All photos courtesy of Lindsay Gordon |
Now more on Durham! Thanks so much, Lindsay!
Jamie Hurst: Tell me
about yourself and your role in the art scene of Durham.
Lindsay Gordon: I moved to the Triangle Area of North
Carolina (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, which sort of make a triangle on the map
and which also encompass a science-tech area called the Research Triangle) in
2007 after graduating from the University of Florida with degrees in Art
History and English. I'd lived in
Florida my entire life, so this is the farthest north I've ever gone
living-wise. I came up here for graduate
school, and spent two years getting my Master's in Art History at UNC. I thought I'd get my PhD, but department
politics and some soul-searching convinced me to stop after my Master's. I've had museum internships at the Samuel P.
Harn Museum of Art in Gainesville, Florida, the North Carolina Museum of Art
here in Raleigh, and a quick and fun summer at the Whitney Museum of American
Art in New York City. I was lucky enough
to get my Master's in 2009, during the peak of the recession, so I spent a
little over two-years doing high-end retail and being funemployed and job
searching and more-or-less questioning my self-worth and life decisions. I'd decided to stay in North Carolina for
personal reasons (aka I met a boy, and yes we are still together today and live
in domestic bliss with our two black cats, so it was a good risk in my
opinion), but also because I was witnessing the city of Durham, where my
high-end retail job was, commence a period of cultural and downtown growth that
is still going strong today. I wanted to
be a part of that, and after quitting my high-end retail job I really focused
my job search on Durham as much as I could.
The summer of 2011 I was doing part time personal assistant
work for a fantastic local artist, Beverly McIver, who had just secured New
York City gallery representation at Betty Cunningham and who was also anticipating
the release of an HBO documentary called Raising Renee, which chronicled her
relationship with her older, developmentally disabled sister. Beverly was a great resource in terms of her
openness with her own story, but also because of her connections to the local
artistic community. That summer I'd put
in an application to the Durham Arts Council (DAC, www.durhamarts.org), a
non-profit arts organization in downtown Durham, and for my work with Beverly I
was corresponding with a woman at the DAC who would be doing the hiring for
this position. So basically anytime I
e-mailed her for Beverly I'd mention that I was still interested in the DAC
job. I guess my persistence (maybe obnoxiousness?)
paid off, because I was called in for an interview and started work at the DAC
as their Artist Services Manager this past December.
My supervisor and I comprise the Department of Art Services,
and we provide grants, resources, and programming for the artists (visual and
other) of Durham County and the surrounding communities. We have a number of internal grants that we
give to both individual artists and arts organizations. We produce several arts festivals a year,
including a Spring Art Walk and CenterFest, our major outdoor arts fair that
will be happening mid-September (www.centerfest.durhamarts.org). I run the Arts Council's exhibition program,
making sure that our three galleries are stocked with rotating array of
exhibits. I also serve as the general
artistic liaison to the community, which is great because I'm an extrovert and
a talker who loves meeting people.
The Arts Council has been around for 58 years and has been
crucial to the revitalization of downtown Durham--which has been getting a lot
of notice in periodicals like The Atlantic, The New York Times, and Southern
Living. The DAC moved to downtown Durham
before there was really anything there, and slowly businesses such as boutiques
and high-end, locally-sourced restaurants followed suit. Along with providing services to the artistic
community, the DAC also has a school and a camp that serve students of all
ages, and features classes such as pottery, dance, music lessons, printmaking,
and drawing. We have parents who
participated in Arts Council programs as children bringing their own children
to camp, so I love that the Arts Council has had such deep and long-lasting
impact on the Durham community.
JH: Describe the art
scene of Durham. What is the history? The vibe? Is it known for anything like
abstract expressionist or performance art movement, etc? Is it underground or
mainstream? Large scale or intimate?
LG: Durham is a town characterized by an entrepreneurial,
can-do spirit. Dozens of refugees from
large urban areas like Brooklyn or D.C. come down here to open businesses:
home-made peanut butter jarred in someone's house, an ice cream truck with the
best ice cream you have ever had, a small storefront selling fantastic meats
and cheeses, a mom-and-pop bike store.
We even have coffee sold out of a bike cart. You name it, it is probably here. That same whimsical, do-it-yourself spirit
infuses our arts scene. We have a good
mix of old-school institutions, such as my organization and academic museums
such as Duke University's Nasher Museum (http://www.nasher.duke.edu/). But we also have a ton of great, scrappy,
galleries started by some artists with a dream and a Kickstarter account
(Durham loves crowd funding).
The Carrack (http://thecarrack.org/) is a small gallery
located upstairs from a bakery (that makes the best peanut butter and chocolate
croissants, featuring some of that home-made peanut butter I mentioned above),
and it features week-long rotating exhibits by local artists. Shows include installations, sculpture
exhibits, 2-d art exhibits, and even a few performance art pieces. The Carrack doesn't take commissions from
sales and is totally funded by donations from the community. Mercury Studio is a new venue that has opened
around the corner from the Carrack.
Mercury Studio's (http://mercurystudiodurham.com/) emphasis is co-working, and artists can rent
communal studio space. The Durham Arts
Place is a group of studios owned by a local art lawyer, who rents the studios
to artists. The Arts Place also has
gallery space, and I'm currently co-curating a show of LGBTQ art work by North
Carolina artists that will show in that space during the North Carolina Gay and
Lesbian Film Festival and NC Pride
(http://durhamartsplacelgbtq.wordpress.com/).
Golden Belt studios (http://goldenbeltarts.com/artists_studios.shtml) is
a fantastic venue in an rehabilitated tobacco warehouse (a common theme in
Durham's urban renewal). Golden Belt is
a series of artist studios that artists can rent, and the artists in Golden
Belt represent a range of Durham styles.
