Comparisons

About the exhibition:

My current artwork is focused on exploring the links between the human body—especially the female body— and architecture.
I work in a variety of media ranging from clay, plaster, fiberglass-resin and cast paper to drawing, photography and, as seen in my exhibition at the DVAA, inkjet printing on silk.

I’m particularly drawn to architectural caryatids because they are very clearly structural elements in architecture. These figures stand erect and act as weight-bearing columns. While there are male equivalents—atlantes and telemons who struggle to hold up their burdens—caryatids support their weight seemingly without effort. Symbolically, they undergird the material and social character of human society.

In this exhibition, ”Comparisons” inkjet prints on silk pair images of women from different ethnic backgrounds with architectural elements: a Portuguese woman in Tomar with ornamentation in Lecce, Italy; a Russian woman with a caryatid in Munich, Germany; a Ghanian woman balancing a basket with a column of nesting Corinthian capitals; a Lenni-Lenape woman with a zig-zag column from a French monastery.

The silk’s translucency and its subtle movement cause the images to shift in and out of visual alignment, changing with light and ambient air currents. They appear soft and vulnerable . . . all the while depicting strong, confident female figures.

Comparisons will be on view in Gallery 1 at Da Vinci Art Alliance October 30 through November 23 with an opening reception on November 1st from 4-7pm.

ABOUT THE FeATURED ARTISTS

Virginia Maksymowicz (born 1952) received a BA in Fine Arts from Brooklyn College, CUNY and an MFA from the University of California, San Diego.

She’s exhibited at the Franklin Furnace, Alternative Museum, Elizabeth Foundation and Grey Gallery in NYC, and in college, university and nonprofit galleries throughout the US and abroad. In 2023, her solo exhibition, “The Lightness of Bearing,” was held at the High Street Gallery of Rowan University. In 2024, she took part in “(re)FOCUS2024,” a Philadelphia-region show of women artists celebrating the 50th anniversary of the groundbreaking exhibition in 1974.

After graduate school, she worked for two years as a CETA (Comprehensive Employment and Training Act) artist under the Cultural Council Foundation in NYC. During the 1980s, she was the Executive Director of Amos Eno (then in SoHo) and the Articles Editor for Art & Artists newspaper. She moved to Philadelphia in 1991 along with her photographer-husband, Blaise Tobia, who had secured a teaching position at Drexel University.

She received an NEA fellowship in sculpture in 1984, and has been a visiting artist at the American Academy in Rome; an artist-in-residence at the Powel House Museum in Philadelphia; and a fellow at the Vermont Studio Center. In 2018 she completed a two-week residency at Trainor Arts in Maine

Her exhibitions have been reviewed in the New York Times, New York Newsday, the New Art Examiner, the Philadelphia Inquirer and Artblog. Feature articles have been published in Sculpture magazine and in Amtrak’s coast-to-coast magazine, The National.

She is currently Professor Emerita at Franklin & Marshall College, having taught previously at Oberlin College, Wayne State University, St. Joseph’s University and the Moore College of Art and Design.