13 minute read
Curatory creates space for contemporary art, community
Curatory Gallery on Wall Street showcases local artwork from painted canvases, pottery, wall
hangings and stickers. Jessi Stone photo
BY JESSI STONE NEWS EDITOR
Ashten McKinney is the new kid on the block, but already she’s making friends with her neighbors and offering a welcoming, safe space for her community.
Sitting outside her new gallery on Wall Street in downtown Waynesville, the space is just as curated as the art on the walls inside. Chairs, benches, art, potted and hanging plants surround the entrance making it feel like a friend’s front porch.
A member of the Boojum Brewing’s kitchen staff waves hello as he gets ready to start his evening shift. Mike Coble and his kids come through carrying boxes through the gallery and up the stairs to his business, J. Gabriel Home and Gifts. Jeannie Shuckstes, owner of The Village Framer, waves goodbye as she heads home for the day. A young waitress stops by to purchase a 12-by-12 sleeved piece of artwork from a young local artist.
As McKinney sips her tea out of a handthrown mug, she discusses her vision for the gallery, which goes far beyond the desire to sell some local artwork.
“As a company and through the arts, we’re creating spaces for multiple marginalized communities — whether that’s queer or whether that’s people of color — and utilize the arts to tell stories and make that representation,” she said.
Contemporary art and designated queer space is something that’s been lacking in downtown Waynesville even with a wellestablished artist community and arts scene.
“I see so much potential in this beautiful space — for art but also branching out with serving as an open mic space and trying to congregate and move other businesses to work together,” she said. “I view the arts as very important — even if your business isn’t involved in the arts, the arts are behind every business.”
Curatory hit the ground running with its grand opening in May and second exhibit for the month of June entitled, “I Am Not An Asterisk.”
It’s a statement that hits close to home for many in the LGBTQ+ community who don’t fit neatly into any box that society has laid out for them. The exhibit featured five artists, including McKinney, who celebrated Pride Month with paintings, photography and 3D installations.
“There is so much pressure on people to look and act a certain way — career and lifestyle wise, clothes and fashion, gender and sexuality,” she said. “There’s a lot of pressure that leads people to try to fit into a mold instead of figuring out what their own mold is and that’s what leads them to the ‘I’m not an asterisk — I don’t fit in a box.’”
McKinney doesn’t necessarily have a problem with boxes — having a box makes her feel like she has a place to belong — but sometimes there aren’t enough boxes for everyone.
“Especially in the trans community and those who identify as queer or nonbinary can feel like they’re an asterisk because they don’t neatly fit into any box,” she said. “Maybe you’re a cis male that does drag wondering what box do I fit into. When you fill out intake forms and don’t know which box to check — that’s always been a struggle in my life and for many others.”
She described the upcoming July exhibit as another heavy subject. Entitled “Chained to Perfection,” the exhibit takes on how societal pressure of beauty, image and lifestyle standards intertwines in the development of depression, self-harm and substance abuse.
“Addiction is a big part of what’s going on in Haywood County right now. Some of my artists struggle with it. Again, I’m about marginalized communities and bringing some of that to light,” McKinney said. “A lot of creatives with that kind of creative brain, it opens a vulnerability to heightened sensations that can lead to substance abuse.”
The exhibit will feature work by Callie Ferraro from Asheville and Corrie Hanson of Waynesville. The opening reception will be held from 4 to 9 p.m. July 3 at 62 N. Main Street.
McKinney plans to have a new curated show each month at Curatory. Her hope is that local artists who don’t have available space will reach out to her with their ideas and together they can create something beautiful.
“We’re going to curate shows each month and each one will tell a specific story of something going on — politically or a social movement,” she said. “It’s challenging but it’s so much fun.”
A big part of McKinney’s mission is to support up-and-coming artists in the community. Over 80 percent of the artists showcased in the gallery are from Haywood County or currently live in Haywood County. Most of them she’s scouted out online or found through mutual friends. Many of them work in the downtown service industry as well.
