News
Forthcoming Group Exhibition Curated by Arden Cone: Dream, America at Hollins University’s Eleanor D. Wilson Museum
February- April 2025
(Roanoke, VA) Dream America, an exhibition of six artists, including Arden Cone, Rachel Ahava Rosenfeld-Dlatt, Allison Rae Johnson, Julia Kwon, Jason Patterson, and Benjamin Winans, will take place in early 2025 at Hollins University’s Eleanor D. Wilson Museum.
Each of the artists in the exhibition approaches the American experience with eyes wide open, questioning themes as varied as gender, religion, race relations, and the legacy of colonialism by clearing the fog from the lens American history.
Curator Arden Cone said of the project,” Curating Dream, America feels like due diligence, its scrutiny of the nation’s historical narratives an act of empowerment.
Each artist I selected for the exhibition substantiates the claim that history is alive, malleable, and up for reexamination. Dream, America builds a more accurate memory of our collective past and shows that doing so is a form of activism. After all, we must safeguard our past to safeguard our future.”
Exhibition programming will include a virtual panel with the artists (moderated by the curator), as well as workshop open to Hollins students. Dates to be announced.
Residency: Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center Active Archive Residency
April 8-18, 2024
(Black Mountain, NC) The BMC Active Archive Residency, a partnership between Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center and Lake Eden Preserve, is a new program that invites artists to develop work inspired by the history and philosophy of Black Mountain College. The residency takes place at the historic site of the College, aiming to recreate the dynamic and creative atmosphere that made BMC a powerful incubator for new ideas. Throughout the residency artists have access to Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center’s extensive collection of archival materials related to the history of the College, available for research and inspiration. This inaugural cohort of residents–made up of artists Jen Clay, Arden Cone, and Julian Jamaal Jones–reflects the experimental and collaborative ethos of the BMC legacy, working in diverse mediums and using multidisciplinary methodologies. This program is generously supported by the Windgate Foundation.
Exhibition: The 2023 11th Annual International FL3TCH3R Exhibit - Socially and Politically Engaged Art
October 2-December 8, 2023
(Johnson City, TN) The international “FL3TCH3R Exhibit: Social & Politically Engaged Art” at East Tennessee State University’s Reece Museum faithfully continues to represent the spirit of social and political movements of the country and world. The 2023 exhibition runs Oct. 2nd-Dec. 8th. The 2023 juror will be Adam DelMarcelle, educator, artist, and activist. Due to the loss of his brother, Joey, to a Fentanyl overdose, DelMarcelle’s journey began through his use of traditional means of revolutionary art action and resistance, including poster bombing communities with screen-printed materials. When police destroyed this work, he turned to large-scale building projections, casting 80-foot-tall images onto the sides of buildings in his hometown. In 2018, he projected one such image onto the headquarters of Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin. His work as an educator and artist has sent him traveling widely activating communities through outreach, activism, and educating anyone who will listen to the power art possesses to disrupt, resist, and document our human existence. DelMarcelle’s work has been extensively written about and exhibited and is included in several collections across the United States including the Library of Congress, The Cushing Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, Syracuse University, Letterform Archive and many more. He earned a BFA from Pennsylvania College of Art and Design and an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Art. Currently, he serves as an Assistant Professor of Graphic Design at Wilson College
Exhibition: New Language: Contemporary Abstraction at Gallery 263
October 12-November 4 2023
(Cambridge, MA) Juror Daniela Riviera selected 26 works from over 700 entries, including “The Mileage” by Arden Cone. Gallery 263’s call to artists describes abstraction: a language of color, form, shapes, and lines that is discovered through improvisations of material and technique. Artists often consider abstract expressionism as a springboard for a contemporary approach to translating the world into a non-objective language or one that is removed from representation. Abstraction has expanded its vernacular to consider digital processes and the influence of technology as a point of departure to translate observations and perceptual illusions.
In the Works: December 2024-January 2025 Solo Exhibition at Greenville Center for Creative Arts
December 2024- January 2025
(Greenville, SC) Arden Cone is pleased to announce a solo exhibition of her work at Greenville Center for Creative Arts (GCCA). The exhibition (Title TBA) will include art from multiple bodies of work including Red State Blue Blood, Creosote Tears, and forthcoming bodies of works to be created during the remainder of 2023 and 2024. GCCA is located in the former Brandon Textile Mill in the Village of West Greenville, SC. For more information about the center, visit their website here, and for a virtual tour, click the button below.
Event: Archiving Histories and Decay: An Artist Conversation with Arden Cone and Jeff Arnal
June 7, 2023 from 7:00- 8:30 PM
(Tryon, NC) Upstairs Artspace will host “Archiving Histories and Decay: An Artist Conversation with Arden Cone,” a free community event on Wednesday, June 7, starting at 7 p.m. Cone is currently exhibiting Time’s Witness: Work by Arden Cone and Millicent Kennedy. She will be in conversation with Jeff Arnal, Executive Director of the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center (BMCM+AC) in Asheville, NC. Arnal has worked in the arts and nonprofit sector for the past two decades. He was appointed Executive Director of BMCM+AC in 2016. Previously, he worked as a Senior Specialist for the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, a nonprofit grantmaking organization and knowledge-sharing hub for arts and culture in Philadelphia, PA.
The public is invited to join us to learn about how Cone incorporates found objects and the complex stories behind her work.
Exhibition: Time’s Witness: Work by Arden Cone and Millicent Kennedy at Upstairs Artspace
May 6-June 16, 2023/ Opening Reception: May 13 from 4:30-7:00 PM
(Tryon, NC) Tryon’s contemporary art gallery Upstairs Artspace will exhibit Time’s Witness: Work by Arden Cone and Millicent Kennedy May 6-June 16. This exhibition of 3-dimensional artwork “offers a deep and sometimes dark look into humanity by way of the objects we utilize, attach to, and eventually discard.”
