Assembly

Part of Locally Made's One Room.
In Assembly, gather for casual meetings of the minds and unexpected happenings curated by local artists and designers. Congregate for poetry readings, sonic performances, movement, projection, and more.
Tom West curates BE GOOD, WORK HARD, DO STUFF, from 10/15 - 10/20.be good = a mantra passed on to me from my grandpa and his ability to befriend an entire neighbor hood and treat them all like family. his quote "be as good as you can to everyone around you, and things will always go your way".work hard = the deterioration of work ethic in our country is almost impossible to deny anymore. the effects have made it hard for all. working hard at accomplishing something is ALWAYS the key. If you want to be a successful painter (or any trade), keep the brush in your hand. The rest will work it self out. Work work work. Sweat sweat sweat. always!do stuff = the cure to everything (depression, hunger, failure, boredom, physical unhealthiness etc.).
The creatives I chose to do this week with me at RISD share these views. We all support and push each other along. they are my family.— Tom West
10/17: Curtis Aric
Free with museum admission.
Tom West received an honorable discharge from the US Navy and holds an Associate in Fine Arts degree from CCRI. West is a war veteran turned professional artist. His personal work tackles issues of war, politics, popular culture, religion, all through the lens of humor.
Curtis Aric's love/hate affair with rusty steel started when he was 10. His first metalworking job was to repair rotten dumpsters with a torch and lots of coat hangers. He completely rebuilt, modified and "blew up" a fleet of unlucky cars before graduating high school, where he moved from rusty to shiny steel and trained and worked as a machinist before realizing precision and exacting tolerances just did not allow for his level of creativity. He gave up drilling and tapping for welding and refabricating rusty cars from the ground up. He then decided to go further down the technical evolution ladder, crawling back into the dumpster for rusty iron where, this time, his well-trained eye teamed with glancing blows of a hammer and the heat of a forge to create art. Curtis enjoys transforming recycled cars, scrap metal and discarded machinery into both organic and utilitarian items. He also loves to work hard in a smart way while passing oral traditions of craft through hands-on experience, especially in this time, when such skills are being lost to an increasingly digital society.