Clarion Content

Catherine Howard, artist and community activist, and occasional guest columnist for the Clarion Content, is bringing her 13/13/13 Sketchbook Project to Durham tonight at Mercury Studio. (Where else, right?) Howard and Mercury Studio are inviting the public to celebrate the launch of the 13/13/13 Sketchbook Project with food, music, wine, and what Catherine promises will be lots and lots of hugs! (Ed. note: We believe she means it.)


So what's the story?

Howard journeyed last year to South Africa to paint, write, teach and create. She returned with a magnificent work of art, "A Warm Space to Disappear," which is a compilation of Howard's sketches from her residency in Cape Town. This experience and the rave reviews inspired her to go bigger in 2013.

from her website...

"During the 13/13/13 Sketchbook Project, Catherine J Howard will live with 13 collectives of artists that use visual art to challenge and revitalize their communities -- from Tampere, Finland where artists band together to weather a harsh physical and economic environment to Karachi, Pakistan where artists are working under-the-radar to promote critical thinking about the implications of combining religion and materialism to Asuncion, Paraguay where street artists are invigorating shanty towns with color and pride. To document and disperse these experiences, she will publish sketchbooks..."

She intendeds for these sketchbooks to include everything from writing and drawings, to collage, to photographs and perhaps even Polaroids. Naturally, she is going to blog about her travels, as well. Her South Africa blog was riveting.


After a year roaming the globe, Howard intends to distill the lessons learned of her journeys into an educational curriculum for distribution to art educators and social activists all over the world to help reverberate the waves started by her 13/13/13 Sketchbook Project.

We applaud. And we encourage you to come out to Mercury Studios tonight between 6pm and 9pm, at 407-A Mangum Street to help support Catherine and Art.



"Art is at the nexus of protest."---A.Mandel

Labels: Art, Durham

Friend, artist, community activist, and occasional guest columnist for the Clarion Content, Catherine Howard, has undertaken to pen a series of articles about how the visual arts have impacted Durham's community on her 13/13/13 Sketchbook site. Howard is both a leader on the ground in bringing the arts to communities worldwide and also a coalition builder who helped get the ball rolling for the Durham Storefront Project.

The Clarion Content was delighted that Ms. Howard selected our publisher, Aaron Mandel, and the co-founder/director of The Carrack, Laura Richie, as the subjects of her first pieces. Ms. Howard has generously agreed to co-publish this series on the Clarion Content. Her third piece is about an important Durham institution.

Creative Leaders of Durham: Margaret DeMott and Lindsay Gordon of the Durham Arts Council
by: Catherine Howard



One cannot discuss the development of "arts" in Durham without giving a hearty nod to the Durham Arts Council, one of the oldest arts councils in the United States. The Durham Arts Council, whose mission statement is to promote excellence in and access to the creation, experience and active support of the arts for all the people of the Durham community, combines arts education with exhibitions, performances, and community events, such as CenterFest* and Art Walk.

During a lunch at Toast, Margaret DeMott and Lindsay Gordon from the Durham Arts Council expanded on five factors that promote flourishing arts communities:

1. Public space where you can find the art. The Durham Arts Council is a physical place where things can happen - meetings, art can be hung, shows can be put on, people can find it. Although lots of arts councils don't have a permanent space, whenever they want to hold an event, their first challenge is finding a space. With an understood showcase, people know events will be happening. Town squares used to provide those spaces, and now those spaces often need to be run by groups to insure stability for cultural programming.

2. An educated adult audience. Even if expensive visual art is not being bought, an audience that is educated (either through school or person-to-person outreach from the artistic community) will support the arts by giving their time to attend events. Universities attract people with talent, curiosity and creativity, and in Durham, there are two large universities (Duke University and NCCU) which have launched and funded many arts organizations. In communities without universities, such as Sarasota, the arts can still flourish if wealthy individuals are eager financial supporters.

3. An educated child audience. Arts education has proven to promote critical thinking and social skills, which helps children to succeed in any career path they choose. Exposure to the arts from a young age, in school or in arts camps, also encourages children to grow into adults who understand and support the arts. As Lindsay put it, "If you catch them when they're young, you'll keep them."

4. Supportive government. If a community desires to encourage artistic engagement in the community and promote the reciprocal communal respect of the arts, government leaders can use the arts to denote respect and honor. For example, leaders can commission concerts or paintings to celebrate an official's service, rather than giving them a watch or plaque. The City of Durham has made a substantial investment over the years in public cultural spaces such as the Carolina Theater, Hayti Heritage Center, and Durham Arts Council building.

5. Recognizable leader. Even if there is not an arts institution in a community, there still must be a single recognizable leader who leads the charge on coordinating events. People will get excited about an idea, but unless there is someone to keep moving the ball forward, to keep sending the next email, to keep cajoling everyone, events just won't happen.


