhibition "The Prescription is Home: A Manifesto." This ancestral meditation seeks to walk us through our ancestors' journeys to pick up tools to use in present day. She will be joined by Brooklyn-based sound healing practitioner ArinMaya, who has been holding sound baths, both virtually and in person, to provide healing and ease for a world she believes is sorely in need of more rest, more joy and more ease.
Together we will hold space for attendees to relax, rest, gather and TEA.
This experience is being offered on a sliding scale of $50-$115. Please see below for more details on how to submit payment.
A few notes:
• After you register here, please send your payment via one of the following payment modules:
– Venmo @arinmayalawrence
– CashApp $ArinMayaLawrence
– Zelle arin.m.lawrence [at] gmail [dot] com
• Be sure to bring a yoga mat, a water bottle and cozy socks
• If you'd like, bring a journal for any thoughts/ideas that may come up for you during the guided meditation or sound bath
If you have any questions, please feel free to email arin.m.lawrence [at] gmail [dot] com. We can't wait to see you soon!
Arlington County Library and Mason Exhibitions Arlington affirm the kitchen as a site of learning, preservation, and connection.
Join us for Bring Your Own Supper Club, spring table celebration. This will be a gathering where each person brings their own dinner for themself and commune en plein air. Feel free to bring extra to share. The library will also provide a short group cooking experience with its portable kitchen, with a local chef.
This is scheduled to be an outdoor event (weather permitting)
Co-work at HOME
February 19-April 15 at Mason Exhibitions Arlington
Every Thursday (between the above dates): 12-4pm
Come for collaboration, quiet, research, or just new walls to be surrounded by.
Co-work at HOME
February 19-April 15 at Mason Exhibitions Arlington
Every Thursday (between the above dates): 12-4pm
Come for collaboration, quiet, research, or just new walls to be surrounded by.
Sheryl Oring makes work that activates democracy through art. She is best known for her ongoing project I Wish to Say, in which she sets up a public office and invites members of the public to dictate postcards to the U.S. president, which she types verbatim on a manual typewriter. To date, she has typed more than 5,200 postcards to four presidents from hundreds of locations across the United States. Oring also creates prints, artist books, sculptures, and public artworks that foster dialogue and examine personal and collective histories. Her work has been presented at the U.S. Pavilion of the Venice Architecture Biennale; Bryant Park in Manhattan; the Brooklyn Public Library; the Free Library of Philadelphia; the Washington National Cathedral; and the Jewish Museum Berlin, among many other venues. In 2026, Oring’s work will be featured in America 250: Common Threads at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas.
Oring has received support from the Creative Capital Foundation, Franklin Furnace, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Puffin Foundation, and the North Carolina Council for the Arts. She has completed public art commissions at the San Diego International Airport and the Tampa International Airport, and her work is held in collections including the Library of Congress, the Museum of Modern Art, Tate Britain, and numerous university libraries across the United States. She is the editor of Activating Democracy: The “I Wish to Say” Project (Intellect Books / University of Chicago Press, 2016) and is currently completing a forthcoming book, Secretary to the People: Civic Engagement Through the Art of Sheryl Oring (Intellect Books / University of Chicago Press, 2027), edited by Corey Dzenko.
www.sheryloring.org
This event will be held at the Harris Theater on the GMU Fairfax campus and online via Zoom. RSVP is required to receive the Zoom link via email the day-of!
Co-work at HOME
February 19-April 15 at Mason Exhibitions Arlington
Every Thursday (between the above dates): 12-4pm
Come for collaboration, quiet, research, or just new walls to be surrounded by.
March 1: Anna.log session
1-4pm
Unplug at HOME. Bring your crochet, knitting, a good book, and we’ll have chill vibes to provide an offline session for your life.
Anna.log to honor Anna Murray Douglass of Anacostia, and her legacy of hospitality.
Co-work at HOME
February 19-April 15 at Mason Exhibitions Arlington
Every Thursday (between the above dates): 12-4pm
Come for collaboration, quiet, research, or just new walls to be surrounded by.
CommuniTEA Salon
March 21: 1-4pm at Mason Exhibitions Arlington
This salon seamlessly weaves together meditation, cultural exploration, and community discussion, offering participants a “Think & Do” experience where they not only reflect on critical issues but also co-create solutions for a healthier, more connected future.
Tea will be available to blend and sip and heal.
