ANNIE WALDROP

  • Annie Waldrop - Fils-de-Connexion
     Fils de Connexion

Alexander/Heath Contemporary
is pleased to announce
an exhibition by multi-media artist

Annie Waldrup

“Becoming”

September 4 through October 30, 2026

OPENING RECEPTIONS:
Art-by-Night Friday, September 4, 2026, 6-9 pm
Art-by-Night Friday, October 2, 2026, 6-9 pm

CLOSING RECEPTION:
Friday, October 30th, 2026, 6-9 pm

Artist Statement:

My art is a visual prayer; an offering and a healing process. It is a garden I tend diligently as a source of refuge. Using collected media from past eras for inspiration and material – fashion, music, dance, deism, writing – I explore and explode paradigms of beauty, strength, oppression, and liberation. Whether canvas, chairs, tables, dressers, butter churn, millinery, and both found and constructed elements, my assembled images and 3-D constructions evoke legacies like nurturing and compassion, as well as physical inheritance, across cultures and history. The good china, silver tea sets, and tiaras are scaled up to amplify their significance in the larger context. They become relics from the tomb of the Divine Mother – a merger between Venus, Madonna, and the Buddhist deity Tara. They poke at the junction of history and hysteria. The work resonates with personal agency and restores power to the feminine gaze, revealing its drama, Dharma, and the consummate power of the Divine Feminine.

Artist Bio:

Annie Waldrop is a painter/sculptor currently residing in Roanoke, Va. She received her master’s degree from The Maryland Institute College of Art in 2003. Prior to that she attended Parson’s School of Design in NYC where she lived and worked for over 10 years, designing hats and exploring the downtown art scene of the 1980’s. The impact of her time in NY caused her to give up commercial art pursuits for a focus on the fine arts. A retrospective of the work of Joseph Cornell at MOMA plus the involvement in the downtown art scene (where she attended the opening reception of Jean Michel Basquiat s initial exhibition at Anina Nosei Gallery) had a profound effect on her overall creative life. The combination of the sculptural aspects of millenary design coupled with time spent in the sculpture department at VCU and MICA laid the foundation for her current works which combine both painting and sculpture in a mixed media format that address themes that have continued to surface again and again throughout her career. Interests in various aspects of the Feminine, combined with spiritual teachings gleaned from Taoism, Buddhism and other spiritual philosophies are interwoven into the underlying fabric of this exhibition.

6 assemblages, a flurry of visual scat singing

All of these assemblages include objects associated with domestic life, like that of a small girl who creates and plays house, except all are created on an adult scale. These works also introduce the idea of paintings as 3-D objects; and the elements can be recombined and reconfigured, coupled and decoupled.

