Fri 9/5 @ 7:30PM
Akron Soul Train, the ambitious arts nonprofit that offers artist in various disciplines short “residencies” to work on a specific project, is opening the results of the three new projects this week.
Julia Betts’s installation The Dams are Broken, was inspired by watching her niece color (!). It looks at the tension between confinement and liberation and, we’re told “invites viewers to reflect on the fragile negotiation of bodily, emotional, and spatial boundaries.” Betts invites Akronites to share photos of cherished objects and personal spaces to use as building blocks in the installation to create abstract paintings with materials such as saran wrap, black rubber paste and plywood cutouts.
“With each piece, my intent—although never completely pre-determined—is to push a range of materials to the limits of their utility, while placing myself in precarious circumstances that simultaneously function as metaphors of emotional or psychic vulnerability and pure demonstrations of intentional disarray,” says Betts.
Christa Ebert, aka Uno Lady, is well known in Northeast Ohio for the music she’s created by looping and electronically processing her own voice. In recent years, her projects have involved integrating her voice with the surrounding environment, whether that’s European cathedrals or Alaskan forests. She’s also been incorporating video in her performances. Her Akron Soul Train residency had two goals: record her 10th album of songs composed since 2019, scheduled for release next year, and develop and present a project called Arbor Aria, described as “a multi-sensory installation that honors and collaborates with old-growth forests. Electronic signals from trees are recorded and translated into musical scores and are accompanied by an abstract film about the forests. The film’s visuals include footage from the woods where the recordings took place, as well as experimental collages and stop-motion art created with sustainably sourced natural materials.”
The project resulted from work she did in Maine, California, Colorado, and Ohio — including a 400-year-old sycamore in the Cuyahoga Valley. The video premiere of Arbor Aria will take place at the opening reception September 5.
Finally, The Leftovers is a collaboration between Matthew Dettmer, MD; Michelle Duke, RN; and Kristen Tetzmann that integrates healthcare, poetry, and visual art, using medical waste and supplies to look at the impacts of healthcare on patients, families, and professionals.
The free public reception to introduce the three projects takes place at Akron Soul Train’s gallery in downtown Akron on Friday September 5.