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September Issue 2007
Waterworks Visual Arts Center in Salisbury, NC, Offers New Exhibitions for the Fall Season
The Sept. 7 through Nov. 3, 2007, period of exhibitions at the Waterworks Visual Arts Center in Salisbury, NC, features Discover Craft NC, with works from the Governor's Executive Mansion, in the Norvell and Stanback Hall galleries; Sculptural Books, by Daniel Essig, in the Osborne and Woodson Galleries; Carnival, a ceramics installation by Gerit Grimm, in the Installation Gallery; and Wind Instruments, a year-around outdoor sculpture exhibit by Mike Roig, will be offered in the Stanback & Cook Sensory Gardens.
North Carolina is one of the nation's top three craft destinations, a place where creativity and culture intersect. North Carolina's crafts people have, in the past 50 years, been at the forefront of transforming American contemporary art.
The works in the Fall 2007 exhibitions emphasize that transformation. While many objects acknowledge their origins in purpose and function, all embody the individuality, creativity, and emotional power that is associated with significant art of any culture.
The artists include Rick Beck, Jennie Bireline, Elizabeth Brim, Cynthia Bringle, Jan Campos, Linda Darty, Robert Ebendorf, Daniel Essig, Mark Hewitt, Nick Joerling, Bob Kopf, John Kuhn, Susan Webb Lee, Ben Owen III, Mark Peiser, Sally Bowen Prange, Mary Ann Scherr, Michael Sherrill, John Skau, Tom Spleth, Billie Ruth Sudduth, Tom Suomalainen, and Bob Trotman.
The artists were selected by Mark Leach and Melissa Post of the Mint Museum of Craft + Design in Charlotte, NC, with input also provided by the North Carolina Craft Coalition and the North Carolina Arts Council. The exhibit is sponsored locally by Ramsay Burgin Smith Architects, Inc. and is supported by The Executive Mansion Committee and The Executive Mansion Fund, Inc.
Asheville-based artist Daniel Essig approaches bookmaking with an unconventional twist: instead of creating books to be read or filled with words, his journals are sculptural, and they serve as visual and tangible records of the artist's life and work.
In Sculptural Books the artist incorporates interests in the natural environment, traces from the past, ancient book binding styles, distressed finishes, altered books, and found objects. In this way, Essig's works speak for themselves with a unique vision and voice that offers layers of ideas, mysterious combinations of objects, and rich, earthy surfaces. Essig initially became interested in bookbinding as he studied photography at the University of South Illinois at Carbondale.
While working as a graduate assistant on a photographic caving expedition, Essig became intrigued with the dark world of caves and their surrounding above-ground environment. Exploring rotting trees, weathered rocks, animal tracks, and fossils in these natural places generated Essig's interest in the beauty of aging and the colors of decay, two characteristics suggested by the dark tones and quiet, weathered glory of many of the distressed finishes in his work.
Essig creates bound journals and sculptural books using variations of the ancient Ethiopian Coptic binding style believed to have been developed in North Africa in the fourth century. When searching for inspiration to begin a new book, the artist often hunts through his extensive collection of found objects - seashells, small rocks, bones, animal teeth, nails, and fossils - that he began at the age of six.
After graduating from Southern Illinois University with a BA in photography, Essig continued his artistic studies at the Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina and the University of Iowa Center for the Book. In 2002, Essig was a North Carolina Visual Artist Grant recipient. He has shown his work across the United States, including the exhibitions Translucence: Forms in Paper at the Brookfield Craft Center of Brookfield, CT (2005) and The Nature of Craft and the Penland Experience at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC (2004). His work is included in major collections at the Renwick Museum of the Smithsonian Institute of Washington, DC, as well as the special collections of the University of Iowa and North Carolina State University libraries.
In Carnival, a ceramics installation
by German artist Gerit Grimm, a colorful group of original characters
enjoy various amusement park pastimes: children dance and play,
people win prizes of toys and goldfish, and vendors sell delicious
confections of cotton candy and ice cream. Transcending its initial
impression as a fun and charming scene, the Carnival exhibition
explores American pop culture and the notions of kitsch, artificiality,
and the link between movie fantasy and the real world as seen
through the artist's international eyes.
Born in the town of Halle in former East Germany, Grimm's sole
impressions of United States culture came through viewing American
cinema. The fact that US culture of the past 50 years has not
been fully integrated into Eastern Europe frees the artist's powers
of association.
The Carnival exhibition was created during an artist-in-residence program at the John Michael Kohler Factory in 2006. This experience affords artists an opportunity to access industrial engineering techniques. After designing and creating the series of plaster molds for Carnival, the artist filled each mold with vitreous china slip, a mixture of clay and water. The clay remained in the mold for 3-6 hours before its removal. Once drying to a leather-hard state, the artist carved the designs on the clay's surface using a knife and paper stencil. Following another period of drying, color glazes were applied to the surface and the forms were fired using the Kohler kilns right next to the facility's factory line. The entire process of creating Carnival took two and a half months.
After studying at the School for Applied Art & Design Burg Giebichenstein in Halle, Germany, Grimm went on to earn a Master of Arts degree from the University of Michigan School of Art & Design in 2002 and a Master of Fine Arts from New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in 2004. She has exhibited in solo and group shows across the United States and in Germany, including a 2007 resident artist show at the McColl Center for Visual Art in Charlotte.
The sculptures of Carrboro artist Mike Roig embrace a blend of geometry and organic flow. In Wind Instruments, fluid arcs and swaying lines combine with the rigid solidity of angles and straight, steel edges.
A favorite material of the artist, steel offers options ranging from heavy durability, earthen solidity, delicate balance, and glistening brilliance. Together, these possibilities take flight from the mind and hands of the artist, emerging as expressive works that interact with their surrounding environment through physical kinetic attachments as well as visual motion.
The creative planning process of Roig is direct and active. Rather than sketching and planning, the artist describes his process as a "lively, memorable trek." Roig prefers to rely on his mind's eye to bring together physical materials, tools, and artistic insight to develop his creative explorations.
Concerning his work, the artist writes: "Making art is a process of thinking in tangible materials, forming stray images that pass through the mind into solid substance. Creativity is a journey where knowledge must be accumulated and employed in a seamless cycle."
Roig attended the University of Maryland, where he specialized in drawing, sculpture, and printmaking. The artist has exhibited for twenty years throughout the region, including shows in Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and his hometown of Carrboro, all in NC.
A prominent public artist in the Southeast region, Roig completed Glimpses of the Promised Land in 2006, a commission by the Raleigh Arts Commission for the City of Raleigh. Other public sculptures can be seen in New York, Virginia, and across North Carolina.
The Waterworks Visual Arts Center is accredited by the American Association of Museums. Our mission is to offer an innovative program of exhibitions, education, and outreach that inspires and educates its regional audiences in the exploration of the evolution and forefront of contemporary art. The Waterworks is funded by individual memberships, corporations and businesses, foundations, the City of Salisbury, Rowan County, the North Carolina Arts Council, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The Institute of Museum and Library Sciences, a federal grant-making agency dedicated to creating and sustaining a nation of learners by helping libraries and museums serve their communities, supports the Waterworks Visual Arts Center.
For further information check our NC Institutional
Gallery listings, call the Center at 704/636-1882 or visit (www.waterworks.org).
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