Desert // Mixed Media // 4′ x 2′ // Summer 2018
Rabbits
When: July 29-Aug. 31
Phone: 919-434-1662
Email: edgertonator@gmail.com
Price: Free
www.livinontheedgerton.com
Reception: Sat, Jul 29, 10-12 a.m.
In April, the INDY reported on Catherine Edgerton’s Carrack exhibit of art journals and kaleidoscopes, which represented different but complementary—basically, personal and public—approaches to the issue of mental health. It’s one of the artist’s key areas of activism within the Durham Artists Movement, the multivalent, social-justice-oriented collective she cofounded. As such, Edgerton’s new exhibit, Rabbits, benefits Art Asylum, which employs creative practices to destigmatize and empower people with mental-health and addiction challenges. The collage-based, limited-edition prints on view and on sale at Urban Durham Realty use the image of the white rabbit to peel back and palpate the layers of white supremacy, a climate in which mental-health struggles for people of color and queer people naturally flourish. Rabbits runs through August, but there’s no better time to visit it than during the Durham Farmers Market on Saturday morning, when the exhibit is paired with a biscuit-and-coffee reception. —Brian Howe
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Urban Durham Realty
- 401 Foster St , Ste CDurham County
919-237-3701- www.urbandurhamrealty.com
Bottled Light: Works by Catherine Edgerton
The Carrack Modern Art: 947 E Main Street
April 12th through April 23rd
Catherine Edgerton’s exhibit–which explores mental health in an insane society–maps the journeys of seven multi-media, stained-glass kaleidoscopes. Their paths are interwoven with work from Catherine’s hand-bound collage books, which explore her own navigation of mental health and related points of departure. It also includes interactive crisis prevention/ intervention work created with the Art Asylum, turning the critical lens to the system we live in, while building creative cosmic connections between and beyond us all.
Friday 4|14, 6-9pm ………..Opening Reception
Saturday 4|15, 3-5pm………Advance Directive Workshop #1 (Legal Session ): Mavis Gragg, a (magical) local estate planning attorney, will offer a workshop on estate planning basics with special attention to mental health advance directives and special considerations for artists. Mavis will be joined by Joy Long-Vidal, LPC, a (magical) mental health clinician with a background in community mental health and public health. In this workshop, we will look closely at the state of NC mental health advance directive form, and learn instructions for completion of the document, as well as how to file it with the state. $1-$20 sliding scale.
Saturday 4|15, 6pm………….Artist Talk + Mental Health Resource Guide Presentation: Catherine Edgerton will talk about the exhibit, and Billy Dee will host a tour of the Art Asylum’s Online Mental Health Resource Guide. The website offers a comprehensive guide to POC and Queer affirming practitioners (of everything from therapists to yoga) in the triangle area. The website also offers a mental health crisis prevention and intervention tool-kit for community use. Donations for Art Asylum Accepted
Sunday 4|16, 3-5:30pm….Advance Directive Workshop #2 (Creative Session): The Art Asylum offers a magical experience of working through a template for Creative Advance Directive Booklets. Interwoven with poetry, art, and reflections from the Durham Artists Movement, this book is a guide to empower creativity, community, and self-determination in making creative blue-prints and instructions for the care of oneself in the event that one has become unable to make decisions. Altho this template was created specifically as a tool for folks who struggle with mental health, it can be used as any form of advance directive. $5-$30 sliding scale includes book. Scholarships available.
3p-4p: Skill-shares offered by members of the Durham Artists Movement:
Painting and Transformation with Gemynii
Collage and Mistaking with Catherine Edgerton
Invitation to Ground with adé oni
Book-Binding your Advance Directive with Kinsey Moritz
4pm-5pm: Guided work on Advance Directives
Friday 4|21, 6-9pm: Third Friday Art Walk / Closing Reception
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Full Description of Exhibit
Catherine Edgerton builds multi-media stained-glass kaleidoscopes, and gifts them to people who struggle with mental health an addiction, with the intention that they be re-given. This exhibit displays seven of the kaleidoscopes, and maps their imaginary journeys through blind contour drawings of recipients. The journeys are interwoven with prints of pages from hand-bound multi-media collage journals. The books, which are also on display, document Catherine’s own navigation of mental health, whiteness, creativity, resistance, and addiction in the south.
In tandem with this exhibit, Catherine has worked with the Art Asylum (a project of the Durham Artists Movement) to build tool-kits, crisis prevention / intervention strategies, and concrete resources to resist stigma, undermine criminal / patient labels, and foster creativity and connectivity between and beyond its members. The Art Asylum’s work, which is also on interactive display, broadens the lens to show how institutionalization and incarceration are tools for systematic oppression, as well as to demonstrate ways that understanding and art can bridge divides and reduce isolation.
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society” by Jiddu Krishnamurti
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I’m starting a project with stained glass in TV’s to explore consumption and media.
The first one, installed in a mickey mouse TV, is the right hand corner of a dollar bill. The next one is a collage piece using see-through treasures to build a radio tower.