Artists displaying their wares in the Armory during Art Walk

According to one of those leaders, Margaret DeMott, "Artists are the "research and development department" of a community, and the arts non-profit sector helps the artists to do their work. When artists move into the commercial arena, their problem-solving skills can be applied to many different areas, making the community, as a whole, better."


A big "THANK YOU" to Margaret and Lindsay for meeting with me and to the entire DAC staff for their daily dedication to promoting the arts in Durham. Be sure to stop by their building at 120 Morris Street to see the current exhibitions by David Baker, Matthew Litteken, and Nuno Gomes. Join the mailing list to keep track of upcoming events or follow their Twitter here!


Notes
*This year was the launch of a revitalized CenterFest. The Clarion Content tracked the community input sessions and wrote a series of articles on the process of reinvigorating a community tradition.

Labels: Art, Catherine Howard columns, Durham, Economy

special to the Clarion Content
by: Denise Schreiner

If you park in the Measurement, Inc. lot to go to the Durham Farmers Market, you already know there’s a new set of railings on the main stairs with an entry arch at the bottom. It’s a collaboration between Liberty Arts artist, Jackie MacLeod, and Monkey Bottom Gallery owner and artist, Joe Galas.

Turns out there’s an interesting story behind these railings...


Photos courtesy of Jackie MacLeod

For years Dale Evarts and his wife Betsy had brought Dale’s mother, Audrey, to the Farmer’s Market Saturday mornings. Audrey had both a hip and knee replacement, so it was hard for her to navigate the stairs, and every week she would say "It would really be good to have a railing there." And every week Dale would say "Yeah, Mom, someday we’ll have one."

After Audrey died unexpectedly last fall, Dale and his sister began talking about it.

And one Saturday this summer when Dale saw the Durham Central Park booth, he went over and said “You know, those stairs over there need a railing and I would like to support that in memory of my mother.”

As it happens, DCP had wanted to install handrails ever since volunteers had built the three stairways down the hill. They’d already enlisted Jackie and Joe to come up with a design, but had only been able to raise half the cost.

When Dale saw the drawings he knew immediately that Audrey would approve. The reason for his enthusiasm was that for twenty years (1965-1985) Audrey had run Eastgate Hardware Store in Chapel Hill (most unusual for a woman at the time), and the recovered metal components in the design reminded Dale of the old hardware from factories and mills in the area. He wrote a check for the balance on the spot.

Now Audrey’s legacy will become a permanent fixture at DCP.


Photos courtesy of Jackie MacLeod


Photos courtesy of Jackie MacLeod

Labels: Art, Durham, infrastructure, Pop Culture

The Nasher museum is hosting a fantastic show of works from the Baltimore Museum of Art. The exhibition features pieces from Matisse, Picasso, Gauguin, Renoir, Van Gogh, Pissarro, and Courbet among others.

These works came to Baltimore as the titles alludes through the efforts of two women, sisters, Dr. Claribel Cone and Miss Etta Cone. These two cultural visionaries, according to the Nasher's website...

began buying art directly out of the Parisian studios of avant-garde artists in 1905. At a time when critics disparaged Matisse, and Pablo Picasso was virtually unknown, the Cones followed their passions and amassed one of the world’s greatest art collections.

Striped Robe, Fruit, and Anemones---Matisse

This week there are two special events in conjunction with the exhibit.

Wednesday, at 6.30pm in the Cameron Village Library, in Raleigh, Juline Chevalier, Curator of Education at the Nasher and Dr. Marianne Wardle Ph.D, Coordinator of Academic Programs at the Nasher, give an "Art with the Experts" talk entitled: “Collecting Matisse and Modern Masters.”

Thursday night ticket holders for the exhibit at the Nasher Museum itself, can attend a free wine tasting there at 6pm. Join Noel Sherr, owner of Cave Taureau (The Bull’s Cellar) which opened just last month in downtown Durham, he has personally selected six French wines for the evening.

Labels: Art, Duke, Durham, Pop Culture

"Spectives" is all about looking. Artist Jim Lee says, "It is about looking back, looking forward, looking inward, looking closely, looking from a distance, and looking with respect. Mostly, though, it is about sharing some of the ways I see. It is two dimensional and three dimensional, all in the same space.

The exhibit will feature a wide range of new and old works including a reappearance of the Elusive Rock Nest Monster from the National Cryptozoologic Museum. Lots of new work including some never-seen-before sculptures and images from my "Time at the Tracks" series plus some new nature photographs, mostly from the local beaver marsh or my own yard. Close to home but nonetheless mysterious."

The Carrack Modern Art will host "Spectives" from November 26th and December 6th. Jim Lee will host a gallery talk on Tuesday, December 4th, from 7pm---8.30pm.

