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Cairo, Illinois: Photographs & Enamels SARAH PERKINS & GWEN WALSTRAND
November 15, 2018 - December 21, 2018
Cairo, Illinois: Photographs & Enamels by SARAH PERKINS & GWEN WALSTRAND
November 15 – December 21, 2018
COMMUNITY GALLERY
This work is a collaboration, of sorts, by Gwen Walstrand, photographer, and Sarah Perkins, metalsmith and enamelist. The works themselves are not collaborations, but instead are designed to be viewed together in order to have an impact and a narrative that neither could possess on its own. We are artists working in different media but with the same subject matter — the town of Cairo, Illinois. Cairo is a unique place with both rich and tragic histories, a visual showcase of all that is best and worst in our American history.
Driving through what remains of Cairo it appears to an outsider that most of the town, along with its historic buildings and extensive business district, was abandoned within the same year, as nearly all the structures are in the same state of decay. In actuality, many
events and circumstances caused the precipitous decline of Cairo. The town’s history includes booming success as a shipping town at the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio rivers, elegant hotels and mansions, and an impressive business district. The more recent history is one of race riots, appalling violence, multiple lynchings, domination by white supremacist groups, and eventual boycotts of local businesses by African Americans. The 1920s city of over 15,000 people now is home to under 3,000 people, hundreds of strangely patched up, decaying buildings, and a handful of struggling businesses.
The enameled bowls are a response to not only the reality of present day Cairo, but also to the images of it that were chosen by the photographer. The work seen together offers insight into the working processes of the artists and the choices made by different viewers. The photographer gathers and selects visual material, the metalsmith/enamelist edits the material again and transforms the flat images into three dimensions, but on a functional form that speaks to basic human requirements. The photographs, as both independent images and references for the bowls, are aesthetic explorations of Cairo but with an attempt to consider more deeply the complexity of human histories that form such places.
