Join us at Mason Exhibitions Arlington on Saturday, March 22 from 11am-5pm for drop-in Mask Making with Steven Luu using materials from the Nothing Personal exhibition and graphic chronology.

Steven Luu

The wounds of combat have had a profound impact on Steven Luu. Born in Saigon, Vietnam, he is a survivor of the Communist oppression. For nearly 46 years, he was relocated to numerous places. Him and his family were placed in re-education camps by Vietnamese Communist when he was only 1 year old. Escaping to freedom on a small fishing boat when he was 7-year-old boy and spent over two months floating on the open sea until rescued by the British Royal Navy and taken to a Hong Kong refugee camp. In 1991, Steven and his family arrived in the United States-again-as refugees. After completing high school in 1995, he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force and served for 20 years as a Medic. For 11 of those years, he was stationed in Europe-spending three years in combat zones. In all his numerous deployments to the Middle East, he witnessed many violent deaths, and those experiences have had a profound psychological impact on him. 

He was first introduced to art by the intensive treatment program provided by Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. Steven recognizes that art allows him to present his feelings comfortably and focuses on expressing traumatic experiences creatively and non-verbally. As someone with a background in the medical field and a wounded veteran himself, he relates deeply to many service members that return home suffering from the aftereffects of deployment, such as feeling guilty or isolated. He creates his art both to help and communicate with others, focusing on mental health-related matters. Through the years, he has earned a BA in Theology and BFA with a concentration in sculpture. As an artist, he is an advocate for veterans. When the opportunity arises, he guides and encourages many fellow wounded veterans to find a new language to express their pain and emotions – the language of art. Steven is well known for producing serialized artwork; he believes the repetition method helps dedramatize his past and is a form of discipline to understand the materials. 

Visual Voices is a lecture series hosted by Mason Exhibitions and the School of Art and Design. We look forward to seeing you in person or online on Thursday, March 20, 4:45pm to 6:30 pm.

Adriana Monsalve (she /they) is an artist, educator, cultural worker and collaborative publisher working (mostly) in the photobook medium. Along with Caterina Ragg, Monsalve is co-founder of Homie House Press, a radical cooperative platform that challenges the ever-changing forms of storytelling with image and text.

Within her photographic practice, Monsalve is an archivist and visual communicator who produces in-depth stories on identity through the nuances in between race, gender, and immigrant adjacent experiences.

As an educator, she enacts radical imagination in the classroom daily. Monsalve believes it is the first step in building worlds we can safely live in. She says, “..art maps our journey toward liberation. To realize our freedom fantasies for our larger community, we also engage with education between the practices of imagination and creation. I am certain liberation comes in communal form, because the culture of white-supremacy that we were all born into, thrives on individualism.. In contrast, imagination taps into our desires, so that we can share (education) and realize them collectively (creation).”

This event will be held at the Center for the Arts Concert Hall on the GMU Fairfax campus and online via Zoom. RSVP is required to receive the link via email the day-of!

Join us on Tuesday, March 18, 5:30-7:30pm at Buchanan Hall Atrium Gallery for the Reception of Offerings to the Potomac: Acknowledging Indigenous Place.

You will meet the curators and hear from School of Art alumni artists whose work are featured in the show!

Questions about the event should be emailed to Yassmin Salem (mailto: ysalem@gmu.edu)

Join us on Friday, March 7, 5-7pm at Mason Exhibitions Arlington for an evening read aloud and conversation by international and local writers: 2025 Cheuse Fellow: Klara Kalu; Prof. Vivek Narayanan: Author of "After"; Malik Thompson: Washington based writer; and Itoro Bassey: journalist and author. The evening is designed around the visit of Spring Cheuse Fellow: Danson Kahyana who will also be reading his creative work.

The evening will explore aspects of queerness and intimacy through literature and allyship. 

The boat (borrowed from songwriter Noah Kahan)  are the ideas that keep us afloat, conveying the beauty of the Republic of Imagination (borrowed from Azar Nafisi)! The images are from the cover of "After" by Vivek Narayanan. 

Featuring Danson Kahyana

The Cheuse Center is proud to announce Danson Kahyana as the Spring 2025 Cheuse Center Scholar. Kahyana, an esteemed writer and academic from Uganda, will visit the Washington area from March 2 to March 8, 2025.

