Resilient Americana is an online virtual reality art exhibition exploring the hardiness of American virtues in small towns all across the country. The artist, Dave Alber states, “The commitment of Americans to abide in the virtue body of cultural memory and the American character will sustain America through any rough patch of road.”

“Most of us would agree that when we spend time in America’s small towns, the feeling tones that we associate with Americana are readily apparent,” Alber continues. “However, even while American virtues are obvious within the cultural crucible of small town America, they may appear obscured or inaccessible when we are racing around in the windy dissociation of constant movement or caught up in the maelstrom of collective uncertainty. It is at such times, that we might remember to reflect upon our nation’s cultural continuity: actualizing the democratic principles of classical civilization; embodying the faith of European civilization; realizing the freedom-yearning aspirations of pilgrims and immigrants; asserting moral strength against the expansionist aggression of two world wars and the totalitarian collectivism of the cold war; as well as the creativity, technology, and idealism of striding confidently on the moon and even today making early steps toward mars.”

“Yet more than the historically obvious, America’s virtues are in the details of life: in the cordial salutations and connections of small town community; in the spirit of independent inquiry and lifelong self-betterment encouraged early on in its schools; in the honoring of history, traditions, and cultural continuity; in the enthusiasm for athletics in its baseball park; in the moral empowerment of its religious institutions; in the self-reliance of its farmers; in the tenacity of its entrepreneurs; and more.”

Resilient Americana documents the resilience of American culture in the small town ways of Brooksville in Hernando County, Florida during the time of COVID-19. It is the artist’s hope to bring attention inside by reflections on small town images as a metaphor for Americans’ eternal connection with the abiding virtues within. “What virtues shape our character? What noble traits define our spirit? What historical and cultural trajectories work through us and lift us empowered from within?

Fundamentally, virtues are abstractions. They aren’t physical objects like bread and water that a person can put in their mouth. However, as Jesus says in our shared cultural tradition, “Man does not live by bread alone.” Humanity lives—in the deepest sense—and is fed and nourished most soulfully by abstractions… particularly by virtues, graces, ideals, logos, Platonic forms, elementary ideas, archetypes, and eternal values… or in Christian terms, “every word from the mouth of God.”

Virtues such as love, generosity, fortitude, peace, temperance, responsibility, honesty, humility, patience, loyalty, sincerity, prayerfulness, and courtesy are ideals that when taken to heart, become a pattern of character modeling each individual to a high universal principle. And each individual, in the uncertain wilderness of this our world, takes on the virtue in his or her own way. The characters whom Dante encounters in the Paradiso are human examples, the personality of each is saturated in virtues according to the humor and temperament of each.

Resilient Americana is a reminder that humanity is strengthened—particularly in tempering times—by the inner nourishment of noble exemplary virtues. High ideals, intangible though they may be, when assumed… become for the inspired individual, a reality lived from within, an inner life of character patterned on high ideals. For a life lived from within a sustained affect of this virtue body—this habitual meditation on and sustained feeling tone of deeply-felt ideals—is a life strengthened by those virtues.

American virtues are celebrated:

• in America’s historical tradition in the lives of George Washington, Abigail Adams, and Davey Crocket;
• in the folklore tradition with such characters as John Henry, Kate Shelley, and Paul Bunyan;
• in the literary tradition of Mark Twain, Louisa May Alcott, and F. Scott Fitzgerald;
• in the religious traditions of Mother Ann Lee, Black Elk, and Dr. Martin Luther King;
• in the rich musical traditions of hymns, spirituals, powwows, ragtime, jazz, country, and rock and roll;
• In the philosophical tradition of Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James, and Hannah Arendt;
• As well as in the traditions of sports, exploration, education, science, invention, entrepreneurism, humanitarianism, philanthropy, indeed, in every discipline of excellence and human achievement.

In a difficult time, Resilient Americana returns us to the wellspring of ennobling virtues, especially those that are part of the Western and American tradition, that great historical continuity that has shaped America’s moral, political, romantic, practical, and idealistic character.

Resilient Americana is an ongoing project in the early stages of development. As it extends into other media, Dave Alber states, “I’m sure that everyone who explores Resilient Americana will reflect on their own sustaining virtues. Please feel free to connect with me and share the American virtues that sustain you through difficult times.”

The online exhibition, Resilient Americana, is unique in advancing three new technologies that make it accessible in this difficult time when social distancing is a priority.

Dave Alber’s Hybrid VR Paintings™, virtual reality art gallery, The Floating Gallery™, and VR Paintings app offer web, mobile, Google Cardboard, VR Headset, and virtual reality solutions for art lovers in a time when visiting a physical art gallery is simply not possible.

Hybrid VR Paintings™ are physical/virtual hybrid paintings that occupy physical space on the wall while simultaneously manifesting within the virtual world. These paintings are physical oil and acrylic paintings that actually exist in the real world. However, within the virtual world of the VR Paintings™ app, they become fully immersive VR realities. Thus, the paintings are both physical and virtual.

