Tag: art

Virginia Tech’s Center for the Arts showcases new exhibit “Things I Had No Words For”

By Zoe Santos, arts, culture, and sports reporter

BLACKSBURG, Va. (Sept. 11, 2025)– Artists Clare Grill and Margaux Ogden converse in front of one of Grill’s paintings. (Zoe Santos, Newsfeed NRV)

Visitors gathered Sept. 12 at the Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech for Beyond the Frame, a monthly tour series that gives audiences a closer look at current exhibitions. September’s tour focused on “Things I Had No Words For”, featuring the paintings of Clare Grill and Margaux Ogden.

Beyond the Frame takes place on the second Thursday of each month at noon. The program invites audiences into the galleries for informal conversations about the art on display. This fall’s exhibitions, which opened Sept. 4 and run through Nov. 22, include Grill and Ogden’s “Things I Had No Words For” on the first floor and “Seeing and Reading” featuring Dana Frankfurt and Josephine Halberstam, upstairs. 

The exhibition is part of CFA’s rotating series of gallery shows, which change out each semester. Visitors can view the works during regular gallery hours, Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m.- 5 p.m., and Saturday, 10 a.m.- 4 p.m.

BLACKSBURG, Va. (Sept. 11, 2025)– Margaux Ogden, Clare Grill, and Brian Holcombe discuss one of Ogden’s pieces on display. (Zoe Santos, Newsfeed NRV)


Curated by Brian Holcombe, director of the visual arts program, “Things I Had No Words For” pairs Grill’s contemplative canvases with Ogden’s energetic, color-driven abstractions. Holcombe said he was first introduced to the two artists in 2014 through a mutual friend and immediately saw their work as complementary. “It struck me that they would have a wonderful conversation together,” Holcombe said during the gallery tour.

Clare Grill, lives and works in New York, received her Master’s of Fine Arts from the Pratt Institute in 2005, according to her biography on M + B’s website. She builds her work from a personal archive of images, memories, and textures. Her paintings often incorporate faint outlines and muted tones that evoke a sense of layers of history. She told the group that she begins with fragments from the past, mostly from antique embroidery, and allows them to inspire her to create something new on the canvas.

“I really think of painting as an excavation,” Grill said, “I’m looking for something, and I’m not exactly sure what it’s going to be until I’m there.”

BLACKSBURG, Va. (Sept. 11, 2025)– Artist Margaux Ogden poses for a photo in front of one of her pieces on display titled “Bathers.” (Zoe Santos, Newsfeed NRV)

Ogden, who is based in Brooklyn, uses a very different process. Her works are full of bright colors and geometric shapes, and she paints without sketches or strict plans. She explained that her studio workflow thrives on risk and spontaneity. All of her pieces are seemingly perfectly symmetrical, but she shared with the group that she only measures the first four lines of a painting and then relies on her judgment for the rest. “The way I work is improvised,” Ogden said. “It’s not predetermined. It’s about responding in the moment.” View more of Ogden’s works here.

Holcombe said bringing both artists into the same gallery space emphasizes the contrasts while also showing how abstraction can take multiple forms. “Clare is often working from history, while Margaux is responding to the present moment,” he said. “That tension is what makes this exhibition really exciting.”

The gallery tour drew a mix of students, community members, and regional art enthusiasts. Among them was an older couple who had travelled from Roanoke specifically for the event.

As Holcombe guided visitors through the space, the group moved slowly between large canvases that filled the white-walled gallery. Grill’s pieces provoke close looking, with texture and subtle brushstrokes that reveal themselves the longer you look at the piece. Ogden’s paintings, in contrast, catch viewers’ attention immediately with bright bursts of pink, green, and orange.

Standing in front of one of Ogden’s pieces, Holcombe described the effect of viewing both artists side by side, “There’s an energy in the room when you put these two bodies of work together,” he said. “You start to notice connections you wouldn’t see otherwise.” 

Beyond the Frame and “Things I Had No Words For” continues CFA’s mission to showcase contemporary art while engaging both the campus and surrounding communities. Previous exhibitions have included national and international artists, but Holcombe emphasized the importance of highlighting painters like Grill and Ogden, who are contributing to ongoing conversations in abstract art today.

Both artists spoke about the balance between personal meaning and public reception in their work. Grill said she hopes viewers bring their own experiences to her paintings rather than looking for a single interpretation. “I want the work to feel open, like there’s room for the viewer to enter,” she said.

Ogden shared that thought, noting that the intensity of the color often provokes strong reactions. “People might see joy, chaos, or even confusion,” she said. “All of that is valid. It’s about how the painting meets you.”

