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CONCERT TO CHECK OUT: What’s Next? Ensemble
21 Nov
GREEN FESTIVAL in Los Angeles this weekend!
26 OctHere’s an event you might be interested in:
We are only four days away from the Green Festival in Los angeles this weekend! Dorka Keehn, author of ECO Amazons, will speaking on Saturday at 1pm along with Jessica Iclisoy, Founder, California Baby and Alexandra Spunt, co-author, No More Dirty Looks: The Truth About Your Beauty Products and the Ultimate Guide to Safe and Clean Cosmetics.
Dorka Keehn's "Eco Amazons"
To find out more go tohttp://www.greenfestivals.org/
QUINTAN ANA WIKSWO INTERVIEWS JAMES ILGENFRITZ
6 OctOn October 29, 2011, Issue Project Room Artist-in-Residence James Ilgenfritz presents The Ticket That Exploded: An Ongoing Opera. Based on William Burroughs’ 1962 dystopian novel about identity disintegration, oppression of humanity’s collective consciousness through technological influence, and revolution through the subversion of those very technologies.
There are only a few artists whose grip upon my adolescent sensibilities was so thorough, so relentless, and so transmogrifying that I actually feel I absorbed them into my atomic matter. William Burroughs is one such artist (Kathy Acker is another). A few hours after my own peculiar live performance works premiered last month in NYC, I happened to have a restorative beer alongside the delightfully insightful Brooklyn composer, bassist and educator James Ilgenfritz – he mentioned that my aesthetics seemed imbued with a certain Burroughsian hue, a certain WSB stink.
Yes, I said, with a fanatic, quivering gleam in my eye. Are you, too, an admirer of his existence?
When James said he was in fact creating a new opera based off Burrough’s The Ticket That Exploded, and that it would be premiering at the end of October at Issue Project Room in Gowanus, Brooklyn, I knew I would soon have to dissect the whorls and fissures of this likeminded brain over a nice pint of Belgian hops.
And so a few weeks later we adjourned to BierKraft in Park Slope to talk about the re-sexualization of narrative structure, the infliction of aesthetic discomfort, the kinds of weeds that are engulfing William’s old car in the back yard, and James’ kickstarter campaign for the project.
QUINTAN: It seems that while some people are immune to the Burrough’s bug, some of us come down with it pretty badly and learn to treasure the aesthetic infection. To create an opera seems highly symptomatic of this kind of full-fledged chronic infestation. I am fairly confident at this point that you’re highly contaminated.
What initially attracted you to Burroughs’ writing, and to this project in particular?
JAMES: I read Naked Lunch in high school in the mid-90s and was drawn to both the unapologetic approach he took to disturbing imagery and the unorthodox structure to his writing. At that time there was a wealth of information on his work– the film came out, which was extremely inspiring though not necessarily related to what intrigued me about the book. I was fascinated both by his persona and by his bizarre creations.
I’ve long been fascinated by art that both elicits an immediate visceral response and then also requires a fair amount of consideration after the fact in order to begin to understand. I’ve read that this is what initially confounded listeners when they encountered Charlie Parker, Cecil Taylor, and Ornette Coleman for the first time. This definitely happened for me with Ornette’s music, though I was more prepared for both Cecil and Bird.
Naked Lunch definitely did that for me. I spent a long time considering the implications of opening that door, and I’m doing that now with this opera. When the residency at Issue Project Room came along, I knew I wanted to find ways to both challenge myself to create more ambitious work, but also to find a way to more fully address the unspoken force that guides my artistic hand, so to speak.
I quickly recognized that Burroughs’ work had a resonance that I’d been overlooking for a while, probably since the early 2000s when I last read one of his books. My copy of The Ticket That Exploded found its way into my life in 2010 in a very capricious fashion, and I tend to appreciate those fleeting moments- I like to build something big on a foundation that could almost have not happened.
QUINTAN: The most phenomenal artworks really are a kind of pathology – there is the initial shock of contagion, and then a long time living with how it unfolds in the body, its repercussions and consequences and how the host adapts…or doesn’t. It requires a whole different kind of aesthetic outlook to create work that unfolds perhaps weeks or years after that initial encounter…an encounter that can often be quite unpleasant or uncomfortable or distasteful. A sort of Darwinian approach to audiences, perhaps [laughter].
