In 2000, Simmie Knox became the first African American artist to paint the official portraits of a U.S. President and First Lady, when he was chosen to capture the likenesses of both Bill and Hillary Clinton. The commission rocketed the Washington area-artist to the national stage, though Knox had...

Have you registered for next week's TRACES Artist talk yet?

TRACES curator Sarah Tanguy will be speaking with four Washington-area artists currently featured in TRACES, next Thursday 11/12 at 5pm. This is the second of two programs, and will feature artists Roxana Alger Geffen, Rania Hassan,...

Meet TRACES artist Roxana Alger Geffen

Geffen is a multi-disciplinary artist who shows her work nationally and internationally, and teaches at George Mason University. She studied visual art at Columbia College as an undergraduate, and received her MFA in painting from Boston University. She lives in Washington, DC with her husband and three children.

She writes, "My work always revolves around odd juxtapositions. I start with objects, trying to find combinations that seem unexpected but...

Meet TRACES artist Johab Silva.

Silva has lived and worked in the Washington, DC-area since 2008, and is one of the founding members of Kicker Collective. He earned a BFA and MAT from the Corcoran College of Art and Design. Currently, he is an MFA candidate at Maine College of Art. Silva’s ongoing research explores themes of space, time, and environmental issues.

Silva writes: "'Point A to Point B and to Point A Again' is the result of a personal analysis of how I got to my present point in...

‘Aquatilis No. 6’ is part of a series by Washington-based artist Betsy Stewart that finds inspiration in the microscopic organisms living in water. She covered this sculpture with painted, biomorphic forms, as if the freestanding totem is an imaginary cross section of what might lurk in ponds and other bodies of water. The wooden structure is painted with thin, layered washes of color that summon both the bright and the murky greens and blues of water life, with fine details drawn in sumi-e ink....