asheville rites project

RITES: a public performance

2011-05-22T12:25:00.000-07:00

It happened! Last night, around 300 people came out on a gorgeous Saturday evening to watch RITES, live in all its color and glory!

Photos by Colby Rabon:

And a few more photos by Zen Sutherland:

Thank you so much to everyone who came out, and to everyone who helped make this vision a reality!!

A great article in today's Citizen-Times, not only on the project but on both the value and struggles of public art in general

2011-05-20T12:55:00.000-07:00

The right to 'Rites': Free art event reminds Asheville artists need our help

4:38 PM, May. 18, 2011 |

Molly Rose Freeman stands in front of her mural in the River Arts District. / Special to the Citizen-Times

Written by

Carol Motsinger

Garth Grimball leaps in front of a section of Freeman's mural on Riverside Drive.

IF YOU GO

What: “Rites: A public performance.”
When: 7-8 p.m. Saturday (Rain date is May 28).
Where: RiverLink Sculpture and Performance Plaza, 117 Riverside Drive.
Admission: Free, and be sure to bring blankets and chairs.

As you're speeding down the Smoky Park Bridge, I hope you've noticed the new, blushing beauty mark below in the River Arts District.

Local artist Molly Rose Freeman — who is a champion of the color that is her middle name — has been spending about the last month creating an amphitheater-shaped mural, blossoming with burst of pinks and reds, cooled by white accents, on Riverside Drive.

It's bright. It's bold, just like Freeman's idea, a vision she shares with Asheville dancer and choreographer Garth Grimball and musician Michael Libramento. This trio of talent is collaborating on “Rites: A public performance” 7-8 p.m. Saturday at the RiverLink Sculpture and Performance Plaza, 117 Riverside Drive.

Molly's mural will become the backdrop for a dance performance from Grimball, with the soundtrack provided live by Libramento.

The art event is really designed to be a community event, so naturally it's free. It's also a fitting price tag, since the $3,000 project was funded entirely by donations through a Kickstarter campaign online.

And Molly hopes it's really just the beginning of a series of free arts events from her and her artist colleagues.

“We have everything that we need to make these things happen,” Molly said Monday. “We need to have (art events) that are a free, or at least don't have a lot of commercial pressure and involvement, and utilize community resources, artists, businesses and ideas that are homegrown.”

This exaltation of collaboration, of community and public art reminds me of the role the Works Progress Administration played during this country's recovery from the Great Depression. Artists were funded by the government to produce projects, from murals to literature.

One of these artists was Jackson Pollock, the abstract expressionist painter credited with being one of the most electrifying artists of his generation.

Sorry to nerd out, but I have to prove to my parents that paying for an art history degree was not a complete waste (Hi, Mom!). Pollock and his fellow New York City game-changers are also credited with shifting the center of the art world to the United States, stealing the crown of contemporary art from our ancestors in the Old World.

I think it's fair to say that the art innovation of the '50s and '60s in the U.S. would not have flourished to the same degree if it wasn't for the government's investment through the WPA.

That's one of the reasons it's so disturbing that arts funding is being slashed during our modern economic troubles, still nowhere near the Great Depression's depths of unemployment.

If we don't support Asheville's next Pollock now, we will lose, practically speaking, a huge portion of our tourism appeal. And whimsically speaking, a pillar of our identity, culture and spirit.

“Rites,” a name identifying the event's spring theme, is a perfect name for the event and exactly the sort of thing that we have to continue to support, especially as Capitol Hill continues to eliminate important arts funding.

This is about something new, and it is a totally new use for the RiverLink park. A new, super-forward-thinking attraction to the River Arts District, an epicenter of the craft tradition of these mountains.

But it's ultimately a renewal and a reminder that public art is for the public, but it's a public that has to invest in the work and the artists to guarantee its survival.

This is the opinion of Citizen-Times staff writer Carol Motsinger, who writes an entertainment column every Friday for Take5. She can be reached at cmotsinger@CITIZEN-TIMES.com.

A Little Off the Top

2011-05-18T21:58:00.000-07:00

Molly and Kyle Wolff, writing/marketing genius for the River Arts District, tackled the jungle at the space today:

Sidekick: Apacha!

Won't you stay for dinner?

