Hotel aloft to highlight artists' work

The hotel aloft in Chesapeake hosts a mixer for young artists tonight. There’ll be cocktails, a DJ and, of course, art. Meet the creators whose work you’ll see:

MAYA DEVI

Maya Devi says she has been drawing since she was “very small,” growing up in Columbia, Md. At 13, she and her mother moved to Hampton, and by high school she had taken up painting – so much so that after she graduated from Kecoughtan High she enrolled in art workshops at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and at The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She earned an associate degree in photography from Thomas Nelson Community College, and then in 2002 life events sparked a detour that would last several years.

First, she had a baby and afterward abandoned painting for about four years. Then she lost her grandfather, the man to whom she’d become very close in the years after her father died.

“I was really upset. He was like my father. I went back to painting to cope, and then I realized my style had changed. I used to paint really dark, and then it had just become something different.”

Now Devi’s style is sort of an exaggerated, animated portraiture; her characters, usually women, are doe-eyed creatures representative of moods Devi works to evoke.

“I used to call myself an expressionist. I use the portraits to express my mood. A lot of people think they’re self-portraits, but they might just be my emotions. Sometimes they’re just a project for myself.” Next, she says, her work will use fairy tales and Marie Antoinette as themes.

Devi’s sold two paintings through aloft already, and she likes how her work looks in what she calls the modern, funky lobby. And she’s on a roll: In addition to this showing, her work will appear in group exhibitions in New York and Los Angeles.

“It’s exciting,” she says. “I’m really happy.”

See more of Maya Devi’s work at www.myspace.com/themayadevi.

JOSH MALBON

Josh Malbon, who grew up in Virginia Beach, says his art takes its cues from the layering that occurs on surfaces in urban environments. “I like to zero in on segments, like layers that occur from people putting posters up, and maybe writing over it, or getting weathered from rain.”

These layers were part of Malbon’s early years: graduating from First Colonial High School in 1995, studying graphic design at American Intercontinental University in Atlanta, working at an ad firm in Atlanta. Later, he helped his cousin Stephen Malbon lay out and design his then-fledgling magazine, Frank 151, which has become part of a multimillion-dollar marketing firm run by brothers Mike and Stephen Malbon based in New York. When Stephen moved the magazine to New York, however, Josh moved to D.C.

There, he worked for a graphic design firm and worked on a T-shirt line, Haute, with his friend Todd Askins. Haute never got, well, hot, but their second try, Shmack, did. By then Malbon, who is now 32, had moved back to Virginia Beach, where he has fond memories of nature and art.

His mother, an art teacher at Bishop Sullivan Catholic High School in Virginia Beach, exposed him to art early. “She had a studio in her house, where other artists would come in once a week and draw live nudes. … Art was always in the house – there were always supplies around – and naturally it sparked my interest.” Even though his work explores weathered surfaces in urban areas, Malbon, a hunter and fisherman, loves his hometown for its beaches and relative serenity. And he’s glad aloft has shown interest in supporting young local talents.

“They’re not afraid to hang something other than what I call ‘clothesline art’ – the traditional landscape. It’s nice to bring something a little more diverse.”

See more of Josh Malbon’s work at www.joshuamalbon.com.

Malcolm Venable, (757) 446-2662,malcolmvenable@pilotonline.com