Immediately after returning to New York City from our teaching workshops in Washington State (see previous blog post), DOEprojekts -- Deborah Adams Doering and Glenn N. Doering -- began work on our "Seeds in the City" exhibition and installation, funded in part by the New York City Artist Corps/NYC Cultural Affairs grant.
The Metro Baptist Church Community's "art space" in Midtown Manhattan hosted the installation. DOEprojekts created a site-specific "Seed Mantel" after considering the special architectural features of the space. The suspended Seed Mantel spanned an 18-foot gap between two major pillars. The mantel (cloak) consisted of 360 individually hand-cut "Hybrs" (DOEprojekts' abstract seed forms) arranged in continuous color fields.
The Hybr-seed is a form created from the integration of several DOEprojekts' "Coreforms" -- circle, horizontal and vertical lines, swashes, and points. These forms symbolize growth, community, collaboration, and creativity. The semi-circular mantel suggests other social keywords as well.
Drawing, cutting, and installing the Seed Mantel took 50-hours of painstaking work. We were fortunate to have the help of Joe Bergquist and Tiffany Triplett Henkel, members of the MBC community (and good friends as well).
Also site specific was a gold-brown temporary graphic work titled "Wick." In Yorkshire dialect of English, "wick" denotes "active, bustling, nimble, and quick." The semi-circular work, featuring hybr-seed forms was divided in quarter-circles. Each quarter circle was placed on either side of MBC's sculptural cross.
A third part of the installation was an arrangement of 20 "Seed Crop" oil on canvas paintings. This series of paintings were created as part of Deborah's Master of Fine Arts thesis project at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The paintings were displayed at the Cenacle Retreat Center in Chicago for many years.
Sadly, the Cenacle closed this year (2021) because of the ongoing COVID pandemic. We made a special trip to Chicago in July to remove all the "Seed Crop" paintings and transport them to New York City where, happily, they were displayed as part of "Seeds in the City."
Our installation's open-to-the-public hours were well-attended, both in person and via Zoom. The exhibition/installation was open to the public on Saturday and Sunday afternoons from Sept 18 to October 23, 2021. Deborah and Glenn spoke at the celebratory opening on Sunday, September 19. We also led art workshops for youth in the community.
As we prepare to enter the New Year, we are thankful that the COVID vaccine (and booster) freed us from the highly restricted movements of 2020. Yet, even now, there is concern about new variants of the virus and how it will affect our communities in 2022.
At the "heart" of DOEprojekts' Coreforms concept is Movement. Moving, changing perspectives, and creating community connections through art was our focus in 2021 and will continue to be our focus in 2022.
Happy Holidays to all our friends and supporters! We wish you a safe and healthy New Year!
Deborah and Glenn
DOEprojekts.org
New York City, USA