Toni M.
Yelp
Last night was the final concert of the Lesher Jazz Series. Alan and I were finished w/ dinner early enough to have time to stop in at the Bedford Gallery. If you have tickets for the evening's performance, admission to the gallery is free. Otherwise it's $5. We were fortunate to happen on the Cardburg 2012 exhibit, which opened in June and closes today.
This is what their website description says:
"This summer Bedford Gallery welcomes the exciting new exhibition Cardburg 2012: The Super Track! The Cardboard Institute of Technology (C.I.T.) has deconstructed the spectacle of car racing, challenging mainstream notions of competition and cooperation. C.I.T. invites you to take part in their unique brand of racing: form a pit crew, race in teams, and sabotage your opponents.
Bedford Curator Carrie Lederer comments that, "C.I.T. projects always incorporate aspects of the world we live in--from pop culture, history and myth to contemporary life. The artists are entrepreneurial in spirit, and bring an array of skills and talents to their projects, using high-tech/low-tech hybrids as a motto for construction. Each installation is a unique, humorous and thoughtful statement about our local and global community, and our attraction to large-scale, exhilarating public events."
The exibition will include several open makes, during which visitors can come to the gallery and build their own cardboard car. We hope you will join us as we turn up the heat and explore the high-octane world of monster truck racing."
Around the perimeter of the room was a series of race cars made of cardboard, nestled in extravagantly imaginative frames/holders created to harmonize or extrapolate on the themes of the cars. They were exquisitely crafted. I checked, and none of them was operational, but there were some in the back that were. In the center of the room is an elaborate track structure w/ w person-size hole in the center and a couple of 6" high platforms on either side to stand on so shorter people can see into the track. A nice young woman brought out a car, wriggled into the hole and set it on the track, having given me a device w/ a trigger-like accelerator and a wheel on the side to turn the car. I tried, vainly, to steer the car around the track, which was shaped like a large open cone. I just didn't get the concept and the car kept running aground or otherwise getting stuck. Another woman brought out another car, which had toggle-like apparatuses to make it go. I gave the original car and its device to Alan, who had as little success as I did. I had no better success w/ the second car. Fortunately we are both better drivers in the world of full size cars. It was a grand exhibit and I'm sorry not to have discovered it sooner so maybe you could have gone to see it, but unfortunately you can't. The Bedford Gallery has interesting and challenging exhibits, based on past ones I've seen, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the next one is. I feel so lucky to have seen this one.