About the Exhibition
Elevate at 21c presents temporary exhibitions of works by artists living and working in the communities surrounding each 21c Museum Hotel property. Elevate provides hotel guests with unique access to the work of notable regional artists, while featuring their work in the context of 21c’s contemporary art space. To view these works, please stop by the front desk to arrange access to the vitrines on guest room floors.
On view from October 2019-October 2021, Elevate at 21c Durham presents works by artists Heather Gordon, Clarence Heyward, Tim Lytvinenko, Shelby Scattergood, Stacy Lynn Waddell, and Ollie Wagner.
Shelby Scattergood (American)
Battered [Detail], 2015. Archival Ink Print on Phototex (Original medium: Colored pencil).
Control, 2018. Archival Ink Print on Phototex (Original medium: Colored pencil, bar codes from food packaging, and artisan paper).
Eat, You’ll Feel Better, 2019. Archival Ink Print on Phototex (Original medium: Colored pencil, soda can sequins, artisan paper, and acrylic paint).
My current work deals with the complex nature of eating disorders—most specifically, Binge Eating Disorder (B.E.D.). Despite being the most common eating disorder B.E.D remains greatly misunderstood, often seen as a made-up disease. Through my work I challenge the misconceptions of B.E.D and bring light to this complicated illness. Battered, created shortly after my B.E.D. diagnosis, deals with the overwhelming nature that disordered eating and mental illness has on one’s life.
-Shelby Scattergood
Shelby Scattergood, a native of Cary, NC, received her BFA from The University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 2016. She currently works and resides in Richmond, VA.
Tim Lytvinenko (American)
Bound, 2015
Table, 2015
Skin, 2015
Ravel, 2015
Archival Ink Prints on Phototex (Original medium: Archival pigment transfer monoprint on archival photo paper using transparency film)
Tim Lytvinenko creates works through hand-printed photo processes that embrace imperfections and chance. His series, Freefall, references change and choice. “When a body in motion has only its own weight acting on it, it’s considered in Freefall,” the artist explains. “In the times when you have no control, you choose how to feel that—terrifying or liberating.”
Ollie Wagner (American)
The Conference of the Birds, 2019. Archival Ink Print on Phototex (Original medium: Transfer with acrylic and graphite on wood panel).
Crystal Lake, 1980, 2017. Archival Ink Print on Phototex (Original medium: Transfer with acrylic on wood panel)
Ollie Wagner’s The Conference of the Birds and Crystal Lake, 1980, are comprised of photo-transfers painted in acrylic and enamel on a foundation of collaged plywood. The subjects of the paintings are taken from home movies and are concerned with memory, family, and the nature of experiences both personal and universal. The Conference of the Birds takes its inspiration from the eleventh-century Persian poem “The Conference of the Birds” by Sufi poet Farid ud-Din Attar. The poem is an allegory; the birds are on a journey in search of the great Simurgh—a mythical bird in Persian literature often compared to a phoenix—who just like pupils of a Sufi master, follow their leader in their search for enlightenment.
Crystal Lake, 1980, is from one of Wagner’s home movies and depicts a woman in a canoe. While the image is personal to Wagner’s own life, it also directly references the ambiguous ending in the 1980 horror movie “Friday the 13th” where the heroine, Alice, falls asleep in a canoe on Crystal Lake before she is attacked by Jason.
Ollie Wagner lives and works in Raleigh, North Carolina. He received his BFA from the Corcoran College of Art and Design and his MFA from School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University.
Clarence Heyward (American)
FIX YOUR FACE, 2018
Saturday Morning (Gabby), 2018
Archival Ink Prints on Phototex (Original medium: Acrylic on canvas)
Ebony, 2018
Archival Ink Prints on Phototex (Original medium: Charcoal on toned paper)
I believe it is important to use persons of color as subjects in my work in homage to my culture. My work investigates cultural truths, challenges stereotypes, and questions identity. My art practice is centered around the visual narration of stories told and untold, of faces and figures who are often dismissed in the realm of fine art. The works feel familiar, yet distinctively different than “traditional works of art.” The work is based on the ideas of normalcy, inclusion, societal interpretations of culture, and race relations. My process is a combination of charcoal drawing and acrylic painting with the inclusion of text as an added layer. The words serve as an introduction or “breadcrumb” leading the viewer into the work.
“Fix your face” is a well-known phrase, passed down from generation to generation in African American culture. These words are like warning shots from our parents. This image captures a brief moment of defiance. For a split second the subject considers, “What if I don’t?” Saturday Morning (Gabby)is a visual representation of a typical weekend in the Heyward household. Pictured is my daughter, Gabby, with her favorite doll in hand, ready to take on the world.
Ebony was created as a visual metaphor for strength and purity. Ebony is a hardwood native to southern India. The “purest” ebony is the darkest and is sourced from trees that are over 150 years old. With the now mirrored image, I see Ebony as a sort of self-reflection.
-Clarence Heyward
Born and raised in Brooklyn, NY, Clarence Heyward is a figurative artist who relocated to North Carolina to study Art Education at North Carolina Central University.
Stacy Lynn Waddell (American)
The Mississippi in Time of War for Francis, Nathaniel, James, Trayvon, Michael, Eric and Me, 1862/1865/2015, 2015. Archival Ink Print on Phototex and Gold Leaf.
My studio practice is an effort to appropriate the power invested in linguistics, historical record and cultural leitmotifs. Each provides a fitting context for me to critique a pervasive lineage of contradictions and misunderstandings that remain relevant. The formal and perceptual issues presented in my work begin as an appropriative gesture. For this commission, I have selected an image from the portfolio of 19th century American lithographers Nathaniel Currier and James Merritt Ives to both critique the intervention and newly minted powers of photography as well as shed light on the grim, ever-present ideological reality that this scene presents.
-Stacy Lynn Waddell
Stacy Lynn Waddell lives and works in Durham, NC. She received her MFA from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2007 and she has received prestigious awards including the Art Matters Grant and the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant.
Heather Gordon (American)
ECHO, 2017. 1” black masking tape and latex paint.
ECHO is part of Gordon’s series The Algorithms for Intimacy, which maps interpersonal relationships through visual and performance art. Using data sets based upon personal information like geographic locations and birthplaces, and times and dates of correspondence between close friends, Gordon creates an elaborate, geometric map.
Heather Gordon received her BFA from the University of Florida in 1990 and her MFA from New Mexico State University in 1995. She lives and works in Durham, NC.
