Tapp’s is thrilled to announce it’s May exhibition, Afterburner, featuring a menagerie of scrap-metal behemoths and small intricate creatures fashioned from jettisoned snippets and forgotten machinery. Formed in the mind of local artist Andy White, this exhibition of fantastic beasts will open to the public May 4th, 2017 from 6pm to 10pm.
Andy White expands on his concept for Afterburner:
“My work embraces the idea that our lives are entangled with things: we use them, abuse them, lose
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Tapp’s is thrilled to announce it’s May exhibition, Afterburner, featuring a menagerie of scrap-metal behemoths and small intricate creatures fashioned from jettisoned snippets and forgotten machinery. Formed in the mind of local artist Andy White, this exhibition of fantastic beasts will open to the public May 4th, 2017 from 6pm to 10pm.
Andy White expands on his concept for Afterburner:
“My work embraces the idea that our lives are entangled with things: we use them, abuse them, lose them, and throw them away. To my eye, that rough exposure to the world can add an unfakeable, unmistakable beauty to an object that is otherwise shiny and boring. Rust, scratches, and faded paint become markers for memories, reminders of what happened during a life lived. Through our interactions with them, some of our things become meaningful.
Taking that debris – whether it’s something personal or something anonymous that I plucked from the curb – and using it to create something new allows me to transform the slippery connection between the past and present into a tangible thing that I can handle and hold. For me, tuning all of these worn out pieces into an object with new life adds energy to the past in the same way that an afterburner on a jet engine increases thrust by injecting fuel into the hot exhaust gasses. Cutting, shaping, and welding all of this stuff together is inefficient, but I know of no better way for me to make the past part of the present.”
About the Artist:
Andy White uses scrap metal to explore how bits and pieces from everyday life combine and recombine to create, preserve, and transform memories. A native Midwesterner with no formal training in art or metalwork, he now works out of a garage in Columbia, South Carolina, armed with a welder and a few basic hand tools. He uses materials related to his own life as well as things that others lose or discard, building something new from things left behind. He is particularly interested in creating pieces that wrestle with the tensions between new and old, natural and mechanical, and alive and dead. This is his first show.
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