Between Past and Future

October 27 – December 12, 2025
Fribourg Family Atrium, Granoff Center for the Creative Arts
154 Angell Street, Providence, RI
Opening reception: October 30, 2025 | 5:30 PM

Digital Gallery Note

‘Between Past and Future’ began with a historic elm tree cut down on Brown’s main green. Initially an exploration of what it means to consider this tree as a ‘historic’ object, the body of work quickly expanded into a broader examination of the shape and narrative of history that the tree fit into. What followed was a renegotiation with the direction of history, its meaning, and the specific contours of the past that come to explain the present and define the possibilities of the future. 

Between Past and Future artist Eiden Spilker invites artists to submit proposals to create works using lumber from the American Elm. Ten artists will be selected based on an initial concept proposal of how they would use this material to create a work for a Spring 2026 exhibition, Point of Entry, which will be on view from April 9–May 27, 2026 in the Lindemann Performing Arts Center.

Eiden Spilker (b. 1996) is a Providence, RI-based artist working in wood and found materials. He holds BAs in Architecture and Visual Arts and is the 'Maker in Residence' at the Brown Design Workshop where he strives to strengthen collective craft knowledge. His work explores the tension, and often disconnect, between material record and meaning. Using primarily salvaged and reclaimed wood, he investigates the historic testimony of objects, asking how material memory can inform the way we construct narratives of the past.