Current Exhibits
"The Maine Shore"
Works by Avis Fleming
Torpedo Factory Art Center
Printmakers Inc, Studio 14
15 September - 1 November 2025
Reception: 21 September 2025, 2pm to 4pm
Fleming has been painting and drawing the tumbled coast of Maine, the nation's most pristine, undeveloped coast, for more than 60 years. This show will include more than 50 works from Fleming's studio/galleries on Chebeague Island Maine, in her Alexandria studio/apartment, at Printmakers, and from her former studio/gallery in Middleburg. Works will include paintings, etchings, lithographs, drypoints, oil and watercolor monotypes, as well as ceramic bowls, vases, platters and framed Maine ceramic art.
Avis studied philosophy and art history at Bryn Mawr College, graduating cum laude. After a summer of basics at Rhode Island School of Design, she studied printmaking at Pratt Institute from 1959 to 1961. She was a member of the Washington Color School, exhibiting at Studio Gallery in Washington.
Fleming taught sketchbook drawing, figure drawing, and gesture drawing, a class she originated, at Alexandria's Art League School for almost 40 years, retiring in September of 2023. Her repeated Art League School trips to Ireland as well as to the Czech Republic and New Orleans, with its bayous where Avis grew up, were followed by a "Near West" trip to Avis's small Middleburg farm where students sat in pastures on chairs, surrounded by curious, friendly Connemara ponies and Black Angus cattle. The Ireland trips were similar to Avis's own annual summer trips to the Maine Coast (Casco Bay), which of course is like the rocky western coast of Ireland, since Maine and Irish coasts were connected about 200 million years ago, before they and their tectonic plates drifted apart.
Fleming’s work has received awards throughout the DMVincluding many from the Art League and its much praised Art League School. Her work was included in a national Washington Color School show in Brooklyn, NY, and a Chrysler Museum show in Norfolk, curated by New York Times art critic Hilton Kramer. Her awards also include an invitational show at Alexandria's Black History Museum and awards from the curator of the National Portrait Gallery, Charlotte Ickes. She received a second place award in a national ceramics show for her ceramic bowl "Louisiana Canton."
