Thursday, September 15, 2011

Two Art Exhibits This Month at The Scrap Exchange

Join us on Friday, September 16 from 6-9pm for an opening reception celebrating two new art exhibits at The Scrap Exchange!


Shell We Tie a String to That?


Featuring the art of Willa Brigham, Cyn Mallard, and Sara McCreary
September 16 - October 15
Opening Reception: Friday, September 16 from 6-9 pm

The Scrap Exchange opens a new Green Gallery art exhibit on September 16. Shell We Tie a String to That features the artwork of Willa Brigham, Cyn Mallard and Sara McCreary. The exhibit explores fiber art and mixed media using themes relating to nature and shells.

Emmy award-winning storyteller Willa Brigham, a member of the African American Quilt Circle in Durham, will present portrait art quilts embellished with strings and shells. Cyn Mallard will exhibit beach, sand and shell inspired mixed-media paintings using new and recycled materials. And Sara McCreary explores the use of string as an art medium with her yarn paintings, yarn orbs and ceramic pinch pots filled with pine cones wrapped in yarn.

We are also pleased to welcome back the band Swag for Friday’s opening reception!

For anyone who was around at the end of the day on Saturday for our Grand (Re)Opening, they were the last band who played and they were rockin’ the house. We’re really excited to have them back! You can check them out on MySpace: www.myspace.com/swagrock

The exhibit opens Friday, September 16 with an opening reception from 6 to 9 pm. The reception includes refreshments and free art-making in our Make and Take room.

"Shell We Tie a String to That" will run in The Green Gallery from September 16 to October 15.

willa brigham  cyn mallard  sara mccreary




Art Installation by Leon Grodski de Barrera:

Retrospective Inference: 9/11/01 - 9/11/11

In honor of the recent 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, artist Leon Grodski de Barrera has created a very special art installation at The Scrap Exchange. This installation is not on prominent display in the Green Gallery, but rather tucked away within the retail shelves of the store. Visit the store, shop the shelves and discover for yourself this thought-provoking audio/visual installation that contains film, images and sound relating to the Twin Towers before and after 9/11.

The artist, who lived and worked in New York City during 9/11, explains his vision for this installation on his blog, the-sushi-bar. (A few quotes from that blog follow.)

"The Scrap Exchange (is) a place where value is given to scraps — throwaways gathered, presented, and then given value through the choice of the shopper and their subsequent reuse. The space creates an extraordinary experience in what would might seem the most mundane. People who shop enter a realm of discovery, creation, innovation to use and reuse...to take scraps and find use..."
"In this context I have embedded several audio visual elements on the shelves in different sections of the "store." One may stumble upon them, one may not, as they are embedded with other audio visual items that are actually for sale, the shopper may not know that it is not for sale creating the potential for a kind of unexpected happening. The entire space, including the audio visual elements offers the viewer the chance to become aware that something out of the ordinary is at work...maybe a piece of art on the shelf, maybe an unedited film...maybe a cross reference of song to borrowed film...maybe a line that angers, incites or rings true."


"The audio visual elements themselves offer an experience in their own right. I am presenting two borrowed works (a film and a song), raw footage that I shot on September 12th, 2001 on the streets of Manhattan, and a composed work that has been exhibited as art and documentary. Each has a different feel, like the extreme and contradictory feelings of that day, offering comfort, defiance, anger, the desire to act, sadness."

"Retrospective Inference: 9/11/01 - 9/11/11" will be on display at The Scrap Exchange through September 30.
Leon Grodski Art Installation




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