Spwakeysie News Desk — June 10, 2021

WOODSTOCK – The Reeves House Visual Arts Center, the newest addition to Elm Street Cultural Arts Village (Woodstock Arts as of August 1, 2021), is pleased to present an innovative and immersive exhibition, [Re]constructing Home. The inaugural exhibit examines one of the most basic social concepts by which individuals define themselves in relation to others: “home.” After more than a year of being confined to our homes, we have all had ample opportunity to explore the profound impact that the spaces we inhabit have on us. Our homes have been reconstructed in unexpected ways in order to acclimate to a new world that compressed our expansive lives into tiny interiors. Our homes were suddenly tasked with being containers for our entire lives: they became our offices, our kids’ school, our gyms, and our art studios. 

Currently on view in the main gallery through July 4, 2021, [Re]constructing Home features artwork from twenty local, regional, and national artists who explore the elusive concept of home  in a variety of media, from keys cast in resin to armchairs made out of paper. As artists take us along on their personal journeys to locate home, some find it in a physically constructed space, while others only seem able to access it as an abstract concept, and some fail to find it at all. Is home a physical space? A feeling? A person? A memory? 

Whether idealistically imagined, fondly remembered, or bitterly abandoned, all of their interpretations depict home as a space that eludes possession and exists beyond time – materially temporary, but emotionally eternal. 

Viewers can explore these ideas and more in three thematic areas:

• [Re]Calling: Home as defined by memories and their inherent unreliability.
• [Re]Coloring: Home as defined by the ways in which our present selves can reimagine or recolor the narratives of our past. Singer’s rainbow-framed tiny door exuberantly “welcomes all,” while other artists apply bright colors to decidedly darker interpretations of home, or perhaps a lack thereof. In Kyoung Chun’s transparent houses contain bright paintings that recolor her often unpleasant experiences as an immigrant into a space that promises inclusion and invites intimacy.
• [Re]Moving: Home as defined by a space that we no longer occupy or possess, whether voluntarily or forced.

A variety of interactive elements are woven throughout [Re]constructing Home to encourage the viewer to find their own way home, to wherever or whatever that may be. In its denial of passive viewing and demand of active engagement, [Re]constructing Home is an exhibition that can only truly be appreciated in person, so that you can hear the conversation among the artworks that reveal the full story.

Curated by Visual Arts Director, Nicole Lampl. 

The exhibition features the following artists:

Kim Bates (Woodstock, GA)

Karen Beedle (Woodstock, GA)

Ashton Bird (Atlanta, GA)

Eugene Byrd (Atlanta, GA)

Elan Cadiz (Harlem, NY)

In Kyoung Chun (Atlanta, GA)

Nicki Crock (Columbus, OH)

Amber Eckersley (Greenville, SC)

Adam Eddy (Charleson, SC)

Sara Farrington (Lake City, SC)

Honor Bowman Hall (Savannah, GA)

Chase King (Woodstock, GA)

Lori Larusso (Louisville, KY)

Macey Ley (Atlanta, GA)

William Mize (Asheville, NC)

Katie Darby Slater (Melbourne, FL)

Karen Singer Anderson aka Tiny Doors ATL (Atlanta, GA)

Madeleine Soloway (Atlanta, GA)

Logan Woodle (Conway, SC)

Erin K. Wright (Los Angeles, CA)