Courtesy of the Residents Collective.Opening Reception: Friday, May 5 from 6:30pm to 8:30pm
The Residents Collective (TRC) is pleased to announce the opening of Witching Hour, featuring artists MK Bailey, Mills Brown, Kate Fleming, Billy Friebele, Khadija Jahmila, Zia Palmer, Pam Rogers, Tom Woodruff, and Lenora Yerkes. The group exhibition marks TRC’s second annual presentation, in alignment with their continued partnership with Capitol Hill Arts Workshop (CHAW).
The breadth of artworks exhibited are selected by Anisa Olufemi, curator, cultural worker, and Fellowship Manager at Hamiltonian Artists. About the show, Olufemi states, “Witching Hour is an expansive, spellbinding storybook for all ages. Its contents spill over with otherworldly illustrations and abstractions, weaving together photo, video, painting, collage, sculpture and drawing. In this exhibition, veils are lifted—things that lie beneath the surface of murky waters are brought to light, shadow selves and silhouettes serve as main characters while forgotten ghost towns offer portals into the past.”
“There is a dark side, both visual and thematic, present within many of the artworks. However with closer observation, viewers will discover unexpected plot twists—scenes of climax and aftermath saturated in color and light. With an air of eeriness situated somewhere between the surreal and familiar, Witching Hour is an exhibition that haunts, and enchants.”
ABOUT CHAW: Established in 1972, Capitol Hill Arts Workshop (CHAW) is a non-profit arts organization and a home for all forms of art: dance, theater, music, and visual arts. In addition to its robust educational programs for both youth and adults, CHAW boasts two theater companies in residence, a dance company in residence, a darkroom residency in the only publicly accessible darkroom in DC, and a six-week intensive gallery residency. CHAW is an incubator space and an organization that prides itself in letting the arts lead the way.
ABOUT THE RESIDENTS COLLECTIVE: The Residents Collective was founded in 2021 as a way to connect, support, and showcase alumni of Capitol Hill Arts Workshop’s artist residency programs. TRC brings together artists in a variety of mediums, showcasing their distinct talents and perspectives. The group hosts annual, curated shows and maintains a flat file program of its members’ work. Current members include: MK Bailey, Mills Brown, Kate Fleming, Billy Friebele, Khadija Jahmila, Zia Palmer, Pam Rogers, Tom Woodruff, and Lenora Yerkes.
MK Bailey
Gallery Resident, 2020
Mkbaileyart.com / @mk.bailey
MK Bailey creates darkly colorful figurative paintings and experimental landscapes that reflect her experience of the world. She uses acrylic and digital mediums to explore themes of loneliness, anxiety, nostalgia, and the tension between dream and reality. MK’s work has been exhibited most recently at Plain Sight DC, Second Street Gallery in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Rule Gallery in Denver, as well as in flat file programs at Transformer and ICA Baltimore. MK is also a recipient of a 2021 Art and Humanities Fellowship from the DC Commission on Arts and Humanities.
Mills Brown
Virtual Resident, 2020
www.millsbrownart.com / @mills_brown_
Mills Brown is a mixed media painter currently living in Oxford, UK. Originally from South Carolina, Mills’ work considers the American South as a subject. She references ghostly figures lifted from photographs, familiar objects rendered from memory, ornamental patterns, and colorful wildlife to build an uncanny narrative around the idea of home. Mills holds an MFA in Studio Art from American University (2017) and a BA in English and Art History from Wofford College (2015). Selected exhibitions include Magnolia at CHAW (2018), Interiors at Latela Curatorial (2019) and Welcome at Redux Contemporary Art Center (2021).
Kate Fleming
Gallery Resident, 2018
The 50 States Project Mobile Resident, 2019–2021
www.kateflemingpaintings.com / @kateflemingpaintings
Kate Fleming is a painter and a printmaker. Between 2019 and 2021 Kate traveled to and painted in all 50 states alongside her partner, Tom Woodruff. The small, plein air oil paintings she created on the road capture the human-built American landscape: gas stations, parking lots, strip malls, and big box stores. Kate was the gallery resident at CHAW in 2018 and has also completed residencies at Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Amherst, VA and Penland School of Crafts in Penland, NC. Kate’s work was included in the exhibition Inside Out, Upside Down at The Phillips Collection in 2020.
