Three nickels spray-painted green on one side, jewelry, sketches, song recordings, macramé, paintings, and anything else you can imagine is the kind of art that the main exhibition opening today at the Association for Visual Arts wants from the community.
Take Art/Leave Art will last through April 1, allowing anyone in the community to bring their art in any shape or form and exchange it for an art piece in the Take Art/Leave Art gallery.
Tara Harris, an organizer of Take Art/Leave Art says she couldn’t be happier with how the definition of art has expanded with this exhibition.
“If it’s art to you, then go for it,” says Daniel Wroe, the other half of the group “Michigan” who has put together Take Art/Leave Art the three times it has been featured at AVA.
Before Harris and Wroe joined to form Michigan they happened upon the Landis Gallery at AVA as a free space for students to use. The pair jumped on this relatively unused resource of the community and began to do shows there in 2007. Since the idea for the Take Art/Leave Art was generated, Harris says they have essentially “monopolized” this unused space.
For the third round of Take Art/Leave Art, this exhibition has been given the slot in the main gallery, as previous year’s experience has shown that this event captures the attention of everyone, making for stiff competition for anything that is alongside it.
“There were over 100 people there last year in the Landis gallery,” Harris says. “We took all the people from the main opening to our opening.”
Michigan emphasizes that this show is not just for students and they want everyone to join in. They are asking for more submissions before the event that can be dropped in boxes at Leo’s Handmade Gallery, the UTC Fine Arts Center, or the AVA office.
Everyone who donates two pieces of art will get two art pieces at the end of the show.
They are also encouraging the community to bring their art with them to the show. The main thing they ask is that people not take things out of the boxes around town before the show’s opening tonight.
Wroe says, “One of the main goals of this show is to deconstruct hierarchies. We have some amazing paintings coming in but we also have sketches that a four-year-old has done and it’s all equal. That four year old could go in and put a smiley face drawing up there and take down the nicest painting in the place and there’s no right or wrong.”
Also at the event will be materials to make art on the spot so that once visitors make an art piece they can put it on the wall and then take something down.
Harris says she wants people to come and enjoy art at an opening instead of the usual scene that occurs at gallery openings.
“One of the things about going to openings is that a lot of them are really boring and you just sit there, look at the art, and talk to your friends in a corner. One of the things I like about Take Art/leave Art is that you move around and that it’s constant motion, people are fighting over things, it’s exciting, and that’s a nice change,” she says.
Wroe agrees: “There’s a level of disconnect that you have to stand at arm’s length when you are at art openings, and you can’t touch it, can’t interact with it, can’t really have fun with it. With this, there is no line on the ground that you can’t cross. It’s free for all. It make us less of the focal point and makes it more about the art.”
Another difference in this opening to others is that if people visit from week to week, the gallery will be different because of the people who have come in and taken down art and put up pieces in their place.
“The show isn’t about good and bad art, it’s just about art,” Wroe says. “There’s always someone who will like something and with so many people that are going to be there, even if it’s something you don’t like, there will be some guy that will love it.”
Both members of Michigan agree, everyone can be an artist and that’s the point of Take Art/Leave Art.
Take Art/Leave Art opens tonight at 5:30 p.m. at the AVA at 30 Frazier Avenue and will be ongoing until the closing reception on April 1 from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. If anyone is interested in dropping off art before the show, they can email Harris at fend13th@gmail.com and she will come to pick up their work. Call the AVA office or visit www.avarts.org for more information.