Waterworks Visual Arts Center will have an opening reception at 5:30 p.m. today for its summer exhibition showing through Aug. 30.

Jeffrey Hargrave is a featured solo artist for the summer exhibition, “Artistic Translations.” Liliya Zalevskaya and Natcha Villamia Sochat are also featured solo artists. Portraits by Isabella Almazan, the 2019 Dare to Imagine Award winner, will be on display, and she will accept her prize at the reception today.

Titled “A Dixie Homecoming,” Hargrave’s show highlights his body of work between 2016 and 2018. He reimagines the canon of art history in the context of sexuality, identity and fraught racial divides. 

Hargrave attended the University of the North Carolina School of the Arts, Rhode Island School of Design, and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. His works have been exhibited at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Art Miami, Contemporary Istanbul, KuBe Beacon, Volta Basel and elsewhere.

Born in Kiev, Ukraine, Zalevskaya immigrated with her parents to America when she was a teenager, just as the Soviet Union fell apart. Her exhibit “Premonitions” is a grouping of large tapestries that speak to her experience as a young person in the Ukraine having to make an abrupt transition to life in a new country with new rules and expectations.

Liliya studied art in the University of North Carolina system, earning a bachelor’s degree in printmaking at UNC-Charlotte and a master’s degree of fine arts in digital media and performance at UNC-Greensboro. She lives in Charlotte with her husband, artist David Scott Sackett, and is an instructor of digital photography, printmaking and art history survey at Gaston College in Dallas, North Carolina.

Sochat was born in New York City and is the oldest child of immigrant parents with only elementary school educations. An artist from an early age, she studied art and biology in college. Named for the art she creates, her exhibit “Retablos” is a collection of frames or shelves that display personal and religious objects above and behind an altar. A common practice from Natacha’s childhood was the presence of personal altars or niches of worship in many homes that she visited. 

The Dare to Imagine Award is presented annually through a gift from Susan and Edward Norvell. The award, bearing a cash scholarship, honors one Rowan County graduating senior whose artwork most exemplifies the creative potential of the human spirit, heart and hand.