Debbie Robbins, New Works at Dock 1053

Debbie Robbins: New Works at Dock 1053

Dock 1053 - 1053 E. Whitaker Mill Rd.

Raleigh NC, 27604

October 2022 - January 2023

Artist Statement

Debbie’s background is in interior design, which gives her art a strong sense of design and color. Debbie sees art everywhere she goes.

Though Debbie did not paint much until she became an empty nester, her experimental nature has allowed her to quickly catch up. She feels comfortable with acrylics, her primary medium. The fast drying time of the medium allows Debbie to experiment with layers and textures using various mediums in her work.

Debbie received her B.A. in Interior Design at UNC-G. She is a former board member for Visual Art Exchange and still a volunteer. She was on the board at UNC Rex Cancer Center on the art committee. She is a member of Raleigh Fine Art Society.

To view more of Debbie’s work visit 311 Gallery!

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Exhibition Checklist + Pricing

Luxury, 30x24

Sparkling, 40x40

Transfer, 36x48

2nd Layers, 30x30

Connections, 30x30

Textural, 30x24

to inquire about purchasing a piece please email Ant (they/them)!

CLAIM THE BODY: HEALING & AUTONOMY

August 11 - October 27, 2022

VAE Cube Gallery

228 Fayetteville St

Raleigh NC 27601

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Claim the Body: Healing & Autonomy comes at a time when discourse related to autonomy is more important than ever. As rights continue to be stripped from the lives of people globally, VAE understands the importance of sensitivity regarding this subject matter. It is not our intention or goal to highlight trauma and disaster, but to instead focus on network building, mutual aid support, and community engagement that can be regenerative and healing.

Claim the Body features work from 8 artists, mostly artists from our immediate local community in North Carolina. We believe that to better facilitate community building and connections it is important to lean into our local community of artists, organizers, and champions of bodily autonomy to foster support, care, healing, and understanding amongst each other.

The ways in which we exercise our autonomy are vast and distinctive. Through dress, body adornment, healthcare decisions and interpersonal relationships, individuals make daily choices about their physical bodies and lifestyles. While some of these decisions are fleeting or aesthetic, they often reflect deeply held convictions, significant deliberation, and creativity. There is power in that.

While bodily autonomy is deeply personal, it is rarely exercised or experienced in isolation. The confidants, abortion care providers, tattoo artists, organizers, doulas, mutual aid efforts, and innumerable others are critical to our choices, advocacy, empowerment, and our healing, both personal and collective. We believe that through practices of personal and communal autonomy, a higher quality of life is possible. The works in Claim the Body speak to the reclamation of the self and the body politic that happens in the struggles for autonomy.

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STEERING COMMITTEE

Candace Howze

Cassandra J. Rowe

ARTISTS

Candace Howze - North Carolina

Cara Hagan - New York

Cassandra J. Rowe - North Carolina

Gabi Magaly - Texas

Grey Von Cannon - North Carolina

Jenny Eggleston - North Carolina

Jennifer Markowitz - North Carolina

Julie Rae Powers - New York

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PROGRAMMING

SOLD OUT!

OCTOBER 15, 6 - 9PM

Portrait Party w/ Jade Wilson, and Closing Reception

Join VAE Raleigh and Durham based artist, Jade Wilson, for a special program and closing reception for Claim the Body.

About Jade: Durham artist, Jade Wilson, has worked as a professional image maker for the past eight years, spending the first half of that time as a corporate photographer and the other half defying artistic convention and upending the status quo. Their work explores what lies in the shadows behind beauty and sorrow–both personal and communal. Their raw and frequently somber style is illuminated by their Black trans identity.

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Breathe: My First Breath

Breathe: My First Breath

A Solo Exhibition by JP Jermaine Powell

June 15 - July 22, 2022 | Opening Reception June 23, 6 - 8PM

The Cube Gallery

228 Fayetteville St

Raleigh NC 27601

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NOTE FROM THE ARTIST

“As a local artist, I want to genuinely thank VAE for supporting my colorful career and my artworks along the way. They were behind some of my major works being able to get seen and purchased. They have supported the creative risks that I’ve taken in my work. VAE has been a great resource for, not only myself, but for so many local and regional creative voices for many years. Continued success to VAE’s visionary leadership and mission.”