Labels: Art, Durham

Friend, artist, community activist, and occasional guest columnist for the Clarion Content, Catherine Howard, has undertaken to pen a series of articles about how the visual arts have impacted communities in North Carolina on her 13/13/13 Sketchbook site. Howard is both a leader on the ground in bringing the arts to communities worldwide and also a coalition builder who helped get the ball rolling for the Durham Storefront Project.

The Clarion Content was delighted that Ms. Howard selected our publisher, Aaron Mandel, to be the subject of her first profile. A far more deserving figure in the Durham arts scene is the subject of her second piece of the series, which Ms. Howard has generously agreed to co-publish on the Clarion Content.

The Creative Leaders of Durham Series: Laura Ritchie of The Carrack Modern Art

by: Catherine Howard


Laura Ritchie, a vital and vibrant cog in the Durham art community, is the co-founder/director of The Carrack Modern Art. A graduate of UNC Chapel-Hill, she teamed up with John Wendelbo in 2011 to pursue a vision of a gallery that served the artists and community rather than commercial purposes.

The Carrack has been empowering local Durham-based artists for over a year. Answering artists' cries for space rather than paid memberships or partial commissions, The Carrack rotates exhibitions with artists in all media every 10 days in their zero-commission art space. With this innovative model, The Carrack has received an upswell of support for its mission to forge productive cultural and socio-economic ties within the Durham community.

Laura and I sat down to catch up (The Carrack exhibited my Veil Tease series last year) and chat about the ways she has witnessed the arts become an integral component of Durham's economic revitalization.


Laura Richie, the curator and co-owner of The Carrack

CJH: So! How have you seen how Durham's art scene has shifted since The Carrack started and now?

LR: I can only speak about Durham from my experiences over the past two years, which may be a narrow viewpoint, but in terms of downtown, specifically, things have changed quite substantially in the past two years.

Mostly, people are thinking about "art spaces" differently.

The Carrack is a gallery - a traditional space with a non-traditional model. Then there's the [Durham] Storefront Project - non-traditional spaces with a non-traditional model. Then there's dtownMARKET - non-traditional space, non-traditional work, and a non-traditional model.

People are also thinking about "art" in a different way.

There are performances like Stacey Kirby's VALIDnation, and then you have music performances, poetry readings... the concept of "art" seems to be broadening. It seems to be very malleable in this present moment. There's a whole different crowd of people - age, race, socioeconomic background - that traditionally participate in and enjoy each of these different art forms. Here in downtown Durham, art brings all these circles together in the same place.


from the exhibition "A sense of place" by Michelle Gonzalez-Green



from a "VALIDnation" performance by Stacey Kirby


CJH: It sounds to me like "art" is reflective of the community.

LR: And vice versa. The Carrack was built in response a demand we recognized from this community's artists. "Free space? YES! Gimmespacegimmespacegimmespace!"

I don't think that artists in this community feel pressured to make work solely for a traditionally commercial market, and that is a great thing. This idea of "community" is at the forefront of everyone's process. Everyone is so proud of being from Durham, to be a part of Durham's narrative, and that shows up in their work.


Holly Johnson, from Happymess Art Studio, hosts an art event at The Carrack for Durham kids


CJH: Do you feel like the art community is reaching out actively into the wider community in Durham?

LR: I don't think there is a clear boundary of where the "art" community ends and the "broader" community begins because everyone seems to be thinking of "art" as the term for the culture of Durham. "Art" and "culture" are synonymous here.

I do think enrichment is a goal - that all the artists want to better Durham as a whole.

CJH: I think that the biggest difference I have seen between Durham and a lot of other "art cities" is that Durham's art scene does not seem to be commercially driven.

LR: There is both physical and intellectual space here, and all the networks have not already been established. In some ways, there have been too many new businesses and new projects, but that's a great problem to have - too many people that have the ambition to create something that they haven't seen in this community before. The Carrack couldn't have existed in any other time or place in the way that it does.

We are making the formula, the history NOW for how the art community works here [in Durham].

The community is willing to financially support all these independent art projects and new businesses, and by doing that locally, those artists are producing work within the community, which then brings interest, visitors, and money back to Durham. It's a cycle of the community investing in itself via the arts.


Photo credit Scenes from my Lunch Hour

CJH: Thanks so much to Laura for her insights into the role the arts can play as an investment in community. 

Just a reminder that The Carrack Modern Art is located at #111 West Parrish Street in the heart of Downtown Durham. Stop by regularly and keep an eye on their calendar! You can also “Like” them on Facebook to get updates there. Also, please consider supporting The Carrack efforts by becoming a Sustainer.