“For many of the artists in here, it’s their first gallery. As an art dealer and buyer, it behooves me to find people young in their art profession that I see who have raw talent, get to know that person, see the work they continue to do and if I feel it’s a person that’s going to pursue the art world, who’ll keep pushing the boundaries, making the weird art and making a statement, then I buy their art,” she said.
The other side of her mission is to support art in the community by getting involved with other organizations working toward the same mission — Haywood County Arts Council, Waynesville Gallery Association, Downtown Waynesville Association and Waynesville Public Arts Commission. She wants to see a more concerted effort between those organizations to keep Waynesville an arts destination.
McKinney plans to support the local service industry and arts in public schools with future exhibits. For example, this fall she plans to work with elementary and middle schools by providing art classes with tons of blank paper for student created work. She will collect all the artwork to mat, sleeve, label and sell in the gallery. Half of the proceeds will go back to the school art program and the other half will roll into an art scholarship fund.
The student artwork will also be featured in a junior and senior juried art show, which will help those young artists build their resume for college and career. Pearl Renken, who is the treasurer of the River Arts District in Asheville, will serve as one of the judges.
“Showing that you’ve been part of a juried exhibit is necessary when building an artist resume and when applying to colleges,” McKinney said. “We want to make sure we’re setting these kids up for success.”
The COVID-19 Pandemic hit the local service industry hard in Haywood County and across the country. McKinney started the Sound and Service Foundation as a way to build up a fund to help service industry folks with certain expenses, but it was hard to do any fundraising during the shutdown. Now, she’s looking forward to finding new ways to support that project.
“Many artists work at the restaurants up and down main Street, so it’s important for me to help the service industry and I think the gallery will provide a way for Sound and Service Foundation to gain momentum,” she said.
Part of the December exhibit this year will be a fundraiser for the foundation. McKinney plans to rotate a box of beverage napkins and markers between the downtown restaurants in hopes people will create art or share a quote on them. She’ll collect all the napkins and mount them at the gallery. Each napkin will be sold for $10-$15 a piece, and proceeds will go to the Sound and Service Foundation.
She is also now serving on the Blue Ridge Pride Board of Directors as the Haywood Outreach member. Outreach will be a big part of Curatory’s business because it’s McKinney’s passion, but also because she wants the community to see the gallery and the queer community as a force for good and not something to be feared.
“Especially as a queer space I need to be able to take people’s pride out of the equation. I need to be involved in the community and seen as bettering the community in any way I can so people will be accepting,” she said. “I’ve had a ton of support so far and I think a lot of people are just happy we’re here. The queer community is pretty big here — and it has been — but there hasn’t been that defined space for them.”
— Ashten McKinney
BY HANNAH MCLEOD STAFF WRITER
During the pandemic, Asheville-based artist Pearl Renken wrestled with the pain, isolation and racial reckoning happening in the United States. Her first instinct during that time was to paint, very literally, the pain she was seeing, the hate that felt abundant.
After a conversation with her father, who is also a painter, she was encouraged to paint what was missing, instead of painting the hate and fear people were already inundated with every day.
“I’ve always wanted to make work about LGBTQ issues, racial injustices,” said Renken. “I just feel like that’s what I can do. That’s what I can do with my voice, my privilege. That’s what I can contribute. So it has always been important to me to find a way to be a voice for the voiceless.”
Renken began painting more people of color, she began painting men’s bodies in the dismissive nature women’s bodies have been portrayed for centuries. She began painting non-heteronormative pairs embracing. Renken wants these images to be seen and felt in the dominant culture until they are not surprising anymore, until the subject matter is dismissed.
“I think if you see enough imagery, it’s dismissive, and I’m not saying dismissive in a negative way. I mean dismissive in a ‘you don’t have angsty feelings about it’ way, because it is normal,” said Renken. “Why do we need to normalize what’s already normal?”
Renken uses old objects, with previous uses and lives to make original images that center those old objects in a more accepting, open and diverse world. She uses ancient objects to normalize what should have always been normal.
Her style and statements about society have fit perfectly into the mission of the new Curatory Gallery in downtown Waynesville. This Pride Month, the Curatory is showcasing the exhibit “I Am Not An Asterisk.” This is a group exhibition that celebrates pride and LGBTQ+ artists and the community with contemporary art, photography and 3D installations.