When I talk to people about Burroughs, the idea of Lawrence, Kansas often emerges as an imagined place – some sort of epic spacetime coordinate that lives only in mythos.. I went on a pilgrimage there as a teenager and it ended up being quite a bizarre, beautiful experience – I suspect it’s nearly impossible to have a normal, tidy, sane experience of his domain.
How did you end up making your trip to WSB’s house in Lawrence, Kansas, and what was that like? I half-expected to see his corpse in the driver’s seat of that car. A datsun, perhaps?
JAMES: As my idea to turn Ticket into an opera turned into a strong determination, two issues arose: one was that I felt that I wanted a more direct connection to the man. The creative work I’m doing is based on my personal experiences encountering his creative work, but I wanted another level of personal connection to Burroughs the historical figure. The other issue was that I wanted to make sure that I would be allowed to do this! Elliott Sharp helped me get in touch with James Grauerholz, who was a close friend and professional associate of Burroughs for the last couple decades of his life. James was very helpful on both counts.
It turned out that that day I could be in Kansas was a Thursday, a day where traditionally Burroughs and many of his associates in Lawrence would get together for a pot luck. So James and Tom King, who lives at the house and maintains the property, invited everyone back over and we had a wonderful evening full of stories and some incredible food.
Towards the end of the evening I gave a short concert, which was recorded and is now on Youtube. The experience was really great, because it gave me a chance to get some first-hand accounts from folks who knew him quite well. They were all quite gracious– as one can imagine, there are a fair number of random people who show with somewhat voyeuristic intentions because of his notoriety, but they were quite appreciative of my work and were all quite helpful– I’m definitely grateful for them referring me to Andre Perkowski, who has made an incredible film based on the Nova Express.
QUINTAN: Burroughs had a really shattering impact on many artists’ sense of narrative – not just textual, but visual and cognitive as well. He has the ability to take a subject that could be highly coherent and smash it over your head, leaving you to assemble the pieces within your own consciousness…or not. That smashing gives a lot of respect and power and responsibility to the audience, and serves as a reminder that our brains are capable of abstract aesthetic sleuthing. Fragments and shards force us to do the heavy lifting. It’s one of the aspects I love the most about his work.
Given the number of shifting components available within opera – text, voice, plot, stage setting, narrative, instruments and the multivalent score itself – how are you approaching Burroughs’ unorthodox deconstruction of narrative?
JAMES: Burroughs’ approach resonates with those of some of my favorite musical innovators– Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Laurie Anderson, John Cage, Pauline Oliveros, Morton Feldman. These are all artists from whom I have learned things about texture, methodology, and structure. They have created work that challenged the concept of linearity and narrative, all in very different ways.
Opera is, in my mind, one of the great formats for synthesis, juxtaposition, cross-pollination, and appropriation, so I am looking to assemble a variety of performative methodologies in this work. The structure itself is modular– there are numerous discrete episodes which will be assembled in real-time during the performance. This is why I am referring to this as an “ongoing opera”– the materials will always fit together differently. Not only because the sections will not necessarily happen in the same order every time, but also because many of the sections incorporate indeterminacy and improvisation as well as notation with more implicit directionality.
I came up in a time where many filmmakers were experimenting with nonlinearity, from David Lynch to Quentin Tarantino. As I began to learn more about compositional structures that dealt with nonlinearity, I really started to see something that attracted me in a deep way. This opera actually has a big mixture of linear structures and various curved structures.
QUINTAN: I would be unforgivably remiss if I didn’t steer our conversation towards the significance of gender and genitalia in these poly-matrix narrative constructions and compositional structures. You take 20th century queer artists – Burroughs and Kathy Acker and the phenomenal Monique Wittig, for example – who looked at how sexualized biological forms impacted narrative structure. That the “plot arc” is a male orgasmic structure. That linearity is rather penile. That a circular structure with multiple climaxes is a feminine construction…and so forth.
Their work has a conscious scatological, genital “obscenity” to it that really startles us out of these static forms and encourages us to tell our stories within a far broader framework of structures.
JAMES: Absolutely, I think Burroughs’ work shatters linearity in this violent and beautiful way. I’ve been inspired for a while by artists whose work identifies linearity as a phallic structure that needs balance. It was a great experience for me, seeing Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party at the Brooklyn Museum– a pretty deep experience, as was an experience I had a the Whitney a while back with the work of performance artist Hannah Wilke, whose work Through the Large Glass, which was represented in an exhibit called Off The Wall: Thirty Performative Actions (which inspired the title to my work Three Performative Acts, premiered earlier this year at Issue Project Room).