• JP

ARTIST BIO

Jermaine “JP” Powell is a North Carolina based mixed- media artist and muralist. Originally from Cleveland, Ohio, JP holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Pratt Institute, located in Brooklyn, New York. His paintings and public art projects explore the complexities of human relationships, materialism, and consumerism.

As a world traveler, JP’s travel experiences have inspired the use of various luxury objects featured in his work. Both American and international currencies are often featured symbolically in his work. In his Breathe Life, Modern Currency, and Pure Luxury Collection series (2018- 2022, JP also uses bold, colorful textures, flowers, patterns, and mosaic tile.

JP is the creator and curator of the Breathe: Back To Life art exhibition featured at the Duke Energy Center for The Performing Arts in Raleigh, North Carolina. He is also the creator of the Welcome To Hillsborough Street mural project near NC State University and also the We Are Community mural in Carrboro, NC.

JP’s artwork has also been featured at Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Arts + Culture, Raleigh Magazine, Cary Living Magazine, Duke University, Art Space Galleries, Raleigh Arts, The City of Durham, and The Durham Art Guild. He is fortunate to have collectors throughout the United States, Argentina, Japan, South Africa, and London.

In 2021 JP was formally announced as the illustrator for the children’s book, The Museum Lives In Me in partnership with the North Carolina Museum Of Art. JP’s work has been shown in numerous group and solo exhibitions in Ohio, New York, Maryland, Washington D.C. and North Carolina.

INVENTORY

• JP Jermaine Powell, A Queen’s Justice Triptych, 2021, Acrylic and Mixed Media On Canvas, 48in x 60in and 16in x 20in, $10,500, For Sale

• JP Jermaine Powell, Rainbow, 2021, Acrylic and Mixed Media On Canvas, 48in x 60in, $10,500, For Sale

• JP Jermaine Powell, Concrete Souls No. 1, 2021, Acrylic and Mixed Media On Canvas, 12in x 12in, $550, For Sale

• JP Jermaine Powell, Concrete Souls No. 7, 2021, Acrylic and Mixed Media On Canvas, 12in x 12in, $550, For Sale

• JP Jermaine Powell, Young Money Triptych(Side Panels 2 and 3), 2021, Acrylic and Mixed Media On Wood, 24in x 24in, Not For Sale

• JP Jermaine Powell, JP Presents #JP100k Tryptych, 2014, Acrylic and Mixed Media On Wood Panel, 80in x 80in, Not For Sale

• JP Jermaine Powell, Black Luxury: Finance 101, 2020, Acrylic and Mixed Media On Canvas, 36in x 48in, $8500, For Sale

• JP Jermaine Powell, Blanco Noir, 2020, Acrylic and Mixed Media On Canvas, 36in x 48in, $8500, For Sale

• JP Jermaine Powell, No Ceilings, 2020, Acrylic and Mixed Media On Canvas, 36in x 48in, $8500, For Sale

Play Exhibitions @ Dock 1053

May 10 - September 4, 2022

Dock 1053

1053 E Whitaker Mill Rd

Raleigh NC, 27604

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“All meaningful, organic, and foundational learning is at heart playful and ludic. ”

Marcelo Suárez-Orozco, Contemporary American professor of education

PLAY is a collection of work generated from exploration within an artist’s practice, and the embracing of a spirit of playfulness. Each piece expresses a sense of vibrancy, whimsy, and humor, whether as literal tools for play or through experimental concept and process. It is through PLAY that we learn to reimagine our sense of self, and challenge those around us to push beyond constraints of “reality” and “possibility”.

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ARTISTS

Anna Lee | Melody Moon and Sonata Sun (from “Things Held Dear”), TV Toy Theater (from “Things Held Dear”), Astronaut Animation Frames (from “This Was Life on Earth”), and Jimmy! (from “ARC 9 PIES”)

Brian Sillman | Bathos V, VII, IX, and XIV

Clara May | Bound, and Untitled Self Portrait

Peri Law | Hinton James, 2016-2017; Morrison, 2017-2018; and Byng Place, 2018

SASS | Teagress for NIGHTPLAY

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Jenny Eggleston - State of the Union @ So & So Books

April - December, 2022

So & So Books

719 N Person St

Raleigh NC, 27604

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EXHIBITION STATEMENT

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Employing both the loosely figurative pre-impressionism of J. M. W. Turner and the satiric graphics of later Philip Guston, Eggleston, in State of the Union, grapples with and protests the injustices carried in on the most recent waves of conservatism–the Tea Party, Trumpism, etc. Eggelston seems to lament a unifying patriotism of the past that has been co-opted in service of voter suppression and false claims of fraudulent vote counts, book banning, and ultimately the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, while recognizing that patriotism, in whatever iteration, has never been accessible to all Americans.

