Stepping into Sharon Duwaik’s micro studio and gallery space in the Aurora Cultural Arts District feels like stepping into an unfinished work by Salvador Dalí.
There aren’t any melting clocks compliments of the godfather of surrealism, but the hodgepodge of items on display comes close to matching the enchanting peculiarity of Dalí’s famed 1931 painting “The Persistence of Memory.”
A lifetime of odds and ends festooned with outlandish accents overflows the converted closet in the ACAD gallery at 1400 Dallas St. A wooden, white-washed ear the size of a foam finger is tucked behind a seamstress’ limbless mannequin. A few degrees south, a chrome bicycle crank nakedly sits atop what once may have been the stem of a living room lamp. On the space’s northern wall, a clock-like contraption featuring a colander rimmed with utensils watches a porcelain doll head that is fixed to the remnants of a carved giraffe.
There’s no denying that the room’s inhabitants are outré. And kooky. And bizarre.
But every detail that adorns Duwaik’s many frankenstein pieces is pregnant with purpose and meaning.
“The little green dots stand for the grass is always greener on the other side, and then there’s the hypocrisy with these little pawns, and here I am this little princess,” Duwaik, a longtime Aurora resident and artist, says while holding a work that is comprised of an old breadbox teeming with an array of glued-on trinkets.
She proceeds to read the various meanings wrapped within the piece from a list of notes written on the side of the breadbox. Shortly after finishing that explanation, Duwaik launches into a description of a recent lamp she created using a collection of antique toy trains she found at the nearby ARC store on East Colfax Avenue and Dayton Street.
“It was called ‘Life is a Train Wreck,’ but there’s light at the end of the tunnel so the lamp, you know, turns on on the inside, to form a tunnel,” she says.
Those hidden messages — and ceaseless evidence of several decades spent ferreting about rummage sales and antique stores — will be on full display in the coming weeks during Duwaik’s first semi-solo show at the ACAD gallery in nearly a decade.
“I had one show in 2007 with The Other Side Arts, but this is my first solo show in a long time,” she says. “So I figured I’d just blow it up and go really big.”
Deemed “Mélange 60,” the show will feature dozens of Duwaik’s “creative constructions” made from her ever-expanding stockpile of found objects. She also maintains a workspace in the basement of the ACAD studio that is littered with additional knickknacks.
The title of the show is an homage to her variable style as well as her 60th birthday, which she will celebrate later this month.
“Part of the reason I really wanted to (do a show) this month was because Feb. 12 is my birthday,” says Duwaik, who daylights as a grant writer for the City of Aurora. “So it’s a perfect day for opening and it’s my 60th (birthday), which is a big deal to me.”
The upcoming show at the former police substation on Dallas Street won’t be all about Duwaik, however, as she will be sharing the gallery space with several artists who have ties to one of the district’s newest tenants, 5280 Artist Co-Op. A sextet of additional artists from 5280 will feature works in a collection deemed, “From Darkness to Light,” which will hang alongside Duwaik’s artwork and honor themes tied to Black History Month, according to Stephanie Hancock, co-founder and president of the new co-op.
“‘From Darkness to Light’ is a real representation of the African American experience from six different artists, and we’re really excited about this eclectic, collaborative, imaginative event,” Hancock said. “When people leave the space, we want them to experience hopefulness, and maybe some joy, too.”
Hancock said she first approached Duwaik about collaborating on a February show when the two met during an art event at the nearby Stanley Marketplace last summer.
“5280 is the newest resident of the ACAD space, so the calendar had already been pretty much set, and Sharon was on the calendar to do a show in February,” Hancock said. “But she was very gracious and said, ‘Hey, why don’t we do something jointly and collaborate so you can have a presence for Black History Month and have a portion of the space?’”
Duwaik’s collaboration with the neighborhood’s newest artistic resident underscores her passion for the surrounding community, one she has lived and worked in for about 30 years. She works in the nearby Martin Luther King, Jr. Library and lives immediately behind the Fletcher Gardens affordable housing complex, where she helps coordinate a free community garden program in the summer.
“We’re a very strange community because, even though we’re a very transient community and people might move around … they don’t move out,” Duwaik said. “And it’s much tighter because of that. We’re very hooked to one another.”