Avis Fleming

IMAGES, a one-artist show of etchings, lithographs, monotypes, paintings and ceramics by Alexandria and Loudoun artist Avis Fleming, opens May 1 through June 28 at Printmakers Inc., in Alexandria’s Torpedo Factory Art Center.

The opening reception is Sunday, May 7, 2-4 p.m., in Printmakers Inc., Studio 325 (third floor) of the Torpedo Factory Art Center, 105 N. Union St., Alexandria, Va. The 35-year-old nonprofit studio-gallery is open daily 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. (703-683-1342).

Fleming, who has taught figure and sketchbook drawing at Alexandria’s Art League School for more than 25 years, uses images from her sketchbooks and figure drawings and translates them into prints, paintings and ceramics, in much the way Degas and other artists used their sketchbooks and drawings to make monotypes, etchings, paintings, sculpture and ceramics.

Her prints and paintings have won numerous awards, including two Art League Best in Shows and an award at the Arlington Ellipse’s mid-Atlantic exhibit “Prints! Prints! Prints!” Her show at Alexandria’s Black History Museum in 2003, “African American Images by Avis Fleming,” was praised by The Washington Post for having “Put Faces on Feelings… taking traditional portraits to new heights.”

Her sketchbook drawing trips for the Art League to Louisiana, Ireland and the Czech Republic inspired her printmaking and ceramics, as have her visits to coastal Maine, Louisiana and California and locally, on trips to the Washington Zoo with her sketchbook classes.

Fleming has shown in the Washington area since the early 1970s, and in 2013 was included in a New York City retrospective of Washington Color School painters, “Banned in Washington.” Her etchings and lithographs were shown recently at Strathmore in an invitational exhibit of Printmakers Inc. artists.

One of her ceramic pieces, “Louisiana Canton”, done in conjunction with husband/potter Paul Hodge, won honorable mention in the 2013 national ceramics show “Tabletop Exhibit,” juried by Linda Christenson of Minnesota.

Fleming and her artist sisters were honored with an exhibit at Isidore Newman School in New Orleans in the Reynolds Ryan Art Gallery, “The Fleming Sisters of Lafitte.” The show included landscapes of her childhood home on Bayou Barataria, of Maine and the rural Loudoun County historic Quaker village of Unison, where she lives on a small farm with her husband and two Border Terriers.

PRESS CONTACTS: Avis Fleming or Paul Hodge, a.p.hodge2@gmail.com; 540-554-8624; 703-477-2290.