Aug 8th - Sept 8th
Koa Stevens
Vaka Fa’i Olo
~Wood spirits live where termites fear to tread~
This exhibit of diasporic Rotuman art recontemplates the future with traditional Polynesian hand chiseling on a variety of rare woods, from Asiatic teak to Hawaiian sandalwood and ironwood, in conjunction with Hungarian and French oak wine casks, all tattooed in contemporary and traditional motifs, emblazoned with ancestry and whispering a potency beyond the threshold cambium layers, lilting into the timeless realm of the Va’a, an outrigger canoe of stability.
Past & Current Artists in Residence of Cider Creek Collective presents:
Belly of the Fire
Aug 8th - Sept 8th
This body of work was collectively fired in an anagama-style kiln at Cider Creek Collective, based in Albion. Requiring a dedicated group of potters, neighbors, and friends to fire, we take 2-3 days to load the kiln, carefully placing each piece in a location best suited for its form, and spend 8 days stoking the anagama. For a week, the kiln becomes the heart of the collective, where we spend hours sitting around the campfire, sharing meals with one another, and feeding the fire when it tells us it is time. This work would not be possible without the co-founders of Cider Creek Collective, Nick Schwartz and Jess Thompson, who invited us to participate in the firing.
Belly of the Fire features works by: Emma Eckert, Sam Hill, Rino Kodama, David Lyon, Wolfgang Obergin, Collyn Rayne, and Brandon Steele.
Limbs
Thursday - August 6th
By Unidentified Body Parts
Thursday - August 6th
Limbs Making:
Saturday, August 1 1–5 PM
“Limbs” is a series of gatherings where we come together to create rituals of regeneration. Through collective making, we transform grief, anger, and despair into acts of solidarity, imagination, and care.
For the first ritual, we invite our communities to gather and create clay limbs in honor of the countless bodies we have witnessed in pieces over the past years.
Through our hands, we will shape fragments as we find strength, solidarity and joy in our shared struggle, and honor the countless bodies we have witnessed in pieces over the last years.
The clay limbs created through these gatherings will later be fired, exhibited, and offered for sale as a fundraiser supporting reconstructive limb surgery and grassroots relief initiatives responding to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and Lebanon through the Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund.
LIMBS: “Blastema” (Firing Ceremony):
Thursday, August 6 Time TBD
An Earth Firing Ceremony Following the collective creation of clay limbs, we bury the clay limbs in the earth as they transform in a ceremony of poetry, song and story.
The fired limbs will become part of the Limbs exhibition and will be offered for sale as a fundraiser supporting reconstructive limb surgery and grassroots relief initiatives responding to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and Lebanon through the Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund. This ritual honors the bodies and lands affected by violence while creating space for collective imagination and healing.
Saturday - August 8th
LIMBS: Unearthing Ceremony & Exhibition
Opening & Unearthing Ceremony:
Saturday, August 8 5:15–8 PM
Staged at MAC, the exhibition invites you to experience and connect to the charred limbs as portals to parallel realities that are inexorably intertwined with our own — with the burning possibilities held within our hearts.
The exhibition includes an unearthing ceremony and an installation of the Limbs sculptures created through the collective hands and bodies of our communities.
Throughout the exhibition, Limbs sculptures will be available for purchase. All artwork sales and ticket sales will pass through MAC toward supporting reconstructive limb surgery and grassroots relief initiatives responding to the humanitarian and shelter disaster in Gaza and Lebanon through the Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund.
About Limbs initiative:
"Limbs” is a series of gatherings where we can co-create our rituals of regeneration. As destruction of lands, shelter, peoples, hopes and ideals continues under the hands of out of control, self-righteous, weaponized humans, we can grow the ability and imagination to create & perform our rites of healing, instead of entrapping our wounds with trauma and despair.
In the first art making ritual, we invite communities to gather and create clay limbs in honor of the countless bodies we have witnessed in pieces over the last years. The second, “Blastema” , fires the clay in the earth through a collective ceremony of poetry, song and story. Staged at MAC, the third invites you to experience and connect to the charred limbs as portals to parallel realities that are inexorably intertwined with our own, with the burning possibilities in our hearts. The exhibition includes an unearthing ceremony and an installation of the Limbs sculptures.
For the duration of this exhibition, all related artwork sales and ticket sales will pass through MAC toward supporting reconstructive limb surgery and grass roots relief initiatives responding to the humanitarian and shelter disaster in Gaza and Lebanon via the The Ghassan Abu Sittah Children’s Fund. Use the link here if you’d like to support this initiative directly.
About Unidentified Body Parts
Unidentified Body Parts are made up of numerous creative hands and bodies. At a time where regional powers and imperial powers wage their wars for primacy, and peoples populate their statistical maps as civilian casualties and unwilling victims. We all face the risk of becoming numbers, our personal stories erased and our social fabric atomised. Yes, bombs might melt our features into unidentifiable mucks and if we’re privileged enough to avoid the bombing, our critical political thought might be detained and our opinions,
bodies and faces tracked and our rights dispossessed. We thus freely choose to be unidentified, as an act of free will, as a way to pay homage to all those whose shattered bodies remained unidentified and as a yearning to melt into the collective creative body.