The Atomic Lime Project w/ Special Musical Guests Charlie The Horse

Check it out! Atomic Lime Project is proud to present our first ever collective exhibition. Come out to Bottega Art & Wine, located at 208 North Front Street, Wilmington NC, on July 22nd for the opening reception, featuring a special musical performance by members of Charlie The Horse. You can check out their music here: http://charliethehorse.bandcamp.com/ Also, if you're on the Facebook, let us know you're coming, by clicking here.

The show will be up from July 22nd to September 16th, so if you can't make it to the opening, drop by any time or come out to the closing to see all our work. We'd love to see your beautiful faces!

Stay tuned for some sneak peeks on the goings on at Suite 16 studios (our top secret headquarters) over the coming weeks.

An Honored Introduction by Melina Reed

Hi everyone! In light of my recent acceptance into the Atomic Lime Project family, I’d like to tell you all a bit about myself to get you more acquainted with me and my decision to join this incredible group of artists.

My name is Melina Margaret Reed, born to James Forrest Reed and Jonna Mary Reed on May 24, 1986. I am from a very small town just off the shore of Lake Erie known as Chardon, Ohio.

The average annual snowfall in Chardon is 106 inches. Scenes like this are not unusual between the months of October and April:

In my early adulthood, I decided that six months of snow were no longer beneficial to my state of mind. It was time to get the hell out of the cold in favor of warmer climates, which landed me here:

Mapquest.com - Wilmington, NC

As my body began to thaw in these warmer climates, my heart and mind followed suit. As a result, I have lived in North Carolina for nearly five years. I have since become a devoted student of English in pursuit of an eventual master’s degree in some written discipline (yet to be decided) in favor of teaching community college upon graduation. I owe that decision to my auspicious time at Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington, where I became passionate about writing under amazing professors such as Marlowe Moore, Dylan Patterson and Margo Williams. Also at CFCC, I cultivated my skills as a metalsmith under the tutelage of Melissa Manley. See her work here. The University of North Carolina in Wilmington has seen a continuation of that passion as I wrap up my final year of undergrad with plans to begin master’s work in the fall of 2012.

Since my aforementioned scholastic renaissance, I had been searching for an outlet with which to share my overflow of creative energy. To my delight, an incredible opportunity knocked in early 2011.

When the members of Atomic Lime Project approached me with interest in adding me to their collective, there was no deliberation as to what my answer would be (I believe it was “HELL YES!”, actually). I am honored to call myself a member of this group.

Atomic Lime Project represents something vital to an artistic community. Deep within the heart of every artist is a strong desire to tap into the universal rhythm of all other artists: to promote each other, to create together, to express ourselves as a collaborative whole in order to show the world our Truth. As we work together to invigorate, resuscitate, and revitalize the artistic community in Wilmington and the surrounding areas, we will become pillars of support for the artistic community. Sharing this role as a member of Atomic Lime Project is as epic for me as…. well, this moment:

I hope this doesn't require a caption...

Nonetheless, I will never forget my humble beginnings out of a corner of Marlowe Moore’s dance studio, where I worked for several months to produce all of the work that you see on my artist page.

My first studio: where it all began.

Looking to the future, I will dedicate much of my summer to cultivating what Atomic Lime Project is getting ready to launch in the coming months. Stay tuned to catch sneak peaks into the goings on at the Atomic Lime studio. Also, be prepared to hear from me regularly. In the words of Onward, Soldiers Sean Thomas Gerard: "I can't keep my thoughts to myself, my head's entirely open."

Meet Our New Member

Melina Reed. Do. Etched copper, enamel, silver, found objects.

Atomic Lime Project is pleased to announce the newest addition to our group - metalsmith Melina Reed!

Melina's art is an extension of herself in the most literal sense. As she pursues a career as an English professor, she seeks ways to use words to express herself creatively and professionally while attempting to apply this knowledge to her work and those who absorb it. Metalswork has created for her a new outlet for this artistic expression. Each piece is comprised of many pieces that, together, represent a greater whole. For Melina, metalwork reflects a marriage of opposites: connecting the warm tones of emotion, words and memory to the cool tones of metal. Within each piece is a universe, assigned meaning by its wearer.

