"making stuff out of things"

Paintings, sculptures, and collaborative works by Douglas Degges and Eric Oglander

March 6 - March 22, 2015
Opening Reception: Friday, March 6, 7 -10 pm

Art and walking have an ongoing romance in New York.  From Vito Acconci following people around the city in 1969, to Christine Hill leading them around it thirty years later, right up to Elastic City’s current rendering of Art Walks as an enterprise, artists in New York have often walked the streets in the service of art. This comes as no surprise, since walking in general is such a signature part of this urban culture. According to "New York Magazine," our fine city “is literally designed to force people to walk... Driving in the city is maddening, pushing us onto the sidewalks and up and down the stairs to the subways…Every city block doubles as a racewalking track, every subway station, a StairMaster. Seen this way, the whole city looks like a massive exercise machine.” And to Douglas Degges and Eric Oglander, the whole city looks like their studio:

We’ve found that the walking required to traverse New York City has opened up our shared studio space and collaboration simply by introducing us to the surprising textures, shapes, and materials of things discarded in the streets. Usually one of us will arrive to the studio with found treasures in tow. These treasures offer a jumping off point, a story or conversation to build work around. One of us will work on something until a stopping point is found and then pass it along to the other. This process of working collaboratively, of passing things back and forth, has asked us to consider, and at times adopt, even if only for a moment, the interests and concerns of another maker.

We’re happy to present "making stuff out of things," paintings, sculptures, and collaborative works by Douglas Degges and Eric Oglander in the main gallery at Wayfarers.

TOBY PROJECT WALL

"Summer Studies"

Cassidy Araiza

For this iteration of the TOBY Project Wall, Wayfarers is pleased to present "Summer Studies", a selection of photographs by Cassidy Araiza. Following in the legacy of street photography, Araiza is an itinerant artist whose wanderings, local haunts and close-knit social circle serve as the inspiration for his works. Though different in media, Araiza’s photographs act as a foil to Douglas Degges’s and Eric Oglander’s works in the front gallery, as all artists explore the unseen, overlooked and discarded in our environment.

As Araiza states, “Since I was a kid, I have always associated summertime with bright vivid colors and warmth. Summer was a period of being carefree, and this stays with you even as an adult. While working on this series, it was important to take each photograph as a memory from my childhood. These youthful times of going to the community pool, trips to the arcade, family vacations and so on are what has influenced me.”