“Of Most Excellent Fancy” opens at Crate Wine Market + Project
“Crate Project was originally and intentionally conceived to help Crate Wine Market transcend from being a typical retail wine shop and transform it into a cultural hub … a community gathering space where people can meet each other to converse, learn, and share knowledge,” says owner Derek Coté.
This week, the Laurel Park business kicks off that portion of its mission with the exhibit Of Most Excellent Fancy, featuring conceptual glass sculpture by Sarah Mizer.
The title, Mizer tells Bold Life, “is pulled from Shakespeare. Hamlet uses this combination of words in part to describe his friend, Yorick. As Hamlet holds Yorick’s skull in his hands, he is reminded of his greatest qualities, and exaggerates his relationship to his fallen friend. Hamlet consciously enhanced the reflection of Yorick’s life.”
And speaking of the 16th century, the artist’s works for the Crate show are based on the “vanitas”-style still lifes of the Flemish and Italian masters. The subject matter in these works symbolized both the duplicity and brevity of life — a sour lemon with sunshiny skin, a congress of grinning skulls. Mizer, using a much more minimalist approach, enshrines spare branches of flora that, while no longer technically living, become important for the afterglow of time and place in which she found them.
Like Hamlet, she says, “I amplify things I may not really remember.”
“Of Most Excellent Fancy,” featuring the work of Sarah Mizer, opens at Crate Wine Market + Project (100 Daniel Drive, Laurel Park) on Friday, February 17, and runs through March, with a closing reception on Saturday, April 1. For more information, call 828-696-3283 or visit cratenc.com.
