Tag Archives: Featured

The Golden Doors to Freedom

ArtWorks for Freedom and the Torpedo Factory Art Center are proud to present The Golden Doors to Freedom, a participatory art venture that turns abandoned doors into dramatic vehicles for a communal focus on human trafficking and the healing nature of art. Amateur “artist” participants include trafficking survivors and potential allies among the public — students, professional associations, artists, educators, civic and faith-based organizations, media and other affinity groups).

Conceived by master gilder William Adair and photographer Kay Chernush, trafficking survivors and the various groups convert discarded wooden doors into freedom portals. Using 23k gold leaf, participants write, stencil, draw, scratch, burnish and embellish the doors with their own thoughts about trafficking. As survivors transform a “piece of junk” into a compelling work of art, they can see new possibilities for their own lives. For allies the process awakens feelings of empathy and connection.

Human trafficking involves the use of force, coercion, or fraud to induce an individual into performing a commercial sex act (sex trafficking), or to subject them to involuntary servitude, debt bondage, or slavery (labor trafficking). 8,042 cases of human trafficking were recorded in the U.S. in 2016. Globally, the International Labour Organization estimates over 20.9 million victims of human trafficking (more than the total populations of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston, and Philadelphia combined). Of that 20.9 million people, 68% of them are trapped in forced labor, 26% of them are children, and 55% are women and girls.

Visitors to the Torpedo Factory Art Center will experience all 12 doors, exhibited for the first time, on view in the main hall. The Golden Doors open opportunities for reflection, engagement, and action, providing a powerful public and visual representation of the commitment to eradicate human trafficking. By creating freedom portals, survivors and allies together became a force for social change.

 

Reception, Thursday November 9

7:15 pm – South Hall
Reception for the Golden Doors Project. Michael McKeown, Executive Director, Homeland Security Advisory Council and Campaigns, will speak about the importance of this arts project in the face of global human trafficking.

Part of November’s Second Thursday/Torpedo Talk

 

44th Annual SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival Showcase

CAF_ShowcaseWashington DC Chapter of ACM SIGGRAPH hosts the 44th Annual SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival Showcase at the Torpedo Factory Art Center. This festival showcases a collection of some of the most dazzling and innovative works, selected by a distinguished jury of computer-graphics experts and specialists.

The SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival is recognized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as a qualifying festival for the Academy Awards. Since 1999, several works originally presented in the Computer Animation Festival have been nominated or awarded an Academy Award for Best Animated Short.

In the words of CAF Director Jerome Solomon, “There’s no other stage in the world comparable to SIGGRAPH’s Computer Animation Festival.”

This is presented as part of the Torpedo Factory Art Center’s Community Partnership Program.

 

Lindsay Hall: Post-Graduate Resident Talk

As Lindsay Hall wraps up her time in the Post Graduate Studio (Studio 12), we invite you to join us for a reception and artist talk, moderated by artist Danni O’Brien. Hear about the “tubes and sacks” she’s had on view in her studio and what she hopes the next chapter has in store.

7:00 Reception, 7:30 Talk

RSVP here

 

Lindsay Hall

 

I create colorfully titillating pieces that engage the notions of pleasure, beauty, and the perverse as they relate to the body, sexuality, and the intimacies and vulnerabilities of human interaction. The resulting pieces and installations fantasize these shared human experiences, often sugarcoating shame and disgust with a provocative playfulness, and the occasional glitter bomb. The forms are reminiscent of bodily orifices, hair, and luscious fleshy lumps. Superficially, my work serves as eroticized eye candy, but further inspection suggests the layered innuendos and the juicy persuasions. Desire and temptation become valuable components for experience and interpretation. The work is sensuous in nature, often provoking haptic responses. My interdisciplinary practice fuses sculpture, painting, installation, and drawing. I source an eclectic range of materials including silicone, fiber, foam, spray paint, and glitter, as well as repurposing found objects. Contrasting textures, forms, and materials are combined in reference to binaries: attraction/repulsion, feminine/masculine, hard/soft, interior/exterior, beautiful/grotesque.

