Disarm
*Photo above: Kirsten Stolle, Pit B Elevator, 2016
April 25 - May 21, 2017
Disarm is a collage and drawing project examining the historical legacy and impact of the Cold War-era US Nike missile program within a 21st-century framework. Disarm re-purposes and neutralizes abandoned military spaces through archival photographs, collage, ink, and gouache. Images of underground missile silos, decontamination showers, guard stations, launch pads, and missiles are transformed into places of growth and activation.
The artist would like to acknowledge and thank the artist residency program Willapa Bay AiR as a supporter.
About the Artist
Kirsten Stolle is a visual artist working in collage, drawing, and site-responsive installations. Her research-based practice is grounded in the investigation of corporate propaganda, environmental politics, and biotechnology. Her work examines the global influence of agrochemical and pharmaceutical corporations on our food supply and considers the connection between corporate interests and public health.
Stolle received a BA in Visual Arts from Framingham State University (Framingham, MA) and completed studies at Richmond College (London) and Massachusetts College of Art (Boston, MA). She is a recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and her work is included in the permanent collections of the San Jose Museum of Art (CA), Crocker Art Museum (CA), and the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MN). Select solo exhibitions include the NOME (Berlin), The Turchin Center for the Visual Art, (NC), Second Street Gallery, (VA) and Dolby Chadwick Gallery, (CA). Her work has been published in Poetry Magazine, Made in Mind, Spolia Literary Magazine, Creators Project, Widewalls and New American Paintings, among others. She currently lives and works in Marshall, North Carolina.
About 12 x 12
12 x 12 artist salon series presents 12 artists from North Carolina, the 12th State. Each Salon is a pop-up exhibition and conversation with the artist. The series schedule consists of three exhibitions per spring and fall seasons in 2016 and 2017, beginning March 1st, 2016. At the end of the salons, a group exhibition in our Potter Gallery will bring together all twelve artists.
The twelve artists in the series represent a diversity of artistic practices and cultural backgrounds. At salon events, each artist will share ideas and processes of their studio practice in the midst of recent, new, or site-specific work presented in SECCA's Preview Gallery. Each artist will discuss their experience first-hand, inviting the public to ask questions and to engage in conversation. Like a studio visit, these salon events are a social space for the discovery and discussion, providing invaluable feedback to artists and insights to those who come to experience them.
12 x 12 gives artists from across North Carolina a public platform for continued artistic development and recognition in the place where they live and work, and beyond. At the same time, the series aims to push conversation around contemporary art forward and to consider the significance of localism as a curatorial framework. What does it mean to these artists to be working in the South and Southeast today, especially after the Internet and Globalization?
The 12 x 12 artists were selected by Cora Fisher (Curator of Contemporary Art, SECCA) and four guest jurors: Linda Dougherty (Chief Curator & Curator of Contemporary Art, North Carolina Museum of Art); Lia Newman (Director and Curator of the Van Every/Smith Galleries at Davidson College); Marshall Price (Nancy Hanks Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University); and Mary Anne Redding (Curator, Turchin Center for the Visual Arts).
An