Gaylord Building Announces Finalists For Lockport Art Experience

LOCKPORT, IL — The Gaylord Building, National Trust for Historic Preservation, and unLOCK jury panel have announced the 10 artists who have been selected to create new works of art for unLOCK: Merging Art & Industry in Lockport.

According to the organization, unLOCK, a citywide multimedia art experience in Lockport, is intended to increase the city's creative and commercial activity and advance local revitalization efforts by using art
to galvanize the city's unique heritage. unLOCK is being created and executed by the Gaylord Building utilizing a $50,000 Our Town Grant received from the National Endowment for the Arts.

32 proposals were sent in for unLOCK, and ten final participants were selected, the organization said in a release.

• Steve Carrelli – “Harvest”, an outdoor sculptural installation that evokes Lockport's history as a center of grain trade in the 19th century.
• Maggie Capettini – “I&M Canal: Industry, Memory, Community”, a series of architectural paintings offers the community a fresh take on their surrounding along with programming and activities that engage the community with each other, the history of Lockport and with the evidence of that history in the present day.
• Jaclyn Mednicov – “Accumulations”, through fabricated wallpaper collaged with the histories and memories of the residents of Lockport, stories will merge on one surface in a layered accumulation of images and text.
• Samuel Love – “Lockport Poetry Project”, an exploration of Lockport’s industrial history and culture through poetry, independent publishing and public art.
• John McDavitt – “Lockport by Lockport”, a mural with the theme ‘Legacy of Lockport’ will be an interactive ‘paint-by-number’ artwork for the community.
• Robert Ryan – “The City of Lockport...Constantly Moving Toward a Brighter Tomorrow”, a public mural displaying the modes of transportation and businesses that defined Lockport as a crucial part of the region’s development and success.
• Colin Lyons – “Prototype for the Preservation of Degradation”, a project that will inhabit a portion of post-industrial canal infrastructure where an off-the-grid shelter will be created and a printmaking-powered laboratory inhabited by the artist who will assume the role of surveyor, ecologist and alchemist.
• May Babcock – “Ebb and Flow: A Papermaking Installation”, a modular, organic piece sculpted from paper created from responsibly collected, local, plant materials and handmade papers.
• John Siblik – “Garden in the Sky”, 30 72” spheres will be installed at least 15 feet above ground and tethered in the trees along the I&M Canal.
• Dylan Fish – “From Dolomite to Dolobyte”, a unique project which will develop a fully functioning cryptocurrency unique to the town of Lockport that engages the history of mining in the region.

Image via Shutterstock.