As of Monday, November 9, Mark Jenkins‘ Sleepwalker is standing tall in downtown Winston-Salem at the Clark Campbell Transportation Center on 5th Street. Mark is the 5th artist in SECCA’s year-long public art series Inside/Out: Artists in the Community II, and in partnership with the City of Winston-Salem, his work continues to emerge across the city. Fox 8 News was there to cover the installation, interview myself and a number of onlookers, and capture the many priceless reactions that continue to accumulate with this mysterious figure in public space.
It was a true pleasure to see the work become such an instant magnet for curiosity, wonder, and conversations. At SECCA we’ve been thinking a great deal about what our mission is as an art center. The inspiration of communities through contemporary art has emerged as one of our most fundamental objectives. Jenkins’ SleepWalker animates this mission in many ways; becoming a compelling topic for dialogue between people and groups who may have never spoken to one another otherwise at the heavily trafficked bus station. Collectively trying to figure out just who (or what) this surreal figure was, and what it was doing in the middle of a public site, quickly led into larger discussions about the ability of art to expand perspectives, ignite new ideas, and re-frame our ways of seeing social and physical spaces.
I urge you to go and see the SleepWalker at the Campbell Transportation Center before it disappears. The figure will be standing at the Bus Station until Sunday, November 15. Catch it while you can. Like a waking dream, the SleepWalker will vanish as quickly as it came to life.
10/18/2009
Sometimes you just know a day is going to be a long day. Autumn warmth had packed up and left town as quickly as cold winds blew their way into Winston-Salem; carrying with them a seemingly endless supply of dried leaves that had a special knack of finding their way – repeatedly – into wet paint. It was clear that the weather was going to be an adversary on this day, but we stood strong…with a little help from new friends.
Sweeping away the Leaves to make way for the Screw
10/17/2009
On the morning of Saturday, October 17 we found out that the shoelace stencils for the Anderson Center parking lot weren’t quite large enough to have their intended affect. Rather than re-cut them on site, we moved up hill to the former MLK Jr. Drive and its compellingly rounded bottom end. On this hybrid cul-de-sac and sewer drain (due to its slow downward slope), Roadsworth painted a cautionary tale to drivers. Using a faded pair of yellow traffic lines as his starting point, he extended the lines into streams of spiraling water that terminate in a circular drain painted at the bottom of the hill. In this intersection of urban and natural metaphors, one must ask if our resources and social good will continue to go “down the drain” if the same linear path is followed. I can tell you that taping those lines to be smooth and straight was anything but simple, but the results were both whimsical and poignant. This design is best viewed from high above on the hill adjacent to the street.
Taping the Yellow Lines
Pondering the Drying Drain Stencil
Still Taping the Lines...
Working on Both Ends
Sky's the Limit
After about a week and a half of intense artistic navel-gazing and creative exploration, the students and faculty at the Enrichment Center came up with an exciting Roadsworth inspired design for their parking lot. With design in hand the group then met with Roadsworth who helped to transform their concept into a series of stencils, while also providing some guidance on applying them to the asphalt.
The work-titled Sky’s the Limit-has transformed, what once were, simple white parking lot arrows into rocket ships blasting their way through space. Below you can see the prepped but still unpainted parking lot, a pic of the finished rocket ships, and Roadsworth (pictured to the left) with the students and a finished space vessel.
The rocket ships “take off” at the Marshall Street entrance, adjacent to the Gateway Gallery, following a trajectory towards the main parking lot. The final rocket finishes its course nearby to the Enrichment Center’s new sculpture garden, which features 3 sculptural installations collectively titled Things That Fly. The two projects, especially in conversation with each other, speak warmly to the uplifting work done at this fine organization. Everyone at SECCA wants to extend a hearty congrats to all of the artists involved.
Check out more images from SECCA’s Street Art Workshop and Community Day at the Enrichment Center on SECCA’s flickr page.
10/16/2009
Although the weather didn’t quite share in the hospitality, SECCA happily welcomed Canadian street artist Roadsworth to Winston-Salem and the Inside/Out: Artists in the Community II Public Art program on October 10th. Roadsworth is the sixth artist in the 2009 series, and was invited to create a series of intervention-style street paintings on the campus of Winston-Salem State University and three crosswalks along Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. To give you a brief background, Roadsworth alters existing street markers and civilian wayfinding devices (i.e. sidewalks) to critique car culture and re-energize the pedestrian (and cyclist) experience. Dubbed “Pedestrian Street Art,” these works use satire and spectacle to poke fun at humorless streets and society’s absurd (and often dangerous) reverence for the automobile. He does so by using the language of the street to subvert itself, retaining the functionality of said markings while transforming their character into something delightfully absurd. In the process, Roadsworth illuminates what is so often ignored – creating utopian proposals that simultaneously speak to the imminent dangers of car culture.
an early example of Roadsworth's Pedestrian Street Art
The folks at Mock Orange Bikes have loaned Roadsworth a sweet ride for his stay in Winston-Salem. During the installation of his work, Roadsworth will be cruising about town on a Kona Big Kahuna with 29 inch wheels so he can fly over artistic obstacles with ease.