Melina intends for her pieces to become interpretations of self, capable of holding many meanings bound by a single word or concept. Right now, Melina is primarily focusing on etched copper and fold forms with silver accents, enameling, and the incorporation of found objects within necklace, earring, and bracelet designs. The diversity of her pieces reflects the rawness of human expressions; no two will be the same.

Melina Reed. Stitch. Copper, quartz.

Originally from northeast Ohio, Melina currently resides in Wilmington, NC, where she has studied under Melissa Manley, an accomplished ECU alumni (Melissa's work can be found here: http://www.melissamanleystudios.com/).

To see more of Melina's work, check out her Artist page here.

This is just one of many exciting new things on the horizon for Atomic Lime Project - check back in the coming weeks for important announcements and updates.


Photo credit: Ashlie White

Art School Part IV: Walls, and How Best To Climb Them.

As I mentioned in part I of this blog series, there’s always something that stands in the way of a person and their goals in life. I refer to these things as walls. Walls come in many forms - physical, mental, and emotional - and the long, winding path through art school is rife with them. Most walls are built to keep you from getting somewhere you’d like to go, or to keep you out of a place you’d like to be. People build walls around their property to keep their neighbors out and their pets in. People build walls around themselves to keep other people from getting too close or to keep themselves from getting too close to others. In art school, most of the walls are built to keep those who would weaken the program from moving forward successfully. One such wall is the foundations program – a topic I covered in depth in part II. But there are many more along the path to successful completion of art school, and each of these has to be dealt with in one way or another. To be successful, it’s best to know how to climb these walls, find secret passages through, under, or around them, or in some cases, tear them down with a bulldozer.

Each course you take in college can be seen as a series of miniature walls. In most cases, the door to your eventual graduation will be hinged on your successful completion of these courses, and if you’re not careful, you could find yourself unable to move forward because you need to complete a course. At a public university like ECU, some of these required courses seem completely irrelevant at first (such as the need to have 12 hours of Fine Arts credit for which your Art classes don’t count), but the key to climbing these walls is to accept the importance of a broad education in your life. By studying Music, History, Math, Science, English, and yes, even Exercise, you are only building upon your life experience, something which every artist draws from in order to create their work. If you see these things as obstacles in your path, climbing the wall will be a daunting task. But if you learn to appreciate them as experiences along your path, and put forth the effort to truly allow yourself to grow in knowledge, passing right through them will come naturally. Find a way to game the system – pick classes that count towards whatever credits you need that will interest you and enrich your life, and which you feel can apply to your art. You don’t have to be stuck taking classes that don’t matter to you in any meaningful way, and this is something a lot of people don’t seem to understand. For English lit, I took a Film Studies class. We watched and analyzed movies, and the class bettered my understanding of composition. For my exercise class, I took rock climbing.  I work with stone and my work is inspired by nature – a no brainer – but this also helped me understand the importance of goal setting. I would pick a difficult route and practice it repeatedly until my skills and strength had reached a point where I could complete it. This was something that I could apply to just about anything in life.  I appreciated every class I took as an opportunity for me to grow and learn, and even when I couldn’t always put forth a solid effort in a class because I was stuck in the studio all the time, I still enjoyed it as a welcome escape.

In the School of Art and Design at ECU, the next huge wall that you will approach after foundations is the portfolio submission. Each person must submit a portfolio to a chosen area in order to declare a concentration. This is a bigger deal in some of the more competitive concentrations, but still a very important wall that must be dealt with. If you’re denied admission into that concentration, you’ve now spent at least two years of your life in art school only to be stopped dead in your tracks. This is probably the most important piece of advice I can give you – learn the value of communication. Talk to your professors. Have them critique your work prior to submission and get advice on what to include in your portfolio. Figure out areas where they think you should try to improve your work, and USE THAT ADVICE.  Sometimes just the fact that you showed the initiative to do this will be enough to separate you from the competition. And if it doesn’t open that secret passage through the wall for you, at the very least you’ve been shown the route you need to take to climb it.  