2011-05-17T17:22:00.001-07:00

For those of you who are in town and plan on coming to the performance this Saturday (gates at 6, performance at 7), we'd like to remind you that this is around dinner time, and we will not have food at the show. However! We've got you covered. You are welcome to bring a picnic/drinks/snacks of your own, but the River Arts District also has some really great places to eat:

Roots Cafe @ the Grey Eagle
Roots Cafe, owned by local hummus king Matt Parris, has relocated to the Grey Eagle and is serving up a great variety of old favorites made from super high quality ingredients. (Tip: go for the quinoa hushpuppies!)
Hours: 11 AM-10 PM

The Junction:
The Junction, opening officially tomorrow, is the newest addition to the Pink Dog Creative buildings (the technicolor strip on Depot Street). Molly got a chance to sample what they'll be dishing out, and it does not disappoint. From a farm egg and grilled asparagus sandwich to a hearty smoked tomato soup, the food here is packed with flavor. There's also a full bar with specialty cocktails.
Hours: lunch and dinner

Clingman Cafe:
Trip will be serving the full lunch menu of delicious soups, salads, and sandwiches, as well as some special dinner entrees, and you can grab a seat outside to enjoy what we hope will be a nice night! Wedge beer is on tap, from right down the hill.
Hours: 8 AM-8 PM

White Duck Taco Shop:
White Duck Taco is so new it won't event be open until Friday, but already we can tell you it will be good--check out the taco menu below!

Our good friends Carol Motsinger and Erin Brethauer from the Asheville Citizen-Times have been following and chronicling the progress of the restaurant since its early stages: check out their blog. The shop also features artwork by Ishmael. Stop in soon (like... Saturday?) and welcome them to the neighborhood!
Hours: Until sundown

Magnetic Field:
A hybrid restaurant-bar-venue-theatre-latenight-hangout, the Magnetic Field, in the bottom of the Glen Rock Depot, has good food, good beer, and a hip atmosphere. If you're not performanced-out after our event, check out "The Family Tree," a play by Lucia del Vecchio, which got a great review in this week's Mountain Xpress.

Happy eating!

Promo Material

2011-05-08T22:25:00.000-07:00

Getting these bad boys printed tomorrow.

Local Photographers

2011-05-04T19:44:00.001-07:00

We've been so lucky the past few weeks to have several local photographers stopping by the space to photograph the mural:

Photo by Nicholas Adams (model: Rhea Griffin)

Photo by Bill North

Photos by Cindy Kunst, of Asheville CLicKs

Roses and More

2011-05-02T06:46:00.000-07:00

Brian came by the space yesterday and brought two BEAUTIFUL roses from his garden. (And they smell incredible....)

Molly's dad, Herschel, passed through town on his way home from MerleFest:

We got a storm on Wednesday night, and the whole platform filled up with water (the panels are fine). Worth it for this photo:

And here's a detail of the middle panel, as of yesterday:

VERVE Magazine

2011-04-27T15:28:00.000-07:00

Wall Flower?

Yes, and wall hexagons. With dancers in front. An Asheville mural artist has an ambitious collaborative show in the River District this month.

by Ursula Gullow . photo by Matt Rose

Molly Rose Freeman has a thing for patterns. “There’s just something about committing yourself to creating a pattern,” says the 24-year-old, gesturing to the illustrations peppering her studio. She’s committed, all right. Her breezy space, located in the Roots Building of the River Arts District, is full of pattern-covered paintings, illustrations and other objects, including a mirage of pink plaid “crystals” painted directly onto her wall. That project looks quite modern, but it was inspired by a mosaic-tiled floor she saw in an Italian Cathedral.

Freeman is drawn to patterns found in other cultures, and she enjoys figuring out how to reproduce them. “Patterns can be really overwhelming when you first see them,” she says. She can spend hours or days translating and breaking down the small parts. For now, Freeman is using her wall space to get comfortable painting at a large scale for her upcoming Asheville Rites Project, a collaborative performance piece that comes together on May 21. The over-arching theme is springtime—playing on the concept of transitions, rituals and celebration.

For the next two weeks, she’ll be painting five 10’ x 10’ panels for the Rites project, to be installed in amphitheatre format at the RiverLink sculpture and performance plaza. The plaza is an outdoor venue at 117 Riverside Drive, across from Cotton Mill Studios and 12 Bones. In its entirety, the mural will be 500 square feet. To create it, Freeman plans to paint every day, since it takes a good bit of practice and muscle memory to paint on such a scale. Weather permitting, she paints outside. “I’m looking forward to working on my tan,” she jokes. The mural will be temporary, but before it comes down, she and fellow artists will celebrate its completion with a dance choreographed by Ashevillean Garth Grimball and a dozen contemporary dancers from troupes around town. To raise funds for the project, she and Grimball created a Kickstarter video in early March and reached their goal of $3,000 just 27 days after posting it online. The show on the 21st will start at dusk and last about 45 minutes, Freeman says.