Labels: Art, Catherine Howard columns, Durham

This Fall, our #FashionDriveBy features role reversals in more ways than one. Modeled by Angela Goldman and Kara Pezzimenti, normally the behind-the-scenes stars responsible for the incredible hairstyle coordination you've seen in the past, and featuring styling and dresses designed by our Creative Director, Cady Childs, we all put our hands in the pot a little differently this time.

First Edition, Cady Childs' line, had its true premiere at the DTown ReFASHIONED show back in July. Her inspiration behind the styling and creations of this shoot were the hauntingly heartbreaking faces, silhouettes, and wardrobes of the silent film stars of the 1920s, their sensual fabrics contrasted with stark, harsh lines, perfect hair waves, and heartshaped lips. Their overly expressive faces showing every action and happening twice as dramatically as we would in film now makes for an air of incidental glam that was best captured in that time, when the actors only had their faces and motions to truly tell the story between quote captions. But instead of implying their sensuality and femininity meant needing a man to come to the rescue, we wanted our damsels to flip the script, and escape from distress on their own accord.

Thanks to The Real Laww for being our DURM styled bandit, HT Jewelry for the accessories, and of course, the eye behind the lens that makes all our visions come together, the photographer, Jessi Blakely of Jessica Arden Photography.

Labels: Art, Cady Childs columns, Durham, Fashion, Fashion Drive-bys, Pop Culture

The Clarion Content met today with an old friend and former contributor, Catherine Howard. Ms. Howard was once a stalwart of the Durham art scene. She worked at the Durham Art Council and helped the Durham Storefront Project launch its first fabulous downtown install in November of last year.

These days, having returned from South Africa to North Carolina, she has decamped to Raleigh, where she is planning further world travels. Her sojourn to South Africa earlier this year produced, among many things, a fascinating sketchbook entitled, "A Warm Space to Disappear." Ms. Howard received scads of accolades for this 84 page, hard bound, visual journal documenting her artist residency in in Cape Town, S.A. So this year she is embarking on what she has titled 13x13x13 for 2013, a thirteen country, thirteen sketchbooks project to connect people through art. Just today, she said she had confirmed her residency in Buenos Aires.

With all that exciting news in the hopper, and please do click through on the links, we thought we'd dip into the back catalog for collaboration we did with Catherine this Summer. These amazing shots by Beth Mandel of BWPW Photography, featuring Clarion Content Creative Director and Durham bon vivant, Cady Childs, are from Ms. Howard's Courting Love and Violence.

In Ms. Howard's own words,

"Courting Love & Violence" originally began as a series of paintings for three narrow high windows in a Durham loft residence, and then, expanded into a camouflage inspired scroll and convertible dress.

This series explores the relationship between idealized sexuality and aggression. How do we balance our desires to blend in a hyper-sexualized world that dehumanizes and objectifies bodies without internalizing the detrimental, self-destructive facets? Using images of 1940's pin-ups and South African police squads controlling riots, these silhouetted characters create ambiguous narratives about culturally acceptable sexual violation.

All photographed in Durham by BWPW Photography









Modeled by Cady Childs










See even more photos here of Catherine Howard's "Courting Love & Violence," a Clarion Content production, photographed BWPW Photography.

Labels: Art, Durham, Fashion, photos

The Durham Arts Council is holding benefit fundraising night in conjunction with the new Bonefish Grill that is opening out by the Southpoint Mall. The tickets are $35 and 100% of the proceeds benefit the Arts Council.



The Durham Arts Council supports a litany of programs and cultural makers and doers in Durham, from The Scrap Exchange to the Young People's Performing Company, as well as running festivals like Centerfest and the Edible Arts Festival, as well as, Durham's annual Art Walk.

Food and drink for a good cause!

Tickets can be purchased, here.

Labels: Art, Durham, food, Pop Culture

As a fly on the wall inside the Durham Arts Guild's annual meeting, our editor can tell you the tenor was entirely different than last year when a hostile tension and divisiveness filled the room. It wasn't just that hungry bellies were soothed by a non-profit priced stack of pizza from Pop's Backdoor Pizzeria, either.

There was a genuine spirit of excitement in the air for new gallery coordinators, Katie Seiz and Laura Richie. The reason the Durham Arts Guild (DAG) appointed gallery coordinators, rather than a new director of the DAG, was in part because the membership was frustrated with the programming of the DAG's exhibits. In a response to that membership priority, the Board focused on the gallery programming by appointing Seiz and Richie.


The SunTrust Gallery, a sneak peak at the DAG's 58th Annual Juried Art Exhibition

The Durham Arts Guild programs the SunTrust Gallery at the Durham Arts Council and Room 100 at Goldenbelt in partnership with Scientific Properties. Right now, the SunTrust Gallery is hosting the DAG's 58th Annual Juried Art Exhibition. There is a ton of excellent work hanging, a plethora of Durham talent, which is what the membership wanted when they felt Durham was being shunted aside by the previous director for undesired New York Pop Art exhibits.

