The Poe Museum is pleased to announce the upcoming exhibition of new artwork inspired by Edgar Allan Poe’s short story “The Masque of the Red Death.” The show will open on October 7 and run through December 31. In honor of the show, the Poe Museum will host a special “Masque of the Red Death” Unhappy Hour on October 25 from 6-9 P.M. The highlight of the exhibit will be a stained glass window (pictured above) created by award-winning Wisconsin glass artist David Fode. Earlier this year, Fode displayed the piece at the American Glass Guild’s juried members’ exhibit in Pittsburg. David Fode was trained in drawing and illustration at the American Academy of Art in Chicago and began his career illustrating various periodicals in the United States and Europe. In 1999 Fode began working exclusively in stained glass, primarily in restoration and conservation. Fascinated by the idea of using light itself as a medium, Fode made a careful study of traditional means and methods used to manipulate light in painted designs. Fode currently designs and paints new stained glass for churches, businesses and private homes using the styles and traditional techniques found in the 19th century works that originally inspired him. More examples of his work can be found here.
In addition to Fode’s work, the exhibit will feature a series of lithographs (pictured above) by Indre McCraw, who works as a freelance glass painter and is based in NY. She started her stained glass training as a stained glass conservation intern at St. Ann’s for Restoration and the Arts in Brooklyn in 1993 while getting her BFA in Illustration and Art Education from Parsons School of Design (1994). She was hired as the third staff apprentice of the St. Ann’s program in 1996. She does a good deal of replication work through various studios for churches, historic places, and the Cloisters/Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as new work of her own and for others.
Complementing the new artwork by Fode and McCraw will be select pieces from the Poe Museum’s collection by Michael DeMarco, Berni Wrightson, and others.
The Poe Museum’s exhibit will build upon the museum’s tradition of bringing to Richmond the best in contemporary visual art inspired by the works of Edgar Allan Poe. Since 1922 (when the Poe Museum worked with Mt. Rushmore sculptor Gutzon Borghlum in the development of a portrait bust of Poe) the Poe Museum has brought the best in contemporary art to Richmond. While visiting the Poe Museum to see “The Masque of the Red Death,” guests can also see the Poe Museum’s outstanding permanent collections and its other temporary exhibit “Picturing Poe: Portraits from the Poe Museum’s Collection” featuring portraits of Poe done by a variety of artists from 1884 to 2009.