Watauga Democrat 2-15-23
BOONE — The Watauga Art Council opened its center at February’s First Friday with an art show featuring Mark Edwards and Kwame Crawford.
Returning from a hiatus instigated by the COVID, the Watauga Arts Council celebrated First Friday at the Arts Center, unlike their previous location on King Street, from 5 p.m. to
Mark Edwards has been an artist since the age 3, with encouragement and inspiration from his father who taught at Appalachian University for a large part of Edward’s childhood as an art professor.
Currently, Edwards is working on an interactive sculpture that utilizes 49 separate sculptures. Two prototype sculptures were featured at the gallery that will be included in the final project.
“A set of a possible 49 different sculptures that will improvise music with each other, and with humans… They’ll have microphones that work on each side of the sculpture. So, they’ll hear and be able to determine what direction that sounds coming from. Say you go to the gallery and you approach it and you’re with your mom and you’re chatting, these things are gonna be listening to you and respond to that. But more importantly, they’re going to be responding to each other,” Edwards said. “As you walk through the gallery, the sound passes from machine to machine and it surrounds you and maybe it goes around like a flock of birds and they call that murmuration.”
As people filed in, you could hear the two prototype sculptures humming to each other. Edwards hopes to accomplish the rest of the sculptures by the end the year, but realistically expects it to take longer due to the complex coding of the sculptures.
WAC is continuing to seek additional locations for a more spacious community gallery.
“Our experience at the King Street Art Collective exposed the need for a large exhibition space for us to showcase a wider variety of work, large-scale exhibits, and community events. We will continue to look for creative ways to partner with businesses and agencies to showcase our incredible community of artists,” said Amber Bateman, executive director of WAC.
Both Crawford and Edwards will have their gallery’s up until the end of the month at the Watauga Art Center.