REGISTRATION RECOMMENDED: First-come, first-served seating. https://arlingtonva.libcal.com/event/16232100
Libraries and exhibitions alike serve as repositories of collective memory. By bringing them together, Arlington County Library and Mason Exhibitions Arlington affirm the kitchen as a site of learning, preservation, and connection.
Join us for Bring Your Own Supper Club, hosted at Mason Exhibitions Arlington.
Lavita Mondie @vitatheveganchef will be utilizing the mobile kitchen to lead us in learning and collective cooking a soup to accompany your meal.
This will be a gathering where each person brings their own dinner for themself--whether from your fridge or picked up on your way to the gallery. Feel free to bring extra to share. The start time is flexible, so please feel free to come when you can. We will provide plenty of seating as well as some fun conversation starters to help you get to know your neighbors and make friends.
While you eat, you can also enjoy the current exhibition on display, "The Prescription is HOME: A Manifesto," a community-sourced, immersive visual arts exhibition by Melani N. Douglass, on view January 23–April 18, 2026.
REGISTRATION RECOMMENDED: First-come, first-served seating. https://arlingtonva.libcal.com/event/16232100
Co-work at HOME
February 19-April 15 at Mason Exhibitions Arlington
Every Thursday (between the above dates): 12-4pm
Come for collaboration, quiet, research, or just new walls to be surrounded by.
Sandy Williams IV is an interdisciplinary artist, filmmaker, and professor. Their work studies the vernacular of time as it exists across social landscapes and as various units of measurement. Williams’s public artworks layer context against disenfranchised memories and often include emancipatory, live, shared experiences.
Williams’s work conjures communal catharsis and operates like an archive.
Williams is the recipient of the 2024 Joan Mitchell Fellowship, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship, and the New York Community Trust Van Lier Fellowship. They have presented solo exhibitions at Palo Gallery (New York), 1708 Gallery (Richmond), the Visual Arts Centre of Clarington (Ontario), Roanoke College (Salem, VA), Telematic Arts (San Francisco), Reynolds Gallery (Richmond), and Second Street Gallery (Charlottesville). Their work has been featured in The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Washington Post, Hyperallergic, and the BBC. Collaborations include Creative Time, CulturalDC, and the Weeksville Heritage Center. Selected group exhibitions and performances include presentations at the Museum of Contemporary Art Virginia Beach, the Arlington Museum of Contemporary Art, the Harnett Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art at VCU, The Shed (New York), Socrates Sculpture Park (New York), Grounds For Sculpture, Martos Gallery (New York), M+B Gallery (Los Angeles), de boer Gallery (Los Angeles), Springsteen (Baltimore), and NADA House (New York). Williams has been an artist in residence at McDowell (New Hampshire), MASS MoCA (Massachusetts), the Atlantic Center for the Arts (Florida), SOMA (Mexico City), ACRE (Chicago), and the University of Cumbria (UK).
This event will be held at the Harris Theater on the GMU Fairfax campus and online via Zoom. RSVP is required to receive the Zoom link via email the day-of!
Inspired by the exhibition The Mirage of Ancient Egypt, this symposium offers an exciting opportunity to explore Egypt in popular culture in more depth.
Topics include how Orientalism informs Egyptologists' interpretation of the evidence for the daily lives of ancient Egyptian queens, and how alien conspiracy theories and pseudoarchaeological narratives create a mirage of the ancient past.
Dr. Jacquelyn Williamson, George Mason University
Assoc. Professor, Art and Archaeology of the Ancient Mediterranean
Dr. David S. Anderson, Radford University
Associate Professor of Anthropological Sciences
Dr. Leslie Anne Warden, Roanoke College
Associate Professor of Art History and Archaeology
A private curator-led tour of the exhibition, The Mirage of Ancient Egypt, will follow the symposium. Refreshments provided!
You are invited to a Veteran's Conversation in conjunction with the art exhibition Material Acts of Resistance by Michèle Colburn. This gathering will explore how art can serve as a powerful medium for reflection, healing, and resistance. Colburn’s mixed-media works—created from materials such as gunpowder, wire, thread, and burnt paper—transform the tools and symbols of conflict into contemplative expressions of endurance, vulnerability, and renewal. Veterans, guests, and community members are invited to engage in dialogue about how creative practices can reframe experiences of conflict, foster resilience, and open space for meaning-making beyond violence.
