CHARLESTON, W.Va. — At this year’s FestivALL, lovers of art can experience a new exhibit in the 11th floor of Charleston’s Union Building.
The Brickscape Artist and Residency Exhibition is FestivALL’s 2018 public art project. The exhibit will feature site-specific installation art made by nine artists chosen through an application process.
“It’s either inspired by the physical limitations of that space or the historical or cultural context of that space and a lot of times site-specific work can’t exist outside of the space it’s made for,” said Jack O’Hearn, project director of Brickscape.
The Union Building on Kanawha Boulevard was chosen as the site for the exhibit because of its history in Charleston. Developers from the Riggs Corporation showed O’Hearn the site and he decided he wanted to utilize it for his project.
“We were kind of looking around for vacant properties,” he said. “I wanted to choose a historical property. Part of the mission is to take advantage of some of the currently underutilized properties in Downtown Charleston.”
O’Hearn would like to see if some activity in one of Charleston’s older buildings can encourage other growth.
“I feel like that building is not only historic, but it’s iconic, being the only standing structure on the bank side of Kanawha Boulevard,” he said. “I think it’s a pretty iconic symbol of the history of Charleston.”
The idea for Brickscape came from a similar project O’Hearn worked in as an artist called The Birdsell Project. The project was a site-specific art exhibit that was located in a 19th century stone mansion in South Bend, Indiana.
O’Hearn said the project was very successful.
“It got a lot of attention and a lot of media coverage and a very large attendance for an art exhibition, because it was such a similarly iconic, historical space that had been closed to the public and vacant for maybe a couple decades,” he said.
Nine artists from various places, including West Virginia, were chosen to display their work in Charleston’s Brickscape. Some have worked in site-specific art exhibitions before, some are painters and some are sculptors.
Each artist took on the six-week residency program and lived in Charleston while working on their pieces which will be fully-immersive and interactive with viewers.
“You know it’s part seeing an art exhibition and it’s part going into these cool, old, historical places that you might not go into otherwise,” O’Hearn said.
Brickscape will open at 7 p.m. on May 25 during FestivALL’s Preview Weekend.
More information can be found at brickscape.org.
Story by Jordyn Johnson