I want to reiterate that last point of advice. Communication is key in everything you will do for the rest of your life. 95% of the walls that will stand between you and your goals are in the form of other people. Learning how to communicate effectively with them is the easiest and most effective way to climb these walls. If you’re struggling in a class, for whatever reason, go talk to your professor. If you’re struggling to keep up with your workload, and know you’re going to miss a deadline, go talk to your professor. If you’re just having a rough time with life in general, and it’s affecting your work for a class, go talk to your professor. If you need help with something, ask for it.  Don’t be afraid of sounding like that whiny student who’s just coming up with excuses. You might, but so what? You have nothing to lose but your pride, and if you’re in art school, you might need a good ego-bashing anyway. It might just earn you those extra few days you need to get your head straight and get your work done. I actually received a couple of incompletes in my time at ECU simply because I asked for them.  It’s a very humbling thing to admit that you’ve failed yourself to your professor, but that humbling experience was something I needed in order to complete my work and avoid a low or failing grade in a class. Once you understand the value of communication, and learn to utilize it, things will become much easier for you. Remember: If you never ask, you’ll never receive.

The final wall I’m going to talk about is one of the most annoying, obnoxious things you’ll ever have to deal with, and that is the bureaucracy of higher education. I firmly believe that going at this wall with a bulldozer is probably the most effective method of clearing it from your path. My experiences with the administration of ECU have been less than pleasant, to say the least, but this is not just a personal thing – many of my peers have also had very unfortunate run-ins with the bureaucracy of ECU. I’m a firm believer that secretly, institutions of higher education do not actually want you to graduate. If you graduate, then they can no longer take your money (and in the case of a public institution, receive money from the government because of you), and thus it’s just a simple matter of economics. The longer they can keep a student in school, the longer they can milk the cash cow. The only real way to deal with this is to tackle it head-on early, and never stop pushing until you’ve made it through.  Lost paperwork, missing files, miscommunication, and incompetence are just a few problems you’ll run into when dealing with administration. You have to anticipate this, prepare for it, and do everything in your power to make sure that the wheels are turning in your favor, or they won’t. A good friend of mine found out 3 weeks before graduation that, even though he had sat down with his advisor and discussed his graduation requirements and registration on multiple occasions and everything was good to go, there were somehow still 3 credits that they “missed.” One class that he still needed to take in order to graduate. In my case, the bureaucracy tried to keep me from getting my job by somehow deciding that I wasn’t actually graduating when I was supposed to be. For no reason at all, really – I had applied for graduation, signed my senior summaries, all of my degree requirements were met, and I had walked across the stage. They just arbitrarily decided my graduation date should be something other than what it was, and proceeded to tell the school board trying to hire me that they couldn’t actually hire me. After 2 weeks and dozens of phone calls and emails, the issue was resolved – they just had the wrong date on my graduation paperwork. But had I not been proactive, I’d be stuck without a job and a degree right now because of a clerical error. Be prepared, triple check every requirement, anticipate any possible problem that the administration could throw your way, and have your bulldozer gassed up and ready to go when something inevitably goes wrong. If you don’t, this wall could be one that shows up out of nowhere and diverts you away from reaching your goals for quite some time.

When you reach the inevitable walls along your path, don’t let them stop you. Remember that there’s always a way to get over them - it just takes a little perseverance and planning to figure out how.

Check back next week for the final installment of this blog series, Art School Part V: How To Be An Artist – Something They Don’t Teach You In Art School

Art School Part III: And Now The Fun Begins

If you can make it past the first year of art school without cracking under all the pressure or losing your mind entirely from sleep deprivation, there are actually some extremely good times to be had – the problem lies in finding time to actually experience and enjoy them. But at this point, your body is already accustomed to functioning on little to no sleep, so you find your days are much longer than most other people’s. You still have tons of work to do – arguably more now than you did in foundations – but if you’ve stuck it out this long you’re now taking survey and studio classes in your choice program areas, which makes the work feel less like work. As I mentioned before, art school pretty much destroys any sort of social life you may have had, but your old friends have been replaced by, well, everyone else in the art department.

