Gift of the Artist

Created during a 2006 artist residency at Davidson College and exhibited in the accompanying exhibition, Force of Nature. The Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art at the College of Charleston and the Van Every/Smith Galleries at Davidson College organized this exhibition and residency program, in collaboration with the College of Art and Architecture at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte, McColl Center for Visual Art, Winthrop University, Clemson Architecture Center in Charleston, and the Sumter County Gallery of Art. The residencies and installations occurred in the fall of 2006, with a capstone exhibition at the Sumpter County Gallery of Art in April 2007. Funding for this collaboration was provided by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Henry Luce Foundation, and the Asian Cultural Council.

For the 2006 installation at Davidson College, Abe created one thousand graphite drawings of clouds. First, building up the surface with graphite, then erasing layers to varying degrees, he created a visual reference to complement the experience of hearing the clouds in his installation. He then created a walk-in sphere that contained the sounds of clouds he recorded high above Lake Norman. Projected on the wall directly across from the “cloud sphere” was a digital animation of cloud drawings.

The artwork retained in the collection of Davidson College includes one thousand cloud drawings and the accompanying animation.

Bibliography

Thomas, Brad & Mark Sloan. Force of Nature. Van Every/Smith Galleries and Halsey Institute for Contemporary Art, 2006.