Wooly Whoopie at Wabi Sabi Warehouse!

Wabi Sabi Warehouse to host 2 Feltmaking Workshops taught by master felter Cynthia Mollenkopf January 30, February 1, 2009

Basics of Feltmaking
Saturday, Jan 31, 12:30 - 5:00pm
$70 includes all supplies

Feltmaking is an ancient art form used for both the creation of wearables as well as artistic self expression. Learn about the art of feltmaking and create your own beautiful 2 & 3 dimensional items from wool. We will discuss the history of feltmaking, what factors make a quality felt, choosing the right wool for the project, preparation, combining needle and wet felting, and post production embellishment. This is an in-depth, hands-on, exploration of feltmaking for those with little or no experience, providing the building blocks to take feltmaking in any direction you chose.

Pouch Purse Workshop
Sunday Feb 1, 1 pm - 4:30pm
$55 includes all supplies

Make a pouch purse in the morning and wear it in the evening. That is what you will learn to do in this no seam pouch feltmaking class. Personalize your pouch's shape, decorative elements, closure and strap. No seam techniques can be applied to your future creative projects. Wet felting experience helpful but not required.

email dixonstetler@gmail.com to register or for more information

The Great Hose Round Up

I am in need of your help. More specifically: I am in need of your garden hoses.
Hoses can be red
hoses can be blue
any old condition
or length will do

Please keep an eye on the side of the road and your neighbor's trash. Report any sightings immediately. (if the garbage truck is en route, STALL)

Thank you for your help in this matter.
I need a bunch.
Sincerely, Dixon Stetler

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"

"A Passive Aggressive Response to Depression"
Paintings and Sculptures by David Bodhi Boylan
at Wabi Sabi Warehouse

Exhibition dates: December 5th-January 10th
Opening Reception: Friday, December 5th, 7-10pm
Dancing between painting, sculpture and performance art, David Bodhi Boylan 's "A Passive Aggressive Response to Depression" is a multifaceted exhibition coming to IAC's Wabi Sabi Warehouse.

David Bodhi Boylan's large paintings deal with the depressive nature of growing up in a small town in the United States. He works with images from memory, depicting the landscape of his childhood in upstate New York, as well as from his current small town home of Wilmington, NC. Boylan is also motivated by the second hand domestic goods he encounters through his work with Habitat for Humanity. "A Passive Aggressive Response to Depression" includes sculpture that resembles furniture and household items reconstructed with discarded materials such as garbage bags and photocopies. Unconventional materials and symbolic elements of design contribute to the breaking down of traditional boundaries between art and functional design. These works challenge us to redefine "furniture".

Please join us on Friday, December 5th, from 7-10pm, for a reception with the artist, and also tour the artist's studio, housed in Wabi Sabi Warehouse.

David Bodhi Boylan has been shown artwork in Boston, MA; Brooklyn, NY; Cleveland, OH; and Quebec City, Quebec. He has recently returned from a month long artist residency at the Vermont Studio Center. This is his first solo exhibition.

Recycled Regurgitations

at Wabi Sabi Warehouse

An exhibition of art created by John Goras

Exhibition dates:October 3-November 21

Opening reception: Friday, October 3rd, 7-10pm

John Goras is as prolific as Picasso, but with an anti-aesthetic. Beauty is not the measure here, instead its about invention, surprise, shock, and revulsion. Any available surface is up for grabs. From sheet linoleum to vinyl wallpaper samples, from old album covers to discarded packaging, he has decorated each with collage, painting, drawing, and sculptural relief. Goras' creations gather and project images in a language both ephemeral and sentimental. His fascination with thrown away toys, photos, pornography, menus, magazines, and movie posters, provides him with an endless palette of junk he can draw from again and again to synthesize his art. John Goras creates works from the debris of our cast off culture, instead of more traditional and lasting materials such as marble, bronze, or oil on canvas.

