Exhibition Opening: Friday, January 17, 2014, from 6-8 p.m.
Runs Through: March 7, 2014

Joni Pienkowski

Landscape: Another Dimension

Four solo exhibitions reinvent the tradition

Ruth C. Horton Gallery

The Moss Arts Center’s first one-person painting exhibition features Joni Pienkowski, one of the most prominent artists living here. Rendered in oil on birch panel with acrylic, charcoal, graphite, and Prismacolor pencil, Pienkowski’s abstract paintings evoke the poetic power and life force of nature. Steeped in a rich palette of earth tones, highlighted with dashes of burnt oranges, yellows, and whites, the paintings seem imbued with an nascent, though potent, energy. Wisps of pencil, pen, and ink spontaneously extend, curl, dance, and retreat over the picture plane, unfurling like the wind. With titles such as Leaving Seeds, Wind Blown Answers, and Thermal Emergence, these works, for the artist, suggest such natural phenomena as pollination, gestation, and transformation. Pienkowski captures the dynamism of nature in her art—crystallized in a latent, almost expectant, but universal moment.


Artist Talk

Friday, January 17, 2014, 6:30 p.m.
Joni Pienkowski
Ruth C. Horton Gallery



My Take Talks

February 24, 2014, 7:20 p.m.
Whitney Knollenberg
Doctor of philosophy candidate in the Department of Hopitality & Tourism Management
Ruth C. Horton Gallery

March 2, 2014
Sam Cook
Director of American Indian Studies and associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Virginia Tech
Ruth C. Horton Gallery

March 7, 2014, 6:50 p.m.
Megan O'Rourke
Assistant professor in the Department of Horticulture at Virginia Tech
Ruth C. Horton Gallery



Assimilating, 2012
Oil, acrylic, Prismacolor, charcoal, and graphite on birch panel
18 x 80 inches
Collection of the artist

Thermal Emergence, 2012
Oil, acrylic, Prismacolor, charcoal, and graphite on birch panel
18 x 80 inches
Collection of the artist

Seed Journey, 2010