 

Danielle O’Brien

 

Danielle O’Brien is an artist and educator born and raised in the D.C. metro area. Currently an educator in Fairfax County, O’Brien strikes a balance between her passion for art education and advocacy with an active interdisciplinary studio practice. Her work, based habits of collecting and compiling, grapples with notions of childhood, play, and sexuality. O’Brien has shown regionally at McLean Project for the Arts, The Target Gallery, and The Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, and more broadly, at The University of Cincinnati, Women Made Gallery (Chicago), and the International Museum of Collage, Assemblage and Construction (New Mexico). She has returned to the DC area after pursuing an artist residency at Proyecto Ace in Buenos Aires, Argentina and another at Art Farm in Marquette, Nebraska.

 

 

Culture Shock

Opening Reception: Thursday, September 14th 6 – 8 pm | Gallery Talk 7 pm

Target Gallery, contemporary exhibition space of the Torpedo Factory Art Center, presents Culture Shock, an exhibition exploring pop, graffiti, and street styles in contemporary art. Culture Shock addresses topical socio-political issues and pokes fun at pop culture, illustrating the influential role visual art and creative expression plays into building cultural identity.

The juror for this exhibition is Mojdeh Rezaeipour, a storyteller, artist, The Moth‘s Washington DC StorySlam Producer, and Co-Founder of Epicure Cafe – a community cafe, gallery, and music venue, home to hundreds of creatives in the Washington DC area.

Participating Artists Include:

Raul Barquet, NY
Tavin Davis, MT
Carolyn Faulkner, NC
Michael Fischerkeller, MD
Michael Holt, VA
Sarah Jamison, DC
Khanh Le, DC
Floydetta McAfee, VA
Brandon McDonald, PA
Sandi Parker, VA
Gabriel Pons, VA
Ron Testa, IL
James Walker, VA
Jen Watson, UT
Babelon Williams, IN
Muhammad Zaman, NY

 

Image:  Sandi Parker, Art Is Not A Crime, acrylic, 2015.

The Late Shift: Boardwalk Nights

The Late Shift: Boardwalk Nights is the last of three late-night festivals over the course of the 2017 summer season. Experience a late-night art happening along the riverfront and in the Torpedo Factory. FREE.

Featured Guest Artists

– Superwaxx
– Lindsay Hall
– Anne Smith
– Danielle Smith

Including Artist Showcase curated by Quota’s Dawne Langford
– Hoesy Corona
– Rachel Schmidt
– Rodrigo Carazas Portal

Participating Artists

– Paulette Palacios
– Constantino Bastidas
– Michael Price
– Tsolmon Damba
– Anna Yakubovskaya (Studio 302)
– Jennifer Brewer Stone (Studio 227)

Highlights

– Riverfront Art Market
– Mermaid Rayla and Mermaid Tasha of Circus Siren Pod, and their pirates
– Psychic Readings and Artworks by Jovanka Magaña
– Bubble performance by ELECTROCUTE
– Stilt walking by Morgana Alba
– Arial dance by Circus Siren Entertainment
– The Board Bus
– Mini-panel paintings and Art Auction with the Torpedo Factory Artists Association
– DJ set by Sharkey
– Beer, wine, vittles, and bronut ice cream sandwiches with EatsPlace
– Photobooth provided by DMV Premium Photo Booths

Schedule

7 pm: Boardwalk Nights opens
7 – 10 pm: DJ set by SHARKEY
10 – 10:30 pm: Sideshow
11 pm: DJ set by SHARKEY
Midnight: Boardwalk closes

About the Featured Artists

Superwaxx

American artist Superwaxx first developed an interest and talent in art as a child. Her work is heavily influenced by animated cartoons, comic books, popular culture and street art. Often using vibrant colors and fine line painting techniques, Superwaxx is better known for her collective works which display her signature style while incorporating cartoon like aesthetic to narrate various subjects and topics often pertaining to historical or personal events. Since the sprouting of her professional career in as an artist, she has exhibited artwork in Boston, New York City, Miami, and Cuba. She has also worked in collaboration with acclaimed internationally renown artists and art institutions such as the Smithsonian. Superwaxx is a native of Richmond, VA currently creating and residing in Washington, D.C.