Though she has experience painting murals, this is the first time Freeman has painted on such a large scale and in such a public way in Asheville. Last winter, she joined a team of artists to create a mural during the infamous Art Basel Art fair in Miami, Florida. For the mural, Freeman painted a large ambling mass of organic shapes that served as a backdrop to painters Dustin Spagnola and Ishmael, who painted images of gas cans and Frida Kahlo. “The greatest street artists [including Shepard Fairey, Swoon, and Barry McGee] were all in a three-block radius of each other,” Freeman says. “It was so amazing to not only learn about mural painting but to be in the company of these artists.”

Freeman was born in Durham, North Carolina, and then moved to Arkansas, then Memphis. In 2006, she enrolled at UNC-Asheville, intending to get an arts and foreign language degree, but took creative writing classes instead. She is still an avid writer. Her abstract painting style embodies the non-linear aspect of her creative self, she says, while her fictional writings employ a more literal form of expression.

At the moment, she’s stuck on pink. Freeman has boxes of Prismacolor and Coptic markers of every rosy hue imaginable. In the corner of her studio, an old palette of dried paint looks a Bazooka bubble gum explosion, with all its shades of reds and pinks. “I needed to give myself some boundaries, so I gave myself a limited color palette to work within,” she says, noting that she hated pink as a girl. “Maybe now I’m embracing my inner princess.”

So what’s in store for one of the River District’s rising stars? She’s going big. “My goal is to just make everything bigger,” says Freeman. “I want to focus on public art, murals, and having more interaction with the public.”

Watch Molly Rose Freeman at work on her mural in the River Arts District during daylight hours until May 15. Then, she and Garth Gimball’s Asheville Rites Project dance performance, with music by Michael Libramento, is set for May 21 at 117 Riverside Drive at dusk. (Rain date is May 28.) The project is supported by RiverLink, Arts2People, Asheville Mural Project and Asheville Ballet. To see more of Molly’s work, go to www.mollyrosefreeman.com.

Carnivalesque: A Carnival & Interactive Installation from Steve Spurgeon

2011-04-27T12:54:00.000-07:00

Steve Spurgeon, whose able hands built the panels for our project, is launching his own project this Saturday--Carnivalesque: A Carnival & Interactive Installation, an outdoor event across from Pink Dog Creative and the Artery on Depot Street in the River Arts District of Asheville, NC. Attractions include a bicycle-powered ferris wheel, Hammerstrike, slot car racing, a Tunnel of Love, and more. In lieu of traditional carnival tickets, you will have the chance to win, lose, and redeem live goldfish (provided.) This event is FREE and open to the public. It will run from 7-10 PM, but get there early for your pick of the best fish. Molly will be running the "ticket" booth, so stop in, say hi, and support a great public art event in the River Arts District!

For more info, check out the Facebook event here.

Fresh Snaps

2011-04-26T17:31:00.000-07:00

Our new documentarian extraordinaire, Mavis Clapp, took these stills yesterday at the project site:

The weather has been clear (and HOT) the past four days, and Molly is making great progress on the mural. As of this evening, every shape has been laid down on the panels, so it's patterns and fills from here on out! Garth is rehearsing dancers every day and will be getting costumes for the performance this week. Hopefully soon we will have sneak peeks to show you....

Two Weeks

2011-04-24T16:08:00.000-07:00

It's been two weeks since we first started building the panels, and this is what has come along so far:

Garth Grimball

2011-04-24T07:21:00.001-07:00

Garth in front of the mural yesterday:

Color Blocking

2011-04-22T13:03:00.001-07:00

All of the major colors are now blocked out on the panels:

From here on out it's patterns and details!

The last couple weeks have been a whirlwind, and we'd like to thank a few people in particular for their help: Steve Spurgeon, Corinne Longman, Ian Wilkinson, Pattiy Torno, Jenny Bowen, Diane Ruggiero, Stephanie Carver, Morgan Asbell, and the River Arts District Artists.

Here's a shot of the mural from Roberts Street, at the bottom of Chicken Hill between Phil Mechanic and the church:

If you are in Asheville, come stop by the space tomorrow @ 117 Riverside Drive for RiverLink's Earth Day festivities and get an up-close-and-personal look at what we're working on.

