'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.
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Friday, May 16, 2008
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
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
Monday, April 28, 2008
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.
Saturday, April 26, 2008
by dan brawley and bob brown
and the
Mother of all Palapas
by dixon stetler
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.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
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!
Saturday, February 2, 2008
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!"
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