Detroit-Toledo

 

Detroit Industrial Projects and Toledo Secor Gallery present

 

An art installation by

 

Kevin Beasley, Elizabeth Bernblum, Jada Bowden, Robert Garcia, Doug Kampfer, Nate Masternack, Jody Russ, Salvatore Schiciano, Jeanette Strezinski, Andrew Thompson

 

Over a three-week period, five Detroit artists traveled to Ohio’s vast Toledo Secor Gallery for a collaboration with five Toledo artists.  These Midwest artists shared similar economic challenges and together explored the idea of renewed opportunity stemming from urban crisis.  The artists brought together everyday items, found objects, and discarded materials from both cities to create an art installation representing the connectivity between development and re-urbanism occurring in both Detroit and Toledo. (artist’s statement below image)

 

 

Untitled (Funnel Cloud)

 

By Andrew Thompson and Nate Masternak

 

grocery bags, paint, pizza boxes, bottles, water, wire, fan, plastic

 

Controlled Chaos:  An emergent phenomenon is a discovered order or structure within a context of disorderly events, most plainly observed within weather patterns.  Science and technology can attempt to predict the weather, but is always left in the passive position of observer, victim to nature’s whims (the events of chaos).  We have learned that though we cannot predict the weather, nor control the weather, our actions as industrialized nations do alter the weather and change the climate.  This piece is a response to the realization that we are not outside the forces of chaos, but within the thick of it all.  Simple human needs of food and water, as commodities co-opted by Capitalism, become moralistic issues of commerce, consumption and negligence:  once we have received our input, what will be our output?

 

 

Your Precious Presence is Necessary

 

By Kevin Beasley

 

spotlight, mirrors, steel, stainless steel, wood, glass, water,

oscillating fan, carpet, furnace filter, boots

 

There are static things that constitute movement–the joining of the mountain and the river.  Their crests and ridges fold onto one another.  Their subtleties scream at each other exploding into forest fires and floods.  There is a conversation between two elements that shape and move terrain.   The raging rivers gouge out the mountain’s most precious moments softening the hardest of stone.  The change of light presides over it all, leaving us with reflections of what could be and what we are supposedly seeing.

  

Tale of Two Chandeliers

By Salvatore Schiciano

construction with found objects 

I thought to myself that it would be intriguing to try and build cities out of trash and common contemporary materials.  The process required the basics such as setting foundations, building frame works and masking the buildings, which is fairly in-sync with traditional methods for building.  To keep away from simply making crude miniature representations of cities, the concept of suspensions opened up along with the projected sky lines that helped me to create another avenue for the viewer to address found object utopias.

 

Ask Yourself…Find Out

 

By Robert Garcia

 

metal

 

The artistic objective is to suggest and create positive visual, mental stimulation.  The labor involved stimulates the artist’s thought process, beginning with a set of ideas from which many more ideas spring.  Hopefully you, the viewer, will experience a similar perceptual and conceptual experience.  As you walk around and through the elements, you may have questions about many related aspects of these works, other art and beyond.  You may make connections, formulate ideas and think about personal philosophies.  You may even have a counter response, but hopefully it will nurture a growing awareness that will ultimately transfer to your personal environment.  In my compositions, all art forms ranging from music to architecture, art history to current trends have contributed to my artistic vision and working preference. 

 

 

All Your Lines Look Alike To Me 

By Liz Bernblum and Jody Russ

 

mixed media

 

The Motor City and The Glass City.  Two cities in crisis.  A collective.  Natural.  Unnatural.  Molecular. Visceral.  Cellular.  Concrete.  Ebb. Flow.  Tension. Stress. Conflict.  Calm architecture.  Negative space.  Gravity.  Tissue/DNA.  Symbiotic.  Purity.  Form.  Function.  Space.  Time.  Dimensions.  Transformation.  Affect.  Clarity.  Breath.  Uncertainty.  Rust. Industry.  Economy.  Out of crisis comes opportunity whether negative or positively realized. 

 

Our cities are represented as Motor Oil and Glass Objects linked to single filaments which lead to a tense architecture of single threads.  Combined, the life/blood of connections, opportunities, communications, to have or to shun, co-mingle as if they are one in the same. 

 

Our cities, emotions, day to day struggle, and our perception of space as we are corralled into submission by our surroundings is represented in common and uncommon threads.  It is an entrance into the known and unknown.  It is a transformation of two minds, previously separate, finding diversity within commonality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Line and Weight

 

By Jeanette Strezinski and Jada Bowden

 

plaster casting, found objects

 

Reference points shift as found and made objects begin their metamorphosis from city to city.  They become removed from original contexts and combined in a new way.  The dialogs between the objects alter as well, telling a new tale while leaving evidence of the past.  Inspired by found materials in Detroit and then constructed in Toledo, the final installation for Line and Weight was realized through a blend of the traditional and contemporary sculpture techniques of casting and installation.

 

 

 

Reclaimed Barn

By Douglas Kampfer

natural materials