[ee-kwuh-lib-ree-uhm]
Finding Balance
[ee-kwuh-lib-ree-uhm] is a collection of ten large-format works on paper born out of a two-year interdependent collaboration between photographer Cade Martin and multi-disciplinary artist Vincent Serritella. Produced by Kate Chase.
How [ee-kwuh-lib-ree-uhm] Happened
Photographer Cade Martin and artist Vincent Serritella reside on opposite sides of the United States. Brought together by Chase, they immediately and easily slipped into discussions about the ways in which they could best blur the lines between their individual contributions and find a complementary third way through balancing skills and aesthetics. The resulting ten works now prompt the question as to what was photographic and what was paint. It’s hard to tell where Cade’s work stops and Vincent’s begin.
Why New Orleans for the Project?
Cade Martin has always had a fondness for Louisiana. As a child, he explored there often during summer vacations with his parents. As an adult he travels back frequently for both work and personal trips—drawn back for its food, its mix of cultures, its textures and to document its many characters from all walks of life. It was on one of these trips when he first laid eyes on the nearly century-old Market Street Power Plant, and it immediately put its hooks in him.
And it would be this project that would officially get him inside. Walking the vast factory, he captured what he saw, what moved him and what caught his eye. The building’s character oozed from each corner of the space, connecting him not only with the energy of the plant’s past but also filling him with the inspiration that came from envisioning its next life through Vincent’s mixing of media.
For Serritella, in contemplating the rawness of this abandoned and street-art filled power-plant, he would be reminded about the spontaneity and direct dialog street artists have as they add-to or subtract-from their surfaces. Choosing then to let Cade’s photographs decay, just as the building had. Serritella let the paper collect dust, dirt, debris and footsteps on the floor of his studio for over a year. Then came a juxtaposing of media — spray paint, oil and grease pencil. The piece was layered finally with chalkboard paint, acrylic, cray-pas and charcoal to add texture, richness and depth to the surface of the paper. The work was then framed without glazing to allow the natural atmospheric elements to further decay the paper and work, continuing the impermanence of leaving the life of the image unknown and perhaps to decay if left abandoned. Each piece was ultimately named for a graffiti phrase found in Martin’s original photographs.
Along the way, the work also took on a new partner so to speak, the New Orleans Market Street Power Plant. Built in 1905, it closed its doors in 1973 and was left to decay.
But now, thanks to the unique balancing act between Cade and Vincent’s juxtaposition of various media, [ee-kwuh-lib-ree-uhm] is breathing renewed power back into this currently neglected space.