Lindsay Hall

Lindsay Hall’s interdisciplinary practice sources an eclectic range of materials including silicone, textiles, foam, spray paint, and glitter to create colorfully titillating pieces that engage the notions of pleasure, beauty, and the perverse as they relate to the body, sexuality, and the intimacies and vulnerabilities of human interaction. Because visual perceptions urge haptic responses, desire and temptation become valuable components for experience and interpretation. Contrasting textures, forms, and materials are combined in reference to binaries: attraction/repulsion, hard/soft, feminine/masculine, interior exterior, beautiful/grotesque. The resulting pieces and installations fantasize these shared human experiences, often sugarcoating shame and disgust with humor and playfulness.

Anne Smith

Anne Smith is a visual artist in Washington, DC. Her art practice spans disciplines of drawing, sculpture and printmaking to study elastic boundaries, paths, and divisions of space. Her subject matter has included her childhood home, the side of the road, and other spaces entirely made up or imagined. Smith is also a teaching artist at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and works in the studio of Master Printmaker Lou Stovall.

Danielle Smith

Danielle Smith is a Washington, D.C.-based painter and writer, originally from Monterey, California. She received her BFA from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco and graduated from the MFA Studio Art Program at the George Washington University in May 2016. Dani has traveled to China and Australia to participate in artist residencies and her work has been featured in the Franklin Furnace artists’ book series.

About Quota:

Dawne Langford

Dawne Langford is an independent documentary producer and independent curator. Her passion for sharing stories that highlight the transformative power of the arts led her to establish Quota, a curatorial initiative that aims to enhance a community of peer-led creative advocacy. Langford has worked in various capacities in the social justice movement, a member of DIY artist collectives, teaching and working in public media.

Hoesy Corona

Hoesy Corona is a multidisciplinary artist, project manager and founding co-director of Labbodies, an arts lab that creates opportunities for new media and performance artists to exhibit their work in the USA. He has shown compelling works and inventive sculptures fitted to the human body extensively at various institutional, private, public and underground venues including among others The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden; The Baltimore Museum of Art; The Walters Art Museum; The Peale Museum; Songs for Presidents Gallery; Gallery CA; Decker Gallery; Delicious Spectacle; The Brooklyn International Performance Art Festival; Greenbelt Arts Center; The Fine Arts Work Center; VisArts; The Creative Alliance; and the Haggerty Museum.  Recent honors include a Halcyon Arts Lab Fellowship 2017-2018 in Washington, DC; an Andy Warhol Foundation Grit Fund Grant administered by The Contemporary in Visual Arts 2017; a Robert W. Deutsch Foundation’s Ruby’s Project Grants in Visual Art 2016-17; a Light City public art commission 2017;a CHM Sculpture Park and Fellowship 2016-2017; a Light City Artist in Residence Winter 2016 in Baltimore’s Station North; a Cafe Con Leche Latino Artist Resident in Pittsburgh,PA Spring 2016; a Fine Arts Work Center Award; a Pelham Printmaking Residency;was a Janet and Walter Sondheim Prize Semifinalist in 2013,2015,2017; a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award 2013; a Baker Artist Awards B-Grant (The Copycat Theatre); and was included in Creative Capital’s “On Our Radar 2016.

Rachel Schmidt

Rachel Schmidt loves stories – those based in reality and those based in the ‘realities’ found in myths, legends, or fairytales. In her current body of work, Schmidt explores the impacts that the growing urbanism of the planet could have on distant futures. Schmidt has a Masters of Fine Arts from MICA and has exhibited in various venues, local and international, including Hillyer ArtSpace, Artisphere, (e)merge Art Fair, DCAC, Arlington Arts Center, GAIT LA, Los Angeles, CA and returned recently from her residency at the Taipei Artist Village, Taipei, Taiwan.

