Fri 8/7 @ 5-7:30PM
This weekend, Akron Soul Train is debuting another pair of projects, created by the short-term residencies it awards to artists from this region (and sometimes beyond). As is typical, the projects are heavily conceptual, encompassing a wide variety of ideas and mediums.
Northeast Ohio sign painter/installation artist Ron Copeland’s Casual Recollections draws on painting, photography, screen printing, sign painting, sculpture and assemblage to “explore time, place, and memory through the visual language of typography, signage, and the evolving built environment.” He works extensively with found items such as old signs and industrial artifacts to create his mixed-media installations that “blur the boundaries between documentation and imagination” and evoke personal memories of earlier times and places.
The opening will also feature work by emerging artist Cory Shelton, co-founder of Akron’s Nightlife Cinema, who, unsurprisingly, works as a filmmaker, animator and designer. His exhibit Merry Bear is an immersive installation of a video game project he’s created, bringing a digital work to life as a real-life experience. “Playing with shifts in scale, abstraction, and materiality, the installation examines the translation of ideas from digital illustration to physical experience,” the artist statement says. “The work also reflects on themes embedded within the game itself, including nostalgia, idealism, and the myths of mid-twentieth-century American culture.”
There’s a free public reception on Friday August 7, where the public can see the work and meet the artists. The shows will be on view through September 12.