Photos By: Terri Le
Over the weekend, VisArts at Rockville presented a one-day exhibition called Six Degrees. It opened and closed on Sunday, April 22, 2012 in the second floor Kaplan Gallery. Curated by AERU (Artist Emergency Relief Unit), the show featured the work of: Carolyn Case, Amanda Burnham, Sue Wrbican, Maggie Gourlay, Jenee Mateer, Jan Razauskas, Julie Jankowski, Allyn Massey, Janna Rice, Calla Thompson, Lillian Bayley Hoover, Dawn Gavin, Ryan Hoover, Stewart Watson and Tim Horjus.
The title for the exhibition refers to the idea of "six degrees of separation"1, in which the group of artists and their pieces connect and intersect through different pathways. To create the exhibition, Dawn Gavin (Associate Professor of Art at University of Maryland and artist) sent out an email to friends calling for artwork for an emergency pop-up exhibition at VisArts. The response was immediate and generous. Within a day, 14 artists promised work for the show. The group of artists connected to Dawn Gavin and Susan Main (VisArts Curatorial Consultant) through a variety of intersecting pathways. The artwork arrived at the gallery without the curators knowing what pieces the artists would deliver. Painting, drawing, printmaking, photography and sculpture were represented. Despite the range of media and the autonomous selection, the exhibition was astonishingly cohesive both formally and conceptually.
Although the exhibition was brief, Six Degrees was admired and appreciated by our patrons, visitors, and staff members.
1Six degrees of separation refers to the idea that everyone is on average approximately six steps away, by way of introduction, from any other person on Earth, so that a chain of, "a friend of a friend" statements can be made, on average, to connect any two people in six steps or fewer. (source: Wikipedia.org)
