A did a post a while back about artist-in-residence Aldwyth's stay with us and show at the gallery. We have stayed close and visited her in South Carolina last year. Aldwyth had shared with us that the owner of one of her seminal pieces, Cigar Box Encylopaedia (yes that is how she spells it), wanted to find a new home for it and Ellen and I excitedly signed on. The piece consists of 26 collaged cigar boxes, one for each letter of the alphabet and all items in each box begin with that letter. When we were down in South Carolina we had a wonderful "passing of the baton" ceremony from Joe and Carolyn, the previous owners, and a few tears were shed.
Even though the piece did travel on the three city museum tour in 2009-2010, including the Ackland in Chapel Hill, we decided to mount a show here at Cassilhaus Gallery so more folks would get a chance to experience it up close and personal (Aldwyth hated it that people were not allowed to touch the boxes during the museum shows). The original museum show was curated by Mark Sloan, the director and senior curator at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art in Charleston which was one of the venues on the tour. Mark commissioned a wonderful video about Aldwyth's work and had high resolution photographs of the tops and bottoms of each of the boxes made to exhibit above the boxes so viewers could see all sides of the pieces. Mark graciously provided both the video and the photographs for our exhibition.
I had never installed anything like this before. In the museum shows the boxes were installed on long shelves and I wanted them to be more independent. After a few false starts with various plastic materials, Ellen suggested we get custom fabricated metal shelves. I went to Young Roofing in Durham (truly the land that time forgot) and showed them a sketch and they made me brackets out of 24 guage stainless steel scraps and I put picture frame bumpers on them to provide enough friction to hold the boxes in place.
It was our first use of video in an exhibition here. I found a flat panel TV with a built in DVD player and it worked very well.
Ellen has become the vinyl letter specialist.
I have to say that the exhibition looked fabulous.
We were completely thrilled when Aldwyth agreed to come to the opening in October. She brought one of her amazing large format (6'x6') collages, Casablanca (colorized version) to exhibit just for the opening.
I have to admit is was my first experience with a non fabric artist ironing their work!
The opening was a smashing success and Aldwyth really made our experience of the work rich with her many anecdotes and stories of making the piece.
Fripp, however, was unmoved.
I reprised my alphabet shortbread cookies to honor the occassion.
Even after living with the piece for 5 months I have not even scratched the surface of all of the amazing details I keep discovering. The "G" box-
The "K" box.
The "O" box. That's a real ostrich egg.
The "Z" box
The "S" box is one of my favorites. Where else do you get Superman on a spoon in a shark's mouth?
The "Q"
A detail from the lid of the "P" box.
and the side of the "A" box.
It is an amazingly rich experience to get to know artists and their work with this level of intimacy. Thank you Aldwyth for sharing your world.
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