Brand new work by Seattle artist Toby Liebowitz. Immaculate drawings, and accompanying collaborative installation (Max Liebowitz and Sean Pecknold) introduce us to the fictional depression era Peg and Awl Society.
Peg and Awl is a fictional society based in Douglas County, Oregon between the spring of 1933 and the winter of 1934. A community built from the dreams of the great depression; a place for artists, carpenters, writers and adventurers with visions of a utopian society. Through a series of graphite drawings, that span the seasons of a year, we witness the rise and fall of a community of people who are forced to face the realities of human desire and the harsh unknown.
The name of the community "Peg and Awl" comes from the song of the same title, popular during the industrial revolution of the late 1800s in America. The song prophecies the demise of handcrafts in favor of the machine. This fictional Peg & Awl society, created by Leibowitz, largely based on handcrafts, is an ode to the simplicity and creative spirit in our past, present, and potentially our future communities.
Toby Liebowitz attended Parsons School of Design for Illustration & Currently, is pursuing a degree in Agriculture at the Evergreen State College. Toby has shown her work in Seattle, New York and London.
Artist Statement about the installation:
Early in the 20th century hundreds of small sustainable communities were popping up around America. One of the most common ideas was the notion of free land and the liberation to builds ones shelter however and wherever they pleased. It was always with what they had and just the amount of space that was needed. The installation is trying to reenact a space of handmade and time spent shelter. Inside the shelter a sound piece is looped. Taking fragments of human life, a baby first laugh, and fragments of sound clips appropriate to 1933, clips of FDR’s fireside chats. The sound piece will aurally express the arc of the society “Peg and Awl” through the seasons and cyclical nature of patterns in human nature and the repeating of history past.
Sculpture Installation by Max Liebowitz
Sound Piece by Sean Pecknold
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