Install It back for 2013 Artista Vista

Install It – the installation art component of Artist Vista – will be back for 2013.

The 2013 exhibition taps into the history of the Washington Street area which was once a major a business and social street for the African-American community. The street was and is the home of many important places such as the Zion Baptist Church, an African-American state fair and the Richard Samuel Roberts photography studio. The exhibition will also tie into the Columbia 63 which is celebrating important milestones in the Civil Rights Movement as well as Mayor Steve Benjamin’s Famously Hot Bicycle Ride.

Most of the artworks will be installed in and around the former train tunnel that is now part of the Vista Greenway. The tunnel runs directly beneath Washington Street and serves as an apt metaphor for the hidden history of the street above.

Artists taking part are Michaela Pilar Brown, Amanda Ladymon, Bri Kinard, Kara Gunter and Wendell George Brown and Kimberly Bookman.

The exhibition will be on display until MAY 24

The exhibition that enlists Columbia artists to create non-traditional works for unusual locations was started in 2011 and continued in 2012. Installation art was an important part of Artista Vista when it was founded 22 years ago in the emerging arts district, but as the area rapidly redeveloped these art projects took a long hiatus.

Installation art exhibitions were restarted by the Congaree Vista Guild in 2011 as part of the 20^th anniversary Artista Vista and dubbed Install It. Jeffrey Day, a long-time arts writer in Columbia, curated the 2011 and 2012 exhibitions and will also be putting together the 2013 exhibition.

The 2013 exhibition will also be outdoors where it can be seen by the greatest number of people and will be on display until May 24.

A word from our partner - Jane Przybysz, McKissick Museum director

  INSTALL IT 2 would not have been possible without the support of the McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina. Museum Director Jane Przybysz overheard me and one of the artists talking about project in the late winter and asked how the museum could get involved. She has since been a tireless supporter of the exhibition and provided invaluable professional expertise which greatly increased the quality of the exhibition. 

Here are Jane's thoughts about the impact of the exhibition, which comes to a close May 26. - Jeffrey Day, exhibition curator.

  

The scene of opening night for INSTALL IT 2 was a community art educator’s dream.  At the Rangoli: Giant Bird Feeder, venturesome families with children, couples young and old, and curious clumps of seniors gathered round trying to grasp what in the world was going on.  Many were soon on bent knees, flowers or flour in hand, intently focused on adding their own designs to the lot-sized ground painting artists’ Khaldoune Bencheikh and Mary How vision had sketched with colored bird seed and rice to serve as a huge welcoming mat for birds at the heart of the Vista. 

At I Have Loved You So Long, artist Michaela Pilar Brown held court to the tune of traffic passing by the loading dock facing Gervais Street that provided the framework for her installation.  In moments of relative quiet, she talked about her decision to return to her family’s homeplace in rural South Carolina after years of living in an urban setting.  She reflected on how much more time she was now spending in a car on roadways littered with gators—a term truckers use on their CB radios to describe sometimes hazardous tire treads littering the highway.

You could actually sense traffic slow down alongside the Zion Baptist Church where Wendell George Brown had built Ascension—three monumentally-sized, larger-than-life figurative sculptures that paid homage to African American spiritual traditions.  The pottery shards and tree branches poking out of earthen-like figures powerfully evoked bottle trees and burial customs African Americans—especially in South Carolina’s low country—have practiced for generations.

As the evening wore on, a small crowd gathered near the alleyway where Kara Gunter had installed Ghost Trees.  They were patiently waiting for the sky to darken so they might witness the effect evoked by LED lights Gunter had installed at the base of the white gauzy trees she’d constructed to mourn the loss of real trees in an urban setting.

Perhaps because there was a rock band playing outdoors adjacent to Eileen Blythe’s Seven Doors, there was less conversation about and more observation of the Alice-in-Wonderland, door-like structures she’d created from repurposed industrial materials with Adluh Flour’s building as a backdrop.  At one point, my eye was drawn beyond the sculptures through the crack between two parts of the building structure to a spotlit American flag furling and unfurling in the breeze.  I couldn’t help but take this fortuitous juxtaposition of the flag and the installation as a positive sign that the spirit of Artista Vista and of Install It 2 embodied the spirit of America, constantly reinventing itself through individual initiative and collective endeavor. 

Last week for Install It 2

In spite of all the rain, the artworks in Install It 2 are standing strong throughout the Congaree Vista. 
You still have a week to take in the exhibition and here's a look at what you'll find.
The exhibition remains on display through May 26. Se the map at the end for locations.
 