Rodrigo Carazas Portal

Born in Lima, Perú, Rodrigo Carazas Portal was raised in the Callao Province. He attended the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú’s Art Program in Lima, and later relocated to the United States of America in 2009. He earned his BFA from the George Mason University’s School of Art in 2015. Awarded the Sculpture’s Academic Excellence Distinction (2015), he also obtained the Best New Project Prize from Lima’s Biennial Art Fair (Second Edition, 2016). Recent exhibitions include Lima’s Biennial Art Fair (Perú,2016); Revolution Revelation (USA, 2017); Anytime/Anywhere (Canada, 2017); Local Legends (USA, 2017); Overload (Perú,2017).

Sharkey

Musician, producer and beat maker, Sharkey, has worked and performed with such heavyweights as Eminem, The Black Eyed Peas, Rick Rubin, Everlast, Spank Rock, Jedi Mind Tricks, Kool Keith, and Wyclef Jean. He’s also featured on the soundtracks for movies like Big Daddy and Strays, television shows like House, and XBOX360 video games like Rockstar. His first album, Sharkey’s Machine was credited by The Washington Post as one of “The Top 10 Best Records of 2004” and his second album, Monster Maker was highly rated in Entertainment Weekly and Urb Magazine. He received a Capitol Hill Hilly Award as the 2011 Artist of the Year. He has recently partnered with the Joodlum Group on restaurant and nightlife venues slated to open in 2017.

Veterans and Service Members Art Exhibition & Spoken Word Performance

The Torpedo Factory partners with USO Metro, Combat Paper NJ, Warrior Writers, and Community Building Artworks to host a one-night art exhibition of works made by veterans and service members.

The Combat Paper/Warrior Writers exhibition and reading is the culminating event of a four-day art-making and writing workshop at the USO Warrior and Family Center at Ft Belvoir. During the workshop, Service Members and Veterans make “combat paper” out of used military uniforms and then write and create art on that paper. At the culminating exhibition, the public is invited to view the artwork and listen to a reading/performance by participants.

There will be a reception for attendees, followed by an Open Mic.

Veterans, service members, friends, and family are all invited to attend this uplifting night.

FREE, all are welcome

RSVP

 

Thanks to our partners:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Second Thursday Art Night: Collage/Melange

Enjoy a special after-hours event at the Torpedo Factory Art Center every month. Browse open studios and galleries, interact with artists, and enjoy special programming. Stop by on your way to dinner and make an evening of it!

Highlights

Refreshments

EatsPlace Café & Marketplace
Enjoy wine, beer, sweets, and hot sandwiches from EatsPlace. Try out the famous Bronut (Brownie/Donut) as featured in the Washington Post.

Later This Month

Late Shift – Boardwalk Nights
Friday, August 18
7 pm-Midnight

 

The Late Shift: Night Market

Come hungry to The Late Shift: Night Market, the second of three late-night summer festivals. Experience a late-night celebration of food, art, and music along the riverfront and in the Torpedo Factory.

Highlights

Food Trucks
Photo Booth
Torpedo Row Artist Market
DIY Artmaking
Performance Art
Music

Featured Night Market Vendors

Poppi (Dawn Benedetto)
Tsolmon Damba
Jennifer Brewer Stone
Rosemary Feit Covey

Red Hook Lobster Pound
Ada’s Kitchen on Wheels
The Big Cheese
Sugar Shack Donuts
Together We Bake
Living Threads Co.
Community Supported Art (CSA)

Live Performance

Linda Hesh

Artist-Led DIY Activities and Demonstrations

Lindsay Hall
Lisa Schumaier
Printmakers Inc.
Torpedo Factory Artists’ Association

Beer and wine bar provided by EatsPlace
Photobooth provided by DMV Premium Photo Booths

Bring your ideas! There will be a table for future brainstorming of art activities and other pop-up ideas at Torpedo Factory.

Summer Social: Second Thursday Art Night

#2ndThurs

In July, we invite you to cool off from the heat and join our “Summer Social”! Featuring receptions in Target Gallery, Art League Gallery, and The Associate Gallery, as well as new projects and artists in the Post Grad Studio and the New Project Studio.