This prestigious fellowship, supported by the Scholl Foundation, is dedicated to providing opportunities for writers at risk, offering them a space to create, reflect, and share their stories. Kahyana’s work—marked by its courage, depth, and humanity—has long amplified underrepresented narratives, making him an exceptional fit for this honor.

During his residency, Kahyana will engage with students, faculty, and the local literary community through public readings, and conversations about his work and the broader challenges faced by writers globally. 

We are thrilled to host Danson Kahyana and looks forward to the impactful contributions he will bring to the spring program. Stay tuned for updates on events and opportunities.

MORE ABOUT DANSON KAHYANA: Sylvester Danson Kahyana is a visiting professor in the English Department at Boston College. Previously, he was a Fellow at the Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy and Research, Harvard Kennedy School, having survived a brutal attack on his life on April 26, 2022. He holds a PhD in English Studies from Stellenbosch University, South Africa (where he is an Associate Researcher in the English Department) and an MA and BA in Literature from Makerere University (where he was an Associate Professor in the Literature Department before he fled Uganda). Uganda’s contributing editor to Index on Censorship and a former board member of PEN International as well as a former President of Ugandan PEN, he has defended artistic freedom and human rights for over two decades. A published poet and anthologist, he has edited five books and published more than 30 scholarly papers. Some of the awards he has received include the Social Science Research Council’s African Peacebuilding Network Individual Award (2023), the Fulbright Research Fellowship Award (2021), and the American Council of Learned Societies’ African Humanities Postdoctoral Award (2015).

ABOUT ITORO BASSEY: Itoro Bassey is the author of Faith (Malarkey Books, 2022) and a journalist at the BBC. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Slice, Catapult, and Hippocampus, among others. A new piece of hers 'How Eno Became Enobong' is forthcoming in Fence (March 2025). 
She is the recent winner of the W.S. Porter Prize for her short short story collection Ajebutter Woman that will published in 2027 through Regal House Publishing. This collection is poised to complicate notions surrounding identity and social dynamics while engaging readers with its rich storytelling. Some of the other awards she has received are from International Literary Seminars, Glimmer Train, and Prairie Schooner. She has received fellowships from the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study, the Edward Albee Foundation, and elsewhere. In 2018 she lived between Kenya, Nigeria and Ethiopia for five years which has broadened her perspective on diaspora and belonging. In her spare time, she supports writers in the Washington, DC area as a board member of The Inner Loop. 

ABOUT MALIK THOMPSON: Malik Thompson (he/they) is a Black queer person from Washington, DC. His work has been published in the Cincinnati Review, Denver Quarterly, Hayden's Ferry Review, and elsewhere. He has received fellowships and residencies from organizations including Cave Canem, Lambda Literary, the Anderson Center, and Monson Arts. He can be found on IG via the handle @latesummerstar.

ABOUT VIVEK NARAYANAN: Vivek Narayanan’s books of poems include Universal Beach, Life and Times of Mr S. His new collection is After (NYRB Poets, 2022).  A full-length collection of his selected poems in Swedish translation was published by the Stockholm-based Wahlström & Widstrand in 2015. Narayanan was born in India and raised in Zambia. He earned an MA in cultural anthropology from Stanford University, and an MFA in creative writing from Boston University. He has been a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University (2013-14) and a Cullman Fellow at the New York Public Library (2015-16). His poems, stories, translations and critical essays have appeared in journals like The Paris Review, Chimurenga Chronic, Granta.com, Poetry Review (UK), Modern Poetry in Translation, Harvard Review, Agni, The Caribbean Review of Books and elsewhere, as well as in anthologies like The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem and The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poetry. Narayanan is also a member of Poetry Daily’s editorial board. He was the Co-editor of Almost Island, an India-based international literary journal from 2007-2019. He teaches at George Mason University in Virginia.

ABOUT KLARA KALU: Klara Kalu is an MFA Creative Writing student specializing in Fiction at George Mason University. She writes contemporary stories that enlighten and offer insights into the intricacies of African narratives, focusing on themes of love, loss, and emotional depths of human connection. Her work explores the spaces between tradition and modernity, memory and reinvention, offering fresh perspectives on identity and belonging. With the Cheuse Fellowship, Klara is traveling to Barbados to explore the echoes of culture and kinship within the island’s communities. Through archival research, oral histories, and on-the-ground immersion, she aims to trace how ancestral ties have endured across generations despite displacement and erasure. Her project seeks to breathe life into forgotten stories, reconnecting threads between the Caribbean and Africa, and reimagining the ways in which history continues to shape contemporary diasporic experiences.