When you work and live in the same building with the same people for so long, you undoubtedly befriend a lot of them, and at the very least you know the majority of them on a first name basis. You find ways to break the monotony of working on a piece for endless hours by engaging in impromptu activities with your studio mates – from 4 am rolly chair races down the ramps to huge building-wide hide and seek matches. Most of you have all pretty much lost your minds from sleep deprivation at this point anyway, so you can’t help but find enjoyment in the simplest of distractions.

Extreme bathroom biking - a sport only witnessed in art school.

One of the fondest memories I have of art school is one such occurrence. A fellow sculpture major and I were tasked with watching a plaster investment kiln overnight – checking it every hour to make sure that it was reaching a high enough temperature and staying there long enough to burn out the molds without getting too hot that it cooked them to death and destroyed them. A certain wood design major chose to stick it out with us. When you’ve got 12 hours to stand around in the cold on a Friday night and make sure something doesn’t catch on fire, what else is there to do but start a fire? So that’s what we did. In an old rusted steel barrel, bum style.  You learn a lot while standing around a bum fire. I learned that when you douse a sculpture in linseed oil and toss it in a fire, you can actually get a pretty nice patina. I learned that a wood fire CAN actually get hot enough to melt aluminum. I learned that, after an extremely long-winded monologue about the fleeting nature of love (and after what may or may not have been several adult sodas), two grown men will simultaneously step away from the fire and call their ex-girlfriends that they haven’t spoken to in years. At 6 o’clock in the morning. Those voicemails must have been priceless. And at the end of it all, I learned there’s nothing better than waking up sprawled out on the hard, cold concrete floor of your studio, putting on your leathers, and pouring molten metal on a Saturday morning with your sculpture professor. That was the smoothest pour I ever participated in, and a lasting memory I will look back on with fondness for years to come.

You see, being cooped up in the same building slaving over your artwork for hours at a time might make you go insane, but the bond created with the people that are right there beside you the entire way is something that can never be reproduced. They become more than friends – they become family.

Check back next week for Art School Part IV: Walls, and How Best to Climb Them.

Art School Part II: Foundations, or the Don't-Sleep-For-A-Year Experiment

There’s a point, somewhere around the 72-hour mark, where sleep deprivation starts to feel like an extremely potent hallucinogen.  A person starts to have micro-sleeps, or periods where they slip in and out of consciousness for seconds at a time without realizing it, and the real world becomes entwined with the dream world. It becomes extremely difficult to decipher what’s real and what’s not. Anyone who has had the pleasure of staying awake for days on end has undoubtedly experienced this, but I can say with some confidence that it is probably most prevalent amongst art students, especially within the first year of art school.

The ECU School of Art and Design’s entrance requirements differ from those of many other art schools – there is no initial portfolio requirement for admission. Instead, one is tentatively accepted into the program contingent upon successful completion of the Foundations Program – a series of courses consisting of Design I, Design II, Drawing I, Figure Drawing, and a few art history classes. You must pass each of these classes, as well as the Foundations Exam, with a C or better in order to move on to the survey level. The theory and premise behind the foundations program is sound: It levels the playing field and allows anyone to have the chance to go into the art program, despite their background and experience in art. After all, someone may have a passion for art, but come from a school with a very poor art program where they weren’t able to build an adequate portfolio.  In practice, however, it becomes something much more sinister.

The problem is that, when you open the floodgates, chances are you’re going to get a flood.  By allowing anyone to declare themselves an art major and participate in the foundations program, many more people will do so than the school can feasibly accept.  As such, the foundations program becomes less about teaching design and drawing, and more about breaking the will and spirits of the students. You have to weed out the ones who can’t handle the pressure. There’s a rule for foundations professors (perhaps secretly stated, or perhaps just unwritten and widely understood) that you can only allow a certain percentage of your students to pass. The rest you MUST fail.  I can’t be entirely sure of the attrition rates – they’re not exactly posted. But with a little bit of deductive reasoning, it’s not too hard to guess. In the fall of 2007 (records for 2006, my entry year, were not available, but they are undoubtedly similar) 11 Design I classes were offered with an average class size of 15 - that’s roughly 165 new entrants. This past December, I walked across the stage with 24 of my peers. You do the math.

