2000 - 2005

Ethyl at Knob Creek Gun Range

Tire Fire Links: CEPA GALLERY ACA GALLERY UNIVERSITY OF LOUISVILLE GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS COLLEGE TIREFIRE WEBSITE

Ethyl at Atlanta College of Art Gallery

 

TireFires and a Talking Car Lisa Fischman,  Director,  ACA Gallery Driven by a fascination with the hidden mythology of everyday life, Sue Wrbican and Mary Carothers forge poetic work out of unexpected experience.   Their projects together focus around travel, loosely plotted adventures infused by an indefatigable embrace of chance.  The artists have learned, they say, "to maneuver without maps" and follow instead less obvious "signs" that lead to the unanticipated find, the curious encounter.   The strategy is crucial if unforgiving, a courageous effort to investigate the very nature of creative process.  Born of their credo "Surrender Your Comfort Zone!" the work bespeaks true collaboration, a merging of impulses, talents and vision that is both wildly unpredictable and genuinely unconventional. It all began with a poem. Sue Wrbican's "The Fire Breathing Couch" is based on the work of artist Mary Carlisle.  In it, a woman conspires with her friend to photograph a burning couch.  Having lit the couch and captured the image, the two women douse the flames and strap the skeletal remains of the burnt frame to the car roof overhead.  As the unsuspecting driver speeds toward a gas station to refuel her spent tank, the wind rekindles the fire.  On empty, crowned in flames, the car stalls at the pumps.  In Carlisle's case this was a fortuitous end; in Wrbican's version ... everything explodes. The poem is a metaphorical sketch for Wrbican and Carothers' collaboration, an outline that guides their project and speaks to their sense of art- and life- as irrefutably dependent on accident and unforeseen consequence.  Their work is a form of storytelling, expanding imaginatively . . .

The Fire Breathing Couch Sue Wrbican with the couch of her dreams tied to the roof of her car she drives out to the suburbs finds her friend waiting in the driveway with a gallon of gas the two of them drag the couch out back its legs scraping on the asphalt leading to the garden where the sunflowers are gathered in anticipation in their tips you can see they've survived a long afternoon and are a little tired everything goes as planned after shooting two rolls of film she douses the flames until the smoke is gone the two of them can barely hoist the dripping carcass to the roof rack but they struggle victoriously faces and arms glowing with soot and satisfaction and say goodbye. she throws the gears in reverse and backs out slams it into drive and speeds off down the hill the weight of the couch pulling her faster she's running on fumes and in a hurry to get gas because the sun is setting and this time of year the pumps close early from deep inside the dream the dragon feels the sting of the wind and wakes up screaming angry and frightened then gives the wind what it gives to him one gasp and one sigh all at once

 





                                                                                                                                                                               





                                                                                                                                       home