The Shadow We Create & Pinkie's Memories
Member Preview Day
Thursday, September 9, 10 AM-9 PM
Members Only Tours: 11 AM, 1 PM, 2 PM, 5 PM, and 7 PM
$2 convenience fee for online registration

Join us for a members only preview of two new exhibitions: The Shadow We Create and Pinkie's Memories. Free staff-led tours for members will take place at 11 AM, 1 PM, 2 PM, 5 PM, 7 PM. Register online, in person at CAM or by phone.

There will also be a 20% off Member Sale in the Museum Shop all day for members (except Claude Howell serigraphs) from 10 AM to 9 PM on September 9. CAM Café open for lunch and dinner. Reservations encouraged - call (910) 777-2363.

Image Credits: (Left) Pinkie Strother, I Have a Dream (Back View), mixed media diorama, 2009. (Right) Jan-Ru Wan, The Noise We Make & The Shadow We Create, screen-printed recycled plastic, thread, rusted bells dipped in wax.
The Shadow We Create
This exhibition raises questions about societal prescriptions, race, servitude, fear, and the consequences of not speaking through compelling works by artists Mary Bowron, Willie Cole, and Jan-Ru Wan. The exhibition is named after Jan-Ru Wan’s stunning work The Noise We Make and The Shadow We Create, an assemblage of hundreds of rusted bells rendered silent by immersion in wax. The Beauties, Willie Cole’s full-scale prints are pulled from blackened crushed and hammered ironing boards. With titles including Bessie, Carolina, Jonny Mae and Jane, each print is named for a woman in Cole’s family. Simultaneously they reference servitude, beauty, oppression, and darkened holds of slave ships. Shadow features a haunting installation of Silent Witness, a series by Mary Bowron populated by androgynous pit-fired ceramic heads. Some are smothered in thick wax, others branded with soot from the fire of their birth, with all featureless where a mouth once was, or may still be. Shadow addresses fear of speaking the truth amidst racial, social, political and economic unease. This exhibition asks the viewer to contemplate ways in which silence is forced and silence is broken.

Image: Jan-Ru Wan, Do Not Iron For Me Anymore, men's shirts, printed silk, wood table, iron, paper. Collection of the artist.
Do Not Iron For Me Anymore by Jan-Ru Wan
Pinkie's Memories
North Carolina artist Pinkie Strother re-creates her childhood memories of growing up the fourth of nine siblings in rural Maryland in the 1950s and 1960s through mixed media dioramas. These miniature buildings and rooms on a 1″ scale offer a connection to the past through the recreation of the houses, churches, schools, and libraries of Pinkie’s memories. Pinkie Strother received formal training in art from Bowie State University where she studied to become a teacher and a MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Image: Pinkie Strother, Island Creek Elementary School Interior, mixed media diorama, 2004.
Island Creek Elementary by Pinkie Strother
The Shadow We Create
Jan-Ru Wan Artist Talk
Friday, September 10, 2021, 1 PM
CAM Members: $15; Non-Members: $20

Join artist Jan-Ru Wan in the gallery for an intimate artist talk. She’ll discuss her work and process as she walks you through her work on display as part of The Shadow We Create.
This project was supported by the NC Arts Council, a division of the Department of Natural & Cultural Resources