PRESS RELEASE:
London District Studios (The London), opening 13 February 2016, is the anchor to Asheville’s emerging London Design District, which will include Burial Brewery’s new campus and other entertainment, art and design related business. Located at 8 London Rd at the intersection of London Rd and Sweeten Creek in the Biltmore Village, The London houses the working studios and a retail home store offering lifestyle driven furnishings including original art, upholstery, home wares, artifacts and curiosities. The London will offer arts and craft classes and host a monthly art opening featuring a different artist the first Friday of each month beginning Friday, 4 March 2016.
The Art Opening 4 March 2016 will feature new works of artist Kehren Barbour. The Series is called the “#postpianoproject”. Art pieces are made using decommissioned, deconstructed antique American pianos. In these pieces, the instruments are given new life as material used in collages, ready-mades, and site-specific, public-accessible, instrument installation-art pieces.
The material and collages are based on the marriage of folk and fine arts. Context and composition creates the story and song on these authorless instrument/installations.
Barbour (installation artist) is installing a unique site-specific installation/instrument to be played by evening attendees. A similar instrument was installed at the 2014 Black Mountain College ReHappening and the 2014 Moog Fest. It is a polytonic stringed instrument sometimes called: “a piano without the piano”.The London will house the studios of:
Kehren Barbour, a trained studio artist (BFA, 2003) interested in issues of space and environment. Returning to Appalachia after making her way to Bay Area theater scene, Barbour earned her MA in Appalachian Studies and Sustainable Development in 2013. Mother to a young son, Barbour makes artwork at her studio in Gerton, NC and at The London and makes home in Asheville, NC.
Owner, Leslie Rowland, a professional artist of 20 years focusing on paintings, art furniture and reimagined artifacts. Rowland’s original and reproduced works in mediums such as art giclees and fabric are sold worldwide. Rowland enjoys creating rich textures, pattern and color in her paintings, breathing new life into vintage furniture pieces, and repurposing artifacts such as car doors and artillery shells into unexpected and often humorous works of art
Wade Oppliger, who has spent his career in textiles–in men’s fashion as well as home furnishings, in particular as part of companies who created the “lifestyle furniture” category that has become the industry standard. Oppliger will help curate the furniture collection at The London featuring some of his newest designs.
Interested in images of London District Studios and its resident artists and designers please see The London’s Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/londondistrictstudios/
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