It started out as a whisper of an idea: What would happen if some of the Triad’s best artists got their hands on our newspaper boxes? And it really was just idle talk there in our publisher, Charles Womack’s office. But then I dropped the idea on my friend Eric Beerbower, proprietor of Lyndon Street Artworks in downtown Greensboro and one of the most visible artists in town. Beerbower bubbled with excitement at the idea, and it wasn’t long before he pitched it to Millicent Greason- Spivak of Winston-Salem’s Urban Artware and SEED
Gallery. And the next thing I knew, we had 10 of our newspaper boxes primed with gray paint and delivered into the hands of some of our most notorious creative minds. With that, the YES! Weekly Outside the Box Project was on its feet and running — all we had to do was monitor 10 artists and impose a two-month deadline, which was actually a littler bit easier than I thought it would be.
The results are amazing. And now the time has come. The boxes are in, and before we install them in various locations on Triad city streets, we’ll gather them all in one place to laud the artists who made them, shower them with alcohol and prizes, and possibly decide which one is the best of them all.
The best part: This event is free and open to the public as part of Greensboro’s First Friday Gallery Hop. We invite art lovers from all over the Triad to come out to Lyndon Street and check out the humble newspaper box as re-imagined by these cool, creative folks.
And then look for them out on the streets before the summer is out.
Patrick Harris
Where you show: seeD
Collective/Urban Artware;
Name of work: “We’re All Mad Here”
What
were you thinking: “My idea was I was doing the best of my favorite
paintings, revisiting them redoing and re-envisioning them in a fresh
and newer way.”
Millicent
Greasons-Pivak
Where you show: seeD
Collective/Urban Artware
Name of work: “Don’t Believe everything
You Read (Unless you Read It in YES! Weekly)
What were you thinking:
“I love collage and mod-podge, and I’ve done his same sort of thing
to two different refrigerators and when this product came up I was
like, ‘Yeah., I’m gonna do the mod-podge.’ Over the years I’ve collected
all these cheesy newspapers — they’re just beautiful. And so I just though
they would be perfect.”
Mark Graves
Where you show: seeD
Collective/Urba Artware; www.technogaia.com
Name of work: “Beer Box Polka”
What were you thinking: “I’ve
had a gang of friends collecting beer caps for me for about five years
now I had three five-gallon buckets full to do something with, and it
lent itself to it. I thought, This is a good use of beer caps. It’s
weatherproof, it’sdurable.”
Hillary Hempstead
Where you show: Urban
Artware/ seeD Gallery
Name of work: “sleep Deprivation”
What were
you thinking: “I had a baby about 6.5 months ago. That is all I
have to say about that. With having that obstacle I received this
project in a strange, roundabout way and so I began. I had 15-minute
spurts, bugs galore and some crazy weather to contend with. This is the
thing that grew out of it. literally consisting of all my favorite
artists, ideas and images, the box holds my collection.”
Kendall Doub
Where you show: Urban
Artware/ seeD Gallery, among others; www.kendalldoub.com
Name of
work: “The contempo Box”
What were you thinking: “I thought
about YES! Weekly, and especially as a graphic designer. Your logo,
that’s where the palette came from — black, white red — I wanted to feed
off that. It’s color theory: color is part of the subject matter in
abstract work; it determines whether the piece is successful or not.”
Devon Reed
Where you show: elsewhere;
www.elsewhereelsewhere.org
Name of box: “electric Dreams”
What were you thinking: “The
box was painted with leftover material from the elsewhere tool shed in
bright nostalgic colors referencing the museum collection. The geometric
compositions signify the liveliness and imaginative activity that take
place at elsewhere and throughout downtown Greensboro.”
Scott Harris
Where you show: lyndon
street Artworks, marshall Gallery, among others; www.designstudios.com
Name of work: Untitled What were you thinking: “I just
like it to reflect my personal style of work, kind of a fun thing to
reflect on my own work in something like that.”
Marshall Lakes
Where you show: Vintage
301, Greensborough Coffee Shop, Lyndon Street Artworks, among others, www.marshalllakes.com
Name
of work: Untitled
What were you thinking: “Eric [Beerbower]
had mentioned he wanted me to do something kind of comic-booky. I
started thinking about fantasy and comic books — I guess I was in kind
of a space mood — so I did this kind of fantasy space thing. So its got
spaceships, troopers, cyborgs, some fantasy elements to it. It’s all
sorts of space stuff. It’s space and fantasy mixed together. It should
be way different from anyone else’s.”
John Gibbs
Where you show: CVA
Gallery, the View on Elm, Vintage 301 among others; www.gibbsgallery.comName of
box: Untitled
What were you thinking: “It’s kind of a city
scene. I was thinking, ‘What is YES! Weekly?’ I opened up the paper
looking for ideas. And what’s more Greensboro than the skyline? And the
[articles] that are in every issue, I put them in the clouds.”
Eric Beerbower
Where you show: Lyndon
Street Artworks, downtown Greensboro; www.needsculpture.com
Name of
box: “Super YES!”
What were you thinking: “Superhero, man.
It’s self-explanatory.”
