What you should know and be able to do, exhibition annoucement

posted by on 2013.10.29, under art, education, exhibition, video, writing
What you should know and be able to do

Sarah Rushford
October 25 – November 30, 2013
Opening Reception: Friday, October 25th — 6-9pm

Artist Reading and Screening: Saturday, November 2nd — 7-9pm
Sarah Rushford will read from her poetry manuscript and several short video works will be screened.

What you should know and be able to do (text voids), 2013, graphite on paper

The Hallway Gallery is excited to announce its next solo exhibition featuring the interdisciplinary work of Sarah Rushford. What you should know and be able to do will feature text art, works on paper, video, audio, and sculpture by Boston-based artist, Sarah Rushford.

Sarah earned her BFA from Hartford Art School in 1998 and MA in Media Studies from The New School in 2001. As a multimedia artist she is currently working in writing, video, and collage. She recently completed art and writing residencies at TAKT Kunstprojektraum in Berlin and Art Farm in Nebraska. She has exhibited in Boston, New York, Los Angeles, and Berlin.

I make art across diverse media and I use ordinary materials and objects like flour, talcum powder, children’s games, sewing needles, ice, pins, text. The processes performed on these are simple, and remain simple. Dots, lines, letters and rubbings are made, fabric is folded, the camera is fixed, objects are pressed onto paper, holes are poked. The almost over-simple gestures accrue a vulnerable, striking, beauty; a transcendence. My process is impatient, imprecise, inarticulate, playful, and I often feel foolish. When a project comes to fruition, I have a mastery of a strange skill. I am working to articulate this mastery that exists on a continuum with foolishness.
The works are that of noticing and invisibility; they are about the anomaly that the vivid interior self and the living argument of consciousness can be sharp and definite to the individual, yet invisible to the outside, to others, and to science. 

The Hallway Gallery
66a South St
Jamaica Plain Ma 02130
thehallwayjp.com

Gallery hours:
Tuesday-Saturday 10am-6pm
Sunday 12-4pm
& by appointment

If you’d like to set up an interview with Sarah Rushford or schedule a private viewing of the exhibition, contact me at your convenience.
Brent Refsland
The Hallway Gallery
66a South St
Jamaica Plain Ma 02130
617-818-5996
thehallwayjp.com

MIA: Strange Loop at the Armory Center for the Arts

posted by on 2012.07.26, under art, screening, video

I am excited to announce the final edit of my 2009-12 project, i dream in your language, will premiere in MIA: Strange Loop, curated by Alanna Simone, at the Armory Center for the Arts, Friday July 27 at 7pm.  Here’s the press release:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MIA SCREENING, STRANGE LOOP
New Series Screens Video Art & Experimental Films

Please join us for the July screening of MIA at the Armory!

This month’s event takes place on July 27th at 7PM and features five projects each dealing with communication and misunderstanding.

Orgasmatique, Dramatique, Horror (2009) is a short performance questioning the portrayal of women and emotion in pornography, melodrama and horror films from Washinton D.C. artist Melissa Bruno.

Los Angeles artist Michele Jaquis envies people who speak multiple languages. Her series, i dream in your language (2009-2012) investigates the experience of seven such people, revealing the complex negotiations they undertake to translate and interpret words and meaning.

San Francisco based Whitney Lynn asks a rabbit (repeatedly) to ‘sit’ for a portrait in Commissioned (After W.W.) (2010).

The Complect Voice (Suite for Birds and Mammals) (2012) attempts to include a variety of animals in a musical collaboration with the artist Julie Rooney and composer Jonathan Sokol, both based in Boulder, CO.

The Foreignness of Language (2011) by Nina Ross explores the disruption of personal identity the artist experienced as she incorporated a second language after leaving Melbourne, Australia to live in Norway.