ABOUT NOTHING PERSONAL This exhibition closely examines the book, Nothing Personal (1964), a collaborative artwork in book form by two legendary American artists, James Baldwin, the African American writer, public intellectual, and civil rights activist, and Richard Avedon the Jewish fashion and portrait photographer. Learn more here:  https://www.masonexhibitions.org/exhibitions/nothing-personal-mea

Art work in this post is from the cover of "After", by Vivek Narayanan. This cover is from his Indian edition, published by Harper Collins.  

More information on the lineup to come! 

Join us on Thursday, March 6, 6-8pm at Mason Exhibitions Arlington for a film screening of ‘Ain’t No Back to a Merry-Go-Round’, followed by a brief Q&A with the filmmaker, Ilana Trachtman. The film is about the desegregation of Glen Echo Park, and it discusses the role that Howard University students played in leading this effort.

For almost 60 years, Glen Echo Amusement Park was the wholesome, beloved playground of white metropolitan Washington, DC. Every summer, tens of thousands enjoyed its Crystal Pool, wooden rollercoaster, Spanish Ballroom, and Tunnel of Love. But the Black children living nearby could only gawk from the road.

In June of 1960, three shocking, unprecedented events happened at “idyllic” Glen Echo Amusement Park:

• Howard University Students arrived up at the Park, and sat down on the carousel.

• White, middle-aged neighbors, largely Jewish, joined the protests.

• The American Nazi Party showed up.

AIN'T NO BACK TO A MERRY-GO-ROUND is the forgotten story of how those three events shook metropolitan Washington, forced sides, changed lives, and ignited sparks that flew out across the Civil Rights Movement for years to come.

Using just-discovered archival footage, and focusing on the stories of six individuals, viewers are transported to those heady days, when private businesses could choose their customers, and the walls between Black and white were so high that friendships were unimaginable.

AIN’T NO BACK TO A MERRY-GO-ROUND offers a rare intimate lens on one protest in the early Civil Rights Movement. Telling the story of one amusement park, one group of individuals, and one moment in time, the laser focus allows for deep understanding of the non-famous individuals whose efforts, sacrifices, and personal awakenings fueled the Civil Rights Movement. 

Tuesday, March 4, 2025 7:00 PM EST
Johnson Center, Cinema

A special screening of The Price of the Ticket, the documentary by award-winning filmmaker Karen Thorsen that explores the life and legacy of James Baldwin.

Following the screening, Karen Thorsen will be in conversation with  Leeya Mehta and Prof. Keith Clark to discuss Baldwin’s legacy, the making of the documentary, and its continued relevance in today’s world.

Join us at Mason Exhibitions Arlington on Thursday, February 27, 6-8pm for a conversation with the authors of Radical Paper: Art and Invention with Colored Pulp!

In Radical Paper, the authors discuss the contemporary breakthrough of using colored paper pulp as an integral element in creating art – as opposed to serving only as the surface on which art is created.

The book chronicles the rapid development of the movement over the last 70 years, and how early practitioners in the mid-20th century first began manipulating colored pulp, freeing it from its two-dimensional function as a substrate.

Mapping out new directions in using colored paper pulp, progressive papermakers, such as Douglass Morse Howell, Laurence Barker, and Kenneth Tyler, inspired the careers of generations of artists, including Pacita Abad, El Anatsui, Firelei Báez, Leonardo Drew, Torkwase Dyson, Melvin Edwards, Helen Frankenthaler, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Mona Hatoum, David Hockney, Jim Hodges, Eddie Martinez, Wangechi Mutu, Adam Pendleton, Howardena Pindell, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, and Alan Shields, who have taken this medium in fresh and unexpected directions.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Lynn Sures creates multi-media works examining the juncture of geology, physics, and the origins of humans. She has been a SARF Fellow in Kenya and a US State Department American Artist Abroad in Sri Lanka. As an artist-in-residence, she made works at Museu Molí Paperer de Capellades, Spain, and the Press at the Palace of the Governors, Santa Fe. Collections that hold her works include US Dept. of State; Library of Congress; Yale University; Schomburg Collection, NY Public Library; Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt Museum; Museo della Carta e della Filigrana, Fabriano, Italy; Museum of Art & Photography, Bangalore, India; and Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Egypt. Sures is Professor Emerita, Corcoran College of Art & Design (GWU).