Overwhelming and relentless, his outrageous postcards have insulted letter carriers for nearly ten years. Postal workers have gone so far as to put the offending Goras creation in an opaque postal envelope before delivering it to a mailbox. The subject matter is often a revolting yet humorous look past the grave, into the things we are far too squeamish to embrace. He breaks the mirror, steps on the crack, spills the salt, and walks under the ladder, all with the hope of improving his luck. Goras' artwork stands out like bloodstains on a wedding dress. Brightly colored, controversial, and smartly designed, he produces a style that is instantly recognizable and impossible to counterfeit.

Celestial Complex 43

Bob Brown at the Cameron with the Endless Tower of Tires and the Glove Palapa. Photo by Christine Cox.

Art+Words=Collage
A summer camp for 7th and 8th grade girls taught by metalsmith Melisaa Manley. Make different artist books, alter books with paint and collage, and write our own poetry, and basically make cool mixed-media stuff! Wear your art clothes and bring a bag lunch. Afternoon snack provided. Class size is limited to 7 cool artsy girls! July 7-July 11, 9am-4pm, $100

Meissa Manley earned her BA in studio arts with a concentration in painting and printmaking from UNCW. She received her MFA in metal design at East Carolina University and currently teaches metals at Cape Fear Community College. Her work has been published in Making Personal Shrines, Somerset Studio magazine as well as metalsmithing books. She teaches mixed media workshops for adults annually at "Artfest" in Port Townsend, WA. Join Melissa and her daughter Meredith, and let's make stuff with paper, paint and words!

For more information or to register call 910-538-1246
melissa@melissamanleystudios.com

Camp will be held at IAC's Wabi Sabi Warehouse
19 North 9th Street
one block off Market Street near the Cape Fear Museum.

'Mobile | art in motion

Submit work now for this juried exhibition. IAC is looking for sculptures having balanced units suspended in midair with parts moving this way and that. Jurors Sarah Tector, Michael Van Hout, and Susan Kranyik will select the works for this group exhibition at Wabi Sabi Warehouse. Artists may submit 4 images via email to: wabisabiwarehouse@gmail.com. Entry fee of $15 is payable by check or money order payable to: Independent Art Company, 19 North 9th Street, Wilmington, NC 28401.

Submission deadline: June 16, 2008
Exhibition dates: June 26-August 1, 2008
Selected artists will be notified by June 20.

Dixon Stetler: Glove Palapa

Hoorah! The Palapa is finished. It took longer that I thought it would, which wasn't really that long anyway. I'm still on the fence about a bench. A little distance will provide clarity on the issue.

Inspired by the thatched roof palapas in Belize, the glove palapa provides shade. Palapas are everywhere down there. They are all the same basic construction, yet each one is a little different. I am a big fan of repetition and variety. As a thatched roof, the gloves maintain part of their original purpose of nurturing and protection against the elements.

Art supplies are everywhere! You don't need a kit from A.C. Moore to create. Canvas and paint cost way too much anyway. Rather than buy more stuff, I like to reuse some of the abundant materials I find in a few select dumpsters, in undisclosed locations. (Too bad it's illegal to find useful things in your neighbors trash!) Gloves are such a personal item, with meaning built right in. We've all had a pair.

We've all experienced the loss of one, or that moment when your finger finally pokes through and the original function of the glove ceases. It takes many to make it work. I have learned a great deal about "People Helping People" from Bob Brown. By giving an ordinary disposable object, this collaborative project becomes accessable to all. People who don't usually make art can participate without intimidation.

The stories told by glove donors were a very important part of the process, where and when and how. Many of the gloves were worn to special events or gifts from a loved one. I have great friends who dodge oncoming traffic to rescue gloves from busy intersections. Hockey gloves used as a dog toy, bee keeping gloves from a film set, and "my daughter's first gardening gloves" all became part of the palapa. Folks visit the palapa and identify their glove. They point and say "Oh! There's mine!" I hope they feel a sense of ownership in the piece. The real heroes of this project are the fine garbage men of Wilmington. They donated hundreds of their worn out gloves to the cause. They are very excited to visit this fruit of their labor, at all places, the Cameron Art Museum.

-posted by Dixon Stetler

Birth Art Opening

You've all been there, in one way or another. A grapefruit being pushed through a lemon-sized opening. Buy have you seen it represented in art? Wabi Sabi Warehouse and Cape Fear Area Doulas invite you to an opening reception for "BIRTH", a juried exhibition honoring the miracle and mystery of birth.


