UnVacant Lot | Past Projects
unVACANT LOT | Past Projects
The UnVacant Lot features interactive exhibitions designed to delight and connect our community – check out some of our past projects below and our current exhibition HERE!
LAND WATER SKY
Florida State University’s
Studio D Summer Institute 2022 | Artists
Public Art Exhibition
November 2022 – February 2023
The UnVacant Lot | 217 W. Jackson St.
This project was designed to promote the importance of our land, water, and sky, and how conscious conservation, habitat management, control of invasive species, and sustainability efforts result in healthy and unique habitats and vistas in the Red Hills region.
Florida State University’s Studio D Summer Institute 2022, designed to connect the profession with the community, worked with 30 professional interior designers, artists, and architects to create patterns for layered wood and acrylic artworks reflecting the unique characteristics of our area habitats.
Florida State University’s Studio D Lab, a program of the Department of Interior Architecture & Design, then constructed and framed individual works of art based on the artists’ patterns. The art is displayed in three separate structures representing land, water, and sky. Each piece of finished artwork is 11.5″ x 11.5.”
The Center collaborated with three partner organizations having expertise in wildlife and wildland conservation in Florida and South Georgia. These partners, Tall Timbers, Aucilla & Wacissa Water Group, and Birdsong Nature Center, provided the exhibiting artists with features and images unique to our land, water, and sky for the purpose of informing and inspiring their work.
katherine sandoz | Artist
On Location_Water, 2021
Water-based media on Historic Brick + Mortar
Field studies of the Red Hills region are documented in this installation of two vistas: one water and one field + forest. Creating a sense of one being at the bottom of a field, pond or swamp, this view depicts a high bluff, and a lower-lying lake with a constellation of water loving flora: pitcher plants, sagittaria, and water-lilies.
On Location_Field + Forest, 2021
Water-based media on Historic Brick + Mortar
Field studies of the Red Hills region are documented in this installation of two vistas: one water and one field + forest. Creating a sense of one being at the bottom of a field, pond or swamp, the composition features pines, native grasses, flora, and insects typically found where the field meets the forest.
Katherine Sandoz studies details that inspire exhibitions and public art installations; highlighting vistas, plants, unique marshes, waterways and flora, Sandoz intentionally designs an experience to enrich the visitor’s understanding of native plant life and regional ecological diversity, and to enhance their understanding of abstract work.
Land of the Roses
Trish Land | Artist
April 23 – August 13, 2021
As an artist, Trish Land was used to capturing the ephemera of natural landscapes: radiant cyan sunsets or moody thunderstorms embellished with drips of sage. “When I look at something, I see its energy,” she says. “I try and capture the essence of the moment, what it feels like.” Before March 2020, Land had never painted a rose. However, out of compassion for others during Covid 19, both bodies of her rose-inspired work celebrated in The UnVacantLot, came to fruition.
Her Renaissance work, merges old world art with her love of roses, while her rose varieties hold a special connection to family and Thomasville. Land is a self-taught artist, and has been a storyteller all of her life. She is spirit driven.always inspired, and always creating.
For more information on the work of Trish Land, visit http://trishland.com. Email the artist at trish@trishland.com. View more of her work on https://www.instagram.com/trishland/.
Morning in the Tall Pines
Joe Cowdrey
November 6 – April 23
The UnVacant Lot | 217 W Jackson St
Hours: Monday – Sunday | 7am-11pm
Free and open to the public
Featured Image: Joe Cowdrey | Detail from Morning in the Tall Pines Mural
What would downtown Thomasville look like if you took a trip back in time, to an era before the buildings and roads? That is a question Joe Cowdrey aimed to answer when he set out to paint Morning in the Tall Pines. Drawing inspiration from the surrounding forested areas, including the Tall Timbers Research Station, Joe set the scene for a misty morning in the longleaf pine forest. Using vibrant blues and greens, contrasted by the dark-red brick color of the pine trunks, Joe created a piece that feels dense with vegetation, but also spacious, much like the local forests. Catch this mural just after sunrise, and it really seems as if the light of the early sun is reflecting off of the painted trees while the early morning mist drifts up into the atmosphere.
