Ian Mcfarlane, Amy Eyes, 2001, Available at Matney Gallery

Ian Mcfarlane, Alegra Sleeping, 2001, Available at Matney Gallery

IAN MCFARLANE

Biography
Ian McFarlane (b. 1970) is an American portrait and commercial photographer based in Athens, Georgia. He grew up in Florida and Georgia and discovered photography as a high-school student in Atlanta. He later studied at the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia, where he began working as a personal darkroom printer and photography consultant for R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe. In that role, McFarlane helped guide Stipe back into photography, including printing the images for On the Road with Patti Smith (1998).

McFarlane’s first solo exhibition was in 1998 at Jane Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta. In 2000, he opened his own studio, working across commercial and fine-art photography. He later co-founded ATHENA Magazine and served as head of photography (2006–08), while also engaging in arts administration in Athens and working closely with painter-filmmaker Jim Herbert. His editorial and commercial clients include Rolling Stone, Spin, Jezebel, R.E.M., and the B-52s.

Welcome: Ukrainian Refugees in Georgia: An ongoing portrait-documentary series of Ukrainian families resettled in the U.S. Southeast. Available at Matney Gallery

Welcome: Ukrainian Refugees in Georgia: An ongoing portrait-documentary series of Ukrainian families resettled in the U.S. Southeast.

Ian Mcfarlane Jennifer Holding, 2016, 16"x 20"    ( frame 19"x 26" ) ,Archival pigment inkjet print, Edition 3/20 , Available at Matney Gallery

Ian Mcfarlane, Dreaming,, 1993, Available at Matney Gallery

FALL SALON: THE WAGNER TAKEOVER AT MATNEY GALLERY

CHRIS WAGNER: A SALON TAKEOVER

With Steve Prince, Garth Fry, Jill Carnes, Lita Tirak, Michael K. Paxton, Ian McFarlane, Dana Jo Cooley, Noreen Dean Dresser, William Ruller, Luther Gerlach, Christi Harris, Olga Tobreluts, Ivan Plusch, Nicki Santiago, Rebecca Shkeyrov, George Papadakis, and others
Opening Reception: November 7, 5–8 PM and beyond
Matney Gallery | Williamsburg, Virginia | Fall 2025

The Fall Salon at Matney Gallery centers on a Salon Takeover by sculptor Chris Wagner, whose carved and mixed-media works—often depicting animals—reflect a deep meditation on ecology, endurance, and renewal. Wagner’s figures, shaped from reclaimed wood, stand as guardians and witnesses of the natural world. Their tactile presence transforms craftsmanship into a quiet language of care and continuity.

AS WAGNER REFLECTS: “WHETHER IT’S CARVING A BISON, SCULPTING A VETERAN, OR DESIGNING A MOUNT FOR A 2,000-YEAR-OLD BOWL—IT’S ABOUT ATTENTION. YOU SHOW UP FOR THE FORM IN FRONT OF YOU. YOU TREAT IT WITH RESPECT. THAT’S WHAT KEEPS ME GOING IN THE STUDIO.”

• Friday, November 7, 2025

• 5:00 PM 8:00 PM

• Matney Gallery5435 Richmond RdWilliamsburg VAUSA (map)

• Google Calendar ICS

FALL SALON: AN EVENING OF ART AND DIALOGUE

• Friday, November 7, 2025

• 5:00 PM 8:00 PM

• Matney Gallery (map)

Pictured: Steve Prince, SOW, 2024, Linoleum Cut, 82.50 x 36 in, 209.55 x 91.44 cm

VIEW A PROFILE ON STEVE PRINCE

Steve A. Prince is a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, and he currently resides in Williamsburg, Virginia. He is the Director of Engagement and Distinguished Artist in Residence at the Muscarelle Museum at William and Mary. Prince received his BFA from Xavier University of Louisiana and his MFA in Printmaking and Sculpture from Michigan State University.  Prince is a mixed media artist, master printmaker, lecturer, educator, and art evangelist. He has taught middle school, high school, community college, 4-year public and 4-year private, and has conducted workshops internationally in various media. 

He has worked with several churches of various denominations across the nation spreading a message of hope and renewal philosophically rooted in the cathartic nature of the Jazz Funerary tradition of New Orleans.  To Prince, art media is like languages to a linguist as he adeptly tithers between two-dimensional and three-dimensional artistic practices while working with virtually every age bracket and multiple ethnicities.

VIEW YOUR LINK TO THE INVITATION

DANA JO COOLEY

FALL SALON: AN EVENING OF ART AND DIALOGUE

Dana Jo Cooley’s origin story lies in the coal-scarred hollers of Whitwell, Tennessee, where generations of miners laid their bodies into the earth. From that landscape of labor and silence, she draws not heaviness but light. The low light of dusk, the echo of hymnals in worn pews, the slow accruing of dust: these are the elements she gathers into her work.