www.lynnsures.com

Michelle Samour’s work explores the intersections between science, technology, and the natural world, and the socio-political repercussions of redefining borders and boundaries. Her artist residencies include Haystack Mountain School of Crafts and The Banff Centre. She has exhibited her work at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Kohler Art Center, and Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. She has received grants from the MA Cultural Council and a Society of Arts and Crafts NE Artist Award. Collections that hold her work include the International Paper Company, Meditech, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Watson Library. Samour is Professor Emerita of the SMFA at Tufts University.

https://www.michellesamour.com/

The Alan Cheuse International Writer’s Spring Scholar in Residence Oksana Maksymchuk will share selections from her powerful poetry collection, Still City amongst the current art exhibition in Gillespie Gallery, Morgan Ashcom: Abstract Land and Filing Company.

Gillespie Gallery is inside the Art and Design building of GMU Fairfax. The nearest paid visitor parking is at Shenandoah Parking Deck.

ABOUT OKSANA MAKSYMCHUK

Oksana Maksymchuk is a celebrated poet, translator, and essayist whose works resonate deeply within and beyond literary circles. Her poetry collections, translations, and essays have received international acclaim, positioning her as a vital voice in the contemporary literary landscape. Oksana’s impactful work has resonated widely, with her latest book, Still City, captivating readers with its profound explorations of resilience and identity. She is the author of poetry collections Xenia and Lovy in the Ukrainian. She coedited Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine, an anthology of contemporary poetry, and has published a few single-author volumes of translations. Born and raised in Lviv, Ukraine, she has also lived in Chicago, Philadelphia, Budapest, Berlin, Warsaw, and Fayetteville, Arkansas. She currently teaches at the University of Chicago.

ABOUT MORGAN ASHCOM

Morgan Ashcom's multidisciplinary artworks and books explore the tension between fiction, myth and lived experience in the context of imperialism. Ashcom's work has been exhibited and published across the globe. He has received numerous awards including German Photobook and the Center for Photography at Woodstock Purchase Prize. His work has been featured in Le Monde, The Brooklyn Rail, Jewish Currents, and The British Journal of Photography. Ashcom is former faculty of Western Connecticut State University, Ithaca College, University of Hartford, Cornell University and the University of Virginia. He is also the Founding Director of Visible Records. He currently lives and works in Charlottesville, VA

Join acclaimed author Moriel Rothman-Zecher for an engaging reading and discussion of his latest novel, Before All the World. He will be joined by multidusciplinary artist Morgan Ashcom amongst his current exhibition, Abstract Land and Filing Company at Gillespie Gallery inside the Art and Design Building of GMU Fairfax. The nearest paid visitor parking is Shenandoah Parking Deck.

Rothman-Zecher will share insights into his writing process and discuss themes explored in the novel, along with his broader body of work that continues to captivate readers and critics alike.

ABOUT MORIEL ROTHMAN-ZECHER

Moriel Rothman-Zecher is the author of the novels Before All the World (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), which was named an NPR Best Book of 2022, and Sadness Is a White Bird (Atria Books / Simon and Schuster), for which he received the National Book Foundation’s ‘5 Under 35’ Honor, and which was a finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the winner of the Ohioana Book Award, a finalist for a National Jewish Book Award, and longlisted for the Center for Fiction’s First Novel Prize. His poems and essays have been published or are forthcoming in The American Poetry Review, Barrelhouse, Colorado Review, The Common, Nashville Review, The New York Times, The Paris Review’s Daily, ZYZZYVA, and elsewhere. Moriel is the recipient of two MacDowell Fellowships for Literature (2017 & 2020), a Wallis Annenberg Helix Fellowship for Yiddish Cultural Studies (2018-2019), and holds an MFA in Poetry from the Bennington Writing Seminars, where he was the recipient of a Donald Hall Scholarship for Poets (2021-2023). Moriel teaches creative writing at Swarthmore College, where he is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing, and is a member of the faculty of the Bennington Writing Seminars’ MFA Program. 

ABOUT MORGAN ASHCOM

Morgan Ashcom's multidisciplinary artworks and books explore the tension between fiction, myth and lived experience in the context of imperialism. Ashcom's work has been exhibited and published across the globe. He has received numerous awards including German Photobook and the Center for Photography at Woodstock Purchase Prize. His work has been featured in Le Monde, The Brooklyn Rail, Jewish Currents, and The British Journal of Photography. Ashcom is former faculty of Western Connecticut State University, Ithaca College, University of Hartford, Cornell University and the University of Virginia. He is also the Founding Director of Visible Records. He currently lives and works in Charlottesville, VA.

