Double Vision Lecture Series

Redux Contemporary Art Center proudly presented Double Vision, a semiannual Lecture Series that was started in the fall of 2008. Boy oh boy did the Redux Double Vision Lecture Series have a great group of artists and professionals for its forth event! Instead of losing steam they gained momentum with an eclectic lineup that amazed and amused spectators. Lectures took place at 6pm on Mondays, March 15 – April 5. All lectures were free and open to the public and took place at Redux. Registration was not required.

Double Vision played an important role in the educational mission of Redux. This lecture series paired one art related issue against another subject of equal significance from a seemingly unrelated field. Each Lecturer delivered a 30-minute presentation; the audience then discussed the possible or impossible relationships between the two. During the first part of the program, speakers were not allowed to make connections between topics, during the question and answer period, anything went.

The audience was intimate, appreciative, and intelligent, and the lecturers were accessible, generous and interesting.

/ SCHEDULE OF LECTURERS + TOPICS /

March 15:

Ashley Harwood // The Function of Fine Craft
Kate Quigley // South Atlantic Fisheries in Transition

March 22:

Donna Hurt // Walking the Slippery Slope of Being an Artist
Mitchell Davis // The Media is Still the Message

March 29:

Robert Lange // Abandon Formula and Paint Different
Dr. Patrick Lovegrove // Slow your Aging Process

April 5:

Sandy Logan // Architecture in Charleston—Invent or Copy?
Joelle Neulander // Creating an Audience for a New Medium: The Case of French Radio

More information about each lecturer and descriptions for each presentation can be found below

/ MARCH 15 /

Ashley Harwood // The Function of Fine Craft

Ashley Harwood discussed the pursuit of a career in fine craft with a background in fine art. She addressed the many different directions that her work has gone, and how her fine art education has informed her career in fine craft. She related her education and career to the arguments that divide fine art and fine craft.

Ashley Harwood was born and raised in Marietta, Georgia. She attended the Georgia Governor’s Honors Program for Art. It was here that she first developed an interest in sculpture and installation. Harwood attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a focus in sculpture and installation. She primarily worked in non-traditional materials such as saran wrap, synthetic human hair, neon, and interactive electronic media. Her works have attempted to address such topics as women’s roles, social interaction, and time and space. She attended OxBow School in Saugatuck, Michigan where she studied glassblowing in 2002. Harwood continued this pursuit at the Pittsburgh Glass Center in conjunction with her studies at Carnegie Mellon. She obtained an apprenticeship in the craft of neon to complete her senior project. After college, Harwood lived in Washington, D.C. and continued to attend summer classes at the Pittsburgh Glass Center. She moved to Charleston, South Carolina two and a half years ago. Her father taught her how to make her first wooden bowl, and they attended a class together at John C. Campbell Folk School in January of 2009. Since then, she has pursued a career in woodturning, displaying her work at the Charleston Farmer’s Market in Marion Square. She now has an apprenticeship with Stuart Batty, a third generation woodturner from Newcastle who now lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Kate Quigley // South Atlantic Fisheries in Transition

Since 2006, several new federal regulations have been implemented that restrict the harvest of almost all species fished for off the coast of the South Atlantic states. The result of such rapid fire change nationwide has been an overly stressed and fearful fishing industry that could disappear in the next few years. However, the regulations, if successful, will implement biologically sustainability fishing levels for the first time in several decades. In this lecture, several examples are given that illustrate the challenges fishermen have overcome and the unlikely success stories that may be just around the corner.

Kate Quigley is the fishery economist for the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council, the federal lawmaking entity responsible for management of commercial and recreational fishing in federal waters 3-200 miles offshore of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. She is responsible for analyzing the economic and social impacts to South Atlantic fishermen of various fishery management policies. She received her Master’s degree from the University of Florida and worked on her doctoral degree at Oregon State University. Her primary focus right now is helping to find ways for fishermen, impacted by recent implemented widespread fishery closures, to succeed economically. In the past, she lived in New Zealand and worked on modeling New Zealand’s South Island Scallop Fishery for a fishermen’s corporation, worked in Seattle for the National Marine Fisheries Service to provide analysis of the groundfish trawl fishery, and worked with snapper grouper, golden crab, and wreckfish fishermen in Florida and South Carolina to help them craft their own fishery management programs. She is a strong proponent of fishermen participation in fishery management. She lives in Charleston with her husband and two little boys.