State of the Union also explores the exhaustion, the emotional and physical wear and tear, that the vigilance required to fight injustice results in, as well as the outright violent dangers that accompany oppression and protest. The horse, depicted as either dead or emaciated, is being shot at or doused by paint. The flag is in tatters or is simply disappearing, dispersing like smoke or tear gas.

The horse at times evokes the idiom of beating a dead horse, as issues we keep telling ourselves have been resolved keep rearing their ugly heads generation after generation. At times, it evokes the donkey of the Democratic party, either deflated after a loss to Trump, exhausted in the face of Republican propaganda and lies, or inept and impotent, unable to produce the solutions its stated ideals promise. Or all of the above.

The flag is reminiscent of the flags of Jasper Johns, but in the context of the January 6 insurrection, they also evoke his target series–flag as target. Is the flag a rallying symbol for the insurrectionists, even as it flies over the building they ransacked? Or is it a symbol of the democracy they attempted to overthrow?

After every State of the Union address, the president, no matter which party, inevitably closes by saying, “and the State of the Union is strong.” There are times when that rings more hollow than others, and Eggleston’s State of the Union makes clear, in no uncertain terms, that this is most definitely one of those times.

- Chris Tonelli, So&So Books

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ARTIST STATEMENT

“My recent work is in response to the crisis of democracies across the globe, particularly in the United States. While insidious assaults on democratic ideals have been experienced by Black and POC communities since the inception of this country, citizens the country over found themselves in shock and disbelief over the assault on our Nation’s Capitol on January 6, 2021. The subsequent attacks on voting rights, reproductive rights, and attacks on the LGBTQ+ communities have intensified in the last year. State of the Union is a body of work that depicts these ongoing threats to our civil liberties through symbolic imagery that is at once visceral and unrepressed. The mixed-media works in this show employ taboo imagery, funhouse mirrors, and flags while using mud, dirt, and gauze as some of the mediums. The symbols and materials composed are meant to be stark reminders that there cannot be democracy when there is only one dominant narrative and made under the blanket of White Privilege.”

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Reading Rainbow 40 x 37” | $2000

Voting Booth I 37 x 40” | $2000

Voting Booth II 37 x 40” | $2000

White Trash 30 x 21” | $1000

White Wash 30 x 21” | $1000

America the Broken 30 x 21” | $1000

Mud Flag: In Reverse 30 x 21” | $1000

INVENTORY + PRICES

Insurrection 25.5 x 31.5” | $1200

Yellow Gas 26 x 20” | $800

I Portest 40 x 30” | $1500

For Love of Country 37 x 48” | $2000

Black Hole 30 x 40” | $2000

Black Day 23 x 29” | $1000

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Wings of the City: Make your Mark!

March 4, 2022 - March 30, 2022

VAE Raleigh

120 Wilmington Street

Raleigh NC, 27601

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VAE Raleigh and Dorothea Dix Park have come together to create an interactive experience in honor of world-renowned Mexican artist Jorge Marín’s traveling exhibition, Wings of the City. The collection of nine bronze sculptures features larger than life figures – some winged and poised to take flight, others delicately balanced in acrobatic poses. 

Art created by the Plein Air Group and poetry inspired by the Wings of the City exhibit will be on display at VAE’s pop-up space located at 120 Wilmington Street.

Wings of the City exhibition in Raleigh is made possible through a partnership between the Consulate General of Mexico in Raleigh, Jorge Marín Foundation, and the Dix Park Conservancy.

