village impulse

For the last couple of months I’ve been working on drawing-based project and exhibition that will take place at Birdland in July with fellow abstractionist Jason Lord. The impetus of the show, for me, is a continuation of my interest in parallels between the epoch in which late Modernism exploded, and the present day– specifically in pointing at the former to draw awareness to the latter. It has also been a refreshing and invigorating extension of my current practice as I have had the opportunity to use some mark making strategies I wouldn’t normally. There is a strong footprint on the finished work, specifically some large individual contributions, from Linda Cato, Peter Deligdisch, Cindy Morefield and Chris Thomas. There will also be a spectrum of participation by many artists from our local community, you’ll have to come visit to see who!

The project started with the early 20th century Surrealist parlor game Exquisite Corpse, where the collaborative joining of unrelated ideas yields novelty, contradiction, and the unexpected.  This process of dismantling and reassembling branched into other strategies of disruption:  attempting to suppress the conscious mind through the act of automatic drawing; using frottage, asemic writing, and collage to deconstruct meaning or remove it entirely. Some samples of the some of the drawing I’ve generated are below- quite different from hard-edged squares within squares. Show statement follows.

village impulse is a drawing project that centers communal strategies to disrupt conventional image-making and design. We pull from art historical traditions, like the ego disruption of the Surrealists, the rejection of logic in Dada, and the experimental spirit of Black Mountain College.  Through collective experimentation, we embrace absurdity, challenge the inert, and uplift the unexpected.  As the planet and its inhabitants face compound systemic failure, we ask, “how can we use disruption as a strategy to enable collective creativity and transformation?”

Artists respond to the world and its happenings.  When the political landscape becomes irrational and the status quo unacceptable, artists respond and disrupt accordingly. Through village impulse, we make a case for embodied disruption through drawing: disrupting the hand through interventional tools and limitations; disrupting the image by decentralizing its maker; and disrupting the drawing process by adding elements of chance and randomization.

By revisiting these Modernist strategies, we plant a rhizome and let it spread into new territory, drawing approaches, and means of disruption, and through shared prompts, mail art, and on-site drawing (YES! when you visit, you can add to the exhibit!), we invite you to join us in asking, “how can we build something new together?”

Birdland Gallery is located at 706 Mountford Ave in Raleigh. The space will be open Fri/Sat/Sun in July (hours to come but expect late afternoon). Opening 7/5. Tell a friend to tell a friend!

R. H. Quaytman

newest is Ones, Chapter 0;2 at Miguel Abreu Gallery. R. H. Quaytman approaches painting as if it were poetry: when reading a poem, one notices particular words, and how each is not just that one word, but other words as well. Quaytman’s paintings, organized into chapters structured in the form of a book, have a grammar, a syntax, and a vocabulary.

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Emily Kame Kngwarrey

One of the most celebrated Australian painters of the 20th century, Emily Kame Kngwarreye painted over 3,000 abstract acrylic paintings of dots, gestural lines, and vibrant hues, all inspired by her Aboriginal community’s symbols, rituals, and daily life.
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Alexis Vasilikos

“Involuntary Photographs,” emerged over the past five years and involves “a different mode of seeing.” That is, the results of unintended taps and stray gestures on his mobile device. Or, perhaps, the device’s own autonomous “dreaming”:

“Without traditional framing or subject matter, the resulting photographs form soft abstractions of light, texture, and motion, resembling Color Field paintings more than conventional documentary images. They exist in a liminal space between conscious creation and mechanical observation—photography without a photographer, vision without deliberate intention.”

Based in Athens, Vasilikos is deeply influenced by Eastern mysticism and drawn to the meditative and transcendental dimensions of image-making.

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Giulia Cretulescu

gets some love from Art in America. Crețulescu recently completed a PhD program in graphic arts in Bucharest. Her training is evident in the armor-like outlines she stitches as if in bas relief. She started sewing after growing frustrated with graphic design work that, done on a computer, “goes so fast.” Working with her hands, she found “a place to breathe.” Then, doubling down on resisting efficiency, she decided against making anything functional at all.

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Ronald Joseph

Ronald Joseph started his artistic career in Harlem, New York City at the Harlem Community Arts Center, where he was one of the youngest pupils. Joseph’s early oil paintings were influenced by Picasso, Braque and other European artists while most of his contemporaries focused on social realism. By 1943, he was hailed by art historian James Porter as New York’s “foremost Negro abstractionist painter”.

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Daniel G. Hill

recent sculptural work advances concerns of gravity, mechanics, flexibility, structure, and form that have motivated him since the early stages of his career, given inspiration from 19th century mechanical systems, toys from his childhood, Latin American 20th Century non-objective art, and late modernist cubic sculptures.

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Sharmistha Ray

is a visual artist whose practice spans painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, and writing. Their work explores the complexities of cultural inheritance, queer identity, and abstraction, drawing from both Western and non-Western traditions. Ray’s art delves into themes of migration, spirituality, and the interplay between personal and collective narratives.
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