Opening reception: LOOM and Post Frontier Landscapes

Carbondale Arts presents “LOOM” and “Post-Frontier Landscapes” opening Friday, August 9, from 6-8pm at the R2 Gallery inside The Launchpad, located at 76 S. 4th Street in Carbondale.
“LOOM” explores the relationship between the weaving loom and the evolution of the modern computer. This two-person show is organized around collaborative pieces by mixed media artist Andrew Roberts-Gray and painter and textile artist Cate Tallmadge. The works investigate connections between woven geometry and painterly geometry, and highlights the link between the binary coding in weaving and computing. Ada Lovelace saw the correlation between the punchcards used to program a Jacquard loom and its future application in computing. This visionary observation became the artists’ prime motivation for creating the work in the show. Both Tallmadge and Roberts-Gray made a decision to title individual pieces by selecting mostly women who were important in mathematics and computer science.
“Post-Frontier Landscapes” is a solo exhibition by textile artist Julia Crocetto, whose inquiry is rooted in her experiences of the Greater West, specifically areas that are or have been known as Frontier Lands. This exhibition is a facet of her study of borderzones and anomalies, which developed from the artist’s attempts to connect with place and grapple with her faulty memories of the West. “Post-Frontier” is Crocetto’s description of the present condition of the American West; on the surface it feels familiar and evokes nostalgia, upon closer inspection it reveals the colonial, drought-afflicted story of the Anthropocene. It is her response to anomalies such as administrative lines on a map, often arbitrary to the topographic, biological, or cultural content of the land they transect. It is the artist’s lament for loss of wilderness and innocence, that there is no place in the American West “untrammeled by man”.
A preview for Carbondale Arts members and gallery patrons will take place on Friday, August 9, at 5:30 pm to meet the artists and for an opportunity to see the work before the exhibition opens to the public at 6pm. For more information call (970) 963-1680.