  1. Fils de Connexion –  Threads of Connection (2025) 60″ x 120″ x 36″ Mixed media assemblage. Oil on canvas painting, bamboo, luan, handmade needle and spool, chenille yarn, and assorted found parts.
    The French poet Arthur Rimbaud wrote Illuminations, which inspired singer/poet/author Patti Smith’s poetry, spoken word performance, and several books. In turn, Smith, as the “High Priestess of Punk,” has a shamanic influence on me; I view her as a modern manifestation of a deity. The thread connecting their art and wisdom is the source of inspiration between artists, which transcends time. This piece illustrates the interconnectedness of all things.
  2. Claws of Fashion – (2025) 72″ x 84″ x 72″ Mixed media assemblage. Vintage chair back, pool cues, antlers, other assorted found parts, oil on canvas painting. Adornment, flowers, elaborate hair, alluring fashion – these are the attractants known to and used by women throughout time. Seen as feminine vanity, each can in turn prove wily tools of protection from captors and sycophants alike. As in nature — the sting of the bee and the brambly thorns in the garden, they attract and, when needed, repel. The duality between the deist archetype and the realized feminine is historically tied to shows of wealth and power. From outer display to inner psyche, this assemblage recognizes the duality of attracting others to bring them within striking distance.
  3. Conversation between Color, Fragrance and Sound – (2025) 48″ x 60″ x 43″ Canvas, chair, butter churner and other assorted found parts.
    West and East meld as The Fragrance of Compassion (oil on canvas), based upon Botticelli’s painting, is smelling an Eastern flower. Real beauty is timeless, and through time has manifested in the best qualities ascribed to women and goddesses: compassion, kindness, nurturing, self sacrifice. Elements of this assemblage include a “Davey Coquette” hat (the crown formed of a Wonder book about Davey Crockett), a butter churner (the sacrificial labor of love), a womanly-shaped guitar (connoting music and the “gentler art” of female education). Women form the soundtrack of childrearing with voice, lullaby, and caregiving. Life as a woman is a conversation and a serenade. This visual, imagined musical score is based on these archetypal feminine themes.
  4. Chinoiserie Shepot and concocted family heirlooms -(2025) 68″ x 72″ x 84″ Vintage hand painted dresser, aluminum flashing, foam pipe insulation roof, welded steel spout and welded frame for wooden blue willow plate, other assorted found parts.
    Derived from Salvador Dali’s surrealist concept of women having secret drawers, the Shepot features Edith Sitwell (of the Bloomsbury Group of English artists and poets). As a “visual poet,” I am drawn to her Bohemian lifestyle, eccentricity, and her haute couture — a real-life goddess. The reverse is young Edith at peace in a garden. A teapot is a vessel as a woman is a vessel, and this Shepot is a giant womb, a “period piece” with scores of drawers to have and to hold. Included in this realized collection of personal objects are a framed painting of an imagined relative, a Blue Willow plate coffee table, and a painted, oversized sugar spoon offering the eastern concept of egg as a seed of potential. All reflect a family aesthetic that evolved over time. These objects are relevant to me as they represent the sacred rite of passing items on from generation to generation.
  5.  Rebirthing Chair … (2025) 54” x 72”x 64.” Mixed media assemblage. Handpainted chair and pillow, plaster cast feet, other assorted found parts, oil on canvas painting. Every culture has a creation story and generations of births and deaths. Whether ancient progenitor, western royalty, or uber-fertile bunnies, the experience of birthing is universal and humbling. In this coupling, East and West once again intersect to commemorate new, physical incarnations. The thread of being knits and purls, and human and deity alike transform into this lifetime from within the sacred womb. In the painting, the goddess Tara pairs wisdom with the blossoming lotus flowers, which grow from the mud and emerge unstained from murky beginnings. The fully blooming flower represents attainment of enlightenment; the butterfly wing symbolizes transformation into this lifetime. There is an intuitive wisdom and power that comes from women’s ability to give birth. In every way, women are guideposts of creation.
  6. Sky Music, accompanied by Essence and Impermanence – (2025) 74” x 34” x 84” Mixed media assemblage. Hand painted found chair, cloud of polyester batting, other assorted found parts, oil on canvas painting.
    Revisiting the theme of music, this work illustrates a Buddhist/Taoist concept of impermanence as shown to us in nature, like a transient cloud. The constellation chair is a celestial throne, a symbol of infinity and destiny; the hand, a sign of human life. Headed by an Eastern deity that forms a mask over a Western woman in a yellow dress, the painting suggests an imagined permanent archetype that persists across time. Chairs in general offer corporeal comfort as a resting place, and a place for meditation and contemplation. I’m inspired to create imagery celebrating the poetry of Dharmic principles. The sky record player is a devotion, an homage to the conceptual artist Yoko Ono, whose body of work stems from Buddhist thought.

Education:

2003    MFA,  Maryland Institute College of Art; Baltimore, MD
1991    BFA in sculpture, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA
1977-1979   Graphic design, Parsons School of Design, New York, NY

Exhibitions, Commissions, Collections

2025    The Broadcast oil painting selected for Olin Hall Gallery 2025 Juried Biennial Exhibition, Roanoke College
2024    Hard Labor solo exhibition of oil paintings, Gallery360, Roanoke, VA
2023            Venus Inferred solo exhibition, Piedmont Arts, Martinsville, VA
2022    Venus Inferred solo exhibition, Hunt Gallery, Mary Baldwin University, Staunton, VA
2021    Fur Lined Demitasse sculpture selected for Homeward Bound group exhibition, Taubman Museum of Art, Roanoke, VA
2020    Fur Lined Demitasse selected for group exhibition, LaGrange Museum, LaGrange, Georgia
2020    Exhibition at Annie Gould Gallery, Gordonsville, VA
2018            Looking Inward group exhibition; curated and was a contributing artist in exhibition at Carilion/Virginia Tech School of Medicine, Roanoke, VA|2018    Seeds of Potential solo exhibition at Alexander Heath Gallery, Roanoke, VA
2016            Iconic Memory, Capturing the Fugitive chroma projects included in            Charlottesville, VA group show featuring works by artists Bihn Danh and Robert Schultz, John Grant, and Anne Savage
2015    The Seen and Unseen major solo exhibition, Turchin Center for the Visual Arts at Appalachian State University

The exhibition is on display through Friday, October 30, 2026.
Access is available during exhibition hours or by appointment only:
Contact Ed Hettig:
hettig@alexander-heath.com or text 607.226.2473.