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Angy Rivera is a Colombian-American immigrant who fled to the U.S. with her mother due to violence in Colombia when she was just a child. Now in her 20s, she is one of the most vocal undocumented youth activists. Rivera has two siblings who are American-born, and is experiencing the unique struggles of being in a mixed-status family. Although an undocumented immigrant Rivera doesn’t let documentation define her. However, starting at a young age, barriers resulting from her immigration status stood in her way; even scholarship applications are a different reality for undocumented youth. While her teachers encouraged her to...

Yinka Shonibare’s Wind Sculpture (SG) I (2018) made its debut in New York City this past March with much media attention. Resembling a large scrap of fabric or a sail waving in the wind, the sculpture features Shonibare’s signature use of Dutch wax print and remarkably was the artists’ first public work in New York. Thanks to the Public Art Fund, the 3-ton solid fiberglass sculpture remained on view in the Doris C. Freedman Plaza of Central Park through October 14. In advance of Wind Sculpture (SG) I’s permanent installation on the Davidson campus, we collected some of the exciting...

You’ll see vibrant evidence of a painter maturing and developing in “Russ Warren: Works 1971-2015,” a 44-year survey of the longtime Davidson College art professor’s career. It’s now on view at the college’s Van Every/Smith galleries. Warren, born in Houston in 1951, grew up surrounded by art, from Picasso to Mexican muralist Rufino Tamayo, and says he’s always been inspired by Mexican masks, “Day of the Dead” folk art and colonial paintings – especially in their disinterest in realism. A student of art history generally, he’s been more recently influenced by Roy de Forest, fellow Texan James Surls and Chicago...

Los Angeles artist Kent Williams makes imaginative, unique figurative pictures full of intrigue, ambiguity and haunting allure in his solo exhibition “Native Bone and Far to Home.” His subjects, only partially visible in “Tomorrow,” for instance, coexist in an edgy and energetic visual tableau. They float comfortably in and out of spaces he paints using gestural brushwork and passages of decorative pattern. Both facets create a flattening visual effect. The realistic figurative elements, combined with seemingly unrelated areas of the composition, make for an irresistible Rubik’s Cube-like puzzle to decode. The artist often foreshortens his subjects, to heighten the viewer’s...