Brightest Young Things
By KAYLEE DUGAN AND CLARISSA VILLONDO OCTOBER 15, 2019
Last January I spent an hour sitting on the floor of 336 Randolph Place NE, pouring over maps, talking about Kickstarter fundraising and spending an hour or two living in Tim Doud, Caitlin Teal Price and Linn Meyers vision. As they led me down corridors that didn’t have electricity and showed me empty, concrete rooms that were full of light, I could start to see the outline of their dream. A little over a year and a half later, STABLE, an artist studio and exhibition space located right off the Metropolitan Branch Trail in Eckington, is debuting their first gallery exhibition and throwing a grand opening celebration.
Those giant empty concrete rooms are now slices of studio spaces. They’re still full of light, but now they’re also covered with paint and car parts and tobacco leaves and spare piano equipment. Some of them are organized like little mini galleries, while others are jam packed with canvases and equipment. Wandering around the space feels like you’re hopping dimensions and peeking into another world. You never know if you’re going to walk into a room and see giant sculptures made of candy colored car parts or if you’ll be greeted by a carpet composed of egg shell slivers.
In the gallery space, all of that work comes together. Curated by Dr. Jordan Amirkhani, Dialogues is STABLE’s proof of concept. The exhibition, which pulls from every artist in the building, is wildly varied but still manages to feel cohesive. There are typographic installations, paintings inspired by childhood memories and a working piano that plays radio stations when you press down on its keys.
The differences in the work, whether its medium or subject or size, are what make the exhibition exciting. Knowing that some of this work was made under the same roof, that hammering and painting and threading and printing were done simultaneously, like some sort of art based orchestra, imbues the show with a special kind of power.
But there’s nothing quite like roaming the studios. If you can only see the exhibition, it’s still worth a trip to Eckington, but everything really clicks into gear when you see the spaces where the art is made. Watching other artists shoot the shit, pop their heads into each other spaces and share bigger studios makes STABLE’s vision feel alive. This isn’t a WeWork for artists, it’s a mad experiment.
STABLE’s grand opening soiree is Friday October 18.
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