Member Reception

This special preview reception is for PBF Members only! You can learn more about becoming a member on this page.

Stroll the garden with a chilled beverage while enjoying refreshments from Six Star Events, listening to live jazz coordinated by Drum Orpheum, and be the first to visit the studios of our summer artists in residence: writer Jessi Lewis, visual artist Alyssa Ruby, and photographer Coriander Focus. You’ll also be among the first to see this year’s limited edition print by former PBF artist-in-residence Rashad Ali Muhammad. Following the member reception, join us for the public open studio event beginning at 6pm, which has been graciously sponsored in part by the Marion Park Lewis Foundation for the Arts.

More about the artists:

Jessi Lewis grew up on a blueberry farm in rural Virginia. Her fiction was in The Mysterious Bookshop, The Best Mystery Stories of the Year, 2023, and she received an honorable mention in Best American Short Stories, 2020. She was once an Oxford American Debut Fiction Prize winner and her work has been published in Alaska Quarterly Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Hopkins Review, Zone 3, Sonora Review, The Pinch and Yemassee, among others. Jessi's novel manuscript was a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. She teaches in the Shenandoah Valley and lives for really good tomatoes.

Coriander Focus is a full time creator, working most in the mediums of multimedia photography and written word. Coriander spent her youth deep in the mountains of rural Appalachia where her love of wild places was cultivated, out of that passion came original art and poetry inspired by the natural world and its influence on our internal experience. Coriander explores work that tells a story about how we relate to ourselves and our bodies using photography, poetry and multimedia art that frolics through the forest.

She has worked as an artist and has had her work displayed nationally across galleries, shows and publications since 2010. Notable highlights of Coriander Focus’ recent career have been Her Voice, Her Vision - Chesapeake Arts Center (2024) Windows to the Inside, Woman Made Gallery (2023) and Sarasvati Creative Space Residency (2022).

Alyssa Ruby is a Virginia-based artist whose work blends painting, sculpture, and textiles to explore storytelling, nature, and community. She earned her BFA in Fine Art from Flagler College, where she exhibited solo shows at Kenan Gallery and the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum. Inspired by a course in natural dyes, she went on to complete her MFA in Fibers at the Savannah College of Art and Design, where she developed immersive installations and a thesis exhibition, The Valley of In-Between.

Her professional experience includes designing home products during a print and pattern internship with Kohl’s, and creating an interactive public art installation for the Dewees Island Conservancy in South Carolina. The project combined large-scale murals, sculpture, and educational design to highlight the local ecosystem.

Alyssa currently works as a freelance mural artist with NOW Art and Walmart, creating custom digital murals that celebrate community identity across the U.S. She also serves as Exhibition Manager at ShenArts, where she curates exhibitions and supports artist programming in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley. Her work—whether in galleries, on city walls, or within natural landscapes—reflects a passion to tell stories that inspire wonder, connection, and a sense of place.