For visitors, the tour was not only about viewing paintings but also about connecting with artists and ideas. Some lingered after the formal program ended, continuing to talk with Grill and Ogden about their processes. A few students took notes, while others snapped photos to remember specific works.

The CFA hopes that kind of engagement continues throughout the fall. With the exhibition open until Nov. 22, Holcombe encouraged visitors to come back more than once, noting that abstraction often rewards repeat viewings.

“You can walk into this show on different days and notice new things each time,” he said. “That’s the beauty of work that resists easy answers.”

“Clare Grill and Margaux Ogden: Things I Had No Words For” is on display at the Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech through Nov. 22. Admission is free. More information is available on the Center for the Arts at Virginia Tech’s website.

International Art Exchange Gets It’s Start at Virginia Tech.

By Zain Omar

The Art, Research, and Technology Exchange (ARTx) was founded in collaboration with Virginia Tech’s Institute for Creativity, Arts and Technology (ICAT) and hosts conferences in specialized performance venues with universities on the advancement of technology’s role in art.

The idea of ARTx came to fruition when Kyle Hutchins, assistant professor of practice at Virginia Tech, played a piece that was composed specifically to be played at the Cube in Moss Arts Center. He realized that certain works could not be duplicated or transferred to digital media because the experience of the performance is affected by the environment.

ARTx allows for professionals and students in the art space to research the impact that advancements in technology affect the way art is shared, learned and taught. Universities and organizations have the opportunity to be awarded grants for their research to keep advancing multimedia performance spaces on their campuses. Virginia Tech was awarded the SEAD grant to fund future projects at the Cube during the spring 2024 ARTx conferences.

ARTx features guest lectures at their event where researchers and art faculty from around the world can share how they found that technology has impacted the learning and performance landscape. Music therapist, Grace Carr, has experienced first-hand how technology has affected the way we learn art. “As a music therapist, I have seen first-hand how teaching music and understanding it have changed because of technology. It is my opinion that technology has allowed for teaching to become much more accessible and readily available to people,” said Carr.

ARTx research focuses on advancements in technology and how they impact the way art is shared, whether in educational environments or in specialized performance venues, such as the Cube. According to Virginia Tech’s Institute for Creativity, Arts and Technology, “The initiative emphasizes collaborations with peer institutions that feature spatial audio and multimedia performance spaces and festivals.”

Advancements in technology also play a role in art classrooms. As new technology is being introduced each year, students and teachers must adapt to new ways to create.

Advancements in technology change the learning landscape for students who are pursuing careers in artistic fields. Former music education student and Music Therapist Grace Carr found that technology has enhanced the learning environment when it comes to artistic fields. “I would say that technology has changed the way we learn art, in that it had simply added on to what we learn. That is not to say that I didn’t learn anything the “old fashioned” way. When I was learning to transcribe music, I would first learn on paper, then on a computer software. So, I would say that in leaning art, technology can help us enhance what we already know,” said Carr.

With the rise of art created for specialized research environments, institutions have found that sharing their work in other settings can be difficult. “When institutions have highly specialized research spaces for art-making, sharing work with other institutions can become challenging, if not impossible,” according to ICAT. ARTx is a way for these institutions to team up to find ways to develop these works to be shared in other space.

Through ARTx, researchers are finding ways to better be able to share these works that have been composed to fit only certain environments. This research will open doors or new ideas and innovative ways that art can be created.

ICAT hosts collaborations with festivals, universities, and organizations throughout the year. They have currently teamed up with 11 partners with locations all around the world. Currently, ARTx has partners in Canada, California, Ireland, New York, and Washington, D.C.

Virginia Tech hosts the New Music and Technology Festival every two years, where faculty and researchers apart from ARTx convene to share their research through lectures, performances and installations. The festival also features student works and is an environment for art and technology disciplines to learn and collaborate with each other. According to ICAT, “the festival highlights diverse disciplines, including music, theatre, cinema, dance, visual art, creative coding, computer science, neuroscience, molecular biology, robotics, and cybersecurity.”

Events for this festival are held in specialized research and performance spaces around Virginia Tech’s campus, such as the Cube, the Sandbox, and Perform Studio.

When Virginia Tech is not hosting the organizations that are part of ARTx, faculty is sent to attend conferences all over the world hosted by other institutions in the art exchange. The most recent conference that Virginia Tech attended was a five-day conference at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media and Technology in Montreal, Canada.

Through the collaboration with ARTx and ICAT, along with the other universities and organizations that have joined the art exchange, new understandings of the way technology and art intertwine will start to change the way we share and view art.