The house at 1324 Third Ave. N. sits on the corner of 14th Street where it has been empty at least five years according to the neighbors. It’s an old house, with dingy walls outside and an overgrown lawn, but when next-door neighbor and artist Dustin Vance looked at it, he saw its potential.
The soft-spoken art student is getting his master’s degree in visual art from the Pacific Northwest College of Art and needed a place to set up an art exhibition he will organize as part of his thesis. He contacted owners Wilbur and Dorothy Colom who leased the house to him for a nominal sum, according to Wilbur.
With that, Splinter: An Exhibition was born. It will open to the public the last weekend in March and run through April. Ten artists are currently signed up to display work in the house, and Vance hopes to have more. He has been reaching out to artists in the community asking them to apply and exhibit their own pieces that represent living in Mississippi — particularly living as a minority or living poor.
Vance has set up a website for the exhibition at splintercollective.squarespace.com. The website explains the project, offers ways for volunteers to donate their time or finances to the exhibition and links to a blog which updates every few weeks. It’s not just people from Columbus following the house’s progress, Vance said. There are others in the graduate program at PNCA wanting updates, as well as friends and family of other artists in other parts of the country.
The house
“The whole structure seems to bear the weight of its history: a place haunted by its past, but unwilling to let go,” the website says. “Even as every part of it crumbles, it somehow manages to hang on like an ancient sentinel.”
The address was the residence of a family in 1906, according to a city directory from that year, so the house could be more than 100 years old. It may have seen the effects of two world wars with a depression sandwiched between them and, even closer to home, the social change and upheaval of the civil rights movement.
There are several reasons to host the exhibition there, Vance said. It’s a pretty easy commute from Mississippi University for Women, where many of the artists and volunteer renovators will be traveling from. It helped that the house has been abandoned — Vance called it a “blank canvas.” The house is also in a neighborhood that could use a little revitalization.
“It also is very Columbus,” Vance said. “It looks like a lot of older homes in the area. And it has this distinct Southern feel, so going into a space that was unique to the city, unique to the culture of the area, and it’s also in a neighborhood that could use a little revitalization. … It’s a great landmark area.”
With a hearth in almost every room, the old-fashioned light fixtures dangling from the ceiling and the sound of a train whistle from railroad tracks a few streets away, the house has a Southern charm even in its current state of disrepair. Six rooms upstairs, three rooms downstairs, the front porch and the backyard can all host art — with a little bit of maintenance.
The renovations
First things first: cleaning.
Vance and his team of artists and volunteers started by clearing the house of clutter. Downstairs floors were swept and mopped. Empty paint cans, bits of trash, broken boards and a pair of locked filing cabinets all went to recycling. Volunteers ripped up tack strips and removed broken windows. They haven’t made as much progress outside the house because of bad weather, but they have mowed the lawn, trimmed hedges and ripped up vines which Vance said were crawling all over the porch. They’ve removed moldy ceiling tiles and have plans to rip up the carpet on the staircase.
It’s not just Vance and the artists making the house spick and span. Neighbors have poked their heads in to see what’s going on and ended up helping. Others have seen the activity and come by to help.
“We had one guy literally just walk in and give us a business card, said, ‘Hey, we do renovation work. If you need some help, let us know’,” Vance said. “So it was kind of cool.”
Vance stressed that he doesn’t want to change much about the house itself. If any painting needs to be done, he’ll paint it the same color as the original paint. Even the art will add to each room, he hopes.
“Everything we do we want to retain the inherent character of the space,” he said.
A room toward the back of the house and leading into the kitchen serves as what Vance called the “Mission Control” room. It contains a white board portraying a hand-drawn floor plan with each room labeled in different colors. Below the floor plan is a color-coordinated list of what needs to be done in each room. Whenever something is done, it’s crossed off the list.
By the time Vance and his team of artists and volunteers scrub and possibly paint the mantles, finish the floors, clean the mirrors, repair the windows and rip up the old carpet on the staircase to reveal (what they hope will be) nice wood floors underneath, the house will be ready to make the art at home.
The art
Some of the items and debris cleared from the house are going into the art. Long strips of wood are stored in the closet for anyone to grab for their own sculptures or exhibits. Vance himself has taken some glass from a broken window and plans to use it in his own piece, a table made entirely from glass.
“The idea is to talk about the kitchen table as a symbol for family. You know, it’s the place that family gathers. We think about family dinners, family gatherings there at the kitchen table, and so my idea is to create it out of glass which is very fragile. But I’m using specifically broken glass because it’s sharp … and it’s dangerous. The idea of the fragility of family … can be universal for many different minorities, whether you’re lower socio-economic status or you’re black or you’re a female. It’s a place that’s common between all of us.”
The semi-completed glass tabletop sits on his own porch where he glues small jagged shards of broken glass to large slabs. He estimates it will take over 20 hours just to complete his first model of the table, but he’s already begun. He intends to have three layers of glass glued one on top of the other.
He plans to put the completed table in the dining room, an octagonal room near the kitchen. He wants to have chairs if possible and is considering including some other pieces if he has time and if there’s enough room.
He’s not the only artist planning to put the art in the room where it functionally belongs. Alexandra Peairs, who graduated from Mississippi University for Women in 2014 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and an emphasis in ceramics, is creating pots, pans and cups. Where will she put these things? The kitchen, of course.
“I do more functional ceramic pieces, so a traditional cup, a bowl, something that you would actually use,” she said. “But I also am drawn to really feminine aesthetics, kind of like china patterns and this and that. But I love to draw, too. So I’m going to try and allude to that kind of feminine delicate things, and it’ll really show in my space which will be in the kitchen area and … as a woman, how we function in a domestic way.
Peairs and Vance know each other from MUW, where Vance studied as an undergraduate. Vance sent Peairs a message on Facebook to let her know about his plan for the exhibition.
“I love the idea behind it, how he’s going to link in culture and make it comfortable,” Peairs said. “… Especially in the art world, gallery spaces can feel kind of cold sometimes and make you feel tense, but this is someone’s home. And we’re going to try and make ourselves at home here with our artwork and make people feel at ease and really enjoy themselves.”
The community
Enjoying themselves is just what Vance hopes people will do, whether they help with renovations or just enjoy the exhibit once it opens. In the meantime, anyone who wishes to help with renovations is more than welcome to do so, Vance says.
“We just want people to feel welcome and invited,” Vance said. “You know, it’s a community project, so we want the community to feel involved, so anyone who wants to help in any way, it’s important to us.
“And if they have special skills that may be helpful, we’d love to have you because some of us don’t have those skills,” he added.
To volunteer for any of the designated volunteer Saturdays or to donate money, visit the website. Artists can also visit the website or contact Vance at [email protected]. The deadline for applying is Jan. 15.
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