February 2020 • 25 Central Square, Seaside, FL
Endress, Gregg & Elkins | ESCAPE TO CREATE
Join us on Saturday, February 8th, 2020, from 5PM to 8PM for an opening reception at 25 Central Square, in Seaside, Florida, presenting a collection of independent works by Escape to Create artists-in-residence Lisa Endriss, Gail Gregg, and Laura Elkins. The art exhibition is hosted by Anne Hunter Galleries and Amavida Coffee in conjunction with Escape to Create; and, is made possible with the support of the Seaside Arts & Entertainment Corporation. The show will run February 8th – 16th, 2020, as each of the three artists is creating the following, new body of work for her Escape to Create artist residency:
ARTIST COLLABORATION: SPEAKING TO THE POSSIBILITY OF TRANSFORMATION and HUMOR in the 21ST CENTURY
Escape To Create Fellows and visual artists LISA ENDRISS (’05) of Munich, Germany and GAIL GREGG (’02) of New York City first met while MFA students at Vermont College of Fine Arts and have remained international colleagues for decades. LISA ENDRISS is a leading abstract expressionist shown throughout Europe and Brazil. She is included in the Critical Encyclopedia of Contemporary Art and her work is collected by prominent museums in Germany and is found in international corporate and private collections. GAIL GREGG’S geometric abstractions and new figurative collage have been shown in galleries around the world, and are included in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art (NYC), the Mulvane Museum (KS) and the U.S. Art in Embassies program. Her freelance writings have appeared in leading U.S. cultural publications including ARTnews and the New York Times.
Working as a collaborative team during their residency, Endriss and Gregg hope to create fictional environments out of found objects to simulate habitats humans might elect to live in should climate change permanently alter such ecosystems as the Gulf of Mexico. They will be engaging local residents about their environmental concerns and hope to enlist them as participants in a video documentation of their project.
Artist LAURA ELKINS explores the vagaries of life through painting, drawing, sculpture, installation and architecture. She began painting as a child in her hometown of Oxford, MS. Based in Washington, D.C. since 2000, Elkins immerses figures in the events and issues of our times to create contemporary portraits charged with tension of being both the observer and the observed. Her explorations of the human form are heavily influenced by her architecture degree from the University of Virginia.
ELKINS is recipient of a number of prestigious grants and awards including the NEA, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation. Exhibited widely in New York and Washington D.C., Elkins is a fellow of the Virginia Center For The Arts and the Santa Fe Art Institute.
While in Seaside, LAURA ELKINS will focus on plein air self-portraiture that expresses the “terrible beauty” of the earth being lost through extreme climate. Weather permitting, the artist offers a plein air portraiture workshop during her February residency.
For more information visit: http://www.escape2create.org
About Escape to Create
The history of our community-based artist residency is uniquely bound with the history of Seaside, FL, the small coastal town in the panhandle of Florida hailed throughout the world as the birthplace of New Urbanism. Seaside’s founder envisioned a new town built upon revived principles of traditional building with architectural design that would have enormous influence on social, civic, and cultural life. The masthead of this philosophy was The Seaside Institute and with Escape to Create as a core program initiated by homeowners, the arts were the nucleus of civic life as the town emerged from the isolated dunes along Florida’s “forgotten coast.”
Proclaimed “the most astounding design achievement of its era” by Time Magazine in the early ‘90s, Seaside quickly became an international phenomenon for its radical departure from suburban development. Florida’s “forgotten coast” was transformed into Florida’s “Emerald Coast,” the panhandle’s premier destination for family vacationers. During this time of rapid change, The Seaside Institute educated a generation of town planners, architects, and public officials in mixed-use development and sustainable building practices. Today Escape to Create serves as a cultural cornerstone of five New Urban towns located along the quiet coastal road known to millions of summer visitors as simply “30A.”
About Anne Hunter Galleries
Anne Hunter moved to Santa Rosa Beach, Florida, in 2004, and opened cafes and art galleries in the new urbanist communities of Alys Beach, Watercolor, Rosemary Beach and Seaside. In 2010, she moved part-time to SoHo, New York City, to scout emerging artists while becoming a freelance writer. Her art gallery, Anne Hunter Galleries is located at 25 Central Square in Seaside and is dedicated to preserving the primitive, contemporary and modern art of the new urbanism.
For more information: Anne Hunter | 214.641.1048 | anne@annehuntergalleries.com | www.annehuntergalleries.com
About 25 Central Square
CELEBRATE THE ART OF LOVING LIFE within steps of the Gulf of Mexico at 25 Central Square in Seaside, Florida. Known for its colorful purple street-art mural, depicting Vincent Scully, Jr., the American art historian who was a Sterling Professor of the History of Art in Architecture at Yale University, 25 Central is the only building dedicated to an arts collective on Scenic Highway 30A. The historic structure, commissioned by Robert & Daryl Davis, was designed by Machedo-Silvetti Architects in 1990 in harmony with the design by Andres Duany and Lizz Plater-Zyberk for the master plan of Seaside. Overlooking the town square, 25 Central aspires to a strong civic expression that is especially suited for 30A’s most established purveyors and beloved artisans. – Art of Simple, La Vie Est Belle, Amavida Coffee and Anne Hunter Galleries.