Joe Cowdrey is a self taught painter from Tallahassee, FL. He draws his main inspiration from the natural landscapes he explores on a regular basis, wherever he may be located. Environment is very important to him, and it is his hope that people are able to share his appreciation for the beauty of the forest after seeing his works. Joe currently lives and works in
Northern New Jersey.
Artist, Toni Ardizzone takes you to the swamp with her very exciting homage to a mascot of the South. Dinosaur of the South is a celebratory work engaging the viewer with rhythmic, vibrating color and untamed brushstrokes. Like the alligator, which as a species has survived for more than 84 million years, the work embodies the resilience and strength needed to survive. This project, created in this unprecedented era of COVID-19, is also intended to convey the healing power of art. Presented by Thomasville Center for Arts in partnership with Hurst Boiler, the experience is sure to bring joy, hope, and a sense of place to this community space.
Ardizzone created the larger than life mural on site, in three phases, over six weeks using a brush and roll technique. With each phase she left the work in a state of evolution to keep you guessing about what would come next. By layering the piece, and building on the work over time through a laborious rhythm of movement marked by bold strokes of color, she reconstructed her canvas over and over.
Toni Ardizzone is a painter combining refined methods with a blue-collar skill set to create large-scale murals and tactile paintings. She received her BFA from Indiana University at Herron School of Art and Design in 2006. Her prolific body of work has led to several solo exhibitions across the United States as well as international recognition. In 2019, Ms. Ardizzone was selected for two artist residencies including Ayatana in Quebec, Canada and the Palimpsest Project in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She received her MFA from FSU this spring. Visit her website at www.toniardizzone.com or Instagram @toniardizzoneart to connect with the artist.
Learn more about Toni Ardizzone at http://www.toniardizzone.com and past Thomasville Center for the Arts’ public art experiences designed to connect and engage our community at the links below or visit The UnVacant Lot at 217 W Jackson Street.
TCA Public Art Team challenged Brookwood Schools’ Foundations of Innovation Class (FOI), under the direction of Josh Hanke and Rob Clendenin to create an installation that will reignite ’70s skate culture and bring it to our neighborhood.
Along with this installation and in support of our local sk8board provider, The Kickstand, we wanted to promote safety first, and give you the opportunity to practice basic skateboard techniques in a safe environment. Skateboarding is a sport like no other. Skateboard culture has influenced fashion, music, and even the way we talk.
The public art team at Thomasville Center for the Arts challenged our very own Artist-in-Residence, Ron Thomson, to apply his master technique in oil painting into a public art mural. His installation became part of “Bug Out!,” a public art exhibition invading the nooks and crannies of Thomasville’s creative district with spectacular works of art to widen your view of the winged and wonderful bug’s world.
Four photographers were asked to capture the faces of the people we often miss when our heads are focused on our gadgets. Drew Balfour, Taylor Brandon, Justin Allen, and Michael Serine exhibited a powerful display of 80 larger-than-life portraits of the people who are creating our community – when their heads are up!
This exhibition was independently organized by “Inside Out Project Group Action,” a participatory art project that transforms messages of personal identity into pieces of artistic work around the globe. The Inside Out Project is a creation of the artist JR, recipient of the 2011 Ted Prize
Tree Huggers was a public art installation created for the purpose of educating future generations on the importance of managing, sustaining, conserving, and maintaining our forests at all levels. High school students were led through the start-to-finish process of creating an installation that would give them the tools to do future public art in Thomasville, GA.
This collaboration between Thomasville Center for the Arts and Brookwood School’s Foundation of Innovation Studio was the first installation in the newly renovated UnVacant Lot.
Tree Huggers was created under the direction of Brookwood faculty members Rob Clendenin and Josh Hanke, Center Artists-In-Residence Sarah Painter (painter) and Robert Copper (sculptor), and Public Art Director Darlene Crosby Taylor.
Thomasville Center for the Arts sees opportunity in the unimaginable and transforms spaces into places.
What Do You Want To See Here? was an installation that offered the community an opportunity to engage in the process of designing what they wanted to see during the period where infrastructure was being installed in The UnVacant Lot. A 60-guest community charrette dictated the design of The UnVacant Lot in phases, and overwhelmingly supported educational opportunities for all to experience.
