Scene Report From Sarah Martin

Sarah Martin’s scene report of Greensboro, NC was originally in We Don’t Owe You A Thing #1 a fanzine about art and hardcore.

It may surprise some readers to hear that North Carolina has a pretty rad art scene. Some of my favorite art stops are SECCA (Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art) in Winston Salem, the Weatherspoon Museum in Greensboro, the Nasher and the Center for Documentary Studies in Durham, The Ackland Museum in Chapel Hill and the newly renovated North Carolina Museum of Art in Raleigh.

The Ackland Art Museum is currently showing “More Love”, which investigate the ways in which contemporary artists have addressed love as a political force, as a philosophical model for equitable knowledge exchange, and as social interaction within a rapidly changing landscape of technology and social media. My friend and colleague, Lee Walton put out an open-call for participants in his piece, Father and Daughter View the Exhibition. During every one of the 43 days that More Love is on view, a father-daughter pair will enter the Museum at 4:00 PM, view the exhibition, and exit at precisely 4:30 PM. By its nature, Walton’s piece makes an everyday event into art, but because the father-daughter pairs will not be identified in any way, the piece blurs the lines between spectacle and the quotidian. Walton’s piece draws attention to the experiences that make us human and the heightened awareness of moments shared with loved ones.

I’m personally looking forward to viewing the new exhibition, “Light Sensitive: Photographic Works from NC collections” at the Nasher up until May 12, 2013. Down the road on Duke’s campus is the Center for Documentary Studies, which is about to open a new exhibition on the life/work of Paul Kwilecki (1928–2009), who chose to remain in Bainbridge, Georgia, the small town where he was born, raised, and ran the family's hardware store. A self-taught photographer, he documented life in his community for more than four decades, making hundreds of masterful and intimate black-and-white prints.

Last but not least is my favorite neighbor, the Weatherspoon Art Museum. Both Yoshua Okon and Diana Al-Hadid have opened shows and spent time as visiting artists in 2013. Okon’s installation will be up through April and Al-Hadid’s sculptures and drawings will be up through May 2013.