Art teamwork breaks mold

The fusion of artists from different dimensions is the new focus at Pleiades Gallery in Durham.

Two Durham artists, Renee Leverty and Darius Quarles, present their exhibit “Meta-Crylic Vibration,” the first of the new Pleiades series presenting two artists’ work in the same exhibit.

Pleiades Gallery is a 10-person collective that primarily displays the work of these artists. Leverty is a metal sculptor and Quarles is a painter.

They began their collaboration with the title of their exhibit. Quarles said while naming an exhibit normally happens after the fact, it gave them ground to begin.

“We banged our heads a little bit to come up with something kind of catchy,” Quarles said.

They wanted the title to provide a glimpse of the exhibit itself. He explained that coming up with the first part, “Meta-Crylic,” was simple. It was deciding the significance of the two mediums together that proved more challenging. Ultimately, the two arrived at “Vibration.”

“Vibration, for me, was more about energy, dynamic, movement or even energy in the sense of what individuals carry,” Leverty said.

Beyond creating the name, there was very little communication between the artists.

“Our philosophy was: Here, we have picked this title, we have an idea of how we want it to be, now let’s go to our studios and create and bring it together again,” Leverty said.

While most of the pieces on display are of each artist’s individual creation, a metal sculpture of a yin yang features the artists’ direct collaboration. Leverty created the raw white metal yin yang for Quarles to paint.

“She said, ‘Just take it and do your thing,’” Quarles said.

Leverty created the piece to represent the idea of balance. Quarles kept to the simple idea of the yin yang, painting it black and white, but did so with an abstract wavy design.

“There is not a lot you can do with that actual symbol,” Quarles said. “But we kind of flipped it and freaked it and added our touch to it and we gave it actual vibrations.”

Leverty said the show has already been well-received. The metal yin yang sculpture has already been sold.

The artists’ work has inspired the other members of the gallery. Gallery member and jeweler Jena Matzen’s work will be displayed in the gallery in early 2014. She has begun brainstorming with her co-artist, a painter who uses leafing in his work.

In creating the series, each artist was paired with another artist of a different medium. The gallery members strove to pair 2-D artists with 3-D artists, though there are more 2-D artists. Each pair of artists has a certain element in their art that connects the two.

Matzen’s metalwork with her jewelry and her partner’s metal leafing in his paintings served as their connection.

“We mean to give the viewer a fuller range where they are getting to see both a 2-D artist and a 3-D artist,” Matzen said.

While “Meta-Crylic Vibrations” is the first in the series, it is by no means modest.

“It’s going to be hard to follow us because it really worked out so good. We are on two opposite ends of the artistic scale, but everything seemed to work out,” Quarles said.

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