LabourLove Gallery
August 20, 2010 to October 10, 2010
6:00 PM to 7:00 PM
Art Exhibition
Admission: Free, Open to public
Parking: Main, Visitor and Auxillary Parking Lots

Jason Salemme will be back for the opening on Friday, August 20 from -11:30pm with Three of our all time favorite homebrew’s! IPA, Pineapple Hefeweizen, and ESB

In “Look Away Dixie Land” McArthur Freeman, Titus Brooks Heagins, & Dave Alsobrooks explore themes of racism in the south through painting, photography, and mix-media.

McArthur’s Artist Statement:

I create narrative paintings, drawings, and installations exploring race, double consciousness, and the construction of identity. The images are a synthesis of children’s book illustrations, fairy tales, and invented characters with historical narratives, images from popular culture, and social critique to create a wonderland like world that has gone disturbingly awry, but is seductively beautiful. Th…e images are surreal, yet they investigate many of the myths and absurd truths that exist in our real world experiences. Dark subject matter that is sweetened by cartoon-like figures, lyrical compositions, vivid color, and bulbous sensual forms, unify a host of iconic references in these painted environments. Painting becomes a way of exploring and confronting the images that we consume in order to create a dialogue between image, perception, and constructed reality. Through these open-ended narratives, I explore the displacement involved in the expectations of the utopian American dream and the reality of racism, mind colonization, confused notions of beauty, and hybridity. McArthur earned an MFA from Cornell University and is currently a professor at NC State.

Titus’s Artist Statement:

The pivotal question is whether we owe a debt to those ancestors who endured so we could have life. They lived lives of pain, indignities, unfulfilled desires and dreams, while surrounded by fear and the various forms of physical and spiritual death. The debt we owe is not reparations, nor national apologies — those issues are for the larger society to ponder. Ours is a debt more personal, central to our persistence and continued survival as a people in a nation still hostile to our presence. I create images today to interrogate the past. Visual realities that are dense in detail and laden with conflicting meaning so overwhelming that they hold the potential to extract our own truths from a filter of the past. We remain prisoners of our past; we may not acknowledge this fact, but we remain held by our denial as well as our acceptance of the truths of enslavement. African Americans come into the world with vulnerable potential, but are quickly damaged. Daily indignities confront us as we negotiate our path in a cloaked and clouded. As both an institution and experience, slavery is rarely a conscious reality for most African Americans. Both inter and intra racial relations bear the foundations created in antebellum America. The sole purpose of this exhibition is to present a series of visual relationships that existed both internally and externally in the plantation economies of the American South. The truth of these images lies in your past, present, and future experiences. Titus is a documentary photographer and teacher of photography at the university level. He earned his undergraduate degree from Duke University and MFA from the University of Michigan.

Dave’s Artist Statement:

Let me start by saying I’m not pretending to answer age-old questions about race relations with paintings of the Confederate flag. But you may have guessed as much. I’m simply recounting my experience of growing up in South Carolina. As with the strong graphic lines of the Confederate Flag, there were distinct lines in life. Geographic and cultural, acceptable and punishable. The Confederate Flag has been a point of contention in South Carolina for generations. The flag has traditionally been a prominent icon, seen on license plates, shirts, tattoos, bumper stickers and keychains among other items. The “Southern Cross” was even displayed atop the state’s capitol building from 1962 until 2000. Arguments were made to remove the flag and to uphold its public display in Columbia. I knew folks entrenched on either side of this discussion, so I was privy to both points of view. During this time the phrase, “Heritage, not hate,” became popular. It became the “politically correct” slogan accompanying the Confederate Flag. Paraphrased: the Confederate Flag doesn’t have any hateful associations — its public display is only a tribute to history, heritage and a way of life. Heritage, not hate? To whose heritage are we referring?

What if this powerful symbol were only about the sacrifices and tribulations of people fighting to maintain their way of life? Or what if the flag only encompassed simple family traditions being passed from generation to generation, with none of the mistakes made along the way? What if the flag were reclaimed and used as a defiant symbol of perseverance and cultural vibrancy? Or what if in the flag, we were only witness to its worst associations throughout history?

More questions, I admit.

Dave is the Durham Art Guild’s artist in residence at GB for 2010, the co-founder of The PARAGRAPH Project, and an organizing member of BULLWORKS

Slow news cycle? I’ll take it.

Here’s a link to the article on the Herald-Sun’s website.

PROJECT UPDATE:

The New Neighbors project is still eligible to receive votes everyday as part of the Pepsi Refresh Everything grant program. I was tracking up quickly, but have stalled in the past week. Votes during the month of July are very much appreciated. You can visit the project and vote for it here. And every one of you can vote for the project once a day! Just thought you should know that part. AND… you can text your vote from your phone! Just text 100120 to 73774… daily! Thanks so much!

I received an email at 12:23 am this morning informing me that the New Neighbors project made it into the Pepsi Refresh Everything project.

What does that mean? Well, it’s only the first hurdle that needed to be cleared.

I’ve asked for a $5,000 grant to blow out the project rather proper-like. This will help promote the launch event that will coincide with Preservation North Carolina’s annual conference. It will also purchase the supplies needed to build frames and stretch canvases for the post-installation auction.

So what happens next?

The project has a page on the Pepsi Refresh Everything website. You can go there and vote for it once every single day until midnight on July 31st. Please do go and vote as manytimes as possible between now and July 31st! You can actually vote for up to 10 projects a day, and there are lotsa great ideas. That’s it — come August 1st Pepsi will award funding to up to ten of the $5K ideas (there are other money categories).