Highlights

All Evening

Refreshments

EatsPlace Café & Marketplace
Enjoy wine, beer, sweets, and hot sandwiches from EatsPlace. Try out the famous Bronut (Brownie/Donut) as featured in the Washington Post.

Later This Month: Saturday, July 22: Late Shift – “Night Market” 7 pm – midnight

Sarah Nesbitt: Making Sense of What We Have

Opening Reception: Thursday, July 13th 6 – 8 pm | Artist Talk 7 pm

Target Gallery, the contemporary exhibition space for the Torpedo Factory Art Center, welcomes Detroit-based mixed-media artist Sarah Nesbitt for her first solo exhibition in the greater D.C. metropolitan area.

Nesbitt’s show arrives at a time where our society, the media, and government aim to establish a concrete line between fact and opinion, history and myth, evidence and conspiracy theory. She studies forgeries, censorship, the writing and re-writing of history, and positions art as essential to contextualizing and interpreting both our present and our past.

“A photograph is often perceived to be an objective arbiter of truth, but realistically, it’s just as open to manipulation as the process of recording history,” said Nesbitt. “Photography can alter our entire perception of reality via editing, interpretation, and desensitization. It can also construct hyper-reality and depict pseudo-events.”

To Nesbitt, history is a living, breathing investigation into who and what came before us. Using a variety of modern and antiquated printed and digital media—videos, installations, sculpture, augmented reality, and even wet-plate photography—Nesbitt disrupts her own work with stitching, dissecting, writing, and pinning. She lays it bare so that it can be seen for what it is. Photographs aren’t precious and complete, they’re vulnerable to disruptions from outside forces.

For her large-scale print, The Survival of Art, she lays out slides and notates them with art historical comments. For example, the slide labeled “Edward Curtis” reads, “Destroyed all of his glass negatives in 1919. Others claimed he misrepresented Native American people.”

In Our History of the Telephone, the audience sees a spread in an old book on the history of telephony. Using a custom application on a smart phone, the viewer holds the screen over the picture of the book and sees it changed and modified in real time.

“My aim is to create awareness to these shortcomings so we could continue to look at history not as static stories of previous lives, but our efforts to get closer to an accurate portrayal of our past,” she said.

Nesbitt was selected from more than 100 international applicants as part of the annual Open Exhibition solo show opportunity. The jurors for this exhibition were: Jeremy Flick, Sheldon Scott, and Marta Staudinger.

“Sarah explores the critical methods we use to record world history and understand our present,” said Flick. “She aims to reveal the shortcomings of how we read photographic images, what constitutes as accurate, and how we construct narratives of history. She offers a new focal point in which we should critically examine the role of photography in our understanding of history and the formation of our present stories.”

“As our understanding of truth, its consequences, and our acceptance thereof are challenged in new ways, we must become open to nuanced frameworks for future thinking and increased scrutiny of the historical record,” said Scott. “Sarah’s use of different media suggests a diversity of delivery systems that truth could be experienced through. Her disruption of surfaces brings a greater focus to our personal experiences in the process of truth.”

“Sarah’s interest in creating awareness of history shortcomings is a refreshing narrative that seems particularly appropriate in a time where we are so digitally connected to news, and yet somewhat removed from truth,” said Staudinger. “The amount of information input we receive is overwhelming and this exhibition brings to light not only that process, but the historiography of our interpretation of history over time.”

Sarah Nesbitt: Making Sense of What We Have runs Thursday, July 13, through Sunday, September 3, 2017. The public reception will be Second Thursday, July 13, 6 – 8 pm, with Nesbitt’s comments at 7 pm. The Target Gallery is open daily from 10 – 6 pm and until 9 pm on Thursdays.

Image Credit:

Sarah Nesbitt, Losing the Collection, 2011. Pigmented Inkjet Print, Inventory Tags, String.

Sarah Nesbitt, Evidence of Existence, 2017. Pigmented Inject Print.