We're also starting to embrace the pop-up store and gallery
movement. I recently attended an art
opening in a newly-renovated studio apartment that was about to go on the
market, and one of our local music clubs holds bi-monthly downtown markets where
artists and crafters can sell their goods. That same club recently held
Durham's first fashion show. We're a
good mix of mainstream (the Nasher, the Arts Council, parts of Golden Belt),
and underground/pop-up. We're also big
on collaboration. The next show I'm
opening at the Arts Council features works made by designers to advertise
performances organized by The Art of Cool Project
(http://theartofcoolproject.com/), a group that brings jazz performances to
gallery venues in Durham and Raleigh.
The Art of Cool Project is celebrating its one-year anniversary this
year, and it represents a fantastic bringing together of performance and visual
arts. Durham isn't a place where people
wait for something to happen, we make it happen, and luckily the people who are
involved in downtown are incredibly excited about making Durham a culturally
relevant and exciting place to be.
JH: Are there
regularly scheduled art shows like, biennials, open air fairs, or First Fridays
(something a visitor especially should not miss)?
LG: Third Fridays are our Gallery Nights--when the art
venues around town stay open late [read more about Third Fridays on The Dilettantista here, here, here, and here]. I
typically start my Third Fridays at the Arts Council (if we have a reception)
or somewhere else in central downtown.
During the July Third Friday I attended the soft opening of Durham's new
History Hub, organized by the Museum of Durham History
(http://museumofdurhamhistory.org/). I
then visited a pop-up exhibition held in a renovated studio apartment,
featuring drawings by an artist friend of mine who had recently completed a
residency in South Africa. I almost
always end up down at Golden Belt and visit with a few artists there--it is
fantastic to see what the artists have been working on, and there is usually a
new exhibit in Golden Belt's gallery space, Room 100 (http://goldenbeltarts.com/artists_nonProfit.shtml). Also on the Golden Belt campus are The Scrap
Exchange (http://www.scrapexchange.org/), Durham's creative re-use crafting
facility, and Liberty Arts (http://liberty-arts.org/), a metal-working
studio. Scrap and Liberty Arts almost
always have fantastic Third Friday events--new exhibits and craft-making at the
Scrap, live glass blowing or metal working at Liberty. Golden Belt is where you will see the largest
congregation of people, and there are always a handful of Durham's amazing food
trucks on site to keep you fed--I usually grab some food truck food, if I
haven't already eaten at one of downtown's great locavore restaurants. I almost always see a bazillion people I know
at Golden Belt.
I help organize several large events at the Arts
Council. The Durham Art Walk is our
spring art fair, and it is a very casual event where artists who are just
getting their start can display and sell their works at venues throughout town. CenterFest is our September festival, and it
is Durham's largest outdoor arts festival.
This is a more traditional festival, with 10 x 10 outdoor artist booths,
live performances, fair food, and a kid's zone.
This year we're moving CenterFest back into central downtown after an 8
year sojourn in another location.
Durhamites are pretty enthused about this movie, and so far it has been
a lot of work, but a lot of fun, figuring out the logistics of moving this
festival into central downtown.
CenterFest historically draws 25,000+ people.
JH: What are the
must-see museums, galleries, and hot-spots?
JG: I pretty much hit all of them above: The Durham Arts
Council, Golden Belt Studios, The Cordoba Center for the Arts (home of The
Scrap Exchange and Liberty Arts), The Carrack, and Mercury Studios. And, of course, the numerous pop-ups that
come and go like tears in rain. There's
probably a new studio or gallery opening next month--that's the way things work
here.
I also want to emphasize that Durham is just one part of the
Triangle--there are plenty of great galleries in Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and the
smaller towns that comprise the Triangle, such as Hillsborough and
Pittsboro. I'm just sticking to Durham
for now because Chapel Hill and definitely Raleigh warrant their own
entries--Raleigh especially has a booming and unique downtown arts scene,
anchored by the West Martin corridor which contains Raleigh's new Contemporary
Art Museum (http://camraleigh.org/), Flanders Gallery
(http://flandersartgallery.com/), and the Visual Art Exchange
(http://visualartexchange.org/).
JH: Who are the
locally celebrated artists, past and present?
LG: Beverly McIver, who I mentioned above, is the big local
celebrity. She does wonderful paintings
of herself and her family on big canvases with vivid, bold colors. I'm also a big fan of the work of Heather
Gordon. She does these wonderful,
intellectual, conceptual paintings based on very technical things such as
schematics, maps, and origami. She also
does fun things where she converts language or audio sound into binary code,
and uses that code to map out an image.
Check out her work here:
http://www.heather-gordon.com/.
I'm also digging the work of Luis Franco, who goes by FRANCO in his
artist guise (he also has a day job as a graphic designer at SAS). His work is very fun and colorful, with some
playful twists in the imagery (http://www.francoproject.com/).
JH: Is there anyone
doing interesting work in the community that should be highlighted? For
example, is anyone touching the community through art education or is a curator
or gallery owner creating innovative or notable shows?
LG: The Durham Storefront Project
(http://durhamstorefrontproject.org/), organized by Jessica Moore, Chris
Chinchar, and Reene Cagnina Haynes, brings amazing installation art into empty
storefronts in downtown Durham. Durham
still has a lot of underutilized spaces, and until they're developed they are
prime real estate for unusual art projects--and luckily the ladies of the
Storefront Project realized this. The
Storefront Project has collaborated with numerous artists to make installations
involving a city made out of books, a strange, cob-webby fairy room, giant QR
codes, and photographs of families who were impacted by North Carolina
atrocious Amendment 1. It is a great
project that brings art out of the galleries and onto the streets, and I'm
excited to see what they put together in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment