Tephra Institute of Contemporary Art

Events: the Tephra ica arts festival, formerly titled the northern Virginia fine arts festival, is a nationally ranked, juried, outdoor show offering the community an opportunity to enjoy and purchase superior fine Art and fine craft from over 200 artists from around the country. The festival is both the institution's largest fundraiser, and its most-attended event, typically attracting over 20,000 people to reston town center that weekend. There are opportunities for patrons to engage with Art and artists, experience innovative performances and activations, and for families to engage in creative artmaking.

Exhibitions: the institution mounts six to eight Contemporary Art exhibitions each year, typically featuring work by emerging and established artists from the mid-atlantic region. This includes solo exhibitions as well as thematic group shows and presents a diverse exhibition schedule featuring a broad range of Contemporary artists working in a wide variety of media. Notable exhibitions in this time period, include the what makes the earth shake exhibition featuring work from fast-rising black figurative painter dominic chambers receiving coverage in the Washington post, our annual invitational exhibition highlighting regional artists titled between a rock and soft place, the group exhibition forecast as an extension of our public artwork buoyant force, remnants and echos by richmond-based artist hillary waters fayle, and hacia la vida / towards life featuring work by three artists of mexican descent. Each exhibition is augmented with a series of public programs, including curator talks, artist workshops, and our creative response program, for which experts in their field respond to the artwork on view and engage the audience in conversation.

Education: Tephra ica is committed to its diverse educational programs that seek to reach and engage a wide and diverse audience of all ages. We annually present our emerging visions program, which invites students k-12 from across fairfax county public schools to come in and view the exhibition; study the Contemporary Art curriculum created in collaboration with Tephra ica staff and fcps teachers; and create Art inspired by their learnings. Selected works are then shown in the Tephra ica gallery. Other innovative education programs offered for youth includes explore more!, a popular self-led program in the gallery; free art-making programs for children such as family days; and annual summer Art camps offering substantive instruction and creativity learning opportunities for campers ages 6-11.