Summer 2020 Art in Olympia Storefronts Installation
Starbridge at Your Door
Artists: Black Well Red Thread Collective: Shameka Gagnier, Aisha Harrison and Cholee Gladney
Statement: Our intention for Olympia's Window Project is to create an installation that is calling to both our past and future ancestors. We as a whole are facing climate change, war, police brutality, pandemic viruses, natural disasters. We see this at every turn, there is a collective anxiety, and our children are feeling hopelessness and dealing with deepening anxieties. We three represent descendants of peoples who have been stolen, traversed over oceans, sold as property, forcibly removed from our families, seen our lands and peoples ravaged and exploited.
These things that we are facing, our ancestors faced; their resilience is in our blood and what we face requires a collective response/remedy. Our installation is a prayer: we are bridging our ancestors to our prayer for the future to find and create the answers that we need. We are calling in a future, a future where we can be in balance, and carry out our ancestor's deepest dreams.
Fictitious Forces
Artist: Cyrra Robinson
Statement: I explore the spaces between the fantasy and reality of our natural world to discover and highlight where they most intersect. Taking notes from scientific research and examining imagery of living organisms in both the micro and macroscopic scale assists me in the hunt for repetitive patterns, textures, and related similarities within their life cycles and appearances.
These findings influence sculpture that does not seek to imitate a living organism of a previous or present domain, but establish organic possibilities. I am especially intrigued with life forms that thrive in extreme and purportedly inhabitable places and their commonly uncommon adaptations to survive in such conditions.
Ultimately I seek to delight the senses; inciting playful, curious exploration and the urge to wonder what exists in the universe still unacknowledged, while pondering what those inward incitements can mean for our time here. I imagine my work to create discomfort and nostalgia, a sense of something mysteriously familiar that reaches into the deep, dark spots in our collective memory that steer our perceptions of what does and doesn't necessarily belong in our world.
Downtown Fish
Artists: Susan Christian & John Corzine
Statement: Susan made the fish. She thought, "This is a seaside city." Nothing too psychological.
John made all the structures that the fish hang from, and hung the fish in compositions Susan thought would work. He made all the little blue lines that convince you the fish are in water.John thought of including some of the kinds of things that humans throw into the water instead of taking them to the dump. He and Susan collected and placed these items.
Any of the fish can be bought after the display comes down, at generously low prices.
You can have the junk for nothing.
Circus Side Show
Artist: Darren Mills
Costumes from Darren Mills, A Circus Sideshow, were designed and hand sewn for the Harlequin’s production of The Elephant Man.