The Floating Gallery™ is the interface of the VR Paintings™ app. Visitors use this gallery to view Hybrid VR Paintings™.

The VR Paintings™ app is an Android, Oculus Go, and Google Cardboard compatible virtual reality gallery app for viewing Hybrid VR Paintings™. The gallery may be explored with a flat screen as well as with a stereoscopic viewer.

Resilient Americana: A Renewal of American Virtues In Tempering Times is live online at http://davealber.com/2020/03/27/virtual-reality-art-exhibition-resilient-americana/.

Resilient Americana may be experienced in the online virtual reality art gallery, The Floating Gallery™, at http://thefloatinggallery.com.

Dave’s VR Paintings app is available on the following platforms and VR output formats:

Cellular:

• Available at the Google Play Store
• Available at the Amazon AppStore

VR Headset:

• Available at the Oculus Go Store
• Available as a download for HTC Vive at com

Online:

• http://thefloatinggallery.com

Art galleries, collectors, publishers, and media partners interested in Resilient Americana and Dave Alber’s Hybrid VR Paintings™ are invited to contact Dave Alber at dave@davealber.com.

Paintings from this exhibition:

Stability: Brooksville Courthouse is a Hybrid VR Painting™ by Dave Alber.

acrylic on Canson paper and panoramic VR technology
22 X 10.75 in
2020

Stability: Brooksville Courthouse explores the American virtue of stability. American classical architecture echoes a deeply felt reminder of our cultural forebearers in the continuity of the Western cultural tradition back to ancient Greece. This echoing call—as if from the well of history—awakens us to the depths of our legal, political, philosophical, aesthetic, scholastic, architectural, humanistic, and idealistic traditions that stem back to our classical progenitors.

It is the stability of the American tradition that made it the model for, not only the United Nations, but representational democracies the world over. The American experiment is notable for its stability in not simply weathering, but vigorously overcoming, mighty storms of adversity.

Click on the image above to experience this Hybrid VR Painting™ in virtual reality.

Faith: Baptist Church, Brooksville, Florida is a Hybrid VR Painting™ by Dave Alber.

acrylic on Canson paper and panoramic VR technology
22 X 10.75 in
2020

One of Christianity’s cardinal virtues (faith, hope, love), American faith’s unique feeling tone is born out of pilgrims faith in the New World re-imagined as the Promised Land. From then to now, in the American spiritual tradition, hardships were reimagined as informed by a spiritual trajectory. During the time of COVID-19, this small town church stands as a symbol of the resilience of American faith through tough times.

Click on the image above to experience this Hybrid VR Painting™ in virtual reality.

Patience: America’s Pastime Postponed at Tom Varn Baseball Field is a Hybrid VR Painting™ by Dave Alber.

acrylic on Canson paper and panoramic VR technology
22 X 10.75 in
2020

In the time of COVID-19, Americans are asked to stay indoors to weather the silent storm of the virus’s spread, while among children and adults alike, hands itch to throw, catch, and bat a baseball in a community of shared enthusiasm. Patience is a virtue, it is said, as players, coaches, and families who would gather around, and make a fine outdoor day of their enthusiasm, are forced—rather—to “sit on the bench.”

Patience, we are reminded, is in many respects the essence of the game. It is a game where players wait for their turn to bat, where field positions wait for their moment of play, and where spectators wait for skill, strategy, and sheer perseverance to pay off. Games are metaphors for living. And through the inconveniences of the quarantine, we might find ourselves spectators to manufacturers turning their production to safety masks, ventilators, and medicine. Still wearing the virtue that our forefathers wore while working with technology of a different pace, we might think back to World War II, and that gap of time between the Pearl Harbor attack and when American manufactured weapons would be ready to engage in the storm of War in both the Pacific and European theatres. Silent though the field may be, the game is still on.

Click on the image above to experience this Hybrid VR Painting™ in virtual reality.

Continuity: May-Stringer House, Brooksville, Florida is a Hybrid VR Painting™ by Dave Alber.

acrylic on Canson paper and panoramic VR technology
22 X 10.75 in
2020

It is well understood that the American New World was a land where pilgrims, immigrants, and early colonialists reinvented themselves according to the new spirit of self-determination that strengthened these early Americans with a unique sense of personal destiny. Ironically then, the American Revolutionaries’ break from the British Empire in The Declaration of Independence was felt and understood as part of England’s continuity of liberty under limited government that the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and its subsequent Bill of Rights had declared. The American Revolutionaries, it is important to recognize, understood themselves as loyalists to the British government’s highest principles. It is our continuity of principles, ideals, history, culture, and life-ways that give us our unique character in the global supermarket of ideas and values. The May-Stringer House in Brooksville, Florida is a Victorian mansion completed in 1856. It now serves as a museum preserving America’s local history, cultural continuity, architecture, artifacts, and even ghost stories and oral tradition.

Click on the image above to experience this Hybrid VR Painting™ in virtual reality.