Every year since opening Lafayette Flats Boutique Vacation Rentals in 2015 we’ve set aside a portion of our vacation rental income to financially support contemporary West Virginia artists by purchasing their work for display in our building. Our now extensive collection (160+ pieces!) allows us to showcase the rich and diverse artistic talent found here in our beloved home state to folks from around the world.
In past years we’ve taken a varied approach on selecting the piece or pieces we purchase with our West Virginia Art Fund. Some years we had a particular artist in mind and some years it was a certain theme or subject we desired. Many years the purchase was made because we saw a piece in a gallery that we just had to have.
While planning this year’s purchase, we thought about the value that art galleries bring to our lives. More than just an art store, a gallery can be a place where we experience art just like in a museum. A place where art is selected, curated and displayed for the public to see up close and in person. Galleries are often important social hubs where small gatherings can take place in beautiful surroundings. We think of galleries as art, and their owners as artists.
Of course, many times, especially in a small state like West Virginia, galleries are created and run by artists. But independent of their own creative endeavors, the people who provide these spaces are enriching our lives just like the ones who created the art they contain.
So, this year, instead of buying art from one artist, we focused our patronage on one of our favorite West Virginia art galleries to recognize that if not for the good work of the few remaining gallery owners in this state, we would miss out on the work of so many talented artists. We are pleased to announce that the 2024 West Virginia Art Fund purchase includes four works purchased from the art gallery, Bloomfield Richwood.
Bloomfield Richwood is a contemporary Appalachian art gallery located at 17 East Main Street in downtown Richwood, WV, on the edge of the Monongahela National Forest. Owners David Ward and Cecil Ybanez opened the gallery in August 2021 and have hosted numerous shows of artists from West Virginia and throughout Appalachia. They draw art lovers from all over to this tiny mountain town which is only an hour from Fayetteville.
David Ward, a Richwood native, and Cecil Ybanez, originally from the Philippines, visited Richwood in late 2016 and purchased a downtown building. Their intention was to renovate the building and create an apartment to use as their landing pad. The devastating flood of 2016 had destroyed the Ward family home, so they needed a new place to stay when coming from Florida to visit friends and family.
But the couple ended up moving to Richwood in 2020 after a call came from one of David’s old classmates saying her father was selling his beautiful old house in town. As happened so many times during the pandemic, that call led from one thing to another, and after some deliberation the couple ended up buying the house and moving in with a plan to one day turn it into a bed and breakfast.
In the mean time, renovations continued but changed direction on their downtown building. The upstairs became a fulltime Airbnb and the first floor opened in 2021 as Bloomfield Richwood.
We were thrilled to discover this gem of a gallery in 2022 and have made many trips back to Richwood for the sole purpose of taking in the gallery’s shows, which are always thoughtfully curated and impeccably displayed. Below are the four pieces we purchased from Bloomfield Richwood in 2024 that are now part of the Lafayette Flats West Virginia Art Collection.
Richwood, WV artist Beverly McCoy spent most of her life as a fine art portraitist. She recently changed her artistic direction; McCoy still paints portraits but now her subject matter is botanicals. This piece, Rhododendron Leaves, resides in flat #4, Eddy. We love the way McCoy captured the beauty of our state flower’s leaves as they transition from life to death.
Weirton, WV artist Jaci Rice has a gift for paining urban, industrial landscapes in a way that captures unexpected beauty. When we visited her solo show at Bloomfield Richwood early this year, we were surprised by the way her landscape paintings of smoke, steel and sky made us feel. We bought Towers for flat #3, Quinnimont so our guests could experience this strange juxtaposition too.
Charleston, WV artist Paula Clendenin is an art legend whose work we have admired for decades. We are fortunate to have several of Clendenin’s pieces in our personal collection and in the West Virginia Art Collection at Lafayette Flats. Small Meanings is just a tiny sample of her work, but we love the way it highlights the methods and patterns we know to be quintessentially Clendenin. You’ll find it in flat #1, Nuttall.
Bloomfield Richwood owner Cecil Ybanez is also an artist, and we can’t get enough of his work creating lifelike clay mushrooms and attaching them to household objects, often antiques. Apparently many other people feel the same way – Cecil received the First Place Purchase Award in the 2022 West Virginia Emerging Artists Exhibition, and in 2023 he won the Governor’s Award in the annual West Virginia Juried Exhibit. His award-winning pieces are now part of the state’s permanent collection, and one also resides in flat #3, Quinnimont.
Discover additional West Virginia artists – explore our past West Virginia Art Fund purchases.
2023 – Lindsay Toney
2022 – Marisa Jackson
2021 – Robby Moore
2020 – Nevada Tribble
2019 – Rosalie Haizlett
2018 – Eddie “Spaghetti” Maier
2017 – Meredith Gregg
2016 – Paula Clendenin
2015 – Stephanie Danz