Thursday, May 22, 6-9pm
Wabi Sabi Warehouse, 19 North 9th Street

Created through both male and female perspectives, works on display celebrate mothers, fathers, pregnancy and birth. "Birth" acknowledges the raw, homest and spontaneous, much like birth itself. This art exhibition includes works by local professionals in the birthing community, including: "Placenta Print," a pair of cement "Squattin' Stones" and a bright yellow knit "Lemon Vulva." Also among the 20 selected-artists are sculptor Paul Hill, metalsmith Kee Wilde-Ramsing, painter Abby Perry, photographer Arrow Ross, and filmmaker Bo Webb.

Woven Tree of Shocking Wires: Durham EarthDay

The Endless Tower of Tires
by dan brawley and bob brown

and the

Mother of all Palapas
by dixon stetler

All week long Dixon and I have been working on the lawn at the Cameron Art Museum constructing the Endless Tower of Tires and the Mother of All Palapas. The installation was intended to coincide with Earth Day this past Tuesday. But the museum is also opening a holocaust show on Thurday, May 1, so Dixon kept saying that our work seem to fit more with the holocaust than Earth Day. Especially since no one seems to quite understand Earth Day - it's like a company is handing out green coozies to hold aluminum beer cans and that's how they exhibit their 'green-ness.' So just like everything else, it becomes just another marketing scam. We scare people about the degradation of the environment and then fill the stores with 'green' products that they must buy or else they'll be destroying the planet. EarthDay out, holocaust in.

So, with all the sad, lonely gloves found abandoned and trampled on the streets, and then with the endless stack of black tires, all their treads facing out like the undersides of peoples feet, we started to see the tower and the palapa in a much more somber way. I keep thinking of the tower of tires as a symbol of all our mile-driving. We all get in our cars as a matter of habit. We don't think about driving ever. Only in terms of how much does it cost to fill up and what kind of car do I drive. All those tires, miles and miles. I'm convinced that the mile-driving is the true American sickness. It's the thing that separates us quickly from our friends and family. And its the tires that make it all possible, but we don't ever see them. All the old tires get tucked away or recycled, out of sight, out of mind. In the end, the The Endless Tower of Tires is more American than the Washington Monument. Partly because it's black.

As my collaborator Bob Brown says, the tower is an homage to Brancusi's Endless Column. And also an homage to Allan Kaprow, who once covered a VW Bug with jelly and then had a bunch of people lick it off with their tongues. It was probably grape jelly or maybe strawberry jam. I'll have to say that part of the reason I built this tower is simply because Bob wanted to. If you haven't checked out his exhibit at the CAM, then go now. Bob Brown is a creative force and he has had a deep impact on my work.

On Friday, I put the final tire on top of the tower. The scaffolding will probably come down on Monday. I have to mention Beth Pancoe and Forest Heddon over at SDI Construction. They donated the scaffolding and generally gave me the kind of construction company lift that I needed to build this thing. We'll be announcing some kind of christening for the 'complex' - which has something to do with celestial turtles. The complex is also reported to be a beacon for time traveling elephants. The amphibious ones with metallic green skin full of sharps of red like snake's eyes. They may be from Babel. And their just looking for a nice place to live with a little pond that won't dry up.

Woven Tree for Durham EarthDay

Wabi Sabi Warehouse resident artist Dan Brawley recently completed a micro-residency at Duke University to prepare for the upcoming Durham EarthDay Festival. On April 19, Brawley will be performing as the artist-in-residence for the festival in Durham's Central Park. The artist invites everyone to weave old wires and cables into a "Woven Tree" of recycled techno-garbage. Anyone can participate. Bring wires and be ready to weave and warp and weft.

What kind of wires? Just about anything! Old phone cords, vcr cables, television cables, old extension cords, romex, ethernet cable, internet wires, speaker cable and anything over 2 feet long that can be woven. Bring stuff with you to Durham Central Park and help make art. Everyone is an artist!

Collaboration Factory at Wabi Sabi Warehouse

Calling all creative types
who wanna play with plastic!

