The exhibit is the first of a series of innovative individual and collective window installations by URI Art Professors Bob Dilworth, Aldridge Hansberry, Brian O’Malley, Kim Salerno, Zoey Stites, and Blue Wade viewed through the URI Providence Campus Windows on Union and Washington Streets.
Origin is the beginning, a place where one is born, the placed where one comes from, the place where one calls home. It is the starting point in every life. A cultural, spiritual, mental, or psychological location, origin is the DNA building block that forms individual character and gives reality to ones existence. It is where every life is introduced to the world and by extension, the universe. It is organic – a life force. Origin is where one gains a sense of self and remains a mirror on which each individual is reflected with the world as a changing backdrop. It is the event through which each person makes him/herself a physical reality. It is the “no zone” that each experience as s/he transitions from one existence to the next – a staging place to prepare for that that is to come, to infinitum.
Although it is referred to as a location or place Origin is neither here nor there. Even though one may know that place where s/he began in this world it is only that, a location. It is our belief that one’s origin marks a much earlier time not necessarily defined by physical reality, that each origin is unique, and that each person is shaped by this event. Certainly, other factors become influential as one’s life progresses into political, social, economic, and cultural realities. But there is a fundamental law that governs how these realities are accepted and interpreted. This exhibition attempts to address how each of us, no matter how different, brings his/her own reality to the world, creating a collective and coherent view of life. Some may see this as another way of addressing the collective human experience. And some ways they will be correct. However, in another way this exhibition represents views on how we become who we are. But more importantly, how those differences, collaged and layered, become the means for expanding and strengthening life.
THE ORIGINS GROUP, believes that the only way new and authentic things can arise in the world is by identifying a cultural space in which to create. That space has as much to do with a positive and honest view of internalizing and interpreting the world as it does with any physical dimension that may be brought into its definition. That space is the “no zone” where the beginning and the end meets, where all creative activity takes place, where time and space are indistinguishable, where paradox, contradiction and irony are allies with harmony, balance and symmetry. ORIGINS believes that art is global, that it speaks to and for all humanity, that it comes from a place deep within each of us. That our origin, in its distinct singularity, is the only place where art finds authenticity, and that our origin is the only place from which it can be made. It is this message we wish to voice.
For more information, please contact Steven Pennell, artist-in-residence, spennell@etal.uri.edu, 401-277-5206.
Hours M-TH 9-9, F 9-4, (closed Saturday & Sunday)
Call 277-5206 for more information.
URI Providence Campus Gallery is located in the 1st and 2nd floor lobbies, 80 Washington St. Providence RI 02903