So once more, please visit the New Neighbors page on the Pepsi Refresh Everything site everyday in July and cast a vote!

Nd now… you can text your vote from your phone! Just text 100120 to 73774… daily! Thanks so much!

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That’s right — I need you to help in the completion of my New Neighbors project. Why should you help? I can tempt you with a few reasons:

+ ultimately this means you will be part of an art installation in east Durham, NC
+ once the installation is over, paintings will be auctioned to benefit Project RED & local arts orgs
+ a launch event is tentatively scheduled to coincide with Preservation NC’s annual conference
+ it’s fun and definitely easy (at least your part will be!)

So what is it I need you to do? Simply pose for a photograph of yourself doing something completely mundane, such as:

+ ironing a shirt
+ changing a light bulb
+ sautéing a side dish
+ peering out with binoculars
+ jumping on a bed
+ teaching a class

I’ll provide the props if you’ll visit me in my studio on a Third Friday at Golden Belt in Durham, NC. The next Third Friday is June 18 and our open studio times are scheduled from 6-9 pm. Come on by. If you want to schedule another time to come by, we can work that out, too.

Heck, you can even send me a photo you already have. I’ll take it! Just make sure you are clearly defined (against a light-colored wall, for example). So let’s say you wanted to illustrate sautĂ©ing dinner. All you really need is the pan and you can “sautĂ©” balls of paper or socks or potato chips. That part doesn’t really matter. The photos will become line drawings so I can fudge the missing parts later. Shoot me a note if that doesn’t make sense, or if you want to come by my studio sometime.

And besides, logos are fun. How can we make some concocted graphic symbolize a company’s entrepreneurial spirit while nodding to the owner’s dog’s tri-colored coat and the fact his business was first conceptualized by sketching directly on a surfboard 20 years prior to now? I’m making that up, obviously, but it’s hard to ever guess what will be in the brief for a new identity.

My point, however, was a computer isn’t needed to make logos. Necessarily. Yes, at some point, it has to go through the machine for production. I’m speaking more about the creative process and advocating that Step One not involve a computer, a television, an iPod (or iPad) or Design Annual.

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Chasing Bear Identity

I decided to name my company Chasing Bear a few years ago. It’s a weird, nebulous concept that I ramble on about here. I should point out this company is primarily where I pursue my own personal art projects. I’m also a partner at The PARAGRAPH Project and we do really intersting stuff for anyone who’s interested.

So along with this very loose concept of what “Chasing Bear” meant came an indifference to a logo. “I probably shouldn’t use a bear as a mark for a company who has ‘Bear’ in their name, right?” I let it languish.

Until one day, my wife and I were browsing in an antique shop in the NC mountains. We came across this carved bear that was meant to hang on a wall. My wife told me it was perfect for my home office. I wasn’t used to being cleared for the purchase of mascots. I just wasn’t buying it (the bear). Fortunately, I eventually did purchase the bear. And when I got home, I hung it above my desk.

I eventually realized this bear was MY bear. And I figured out a way to make him say “Chasing” as well. I took a photo, adjusted some levels in Photoshop and then took a print to my local copy shop where I distorted the image. A quick change of the eye, and I was done. It all happened in a few hours.

The timeline for this endeavor was obviously outside the realm of any traditional client engagement. In fact, there was no timeline. Everything happened organically. I realize it’s not practical from this perspective. But my point is not one of time management. I’m hoping you might look beyond your normal sources of inspiration within the timeframe of any given project. And that the tablet or the mouse are put away for a bit. We (and our clients) might be better served if after reading the brief, we just go for a walk. Or visit an antique shop.

3 artists will create 9 pieces of art in 20 minute bursts. Topics come from the audience. It’s a fun time, especially for hanging out in a gallery. Here’s a link to LabourLove’s blog, where you can get all the details.

Basically, the event will start at 7 pm this Friday, 2/5/10 at LabourLove Gallery in Golden Belt, here in Durham, NC. See you there!

An image from ArtSLAM! v1.0

Here’s what LabourLove is saying about the event.

I had previously assembled a rough tabletop as my primary work suffice when I realized it could actually be a painting. So I’m going to use the tabletop as a workspace and as a painting. Along with collaging stuff I’ll allow my normal working process to contribute to the eventual painting. It’ll serve almost like a journal of the year’s work. It should be interesting. And fun. But my idea of fun is throwing paint and carving letterforms into plywood.

You can come see me in the space (tonight) as part of Durham’s Third Friday event. The studios at Golden Belt are located at 807 East Main Street in Durham, NC. I’m in Studio 138 in Building 3. Cheers.

I’m looking to expand on the art forms I’ve explored so far. This means I’ll be looking at projections, interventions in public spaces, traditional 2-D forms, sound and video. Not necessarily in that order… and not necessarily any or all of these forms will make it out of the studio door. Is that vague enough? Stay tuned… I’m accountable to progress!

Here’s the press release from the Guild.

I’m participating in The Sketchbook Project. Check out my blank, pristine Moleskin sketchbook as it arrived. I have to fill it with art and return for a national gallery tour. My topic: Danger, Danger. Should be fun!

The completed sketchbooks will hit Atlanta, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, St. Louis and Chicago galleries before entering the Sketchbook Project permanent collection.