Undergraduate Art Students Revive Pittsboro Mill With Loom2 Exhibit

Loom2, which opens Saturday, follows a similar exhibit held to great acclaim in December.

"There's a sense of spiritual presence in the building, a religious aura to the space," said senior Jeffrey Waites, the exhibit's creator and co-curator. "I wanted to comment on that, that sense of past life."

The exhibition evokes and pays homage to the 80,000-square-foot Chatham Label Mill and its former inhabitants while infusing the building with a new creative spirit.

Although Waites said this show's premise is similar to the first Loom exhibition, the thematic focus is now on the economy of machine-made and that of handmade goods.

The mill, built in the 1920s, was once the world's leading manufacturer of woven garment labels. It closed in 1996 and is now a national historic site.

Relics from the building's past, such as plans for label designs, will be on display and are incorporated into the artwork. Artists were encouraged to use objects found in the building and surrounding grounds, such as bottles or mop heads, in their pieces.

The building itself serves as a unique display space that interacts with the art. Works crop up in unexpected places, such as in hidden corners and storage rooms and on support pillars.

The building's owner, Tom Roberts, has been an enthusiastic supporter of the project. Waites approached Roberts about two years ago with hopes of transforming the space into an artists' studio, and the Loom exhibits were organized as a way to put the space to creative use in the meantime.

"I think this is a unique opportunity to give artists a chance to show and to give the building exposure as well," Waites said.

Although the first Loom featured primarily UNC-Chapel Hill graduate students, this one incorporates a broader range of students and professionals from UNC-CH, N.C. State University and local communities. "There's an incredible creative and artistic community here," Waites said.

The number of artists participating has increased as well, from about 25 to more than 40. That number includes local luminaries like Superchunk's Laura Ballance, who used objects from the building to create a motley trio of rats born of leaves, twine and debris.

Waites, along with co-curators Angela Salamanca and Lauren Adams, use the exhibition to display the works they created for their senior honors theses in the Department of Art. Art Professor Elin Slavick served as the exhibit's faculty advisor, and it was supported by grants from the the Department of Art and the Johnston Center for Undergraduate Excellence.

Some pieces address the history of mills and some respond to the feel of the building itself. Others, such as Adams' and Salamanca's pieces, deal with personal and family histories. Adams' responds to her memories of growing up on her family farm. Salamanca, a native of Colombia, created a piece that deals with displacement and the ways immigrants settle into life in America.

Other works range from a voodoo-based design created from dirt, chalk and sand to a diorama-like scenario in which robots create themselves to the tune of eerie childlike music.

Waites' own piece, which deals with responses to race in Southern culture, features a portrait of the mill's longtime facilities manager and fabric panels adorned with birds -- echoing the live birds that sometimes swoop through the building.

Waites plans to keep holding regular Loom exhibitions for as long as he can and hopes to eventually bring his plans of developing an artists' studio to fruition.

"I'm really attracted to spaces like this -- it's the combination of space and light," he said.

Loom2's opening night will feature piano, poetry, dance and puppet performances, as well as a collective parade. Pianist Gregory McCallum, who travels to mill towns doing performances that comment on mill closings, will be playing a piece titled "A Southern Weave."

The exhibition opens 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. Saturday and runs through May 18. For a full schedule, directions and more information, visit www.l-o-o-m.org.

The Arts & Entertainment Editor can be reached at artsdesk@unc.edu.