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Roberta Gross at the Levine Shool of Music

November 6, 2010 

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Bobby Gross at her opening
The Levine School of Music is a remarkable Washington resource that I visited for the first time last week. Its impressive mothership, on Upton Street NW, is a stately building on an immaculately-groomed wooded hill, but Levine has planted roots deep throughout the region, including outposts at the Strathmore Music Center in Bethesda, in Arlington, Virginia, and as part of the THEARC in Southeast DC.  Thousands of students study with musicians of the highest quality, have the opportunity to perform with ensembles of all kinds throughout the community or even to take master classes with the awe-worthy likes of Yo Yo Ma, James Galway or Mary Wilson of the Supremes. The school’s mission includes a commitment to make music education broadly available, so many students receive scholarships and outreach is a priority.

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my favorite
I visited the Levine School because it has welcomed visual artists to its wide halls (literally), and my good friend Roberta Gross is currently showing there. I am a big fan of alternative art spaces and new venues for exhibition, so heads up, yo, because the Levine School has plans to amp up a visual arts program. The space offers gobs of linear feet for the two-dimensional artist and the commissions go to a most worthy cause. For Bobby's opening, one of the school's chamber music ensembles performed, which makes for a much classier reception than most of us are used to. I hope that's going to be a recurring feature. If you are interested in the possibility of showing, I’m told that you should contact Stanley M. Spracker at  This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Watch this space for further developments.

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great crowd
ImageRoberta is showing mixed media work, paintings and monoprints. The prints feature a wide range of techniques used in combination. I have written before about the way to spot the printmakers at a show: they are the ones with their faces pressed to the glass trying to figure out how it was all done. The opportunity for much face-pressing is present here. I was particularly drawn to the pieces that include collagraphic prints. In the more typical print, metal or plexiglass plates are incised or etched, and the image is made by applying ink either inside the grooves or, in the case of a relief print, on the surface, and then running the plate through an etching press. Collagraphic plates (the term derives from “collage”) are made by adding texture to the surface of a board, gluing anything from string to foam to paper on it and then applying ink to the surface. The lines tend to be fuzzier than with an incised plate and Roberta's images have a quality that is mysterious and quite successful. My favorite piece is on the second floor. Horses with a ghost-like quality gallop across the dense, layered surface.
 
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