FUSE Bldg., 3401 Fairfax Dr, Rm. 1327,Arlington, VA 22201
https://www.masonexhibitions.org/exhibitions/materialactsofresistance
The Prescription Is Home, an exhibition that centers home as the first site of consciousness, care, creativity, and community. This photography and socially engaged art installation captures photos from families east of the Anacostia River or with roots there for more than 15 years.
Bring the family for some quality time at the house opening reception and housewarming. Come through for a game of spades or dominoes. Catch up with friends old and new. Learn more about how homes have been a central part of community organizing and progress for communities and families east of the river. Welcome to SE where homes function as collective spaces for gathering, safety, progress, and change.
What to expect:
Card and game tables
Red cups for adults blue cups for kids
Games, music, and conversation
Time to experience the exhibition at your own pace
Come as you are. Stay while you can.
Welcome home.
Join Mason Exhibitions for at the opening reception and housewarming for Prescription is HOME: a Manifesto. Melani N. Douglass will provide an artist talk and discussion with the families featured in the exhibition.
It’s not a housewarming without a little family competition! We’ll have a spades tournament, and a table ready for those who are interested in learning.
A live DJ and light refreshments will assist in bringing the community together to warm this HOME exhibition.
The exhibition will always have board and table games available.
Call for Artists:
Fountain of Truth: Women artists and their Perspective on Aging.
The central theme of the exhibit is Women Artists depicting their own personal experience with aging. Below is a list of questions also being considered as a part of the Central theme.
Application Deadline: January 9, 2026
Paper as Politic- Call for Artists
The Paper as Politic exhibition invites artists working with paper—materially, conceptually, and politically—to submit work for inclusion in an exhibition presented during the 2026 Paper as Politic symposium at George Mason University.
Application Deadline: February 1, 2026
Join us on Thursday, November 20, 4:45-6:30pm EST for Visual Voices with Dr. Cheryl Holmes Miller. This event will be held at Harris Theater on GMU's Fairfax Campus, and via Zoom. RSVP is required to receive the zoom link via email the day of!
Questions should be emailed to Jeff Kenney (jkenney5@gmu.edu)
Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller is one of the design field's most respected figures. She is legendary for her decades of scholarship and activism and is known as a touchstone and conscience for the design profession. This long-awaited book documents the history of the question she has been asking for decades: “Where are the Black designers?” along with related questions that are urgent to the design profession: Where did they originate? Where have they been? Why haven't they been represented in design histories and canons?
Holmes-Miller traces her development as a designer and leader, beginning with her own family and its rich multiethnic history. She narrates her experiences as a design student at Rhode Island School of Design, Maryland Institute College of Art, and Pratt, leading up to her oft-cited Pratt thesis examining barriers to success for Black designers. Holmes-Miller describes the work of her eponymous studio for noted clients that included NASA, Time Inc., and the nascent Black Entertainment Television, as well as the story of her later critiques of the industry in the design press, most notably in Print magazine. Miller also recounts the parallel history of collective efforts by fellow scholars and advocates over the past fifty years to identify and celebrate Black designers.
Celebrate transgender voices with a day of readings, panels, and a community writing workshop hosted by This series of events will include readings and discussions from Charlie Jane Anders, K. Iver, Dominique Dickey, Luke Sutherland, Emily Holland, Andrea Abi-Karam, Amir Rabiyah, Addie Tsai and Andrew Joseph White. See a full schedule and list of speakers here.
As part of these events, Fenwick Gallery and the University Libraries Special Collections Research Center will present a pop-up display of photobooks, artists’ books, and zines by transgender and nonbinary artists, in connection with the exhibition How We Saw What They Saw. Stop by from 11:30am-12pm or in between panels to view these titles!
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 20
Fenwick Library Main Reading Room (Fenwick 2001)
Panels & workshops: 12:00PM–4:15 PM
Pop-up library display: 11:30AM–3:00PM (drop in between sessions)
“A Seat at the Table” invites you to rethink the phrase "women belong in the kitchen" by turning it into a celebration of strength, tradition, and legacy. With an interactive display of custom designed ceramics and recipe books, we will honor the women who have quietly shaped history.
Come sit with us, enjoy a cup of tea, and take part in preserving their remarkable stories.
Fenwick Gallery at Fenwick Library
November 18, 5–7PM
This project is organized by students in AVT309: Art as Social Action, and will be temporarily installed in Fenwick Gallery in conversation with “How We See What They Saw: A Reading Room of Photobooks by Women.”
