“Finding Home” Blends Visual Art and Poetry

RESTON, Va. — Visual art meets poetry in an innovative, genre-blending exhibit at the Jo Ann Rose Gallery this summer. Finding Home—a collaboration between Arlington visual artist Morgan Johnson Norwood and Reston poet Sally Toner will be featured at the Lake Anne site from July 30 to August 24, with a special reading and reception to be held August 3 from 2-4 p.m.

The exhibit has a distinct relationship to location, as both artists come from a long tradition of defining “home” with a physical construct. “Finding Home is a journey—artistically and personally, from Reston to Arlington,” says Norwood, who holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Georgia and a graduate degree from George Washington University. She previously showed her work in the gallery before relocating in 2015. Toner, whose first chapbook, Anansi and Friends, is due out later this month, first lived in the Ballston area upon moving to the area in 1995 and has lived on Lake Anne for 17 years. The two were neighbors and developed a fast friendship and appreciation for each other’s art.

“I am personally deeply connected to a sense of place. I come from a very long line of Georgians, and at a young age felt the urge to move away and start my own story,” said Norwood. “My experiences of independence, my grief over the death of my father, and marriage and motherhood kept me feeling the intense need for planting roots.”

Toner also traces her lineage to Georgia and Virginia, and her relationship with these origins, and the people who represent them for her, play a key role in her work. “Much of my auditory sensibility with spoken language comes from my grandfather—his Georgian accent, smooth syntax, and the audacious storytelling to which I always had a front-row seat.”

“Finding Home transcends the manmade elements of both Reston and Arlington to find truth in nature and energy in the urban sphere,” Toner said.

This exhibit, however, isn’t just about geography. Both artists also address in their work the effect of loss in their lives—and the lives of many women today. Norwood experienced a divorce that necessitated her relocation, and Toner is two years removed from a bout with breast cancer that impacted her writing.

“Sally has gone through cancer and faced fear and reevaluated her priorities, and I have gone through divorce and loss and also faced fear and reevaluated mine,” Norwood said. “I see our conversation as a universal one of transformation and upheaval and then finding that sense of safety and love.”

Highlights of the exhibit include the paintings Pyre and Heartstrings and the pair of “erasures”—poetry which utilizes previously written work—that accompany them.

“I found myself falling into Morgan’s abstraction,” Toner said, “but also looking to classic forms to try and grab a foothold in the past, and its innocence, before experiencing the future. William Blake’s Tyger and the Lamb seemed the perfect complement, and I do a little flipping around of these romantic concepts,” Toner said.

“Aesthetically, my paintings include small circles and holes, which respond to the nurturing small spaces within seed pods, items that once held fertile objects within their walls and have since been propelled into the atmosphere. Notice the circular forms, the branches, the leaves, and how they echo the human forms of hair follicles, neurons, blood cells, and capillaries. We are all connected. Heartstrings is a painting that seems to especially claim this theme,” said Norwood.

These two artists, also educators, are looking forward to sharing their experiences with a local audience.

“I love that this show is a conversation across media and geography. We are both teachers, both friends, both love Reston, and both former neighbors,” Norwood said. “The arts have this marvelous way of processing information and creating a story.”

Finding Home will be featured at the Jo Ann Rose Gallery in Reston from July 30 to August 24, with a special reading and reception to be held August 3 from 2-4 p.m.