Best of the Day: HackCycle – June 11, 2015
Welcome to Best of the Day, our daily recommendation for what to check out around town. If you do one thing in Boston today, consider this.
LED-lit laser-engraved acrylic by Miles Donovan. / Courtesy the Nave Gallery
If you’re familiar with Philip K. Dick’s First Law of Kipple—the insidious entropy that transmogrifies valued objects into the world-suffocating detritus known as “kipple” in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?—you know that trash is far easier made than unmade. To win against kipple takes a canny alchemist indeed. And that’s what the Nave Gallery’s new exhibit, “HackCycle,” is all about.
“HackCycle” is a celebration of 21st-century salvage art, “examining the transformation of bits, bytes, cruft, e-waste, circuits, doodads, odds & ends and more into objects of art.” Curated by Melissa Glick—who often leads Artisan’s Asylum workshops on recycled art—the show features contributions from 14 artists who’ve turned castoff junk into vehicles, music players, lava light sculptures, and even a “cyber valkyrie.”
Of course, it should come as no surprise that the Nave is transforming the mundane into the marvelous—creating art in unusual spaces is kind of their specialty. See also: Project MUM (“Meet Under McGrath”), a trippy dance party under the highway, and their guerrilla textile blitzkrieg, Yarnstorm Perry Park.
For an extra shot of Somerville-grade whimsy, head out to the exhibit this Saturday. That way, you can also catch the fourth annual SqueezeBox Slam, an outdoor festival co-produced by the Nave and the Somerville Arts Council featuring roving bands of accordion players—including none other than Lady Kielbasia, the famed accordion-playing drag lunch lady.
“HackCycle” runs June 11-July 12, opening reception June 11, 6-8 p.m., Nave Gallery in the Clarendon Hill Presbyterian Church, 155 Powder House Blvd., Somerville, navegallery.org.