Seiz and Richie, sensitive to their audience, received nearly all membership comments with a "great suggestion" or a "good idea" and beaming smiles. There were some interesting ideas put forth including a public private partnership between the DAG and the Chamber of Commerce and/or Sustain-A-Bull Durham to help connect local businesses wishing to display art with local artists desiring to show their work.

How very Durham.

We did hear a lot of good suggestions from membership at last year's DAG meeting, too. After a frustrating couple of months, the Guild delivered on the two biggest of them, programming and more open communication. This thanks in no small part to interim head, Stephen Foster, who was terrific, according DAG Board Chairwoman, Trudy Smith. The hope is for even better this year, as Smith put it, "We expect [Seiz and Richie] to take it to the next level.


Also note:
The Guild is also partnering with Student U to pair ten young students with ten adult art mentors. Student U is a highly regarded local program for at-risk youth which previously had no arts component. Ms. Richie is serving as liaison to the program for DAG. Stipended mentoring opportunities are available.

Labels: Art, Durham

The Clarion Content bopped about town this past Friday evening on the Durham Art Walk.

We started at the Craven-Allen Gallery on Broad Street. It is always a friendly neighborhood place. And it was no surprise to run into several someones we know. One can beam with pride at our local artistic talent in Durham. The 10th Annual Watts-Hillandale Art Walk and the Craven-Allen are showcasing a passel of it over the next month. We got to have good conversations with a couple of talented Durham artists, Corinne Fox and Kathryn DeMarco, whom, if you will forgive us a moment of inside baseball, we are glad is to hear is on the mend.

When we arrived downtown around 6.30pm, it was buzzing.¹ The Durham Arts Council hosted the Southeastern College Art Conference Annual Juried Art Exhibition in all three of their galleries. The place was packed with artists and supporters. Jazz music cascaded over the balcony and drinks flowed freely. It was a nice look for Durham, the Clarion Content got to have a number of conversations with out-of-towners, from places like Savannah, about what a hip town Durham was (and in many cases, had become since they were last here).

We hit the "Facade of Aves" exhibit by Gillian Rose Galdy. It was another packed room, shoulder-to-shoulder upstairs, at what many people affectionately refer to as "Dan's Place," but is in fact more formally titled the "Durty Durham Arts Collective." It is the second floor of #305 E. Chapel Hill Street, the mysterious stairwell right next to Through this Lens is the entrance. One of Galdy's works sold while we were there, always exciting. And we traipsed further into the backroom than we ever had before, encountering a conclave of Durham writers including the gifted Chris Vitiello, who's poem we had read on the wall only moments earlier. There was also a fabulous essay about a dog who had bit its own tail off, and yet still loved life, by Sandeep Bala²

From there it was on to The Carrack where the fantastic curator and co-owner, Laura Richie, finally got a day off after their triumphant auction. The works of Steve Silverleaf were on display. Colors lit up the room. A friend of the Clarion Content snapped a picture of the bright, wild, incredibly massive, wall-sized custom installation piece that Silverleaf had made that very week specifically the show. (See below.) The co-owner of The Carrack, John Wendelbo, bent our ear about his plans to continue his dynamic trajectory, marshaling public support for Art in Durham.


Steve Silverleaf's wall size custom installation

The Clarion Content, too, has been doing some thinking about that, who are the patrons of the arts in Durham?

While pondering this question we hopped out to Goldenbelt, the Cordoba Center for the Arts, and its tenants, the Scrap Exchange³ and Liberty-Arts, all clustered in a burgeoning knot of East Durham development that is slowly spreading outward from its core.⁴

One of the highlights of the evening were the "City Farm" animals of Jonathan Bowling at Liberty-Arts. They included a life-size horse and pig built out of twisted metal. Another magical, or perhaps in light of Halloween, phantasmagorical creature, a huge bug, that was bigger than a dog caught all eyes. And of course, there was the unnamed Bull that was made both in homage to our beloved Major the Bull, and with his co-creater, Mike Waller.⁵

Liberty Arts glassblower, George-Ann Greth was helping kids blow their own orange glass pumpkins. The warmth of the furnace and the intimacy in the air formed a mystical alchemy which lit up youthful eyes as they watched their pumpkins take shape.

From there the Bull City Connector makes a straight-line to The Federal which we will neither confirm nor deny we followed.


Notes
¹There are still places to park if you know where to go, but there won't be for long at this rate. But that's a whole other article... We are planning a series on Durham and development soon.
²We found the name of the author. Now we can only hope we are spelling it correctly.
³There was a thought provoking show in The Scrap Exchange's Green Gallery called of "a small and curious nature" by Tamara Galliano Bagnell. It re-imagined every day objects and the narratives behind them through the work of a mother and the eyes of her young son.
⁴We heard that the second floor for the Cordoba Center for the Arts has hosted a fashion shoot (not ours) and a music video shoot in recent weeks. We also noticed that Durham Community Media had moved into the Cordoba Center.
⁵Yes folks, the rumors are true, the low-hangers really do swing. Cojones del toro indeed.