What was included in the show was a couple large images of Hanna’s performance in the 1970s– images of her standing naked, photographed through the shattered glass of Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare. Meanwhile, one floor down was a work by Christian Marclay that included film footage of Duchamp discussing the shattering of the glass, and how he felt it improved the very sexually explicit (though profoundly abstract) work.
I find similar beauty in the way Burroughs’ work, especially in the Cut-Up trilogy (that includes Ticket, along with The Nova Express and the Soft Machine) seems to shatter linearity. My hope is to do that with this opera.
QUINTAN: I encourage everyone to check out the opera itself on October 29th at Issue Project Room in Gowanus, Brooklyn, and to contribute your available pocket change to your Kickstarter campaign. Keep us posted with your progress, and let’s go have another beer.
ABOUT THE OPERA:
On October 29, 2011, Issue Project Room Artist-in-Residence James Ilgenfritz presents The Ticket That Exploded: An Ongoing Opera. Based on William Burroughs’ 1962 dystopian novel about identity disintegration, oppression of humanity’s collective consciousness through technological influence, and revolution through the subversion of those very technologies. Featuring live vocalists Ted Hearne, Nick Hallett, Anne Rhodes, and Megan Schubert, video vocalists Melissa Hughes, Steve Dalachinsky, and Ryan Opperman, an ensemble of thirteen instrumentalists, and live video projections from Jason Ponce, the opera will be organized using the same cut-up techniques and emphasis on fragmentation of language that distinguishes Burroughs’ literary work.
An ongoing opera is one which has set material but is perpetually reconfigured during the performance, mixing composed material with indeterminate composition strategies and conducted improvisations. With zero staging, all visuals are conveyed through projected live video manipulations. Pre-recorded video performances will facilitate vocalists to interact with other vocalists who are not present, or even to sing a duet with themselves. These efforts to perpetually repurpose the musical and visual content of the opera are a direct effort on my part to draw comparisons between the performative and the generative– to make the very act of reorganizing materials function both as a blueprint for making art and as art itself.
Anne Rhodes, Megan Schubert, Ted Hearne, Nick Hallett: Voices
Steve Dalachinsky, Ryan Opperman, Melissa Hughes: Video voices
Jay Rozen: tuba
Sam Kulik: trombone
Douglas Detrick: trumpet
Justin Wood: alto saxophone, flute
Mike McGinnis: clarinet / bass clarinet / flute
Julianne Carney: violin
Nathan Bontrager: cello
Denman Maroney: piano
Andrew Drury, John O’Brien, Vinnie Sperazza: Percussion
Taylor Levine, Ty Citerman: Guitar/Electronics
Nicholas DeMaison: Conductor
Jason Ponce: Video Artist / Live Processing
ABOUT JAMES ILGENFRITZ
Brooklyn composer, bassist, and educator James Ilgenfritz has been active in creative music since 1999. His work has been praised in Time Out New York, All About Jazz, and Downbeat Magazine. Recent performances include work with Lukas Ligeti, Pauline Oliveros, Elliott Sharp, Steve Swell, John Zorn, and Anthony Braxton. James has received grants and residencies from Issue Project Room, the American Composers Forum, and OMI Arts Center.
Notable performance venues include Roulette, The Kitchen, The Kennedy Center in Washington DC, The World Financial Center Winter Garden, Symphony Space, and the New Museum in SoHo. James hosts the Ten Thousand Hours Podcast, featuring conversations and duets with such musical innovators as Robert Dick and Pauline Oliveros.
In 2011 James is Artist-In-Residence at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn. He holds degrees from the University of Michigan and the University of California San Diego. James is on Faculty at the Preparatory Center of Brooklyn College and at Brooklyn Conservatory.
ABOUT QUINTAN ANA WIKSWO
Quintan Ana Wikswo is a multidisciplinary artist whose projects integrate photography, original text, multichannel and projected video and film, site specific installation, and performance collaborations with composers and choreographers. Working with damaged antique battlefield cameras and military typewriters, Ms. Wikswo explores unmarked locations where obscured histories and crimes against humanity have taken place. Her projects appear in museums, galleries, performance spaces and publications throughout Europe, Asia and the US.
