The Container Project

Randy Shull Honors Ukraine

Created March 5, 2022

The Community Container Project

LOVE YOUR COMMUNITY
Created October 28, 2018

Pink Dog Creative is proud to announce a new community initiative as part of the Container Project, across the street from 342 Depot St., Asheville, NC.

Pink Dog Creative collaborated with LEAF Easel Rider and the Edington Center in the summer of 2018 to sponsor an art day where children in the community painted what they wanted to see next on the double-decker containers. Thirty children participated and the winner, Trinity Harper Pierce, has just had her design painted on the containers.

Trinity is eleven years old and is a sixth grader at Asheville Middle School. She lives in the Southside/Walton community of Asheville. Her painting, entitled, Love Your Community, can now be seen on the forty foot by 18 foot containers. When asked why she painted that particular painting and message, Trinity said, “There was a lot of violence in my neighborhood. I want people to care more about their community. When they drive by and see this I hope their hearts grow as big as the heart in the painting. I want the love to spread all throughout my community, my city and my county.”

Please drive by and look at Trinity’s design and her heartfelt message. 

Click here to read more in this article by The Laurel of Asheville.

The Community Container Project

in collaboration with LEAF’s Easel Rider
April 14, 2018
 

Pink Dog Creative collaborated with the Edington Center’s Shuvonda Harper and LEAF’s Easel Rider on April 14 for a fun and successful day painting what the children would like to see on the mural as part of Pink Dog’s community Container Project. About 30 children participated. Pink Dog wishes to thank the children and their parents for coming out to paint and Fresh West Pizza for donating bottled water. A selection will be made from the many fine artistic submissions and will be painted on the containers as the next Pink Dog mural.

Read more about LEAF’s Easel Rider here.

Jenny Pickens

Zola’s Embrace (peaceful earth), 2018

Pink Dog Creative is pleased to announce a new mural on its’ containers across the street from 342 Depot Street in the River Arts District.

In a continued effort to build bridges between the River Arts District and the Southside community, Pink Dog Creative has commissioned the second of our Southside neighbors, Jenny Pickens, to design and paint a mural. Jenny grew up in the Southside community and is an accomplished artist. Her design, entitled Zolas Embrace (peaceful earth) depicts a woman stitching the world back together. Pickens says, “With so much negative energy going on worldwide, I wanted to show mother nature repairing the world with the love that’s been lost. We all share a common goal. Peace on earth.”

Artist’s Statement: Violence, homelessness and general hostilities are casting a shadow across the world. “Nobody is getting along,” she says. “There’s no more love. … That’s how I came up with the idea of Mother Earth and just putting love back into the world. That’s what [Mother Earth] is doing [in the mural]. She’s putting the love back; she’s mending it back together.”

Artist’s Bio:
Irene ‘Jenny’ Pickens, a self taught artist from Asheville, NC.

Zolas Embrace (peaceful earth) has been featured in both Asheville Made and the Mountain Xpress. Please click here to read the article in Asheville Made, and here to read the Mountain Xpress article. See more of Jenny’s work at the Fine Art America website.

Randy Shull

Beware of the Dog, 2017

See more of Randy’s work at his website.

Randy Shull

CHANGE, 2015-2016

Artist’s Statement:
I’d been making art about change using Obama banks that said CHANGE on them, a play on coins going into the slot on his head and his campaign slogan. It wasn’t so much a statement but a continuum of thinking that involved my process of work. Through the work I create change. Change is always happening.

Bio:
For over 25 years Randy Shull has been working at the intersection of architecture, landscape design, furniture design and painting.  Randy’s colorful and highly textured paintings reveal countless layers of paint and an interest in the archaeology of the process of painting.  His furniture bridges the gap between art and design by combining painting and furniture in one composition.  A number of these signature pieces are in important collections throughout the Unites States.

 His work is included in a number of national museum collections including The Brooklyn Museum, New York; The High Museum, Atlanta; The Renwick Museum of American Art, Washington, D.C.; The Mint Museum of Craft & Design, Charlotte, NC; Racine Museum of Art, Racine, WI; The Gregg Museum of Art & Design, Raleigh, NC; Museum of Art and Design, New York, Black Mountain College Museum; The Asheville Art Museum, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art; The Mobile museum of Art, and numerous corporate collections including Fidelity, Wells Fargo, Piedmont Natural Gas and others. 

See more of Randy’s work at his website.

Brett Douglas Hunter

Manute Bol, 2014

Artist’s Statement: If I remember correctly, I had 1 day to come up with a design for the mural, and 2 days to execute it. I had often been thinking about the sports superstars I idolized as a kid, and which ones turned out to be terrible people or absolute saints. Manute Bol was a complete outcast and, at a slender 7′ 7″ tall, a freak. He gave up all dignity to make money as a basketball star, and use it to help the people in his war-torn country of Sudan. The impulse to draw him as a sort of God of Peace came late at night on the eve of the deadline. It turned out great, and the reactions from the neighborhood were overwhelmingly positive. Except for the guy who’s car I accidentally sprayed with yellow paint….

Bio: Brett Hunter is an artist from southern Illinois who recently relocated to Nashville. He makes weird and wonderful carvings, cut-outs, masks, murals, woodcut prints, masks and concrete sculptures.

Learn more about Brett in the Original Fuzz interview and also at his website.

Cleaster Cotton

Cover Up Girl, April, 2015—January, 2016

Bio:
Born into a large, close-knit family, Cleaster was lovingly raised by southern parents in the heart of Brooklyn, New York. In the vanguard of arts and academic education, a precocious Cleaster joined a research team and began international travel during early adolescence. 

At age five Cleaster was inspired to be an artist by her mother. Geometrics were at the core of her mother’s training which led Cleaster to invent the modern day hieroglyphics – ALNUGE [“al-new-gee”] (Alphabets Numbers Geometrics.) ALNUGE Code Games and Puzzles are a fun, game-based educational curriculum that fosters creativity, innovation, and brain health. Cotton has used the ALNUGE Codes to teach art and academic education for over a decade.

Read more about Cleaster in the Urban News, listen to a Blue Ridge Public Radio interview with her here, and visit her website here.

Melissa Terrezza

Untitled, 2013

Artist Statement:
The figure is part of a larger thematic body that explores U.S. environmental policies and ethics in the aftermath of the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The gun-wielding cyclist first began appearing on my 2-foot clay tiles, alongside images of sludge, oil rigs and oil-drenched pelicans, egrets and other wildlife. My work compels viewers to question the impact and consequences of their own resource use.
In each appearance, the figure, modeled after Terrezza’s silhouette, is in some form of battle. “It’s kind of a superhero alter ego,” says Terrezza.

 
Bio:
Melissa Terrezza is an artist, environmental activist, and UNCA art graduate. Her work often references the expansive gap between socio-environmental and political ethics. Maintaining a close connection with her Native American ancestry, the relationship of native teachings and modern civilization rise to the surface in her creations and daily life.

Click here to read more about the mural, and see Melissa’s website at this link.