What???: Collaboration Factory
Where: IAC's Wabi Sabi Warehouse, 19 North 9th Street
When: Thursday, February 7, 2008 + Saturday, February 9, from 1pm to 6pm each day

Everyone's invited, no experience required. Everyone is an artist. Drop by for a half hour or stay all day long. Please bring plastic bottles, plastic bags, plastic bottle caps, old tupperware and well, you get the idea. Let's reinvent and reuse. Painting, gluing and taping supplies will be provided. The finished works will be installed as part of the "Retirement Plan for Plastics" Exhibition at UNCW's Warwick Gallery.

•*•*This event has a pending request to be sanctioned by the First National Church of the Exquisite Panic. As the founder of the church screams out in his paintings, "People Helping People is the Future!"

Robert Delford Brown, artist and religion founder

ROBERT DELFORD BROWN:
MEAT, MAPS AND MILITANT METAPHYSICS - Part Two, Too
March 27-May 11, 2008*

Opening reception on Friday, March 28 from 6-9pm is free and open to the public.

Coinciding with the opening of an exhibition of the artists work at the Cameron Art Museum, the Wabi Sabi Warehouse gallery presents an unedited, artist-curated selection from "Robert Delford Brown: Meat, Maps and Militant Metaphysics."

A recent Wilmingtonian, Robert Delford Brown is the founder of the First National Church of the Exquisite Panic and an exuberant collaborationist. Works on display will include his most recent creations - mirrored mandalas and large scale collages. For more information on the artist, we highly encourage you to visit his website www.funkup.com.

*There will be a one week gap in the middle of the exhibition with a ceremonial rehanging of the show to follow. Things like this just happen, the world is full of chaos.

"Retirement Plan For Plastics!?!"

Artist seeks:
old plastic containers
plastic bags
and plastic bottle caps...

Wabi Sabi Warehouse resident artist Dan Brawley seeks old tupperware, plastic bags and plastic bottle caps for upcoming UNCW exhibit entitled "Retirement Plan for Plastics." All old, damaged, darkened and misused tupperware-type plastic containers should be cleaned and dropped off at the Independent Art Company's Wabi Sabi Warehouse located at 19 North 9th Street in downtown Wilmington. Bags full of plastic containers, plastic bags and bottle caps can be left at the door if nobody's around! Colorful and funky rule the day - bring us your old plastic instead of throwing it away! Stay tuned for an announcement about the "Collaboration Celebration Sensation" - an interactive, everyone's-invited day of artmaking in preparation for the exhibition. "Retirement Plan For Plastics" runs from February 14 to March 14 in the Ann Flack Boseman gallery on the campus of UNCW.

Missing Glove?

Found Glove Project
by Dixon Stetler

I rescue gloves from traffic and mud puddles on the street.

You can't lose something in stages, one day you have it, the next day you don't. Sometimes a glove is lost on one day, but you don't know it until the time comes to use it again, and its not there. Like socks that get lost in the dryer, there is something universal about losing gloves.

Gloves originate in pairs, and occasionally I do find them that way, but usually it's just the one. That means that the other thing that is lost is the glove the owner ends up with. The one I didn't find on the street. Does that glove end up in the trash? Nobody wants to protect just one hand. What's the point? One should just go out and buy another pair. A discarded or misplaced glove immediately renders its partner reduntant.

Picking up found gloves is a silent gesture of optimism and thoughtfulness in a crazy, fast paced world. You see them perched upright on a fence, or safely placed on a wall, out of harms way.

I have a plan for these gloves, and I need your help. I need more gloves than you can imagine! Any type of glove is wanted and needed, in any old nasty condition, in pairs or single: work, wooly, surgical, rubber, fingerless, mittens...

I have 3 drop off sites for these gloves:

Old Books on Front Street, 22 North Front Street

Wabi Sabi Warehouse, 19 North 9th Street

Make Art, 6005 Oleander Drive

Or mail them: 2067 Harrison Street, Wilmington, NC 28401

Finished project will be constructed in a public space, to be enjoyed (or not!) by any and all. Please let me know if you want to be added as a drop-off site. Thanks! Dixon Stetler-dixonstetler@gmail.com.