Roadsworth's Winston-Salem ride!
So if you see him cruising between SECCA and Krankies returning from a fuel run throw up a friendly wave and a welcome to town, remember he has traveled a long way to bring Winston-Salem some great art! Thanks Roadsworth and thanks Mock Orange!
In honor of our current Inside Out: Artists in the Community II participating artist Roadsworth, SECCA, in collaboration with Krankies and Diggs Gallery at Winston-Salem State University, is presenting a 3 day Street Art Film Series. The series traces the legacy of street art from the apex of nyc’s graffiti movement in the early 80s to the world-wide phenomenon it has become. We’ll cap the series off by screening a great doc. about our current artist-in-residence, Roadsworth: Crossing the Line. See below for film trailers, locations, etc. PS It’s all free. Hope to see you there!
Style Wars
Thursday, October 15, 7pm
Krankies, 211 East 3rd St.
Post-screening discussion with Dr. Will Boone of WSSU
NEXT: A Primer on Urban Painting
Friday, October 16, 7pm
Krankies, 211 East 3rd St.
Post screening discussion via Skype with director Pablo Aravena
Roadsworth: Crossing the Line
Saturday, October 17, 7pm
Winston-Salem State University, Diggs Gallery 601 S. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr.
Post screening discussion with Roadsworth
That’s the question the staff here at SECCA and our community partner, the Enrichment Center, have been asking ourselves lately. Maybe the more relevant question is, “What could this look like?” A little background: SECCA and the Enrichment Center have organized a workshop for EC artists inspired by SECCA’s upcoming Inside Out: Artists in the Community II artist Roadsworth. Roadsworth has an uncanny ability to look at ordinary street markings and see extraordinary possibilities–to see what could be there–transforming a crosswalk into a foot print, a parking lot into a field of dandelions, and so on.
Dandelions
Inspired by Roadsworth the students and faculty have been exploring the potential of their parking lot, such as the pictured arrow, these past couple of weeks. They’ve come up with a super creative idea, and Roadsworth will facilitate a workshop session this Tuesday to help the artists further realize their concept. We will unveil the finished work of street art at the Street Art Community Day next Sunday, October 18, from 1-4pm.
Working through Roadsworth’s process to re-imagine the space outside of the Enrichment Center has been, to quote Shayna Parker, Visual Arts Specialist at the EC, “A great brain workout.” But I think that eloquently describes the transformative power of art and it’s unique ability to help us redefine the way we see the world. It’s encouraging to know that there are so many different ways we can perceive and experience what’s around us. Personally, the crew of artists involved with Inside Out, along with a cadre of others, have motivated me to actively look-look at my everyday as thought it were perpetually new. Or, perhaps more accurately, to look at my world through, what Lewis Carroll coined a “mental squint.” Looking for what’s there, and, what could be there. So the question remains, what does this look like to you?
The folks at Mock Orange Bikes kicked off the first official race of the cyclocross season at SECCA on Sunday 9/27. Cyclist from as far away as Boone and Fayetteville came to race on the mile and a quarter course that winds its way around the grounds. A combination of wooded trails, single track, paved and cobbled surfaces provide the SECCA cyclocross enthusiasts with a course that has many of the elements that you might find at a European venue where the sport has its roots. Cyclocross was developed as an off season training tool for competitive road cyclist. It has become a very respected individual discipline that is growing rapidly worldwide.
Men's category 3 racers leave the start/finish on the cobbles in front of the Hanes' mansion.
Mock Orange Bikes has been running a series of training rides every Tuesday evening throughout the month of September leading up to this official race. We hope to continue the partnership with M.O.B in the future as we begin to realize ways to fully utilize the property at SECCA and expose a greater cross section of the public to the center.
Cyclocross is very much artistry on a bike and about 100 riders participated in the event. The team kits (uniforms) are usually quite spectacular, but when combined with the bikes, the grounds and a beautiful day rain or shine, it truly is visual poetry.
Women's Pro/Category 1,2,3 racer crests a knoll before dropping into the woods.
Please join us tonight (Tuesday, Sept. 22) at 5:30 p.m. at the Reynolda House Auditorium for a lecture by Mark Jenkins about his public art sculptures. Learn more about his methods and his perspectives into his own work. Reynolda House Museum of American Art is located at 2250 Reynolda Road. The lecture will be followed by a short reception. This event is free and open to the public.
Like artists of the past who have used Plaster of Paris, Jenkins employs a combination of crumpled newspaper, plastic wrap, tape and acrylic resin to create characters that have “lived” in cities around the world.
We hope to see you there. Ellen
