Dirge

posted by on 2012.05.30, under art, video, VSC Residency

I made a new video on Memorial day this week, taking footage from the parade in Johnson, VT. This little parade for me brought up ideas of American identity, loss, memory, and militarized culture (which is nothing new, though maybe taking new forms these days).

Swimming Holes, Hexagons, Newts and Video

posted by on 2012.05.26, under art, VSC Residency

Time has been flying by up in Vermont, sort of. It goes by fast, but it goes by slow too. We have made some excursions out to a few great swimming spots, in various rivers, brooks and a reservoir to jump off rocks, swing off rope swings and generally attempt to get accustomed to the cold, cold water. As many know, I have a great love for water, especially entering it at high speed from tall places. And I am very much into rivers, brooks and all that. Luckily Johnson has plenty of that.

As far as the art production goes, I have been simultaneously working on a few projects. A couple of videos, a couple of drawings in preparation for a wood sculpture (maybe with video?), and a little bit of sound editing.
The drawings and potential sculpture revolve around my current fascination with the hexagonal column structures of basalt found in several locations around the world. One example is at Devil’s Postpile at Mammoth Mountain in CA – where I went a couple of summers ago. Another is Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland. Not sure yet where this project will go, but I have been doing a hand-sketch drawings and a measured drawing of the hexagonal forms so far. I hope to cut out a bunch of wood hexagons this week, if I can get the right wood posts for a reasonable price.

In the video department, I have one small projection on drawings that I have completed, using the nearby waterfall and the transition from laminar flow to turbulent water for inspiration (here is a pic of the set up without the video, video documentation to come).

The other video is a called Still Life (Red Flag), and consists of several long shots of compositions I found interesting around the area my studio is in. I then took the audio from these shots, heavily processed it, and created a soundtrack. I also added in a little Etta James (as one day I was driving around with Harlan from the sculpture dept. and it came on the radio). The mood becomes eerie, and reminds me of hot, bored yet anxious summer evenings. I recommend headphones and full-screen HD when watching it.

To wrap up the post, here is a photo of a newt. We have been seeing a lot of these, some in the orange phase some in the olive green water dwelling phase. I believe its the Eastern Newt, or Red Spotted Newt (Notophthalmus viridescens). They have some sort of compass sensing in their brains, but more about that later.

At Vermont Studio Center

posted by on 2012.05.16, under art, video, VSC Residency

This month, and into the first week of June, I am doing a residency at Vermont Studio Center way up in Johnson, VT. That’s about two hours south of Montreal, and pretty much out in the country. It is rather beautiful. VSC hosts 50 artists every month of the year, making it the largest artist residency facility in the country. I have spent the last few days setting up my studio, getting settled in, meeting everyone, and even getting a little work done. I ran around a bit shooting photos on my trusty Yashica, and staged a video installation on the back of my studio building. I don’t really have a good title for it yet, so lets just call it Waterfall for now.

River soundtrack in the video is provided by the actual river, which is right behind where I shot this.

My studio is across the Gihon river from the mill building (photo at the top of this post), in the Barbara White studio building. Sharing the first floor with me are several printers and a photographer, and there are a slew of painters upstairs. If they let me, perhaps I can post some of their work later in the month.


Barbara White building.

VSC hosts writers as well as visual artists, and there is a pretty good mix of people working in different media so far. Tonight there will be artist slide talks, for those who want to share work, which I am really looking forward to.


My Studio

I will try to keep on a regular posting schedule while here, so check back for more in a few days!

People’s Microphony Camerata listening party at Radio Break

posted by on 2012.04.19, under art, culture, music, performance, politics, social practice
Last weekend I joined the newly formed collective, The People’s Microphony Camerata, founded by Elana Mann and Juliana Snapper. I signed up because of they said we would perform scores inspired by the People’s Mic and the Occupy Movement, which has fascinated me since I first experienced it during the Brooklyn Bridge arrests. However, I was a bit hesitant when I realized they considered it to be a Choir. To the dismay of my Grandma, Edith, who sang at the Stage Door Canteen in NYC, I don’t sing (at least not in public).

