Situated across the street from King Family Vineyards in Crozet, nestled among a stand of trees at the edge of pasturelands, a 1929 farmhouse offers the opportunity to explore exciting visual art within a vibrant and welcoming domestic setting.
Visitors to the non-traditional gallery at Folly Farm won’t find paintings of hunt scenes or hayfields often seen in this type of rural residence. Instead, contemporary works featuring bright, saturated colors in geometric compositions mingle with large-scale mixed media pieces, executed in natural palettes. A dynamic tension emerges between interior decoration and thoughtful curation where skill in aesthetic pairing shines. The conversations between artworks and architectural elements in and across space draw the eye, creating connections between framed works and door frames, furnishings and fine art. Passing through the home’s front door, visitors are met with warm wooden floors and woven-grass wallpaper. Photographs of Black cowboys and color fields rendered in thousands of shimmering beads adorn the entryway, communicating the tone of the interior in a bold and purposeful manner.
The new art space launched earlier this year as Pennsylvania-based art historian and curator Susanna Gold began splitting her time between the Philadelphia area and Central Virginia. A native of Richmond, Gold has been tied to Crozet through her in-laws for many years, but recently began establishing connections with artists, collectors, corporate clients, and arts institutions in the region. The gallery emerged as a means to expand her advisory practice in the Charlottesville area, beginning as just a single room on the first floor of her home.
“Building a showroom of sorts allowed me to have a space where I could meet with collectors, understand what their art needs are, and have space to show them lots of different kinds of work within an art environment rather than an office,” Gold says. “As the art that I wanted to introduce to the Charlottesville area continued to expand beyond the ‘showroom’ space I had carved out, it began to creep into other spaces of the house.”…