Visual Voices is a lecture series hosted by Mason Exhibitions and the School of Art and Design. We look forward to seeing you in person or online on Thursday, February 20, 4:45pm to 6:30 pm.

Morgan Ashcom's multidisciplinary artworks and books explore the tension between fiction, myth and lived experience in the context of imperialism. Ashcom's work has been exhibited and published across the globe. He has received numerous awards including German Photobook and the Center for Photography at Woodstock Purchase Prize. His work has been featured in Le Monde, The Brooklyn Rail, Jewish Currents, and The British Journal of Photography.

Ashcom is former faculty of Western Connecticut State University, Ithaca College, University of Hartford, Cornell University and the University of Virginia. He is also the Founding Director of Visible Records.

This event will be held at the Harris Theater and RSVP is required to receive the zoom link the day-of the event via email!

Harris Theater is building #27 on the campus map and the nearest paid visitor parking is at the Mason Pond Parking Deck.

Questions and concerns should be emailed to Jeffrey Kenney at jkenney5@gmu.edu.

The Baldwin100, the Cheuse Center and Busboys and Poets present:

Just Love: A Dinner Salon with Jazz & Poetry inspired by James Baldwin
to celebrate the Baldwin100

Venue: Busboys and Poets, 14th and V
Time: 5:30pm
  
The night will open with Martheaus Perkins, who will read his poem dedicated to Baldwin. Then we will have Zeina Azzam and E. Ethelbert Miller perform poems, and chat about love, Baldwin, and their own creativity. The evening’s headliner is Lena Seikaly and her quartet.

In collaboration between the Cheuse International Writer’s Center and the Reston Community Center, the documentary “I Am Not Your Negro” will be screened at the CenterStage on Febuary 5th, 2025. 

Wednesday, February 5, 2025 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM EST
the CenterStage, 2310 Colts Neck Rd, Reston, VA

I Am Not Your Negro, 2016 (94 minutes)

"Using James Baldwin's unfinished final manuscript, Remember This House, this documentary follows the lives and successive assassinations of three of the author's friends, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr., delving into the legacy of these iconic figures and narrating historic events using Baldwin's original words and a flood of rich archival material. An up-to-the-minute examination of race in America, this film is a journey into black history that connects the past of the Civil Rights movement to the present of BlackLivesMatter.”

Mason Exhibitions welcomes you to join us for the Opening Reception of Nothing Personal: A Collaboration in Black and White at Mason Exhibitions Arlington on Friday, January 31, 5-8pm.

Dive into the 1964 Atheneum edition of infamous photobook Nothing Personal, featuring an essay by James Baldwin and the portrait photography of Richard Avedon. 

Mason Exhibitions Arlington is located at 3601 Fairfax Drive, Arlington VA. Paid street parking is available, and the Virginia Square metro station is across the street.

Please email Alissa Maru at amaru@gmu.edu with questions about the event.

Visual Voices is a lecture series hosted by Mason Exhibitions and the School of Art and Design. We look forward to seeing you in person or online on Thursday, January 30, 4:45pm to 6:30 pm.

This event will be held at the Center for the Arts Concert Hall on the GMU Fairfax campus and online via Zoom. RSVP is required to receive the Zoom link via email the day-of!

Born in Vega Alta, Puerto Rico, Chemi Rosado-Seijo graduated from the painting department of the Puerto Rico School of Visual Arts in 1997. In 1998, he worked with Michy Marxuach to open a gallery that transformed into a not-for-profit organization presenting resources and exhibitions for contemporary artists in Puerto Rico.

In 2000, Rosado had his first solo show at the Joan Miro Foundation in Barcelona, including interventions on billboards around the city. Since 2002, he has worked with residents of the El Cerro community, a poor neighborhood south of San Juan, to present public art projects, workshops and other community initiatives.

In 2006, he inaugurated La Perla’s Bowl, a sculpture built with residents of San Juan’s La Perla community that functions as both a skateboarding ramp and a pool. Since 2009, Rosado-Seijo has been organizing exhibitions in his apartment in Santurce, creating a center for meeting and exchange in the Puerto Rican contemporary art scene. Rosado-Seijo’s work was included in the Whitney Biennial in 2017.

