The Urban Egg Project

The urban environment is in desperate need of rejuvenation. Thousands of buildings are left abandoned and are magnets for all sorts of criminal and undesirable activity. Where there once was prosperity now is crime and hardship. When organizations and individuals choose to rehabilitate these rundown buildings an entire neighborhood can be converted into a thriving community.

I am creating a sculpture that recycles materials from the city to symbolize the need for the revitalization of these neighborhoods. I am playing off the brick of the city and the history of urban architecture by constructing a 9 x 6 x 6 foot brick egg. The brick would represent urban brick construction and the egg form would symbolize the recycling or rebirth of urban environments. My Urban Egg Project would look as if the life growing within will one day hatch and provide the energy that will rejuvenate the city.

The surface of the bricks will be ground down with a diamond wheel grinder. This will make the bricks smooth and curved to look like a living brick egg. The egg will be placed in the lobby of the Gershman Hall building on Broad Street in Philadelphia. The tight space of the lobby appears to be an incubator protecting the egg and the spirit of rehabilitation growing within the brick shell. The space will also make the egg look as if it is growing larger and taking over the space that is usually used for people as they enter and exit the building. Now this egg is taking over the space as it continues to grow.

Check out Mary Ellen from America's Got Talent. She went to my church when I was little.

Hey check out this review.

Weekly Update – Gold Mountain Redux

By roberta | August 25, 2010

With an American flag at its heart and a jaunty colored brick road on the floor, Abigail DeVille’s Gold Mountain should be upbeat. But the dark, cave-like installation at Marginal Utility is a sorrowful piece, a shrine almost. And the flag and crazy brick road are degraded symbols. Gold Mountain is a hell on earth.

Abigail DeVille, Gold Mountain, at Marginal Utility

DeVille’s installation immerses you in dark space where you can imagine scary things happening. Dim lighting from black lights, red lights, and a small tv makes the space both eerie and fiery. Charred sticks poke out aggressively like cave ribs that might impale you. On the floor the tv’s static fuzz is like white ashes of a dead fire. There’s no central focus here. Instead the viewer, like a pilgrim, moves from one spot to another, stopping to contemplate and careful not to lose her footing.

Gold Mountain's tv fuzz, like ashes of a dead fire

The artist painted a tumbling mass of dead birds and bricks on the dark walls. It looks like a whirlwind just passed through. “I use pigeons and crows as stand-ins for people,” DeVille told me.

The artist — who built Gold Mountain on site from material scavenged in Chinatown (including charred sticks from the nearby incinerated Trestle Inn) — spoke also of a Garcia Lorca poem “The Dawn“. Lorca’s poem imagines a New York at dawn that is “Dawn of the Dead” dark — everything but the zombies. The poet envisions columns of mud, a “hurricane of black doves,” “putrescent waters” and “light … buried under chains and noises” — those words could describe the ambiance of DeVille’s piece.

The title refers to the nickname the Chinese gave to California during the 1848 Gold Rush, when many immigrated here seeking their fortunes. (The term also refers ironically to the Chinatowns that were then springing up in San Francisco and elsewhere.) DeVille, a black artist and Yale MFA student, is a fount of information about the Chinese experience in America. At the opening she talked about the Chinese Exclusion Act, miscegenation laws and other harsh treatments doled out, peppering what she said with dates and references like she was as much history teacher as artist.

But Gold Mountain’s ire is aimed at all racial discrimination in America. Discrimination based on race is a part of American history that’s not dealt with four-squarely in history books, although many artists have no fear of the subject. Writers like James Baldwin and Ralph Ellison and artists like DeVille and, to mention just two others, Kara Walker and Hank Willis Thomas, expose the hidden history in ways that foster the discussion it needs.

Here's my final piece for the Summer.

All Done.

That was fun. For the first years here is another video.

This was done as part of Carol Moore's seminar class last summer.

Old Times. Here is a drawing assignment from my first summer.

Some fun pictures in process of my work.