The MIA series began in June of 2012, founded by video artist Alanna Simone to promote the work of artists who use the moving image. Every 4th Friday the MIA series screens video art, experimental films, performance art, essay films and animation from local and international artists at the Armory Center for the Arts, 145 North Raymond Avenue, Pasadena, CA 91103 (map). Each program is organized around a theme and lasts a little over an hour. A donation of $5 is suggested.

Laminar Flow

posted by on 2012.06.01, under art, video, VSC Residency

More work from my residency at Vermont Studio Center. This video installation was a test for a new, portable projector I got, and a method of projecting on drawings. It is inspired by the transition from laminar flow to turbulence in a waterfall.

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).

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!

Let’s Get Bloody Video!

posted by on 2012.01.17, under music, video

Hey! Happy New Year to you alls.. been on a bit of a blogging hiatus, as I am sure you can tell by now. Something to do with a new job, new house, new year, and all that. But more about that later. For now, I got video.

I just finished editing my music video for State Shirt‘s song Let’s Get Bloody, which is on the recent album of the same name. Have I mentioned the album is stellar? Yes, its worth dragging out that ol’ word for. So anyway, I have been talking with Ethan of State Shirt for years about making a video for him, and we finally pulled it together and starting shooting stuff a couple of months ago. Due to the new job and all that its been sort of slow, working on it a weekend here, an evening there, but now its done. I shot most of it, and my fantastic wife Michele helped me out with a second camera for one of the shoots.
I had been wanting to do something with these statues… I drive past the vendor every day heading in to work.. so here we go! Also, its in HD, so hit that full screen button down there.

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.

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!

twodays twonights

posted by on 2011.03.31, under art, video

About a month ago I had one of those ideas that just arises, one that seems to be uncovered in the mind.  I’m making it seem like it was some knock-your-socks-off idea, and, well, maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t but what it was was a clear idea; with a static video camera, shoot two matching clips during the same ten minutes of consecutive days.

Rise Industries forces aligned, (Might Morphin Power Risers are GO!), and I shot my consective days video in Boston and Jeremy and Michele shot theirs  in LA.  And that is what is shown below.

Two Nights- Los Angeles March 2011

Two days- Jamaica Plain Feb 28 2011,  4:11-4:21pm, March 1 2011, 4:11-4:21

We look from left to right for the inconsistencies in framing, as if trained to do so. And from this we get more information than what is contained in the frame, gestalt at work.  We get iformation about what has happened in the interim, some snow has melted, and the camera has moved. Isn’t it strange how the tire tracks are tracks in the snow in the left, and  negative tracks in the right?  Ghost like, the day in between speaks to us when we put time together this way.

In Los Angeles, there was no snow to be melted, and the two shots are so similar that it is as if the 24 hours in between has melted instead. The inconsistencies in light, weather, and the movement of the air are highlighted instead, and even the air seems choreographed to rustle thorough the left tress, and then the right trees, as if doing a job.

In both, the passage of those twenty minutes reveals the light changing as the day approaches dusk. In the right shot in LA, dusk comes on as an intense pink glow. And it seems appropriate that this wild act of light has been recorded, because it seems to be performing on the second day because it missed the opportunity on the first.

Sound in LA is much more interesting because it was recorded outside, in Boston the camera was inside the house . In LA it is hard to distinguish the source of the sound until you have a visual cue to link it to. If there is no visual cue the sound works as a mending agent across the gulf of the two days.

To me the work is evokative, mysterious. It’s as if  juxtaposing the two intervals opens a secret portal through which the very passage of time can communicate.

The Boston shots can be improved, would like to crop like LA shots (can’t do it in Final Cut Express) more to be done on this project. I’d like to see how it looks projected large or on large monitor. I’d like to try shooting with matching cameras. It is actually pretty complex if you watch all four shots at once. And at the beginning I actually intended to shoot a closeup as opposed to the more landscapey shots we did. I think we should try the closeup next. Another way I saw this was to have the right shot be live, and the left be 24 hours ago…..Mighty Morphin Power Risers, assemble! (wait I think that’s Voltron or something).

 

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