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September Issue
2010
Appalachian
State University in Boone, NC, Offers Installations by Dan Smith
Appalachian State University in Boone, NC, is presenting the exhibit, MANinfested DESTINY: From Boone to Boon A Re-interpretation by Dan Smith, on view in Gallery A of the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts through Nov. 5, 2010.
Appalachian State University has invited artist Dan Smith to design and install a site specific environmentally and historically based exhibition. Smith's innovative mixed media installations will feature themes based on the life of American pioneer and our city's namesake, Daniel Boone - themes that continue to resonate almost two centuries after Boone's death.
Since 1987, while earning his MFA at the University of South Carolina, Smith has been creating a body of work entitled Extended Sites, projecting himself into randomly selected out-of-doors environments across the United States. His first series Man/Land focused on the relationship between human beings and nature and combined rational as well as intuitive discovery relationships he continues to investigate in the Turchin Center exhibit.
In 2007, 400 years after the founding of the first English settlement in America, in Jamestown, VA, Smith presented InCarNation: The Hampton Roads 400. This site specific installation served as a contemporary reinterpretation of the 17th century explorer John Smith. After moving to the Foothills of North Carolina, Smith became captivated with a new larger-than-life explorer Daniel Boone.
Moving into the 18th century with Boone has provided opportunities for the artist to investigate aspects of the American Revolution, the Great Awakening, the Enlightenment, global conflict, new technology and sustainable development. MANInfested Destiny: From Boone to Boon incorporates photographs, paintings, natural and manmade objects with historical documentation.
Smith envisions his third component of a trilogy working with 19th century characters from a "Westward-minded" theme will involve Chief Joseph and the last Native American Wars. This Nez Perce leader has personal significance because of the artist's Nez Perce ancestry.
Smith's art has been featured in over 100 exhibitions throughout the country including the prestigious National Academy Museum of Art in New York City; the DC Art Center in Washington, DC; the Taos Art Museum in Taos, NM; The Academy of Art in San Francisco, CA; and Virginia Commonwealth's Anderson Gallery, in Richmond, VA.
Smith is a graduate of BFA and MFA studio art programs at East Carolina University and the University of South Carolina's, respectively. Before moving to Hickory, NC, in Dec. 2003, he spent over 15 years teaching studio art and humanities at colleges in South Carolina and Virginia, including Claflin College in Orangeburg, SC; Hampton University, in Hampton, VA; and Virginia Commonwealth University, in Richmond, VA.
During the exhibition on Saturdays Sept. 4 & Oct. 2, from 10am-noon, Smith will lead free walks around Boone. The walks will begin and end in his Turchin Gallery exhibition, and will also include: Belk Library; the Boone Statue; the Boone Monument; the Greenhouse; the Post Office Mural; and Smith's photographs of contemporary residents representing the "many hats" of Boone at High Country Press.
For further information
check our NC Institutional Gallery listings, call the Center at
828/262-3017 or visit (www.turchincenter.org).
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