
ArtReach Creativity Lab with Artist-in-Residence Elgin Cleckley
Anderson Center artist-in-residence Elgin Cleckley is sitting in on Creativity Lab at ArtReach in downtown Red Wing from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, July 8. Create 3D models and learn how you can utilize design thinking in your own artistic creations with a professional designer and mixed-media artist who led the creation of an exhibit last year at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. All ages welcome! Bring your own supplies from home or experiment with ArtReach’s free art tools and supplies. ArtReach’s Creativity Lab takes place each Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Elgin Cleckley is a multi-modal artist creating architecture, visual art, installations, and exhibitions that support spatial justice in professional, academic, and community contexts. He is the principal of _mpathic design, an award-winning pedagogy, initiative, and design practice established in Charlottesville, VA.
Elgin has developed empathy-driven designs throughout North America, co-creating with communities, including acting as design coordinator on the world’s first architectural space dedicated to design thinking, the Weston Family Innovation Centre in Toronto, Ontario. He is an assistant professor of architecture and design thinking at the University of Virginia and a recipient of the Alumni Board of Trustees Teaching Award, the highest teaching award an assistant professor can receive at the university. Elgin is the design justice director at UVa’s equity center and is active in community projects such as the Charlottesville Memorial for Peace and Justice.
During his Anderson Center residency, Elgin is continuing work on the installation/exhibition he began at MacDowell in fall 2022, which he calls “Brookes (Revisited).” The exhibition accurately visualizes and humanizes the iconic set of architectural drawings of the Brookes Slave Ship utilized by the British in the Transatlantic Slave Trade – immersing viewers in the reality of being aboard the vessel through models, drawings, and full-scale interactives. The exhibition will debut next year at the TIME SPACE EXISTENCE Architecture Biennale in Venice, Italy.
This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota by a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.