RED

2011-04-19T14:05:00.001-07:00

After a minor delay the past few days, we are back in action:

A New Shape

2011-04-16T13:43:00.000-07:00

After we finished building the panels from the original specs, we decided to go one step further to give the shape a little more thrust. Steve Spurgeon, above, building the triangular frames for the added panels. The final product:

Ian Wilkinson, director of the Asheville Mural Project, came by to drop off supplies and stayed to help prime the panels.

And Molly started painting on Friday!

We're Up!

2011-04-12T19:28:00.000-07:00

Thanks to our resident expert on all things 3-dimensional, Steve Spurgeon!

The Next Step!

2011-04-08T10:20:00.000-07:00

We did it! We reached our fundraising goal with the help of over forty people--friends, family, artists, neighbors, people who believe in this project as much as we do. So, on to the next step!

We officially made our first trip today to buy supplies for the project, and we break ground, so to speak, on Sunday. Steve Spurgeon and Molly Rose Freeman will be at the space that morning constructing panels for the mural. If you're in Asheville, stop by (or drive by) to see their progress, say hi, bring them coffee. Painting officially starts Friday, May 15!

Thank you again to RiverLink, Arts2People, Asheville Mural Project, River Arts District Artists, CURVE studios & garden, and the Fred Moss Charitable Trust for their support.

we need your help!

2011-03-20T11:14:00.000-07:00

alright, we have a little over two weeks to raise the rest of the funding for our project, and we need your help! donate a few dollars, send the link to people you know, help us get the word of the project out there.

thank you thank you thank you to those who have already donated (see the sponsors listed on the left), we're on our way!

postcard design and newspaper article

2011-03-16T14:30:00.000-07:00

round one of print materials! molly will have these postcards at the opening for her show, "pattern on pattern." the reception is at eclipse salon and gallery, 16 wall street, asheville, NC from 7-10 PM.

carol motsinger wrote a great article about the project in today's asheville citizen-times! you can read about the artists and ideas behind the project here.

kickstarter page

2011-03-06T17:34:00.000-08:00

please help support this project!!

Asheville Rites Project

2011-03-04T08:18:00.000-08:00

Asheville Rites Project: Outline

We want to create a performance art event that will be totally free and open to the public in the River Arts District of Asheville, NC. The space for the event is the RiverLink Sculpture and Performance Plaza, an outdoor venue along the banks of the French Broad River. Molly Rose Freeman will install a series of wall-sized panels (built by local artist Steve Spurgeon of Pink Dog Creative) in the space, and over the course of a month will paint an abstract mural to act as a backdrop for a dance piece that Garth Grimball will choreograph.

Garth's piece will involve fifteen or so dancers from various companies and studios throughout Asheville and the surrounding areas. His choreography will draw inspiration from Jerome Robbins' "Jazz Opus," as well as specifically from Molly's mural and an original score composed by local musician Michael Libramento. The score will be played live during the performance.

The overall themes for this project are Springtime, rites of passage, and the reemergence of life and color that are associated with the season. Springtime by nature is a celebration, and this project seeks to channel that energy into an art event that the whole community can experience. The colors will be vibrant, the movements will be lively, the music will be fresh. We want this project to be an occasion to explore and share in the vitality of the season.

We already have incredible support from RiverLink, Arts2People, Asheville Mural Project, and Asheville Ballet. What we need now is your help to fund the cost of paint, painting equipment, materials to construct the panels, costumes and shoes for dancers, and publicity so we can get the word of this project out to as many people as possible.

We have so much passion for this project, and we relish the opportunity to bring more public art and collaboration into our community. Please help us bring this idea to life!

Helpful links

RiverLink: http://www.riverlink.org

Arts2People: http://www.arts2people.org

Asheville Mural Project: http://www.arts2people.org/amp.html

Asheville Ballet: http://www.ashevilleballet.com

River Arts District: http://www.riverartsdistrict.com

Bios

Garth Grimball, a graduate of UNC-Asheville, is a dancer and choreographer with the Asheville Ballet. His work has been featured at the North Carolina Dance Festival, The North Carolina Dance Alliance and Choreographer's Showcase, and he recently produced his first full-length ballet at NC Stage Company in Asheville.

Molly Rose Freeman is a graduate of both UNC-Asheville and the University of North Carolina School of the Arts Visual Arts program. She is an artist at Roots Studios in the River Arts District and, most recently, collaborated on a mural in association with Art Basel: Miami Beach 2010. Check out Molly's website here.

Michael Libramento, also a graduate of UNC-Asheville, is a musician who has played with acts like Ice Cream, Floating Action, The Generationals, Jar-e, Angi West, Jonathan Scales, Cary Fridley, Mind vs. Target, Moses Atwood, and many, many more.