Spring Open House and Restless Corners art installation opening
The Percy Grainger Home and Studio is pleased to announce the 5th annual Spring Open House featuring the opening reception for Restless Corners, a site-specific art installation. The event, free to the public, will take place on Sunday April 6, from 2-4 pm at the historic house located at 7 Cromwell Place in White Plains. At 2:30 pm there will be a moderated Q&A with the artists about their process. Due to space limitations, registration is necessary. Please register: https://percygrainger.org/event-5874611
The Art Exhibition
Restless Corners, created by Joel Sherry, is a series of sculptural video objects placed throughout the house. Inspired by both the building and Grainger’s life, the works incorporate performance, sound, photography, drawing, found objects and Percy Grainger’s own musical compositions. The sculptures integrate reclaimed monitors and projectors using video played in an atmosphere of looping movement, light and sound.
In creating Restless Corners, Joel Sherry and members of the dance performance group Teatolocal (Joel Sherry, Cynthia Bueschel Svigals, Michelle Kelly Wurf) collaborated to connect diverse audiences, fusing visual art, performance, and music in surprising combinations.
Paul Jackson, president of the Percy Grainger Society, expressed his enthusiasm: “We are thrilled to welcome Joel Sherry and his groundbreaking exhibit, Restless Corners, to the Percy Grainger Home and Studio. This installation not only honors the artistic spirit of Percy and Ella Grainger but also continues their legacy of using this space as a vibrant platform for creativity and innovation.”
Exhibition Dates: Sunday, April 6 until Sunday, May 4
In addition to the Spring Open House on April 6, specific tours have been scheduled to highlight the multimedia art installation. Join us on a Sunday tour, April 27 at 2pm, for a special guided tour of the exhibition with the artist, Joel Sherry. (Reservations required). https://percygrainger.org/event-6062687
The exhibition is also available for Wednesdays Lunchtime Tours on April 9, 23 & 30th. Tours begin at noon (advanced registration required). https://percygrainger.org/event-6061590
About the Artists
Joel Sherry is an artist, designer, builder and choreographer. He received a BFA in Theatrical Design from California Institute of the Arts. As a multi-disciplinary artist working in the areas of design, visual art, and choreography, he creates paintings, sculptures, installations and live performance. As a designer, he has created environments for theater, dance, corporate entertainment and themed attractions. He currently works for SUNY New Paltz as Technical Director of the Performing Arts Department. Teatolocal is the current iteration of his collaboration with Cynthia Bueschel Svigals & Michelle Kelly Wurf.
About the Percy Grainger Home and Studio
Percy Aldridge Grainger (1882-1961), an internationally renowned pianist and composer, stands as a seminal figure in 20th century music history. His compositions and arrangements for wind ensembles helped transform bands into instruments for serious concert music and his arrangements are still widely performed today. Innovative and multi-talented, Grainger was additionally, a pioneer in the collection of folk songs, a watercolorist, essayist, and inventor of experimental music-making machines. The house, purchased in 1921, served as his residence, studio and laboratory until his death in 1961.
The 1893 house remains largely furnished today as it was during Grainger’s lifetime and is the resource most significantly associated with Grainger in America. Each spring, the Percy Grainger Society invites the local community to visit the Percy Grainger Home and Studio. From the music room and beyond, the house quietly illustrates how each Grainger family member made this space an echo of their individual interests, talents and unique personalities.
For more information, please go to https://percygrainger.org
About Percy Grainger Society
Percy Aldridge Grainger (8 July 1882 – 20 February 1961) was an internationally known composer, arranger and pianist who made his home in White Plains, New York from 1921 until his death in 1961. Multitalented and innovative, he also invented music-making machines, recorded and documented folk music, designed his own clothing, and wrote extensively. His popular works like “Country Gardens” and “Molly on the Shore” were best sellers of the early twentieth-century music world, while his experiments in avant-garde music anticipated many artistic developments in the later twentieth century and beyond. Today his music is performed even more widely than during his lifetime. The historic house, built in 1893 and added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 8, 1993, remains today furnished as it was during Grainger’s lifetime, a dramatic living testimony to the life and times of a multi-faceted genius. The Percy Grainger Society seeks to preserve and interpret Percy Grainger’s life and works, serving as a cultural resource for a diverse audience of national and international visitors.
Percy Grainger Society engaged in an ongoing re-creation of the life and times of Australian composer Percy Grainger, especially during his forty years in White Plains (1921 to 1961). To this end, the Percy Grainger Society rededicated Grainger’s historic landmark home at 7 Cromwell Place in White Plains, New York as a living time capsule that exhibits how an internationally famous, radically inventive creative artist (and his wife, Ella Viola Strom, also an artist) lived and worked as “different drummers” in twentieth-century America. The Graingers’ home, long a destination for a worldwide stream of visiting musicians, now reemerges as a fascinating storybook world for a larger cultural public.