Installations at the College of Central Florida

(Above:  Selfie with gallery coordinator Amanda Lyon at the College of Central Florida's Webber Gallery.  Click on any image to enlarge.)

It was quite a thrill to learn my installations were accepted into the inaugural installation art biannual, an exhibit titled The Gap Between Art and Life. Eight diverse artworks by only four different artists were selected from the 89 submissions.  Leslie Hammond, president of Artistic Eye Fine Art Services, and Victoria Billig, assistant director of the Appleton Museum of Art, made up the jury panel.  Amazingly, three of installations were mine!  Steve and I drove to the Webber Gallery on the College of Central Florida's campus in Ocala on Monday.  We were up early and arrived around 12:30 pm.  Four hours later, the space had been transformed!

(Above:  Part of The Clothesline and the outside corner of The Cocoon.)

The exhibition will open Monday, August. 7.  It will be on view until Thursday, September. 7.  Hours are 10 a.m.-4 p.m. There's going to be a free opening reception on Friday, August 25th at 5 p.m., and Steve and I will be there!

(Above:  One outside corner of The Cocoon with The Loss Installation in the background.)

Installing The Cocoon was pure joy.  The Webber Gallery provided a perfectly wonderful, large space.  The Cocoon has only been shown twice before ... once at the conclusion of a 2018, five-week art residency at the Rensing Center. This was a special opportunity because South Carolina's ETV came and produced a fantastic, seven-and-a-half minute segment.  CLICK HERE to view!  Yet, the truth of the matter is that the Rensing Center's library was really too small for the entire structure.  The only other time The Cocoon was on view was during the 2021 ArtFields competition.  I took a video that time ... but again ... the selected space was truthfully too small for my original vision.

(Above:  The Loss Installation.)

The Loss Installation has only been shown once.  It was part of the 2019 701 CCA biennial in South Carolina.  Sure, the two smallest garments have been in various juried shows as "stand alone" pieces that speak to miscarriages and stillbirths, etc.  Yet, the entire grouping is much more powerful.  It speaks to all sorts of loss ... from crib death to estrangement to the loss of a mother by dementia.

(Above:  Part of The Clothesline.)

My third installation for this exhibit is The Clothesline. This on-going project started in 2020 during an art residency with the Springfield Arts Association. It has grown ever since and even become my public engagement project at both Great Basin and Guadalupe Mountains National Park.  Part was shown at Wildflowers, an art gallery in Barnegat Light in New Jersey and part of it was in my solo show Once & Again: Alterations at Piedmont Arts, a regional museum in Virginia.  

At this point, I could likely hang a clothesline to surround a football field!  Earlier this year, my husband Steve had to gently tell me to "STOP" making more items for this installation!  (Recently, he has expressed concern over my newest obsession.  My Patchwork Installation now has more than 120 pieces.  My goal was only 100!)

The Patchwork Installation will be going to the Imperial Centre in Rocky Mount, NC for my solo show there.  More of The Clothesline will be there too.  I'm betting that between the two shows, I'll be able to hang at least half the collection! LOL!  Obviously there's an obsessive compulsive streak in many of my projects!

Finally ... I am in debt to the South Carolina Arts Commission for their support!  A grant helped me offset the costs of making The Cocoon.  The installation is built on a typical convention center pipe-and-drape system and has about thirty, heavy-duty drapery hangers and a heavy-duty rolling garment rack.  These things cost plenty and I am grateful for the assistance!

Continue scrolling down for more images of these three installations!