The first group of artists selected for the Artscapes track of Spaceworks Tacoma will begin installing in the last week of June at various locations in downtown Tacoma. These site-specific works will be on display through September 30th.
A complete list of selected artists will be posted soon. In the meantime, here’s a preview of artists Michelle Acuff, Ben Hirschkoff and Tory Franklin, all of whom will be featured at 906 Broadway—across from the Pantages theater and on the same block as the Tacoma Farmer’s Market (open Thursdays).
Michelle Acuff is Assistant Professor of Art at Whitman College, and a 2010 recipient of the Ragdale Artist Residency and an artist residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.
In her proposal, Acuff describes an installation that will juxtapose objects of nature with synthetic materials in exploration of “our tenuous liaison to the natural world.” Acuff plans to contrast “the hand-made with the mass-produced, the phenomenological with the cerebral, and the natural with the synthetic, in colors, materials and objects that are surreal, saccharine, and dystopic.
Artist Ben Hirshkoff, who exhibited at Telephone Room Gallery in Tacoma earlier this year, will suspend an arrangement of cloud forms created from fused pieces of cut acrylic sheeting.
Hirschkoff’s proposal describes his continuing fascination with the archetypal cloud motif, and its de- and re-construction, using wire, pipe, or other building materials. The artist writes: “In my mind, this represents a reflection of the fragmented way in which we perceive nature, as a resource and a utility.”
Tory Franklin, an artist whose exhibition history includes a solo show at Tacoma’s Commencement Art Gallery in 2002, is currently working on elements for an installation based on fairy tales. Referencing original paintings, the artist will reproduce her work in vinyl to fit the space at 906 Broadway. The vinyl will be backed on PVC plastic and pieced together like a puppet. Onion dome turrets fashioned of Tyvek will hang behind the central figure. Franklin is also writing text, to be featured on the storefront window, laid out like illuminated manuscript with ornate motifs.
Please note: images reflect works in progress, or past work (submitted with artists’ applications).