 

But… I stuck with my commitment and half way through our second day of rehearsing and workshopping scores I realized I was enjoying myself and the sound of our collective voices. I was singing.

 

You can hear the results of our first recording session as it will be played on Sunday as part of Radio Break, “an exhibition on the air, presenting twelve artworks in locations throughout Los Angeles conveyed through low-power radio transmissions during two weeks and live events held on two consecutive weekends,” curated by students in the USC MA Art and Curatorial Practices in the Public Sphere program.
Radio Break started last weekend, so you may have missed some of it, but here’s this weekend’s schedule:

 

SUNDAY, APRIL 22nd
All events at 6020 WILSHIRE (The new ForYourArt space), 6020 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles

2–6pm
Richard T. Walker intervenes into Los Angeles’s visual and radiophonic space, telling the absurdist tale of one man’s quest to find the words to speak when language no longer suffices in between distance and a mountain.

3–5pm
Tune into the concerns of Angelenos affected by the financial crisis by listening to the carols of the People’s Microphony Camerata (Cynthia Aaron, Karen Atkinson, Vivian Bang, Andrew Choate, Judith Dancoff, Rachel Finkelstein, Penny Folger, Sascha Goldhor, Michele Jaquis, Allison Johnson, Elana Mann, Kimberly N, Alanna Simone, Juliana Snapper, Julie Tolentino, Annette Weisser and Becca Wilson).

6–9pm
LIVE PERFORMANCE and RECEPTION
David Schafer‘s Cage Mix: Static Age reconceives a selection of John Cage’s compositions through live electronic and processed improvisation performed alongside an accompanying installation. A reception will follow Schafer’s performance.

A listening station with all projects will be at 6020 Wilshire through April 27th.

You hold it in your mind all the time, photos

posted by on 2012.01.29, under art

I know this was a few months ago, but here are photos from the You hold it in your mind all the time artists talk at Art at 12, in September 2011.See a more comprehensive slideshow here.

You hold it in your mind all the time.

An exhibition of experimental work about physicality and perception.
August 11 – September 30, 2011
Art at 12
12 Farnsworth Sreet
Boston MA 02210
www.fortpointarts.org

You hold it in your mind all the time, exhibition

 

Heidi Kayser reflected in Sarah Rushford's sculpture "Semblance"

 

You hold it in your mind all the time, exhibition

 

You hold it in your mind all the time, exhibition

You hold it in your mind all the time. Artists Talk and Closing Reception.

posted by on 2011.09.20, under art, culture, education, exhibition, rise info, video

You hold it in your mind all the time. Artists Talk and Closing Reception.
Saturday, September 24 · 2:00pm – 4:30pm
Art At 12
12 Farnsworth St
Boston, MA

Join us for an artists talk about this exhibition of experimental work about physicality and perception. Artists: Michele Jaquis, Heidi Kayser, Jeremy J. Quinn, Sarah Rushford, Marguerite White, Tom Wojciechowski.

The exhibition includes projected and monitor based video, sculpture, drawing and photography that takes an experimental, scientific, or analytic approach to the investigation of the mysterious nature of somatic knowledge.

See the exhibition announcement and press release

www.fortpointarts.org for more info

You hold it in your mind all the time.

posted by on 2011.08.06, under art, exhibition, rise info, video

Rise is excited to announce the opening of “You hold it in your mind all the time.” An exhibition about physicality and perception that includes multimedia works by Michele Jaquis, Jeremy J. Quinn and Sarah Rushford of Rise Industries as well as Boston artists Heidi Kayser, Marguerite White, and Tom Wojciechowski.

We would be so happy to see you at the opening on August 11 or the artist talk on Sept 24. Or stop in during gallery hours of course!

(Please note the change in the artist talk date from the printed postcard, which says Saturday Sept 15 )

You hold it in your mind all the time.
An exhibition of experimental work about physicality and perception.