In 2020, current School of Art faculty, Ben Ashworth, collaborated with Chemi Rosado-Seijo on The Ceremonial Bowl

We look forward to seeing you on Thursday, January 23, 5:30-7:30pm for the opening reception!

Morgan Ashcom presents

THE ABSTRACT LAND & FILING COMPANY

January 21 - February 28, 2025
Gillespie Gallery of Art
Art and Design Building, George Mason University, Fairfax

About the Exhibition
The Abstract Land and Filing Company (ALFC) enlists its archivist Morgan Ashcom to install a two part exhibition at the Gillespie Gallery of Art. The first part, consisting of selections from the ALFC corporate archives, combines industrial remnants and historical ephemera with original works by Ashcom, depicting the years leading up to a worker-led take over of the company. The second half presents an installation of site-specific research, drawing on Ashcom’s experience as a BFA student at George Mason University (2001-2006), concerning the university’s ongoing collaboration with the radical rich of the American far right. 

About the Artist:
Morgan Ashcom (b. Charlottesville, 1982) produces multidisciplinary artworks and books that explore the tension between fiction, myth and lived experience in the context of imperialism. Ashcom's work has been exhibited and published across the globe. He has received numerous awards including the German Photobook and the Center for Photography at Woodstock Purchase Prize. His work has been featured in Le Monde, The Brooklyn Rail, Jewish Currents, and The British Journal of Photography.

Ashcom is a former faculty of Western Connecticut State University, Ithaca College, the University of Hartford, Cornell University, and the University of Virginia. He is also the Founding Director of Visible Records. Ashcom is an alumnus of George Mason University’s School of Art (BFA ‘06). He currently lives and works in Charlottesville, VA.

(Dream) Roads to Home and Peace
Crossing Cultures in Times of Conflict through Art, Music, and Poetry 

Have you ever thought about the power of music during difficult times? How do songs provide comfort, hope or even a voice for change in moments of conflict? What song or poem inspires you to keep going?

Join us on Tuesday, December 3, 5:30-7:30pm for a unique event dedicated to exploring the profound impact of music in times of struggle. Mason Exhibitions and the Korean ArtPop Storytelling Workshop Team invite the International community at Mason for an uplifting event surrounded by the exhibition A Closer Look: Conflicted Art from Ukraine.

We’ll begin with experiencing the Korean art song ‘Dream Road’, performed by the Korean ArtPop Storytelling Workshop Team. Following the music, we’ll engage in an open dialogue in which we encourage you to share pieces of music and poems. As a community, we will collectively build the playlist “Dream Roads to Home and Peace” to carry forward the message of connection.

This event is offered in collaboration with The Narrative Transformation Lab.

Join us at Fenwick Gallery for the opening of the Mason student-curated exhibition, Loving Krishna: Four Centuries of Indian Painting!

Students from the Art History 495/595 Curating an Exhibit course lead by Dr. Robert DeCaroli collaborated with the Smithsonian Museum of Asian Art and Fenwick Library to create Loving Krishna: Four Centuries of Indian Painting. This exhibit presents photographic reproductions of Indian paintings from the sixteenth to nineteenth century that portray forms of divine love between the Hindu deity and his devotees.

Best of Film at George Mason is a showcase of recent notable and award-winning films. This year's program includes student and alumni work in documentary filmmaking, fiction film directing, music video, and senior thesis films.

This event is free and open to the public.

Join us on Tuesday, November 19 from 6-8pm to see an Original Documentary about Patriot Packout at Ike's Dining Hall on Mason's Fairfax campus.

In collaboration with Mason Dining's Gourmet Gathering, a curated menu of locally sourced and campus-grown food will be served! 

Patriot Packout (PPO) is George Mason's community-based donation initiative that diverts new and gently used items from trash and redistributes them to students, faculty, and staff for free!

Items you may find through PPO include clothing, shoes, books and tech, art-making and office/school supplies, non-perishable food and toiletries, small appliances and furniture, bikes, scooters, and skateboards, and MORE.

PPO is made possible by countless university partners and supporters, including (mostly volunteer) staff, faculty, students, and community members.

This event is a collaboration between Facilities and Campus Operations, Mason Exhibitions, and Mason Dining.   

Join Mason Exhibitions and the Alan Cheuse International Writers Center on November 15, 6-8pm at Mason Exhibitions Arlington for a book launch of two authors, Megan Doney's Unarmed: An American Educator's Memoir  and Amanda Newell, Postmortem Say.

