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Jen Sudul Edwards, PhD, chief curator and curator of contemporary art at The Mint Museum, explains the significance of works by mid-century modernist Doris Leeper. Leeper, who worked in painting and sculpture, hints at her interest in the three-dimensional in the painting Figures Eight. Leeper was born in Charlotte in 1929 but moved out of state. She maintained a presence in North Carolina, however, participating in the Mint’s juried competition series Piedmont Exhibition. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]

E.V. Day (American, 1967–). Daytona Vortex, 2020, neoprene, filament, metal. On loan from Jimmy and Chandra Johnson.

The Mint Museum debuts Daytona Vortex sculpture commemorates NASCAR driver Jimmie Johnson’s 2006 Daytona 500 victory

For Immediate Release 

Charlotte (December 22, 2021) — Daytona Vortex by New York-based artist EV Day makes its public debut December 23, 2021 at The Mint Museum in uptown Charlotte. On loan from Jimmie and Chandra Johnson, the sculpture is made from the fire suit Jimmie Johnson wore when he took the win at the 2006 Daytona 500. 

Made from the winning fire suit, monofilament and hardware with a mirrored stainless steel base, Jimmie Johnson commissioned Day to create the sculpture that stands more than 12 feet tall. For decades Day has constructed sculptures that question social structures and perceptions around gender and sexuality, as seen in her Exploded Couture series that includes Transporter, which is on view in the Mint’s permanent collection galleries on Level 4 at Mint Museum Uptown. 

Bold forms and colors found in the sculpture generate notions of speed, technology, and celebratory confetti. The reversed engineering of the suit pays homage to Karuta, the complicated armor worn by samurai warriors. Day also considers Jimmie Johnson’s racing suit in the lineage of space exploration, tracing its fiber genetics to the suit that allowed Major Arthur Murray to become the first pilot to leave the Earth’s atmosphere in 1954.  

“It celebrates the power and heroism of humankind’s innovation,” Day says. “Tectonically the language of the piece highlights the friction between man and machine — softness of the highly tailored fabric to the rigid structure of the hardware. It may seem that these forces are at odds, but they are interdependent on one another,” Day says. 

When Jen Sudul Edwards, PhD, chief curator and curator ofcontemporary art at the Mint, learned about the commissioned piece, she knew she wanted to have it on view at the Mint.  

“Like Transporter, Daytona Vortex is visually stunning and conceptually powerful as it pushes us to rethink ideas around gender, dress, social interactions, expectations and popular culture,” Sudul Edwards says. “It’s also a poignant reconsideration of sports heroes like Jimmie Johnson and the tension that must be maintained between the physical and intellectual, assurances and risk, in order to succeed.” 

Daytona Vortex is on view December 23, 2021-June 5, 2022, in the Gorelick Gallery on Level 3 at Mint Museum Uptown. 

Ticket Information 

The Mint Museum exhibition is free for members and children ages 4 and younger; $15 for adults; $10 for seniors ages 65 and older; $10 for college students with ID; and $6 for youth ages 5–17. Frontline workers and their immediate families receive complimentary admission through December 31, 2021. 

About The Mint Museum  

Established in 1936 as North Carolina’s first art museum, The Mint Museum is a leading, innovative cultural institution and museum of international art and design. With two locations—Mint Museum Randolph in the heart of Eastover and Mint Museum Uptown at Levine Center for the Arts on South Tryon Street—the Mint boasts one of the largest collections in the Southeast and is committed to engaging and inspiring members of the global community. 

