In July of 2008, Josh Pavlacky and Zach Davis began
remodeling their garage, clearing their overgrown backyard,
roto-tilling the connecting alley, and transforming their home and
surrounding unused land into Appendix Project Space. You’ll find their
homebrewed garage gallery down the south alley between 26th and 27th on
NE Alberta.
In starting Appendix, Pavlacky explains, “We weren’t interested in
creating a gallery, but a discussion.” And not just a discussion on
art, but also a discussion on unused areas in the urban environment.
Rather than leaving the decisions to city planners, Pavlacky argues for
a bottom-up approach. He believes a community’s members should turn its
abandoned areas into venues that serve common interests. The Appendix
Project Space is Pavlacky’s vision realized.
The current installations by fiber artist Maggie Casey were built
specifically to the dimensions of the Appendix garage. Tied between
rafters, walls, and floor, “Drawing Study” occupies half of the project
space and is composed of fishing line, wire, electrical tape, frayed
yarn, and neon ribbons. Casey intended this larger installation to look
like a storm. Suggesting no particular vantage point, string ladders
stand within tangles of overlapping lines. “The ladders represent hope
in a moment of confusion,” Casey explains, and the sporadic lines mimic
the way “things happen all at once.”
The most intriguing piece of the show, “Drywall Tapestry,” is
embedded directly into a wall. Anchoring wire and string protrusions
with mounds of joint compound (drywall mud), Casey pressed wire mesh
into the drying surface, recreating the texture you’d find on the
backside of a wall patch. The globs and slopes of textured drywall mud
appear waterlogged, suggesting landscapes of corrosion. From a side
view, the wires and strings rise from the wall like empty mountain
ranges, each skeletal ridge a window into the next.
Maggie Casey’s installation will be up through May 16. Info on
future Appendix workshops and openings can be found at appendixspace.com.
Correction: Appendix Space started in July of 2008, not 2007. Also, apologies to Zack Davis, I misspelled his name in this article– it’s spelled with a “ck,” not a “ch.” Sorry to all for the bad info!