This event is in collaboration with Faces and Figures: Identity Through Printmaking Between South Africa and DC. Themes of the exhibition respond to violence, reconciliation, and the spirit of Ubuntu (I am because we are).

Mason Exhibitions Arlington is located at 3601 Fairfax Drive, Arlington VA, across the street from the Virginia Square Metro station, and paid street parking is available.

Please email Alissa Maru with questions/concerns (mailto: amaru@gmu.edu)
Free and Open to the Public

About the Books

Unarmed: An American Educator's Memoir

After surviving a school shooting, English professor Megan Doney was traumatized and adrift. Rather than hardening her heart and life, she wrote Unarmed: An American Educator's Memoir. An insightful response to American gun violence and illusions of public and private safety, this memoir is about how to live with an open heart, alive to luck, learning, and love.

Postmortem Say

Love and death, poetry's immortal themes, are interwoven throughout Amanda Newell's Postmortem Say. Death is everywhere-in the fields and forests, on darkened roads, in the delivery room-but there is also love, the kind that defies convention and outlasts death itself. These poems confront, without flinching, hard truths about what it means to be a woman, a mother, a wife, and a lover.

-Sue Ellen Thompson, author of Sea Nettles: New & Selected Poems

How can a mask tell your story? How can you interject new meaning into discarded, recycled materials?

In this poetry and art workshop, artist Steven Luu will lead participants through the creation of collage self-portrait masks using recycled scrap paper, turning waste into treasure. 

Masks can represent concealment and revelation, enabling individuals to take on different roles and stories. They are a means to express, to act, and to be. Materials also carry significant meaning: discarded scraps of paper carry the stories and memories from different people and places. Through collage, we can remix these materials into new forms and memories, a meditative process that allows us to contemplate our own identities and experiences.  

Registration is free but encouraged to save your place. All materials are provided, but participants are encouraged to bring their own discarded letters, photos, or other materials to incorporate into the collage.

Join artist Jorge Bañales for re(IMAGINE), a hands-on workshop inspired by the Fenwick Gallery’s current show, re[FORM]er, co-curated by Bañales and artist Steven Luu. 

This exhibit explores the power of materials to transport our memories. Bañales will guide participants through creating unique photo sculptures using disregarded 35mm negatives and photographic prints.

Photo sculptures transform familiar images into dynamic, dimensional art pieces, allowing participants to reimagine memories and meaning. Participants are encouraged to bring their own photographs to personalize the experience, though all materials will be provided.

The workshop will last approximately one hour, beginning with a tour of the gallery and an introduction by Jorge, followed by 45 minutes dedicated to crafting a photo sculpture.

Registration is free but encouraged to save your place.

Time to get inky! You want to make prints, but what do you do if you don’t have access to a printing press? Before the printing press was invented, blocks were printed by hand. Learn how to carve and print using soft easy-carve relief blocks. You will be given suggestions on size and concept, but ultimately the imagery is left up to you. Best of all, you’ll have learned all the basic techniques to continue creating prints using your own designs after the class is over!

Slots are extremely limited and your registration is a reservation. If you are unable to attend the workshop, please email Alissa Maru (amaru@gmu.edu) 3 days prior to offer your reservation to another participant.
All materials will be provided.

Visual Voices is a lecture series hosted by Mason Exhibitions and the School of Art. We look forward to seeing you in person or online on Thursday, November 7, 4:45pm to 6:30 pm.

Colette Fu received her MFA in Fine Art Photography from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 2003, and soon after began devising complex compositions that incorporate photography and pop-up paper engineering.

Harris Theater is building #27 on the campus map and the nearest paid visitor parking is at the Mason Pond Parking Deck.

RSVP is required to receive the zoom link the day-of the event via email!

Questions and concerns should be emailed to Jeffrey Kenney at jkenney5@gmu.edu.

Andriy Ivanovych Dubchak (b. 1976) is a Ukrainian photographer, videographer, photojournalist, and war correspondent. Dubchak is the founder and director of the independent reporting media outlet Donbas Frontliner.

Andriy’s work is featured in A Closer Look: Conflicted Art from Ukraine at Buchanan Hall Atrium Gallery.

This event will be held online only! RSVP is required to receive the link via email the day-of!

