Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Ruffles on local house technical and durable yet delicate and beautiful
It’s Halloween weekend and in downtown Springdale even one of the houses has gotten its costume on. This month, artist Danielle Hatch gave the Live in America Artist Residency house vibrantly colored, dress-like ruffles to cover its exterior. It will remain dressed to the nines until the end of November.
On Oct. 14, Hatch and Carra Martinez, Co-Artistic Director of Fusebox who is leading Live in America, welcomed the downtown neighborhood to a celebration of the new installation “More Lovely, More Beautiful, More Delicious.” Some of the guests to the free event came in costume to enjoy the music by DJ Raquel and to join in on cookie decorating, dancing, hair styling and listen to a talk from the artist.
“Part of the joy of this project for me was the interplay with the public,” Hatch told them. “Even as I was stapling out the ruffles, I was having conversations with people who were driving by at this four way stop here.”
The position of the house across from the post office and a shopping center — just a couple streets down from Emma Avenue — meant that the installation was and is highly visible. And since the project took several hundred yards of fabric, requiring Hatch to spend hours putting it up, the combination meant she got a lot of input from passersby.
Hatch thinks there’s something to the idea of placing artwork where people are required to slow down. Martinez said a lot of conversations happen in this yard. Sometimes folks walk over from the post office to investigate after dropping off their letters and packages. Others walk over from nearby restaurants.
“There’s so much joy in being able to put your artwork in a public space where people are living their lives and getting to engage with them in conversation,” Hatch said. She told the crowd that she’s grateful to Martinez for sharing this space and the community feedback and chats. By removing the stigma of a museum setting, it makes the art more accessible.
“Placing art in a neighborhood creates an opportunity for such a lovely dialogue, because it takes it out of any sort of rarified context,” Hatch said. “It becomes part of a place that people feel a sense of ownership of and so they feel free to let you know what they think of the work.”
Martinez invited Hatch to create an art installation to be
placed in her yard, in part because she’s positioned in a neighborhood where there isn’t much art.
“We have this big yard, let’s put art in it,” Martinez said to the audience, speaking of the beginning of the a series of yard art installations and programs taking place at The Live in America Artist Residency house in Springdale over the next year. “People who will not go to other, more traditional art galleries will come here and see installations in the yard.”
Hatch is the second artist to share work in this space, with local Audrey Vega being the first. Still, Hatch was able to assist with her art making activity in her role as Public Programs Manager at the Shiloh Museum of Ozark History.
Hatch’s artwork often engages with public spaces and involves collaborating with community members, “plus I love a good theme party so this project was such a pleasure,” Hatch said. She and Martinez chatted during the summer about Carra’s love of Halloween and discussed covering her home in fabric for a victorian/gothic sensibility.
As part of her planning process for these large scale outdoor artworks, Hatch creates fabric collage sketches to think through ideas of scale and color.
“Carra and I went back and forth sharing these sketches until I came up with colors that felt right for highlighting the details of the home exterior and the season,” she said. “It brings me a lot of joy to introduce vibrant colors into an architectural sphere where so much of what we’re presented with in the area is beige.”
For the several hundred yards of fabric ruffles to withstand the finnicky nature of late summer/early fall sun, wind, rain and more, Hatch uses a moisture wicking nylon ripstop fabric similar to that of a tent or sleeping bag that is designed to withstand moisture.
“I really enjoy the contrast of using a very technical and durable fabric to create a delicate ruffled form,” Hatch said.
While she does much of the sewing herself, she does have support in the form of the Sew’n’sew quilt shop in Pea Ridge, whom she’s employed with her last several projects, which include an installation at 21c Museum Hotel in Bentonville and blankets that guests sat on during the yard art event to introduce “More Lovely, More Beautiful, More Delicious.”
“Their machine quilting has allowed me to create large scale quilted installations including … a 20 foot by 20 foot quilted tent cover for the FORMAT Festival,” Hatch said. “The owners are really generous and always chuckle when I show up with hundreds of yards of neon pink fabric to quilt and a plea for a quick turn around time.”
For FORMAT Festival, the recent multi-day live music event that took place at the Momentary, Hatch created six ruffled slipcovers for 20 foot by 10 foot bar tents and one quilted slipcover for the AV booth.
“I’d never worked on an installation for a festival setting, so it was interesting to see the work in that context,” she said. A few tents sat next to the main stage and were lit up in the evenings, making them appear to float in the periphery of the musical performances.
“The Live in America installation was sort of a dream realized for me since a lot of my work is informed by decorative craft in domestic spaces, so I have always eyed certain homes and neighborhoods and dreamed about playing with fabric on the exteriors,” Hatch said. “Carra was generous enough to let me really go for it and cover the entire front of her home in fabric.”
Next up for the Live in America house is a fresh group of artists set to arrive in November. Four times a year artists will come and stay for two weeks at a time, Martinez said.
“They can rest and vacation, but they must attend a community dinner and a workshop” during their stay, she said. Among the future programming to look forward to is a 60 by 60 series, in which 60 artists will have 60 seconds each to perform. It will include poetry and “all kinds of things, and if it’s not good, who cares? It’s 60 seconds,” Martinez said.
As for Hatch, she plans on taking a much-needed break from sewing for the next month, then it will be back to business.
“Next December I have a video piece at Crystal Bridges (Museum of American Art) that I’m excited about (to take place) in the black box,” she said. “And in January I’m going to do an installation in Kansas City.”