Carrie Cox, artist
For the month of May, Wedge Studios will host a collaborative art show in the Spotlight Gallery honoring artist and friend Carrie Cox, who died in March. Each artist has chosen unfinished work of Cox’s and will complete the piece with their own creation and include Cox’s original work within it. All pieces are priced at $275 with all proceeds going to Cox’s family. A reception will be held Saturday, May 13, from 3–6 p.m.
This Land. Mark Bettis and Carrie Cox, artists
Cox was an imaginative and prolific artist working in paper and mixed media. The community of artists at Wedge Studios and beyond is deeply impacted by her loss. “We are honoring what a gift it was to be able to connect with someone who moved through the world with such grace and resilience during times of adversity,” says Callie Ferraro, who used to share a studio with Cox. “Carrie was always thinking of others before herself.” During the pandemic, Ferraro and Cox started a socially distanced collaboration, passing a work back and forth and working on it independently. Ferraro’s piece in this exhibit will be from the series she and Cox completed together. “Each collaboration in this show is a small illustration of her positive, lifelong impact on anyone she came in contact with,” says Ferraro. “I can’t think of a better way to celebrate Carrie’s life than with other artists making collaborations with her unfinished pieces. Carrie loved being alive and the art at this show is the evidence of that.”
Emily Yagielo, a fused glass artist in Riverview Station, has struggled with completing her piece for the show. “Ironically, Carrie would be the first person I would talk to about just such a circle I’ve been spinning in my head,” Yagielo says. “We’d have gone to get coffee. She’d have bought a baked good that caught her eye and then insist I eat half. We would sit and talk and lose track of what hour it was.” Yagielo says she isn’t sure that any artist can “finish” the work of another in an authentic way. “I think, maybe, it’s about the spirit of the collaboration rather than the finished work,” she says. “Something you can’t name, can’t speak aloud. Something maybe you can catch out of the corner of your eye. The spirit of the endeavor rather than the thing itself.”
Rachel Klecker Clegg remembers Cox as a passionate and supportive friend who loved not only making art but encouraging other artists. To complete her work for the show, Clegg pulled a few sheets of marbled paper and feather prints from Cox’s progress work table. It reminded her of a conversation she had with Cox about the artistic idea of an aerial landscape. “The marbled paper looked like the mesas and water channels of the southwestern US,” she says. “I started drawing in the white space of the paper without a set plan for a finished piece. Perhaps the finished look of a piece is not the most important thing. I sense that the act of making and sharing, not being hindered by trying new things is the heart of collaborating with Carrie.”
The Spotlight Gallery is on the second floor of the Wedge Studios at 129 Roberts Street, Asheville. For more information, visit WedgeStudioArtists.com.
