Two Shows, Two Perspectives: Woodturning & Vivid Color at TAG
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September 25–October 17Tappahannock Artists’ Guild (TAG)
This fall, Tappahannock Artists’ Guild is pleased to present two simultaneous exhibitions, bringing together the sculptural possibilities of wood and the expressive power of paint:
Women Woodturners: A New Anglefeaturing Barbara Dill and her students
and
Traveling with Trish in Vivid Color featuring paintings by Trish Poupore
Together, these exhibitions celebrate artists who find inspiration in the world around them—from the natural character of local hardwoods to the light, colors, memories, and landscapes discovered both close to home and through travel.
Women Woodturners: A New Angle
Women Woodturners: A New Angle features internationally recognized woodturner Barbara Dill alongside several women she has taught and mentored: Shannon Conner, Betsy Bowis Terhune, Brenda [last name], Laura Cotterman, and Laura Mathies.
Dill, a local artist, has been turning wood since 1990 and is internationally recognized for her work in multi-axis spindle turning. Working with local hardwoods, she creates forms that reveal and celebrate the innate beauty and character of the wood.
Her path to woodturning began after a 21-year nursing career. In 1990, a growing fascination with wood carving led her to take a woodturning class at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts. Multi-axis turning soon captured her imagination, and by 2006 it had become the focus of her work. What began as an effort to solve the challenges she encountered while making multi-axis candleholders developed into a systematic exploration of the technique.
Teaching and sharing that knowledge became one of Dill’s great passions. She has published numerous articles in American Woodturner, created instructional material, demonstrated throughout the United States as well as in Canada and Ireland, and was named an Emerging Artist at the 2011 national symposium of the American Association of Woodturners. Her book, Multi-Axis Spindle Turning: A Systematic Approach, was published by Schiffer Publishing in 2018.
Although Dill retired from traveling and teaching in November 2023, she continues to create work using the lathe as her primary tool and to mentor woodturners interested in exploring the possibilities of the craft.
That spirit of mentorship is at the heart of Women Woodturners: A New Angle. The exhibition offers visitors an opportunity not only to see Dill’s work, but also to discover the work of a community of women woodturners who have developed their own voices and approaches to the medium.
Traveling with Trish in Vivid Color
In TAG’s second featured exhibition, Traveling with Trish in Vivid Color, painter Trish Poupore takes viewers on a journey through places both remembered and newly discovered.
Working in oil and watercolor, Poupore uses light and color to transport the viewer to scenes filled with nature, comfort, warmth, nostalgia, and hopefulness.
Her paintings have long drawn upon a rich collection of personal experiences. Growing up on a Virginia farm surrounded by a large, colorful family and many animals provided an enduring source of subjects and memories. Family ties to Florida introduced beaches and a family orchard into her visual vocabulary, while childhood stories about her grandmother’s life at Uayalceh, a hacienda in the Yucatán, sparked another source of artistic imagination.
More recently, travel has opened new possibilities. Journeys to Mexico, Italy, and Vienna, Austria, have inspired a fresh body of paintings filled with the distinctive light, architecture, landscapes, and colors encountered along the way.
Poupore’s work also includes portraiture and landscapes celebrating Richmond and the countryside of Virginia’s Allegheny and Bath Counties. Whether painting a familiar Virginia landscape or a scene discovered thousands of miles from home, she seeks to capture more than a place—she captures the feeling of being there.
See Both Exhibitions at TAG
From the surprising geometry of multi-axis woodturning to paintings alive with the colors of travel, these two exhibitions offer distinctly different—and wonderfully complementary—ways of seeing.
Join us at Tappahannock Artists’ Guild (TAG), September 25 through October 17, to experience:
Women Woodturners: A New Angle
Barbara Dill, Shannon Conner, Betsy Bowis Terhune, Brenda [last name], Laura Cotterman, Brenda Thornton and Laura Mathies
Traveling with Trish in Vivid Color
Paintings by Trish Poupore
Come discover new angles, vivid colors, and the stories that emerge when artists transform experience, curiosity, and the natural world into art.
