BOUND: An Interactive Exhibit.
Exhibition Dates: TBA 2024
Educational/Community Outreach
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SOLO SHOW
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Karyn Mannix with the Eastville Community Historical Society
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139 Hampton Street, Sag Harbor, NY 11963
BOUND: An Interactive Exhibit
The exhibition exemplifies the importance of books throughout culture and how bound we are physically, emotionally, and intellectually as books are being placed into generational and political time frames.
Karyn Mannix Artist Statement:
Art as the written word is the direct form of what lies between reflection and expression.
I use text as a way to create works that are as thought-provoking and interactive as possible. As a writer and published poet, using text is one way that I transfer the verbal into the visual.
My work is an examination of the different sides of my personality and the thinking that lies behind it. In this series, I am using books since they are comfortably familiar objects that will pull the viewer in for closer observation. Adding my thoughts in text is a way of questioning the attitudes, inner dialog, and unwritten rules in which we have found ourselves as a society with the current environment and our behavior within it.
My comments on the books are done with a snarky sense of humor and an added dose of reality. They are meant to create a dialog between the viewer and the art.
*Karyn Mannix has been in most aspects of the art business…an artist, arts educator, curator, critic, columnist, gallerist, and coordinating five international art fairs. As a breast cancer survivor, the work revolves around body image, gender, and social and political. By expressing universal concepts of birth, death, love, hate, racism, sex, and war, the directness of the message goes beyond imagery.
Dedicated to Heritage: The Eastville Community Historical Society of Sag Harbor was founded in 1981 and chartered by New York State in 1986 to preserve the history of the working-class community of Eastville and to tell the story of St. David AME Zion Church. The church remains in its original location, built in 1839 by African Americans and Native Americans on Eastville Avenue. It is widely believed to have been a stop along the Underground Railroad. Its founding Pastor, Rev. P. Thompson, was a noted Abolitionist and friend of Frederick Douglas. The Society also owns, upkeeps, preserves, and protects the adjacent century-old cemetery in which African and Native Americans of the earlier St. David's church membership are buried, many of whom were Sag Harbor Whalers.
From the early 1800's until the mid-1900's, the section of historic Sag Harbor known as Eastville was home to a multi-ethnic population of free Blacks, European immigrants and Native Americans. The area evolved through many economic changes, including two devastating village fires, the rise and fall of the whaling industry, the development and decline of factories, and a boom in the tourist and resort business. Today Eastville retains its ethnic mix, while preserving its modest character amidst the glamour and wealth of the Hamptons.
The Eastville Community Historical Society moved its headquarters to 139 Hampton Street in 1996, now called the Heritage House, originally a 1925 Sears & Roebuck catalog house. and continues to raise funds for the maintenance of the church and cemetery. In addition, exhibitions are regularly hosted at the Heritage House. Please come visit!
Mission: The Mission of the Eastville Community Historical Society is to preserve historic buildings and research, collect and disseminate information about the history of the Eastville area of Sag Harbor, Long Island, New York, County of Suffolk, State of New York, and one of the earliest known working-class communities composed of African Americans, Native Americans and European immigrants.
What We Do: Preservation, History, Art, Education, Humanities
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