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Plein Air Exhibiting Artists

Ann Neely

Andrea Frank

isolde sarnecki

Rick Bennett

Beth Barger

Randall Hale

Lori White

Self Portraiture @ Dock 1053

December 13, 2021 - April 30, 2022

Dock 1053

1053 E Whitaker Mill Rd

Raleigh NC, 27604

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Marchello Hardin, Death Row Legends

Marie-Louise Bennett, In autumn the trees rediscover their colors

Martin Church, Self #56 & Scorched Self

Naila Lyles-Elcock, Looped

Natacha Sochat, Self Portrait with Butterflies

Piera Yerkes, Meadow Therapy

Rene Gaete, Self Portrait

Rese Cooley, Self Reflection

Shanny Kohli, Daily Mantra

Zaire McPhearson, Honey Coated & Melanin Bloom

ARTISTS

Bailey Dalton, Self

Danyelle Lakin, Squidge

Diego Pablo Malaga, The Cannibal at the Altar & The Cannibal With His Dog

Harrison Cribb, Self Portrait

Irvin Maldonado, Here Until

Isabel Lu, A Dissertation on Eyelids

Jennifer Bonner, The fluidity of days (We just keep accumulating)

Laleh Bagherzadi, Feeling the Power

Leeman Smith, Hippie Summer Quilt

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KITSCH, CAMP

As a part of the Click! 2021 Photography Festival, VAE presents: KITSCH, CAMP [and all of the other words now one actually knows the definitions for].

KITSCH, CAMP is a group exhibition that evinces world building through camp performance, kitsch styling, and the photographic process. Each artist brings their own self-rendered photographic portals to our reality, allowing viewers to gaze into fantastical worlds of the artists’ own creation that defy the corporeal expectations of the “real.” 

In her seminal essay, Notes on Camp, Susan Sontag describes camp as, “...a sensibility that revels in artifice, stylization, theatricalization, irony, playfulness, and exaggeration rather than content...” Using Sontag’s analysis of camp, the exhibition encourages viewers to think beyond the frame, literally and metaphorically, to see the unseen in their lives and toy with the veiled to create dynamic space where irreverent play is centered as a means of self-exploratory departure from the mundane and banal procedures of the everyday.

LOCATION

120 S Wilmington St

Raleigh NC 27602

DATES

October - November 28, 2021

ARTISTS

Benjy Russell - Tennessee

Murrie Rosenfeld - New York

Yi Hsuan Lai - New York

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Benjy Russell

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Murrie Rosenfeld

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Yi Hsuan Lai

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NC SCULPTURE

Group Exhibition of North Carolina Sculpture

AUGUST 13 - DECEMBER 12, 2021

DOCK 1053

1053 E. WHITAKER MILL RD. RALEIGH NC, 27604

ARTISTS

Conner Calhoun, Greensboro

Conner Calhoun is currently a MFA Candidate at UNCG in Studio Art. They received their BFA in Visual and Critical Studies at the School of Visual Arts (NY) in 2015. They are a queer artist and curator based in North Carolina. Their most recent curatorial project is SLUG (Chapel Hill, NC), a project space by and for queer people of the South. They worked as a Projects Coordinator at LUMP gallery (Raleigh NC) from 2017-2020. Their studio practice uses the tools of paintings, drawing and sculpture in order to create images and visual narratives that explore the fantastical qualities of queer space, existence and resistance. In 2016 they were the artist in residence at Leipzig International Artist Residency (DEU). In 2019 They were the artist in residence at Obracadobra (Oax, MX). Their most recent solo exhibition was Whispers From Wizard Mountain, LUMP gallery (Raleigh NC) in 2018. Their work was recently featured in CAVE HOMO, a celebration to queer spirit distilled into print form. They are dedicated to the creative forces of the queer south and beyond.

kiki nicole, Charlotte

kiki nicole is a poet and artist who works to archive Very Black Feelings. They are the co-founder of the new media/film archival project and screening series, the first and the last, specializing in uplifting work by Black trans/queer artists often overlooked in art spaces. They are currently a poetry editor at Muzzle Magazine and the recipient of a publishingfellowship with Graywolf Press. kiki is 1⁄5 of the NCbased art collective, SaltWater Sojourn—a guest project with Toshi Reagon. They live in Charlotte, NC.

Mia Kaplan, Penland

Mia Kaplan is an artist who works primarily in jewelry and metalsmithing. She received a BA in Studio Art at Earlham College in 2018. Mia worked as an intern Liberty Arts Sculpture Studio & Foundry in Durham, NC in 2016. She was also an intern at Brooklyn Metal Works through the New York Arts Program in 2017. Mia currently is in the Core Fellowship at the Penland School of Craft and works and lives in Penland, NC as a part of the Core program. She has most recently shown work through Secret Identity Projects with their show Amend and in A Curious Year at the Penland Gallery in NC.