August 11 – September 30, 2011

Michele Jaquis
Heidi Kayser
Jeremy J. Quinn
Sarah Rushford
Marguerite White
Tom Wojciechowski

Reception: Thursday August 11, 2011 5:00-8:00 pm
Artists Talk/Closing Reception: Saturday September 24 2:00pm

Art at 12
12 Farnsworth Sreet
Boston MA 02210
www.fortpointarts.org
617 423 1100

Art at 12 Gallery Hours
Mon-Fri 11am-6pm, Sat 11am-4pm, Sunday by chance

Art at 12 Gallery presents You hold it in your mind all the time, an exhibition of multidisciplinary work by Boston artists Heidi Kayser, Sarah Rushford, Marguerite White, and Tom Wojciechowski and Los Angeles artists Michele Jaquis and Jeremy J. Quinn. The show dates are August 11 – September 30, 2011, with an opening reception on August 11th and an artist talk and closing reception on September 24th. The exhibition includes projected and monitor based video, sculpture, drawing and photography that takes an experimental, scientific, or analytic approach to the investigation of the mysterious nature of somatic knowledge.

Informed by philosphy, narrative, and neurobiology, You hold it in your mind all the time expresses and questions the folded duality of the self; the notion that the body is our infinitely personal, private selfhood, and is also a physical object in the outside world. Art theorist Gabriele Brandstetter writes of this strange doubleness “The body is a being of two leaves; from one side a thing among things and otherwise what sees and touches them.”

Heidi Kayser’s sculpture Spanning the Rift is a suspension bridge made of eyeglasses which, Kayser states,“addresses the internally confounding problem of time and helps extend perception by closing the distance between looking back and looking forward.”

Michele Jaquis’s Until I Can Speak my Mind is a short film that was inspired by a recurring dream that both the artist and her twin sister have had in which the artist is chewing bubble gum which she then spits it into her hand, only to find in the next shot that the gum is still there and is getting bigger.

Jeremy Quinn’s What Holds Us Together is a video projection that depicts the Brooklyn Bridge with its middle section conspicuously missing, while the view into Manhattan (the World Trade Center towers missing) remains intact. Traffic seems to pass into and out of a charged void that separates the two sides of the bridge in this commentary on emptiness and separation.

Sarah Rushford’s Quickening is an interactive installation. Viewers reach into a box that contains a green apple and a live video feed of their hand is mixed with a recorded video of another hand touching the apple. Viewers report feeling a strange a ghostly presence as the two images mix.

Marguerite White’s Cargo Cult is a shadow theatre constructed with cut paper and simple light
projections. This surreal narrative is a reflection on the power of visual memory and the subjective nature of physical perception.

Also included are large scale abstract landscape photographs by Tom Wojciechowski, in which familiar objects—a hand, a landscape, set up a perceptual conundrum and create a space that can’t or shouldn’t exist.

You hold it in your mind all the time illuminates a diversity of multidisciplinary contemporary art practice to suggest that what may seem to be private, even mysterious somatic experiences are actually shared perceptions that might be articulated.

Bumpkin Island Art Encampment 2011

posted by on 2011.08.03, under art, exhibition, public art, writing

I participated in the Bumpkin Island Art Encampment 2011 with the Axiom Center for New and Experimental Media. Here is more about the work I created during the residency.

Common Names is a site specific sculpture made of approximately 150 beach stones wrapped in paper, and installed near a grove of sea grasses on the beach at Bumpkin Island. The paper was wet before applying to the stones, and as it dried in the sun it took on the contours and shape of the stones. After drying, I wrote a name on each rock in graphite. The names were a combination of common names, and names of people I know.

Common Names, site specific sculpture, 150 rocks, paper graphite

Common Names, site specific sculpture, 150 rocks, paper graphite

making Common Names

making Common Names

Volunteers helped wrap the rocks, and also helped to generate name ideas. The conversation about names and naming is an evokative, personal, specific one that even strangers can easily become engrossed in. Each name and each stone seems to be for one person, and for every person.

The stones with their names nestled at the edge of the sea grasses seem vulnerable and protected at once. They are visible from far away because of their color, but their shapes and contours match that of all the stones on the beach.

Common Names, site specific sculpture, 150 rocks, paper graphite

Common Names is about the strange dual sense of self that we have as human beings. On one hand we have a profound sense of individuality and private selfhood, and on the other hand, most of what we call our identity; our DNA, our bodies, our perception, our basic human needs, almost our entire identity, is shared with every member of humanity.

