What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
Issue link: http://www.epageflip.net/i/1475959
APRIL WALLACE NWA Democrat-Gazette W hen Danielle Hatch was setting up her photographic shot "My Body Was a Lonely House" that would be used in the Elevate installation series at 21C Museum Hotel, her 10-year-old was stepping onto the school bus and faced a question from his peers: "What's that thing on your house?" The true answer — beyond a shrug and "just another one of mom's projects" — is that it was an enormous slip cover that covered the entire well house on Hatch's property. In the resulting digital image, Hatch herself is in a dress connected to it so that it looks like a single — albeit gigantic — petticoat. "I was imagining turning the female body into a house," says Hatch, who is one of three local artists featured in this summer's "Elevate" series, for which each artist activated a small boxed space next to the elevators of the hotel. "I was interested in how we create identity through domestic spaces. Many decisions we make wrap our identity up in home design and place-making within our homes (so) I was interested in the home as an extension of the human body and the identities we create for ourselves." The slip cover is 10 feet by 12 feet, took three months of sewing and, oddly enough, began as a trial run for something even larger. The digital photograph is displayed at the center of the exhibit space, placed just far enough back to make it seem small in relation to the massive, hot pink quilted frame, which itself measures in at 12 feet by 4 feet by 8 feet. Hatch worked with local quilt shop Sew and Sew out of Pea Ridge to create that part. "It's meant to draw people in and make them touch and feel it," Hatch says. "I use technical fabrics like (what you'd use for) sleeping bags, hammocks and tents, and they have an all-weather feel. So even though they're presented in feminine, frilly display, the material is sturdy and weatherproof. I liked that tension." Danny Baskin, who curated this exhibit, says 21C in Bentonville features a few regional artists every six months or so through Elevate. This time, the pairings of works are "very much about craft practices that are more based in installation and a little outside the norm of craft practice." While Hatch's is a textile work and installation, Sarah Turner's work is glass and neon, but created as a sculpture rather than a sign, and Linda Lopez's ceramics are sculptures, not bowls. Each artist gets a large vitrine on a small room roughly 10 by 6 feet. They get these "boxes to create a world with them," Baskin says. "Danielle does these … huge fabric installations that reference formal feminine dresswear from ages past and put it in conversation with architecture." Placing the two together brings attention to the history of female dress, what it means to be a woman and how those definitions are changing in relation to current conversations, he says. "The conversation of gender right now relates to this work," Baskin says. AUGUST 14-20, 2022 WHAT'S UP! 3 See 21C Page 5 COVER STORY Art, Elevated Local, unique works showcased at 21C Sarah Turner has always been interested in the embodied nature of neon lights and uses a variety of techniques to form relationships between light and the body. Through an intense fabrication process, Turner brings these glass objects to life that can glow from 10-100 years. (Courtesy Photo/Stephen Ironside for 21C)