On October 21st 2017 we opened our studio in V.M. Ybor, Tampa Fl to the Seminal Heights Gallery/Studio tour sponsored by Tempus Projects and organized by Sarah Howard. The interconenctive nature of Tampa's art scene became apparent as different venues prepared for the event. For my part, I was hired to create a mold for a concrete chair design by Michael Lemieux that would debut at the tour for the Livework collective. The tour would also serve as a tool for organizing an upcoming exhibition of Ybor based artists at the Hillsborough Community College Ybor campus.
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| Open studio event at 2929 N 15th St. studio of Kym O'Donnell and Joe Griffith |
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Below, because I am such a process minded person, I have posted some shots of the fiberglass mold created for Mike Lemieux's concrete chair.
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| First step- fiberglass and finish the plug provided by Mike- This included putting a barrier coat on the styrofoam plug, fiberglassing and bodywork. |
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| The finished plug is covered with PVA release agent and then fiberglassed. The mold is then pulled and supported with glassed in wooden parts. |
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| Mold with all support ready to be cast. |
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| Cement ( a special formula used by Liveworks ) Is applied to the open face mold. |
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| Finished product. Just in time for the Gallery/Studio Tour. |
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Work Chosen for the HCC Ybor Campus exhibition, Perpetual Expression 2
Curated by Michael Murphy and Walter Aye, this exhibition was fueled partly by the Seminal Heights Tour. In my case there were several works chosen but in the end one was installed in the exhibition. The work is an installation piece called "Hypnosylvania- Kiley Gardens Version".
This work was first shown at the Tampa Museum of Art in 2017 in its largest manifestation.
The piece is variable in size and includes hypnotic shapes (some motorized and some static) taken from the stumps of the cut down crepe myrtle trees that were removed from Kiley Gardens in downtown Tampa in 2007. The work also references the nick name for Kiley Gardens - "Trip Park"which alludes to psychedelic drugs frequently used by folks who haunted the gardens in the evenings during the 80's and early 90's. For Perpetual Expression 2 the work was resized to accommodate the smaller space of the HCC gallery.
This time around the layout included one spinning hypo-stumps and a pattern that was inspired by the three letters LSD.
