The Art and Antique Gallery of Trouver LLC,
located at 1006D Caroline Street in historic
Fredericksburg Virginia,

Keith Sharp

Keith will be exhibiting with us at the USBG and this summer at NIH. we are so excited...

“Nature Boy” Series

When I was a little boy, I very much enjoyed exploring nature by collecting bugs, looking for critters in creeks, and by taking walks. In the “Nature Boy” series, I have combined my interests in nature and self-portraiture by having portrayed myself transforming into a tree creature. In doing so, I am able to step into my romanticized view of the world. I photographed familiar situations but with a twist in an attempt to make the viewer do a double take. The inherent awkwardness of this character trying to blend in portrays my experiences as an outsider trying to fit in to my environment. I began this series by creating sketches of the various ways that I could imagine myself transforming into this creature. The props that I created for these performances were created from natural and artificial materials – bark, leaves, flowers, old clothes, fabric, plastics, paint, and glue. While some of the costumes have remained intact, others have fallen apart. A photograph is the end result of these performances. web site here

Robyn Einhorn

Robyn does amazing work, she has been in a trial at NIH, and has lovely things to say about our collection and the wonderful care she received there. We are hoping to exhibit some site specific work there and also show her next winter at Smith Farm - here is a recent story about her in the Hill Rag.
Robyn Einhorn: A Visionary Artist

Finding Emotional Healing and Liberation through Art

by: Pattie Cinelli

Robyn Einhorn, curator and assistant manager at Hoopla Traders on Eighth Street, SE, is well recognized to those who have frequented Capitol Hill’s Second Saturday events. She’s the one behind the artists and craft people whose work is exhibited and sold in the store.
This month Robyn is changing roles. Robyn has created a unique Valentine exhibit for Hoopla that will stir the hearts of those who view her artwork. Robyn began creating the art pieces on exhibit about a year ago. It was at that time she became able, as she describes, “ to come out” and share her story. She always loved Valentine’s Day and is a self-described romantic, so it was natural for her to connect these strong emotional feelings with her art.
Robyn is a woman of many accomplishments. She’s not content unless she has many projects professionally, socially and spiritually brewing. She has been an artist most of her life. While living in New Mexico in the 90s, a full time job as curator and single mom was not enough for Robyn. She also was an art appreciation instructor at a juvenile detention center, a trustee of the Roswell Museum and Art Center, a board member of the town’s Hispano Chamber of Commerce and a board member of the New Mexico Endowment for the Humanities. In 1999, Robyn traveled to Japan as a Fulbright recipient of the program’s memorial fund teacher’s program.
When in the mid-90s an opportunity to teach art in high school presented itself, Robyn like the idea of having her summers free. She enjoyed biking in her free time and did it regularly.
Robyn didn’t think twice when she began to feel tired all the time. Her schedule was grueling, but being active and multi-tasking made her happy. One day when she was riding on a bike trail, she felt dizzy and nauseous. She thought she needed more rest. When a kid on a tricycle passed her on the trail, Robyn knew something was wrong. “I went to a doctor and found out I was anemic. No big deal. I took iron.”
But she still wasn’t feeling right. The doctor did more tests including a very painful bone marrow aspiration. Doctors told her they were relatively sure the test would be negative because she was so young, and her profile did not fit the disease for which he was testing; yet he had to rule it out. Robyn’s zest for life did not waiver.
During this same time seven years ago, Robyn had reached a level of dissatisfaction with her teaching position that prompted her to search for new opportunities. So one day she googled words that expressed her interests, and up popped an internship through the Parsons School of Design Masters program at the Smithsonian Institution. She applied, and on the day she learned that she was accepted into the program in Washington, DC, she received word from her doctors about the tests: she had a rare form of anemia that would make her transfusion dependent for the rest of her life.
Robyn’s world as she knew it came to a sudden halt. But not for long. “I had no idea what being transfusion dependent meant, nor what myelodysplastic syndrome was.” She did research, deferred school and her move for a year, regrouped, then decided to make the move.
“Over the years since that first diagnosis, I’ve tried to come to terms with my disease. Who can I tell? How did it change my personality? How did it affect chances for getting employment? Health insurance? How could I continue to live a ‘normal’ life and get blood tests weekly, experiment with medications and receive transfusions monthly?”
With two masters degrees and an undergraduate degree in the arts - drawing, printmaking, painting and the history of American Decorative Arts - it was natural for Robyn to use her art to gain a new understanding about what she describes as this “new glitch in her life.”
However, Robyn decided not to use her academic training when creating her pieces. Instead, she wanted her art to “come from the heart, soul and brain, not books. I didn’t use techniques someone taught me.”
Her art begins with hearts and blood, threads and beads. The embroidered, collaged and painted body organs in her work reflect the symbolic relationship of body parts, love and valentines, while the images from medical textbooks and actual medical supplies express the body in more scientific terms. The exhibit attempts to understand why or how body organs connect emotional feelings with the physical body.
The exhibit is about lovers and compassion. It is her personal thank-you to the nameless and faceless blood donors who have kept her alive. “It is about the sharing of blood and becoming a part of all those donors who share their blood with me. It’s a way to express the certainty I have that I am a part of everyone, and we are all a part of each other.”

Suzanne Stryk @ NIH

The title of the show, This View of Life, is from the last line of Darwin's Origin of Species, and refers to my fascination with evolution and the variety of life on earth. My work features birds and insects, sometimes set in architectural plans or in actual books attached to the panels, signifying our wish to collect, understand and organize the wild. Many images, such as Little Wing, are metaphors for our own personal experience of life as well as explorations of nature. Somewhere in each painting the DNA double helix, genomic sequences, chromosomes or writing appears, suggesting questions such as: How do we use symbols to connect with but also distance ourselves from nature? And has the mapping of the genome unraveled mysteries or simply created more?

—Suzanne Stryk


This exhibit is in conjunction with DNA day on April 25th.

Donna McCullough

This wonderful piece by Donna is going to be in our "Patterns" show next month at Smith Farm