"Rangoli: Giant Bird Feeder" is naturally fading into the earth.

 

The figures in "Ascension" face both the Memorial Park and the Zion Baptist Church.

"I Have Loved You So Long" transforms a loading dock right on Gervais Street into an artwork.

 At the end of Senate Street, "Blue Spheres" connect to the river and ceramics industry.

 The towers of Adluh Flour serve as the backdrop - and more - for "Seven Doors."

 Art and nature merge with "Ghost Trees."

The finished exhibition - you have a month to see it

Thanks to everyone who came out on opening night to take in Install It 2 as part of Artista Vista.

Now that the exhibition is open we'd refresh your memory about the show and artists as well as share photos of the finished pieces.

Install It 2 will be on display through May 26. All the works are outdoors and available for viewing any time.

 For this year’s installation art exhibition, Install It 2, seven artists tap into the history and natural and built environment of the Vista. This exhibition marks a new collaboration with the McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina with the artworks connected through material, content and location to the Museum’s commitment to telling the story of Southern life: community, culture and the environment.

Khaldoune Bencheikh and Mary How, in collaboration with community members, created Rangoli: Giant Bird Feeder at the corner of Lady and Lincoln Streets. The work is based on the rangoli, a folk art from India where women create decorative floor patterns to welcome deities during religious festivals. This biodegradable performance art installation accentuates our relationship with nature, especially the avian variety, even in an urban environment.
Bencheikh is a master of fine arts candidate at the University of South Carolina, and How, an art therapist, is owner of Angelfish Creations. 

Located in the yard of the Zion Baptist Church at Washington and Gadsden streets, Wendell George Brown’s figurative sculpture grouping Ascension is inspired by African-American quilting, spirituals and burial grounds, as well as African grave markers and wooden figures created for healing and protection. Through the source materials and location, the piece reflects upon the African-American history and culture of the area. Founded in 1865, Zion Baptist Church has been at this location since 1870. Washington Street was the primary African-American business district of Columbia during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Ascension overlooks Memorial Park. 
Brown, a Benedict College faculty member, has shown his work at the Japan International Quilt Show, the American Folk Art Museum in New York and the Corcoran Art Gallery in Washington D.C. 

 
 

Kara Gunter’s Ghost Trees in the alleyway near Gervais and Gadsden Streets repopulates an alleyway of stumps with trees made of layered paper and adhesive.
The work contrasts the development of the area from natural to mostly man-made. While much of what we are aware of in the Vista is that which has been built there during the past 100 years, the natural world cannot be stopped and declares its ongoing power in places such as this alley.
Gunter holds a master of fine arts degree from USC and has had solo exhibitions at the S.C. State University and Lander University galleries.

 

The loading dock of City Market Antiques Mall, near Gervais and Gadsden, is the site for Michaela Pilar Brown’s I Have Loved You So Long. Made of kudzu, grape vine, recycled tire tread, steel and grass, the work examines the intersection of family history, memory and myth by using familiar materials in the creation of an other-worldly environment. It continues the artist’s exploration of “home” as a repository for memories which are malleable and transient
 

 Brown has recently been resident artist at the McColl Arts Center in Charlotte and the Vermont Studio Center and had solo exhibitions at the Harvey Gantt Center for African American Art and Culture in Charlotte and S.C. State University.

 

 Next to the Adluh Flour-Allen Brother Milling Company, south side of Gervais on Gadsden Street, Eileen Blyth’s Seven Doors is made by mining the materials and the memories of the Vista. Constructed of objects scavenged in the area, the piece connects to the industries which once dominated the area and how those that remain are add to a vibrant, contemporary urban space. The piece is set against “seven strange, square doors” at Adluh, a historic industry and landmark in the Vista for a century.
Blyth holds degrees from the College of Charleston and USC and has had solo exhibitions throughout the region.
 

Blue Spheres by Virginia Scotchie at Senate and Gist Streets (near the Congaree River) is linked to the brick and tile-making industry once located in the Vista and to Columbia’s place on the geological “fall line.”  A fall line is where rivers descend from upland to the lowland creating rapids. While the fall line limited river navigation, the falling water provided power for grist mills, sawmills and textile mills. In the Southeast, the fall line also demarcates a narrow belt where high-quality kaolin clay deposits are found.
Scotchie, a professor of art at USC, has had her work exhibited in France, the Netherlands, Australia, Taiwan and throughout the United States and in May has a solo exhibition at Hunter College, The City University of New York.

Exhibition curator is Jeffrey Day, who organized the 2011 Install It  exhibition, is an arts writer whose work has been published internationally.