How do eggs, artists, institutions and the public mix together to make art in Columbus? Come to the Columbus Metropolitan’s June 1st Forum HATCHING ART 360: UNIQUE CANVAS OF COLLABORATION which is featuring Charles Bluestone, local attorney and curator of Art 360°, 
Thomas Gattis, Dean, School of Design at the Columbus College of Art & Design, Jackie Shafer, producer and editor of WOSU Public Media’s “Broad & High, with Wayne Lawson, professor Emeritus, Arts & Policy Administration at OSU and former director of the Ohio Arts Council
- When
01 Jun 2016 -
12:00 PM – 1:15 PM - Location
The Boat House at Confluence Park 679 W Spring St, Columbus, OH 43215 WITH FREE PARKING - more info at reservations @ www.columbusmetroclub.org/
With support from: Puffin Foundation West., Ltd. www. puffinwest.org
Eggs symbolize life and play a part in both Jewish and Christian religious holidays in springtime, be it the roasted egg on a Passover Seder plate symbolizing the adversity Israelites endured as slaves in ancient Egypt, or the Easter egg acting as a reminder that Jesus rose from the grave. Chuck also liked the fact that the ostrich egg is the largest egg in the world, once holding the largest single cell organism. But most dramatically, he thought artists would enjoy the challenge of working with a radically different 3-D shape compared to the typical rectangular or square 2-D canvas. Artists would have to start at a certain point and work carefully around the egg in a full 360° to ensure that the artwork came together seamlessly.
The Players
From 2007 to the present, Chuck’s passion for Art 360° : Contemporary Art Hatching Across Ohio has benefited from the tremendous support of fellow OAL Board members and artists. Slowly at first, the series of decorated eggs grew to include names such as Hani Hara, Sarah Fairchild, Amanda Tirey, Chris Rankin and Paul Emory.
One day, a chance encounter with Ohio Arts Council staffer Ken Emerick led to the suggestion that the Art 360°Project be expanded to include artists from other regions of Ohio, including Will Reader of Portsmouth. Discovering that Reader sold his works through the Southern Ohio Museum, Chuck ordered one of his paintings. By happy accident, the painting was carried up to Columbus by museum director Mark Chepp and his artistic director wife Charlotte Gordon. Chuck took the opportunity to show them a couple of decorated ostrich eggs and asked that they take a blank egg back to Will Reader with a request to participate in the fund-raising exhibition.
And The Project Evolves
Three days after meeting Mark and Charlotte, to his astonishment, Chuck received an invitation to exhibit the ostrich eggs at the Southern Ohio Museum. Because artwork is typically featured in multiples of a dozen, he was asked to expand the egg collection to 24, enabling him to include more artists from around the state.
In the summer of 2014, Nannette Maciejunes, Executive Director of Columbus Museum of Art, asked Chuck to a meeting to discuss the possibility of him joining a museum committee. Not wanting to miss an opportunity to promote the ostrich egg project, he showed her the first completed eggs and left with an invitation for another museum show — another affirmation of the show’s creativity!
The scope of the project was again expanded – now to 48 contemporary Ohio artists working in an even broader range of artistic disciplines from watercolor, acrylic, oil, encaustic (wax), and kaolin clay painting to intaglio, lithographic and monotype printing, from ceramics, fiber, and photography to scrimshaw, sculpture and glass. Even a work created by a light artist will be featured in the show!
With the inaugural museum opening in March 2016 now in sight, the enthusiasm that the Art 360° project is generating from the arts community and the general public gives hope that the goal shared by Chuck and all 48 participating artists of raising funds to enable The Ohio Art League to purchase its own building and have a permanent location in the state’s capital will be realized.