Labels: Art, Durham, Pop Culture

The Craven Allen Gallery at 1106.5 Broad Street hosts a celebration of art, opening this Friday for the Watts-Hillandale neighborhood's 10th Anniversary Art Walk, in conjunction with Durham's 3rd Friday Art Walk.


Meredith Emmett's "Icebreaker" oil on canvas

The gallery is located in the historic Watts-Hillandale neighborhood. The art walk takes place November 4th. The art walk will feature more than forty artists in a panoply of mediums.

It also enables folks to get a closer look at the delightful Arts and Crafts style homes that dot the neighborhood, most of them built from the 1910's through the 1940's. Likely some of the fabulous Halloween decorations that line Club Boulevard this year will still be hanging around and about.

If you want a little teaser look at Watts-Hillandale, check out some of the photos of Art Walk years past on the Clarion Content. If you want an in depth look at Watts-Hillandale, follow this link to Open Durham.

Labels: Art, Durham, Pop Culture

Fans, the Clarion Content team just shot our latest Fashion Drive-by, Monday, led by photographer Jessi Blakely of Jessica Arden Photography and our Creative Director, Cady Childs. We were fortunate enough to shoot with two fabulous models, Angela Goldman and Kara Pezzimenti, along with a special guest, Durham hip-hop star, The Real Laww.


Jessica Blakely shoots The Real Laww
Photo credit Tom Berhendt

Creative Director, Cady Childs, designed and created the ladies' style, for her clothing line, First Edition, which received such raves at the Durham fashion show, reFASHIONED.

Inspired by old black white movie visions of damsels in distress, but wanting to flip the patriarchal script on its head, the Clarion Content team set out. The spooky late afternoon light was perfect. Halloween and Fall felt right around the corner.

We strove to highlight, as we always do in our Fashion Drive-by's, how ephemeral and constructed the line is between high and low culture, safe and unsafe Durham. We want to take familiar scenes of Durham and re-envision them. We want to use real people as models. We want to shoot them in affordable fashions. We want to surprise you with what you will see, if you take a second look.

The teaser shots are coming soon, all photos were taken either at The Cordoba Center for the Arts in the Goldenbelt Complex or along the Fayetteville Road-Elizabeth Street corridor.

For a second look at some of our previous Fashion Drive-by projects shot on location in the secret gardens of Trinity Park, inside some of our fabulous night spots, in Watts-Hillandale, in Lakewood and on the Bull City Connector, click here. (and scroll down)

Photographer Jessi Blakely of Jessica Arden Photography, Creative Director, Cady Childs and the Clarion Content's Fashion Drive-by prints and framed photographs are for sale here.

They are also currently on display in the Lars Oliver Salon at the West Village, 604 Morgan Street.

Labels: Art, Durham, Fashion, Fashion Drive-bys, photos, Pop Culture

The Clarion Content hears tell that there is a new bull in town. Liberty Arts artists, Mike Waller and Leah Foushee Waller, were the creators of the original Major the Bull.


Photo sourced from the Flicker Hive Mind.

Major is, of course, stationed in the plaza in front of the "Suntrust" building. We are hoping and campaigning for a name change to the plaza. It makes little sense for the City of Durham to continue to refer to it as "CCB Plaza" in its official literature and on the Convention and Visitors Bureau website. The bank that was CCB no longer exists. The building itself is actually known as the Hill Building. The terminology is dated and confusing. Google CCB and the Wikipedia disambiguation page lists over twenty-seven CCBs.

It is time for a change. The plaza needs to be renamed, "Major the Bull's Plaza" as befits the traditional legacy of our richly cultural city. Surely, we are not going to let the new hoteliers name our downtown Durham plaza.

The new Bull appearing at Liberty Arts this week is a creation of Greenville sculptor, Jonathan Bowling and Liberty Arts's Mike Waller. It is part of larger show by Bowling opening Friday, October 19th, called "City Farm." The bull is already on site and you can pop Liberty Arts space in the Cordoba Center for the Arts at #923 Franklin Street, behind Goldenbelt and just a hop, skip and a jump off of the Bull City Connector's free bus route.


Photo by our pal Jackie MacLoed.

Liberty Arts studio and workshop is an active bustling place. We had a friend tell us the other night, at The Carrack's fabulous Community Color auction, that he had attended one of the glassblowing classes recently and it was "amazing."¹ Liberty Arts also offers classes in life casting, metal casting and metal working, too.

