The Function and Design exhibit at [Artspace] at Untitled vibrantly brings together 52 artists in a show by curator and Untitled founder Laura Warriner.
“We hope audiences will embrace the diversity” of the artists who recycled discarded materials, making them functional once again, and the artists who concentrated more on using recycled construction materials “recognizing that we must all collaborate in discovering new ways to live more creatively in the future,” writes Warriner in the didactic at the show’s entrance.
At the opening last Friday night, a most captivating piece was sensuous bed with flowing and bois d’arc wood bedposts, and a shaboris silk covering.
The under layer was light-white blue to water blue, reflecting the sky from a bird’s eye view. Over it was a crushed and pleated silk in natural greens and browns. “It’s a bird’s eye view – a bed landscape in a natural fabric,” said artist Diane Coady. “Shaibori is a way of pleating, tying off or clamping or stitching fabric so that it resists the dye.”
The queen size coverings are $750, and the bed by Jim Stewart is $ll,500.
The living room couch and chair are coffee bean bags covering rolls of foam.
How is it?
“Extremely comfortable,” answered tester Lea Morgan.
The pieces were created by Tracey and Rick Bewley, with Sue Sullivan’s help in sewing the couch and chair.
The Bewleys also made two area floor cloths. The one of bright reds was a photo of rusty nuts and bolts on the end of an old beam that was manipulated into a computer graphic. The cloth itself was all canvas, glued together and covered wit polyacrylic.
Joe Slack, whose piece Who In Motion was on the first cover of The City Sentinel – catch the six foot red work at the Classen traffic circle, used the negative from another work to create an eight panel screen eight feet high that formed the backdrop for part of the living room.
“I used a plasma cutter – air gas and plasma gas – to cut out the design, and left over steel negative sheets formed the screen for Line Theory,” said Slack. It sells for $12,000.
Tulsan Bruce Brimer calls his piece a Murphy desk – not able to be lifted up easily every day, but on appropriate occasions after the two bolts are removed.
The glass top is supported with mahogany slats from an old bed, and the frame was made from “pine two by fours I had lying in my garage. The metal is from an old bed frame.”
And then there’s the screen of delicate white clay pieces appearing to be in flight, the giant green leaf bedside table of brilliant enamel, a dining room, a media room with a chaise lounge of sculpted nails, and $45 wall vases.
It’s a lovely show with many ideas that will be up through March 27. Untitled, at 1 N.W. 3rd Street, is free and open Tuesday-Friday 10-6, Saturday 10-4, and closed Sunday and Monday.
