Yesterday was important as far as the studio work on the Tale. I finished the slatted tray which will carry the fish and fruit cornucopia now visible through the clerestory windows I just cut open through the white PVC sheet with the axonometric of a living unit drawn on it.
Truly, cutting these clerestories open liberated my vision of ‘the next step’. It inaugurated a renewed color palette better suggesting a hopeful future, a needed change of direction from the memorial side of the Tale.
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Now I have to write a short blurb on Auzheal Oubré, who was burried last Saturday.
Auzheal was the brother of LaShea Oubré, our dear partner in art and activism, who left the Charleston Rhizome Collective around 2018.
Auzheal died in October of this year. We were present at his funeral last week, along with Pam and Arianne. We represented TINYisPOWERFUL.
Auzheal worked with conNECKted in 2016 and 17 for the conception and the making of the City Gallery experiment which launched the next step of our in/with community art.
Although his participation was short, it proved to be very fruitful and important. Among other things, he is the one who knew about the presence of the only memorial to Robert Smalls in Charleston at the time, sadly hidden under a bush at the foot of the back stairs to the gallery. This inspired the first Monument to this hero of the Civil War, who, now, has been widely recognized as such. Auzheal also researched the history of the Charleston Mosquito Fleet. He interviewed Captain Joiner, the last surviving member of the fleet. He developed the idea of a Memorial Sail. He worked on it Gwylène’s studio, using an image transfer technique she taught him and he later used as a source of income. The sail was part of the City Gallery show. He also presented at the Avery Center gallery and worked on boats with students of the ….. middle school, in an apprenticeship program.
We present LaSheia and all her family our condolences and the support they may need to see through this period of sadness and mourning.