The opening reception will be Saturday, May 13, 5-7 p.m., and a Walk & Talk with the artists will start at 4:30 p.m., just prior to the reception.
The found objects referenced or incorporated into this exhibition, resurrected from near disposal and raised into cultural significance, have outlived their intended use by years, or even decades. Time’s Witness speaks to history in relation to human artifacts, investigating what they alone, or we as a society, have weathered. Both artists acknowledge memory, and even trauma, by way of its touch upon objects, people, and societies. Through careful recording, obsessive documentation, and laborious artmaking processes, Millicent and Arden delve into the narratives told through the traces we leave behind.
Exhibition: G.R.I.T.S at Bells Gallery
April 20- May 27, 2023
(Donthan, AL) G. R. I. T. S. is a group exhibition with artists Jasmine Best (NC), Jan Burleson (TN), Arden Cone (SC), Carlson H. Coogler (AL), Larkin Cook (TN), Claire Godbee (AL), Tara Stallworth Lee (AL), Jennifer McCohnell (AL), Tracie Noles-Ross (AL), Joy Alicia Raines (GA), Raegen Register (GA), and April Wright (TN) on view at Bells Gallery in Dothan, Alabama. This show explores feminism in the South.
Review: The Washington Post reviews LOOKS GOOD ON PAPER at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center
Read a review by Washington Post critic Mark Jenkins, with a thoughtful overview of LOOKS GOOD ON PAPER and a mention of Arden Cone’s “Dust Print I.”
Exhibition: LOOKS GOOD ON PAPER at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center
August 19th through October 2, 2022/ Opening Reception: August 19 from 6-8 PM
(Hyattsville, MD) LOOKS GOOD ON PAPER features 2D and 3D works on, in, and of paper. The exhibition showcases diverse practices and concepts in paper arts including trends and advances in the art of hand papermaking, politics of paper/papermaking, and explorations of the materiality of paper itself.
The jurors—Cindy Cheng, Artist and MICA Professor; Kelly Taylor Mitchell, Artist and Educator; and Gretchen Schermerhorn, Pyramid’s Artistic Director— Pyramid’s Artistic Director—faced quite the challenge in reviewing and making selections from the 588 pieces submitted for consideration. In the end, they selected a group of 40 dynamic pieces from artists across the United States. Each Juror will also make a “pick” of their favorite piece in the exhibition, which will receive a ribbon (made of paper, of course!) and a cash award. These picks will be announced August 19th at the artist reception.
The wide-ranging works will show paper pushed to the limits: stretched, manipulated, recycled, cast, or otherwise transformed so conceptually and visibly, it becomes something else altogether. “I think the scale of the works will be surprising to visitors. We often think of paper in its 8.5″ x 11″ size, but that notion is very much challenged by accumulation, transformation, or repetition in pieces such as in Xuewu Zheng’s “Zen Wall” of cast bricks,” remarks Schermerhorn. “It’s exciting to see how something as common as paper can be used to discuss current political events or philosophical conundrums, such as the piece by Kristen Tordello-Williams, “For Flags,” that explores the history of labor in a common American work garment.”
The selected artists represent an array of approaches in art making, from traditional to experimental. Some are very fresh-on-the-scene of paper arts and some are accomplished, master-level artists with CVs that read like novels. Exhibiting Artists: Cathy Abbott (VA), Hannah O’Hare Bennett (WI), Nathaniel J. Bice (CA), Anne Burton (NE), Susan Casey (PA), Arden Cone (SC), IBe’ Bulinda Crawley (DC), Stephanie Damoff (NY), Priya Dave (MA), Mary Early (DC), Elaine Elledge (PA), Amze Emmons (PA), Andrea Sherrill Evans (MD), Lanie Gannon (TN), Reni Gower (VA), Melissa Harshman (GA), David Joo (VA), Nilou Kazemzadeh (MD), June Linowitz (MD), Christine Medley (PA), Emmett Merrill (MO), Samantha Modder (MO), Hannah Moog (VA), Phuong Nguyen (VA), Kimberly Obee (NH), Anela Oh (TN), Katie O’Keefe (MD), Mariceliz Pagán-Gómez (IA), Ransome (NY), Nicole Salimbene (MD), Katie Schutte (WI), Megan Singleton (MO), Briana Stanley (CA), Barbara Straussberg (PA), Kristen Tordella-Williams (MS), Jocmarys Viruet (PR), Isabella Whitfield (VA), Frances Vye Wilson (DC), Amy Yoshitsu (CA), and Xuewu Zheng (NY).
Exhibition: 35th September Competition at Alexandria Museum of Art
July 8th through October 8th/ Opening Reception: July 8th from 6-8 PM
(Alexandria, LA) The 35th September Competition presents works selected by the competition’s juror, Elizabeth Chubbuck Weinstein. The exhibition includes 38 artists from 18 states, including artists from Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas and Utah.
Competition Juror Elizabeth Chubbuck Weinstein is a consultant serving museums, arts organizations and private collectors, an independent art curator, and a freelance writer.
She is the former Chief Curator and Director of Interpretation for the Louisiana Art & Science Museum (LASM) in Baton Rouge. Under her visionary leadership at LASM from 2002 to 2020, she transformed the museum into a nationally recognized venue for contemporary fine art. She produced over 100 dynamic exhibitions and related programming, many of them interdisciplinary approaches exploring the connections between art and science. She also curated solo shows focused on the work of renowned artists including Sam Gilliam, Peter Halley, Howardena Pindell, Faith Rinngold, and Keith Sonnier as well as that of notable local and regional contemporary artists.