9/15/09

9. Trinity Rep, 201 Washington Street


CW Roelle

 

wire drawings

About the Work

The artwork that CW has chosen to show with the Providence Art Windows are examples of his wire drawings that he feels contain movement. Lines are fluid things that easily put into motion static figures simply by running around and through them. Like veins.

About the Artist

CW Roelle's first job was picking corn. He quit after two days. The next job was at an ice cream parlor called Bud's Polar Bear. That one lasted long enough for him to pay for a school trip to Europe and then he quit one day so that he would have the night off and could then attend a small party at a friend’s house. After the trip and a number of babysitting and lawn mowing jobs he gave in to his own reluctance and took a job at the grocery store where his father was the night manager (he became a daytime stock clerk and had to get a hair cut). Moving to Baltimore to attend The Maryland Institute College Of Art freed him from that job (except, that is for his first Christmas break and the summer between his freshmen and sophomore years when he went back for a bit). His first job in college was an 8-hour a week work-study shift at the school bookstore. There were some pretty cushy work-study jobs, that wasn't one of them. Working only 8 hours a week made it difficult to buy things like art supplies and food so he took a job at the security desk at the dorms. The security shifts were overnight (11-7) and he was able to get a lot of his class work done. Then during his sophomore year the opportunity to work at a nearby video store arose and he lept at the chance. To get the job he had to write an essay about what movies meant to him. Now he worked three jobs and was going to school full time. This continued until he graduated, except for the work-study, which turned into working as the bookstore late night janitor. After graduation he continued on at the video store and working security shifts for a little while and then he was hired as a shuttle driver for the school. The shuttle job was great until things started change in the management of the security office and he quit working for the school all together. The video store wasn't enough to live on so in his last months in Baltimore he took a job as a doorman at a local rock club, he was paid five dollars an hour and whatever he wanted to drink (always diet coke). The day came in early 2000 when the time was no longer live-withable in Baltimore and Mr. Roelle moved to Providence RI, the only other city where he had friends (his family lived around Rochester NY, but that town was as enticing as New England). Upon moving he quickly got a job as a parking lot attendant via a friend from college who was doing the same thing. Now it is nine years later and though he works for a different company, he is still working parking lots. It is a job that allows a lot of down time in which he can work on his artwork, at the moment he is holding shifts in that first garage and another one, having 11 other lots under his belt.


To learn more about the artist, please go to www.flickr.com/photos/cwroelle/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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