/ MARCH 22 /

Donna Hurt // Walking the Slippery Slope of Being an Artist

Most people would agree that art is essential to society but do we know why? While art can be objects of beauty and contemplation, art can also be used to raise awareness and ask questions about the culture around us. Hurt’s work functions much like the archetypal trickster character—it crosses borders and boundaries, often questioning tradition, and challenging the status quo. Society likes distinctions of right and wrong, male and female, animal and human. Hurt believes her job, as an artist is to make people aware of contradictions and to create discussion where there has been little or none. She will share her work and discuss the challenges within her art practice.

In 2003, after working in the commercial photographic industry and maintaining an artistic career for many years, Hurt returned to school to receive her MFA from The School of the Art Institute in Chicago. Upon graduating in 2005 she received an MFA fellowship award for her video thesis project. During her graduate studies her exclusive use of still images expanded to incorporate performance and video. This shift opened a new venue for her explorations into the domestic arena, and the human body. Hurt’s work has been featured in numerous exhibitions over the years. Her work has been shown at the Chicago Cultural Center, Gallery 2, and the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in Chicago, IL. In New Orleans, her work has been exhibited at the New Orleans Museum of Art, the Contemporary Arts Center, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, and the University of New Orleans Fine Arts Gallery. In 2008 her show, No Body Home that captured New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was featured in the inaugural opening at the Art Institute of Charleston in Charleston, SC. Pieces from the show traveled to The New Orleans Museum of Art and The FAC Modern in Colorado, Wellington B. Gray Gallery, Greenville, NC, and Time and Space Limited, Hudson NY. Donna moved to Charleston in 2006 to serve as Creative Strategist and In House Coordinator for Evoking History/ Places with a Future, a project through Spoleto Festival USA. Currently, she teaches photography full time at the Art Institute of Charleston.

Mitchell Davis // The Media is Still the Message

This lecture was an exploration of the way media works our minds and how it shapes the world we live in. In an age of media saturation and 24-hour infotainment, is it possible to become media literate?

Mitchell has worked in media and internet entrepreneurial ventures of one sort or another since 1994. In late 1999 he was a founder of BookSurge the world’s first global software and manufacturing system for print-on-demand books. BookSurge was sold to Amazon.com in 2005. Mitchell moved to Seattle and worked for two years in senior management integrating and growing the company before leaving in 2007. In January 2008, he joined some former partners from BookSurge in a new venture to develop a cost effective and scalable eco-system to preserve and commercialize the approximately 60-90 MM out-of-print books throughout the world. BiblioLife has published over 600,000 books in over 40 languages in the past 18 months.

He and his wife also have a “for profit social venture” – Organic Process Productions (OPP) which has produced dozens of projects. These include a multi-year film and media project in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, partnership projects with organizations such as the Quiksilver Foundation, and a broadcast project for SCETV among others. Looking to balance archaic and digital life, in 2009 they began an active engagement in Charleston’s local agriculture community, helping establish a Community Supported Agriculture program and launching Giddy Goat Cheese – a local handmade goat cheese.

Mitchell loves to travel, spend time with his wife Farrah and is thankful he has found a great group of people to work with and a professional outlet for his creativity and self-development.

/ MARCH 29 /

Robert Lange // Abandon formula and Paint Different

Robert said, “Painting is a simple medium, all you need are, frames, canvases, paint and brushes, with these minimal means you can achieve a maximum effect.” Robert talked about how he uses these simple tools to create works of fine art. He discussed the dichotomy of being both a gallery owner and painter, as well as the tricks he’s learned that help him in his creative process, and answered questions from the audience.