Painting a Design I project. At a friend's birthday party. Brush strokes are forbidden.

In order to make sure this quota of failure is met, foundations professors assign the most grueling, monotonous, and time consuming tasks, and will accept nothing short of perfection. Each studio class meets 6 hours a week – for which you only receive 3 hours of credit – and it is expected that you will spend a minimum of two hours working outside of class for every one hour of class time in order to receive a C.  How about an A? You should probably double that number. And don’t forget that you’ve got those other classes to attend, too. There’s simply not enough time in the week, and so the ones who make it through foundations are the ones who find that time by learning the art of surviving without sleep.  You learn that you can’t possibly have a social life, and so your social circle becomes your fellow art students. You spend every waking hour of your life in one building, painting color swatches and drawing cubes, and you find time to nap in your other classes. You tell yourself that 6 hours of sleep every 3 days is fine, and you can make up for it on the weekend. Except you’ve got that crit on Monday. You start to break down, physically, emotionally, and mentally. And on the precipice of complete mental collapse, when your body is running on paint fumes and caffeine, you reach a nirvana of creative clarity that makes it all worth it. And when it’s all said and done, and you officially make it out of foundations, you realize you’ve learned so much more about being an artist than you ever knew paint swatches and cubes could teach you. You’ve learned the value of hard work, perseverance, and the creative energy that mental instability can bring.

A vast majority of the people who fail out of foundations were never meant to be artists to begin with, and would have never been able to make it in the art world if they’d made it through. But perhaps there’s a better way to go about letting them know this without destroying their GPA and wasting a year of their life and thousands upon thousands of dollars in tuition and art supplies. Perhaps we could remember that these are still people we’re talking about, and that they are betting their future on their educational investment. Or maybe that sweet feeling of success just wouldn’t feel so good if we didn’t know so many other people had failed.

Check back next week for Art School Part III: And Now The Fun Begins.

Art School Part I: Dreams and Obstacles

Almost five years ago exactly, I began my final semester of high school. I was full of naivety and willpower, as all seventeen-year-old adolescents are, and thanks to the support of a fantastic mentor and art teacher (and to the dismay of my parents who only wanted the best for me), I had a goal for my future. As I look back, it was truly this final semester that would set me on the path to where I am today.  I had late arrival and was enrolled in only two classes – 3D Design and AP Studio Art – and it was this 3D Design class that sparked my love for sculpture.  I became drawn to the tactile nature of working with the materials, and was overcome by the feeling of stepping back from a finished piece and experiencing the realness and immediacy of a three-dimensional creation. At the same time, I also became drawn to walking around the classroom and providing thoughtful feedback to my peers about their work. By the time graduation rolled around, my mind was made up –I would double major in Sculpture and Art Education at East Carolina University. I was headed for art school.

 My home for the past 4.5 years. Photo Credit: www.ecu.edu/soad

In five days, I will begin my first semester in high school – this time from the other side of the teacher’s desk. I am very aware of how fortunate I am that somehow, over the past five years, I have been able to hold strong and stick to my goals. I am also aware of how incredibly rare that is.  You see, there’s always something that stands in the way of a person and their dreams, and in this case, that something is the only thing that has been constant in my life for the past four and a half years. That thing is art school. Think of it as less of an obstacle and more of an insane bipolar obstacle course of dastardly-designed traps, temptations, pitfalls, and dead-ends disguised beneath a facade of higher education. Please don’t get me wrong: the years I spent in art school are some of the best and most fulfilling years of my life. But I believe anyone who has been to art school can tell you that they have a love/hate relationship with it.

In the coming weeks, I will be posting my reflections on the educational highs and lows of my experience with art school, along with some anecdotal experiences of my peers.  Though my praise and criticism will highly be directed towards the School of Art and Design at ECU, I believe it will largely hold true for just about any art school. 

Check back next week for Art School Part 2:  Foundations, or The Don’t-Sleep-For-A-Year Experiment.