I was exploring some optical effects the other day through video – shooting some random video using various found lenses and glass objects stuck in front of the camera. Have to experiment a bit more with these methods, but here are some glimpses. Subject matter, strangely enough, was Michele playing Katamari and the living room floor.
I like how on the last one here, her face appears now and again out of the swirling colors… or maybe its not that apparent, I can’t really tell anymore from watching it too many times.
couple of weeks ago we headed on down to the NELA artwalk (now that’s North East Los Angeles, often referred to as Highland Park area) to check out a few spaces. We started out at our friend Carol Es’ little studio Moppet, which I had embarrassingly not yet visited.
We got there early, and it was just her hanging out with some cookies and her artwork. She had renovated the space herself, and it sported a sweet stained concrete floor showing off all the hard use the space has gotten under its previous owners. (Architects are suckers for well worn concrete for some reason.) While we chatted, a large gang of cyclists swarmed the place, eating all the cookies and drinking most of the water as they took a cursory look around the place.
Michele and I have known Carol’s work for quite some years now, and I have been interested in its evolution since we got to know her. I think the first show I saw of hers was at Highways in Santa Monica, not sure how many years back. Those were collage and paint works focused on the forms of clothing pattern-making. Seemingly minimal from a distance, they turned into multilayered objects when viewed more closely – I remember one one in particular where the central shape was created from hundreds (at least) of tiny cut out paper strips.
So now her work has taken these shapes and forms (themselves dredged up from childhood experience working in sweatshops) and united them with illustrated moments and scenes from her life, dreams, and dysfunctional family. So, they get pretty personal, but retain a sense of humor and accessibility that keep the viewer from feeling they are invading on someones privacy. On the contrary, they drag you right into her life and experiences and give you some pretty bare, unconnected snippets of reality. Here are some of the works she had on view:
(you can read more from her on her own blog here.)
PS. The illustrated letter at the beginning of the post there is from Daily Drop Cap by Jessica Hische. I think I will use them often.
So Jeremy and I will have new work included in an exhibition and book curated by our good friend, D. Jean Hester. Other artists contributing to this project, besides the three of us, include: Cathy Akers, Nancy Haselbacher, Jaunita Meneses, Miller Updegraff and Louisa Van Leer. The opening and book launch is Sunday Nov. 8, 4-7 pm at Project_210 in Pasadena. Hope you can come!
This is what I’m working on for The Pandemic Show, a group show of artist designed surgical masks, curated by Elizabeta Betinski and Sandra Low. 11.14.09 – 12.2009 at Overtones in Los Angeles. Mark your calendars for the opening reception: 11.14.09, 7-10 pm.
Here are a couple of short videos I made last week. One, Vinyl Timing, was for a weekend project contest over at Vimeo. I experimented with some time distortion on my record player with a couple of audio and visual indicators of the record time and real time. The other, Yashica Viewfinder, is a test shot through the viewfinder of a borrowed Yashica B twin lens reflex camera. I hope to work on some more video using this technique, and yeah, I will frame that better next time.
Our entrance to the museum was a bit disjointed and confused. The museum is the midst of the construction of a new downtown area call the Quartier des spectacles (see next post for more on that) so it was a bit hard to find the entrance. Then after buying a ticket, I misplaced it and had to rifle through my purse as the museum staff and the others I was with waited. This agitation dissipated though as we entered the Tacita Dean installation. There was Merce Cunningham in 16mm, life size, sitting patiently and looking at us or looking just past us, in six projections throughout an immense room. It was like that dream in which someone you love who died, comes back, without explanation.
In the projections, Merce Cuningham is performing John Cages 4′ 33″ . Cage’s performance consisted of instructions for a piano player to not play piano, and Merce Cunningham’s rendition is that he simply sits still for that period of time in his dance rehersal space. In some of the angles you see the person behind the camera, you see New York and the light from the windows pours into the room and from the mirrors. They are stunning portraits, simple and rich with conceptuality and with accesable human meaning. (and further enriched because here is a collaboration among Merce Cunningham, John Cage and Tacita Dean, all making thier own piece) To me they all state fundamental (familiar but welcome) remarks about the worthiness of experimentation and of challenging popular modes of media. To me, some of these are;
-long static shots remind me that media can represent stillness and this can be so engaging
-he isn’t acting, this is a documentary of a man sitting still
-be patient when making moving images
-there’s an old person on the screen, under-represented population
-he’s a dancer, and his sitting still in a chair and this is his dance
-the projections represent him life size, there is no bigger than life character
-the camera is shooting from several angles, and the projections are located all over the room, blowing apart the illusion of space that this media is often expected to invoke
So, about a month ago Michele and I went up to the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena to check out their 20th anniversary show, Installations Inside/Out. For the show, they have works in all their spaces as well as in public locations around the city. We had already seen the Bruce Nauman skywriting project, which was a part of the show and was documented in the gallery (and see my video/photos in an earlier post), but we have yet to catch the rest of the works they have scattered around Pasadena. While the title implies it’s a show of installation art, not all the work was installation or site specific, like the Rushca painting greeting you upon entry or the large wall-hung pieces. The Caldwell Gallery show drew from artists from the Armory’s exhibition history and included striking works from Pae White and Kim Abeles with Ken Marchionno.
Abeles and Marchionno presented a room wallpapered with cartoonish trompe l’oeil drawings and inset videos to create room-scapes with views out, detailing how Native Americans are viewed by contemporary culture. The graphics and videos were compellingly integrated to develop mediated rooms, small settings that referred to both an interior and a view beyond. I was really into the technique of integrating the videos as both elements of the wallpaper and images in frames – check the photos to see what I am talking about. The objects in the drawings are life size, and the piece wraps all sides of a small room off the main gallery space.
Pae White’s large tapestry works dominated the central space of the gallery. Facing each other and taking up a whole wall each, their banal subject matter (smoke, and crinkled mylar or tinfoil) became large scale murals. A closer look revealed the weaving technology involved, and the patterns up close are digital/analogue hybrid abstractions literally woven from threads as the process used translated image into weave to create the fabric.
CJB will be playing at easily the coolest music club in DTLA (if not all of LA). This place is what happens when integrity motivates. Couches. Great service. Hot food. Hot people. LATE drinks. (early drinks.) Come as you are. Be who you are. Dinner House M loves all.
When: Saturday, October 17th
We hit it at 10 and go to around 1:30.
(That’s a whole lot of funk.)
Where: Dinner House M
1263 W Temple St. 90026
$: 6 cover, all of which goes directly to the band!
I heard this song on KXLU last week, was really intrigued by this guy, Moondog. Lived on the streets of NY for 20 years and was known as “The Viking of 6th Avenue” due to his following of beliefs of Viking god Thor. I purchased his album “H’art Songs’ and discovered a delightful exploration of piano harmonies, and bach-like fugues mixed with quarky lyrics of sociopolitical and philosophical themes. This guy was out there, to say the least!