Weeping Clear Liquid
By Brian Crean

What do you get when you open a random novel and blindly point to the text in the middle of one of the pages? Well… if you’re Millicent Greason, the owner of Urban Artware and one of the founding members of the SEED Collective in Winston-Salem, then you get “weeping clear liquid.”

 Although it sounds like just a longwinded way to say “tears”, for the month of May, it is also something else. Starting Friday night, will become the theme and inspirational starting point for an interesting group exhibition. It’s essentially a show by a group of artists who seem to like making art as though they are playing around with a magic 8 ball. Sound weird? Yep…it pretty much is.

But, it’s also a solid show with some engaging images to take in. From what I’ve learned while getting reacquainted with Trade Street these last few months, SEED artists are an accomplished and diverse bunch. And they approach their work from quite a few different angles. For example, Patick Harris is the group’s punk-rock pop artist. Infl uenced at a young age by the sound that would become a way of life and a religion to a generation of young rebels, Harris depicts his illustrative portraits with a slick attention to detail. He also marries the concept of weeping to a few different emotions: anger, love and veneration.

“Tears of Saint Iggy” is his homage to the man usually considered the godfather of punk, Mr. Lust for Life himself Iggy Pop. Totally different visually, but similar in that he likens his artmaking to spirituality, is the work of Dave Urena. His photocollages are a kind of “leap of faith” into another dimension. Well considered and impeccably arranged, Urena’s work often emphasizes light and shadow, and he’s created two new pieces for the show. Clark Whittington, on the other hand, rather than creating new work, decided to pull out two pieces from his own personal vault. Created in 1999 and 2000, “This is About More” and “Collectibles on Display” are a pair of assemblage pieces mounted under recycled windows.

Depicting old LPs, dog photos and army men, the works draw you in. And although there is not a lot of weeping going on, they are pretty interesting to explore. Alex Norwood and Kendall E. Doub are the collective’s two abstract painters. Norwood created a triptych of swirling greens and blues especially for the show, and Doub has created a diptych. When I asked them about their work, each of them said that linking the theme to their creative process felt natural, perhaps even fl uid.

Which brings us to our last featured SEED artist in the show, Woodie Anderson. Working in mixed media, fi ber and found fabrics, Anderson has created two large pieces. Her weeping quilt and hanging mobile are spacious textural studies, almost like installations that entice you to walk into and around them. Similar to the title of the exhibition itself and Greason’s mysterious method of choosing the it, the work is tactile and makes you want to reach into it and fi nd a descriptive phrase to describe it. Something random and evocative. Something illogical. Something kind of like… weeping clear liquid. !