{"id":27567,"date":"2019-07-23T14:00:44","date_gmt":"2019-07-23T19:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=27567"},"modified":"2019-07-23T13:25:08","modified_gmt":"2019-07-23T18:25:08","slug":"apsus-michael-dickins-creating-own-work-championing-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2019\/07\/23\/apsus-michael-dickins-creating-own-work-championing-others\/","title":{"rendered":"APSU\u2019s Michael Dickins creating own work, championing others"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – For a moment, it sounded as if someone was trapped deep inside the metal barrel. This unnerving feeling grew more intense as gallery visitors walked toward the rusty drum.<\/p>\n

It looked like a normal barrel, used to collect garbage or \u2013 for the more desperate \u2013 to build a fire on an icy winter night, but once visitors peered inside, they heard flat, unemotional voices offering up \u201cthoughts and prayers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Michael<\/a>

Michael Dickins is director of galleries at Austin Peay State University. (APSU)<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

One of the barrel\u2019s clearer voices, belonging to an older woman, announced, \u201cPraying for the Orlando community in the wake of this morning\u2019s unthinkable act of violence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those words were tweeted by West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito after the June 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting and they, along with tweets from other politicians in the wake of mass shootings, form the powerful core of artist Michael Dickins\u2019 ongoing sound-collage installation, \u201c#thoughtsandprayers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c(This piece) took the form of a steel drum barrel,\u201d Dickins said. \u201cI was thinking of a symbol of garbage. And the barrel is a provider of this warmth the same way Twitter is providing this sense of warmth. But 30 minutes later, there\u2019s a new news story. The warmth has died down.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Last<\/a>

Last year, Dickins brought artist Amy Sherald to the Austin Peay State University campus to discuss her famed portrait of Michelle Obama. (APSU)<\/p><\/div>\n

Within the Clarksville community, Dickins is known as the innovative director of galleries at Austin Peay State University, where he has the uncanny ability to bring world-class talent to campus.<\/p>\n

Just last year, APSU\u2019s The New Gallery hosted an exhibition by renowned artist Wendy Red Star and a special lecture by Amy Sherald, the artist behind Michelle Obama\u2019s portrait. But Dickins is also a practicing interdisciplinary artist, and in 2018, his piece \u201cWailing Wall\u201d received the Nashville Scene\u2019s Best Activist Art award.<\/p>\n

[320left]\u201cWe often ask questions about the art in a gallery, but Dickins\u2019 work turned questions back on its viewers, and challenged gallery-goers to confront their own stances in these chaotic times,\u201d Joe Nolan wrote in the October 2018 Nashville Scene.<\/p>\n

Sound, such as the voices emanating from that metal barrel, is a major component of Dickins\u2019 work, and this interest has led him to reexamine human speech. Particularly, he\u2019s curious about how political rhetoric shapes and manipulates society. That\u2019s what led him to develop \u201c#thoughtsandprayers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy work is a commentary for others to hear, to see, to disregard,\u201d he said. \u201cIf someone is moved to do something about it, that\u2019s great, but it\u2019s not a call for action. It\u2019s a call for self-reflection.\u201d<\/p>\n

Collaborating with STEM<\/h3>\n

Dickins is now working to expand \u201c#thoughtsandprayers\u201d by adding warped steel barrels to the piece, and to find those specific materials, he turned to an unlikely partner \u2013 Austin Peay\u2019s College of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).<\/p>\n

Throughout the year, as part of that college\u2019s outreach efforts, physics laboratory manager Bryan Gaither wows local students by boiling water inside a 55-gallon steel drum and then plunging that drum in ice.<\/p>\n

A minute or two later, the drum implodes. Gaither is now donating his ruined barrels to Dickins, in one of many collaborations between the College of STEM and the College of Arts and Letters.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there’s a good push here on campus to collaborate between departments and colleges, especially with the leadership of Dr. (Karen) Meisch (dean of the College of STEM) always wanting to bridge those gaps between science and art,\u201d Dickins said.<\/p>\n

[320right]In the future, Dickins also plans to collaborate with Dr. Mollie F. Cashner, APSU associate professor of biology, by having an invited artist \u2013 Brooklyn-based artist Laura Splan \u2013 work with Cashner\u2019s genetics class to create a visualization of a DNA coding sequence. Splan will visit campus in Fall 2020 for a 3-week residency.<\/p>\n

\u201cScience deals a lot with facts, art deals a lot with philosophy,\u201d Dickins said. \u201cI think they should always be combined. To not only ask how, but also why.\u201d<\/p>\n

But for now, in addition to his creative work, Dickins is putting the finishing touches on another major exhibition season for the University\u2019s galleries.<\/p>\n

For information on his work, visit www.michaeldickins.com<\/a>. In the next few weeks, the University will unveil its 2019-2020 season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – For a moment, it sounded as if someone was trapped deep inside the metal barrel. This unnerving feeling grew more intense as gallery visitors walked toward the rusty drum. It looked like a normal barrel, used to collect garbage or \u2013 for the more desperate \u2013 to build a fire on an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[23,32944,33719,262,512,825,21260,23700,33860,27660],"class_list":["post-27567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","tag-apsu","tag-apsu-college-of-science-technology-and-matematics","tag-apsu-stem","tag-austin-peay-state-university","tag-clarksville","tag-clarksville-tn","tag-dna","tag-michael-dickins","tag-mollie-casher","tag-nashville-scene"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-7aD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27567"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27568,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27567\/revisions\/27568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}