The "City Farm" exhibit, which has a free opening reception, Friday night, as part of Durham's 3rd Friday Art Walk, will feature other sculptural animal creations including a life-size horse, a hound, and a pig. And yes the rumors are true, the as yet unnamed bull does have horns even longer than Major's.


Notes
¹True story about the glass blowing, but full disclosure, the Clarion Content does do promotional work for Liberty Arts.

Labels: Art, Durham, Pop Culture

Many news outlets, among them the BBC, are reporting paintings by artists including Picasso, Matisse, Monet, and Gauguin have been stolen from a museum in Rotterdam over night.


This Matisse, "The Reading Girl" was among the works taken by the thieves.

The early estimates place the works combined value near nine figures. The Triton Foundation, put together by multimillionaire Willem Cordia, was showing its entire collection in public for the first time.

Strangely, the museum from which the works were stolen has no permanent collection of its own.

Something smells fishy, first time exhibited, a museum with no permanent collection. Read the rest of the story here from the BBC.

Labels: Art, cop stories

The Clarion Content posted a story last week on the restoration of two 8-foot high, solid bronze gates to the Washington-Duke Mausoleum in Maplewood Cemetery by Liberty Arts sculptor, Mike Waller. The Durham Herald-Sun and columnist Cliff Bellamy caught wind and did a fabulous piece on the restoration and installation.

Bellamy notes that Waller has been working on the restoration for about five months, much of the time researching how the original gates looked. The Herald Sun got some great photos last week when the team swung the nearly 400 lbs gates back into place, drilling into the granite doorway to fasten a metal frame for the gates.

Check out the photos and read the whole piece here.

Labels: Art, Duke, Durham

Liberty Arts, the Durham based sculpture collaborative, and artist Mike Waller have taken on a unique Durham challenge. Waller is restoring two 8-foot high, solid bronze gates from the Washington-Duke Mausoleum in Maplewood Cemetery. The mausoleum was built around 1900, but unfortunately, the massive gates were stolen last fall along with those from two other tombs. They were discovered in a nearby scrap metal yard and recovered shortly afterward.

Waller is playing detective first, trying to figure out what kind of hinges, glass, window frames and fasteners were on the original, a task made more difficult by the lack of photo documentation.



"It’s been an honor to be asked to work on such a magnificent piece of Durham’s heritage," says Mike, "but it was a surprisingly intricate and challenging project".

The gates are being re-installed at Maplewood Cemetery Wednesday, October 10th.

Labels: Art, Duke, Durham, Pop Culture

The Carrack Modern Art, the wonderful, zero commission, gallery space, that you read about so frequently in these pages having fabulous exhibitions, is holding a week long fundraiser.

According to The Carrack's press release, "Community Color celebrates just that: the colorful community of artists, art-lovers, supporters and visionary individuals in the Durham art community..."




In the past year, The Carrack has hosted twenty-four solo exhibits, ten group exhibits and four open call community shows, plus a huge range of cultural events including film, poetry, music, public readings and more.

The gift that this space and its owner-operators have given our community has immeasurably enriched us all.

Time to give back, Durham.

Their schedule of events for the week is as follows...

On October 5th, from 7pm-10pm... the Opening Reception for Community Color with DJ Mike B

On October 6th, all day, 10am-4pm... Create with the Carrack with live music by Anna Rose Beck, Jay Hammond and Scarlet Virgina

On October 7th, 12pm-5pm... the dtownMARKET will be at The Carrack with live music by Curtis Eller

On October 8th, 8pm... Orangutan Swing and The Carrack co-host "The State of Publishing" at Mercury Studio

On October 9th, at 6pm... The Carrack has booked a group tour of the historic renovations at #106 West Parrish Street

On October 10th, 7pm... The Carrack will host a site-specific dance performance by Alexis Mastromichalis

On October 11th, 7.30pm.... The Carrack will co-host a Poetry Showcase and Open Mic with Dasan Ahanu

On October 12th, 8pm... The Carrack will have live music with Jay Manley

And as a Grand Finale, on October 13th...

The Carrack will hold a "Gala and Art Auction" hosted by New York Times bestselling author and the founder of Duke's Center for Advanced Hindsight, Dan Ariely. Ariely will be hosting a special art auction flavored with his unique brand of behavioral economic insight. 100% of the auction proceeds will go towards funding The Carrack in 2013. The evening includes a fun interactive talk and demonstration on international auction practices.

Tickets available here.

Labels: Art, Durham, music, Pop Culture

"Selenotropic" is opening at the Carrack Modern Art. It is a multifaceted, layered and nuanced agglomeration of reactions to our modern world. It includes paintings, found-object sculpture, video, custom furniture and a live music performance tonight.



Photo credit BWPW photography.

