Austin friends! If you are in town, we highly recomned you check out Montrel Beverly's Go To Your Room, opening November 4th from 12-4 at SAGE Studio & Gallery. Go To Your Room invites guests into a pipe cleaner wonderland; Beverly has created an immersive teenage bedroom straight out of the early nineties, chock-full of everything from Lunchables to Nintendos to Reebok Pumps, all out of pipe cleaners. Visitors are invited to bask in nostalgia and marvel at Beverly's incredibly unique craft.
The opening reception will take place during Canopy's first Saturday open studios. Attendees are encouraged to don their best nineties looks–chokers and cargo shorts are a plus! The exhibition is free and open to the public and will run through December 9th. The gallery is open 9-1 Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and 12-4 on Saturdays.
MONTREL BEVERLY (b. 2003) is an Austin-based artist whose practice focuses on sculptures made out of pipe cleaners. These art objects are often kinetic, with moving and detachable parts that add to viewers' joy and wonderment. Beverly began sculpting at an early age, using common household materials like paper towels and straws to create original characters. He started molding pipe cleaners in elementary school after his teacher introduced him to the medium. Pipe cleaners provide Beverly with an immediacy that is important to his process, a material that he can quickly manipulate and begin solving the puzzle of his sculpture with. "When you bend it, it stays. I like that. I can put things in different poses and change things." Though pipe cleaners are often dismissed as a craft material, Beverly elevates them to fine art, building elaborate creations that include automobiles, food, Ferris wheels, and buildings. His work has been featured in Hyperallergic magazine and represented at New York City's Outsider Art Fair.