Copyright The Independent Florida Alligator
Artists often seclude themselves in their studios with nothing but their tools and their own imagination. That can get lonely. “I think people are craving collaborative projects,” said Katy Lemle, the 41-year-old executive director of the Gainesville Fine Arts Association. That’s why, from Tuesday morning to Friday morning, GFAA held its first Exquisite Corpse Art-A-Thon, a 72-hour group art project to raise money for the arts association. Each artist involved has a fundraising page and receives 30% of the money they raise. As of Friday afternoon, GFAA raised $5,731. Soft jazz and chatter filled the sunlit studio as participants worked away at their stations. Eight different artists worked during each 24-hour session, for a total of 24 artists. They filled the canvases in Exquisite Corpse style, where each artist builds off what the previous began. Lemle said the 100-year-old idea originates from surrealist artists, who would write part of a sentence on a napkin, cover all but one word and pass it along to the next person to finish the thought. Now, it is often reinterpreted through art rather than writing. Each team of artists was given a human-sized canvas with two-thirds covered by a tarp, only a couple inches visible from what the previous artist had added. Exquisite Corpse was one of Lemle’s favorite activities to practice with friends and with her students when she taught art. However, she has never seen it done on this scale. “It's fun for people to let go a little bit of control, for our local artist community to have an assignment and to work together with people,” she said. One artist who also taught his students the Exquisite Corpse project is 53-year-old Brian Moody. Moody has been practicing art since childhood, crafting sculptures out of wire food packaging from his family’s barbeque restaurant. Now, his favorite medium is sumi ink, a stark-black medium made of soot, which he incorporated into his drawing Wednesday. His intricate drawing resembled branches and bark. As a teacher, Moody rarely has free time to practice his own art and meet new people in the art community. “Being involved with other artists, being exposed to new things and challenging myself — all around, I think everything about [the event] was intriguing and positive,” he said. Another artist hard at work Wednesday was 68-year-old Sylvia McIntyre-Crook. Her current body of work is inspired by lichen, a type of algae and fungi. She started getting curious about the organisms during COVID-19, when she spent much of her time isolated and in her backyard. During the Exquisite Corpse challenge, she aimed to blend lichen with the human body in her painting. McIntyre-Crook was eager to practice in a time-restricted environment among other artists, and as a volunteer for the GFAA, she also participated for her love of the organization. “GFAA has been such a great incubator for artists around,” she said. “This is one of my ways of giving back.” Frank Curtis had to step out on the back patio to spray paint his piece, one of the few that used three-dimensional elements. After backing into his neighbor’s mailbox, the 64-year-old artist took off his broken tail lights and planned to incorporate them into his section. Though making art was taboo throughout Curtis’ childhood due to his family’s strict rules, he would go on to fully immerse himself in the Gainesville art scene. He currently directs Gainesville Artwalk, plays saxophone in the Gainesville Community Band and has been a member of GFAA for about 12 years. Curtis likes to experiment and take risks with his sculptures, so Exquisite Corpse seemed like the perfect opportunity to test his creativity. “I want to challenge myself,” he said. “I want to enjoy it, see what happens. It may turn out great, it may not. It's okay. It's making art.” Lemle said fundraising is crucial to GFAA. Grants and donations are volatile and never certain, she said. She has big hopes to open artist studios in Gainesville with the funds, but for now, the money raised will go towards the organization’s programmatic and operating expenses. Lemle is GFAA’s only full time member, and the rest of her coworkers consist of one part-time employee and volunteers. “A big portion of it goes toward making sure we can sustain our staff,” Lemle said. “We're doing way, way more than one and a half staff members can handle.” The eight works will be unveiled Halloween night during Artwalk Gainesville, which falls on the last Friday of every month. It’s bound to be a memorable “ooh aah moment,” Lemle said. The pieces will remain on display in the gallery for a month and be auctioned through silent bidding. On Nov. 29, GFAA is hosting its first art market, MADE, where the auction’s winner will be announced.
