Silhouetted Skaters Enchant in New Public Art

In the storefront windows of Winston-Salem's historic Loewy building, 500 W. Fourth Street, downtown restaurants' evening patrons, our RiverRun Film Festival guests, and anyone with an interest to come and see can enjoy Anna von Gwinner's second local video installation, Minus 8, as part of SECCA's ongoing public art exhibition, Inside Out. The installation is on view April 15 - 30, nightly, from 7 pm to midnight.

Inside the Loewy Building, von Gwinner projects silhouettes of figure skaters practicing their routines. Watching these figures glide and soar, viewers can project their own escape from the expected in the urban landscape, and, in the words of SECCA's website, see "hints at Winston-Salem traditions of theater, athletics and ghost stories." It's also just cool to watch. You can dial 336-201-0681 and hear podcasts with more about the artist and the creation of this work.

Von Gwinner and the buildling's namesake would have had an affininty for each other's work. Raymond Loewy (1893-1986) left his mark on hundreds of products and businesses still in use today as one of the last century's premiere industrial and graphic designers. In 1949 Loewy Associates was hired to expand and remodel 500 W. Fourth (then the Thalhimers department store) with his distinctive streamlined design. His was a constancy of aesthetic vision across a variety of material mediums.

Anna von Gwinner studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths' College in London and Architecture at the UdK in Berlin. Her experience in a successful architectural practice for several years informs her talent in exploring and manipulating spaces withing the urban landscape. Her short video loops, all imaginary moments in the life of a city, show a constancy of aesthetic play within a variety of architectural shapes.

Loewy Building photo from Downtown Winston-Salem Association website; Loewy photo from Raymond Loewy on the web. A word of thanks: "Inside-Out: Artists in the Community II" is supported by a grant from The Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County with funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that "a great nation deserves great art." In-kind support is provided by Sundance Plaza Hotel, Spa and Wellness Center; AdColor of Winston-Salem; and Moore's Self Storage.

Millennium Park's Ed Uhlir Speaks at City Hall

The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, the Arts Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, and Mayor Allen Joines are co-sponsoring a lecture by Chicago architect and public design innovator Ed Uhlir on Tuesday, April 21, at 7 pm in the second-floor City Council Chambers of Winston-Salem's City Hall, 101 N. Main Street. Uhlir is the Executive Director of Chicago's Millennium Park, and is responsible for the management, maintenance and improvement of this world-famous center for art, music, architecture and landscape design.

Millennium Park is the result of a unique partnership between the City of Chicago and its philanthropic community. Among works featured in the 24.5-acre park are the outdoor concert venue designed by Frank Gehry, the Jay Pritzker Pavilion; Gehry's brushed stainless steel walkway, the BP Bridge; the video interactive Crown Fountain, by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa; and Anish Kapoor's liquid mercury-inspired Cloud Gate sculpture on AT&T Plaza. The lecture is yet another part of SECCA's Inside Out: Artists in the Community II exhibition series.

The lecture is free and open to the public, but seating is limited, and RSVPs are required. To reserve your space at the event, please call 336.397.2109 or e-mail SECCA here. Image from the Millennium Park website.

Random Acts of Mind-Bliss

SECCA and Winston-Salem welcome German artist Anna von Gwinner to town this week as she opens the first of a two-part exhibition of her work in SECCA's "Inside Out: Artists in the Community II" series of public art. Her first work, "in flight," is on display this weekend only, April 3-5, from 7-10pm nightly at a most unusual location: an RV storage container at the Moore Self-Storage facility in an industrial park off Stratford Road, 3935 Westpoint Boulevard (see directions here).

Von Gwinner is known for her use of video projections, taking short video loops of everyday objects and silhouettes and placing them in surprising encounters of scale and place that get viewers to re-imagine their experience of the urban landscape. In this new work the dislocation of placement space mirrors the dislocation of our economic environment these days. And her imagery, balls of all shapes, sizes and colors speeding through the frame without ever fully revealing their path -- well, the feeling of disconnect from cause and effect should be familiar to anyone watching the fall of their blue-chip 401k portfolios this last year....

The folks at SECCA invite all to come take a view of this playful yet thought-provoking complement to our built environment. And if you come early there is an additional enticement: the first 300 visitors to the projection will be eligible to win an Apple iPhone 3G (no usage contract, just the phone). Drawing registration will take place April 3, 4 and 5 during show times. Images courtesy of the SECCA website.

Rise Up Winston-Salem

Congrats to artist Charlie Brouwer, SECCA, Old Salem, and our community for contributing to the successful creation of Winston-Salem's newest work of public art, "Rise Up Winston-Salem," on display now through April 12 at Tavern Meadow on Main Street in Old Salem.

Building off a recurring theme in many of his own early sculptural works, Brouwer began creating his "Rise Up" series in 2002, using ladders as a representation of the notion of "rising up:" in the words of the SECCA description of his work, "translating the human impulse to strive for something higher into a form of community building." The SECCA website features podcasts of interviews with the artist and a fascinating time-lapse film of the creation of this work. (Acknowledgment should be given, too, to the Moravian blessing upon the weather for this installation - it was a gorgeous early spring day.) In a further nod to community building, the artist and SECCA have recorded stories behind a number of the ladders lent for the creation of this project - including one accidental memory attached to Mayor Joines' ladder - and those are accessible on site and remotely by calling 336-201-0681. The picture above and other photos of this installation can be found at SECCA's MySpace photo site.

SECCA Steps Up: "Inside-Out"

Great news to start a year of public art. SECCA, Winston-Salem's Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, is sponsoring a series of seven prominent exhibitions of public art in the city in 2009. As the Winston-Salem Journal's John Railey noted in a recent editorial, SECCA is itself closed for all of 2009 in order to undergo major renovations to its building, and could have been forgiven for staying out-of-sight for a year as it revamped. Instead, they have boldly announced a plan to broadcast their mission of engaging the community with best in current art by turning their museum "Inside-Out," the title of this series of shows. You can hear SECCA's Curator of Contemporary Art Stephen Matijcio and Curator of Education Michael Christiano talk with WFDD's Bradley George about the concept for the series in this Triad Arts Up Close radio/podcast interview.

First up in the SECCA lineup is wood artist and sculptor Charlie Brouwer, a Radford University art professor. On the last two weekends in February, Brouwer will invite the town to lend him its old wooden ladders - and any war stories attached thereto - for a month-long show at Tavern Meadow at Old Salem. Brouwer has wonderful gifts for pulling beauty and meaning from woods, from intimate carvings to large assemblages. In Winston-Salem, he'll use the familiar, the community meeting ground of Old Salem and your own garage artifacts, to present an installation of new meaning and depth by which to welcome spring. We'll post more details here on Brouwer's wants and display dates as they become available.

What a nice connection between the craft traditions of Salem and the art aspirations of our modern town - thanks, SECCA! All images from Charlie Brouwer's website.