Visiting faculty member gives painting and printmaking pointers

Much like the Department of Painting and Printmaking, Virgil Marti’s work incorporates a variety of artistic techniques and media. Just as the department fosters artists’ experimentation with everything from the staid paint-and-canvas to computer imaging, Marti’s work studies integrative innovation.

Ron Johnson, assistant professor and administrative director in the department, cites Marti’s artistic ambition as one main quality the department seeks when hiring visiting faculty.

“We want an interesting individual – someone with energy, someone unruly,” Johnson said, describing some characteristics of an ideal visiting artist.

The Philadelphia-based artist, whose installation work has shown in many galleries nationally and abroad, said his eclectic use of materials and designs reflect the way his mind works.

“I’ve always been into architecture, and I’ve always had an eye for interior design,” Marti said. A visiting professor in the painting and printmaking department, his “eye” imbues the room in such work as his 2002 installation “Grow Room” that incorporated reflective Mylar wall panels, an antler and Plexiglas chandelier and weblike arrays of flowering vines, among other things.

As the visiting artist this spring, Marti collectively meets with graduate students Wednesday night’s to critique their individual work. This semester, Marti works exclusively with graduate painting students.

“It will be nice to just talk painting,” he said.

At the Wednesday critiques, Marti leads graduates to discuss each other’s works and assigns readings on such topics as sentimentality and irony in art. When Marti reviews students’ work, he offers advice and refers each student to different artistic pieces that might help that particular student’s own project.

“He told me to break away from old references and make my own (using) my recollections,” said Mike Martin, a second-year graduate painting student. Martin and others cite Marti’s sensitive approach to each student’s work as a quality that makes it easy for them to work with him.

Joe McSpadden, a first-year graduate painter, said Marti wants to know where each student is coming from and what they care about before he offers criticism.

“I think this is a great opportunity to develop a relationship with an artist who is doing great work,” McSpadden said. “(These) relationships help extend the art community to Richmond from cities like New York and Philly.”

Marti serves as the part-time project coordinator at Philadelphia’s Fabric Workshop. This studio emphasizes fabric wallpaper as a medium for graphic art and houses a large printmaking facility.

“Wallpaper bridges art and domestic life and makes the art more accessible to everyone,” he said. “While you are in school, take risks,” Marti said. “There is no better time to push the envelope.”