She carried those echoes southward to Athens, Georgia, where she absorbed the fearless inventiveness of a music-inflected art community. Cooley soaked in Athens’ countercultural currents and translated them into her own visual lexicon—salt-encrusted canvases, dioramas, miniature reliquaries, public sculptures that function as both joke and invocation. In Athens, she erected The Love Shack Bus Stop, a whimsical, heart-warped bus shelter born from the playful spirit of B-52s lore and the earnest impulse of public art. It was there she learned the secrets of embedding narrative into space.

Yet she would not stay only in that southern time capsule. Her ambition carried her to New York, where the marketplace of ideas demanded new rigor and spaciousness. Her work—books, assemblages, sculptures—found a place among experimental artists, urging viewers to pause, to listen, to touch. But always, like a moth, she turned her heart southward again, bringing lessons from New York into conversation with Appalachian pulse. VIEW A PROFILE ON DANA JO COOLEY

MEET GARTH FRY AND LITA TIRAK

FALL SALON: AN EVENING OF ART AND DIALOGUE

Garth Fry (1979 b) is an artist in Norfolk VA whose recent work focuses on the theoretical constructs surrounding sculpture. He graduated with a Masters in Fine Art from California College of the Arts in San Francisco, California in 2016. Fry earned his Bachelors of Fine Art in Graphic Design with a concentration in Printmaking from Longwood University in Farmville Virginia in 2002. Garth has engaged with the art community by working as an arts educator, galleriest, preparator, and through volunteering within a variety of cultural arts organizations in Washington, DC, Virginia, and the San Francisco Bay Area. He currently works as a preparator for the Chrysler Museum of Art and has previously worked as preparator for the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University,  the Berkeley Art Museum, the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art, as well as a host of other galleries in the Bay Area, Washington, DC, and Virginia. VIEW WORKS

At the intersection of historical research, scientific inquiry, and visual storytelling, the photographic work of Lita Tirak, Ph.D., offers a compelling lens through which to reimagine overlooked landscapes and legacies. Her series on the Great Dismal Swamp—currently on view at the Linda Matney Gallery—merges color infrared photography with decades of academic and curatorial research into the electromagnetic spectrum. The result is a body of work that both reframes perception and honors the layered histories embedded in the land. VIEW WORKS

Jill Carnes, Secrets In the Garden, Embroidery, 14 x14 (left) and Steve Prince, Guard My Heart, Linoleum Cut, 18” x 24”, 2024 (right)

FALL SALON: AN EVENING OF ART AND DIALOGUE

Jill Carnes’ work has been shown in diverse locales including Athens, Asheville, Atlanta, Austin, and New York City and in exhibitions alongside Lonnie Holley, Thornton Dial, Clementine Hunter, Bill Traylor, Howard Finster, Mose Tolliver and Jimmy Lee Sudduth. Jill Carnes' artistry is a vibrant tapestry of color, pattern, and innovation. Her paintings and drawings have adorned the album covers of bands such as Neutral Milk Hotel and cd inserts for projects featuring R.E.M., Indigo Girls, Madonna, Vic Chesnutt, Victoria Williams, Pearl Jam, Garbage, Kristen Hersch, Soul Asylum and Hootie and the Blowfish. Her work has been exhibited in the Georgia Museum of Art in association with the Elephant Six Collective, a group of American musicians that gave rise to numerous prominent indie bands of the 1990s, including the Apples in Stereo, the Olivia Tremor Control, Neutral Milk Hotel, Elf Power, of Montreal, and Circulatory System. Her contributions have also been featured in esteemed publications like Rolling Stone and Creem and projects for Sony Music. Jill’s talents extend beyond visual art; she also captivates audiences musically as Thimble Circus, incorporating whimsical instruments like the toy piano and trombone kazoo into her performances. Michael Stipe included Jill’s name in an art piece in his 2021 book of photography.

VIEW A PROFILE ON JILL CARNES

NICOLE SANTIAGO

Nicole Santiago is a representational painter who has been featured in over 150 gallery and museum exhibitions. She is known for her narrative figure and still-life work, which has garnered numerous awards, including the Dr. Elaine Melotti Schmidt Prize. Her works have appeared in several publications, including The Artist’s Magazine, Art New England, the International Painting Annual, and Fine Art Connoisseur. Santiago currently resides in Williamsburg, VA, where she teaches studio art at the College of William & Mary.

FALL SALON: AN EVENING OF ART AND DIALOGUE

MICHAEL K. PAXTON

FALL SALON: AN EVENING OF ART AND DIALOGUE

Michael K. Paxton is a Chicago-based artist whose work combines abstraction and figuration to address themes of place, survival, and psychological depth. Spanning over four decades, his artistic practice has ranged from intimate ink-on-film drawings to monumental mixed-media canvases. His visual language draws on the raw materiality of coal-country landscapes, bodily interiors, and symbolic memory, producing work that is both autobiographical and architectonic. Whether through dense layering or pared-down gestural forms, Paxton constructs a visual field where physicality and metaphor coexist.

VIEW A PROFILE ON MICHAEL K. PAXTON

Pictured: Michael K.Paxton, Interpolate #11 96" x 72" 2021