Join us on Thursday, October 17 at 4:30pm for Fall for the Book with A.B. Spellman amongst the current art exhibition in Gillespie Gallery, Nothing Personal: A Collaboration in Black and White. This event is free and open to the public!

In Between the Night and Its Music, renowned poet and leading figure of the Black Arts Movement, A.B. Spellman intertwines jazz and poetry through the collection of new and selected poems. Author and scholar Margo Natalie Crawford says, “This necessary book shows that [Spellman’s] entire poetic flow has been a profound movement of words that create the sensuality, music, and quiet of a Black collective consciousness.” Sponsored by African and African American Studies.

4:30pm – 5:00pm – Holton Plaza (Rain Location: Center for the Arts Lobby)

• Live Music

• Declaration of Inter-Dependence

• Voter Registration with Fairfax League of Women Voters

• Participatory Public Sculpture: Put the I in Civic by Linda Hesh

5:00pm: Chant poetry during a group procession to Buchanan Hall

5:00-5:45pm Citizen Joy Dialogue and Theater of the Oppressed Activity

5:45pm – 6:00pm A Closer Look: Conflicted Art from Ukraine

The third annual Arlington Art Walk is a self-guided tour connecting local galleries, artist studios and cultural events. 

At Mason Exhibitions Arlington, printmaker Fleming Jeffries will lead a ‘Kitchen Lithograph’ make and take-home craft activity, and a live DJ will be onsite. All materials will be provided

Mason Exhibitions Arlington is located at 3601 Fairfax Drive, Arlington VA, across the street from the Virginia Square Metro station, and paid street parking is available.

Please email Alissa Maru with questions/concerns (mailto: amaru@gmu.edu)

This year’s Art Walk coincides with the Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington’s (MoCA) daylong celebration of the National Biennial Exhibition, fall shows and Art After Hours. Enjoy a variety of activities, including Fred Schnider Gallery, Made in Arlington Market at MoCA, Mason Plaza activities and entertainment at Northside Social Arlington. Don't miss the courtyard video screens at Mason Exhibitions showcasing the 40th anniversary of Arlington Public Art installations.

For more information and a downloadable map, visit the Arlington Art Walk webpage.

Check out the Innovation Economy Podcast featuring Alissa Maru, Associate Curator at Mason Exhibitions Arlington and Susan Soroko, Director, Creative Economy  //  Strategic Partnerships at Arlington Economic Development

A  Gathering of Translators

Sept 30, 2024, in celebration of Day of Translation

If you throw a flower in another language into the air, who will catch it? Let’s make a bouquet together in many languages! Please join us for a chance to convene and bring together literary translators and multilingual writers in the DMV for a kaleidoscopic reading and gathering. 

Location: Gillespie Gallery, 1st Floor Art and Design Building, 4515 Patriot Circle, Fairfax

Bus stop: Mason shuttle stop is nearby. Please use google maps to find us.  

Parking: Shenandoah Parking Deck (Validation will be provided for readers. Please save your receipt)

Program

3:30 - 4: 30pm Reception with Introductions, and a discussion on building community around translation; hopes for literary translation practice in the DMV 

Poetry Reading 4:30 pm - 6:00 pm

Lineup: includes Padma Narayanan, Katie King, Munir Hachemi (Cheuse Center Writer-in-Residence from Spain). Nancy Naomi Carlson and Vivek Narayanan

Book Sales: All writers are welcome to bring books to sell via cash, check, venmo, paypal, zelle, with payment to be issued directly to them. 

About the Exhibition: Nothing Personal: a collaboration in black and white: https://www.masonexhibitions.org/exhibitions/nothing-personal

Nora Krug is a German-American author and illustrator whose drawings and visual narratives have appeared in newspapers, magazines and anthologies internationally. In September 2023, Krug published Diaries of War: Two Visual Accounts from Ukraine and Russia.

Immediately after Russia began its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Nora Krug reached out to two anonymous subjects — “K.,” a Russia-born Ukrainian journalist, and “D.,” a Russian artist — and began what would become a year of correspondence. Based on her weekly interviews with K. and D., Krug created this collection of illustrated accounts that chronicles two viewpoints from opposite sides of the border throughout the first year in this ongoing war.

This event will be held in Harris Theater on the GMU Fairfax campus and online via Zoom. RSVP is required to receive the link via email the day-of!

Diaries of War: Two Visual Accounts from Ukraine and Russia will be for sale at the event, and a book signing will be held in the lobby afterwards!