To understand all of the implications and ideas of Robert Lange’s it is perhaps better to view his work as a foreigner to the art world. Unlike many artists whose work can easily be bottled into a genre or “it reminds me” category, Robert can only be classified by his signature stark lights and darks infused with vivid color. At 29-years-old, Robert’s painted world gives context clues into the history and collective memory of his life. A mathematical prodigy perhaps accounts for his disciplined brushstrokes and the stylized geometric division of space on his canvases.

Robert studied under rigid traditional teachings at Pinkerton Academy, in Derry New Hampshire, yet found himself learning new perspectives at the world renown art college, Rhode Island School of Design. Robert was awarded a 4-year full merit-based scholarship based upon his outstanding portfolio. Robert spent most of his college career showing in multiple galleries in Rhode Island, New Hampshire and Maine. He also took part in a project that developed three contemporary urban galleries in Providence.

In 2004, Robert’s move to the traditionalist community of Charleston, SC heightened his desire to create the picturesque. After less than a year in Charleston, with a barely dry signature on his diploma, Robert opened Robert Lange Studios on East Bay Street. The gallery space, like his paintings, is clean, simple, and strangely familiar and inviting.

Robert’s depiction of a heightened suburbia distances his work from the political commitment and social self-importance of most contemporary postmodern painters. Someplace between Charleston’s cobblestone streets and New York’s stark concrete living rooms, is the work of Robert Lange.

Dr. Patrick Lovegrove // Slow your Aging Process

Dr. Lovegrove’s Customized Holistic Regimen uses supplements, nutrition, and hormones to rejuvenate you from the inside out.

Dr. Patrick Lovegrove is an AMA Board-certified Medical Doctor in Charleston, SC specializing in Holistic Preventive-Aging and Pain Management. He implements a customized regimen for each patient with supplementation, diet, exercise and medications to slow aging processes based on comprehensive lab analysis. He discussed Bio-identical hormone replacement, which balances and optimizes your lab levels, as a part of his comprehensive wellness “Living Younger” program.

/ APRIL 5 /

Sandy Logan // Architecture in Charleston—Invent or Copy?

The issue over making buildings of their time or copying stylistic history has been debated, more or less politely, in Charleston for the past fifty years. Yet what would seem to be a simple matter of tracking the natural evolution of style over the past two and one half centuries, and then concluding that “of its time” continues to be appropriate today, has, in the last ten years, taken a nasty turn to the right, towards retrogression and inauthenticity. Invention is always more difficult than convention – so why take the trouble?

Sandy Logan, native Charleston and architect, nine year member of the City’s Board of Architectural Review, has a degree in English Literature from Cornell University and a Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania. He has practiced architecture in Charleston since 1970, and sits on the boards of the National Trust Property, Drayton Hall, and Redux Contemporary Art Center, two positions seemingly contradictory, yet allied to the same tenet.

Joelle Neulander // Creating an Audience for a New Medium: The Case of French Radio

This talk will look at the early years of French radio and explore the methods that programmers used to gain audiences for their stations. From swing music and tangos for the hip set, to radio aunties and uncles for the kids after school, from political wrangling over public station’s schedules to “reality radio on commercial airwaves,” the fight over audience and ideas was both extremely contentious and explosively creative. And the result leads us to question the uses of radio in shaping identity and politics on a national scale.

Joelle Neulander, an associate professor of history at The Citadel originally hails from New Jersey. She received her BA in History and French from Tufts University and her MA and PhD in History from The University of Iowa. Her research focuses on French culture in the period between the two World Wars. She has had work published in several academic journals and has presented at national and international history conferences. Her book, entitled Programming National Identity: The Culture of Radio in 1930s France, published by Louisiana State University Press, explores the ways radio shaped politics, gender and society in the years before World War II. Her current research looks more broadly at popular media in the interwar period – romance novels, comic strips, fan and fashion magazines, advertising, radio, and film – to explore the connections between gender and consumer culture.