OUTREACH:
The Pierro Foundation invited the community and various organizations to respond to A Sense of Place by exploring the theme with their own project under the title, My Sense of Place. The following are a variety of experiences:
Columbia High School Domareki Gallery presents
UN-COMMON-PLACE
Domareki Gallery
Columbia High School, Maplewood, NJ
September 2-30, 2016
The title of this exhibition was deliberately ambiguous. We often find ourselves inhabiting a common place, this leads to the question, what do we have in common? Visitors were invited to feel free to mix and match the words while the three local artists explored the commonplace in uncommon ways. Investigating the sense of place uniquely portrayed by each of these artists as they engaged in their work and examined their recurring themes, visitors were encouraged to recognize and appreciate our commonalities and differences.
Sybil Archibald: The expansiveness of an inner spiritual place, independent of physical losses, is explored in this monotype series, The Inner Life of an Artist. Sybil touches upon the timeless internal landscape that supports the practice of art and the experience of listening on a very deep level without expectation.
Terry Boddie: Memory, identity, and globalization are examined as he invokes the experience of migration in this
series Residual Memory. Memories of a former home merge with the changes and challenges of the new place and culture. As a photographer and multi-disciplinary artist, Terry blurs the distinctions between photography, drawing, and painting.
Russell Christian: With both dark humor and playfulness, Russell populates his spaces with contorting characters, experiencing the confines of a particular place, time, or situation. He comes from a perspective of drawing cartoons and performing, and we are witness to his alter egos’ efforts to fit in, or get out, of the imposed grids.
The Pierro Gallery and Village of South Orange presented
Play Day South Orange, a community event:
- People Make the Place, Drawing Face-to-Face with Neighbors
Ellen Weisbord, artist, Art Experience Leader at Play Day South Orange in Spiotta Park, on September 25, 2016, 1pm-6:00 pm.
Feeling it is “the wonderfully diverse people of South Orange who make it such a special place” visitors were encouraged to sit across a table, learn a bit about each other, and take the time to really see each other through blind contour drawing. This technique, where the participant draws while looking only at the subject and never at the paper allowing for no pressure with fun results, provided a unique way to get to know someone new. Scans of the drawings were displayed in the Pierro Gallery or a virtual online exhibition.
- Drawing Our Place: South Orange
Participants played with perspective or invented their own while drawing a South Orange scene with artists Ed Gunneson and Jennie Traill Schaeffer
The Pierro Gallery of South Orange presents
POL!T!CO: (DO YOU) KNOW YOUR PLACE?
The Baird Center, 5 Mead Street, South Orange, NJ
Wednesday, November 2 through Saturday, December 3, 2016
Opening Reception, Wednesday, November 7, at 7-9pm
“Know Your Place,” an idiom often used to keep people from challenging the status quo, seems particularly relevant in this election cycle. Just as one national party has nominated a woman as their candidate for President for the first time in United States history, the opposing party’s nominee stands charged with racism, bigotry and misogyny. Curators Raleigh Ceasar and gallery Director Sandy Martiny, investigate the ways artists have responded to ‘our place’ in the election issues regarding race and feminism.