Verses is an ongoing work in which prose verses that I composed are written in a stylized text, on long paper banners, and applied to the ground in areas of the landscape that are intended as views or lookout points. The banners are tilted and appear like a subtitle to the view. The two texts that I applied at two key lookout points at Bumpkin Island are the following

“Everything will be fine, your struggle, and the fighting of your mind, the pitching motions of your experience.”

“The sky will take on a yellow cast, once this cast has grown into morning, let the light of that morning fall on your hands, keep them still until the light changes.”

Verse 1 Text banner applied to landscape

Verse 2 Text banner applied to landscape


Verses shares something with Common Names. While the texts seem to talk directly to the individual reader, they also talk to every reader. I intend for them to touch the reader’s private sense of selfhood and also their sense of self as an archetype in a broad humanity. They are like bible verses in that way, speaking to the individual and the archetypal reader at once. But unlike Bible verses they ask the reader to rely on him or herself and on this world for strength and solace, instead of asking them to look outside of themself to God or to the idea of Heaven.

 

i Scream LA! at Debating Through the Arts

posted by on 2011.06.17, under art, culture, exhibition, performance, social practice, urbanism, video


So I still haven’t had a chance to reflect on my time at ICI, mostly because I’ve been getting ready for my next exhibition: Debating Through the Arts. The exhibition is organized by Jerri Allyn and Inez Bush and opens this Saturday (6-10pm) at 18th Street Art Center in Santa Monica. Come see my multimedia installation, i Scream LA! made in collaboration with Beth Peterson and Trinidad Ruiz. It will evolve all summer as we’ll be collecting videotaped interviews with residents of LA’s diverse neighborhoods, in exchange for ice cream. Let us know if you want to be interviewed by our puppets. Come on… everyone loves puppets and wants ice cream in the summer!

100/10∆8: Rise Industries – Opens Tonight!

posted by on 2011.06.11, under art, culture, ICI Residency

After a crazy couple of weeks packed with making new work, the show is finally up and ready for the public. Well, almost. There is still the matter of sound to sort out today, and a shelf/plumb bob situation to figure out. Oh yeah, and I might move a computer into the lab to show a couple of digital videos. But, plenty of time right? We got at least 7 hours to get it all in there.

The opening is tonight, and the show will be up all next week.
In case you like that sort of thing, here is a link to our press release.
And here is the Institute of Cultural inquiry main site.

RECEPTION:
June 11; 7-9 pm (if you are running late, come anyway, we will probably run later)
Free to the public; suggested $5 donation

LOCATION:
1512 S. Robertson Blvd. , Los Angeles, CA 90035
(two blocks south of Pico); street parking available

The work is mostly collaborative in nature, so many of the works share authorship across the Rise Industries membership. Contributors are:

Jeremy J. Quinn
Michele Jaquis
Sarah Rushford
Nicole Jaquis
John Kim
Boris Margolin
Tim Devin
Michael Feldman

with additional drawings provided by Ashley Moore

After Sarah had to return to Boston (sniff, we miss you!) Mike Feldman came by to scope things out, work on some texts, and plan his contribution. I also went around town shooting photos of Tim’s Mappy Facts – created about LA just for the show!

Some final videos were exported, the work got hung and photographed, I built some little foam-core surrounds for a couple of things, and finally figured out how to get my Quartz Composer patch into video. Used a work-around for that, still need to figure out how to export directly.

As the ICI staff wrapped up brochures, we prepped our print for the back of them – a lino-cut with text that summed up all our works pretty well. We spent last night printing these, so you get a free print as part of the brochure!

I got to get back to my final tasks – hope to see you there tonight!

 

All of us at Rise Industries would like to heartily thank the staff at ICI that we worked with throughout the residency – it was a real pleasure to work with you all, to have the run of the space, and basically be supported in doing whatever it was we wanted to do. So, Lise, Elaina, Gina, Jojo, Steve and especially Anna (I must have bothered her with a question about every half hour over a period of almost two weeks), thanks so much for letting us into your space!

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