Sarah Howes Whitney, Raleigh

Sarah Howes Whitney was raised in New York, went to school at Ohio State University for Fine Arts, moved to the West Coast where she lived in San Diego, San Francisco and Los Angeles, before moving to Raleigh NC, where she is currently an Artist, Museum educator and High School Art Teacher.

Lakeshia Ried @ Shaw University

Lakeshia Reid at Shaw University Library

August - December 2021

LOCATION

Shaw University James E Cheek Learning Resources Center

118 E South St, Raleigh, NC 27601

Saturday 12–5PM

Sunday 12–8PM

HOURS

Monday - Thursday 8AM–10PM

Friday 8AM–5PM

ABOUT LAKESHIA T. REID
Lakeshia T. Reid is a self-taught artist who lives and works in North Carolina. She received a B.S. in Graphic Design in 2011 and worked as a Graphic and Web Designer until she began painting portraits in 2017. Her background as a designer helps her create works that nod to the fantastical while offering interpretations of #BlackGirlMagic – a phrase/movement that celebrates positive messages and images of black women. She is currently a full-time artist and owner of 311 Gallery in Raleigh, NC.

One’s own World (The Hermit)

From the Earth and the Elements (The Star)

Everything that Exists (The Magician)

As you Are (L) and She Would be Light (R)

More Things in Heaven and Earth

Memory is a Blessing

Because You Are

Unlike a Flower in a Dry Spell

One but Many

APPROACHING MAXIMUM: THE CLIMATE CRISIS NOW

CLICK THE IMAGE BELOW TO EXPLORE THE EXHIBITION WEBPAGE

Lauren Collins, Mary Ann Anderson, Jessica Dupuis at Dock 1053

October 2, 2020 - February 26, 2021
Location: DOCK 1053
1053 E Whitaker Mill Road
Raleigh, NC 27604

Lauren Collins

Artist Statement

a vision

a meditation

an urge 

a gut feeling

I now believe that these are direct communications through worlds — veils are broken in order for this conversation of speaking and listening and channeling. 

Sometimes in the form of words, sometimes shapes, sometimes just a texture or feeling. 

Created from light + love — dissolving fears and uplifting dreams. 

Sometimes it is only a whisper, so faint that everything else must completely disappear from sight and sound in order for it to live with me in solitude for a moment. 

And only just for that moment. 

And then it is gone. 

Other times it is so loud and blinding that it is all i know to be real — like i have to know; i have to feel it and communicate it to the world, or else it will fill me from the inside out, all the way, expanding from my bones to the thin veil of my skin. 

They live in the shadows and begin to shuffle into the light in order to speak their language to the world; 

and i am only their translator.

Mary Ann Anderson

Artist Statement

My paintings are informed by philosophy and art, especially:

         - Chinese and Japanese art – transcending time and space

         - Kandinsky’s conceptual premise that painting can help us to a greater consciousness

         - American abstract expressionist art and conceptual art 

These mixed media pieces are made using graphite, acrylic varnish and acrylic paint on synthetic paper (Yupo).

Artist Biography

Mary Ann Anderson has presented solo exhibitions at Visual Art Exchange and Artspace in Raleigh, at Duke University, the Durham Art Guild and GoldenBelt in Durham; at the Ackland Museum Store and Chapel Hill Library in Chapel Hill; and The ArtsCenter in Carrboro, NC. Her art studies have included classes at Ox-Bow, a program of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Penland School of Craft in North Carolina.

Jessica Dupuis

Artist Statement

Invisible and visible boxes surround us every day, from standards of society and institutions to houses, studios, and offices. Within these structures, individual perceptions and senses vary, just as our memories and attachment to objects differ from one person to another. For me, the physical form of sculpture functions as a journal; architectural spaces that are open for the viewer to explore.

My work evolves from a process in which I use a combination of clay slip and discarded materials such as newspaper, cardboard, and furniture and transform them into art objects.

Artist Biography

Jessica Dupuis was born in Buffalo, New York and grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She received her MFA from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and her BFA with a concentration in ceramics and print media from Alfred University. Dupuis exhibits her work regionally and nationally. She has been a resident artist at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft and Women's Studio Workshop as well as a recipient of the International Sculpture Center's Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award and an Ella Fountain Pratt Emerging Artists Grant from the Durham Arts Council. She is an Assistant Professor of Art in Ceramics at the University of North Carolina-Pembroke and lives in Raleigh, North Carolina.