Contact: 

Michele Huggins, Interim Director of Marketing and Communications at The Mint Museum 

michele.huggins@mintmuseum.org | 704-564-0826 

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In Vivid Color: Pushing the Boundaries of Perception in Contemporary Art investigates the power of color on our everyday perceptions and shared experiences 

[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_single_image image=”40985″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]Visitors are first greeted by Summer Wheat’s monumental installation Foragers in the Robert Haywood Morrison atrium. The four story, 3,720-square-foot installation fills 96 window panels with vibrant hand-cut layered vinyl gel panels that combine to tell the story of women as makers and providers. The presentation bathes the space in jewel-tone colors and hues that shift with natural light, enveloping the visitor. Foragers was commissioned for the Mint and generously funded by Wells Fargo Foundation Women Artists Fund.

Located on Level 3 in the Gorelick Gallery, immersive installations Daisy Bell and Orbit 12 by pioneering digital artist Jennifer Steinkamp explore the symbolic power of color through video technology. Using repeated floral patterns and hyper-saturated colors, Daisy Bell, which is part of Bank of America’s corporate art collection, challenges viewers to rethink their relationship with the natural world. Orbit 12, a gift to the museum from the Mint Museum Auxiliary, guides viewers through four seasons in which leaves, branches, and blossoms constantly morph through cycles of growth, abundance, decay, and renewal.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_single_image image=”40584″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]At nearly 40-feet wide, Spencer Finch’s Sunset (South Texas, 6/21/03), also on loan from Bank of America, recreates a sunset on the Texas plains with green, pink, blue, yellow and orange filters fitted over fluorescent lamps. The horizontal stretch of the piece mimics the vastness of the plains and allows viewers to settle into the distance of space and color. Gisela Colon’s Hyper Ellipsoid pushes the boundaries of materials and sculptural form. Her objects, self-described as organic minimalism, use suspended pigments in acrylic to create forms that seem to shape-shift with light and motion.

The exhibition also includes 11 paintings and works on paper by artists Jennifer Bartlett, Annette Cone-Skelton, Peter Halley, Juan Logan, Harvey Quaytman, T.J. Reddy, Brian Rutenberg, Julian Stanczak, and Donald Sultan from the Mint’s permanent collection. In addition, local artist Juan Logan has loaned a painting from his Elegy series. Visitors can also play with color and light in the color shadow experience just inside the gallery.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”10px”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]In Vivid Color is presented by Wells Fargo Private Bank, with additional support from the Mint Museum Auxiliary, Bank of America Collection, and the GAVLAK Gallery. In Vivid Color also benefits from a media partnership with Peachy the Magazine. [/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#68c8c6″][vc_empty_space height=”16px”][vc_column_text]

About The Mint Museum

Established in 1936 as North Carolina’s first art museum, The Mint Museum is a leading, innovative cultural institution and museum of international art and design. With two locations—Mint Museum Randolph in the heart of Eastover and Mint Museum Uptown at Levine Center for the Arts on South Tryon Street—the Mint boasts one of the largest collections in the Southeast and is committed to engaging and inspiring members of the global community.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”16px”][vc_empty_space height=”16px”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#68c8c6″][vc_empty_space height=”16px”][vc_column_text]

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The Mint Museum’s new four-story installation Foragers offers a transcendent experience while celebrating the tradition of women as makers and providers

[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_single_image image=”40845″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_column_text]Foragers is part of a larger exhibition In Vivid Color that opens Oct. 16 at Mint Museum Uptown. In Vivid Color brings together four innovative contemporary artists—Wheat, Gisela Colon, Spencer Finch, and Jennifer Steinkamp—who create works celebrating the power of color and its ability to permeate the space around us. Their work is juxtaposed with a selection of paintings and works on paper, drawn primarily from The Mint Museum’s permanent collection, which showcase artists’ more traditional exploration of color.

The magnitude and brilliance of Foragers turns the typical museum experience on its head and creates a transcendent space of contemplation and beauty at a time when a weary public craves an escape—and a spacious, social-distancing-friendly one at that. While standard admission rates apply to the museum’s Level 3 and Level 4 galleries, access to Mint Museum Uptown’s atrium and the Foragers installation is free.