The works flow together with the interconnectedness of our social cultural milleu. Boundaries between the home and the workplace, between the private and the public, between the real and the image have become increasingly permeable in the 21st century.

In "Selenotropic" objects appear to literally be straining to pull themselves off of the canvas into the room. Boundaries are violated, domains are delimited. Creators Chance Murray and Katharine Whalen came together in much the same way, the Venn Diagram of their overlapping worlds found Whalen looking at Murray's paintings in a coffee shop.

Trusting her instincts and following her urges, but not social norms, she reached out to an artist she had not worked with previously. Murray was open and interested. Synchronicity and interdependence followed. The artists discovered that they each possessed an enormous, brown, corduroy-covered dictionary printed in the early 1900’s. The collision of found objects and ephemera with art and music has been at the nexus of their interaction ever since.

The exhibit was very well received over at the new Outsiders Art Gallery Annex. Selenotropic has its opening reception and accompanying musical performance at The Carrack tonight from 6pm-9pm.

Selenotropics are night bloomers. What a great thing to go see after dark.

Labels: Art, Durham, music, Pop Culture, thought

Meaning is not manufactured, it is experienced.

Dipika Kohli has lived these words.



She intuitively knew them when she quit her first job out of college and moved to the other side of the globe. It was not her first move across cultures during a moment of strife.¹ Her parents had moved her and the family from Michigan to Goldsboro, North Carolina when she was ten years-old. It was a sudden and wrenching change for young Dipika, who just months earlier had lost her best friend to the terrorist bombing of Air India Flight 182. In a bitter irony, the bombing took place over the same Irish soil on which she found herself unexpectedly living many years later.

The Elopement is a headlong adventure, with much transit and transition. Like Ms. Kohli's life, it races from under snowy street lights and a lonely Lake Johnson, into the green Irish hills, with its lakes in the middle distance, then off to a Japanese metropolis of glass buildings and snaking corridors. It is breathless and thrilling, at times it feels as though one were reading The Bourne Identity of the Housewife.

The tale is filled with the kind of passion, intrigue and feeling that can only come from experience. Ms. Kohli takes us down a very personal path into her heart and soul. She acknowledges as much when she recounts her own struggles to feel comfortable and grounded in Japanese culture. She doesn't want be soto, which means "outside" but rather, the opposite, uchi, which literally means "inside."²

Her writing style mirrors that of her blog, Kismuth, the practical infused with the mystical, perhaps reflecting the duality of the cultures in which she was raised. In an interview with the Clarion Content, Ms. Kohli said she felt the tension and the joy of real, powerful reactions. She faced it travelling solo through India, meeting her Dad's uncles and her Mom's aunts, heretofore unknown, learning that although she grew up in a nuclear family in North Carolina, she was part of a large extended family that had by no means forgotten or abandoned her.

She faced her own reactions everywhere from a quiet, and sometimes lonely, Irish cottage to flying a kite by herself at lunchtime over Lake Crabtree, desperate to get away from a mindset that didn't suit her.

She notes that she was no finished product, instead, she says, "I liked who I was becoming." Ms. Kohli takes us through that becoming and beyond in what is the first of a four part series. A memoir that she hopes will, "give people time, space and permission to do some soul searching of their own."

The next installment, available October 15th on Amazon, is called, The Dive. For good reason, it will dig into the deeply personal topic of losing a pregnancy in a discompassionate town, in a realm of acquaintances, far from friends and loved ones. But before you get lost in total despair, as Ms. Kohli once was, remember this is ultimately a story of triumph and success, travelling through dark times and on to a place that has a happy family, with a healthy child, and a passion for the creative and the community, here, in Durham.

On her own website, Ms. Kohli quotes Joseph Campbell on a dark Hobbesian day,

"Modern romance, like Greek tragedy, celebrates the mystery of dismemberment, which is life in time. The happy ending is justly scorned as a misrepresentation; for the world, as we know it, as we have seen it, yields but one ending: death, disintegration, dismemberment, and the crucifixion of our heart with the passing of the forms that we have loved."

You can read The Elopement like that, with a samsaric sensibility, or you could let your soul run light and free, knowing the sun will come up tomorrow. Either way, or anywhere in between, there is lots of knowledge, wisdom and life story in these pages.

We are reminded of the words of the English poet Robert Herrick as we eagerly await the next volume from Ms. Kohli.

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today,
Tomorrow will be dying.


The Elopement is available for purchase here.


Ms. Dipika Kohli will be speaking at TEDx Raleigh on Oct. 13, giving a talk called "There's Not That Much Time Left."


Notes
¹Technically, it wasn't her second move either, that came when she dropped out of art school after a semester to move to Japan.
²American kids might say down, she wants to be down. Cool, inside, one who gets it. Not lame, excluded, outside the joke and the meaning.

Labels: Art, Durham, fiction, Practical Advice, thought