Curating

So I will be the first to grant that in this day and age creatives sometimes refer to curating in the context of their Instagram feed. I don’t know if my feed comes off as “curated” and I am very intentional about it. I post every 4 days (3 posts) with every third one featuring other creatives.

Curating also obviously refers to organizing an exhibition. When I first began studying art in an academic setting, this activity was reserved for art historians and professionals involved in the critical discourse. I feel like that has shifted over the last decade, possibly sooner (which I wouldn’t know because of the long break I took in practicing) towards artists themselves organizing and curating exhibits.

I got back into this game to create culture- to not only make but teach about, talk about and write about creative activity that makes this life more. No there’s not a word missing in that sentence. This reason and the general context I outlined above is why I made a commitment to trying my hand at curating in 2023, and I was fortunate to have a proposal accepted by the Durham Art Guild for a show this spring, which is titled Extra Spectral.

Extra-spectral colors cannot be evoked with a single wavelength of light, rather, they can only be seen and created by a combination of them, so you won’t see them in the fantastical prismic illusion we call a rainbow. The exhibit highlights artists Jane Cheek, Jerstin Crosby, Zach Storm, Tonya Solley Thornton and Leif Zikade. All five ask color to play a primary role in drawing audiences into their work, colors in most cases that are “extra” in the recent, common parlance. This is where their commonality ends.

There is a pre-opening and artist talk on 4/6 that you can register to attend and otherwise I hope to see many of you on Third Friday in Durham (gallery will keep normal hours including recognizing Monday the high holy day of museums by being closed).

BTW, I was also successful as part of this goal in getting another show programmed at several venues, this one including my work. Open Source will open this summer at LUMP project space and Sertoma Art Center.