The show features five artists — Renken, Jae Wagner, Gna Wyatt, Nicole Mackin, and Curatory curator Ashten McKinney — and supports the vision for the Curatory Gallery, which is to “feature artists pushing their creative limits, often speaking to social and political movements such as climate change, gender equality, and racial justice.”
Renken’s work was also displayed in Curatory’s previous exhibit, “Love is Love.”
Renken grew up in the Panhandle of Florida — primarily in Pensacola. She was an only child for her first 15 years. She adored music, especially ‘90s country music, prime country as she calls it.
“I thought I was going to be the next Faith Hill,” said Renken. “But, I ended up doing art instead.”
She drew incessantly as a teen, finding therapeutic escape in the activity as she moved through teenage angst. Not right after high school, but eventually the drawing, painting and creating pushed Renken to study the subject at the university level. Following an undergraduate degree at the University of Central Florida, Renken headed to Boston to earn a Master’s in Fine Arts.
“After growing up in the South and just kind of being at odds with a lot of institutionalized ideas, it was amazing,” said Renken. “It was amazing to be around so many different kinds of people, so many different languages all the time. I went there and just felt like I knew I was on the right side of things in my mind. And I felt like I was for the first time around so many like-minded people that weren’t my chosen friends or family.” Massachusetts became the first state to legalize gay marriage in 2004, another indicator for Renken that she had landed in a space she wanted to inhabit, explore and in which she could create. Even in a more progressive city like Boston, Renken found herself chafing against classical training and styles. She recalls calling her father during grad school and sharing painting tips and other advice taught in her classes. During one of these exchanges, he told Renken she had educated herself too much.
“You’re trying to stick to all these rules and there are no rules,” he told Renken.
“I was at war with the institution,” she said.
She created her signature style through connection to her southern roots. Playing in the dirt, thrift stores, flea markets, junk — old, glamorous junk. Making something out of nothing. This is where the idea for the frame, part of Renken’s senior thesis, came from.
“This is the idea of a museum style frame, institutionalized, bold frame, but it is a collage and a pile of my experiences, memories,” said Renken. “This is all emotionally corded stuff that lives in a drawer that you can’t throw away. I like to say, it’s too precious to throw away, but too heavy to drag along.”
As she talks about the giant, frameshaped object in the center of her gallery space, memories are abundant and easily accessible as they literally cover the frame beneath them. Braces, seventh grade yearbook, old loves, lost family members, questions about the past and whether it is regrettable or simply the path that led her to the space she now inhabits — a sunlit, corner studio on the second floor of an old River Arts District building, the love she relishes now and the works of art that surround her. It is plain to see the continued repurposing in Renken’s art. Most of her paintings are collaged with old opera sheet music she found at a junk store in Miami. The sheets are collaged onto canvas, then painted. They go with the flow of the bodies on the canvas, helping the eye fill in spaces and see form.
“It’s almost like an extra layer of trickery,” said Renken. “There’s something that this old paper does when you collage it all out and then paint on top of it.”
Though her art is deeply informed by the antique nature of her southern roots, Renken also deals with the institutionalized ideals she grew up learning in the South. At the Curatory in Waynesville, she has a piece of sculpture made from an old chair. She found the chair for $5 at a junk store because the netting of the seat was a gaping hole. As she began to crochet the netting back into a seat, things came up.
“I was in Boston, but I was missing parts of the Southern landscape, like the big trees
with the Spanish moss, thrift stores, just those comforts at home,” said Renken. “I started thinking about traditions and what’s expected of you, as a woman and these patterns and these rituals and these things that we’re supposed to follow. And then you’re not a complete woman, unless you have a baby, you’re not this, unless you do that. And chairs always make me think of the home, of the body, of yourself.”
The netting that would have made up the seat of the chair extends wildly, in a haphazard column all the way to the ceiling. Renken describes it as controlled chaos.
Pearl Renken.
Want to go?
The Curatory Gallery is showing the ‘I Am Not An Asterisk Exhibit’ now through June 30. Pearl Renken is one of five local artists in the exhibit. Smoky Mountain News
