Tools at Schools: Final Project Launch at ICFF from Tools at Schools on Vimeo.

Tools at Schools : Modeling from Tools at Schools on Vimeo.

We are not necessarily who we think we are. Our ability to be childlike and approach
art, relationships, music, with freedom can become more constricted as we get “stuck in
our ways.” We choose to open to it or to drown in it. We choose to show up, or not to show up.

“The search is what everyone would undertake if he were not stuck in the everydayness of
life. To be aware of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.” Walker Percy, The Moviegoer

We are all creators, artists, experiencers, livers and givers – we are bombarded with visual and auditory cues and clues, many of which we tune out, shut off, discard every minute.
As artists, we can have some say so as to how that experience is presented, as in the museum space. But we do not control how it is received. That is an incredible gift.
Image and sound dance dance together and by doing so exponentially increase the
action/reaction of the viewer.

Collectively we have become more sophisticated in our ability to take in, distill, and let go
of information. In a digital age, we demand more information and we demand it immediately.
We send and receive instant art 24/7.If we are not diligent in our awareness, we may not see the trees for the forest, we may
get lost in the same broken record being played in our heads, our lives.
Abstract art in a museum or a concert can give us an opportunity to become unstuck, to
move to a place inside ourselves where there is an infinite amount of space for growth, change, reflection, healing, and perhaps, enlightenment.

By Bryan Propst

Hickory – Scene Unseen is a luminous installation of photographs and multi-media collaborative works by Hickory photographic team Sally Fanjoy and James Labrenz; gracing the walls of the Hickory Museum of Art through April 15, 2011.

Created with other community artists, such as the Kontras Quartet and poet Rand Brandes, the exhibition includes recorded music, movement/dance, and spoken word. This inclusive exhibition has allowed the Hickory Museum of Art to offer the public a variety of unique programming, including presentations by local poets and experimental musical performances.

Housed in the expansive second floor Coe Gallery of the museum, the visitor ascends the curved staircase of the exhibition to soothing, meditative music. Projected text and images flash across the curved stairwell. On a long wall, diaphanous, gem-like photographs printed on horizontal metal panels float against the wall, suspended above gleaming, ancient maple floors like the links of an expensive watch. The images are more beautiful than immediately recognizable. Gilded waves ripple in moonlight. A far off figure walks the line of a filament of pasture fence. In one image, the blur of oncoming car lights on a bridge seems too real to ignore, the moment is suspended in time, yet carries an immediate urgency.

For Fanjoy/ Labrenz, the exhibition is about exploring the idea of place, of “slowing down” to observe and become involved and capture” the spirit of the place where we find ourselves living.” “Place” becomes not only the location of our office or where we park our car at night, but also the smaller, perhaps unnoticed spaces that fill our lives and which often harbor the mystical, the ignored. In one framed piece, a yard sale vendor peers from behind a fortress of second hand clothes and trucker caps; in another, a plastic cowboy sits triumphantly astride his mount with an expanse of blue mountains behind. A row of plastic school chairs sun themselves while a dog hurriedly bolts across melting ice to escape the ominous presence of two cement deer.

Earth, Water, Fire, and Sky are major themes of the installation. From the shimmering image of a sunset bathed in metallic light, to golden and rust hued leaves reverently stacked for the camera, Fanjoy and Labrenz have captured for the visitor a bounty of rich and substantial imagery.

A series of images of a red bolt of fabric dominate one side of the gallery. The fabric twists in the wind like a Buddhist prayer flag. Sally Fanjoy explains that the fabric is a slip that once belonged to her grandmother. She muses that her grandmother might find this amusing. “Well I never!” Fanjoy supposes she might say. This simple object becomes one of many “small scenes with big stories to tell…”

A large flat screen monitor appears like sleekly framed photograph spooling a continuously looping video of street sweepers clearing snow from the sidewalk outside the window of the artists’ studio. Unaware of the observation, the workers appear as spiders building a web, or bees collecting nectar. In another video, the 20 foot shadow of a shapely girl moves with catlike grace down a dim corridor. Two figures move sinuously beneath the projected image of the interior of the museum itself. The images of the red slip reappear in the video; symbols ebb and flow, dissolve and reappear, resonating with emotion.

Japanese “Sui Seki” garden stones sit patiently in gravel filled containers. Adding to the effect of a Japanese Garden, the small stones represent mountains, the gravel vast seas.

In the same way, the photographic images themselves symbolize bigger ideas, opening a Pandora’s Box of symbolism and personal associations.

The overall effect is that of a jewel box, a boutique, an inner sanctum of delicately encapsulated microcosms of everyday beauty. Serene, quiet, but sleek and sophisticated, the exhibition is a rare glimpse from behind the lens. As the camera is a lens, so is the window, and ultimately, the human eye. The ordinary is made spectacular through the portal of careful observation and documentation. The artists themselves speak of the “enormity of small things”, an idea informed by Asian ideals.

Deceptively simple in presentation, but high minded in its goal of amplifying the common to the level of the divine, this lovely, ethereal exhibition is an opportunity not to be missed.