Valley Art Center Celebrates Our Future, Reimagines Signature Event, Art by the Falls

Kim Mettee at Art by the Falls, in pre-COVID-19 times

Valley Art Center turns fifty years old in May, and we have been celebrating all year long! We have offered exhibits featuring our visionary founders, as well as our present-day students and faculty; a virtual gala celebration in February; and a documentary film exploring our mission within the Chagrin Valley. Now we turn our eye to the future of Valley Art Center, namely those artists who have studied with VAC instructors and gone on to build successful careers for themselves in their chosen medium.

Illustrious Alumni opens April 2 and will feature the work of several former VAC students, including Bill Watterson, Judy Takàcs, Judith Brandon, Kate Kaman and others.

Running concurrent with Illustrious Alumni will be an exhibit by the Whiskey Painters of America. This exhibit, again, explores the foundation of Valley Art Center, with the association of VAC founding member Florian K. Lawton and early VAC members and artists Lois Salmon Toole and Darlene Jackson. A genuine whiskey painting consists of painting a miniature piece of art no larger than 4 × 5 inches with watercolor pigment, created by dipping your brush in some form of alcoholic spirits, then possibly sipping the alcohol, thereby enhancing the painting experience.

These exhibits will be on display April 2 through May 12. Both exhibits will be free and open to the public on-site, along with a virtual gallery tour accessible on our website.

Valley Art Center is finding new ways to bring art to the region despite the challenges the pandemic has brought us. In light of necessary COVID-19 precautions, VAC is staging Art by the Falls in a series of gallery exhibitions at 155 Bell Street in Chagrin Falls during the summer of 2021! Every artist who was accepted to the festival for June 2020 is invited to exhibit and sell their work in the gallery this summer. There will be two separate five-week exhibits: June 4 through July 7 and July 23 through September 1. All artwork will be for sale on-site, as well as in VAC’s online gallery store. The shows will include a virtual gallery walkthrough. In addition, VAC plans to offer pop-up events for local artists on-site and in the Village of Chagrin Falls as we are able.