“This gorgeous work will transform Mint Museum Uptown’s atrium space with color and light, making it a must-see destination in Charlotte,” says Todd A. Herman, Ph.D., President and CEO of The Mint Museum.[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_single_image image=”40843″ img_size=”large” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]Summer Wheat’s installation was commissioned by The Mint Museum. The installation and purchase of Foragers was funded by the Wells Fargo Foundation Women Artists Fund, which aims to address and rebalance gender representation in museum collections.

“The Wells Fargo Foundation Women Artists Fund is designed to address and help reconcile the imbalance of female representation in museum collections,” says Jay Everette, Wells Fargo’s senior vice president of philanthropy and corporate social responsibility.

“Just 11 percent of all acquisitions and 14 percent of exhibitions at 26 prominent American museums over the past decade were of work by female artists. According to a joint investigation by In Other Words and artnet News, a total of 260,470 works have entered museums’ permanent collections since 2008. Only 29,247 were by women.”

Foragers celebrates North Carolina’s creativity and industry—those named and anonymous.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”10px”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]“Foragers presents a tradition in which women were the original hunters, technologists, and artists,” Wheat says. “This array of women connected by geometric patterns echoes the psychological space of women supporting each other. They are marching together connecting to creatures from land and water, demonstrating their inherent link to natural elements and to the intricate depths of the unconscious.”[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

About Summer Wheat

Contemporary artist Summer Wheat (b. 1977, Oklahoma City, Okla.) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York City. She received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Central Oklahoma and a Master of Fine Arts from Savannah College of Art and Design. She is known for being an innovator, constantly blurring boundaries between traditional art forms and mediums. Consider the way she pushes acrylic paint through fine wire mesh to create large-scale paintings, like her With Side, With Shoulder, part of the Mint’s permanent collection and on view in the Mint’s new exhibition New Days, New Works.

Wheat has had solo exhibitions with lauded institutions, galleries and museums across the nation, including the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City (2020); KMAC Museum, Louisville (2019); Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles (2018); Smack Mellon, New York (2018); Henry Art Gallery, University of Washington, Seattle (2017); and Oklahoma Contemporary, Oklahoma City (2016).

Wheat will also have her first solo exhibition with SOCO Gallery in Charlotte—entitled Lather, Rinse, Repeat—September 16 through November 6, 2020. The exhibition will feature ve large-scale paintings and two “pebble seats” focusing on the theme of bathing and grooming. The theme, drawn on throughout art history, frequently depicts idyllic figures and scenery, but in Wheat’s work, the women portrayed are imperfect and defy traditional notions of beauty. Wheat will have a solo exhibition with Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles in 2021.

Additional museum exhibitions include Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2013–14); deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park (2013); and Torrance Art Museum (2013). Wheat received the 2016 New York NADA Artadia Award and the 2019 Northern Trust Purchase Prize at EXPO Chicago. Wheat’s work is in the permanent collections of the Dallas Museum of Art, Texas; de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA; Peréz Art Museum Miami; The Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, Seattle; The Mint Museum, Charlotte, NC and the Speed Art Museum in Louisville, Kentucky.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”16px”][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#68c8c6″][vc_empty_space height=”16px”][vc_column_text]

About The Mint Museum

Established in 1936 as North Carolina’s first art museum, The Mint Museum is a leading, innovative cultural institution and museum of international art and design. With two locations—Mint Museum Randolph in the heart of Eastover and Mint Museum Uptown at Levine Center for the Arts on South Tryon Street—the Mint boasts one of the largest collections in the Southeast and is committed to engaging and inspiring members of the global community.[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space height=”16px”][vc_empty_space height=”16px”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#68c8c6″][vc_empty_space height=”16px”][vc_column_text]

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]Images: Summer Wheat (American, 1977–). Foragers, 2020, colored vinyl on mylar, 805.5 x 738.5 inches. T0263.1a-qqqq. Photo credit: Chris Edwards[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]