Billy Friebele
Gallery Resident, 2022
https://www.billyfriebele.com/ / @freebill
Billy Friebele is an artist working in the Washington, DC region. He has exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Orlando Museum of Art, the Art Museum of the Americas, the Katzen Center for the Arts, and the Kreeger Museum among other venues nationally and internationally. Billy was a Hamiltonian Artist fellow and one of the first makers-in-residence at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library. Central to his research and teaching are a concern for the tension between our mediated digital experience and the materiality of the environment. He earned a BA in Philosophy from St. Mary’s College of Maryland and an MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Billy Friebele is an Associate Professor of Art at Loyola University Maryland.
Khadija Jahmila
Virtual Resident, 2021
www.KhadijaJahmila.com / @khadija.jahmila
Khadija Jahmila is an Afro-Caribbean mixed-media artist, creative entrepreneur, and thrift hunter. She creates surreal and futuristic original collage artworks, art prints, and retailable products, including her popular “Back to Love, Back to Cosmology” zodiac prints. Specializing in cut-paper and digital collage, Khadija’s Afrofuturistic creations reassert the humanity, beauty, intersectionality, and otherworldliness of the African diaspora. Khadija was awarded the NextGen Award by VisArts in 2020 and she has shown her work throughout the DC area at venues including Dupont Underground, Anacostia Arts Center, Howard Theatre, and VisArts Center.
Zia Palmer
Virtual Resident, 2020
www.ziapalmer.com / @_ziapalmer
Zia Palmer is an artist, photographer, archivist, and family historian based in the DC metro area. Through analog photographic processes, Zia records the often slow changes in communities, landscapes, and architecture, specifically legacies and remnants of her ancestral locations in Northeastern New Mexico. Exploring the thought that land has memory, recording all that took place there, has become a catalyst in linking the illusive aspects of memory, identity, and family history into something tangible. She received her BFA from George Mason University in 2019. Zia’s work has been exhibited at the Torpedo Factory Art Center, The Gillespie Gallery of Art, Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art, and more.
Pam Rogers
Gallery Resident, 2017
www.pamrogersart.com / @rogpk
Pam Rogers is a painter/sculptor whose work explores the territory between nature and the role of the artist engaging with nature. Born in Boulder, Colorado, Rogers has a BA in art history from Wellesley College, an MFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design, and a certificate in botanical illustration through a program based in Kew Gardens, England. After six years in residence at Arlington Arts Center, Rogers relocated her studio to Denver, Colorado. Solo exhibitions include Reston Arts Center, Arlington Arts Center, Gintner Botanic Gardens (Richmond, VA), and Swan Coach House Gallery (Atlanta GA). Rogers continues her work as an independent illustrator on various projects for the Anthropology Department at the Smithsonian Institution Natural History Museum.
Tom Woodruff
The 50 States Project Mobile Resident, 2019–2021
www.tomwoodruffphotography.com / @tom_woodruff_photography
Tom Woodruff is a documentary and street photographer based in Arlington, VA. He is a graduate of Ohio University’s school of Visual Communication with a Master’s degree in photojournalism. In 2019, Tom was a finalist for the Reinke Grant for Visual Storytelling. Tom is a co-founder of The 50 States Project, a mobile artist residency through which he and his partner, Kate Fleming, traveled to all 50 states. Tom’s work for The 50 States Project explores how anxiety shapes our culture and reality. How do those anxieties contribute to current tensions in the U.S.? His research is driven by his own fears that we’re beyond repair — as well as his stubborn optimism for the future.
Lenora Yerkes
Gallery Resident, 2019
https://lenorayerkes.com/ / @lenorayerkes
Lenora Yerkes is a narrative artist and writer whose work often eddies around urban scenes, figures and flood imagery, influenced by her youth growing up on the Sacramento River. Her narrative drawings were the subject of her 2019 artist residency at Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, her 2020 residency with Short Run Seattle, and were recognized by a 2020 Artist Fellowship Grant from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. Her comic “Rage Queen” was included in Drawing Power (Abrams ComicsArts Fall 2019), edited by Diane Noomin, an anthology named by the New York Times one of the best comics of 2019. She is a graduate of the California College of Arts and Crafts, where she was a Yozo Hamaguchi Scholar.
The gallery is free and open to the public;
- Monday–Thursday: 9:30 am to 9:00 pm
- Friday: 9:30 am to 6:00 pm
- Saturday: 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
- Sunday: CLOSED
Masks are strongly suggested.
The exhibition is on view at Capitol Hill Artists Workshop, 545 7th St SE. For more information visit https://chaw.org/