Becoming the Unaine is a collaborative exhibition by photographer Liz Louise Johnson and linguist Tereua Miracle Oliphant Kaintoka. Johnson lived in Kiribati for eighteen months between 2013 and 2014, and after returning to the United States, studied Kiribati language and culture in a university course taught by Kaintoka, an i-Kiribati scholar. It was the first university-level course dedicated entirely to the culture and language of the small island nation of 112,000 people. Johnson was in the very first classroom, and Kaintoka was the very first professor. It was in this classroom learning about dialects and rituals that a seed was planted, one that would grow, years later, into the beginnings of this project.
Years later, the two reunited and returned to Kiribati to create a project that allowed them to step into a shared circle: a love of the Kiribati people and language, and the common ground of womanhood. It was in this space that Becoming the Unaine was created.
The project centers on the translation of the Kiribati word unaine: a respected elderly woman of wisdom. Johnson and Kaintoka recreated chronologically the arc of womanhood starting with pregnancy and continued through menarche, and marriage. It weaves together one lived life through 16 women at different ages.
Material Acts of Resistance features the work of Michèle Colburn, who transforms volatile materials such as gunpowder, wire, and thread into quiet testaments of endurance and dissent. Her pieces trace the space between destruction and repair, turning the remnants of conflict into gestures of resilience. Through drawing, burning, and stitching, Colburn reveals how the act of making itself becomes a form of resistance - an insistence on memory, survival, and the enduring power of transformation.
Hosted by the Center for Peacemaking Practice a the Carter School, this event brings together the artist and members of the Carter School community for a conversation about the intersections of art, peacebuilding, and narrative transformation. The dialogue will explore how creative expression can deepen understanding of conflict, illuminate resilience, and reimagine the boundaries between art and peace practice.
The session will conclude with a Q&A and an optional visit to the Material Acts of Resistance exhibition in the Fuse Building gallery.
Speakers:
Michèle Colburn, Artist
Dr. Margarita Tadevosyan, Executive Director, Center for Peacemaking Practice
Audrey Williams, Ph.D. Candidate, Manager, Narrative Transformation Lab
Seung Gyo Kim, M.S. Student, Mary Hoch Center for Reconciliation
Join students from Prof. J. Carrier’s Photobook Seminar for a series of spotlight talks on photobooks featured in the exhibition! In these presentations, students take a closer look at the artist, ideas, and design of each photobook—exploring what makes the work resonate (or fall short) and what lessons it holds for today’s artists and storytellers.
From curation to practical application, how can visual art spaces enhance immersive experiences for all patrons? What are the latest trends and limitations in accessibility tools? How can curators both support and serve as advocates for accessibility in the visual arts? Speakers will discuss practices for integrating assistive technologies and other techniques that advance accessibility in the visual arts, ensuring galleries are welcoming and inclusive.
Speakers:
Alissa Maru
Associate curator, Exhibition Manager, Mason Exhibitions Arlington George Mason University
Korey Singleton
Deputy ADA coordinator for Accessibility and ATI Manager. Assistive Technology institute George Mason University
Register with QR code on the flyer!
Bring your lunch and join us for a deep dive and conversation around selected titles from the exhibition! This week’s conversation will be led by Dr. Deepthi Murali (Asst. Professor, Art History), on artists Dayanita Singh and Gauri Gill.
Bring your lunch and join us for a deep dive and conversation around selected titles from the exhibition! This week’s conversation will be led by Soo Paek (PhD student, Cultural Studies), in conversation with artist Gail Rebhan.
Join us on Thursday, October 30, 4:45-6:30pm EST for Visual Voices with Kayla E. This event will be held at the Center for the Arts Concert Hall on GMU's Fairfax Campus, and via Zoom. RSVP is required to receive the zoom link via email the day of!
Questions should be emailed to Jeff Kenney (jkenney5@gmu.edu)
About the Artist
Kayla E. (she/her) is an award-winning Texas-born artist. She works as creative director at Fantagraphics and is a recipient of a 2023-2024 Princeton Hodder Fellowship. She is the co-founder and former President of Nat. Brut Inc., a non-profit that produces an art and literary magazine, of which she was the Editor-in-Chief for nine years. She earned her B.A. in Visual and Environmental Studies from Harvard University, where she served as the Art Director for the Harvard Lampoon. Precious Rubbish, her graphic novel debut, is a work of trauma recollection told in the style of post-war children’s comics. Kayla lives in North Carolina with her wife and two dogs.
www.kaylaework.com