The first major solo museum survey of her work appears at the Smithsonian-affiliated Yeshiva University Museum in Chelsea/NYC from August 2011-Feb 2012.
Tags: Issue Project Room, James Ilgenfritz, Opera William Burroughs, quintan ana wikswo, The Ticket that Exploded, William Burroughs
REST AREA: a collaborative installation
16 SepAs part of the LA ROAD CONCERTS - Catalysis Projects’ Core Artist Kim Ye and collaborator Christine Wang give CP a sneak peak of their REST AREA project proposal. The project itself will be performed SUNDAY, 9/18/11 from 11am-2pm @ the intersection of Portia & Sunset in Los Angeles.
Abstract
In Los Angeles, where cars are a near necessity and filters many a person’s perception of the world around them, drivers and pedestrians often experience the city completely differently. Often more than just a mode-of-transportation-choice, this split may trace real differences in the social/economic/geographic position between individuals. How can we navigate this difference in a way that can generate a sort of shared experience?
In this experimental installation, we would like to explore options for a public space that unites the comfort and shelter of the car, with the public social space of sidewalks, parks, and bus stops. Through the creation of a temporary shared oasis at the boundary between sidewalk and street, we hope to propose an alternative function for the automobile, while simultaneously modifying the bodily experience of the pedestrian. Through this act we hope to explore how the unit of the automobile may create new relational possibilities for the interaction between human bodies.
Christine Wang & Kim Ye, REST AREA (test), 2011
Installation
Two identical Toyota Sienna minivans are parked directly across the street from each other at either ends of a pedestrian crosswalk. Both side doors are open on the vans, and a ramp runs through the middle of each van; this creates a tunnel that pedestrians must pass through in order to cross the street. As pedestrians pass through the inside of the vans, there will be music, air-conditioning, and refreshments offered to them. They can rest in the back of the van for any amount of time they wish, before proceeding on to their destinations.
Location
This installation was originally conceptualized for the crosswalk at Sunset and Portia in Echo Park, but can work anywhere with significant foot traffic and a crosswalk that can be parked in without obstructing traffic.
Tags: alternative sites, automobiles, car culture, christine wang, found object, Installation, la road concerts, minivans, participation, pedestrian, perversion of architecture, public space, Sculpture, service, sunset blvd
GUEST BLOG: Renée Reynolds
17 AugRenée Reynolds grew up between Chicago and Los Angeles. She writes short fiction and paints long images while working as a freelance writer in Shanghai. This piece appears courtesy of HAL publishing, a postpat colonist publishing house promoting China-based works by exceptional authors. She is a long-time collaborator with CP composer Veronika Krausas.
Fort Bringham’ere in Brief July 5, XXXX
Dear Mr. Just Wondering,
Thank you for your interest in the operations of Fort Bringham’ere. Do accept our apologies for requiring 13 months and a day to reply – foreign-correspondence clearance protocol sure can be a time consuming process! You will find all inquiries and concerns classified as non-confidential addressed in this notarized document. I thank you in advance for pardoning the necessary omissions.
Fort Bringham’ere (formerly Fort Gimme) Military Biosphere Reserve (FBMBR) is located in an undisclosed northern township. With a north-south length of 880 m, and an east-west width of 500 m, the FBMBR covers a total area of 440,000 square-meters (44 hectares).
Once known as one of the world’s largest city squares, second only to the Imam Reza Shrine in Old Iran, FBMBR includes the majority of the highest quality hiparian flats remaining in mainland China. Multiple species of hiparian-dependent life-forms, found in Fort Bringham’ere’s flats, are candidates for rare and special species listing at local and national levels, including the Dusty dead-vinehopper (Wuttanowe dustus), the Xi’s Peckerspot (Thatsanot livustus), and the extremely rare, Highway Blue Face (Cyaninan cryptivius).
As urban development, invasive species, real estate price-hikes, demolition and ground cover succession continue to efface the northern region’s hiparian flats, restoration and management are critical in providing enough suitable habitat for these and other important species to maintain viable populations.
Stewardship of rare and special species and natural habitats has a priority at Fort Bringham’ere. The proper entrapment, documentation, blog-posting, paper-mache and enticing display of such species are also mandated practices under strict Fort-implemented regulations as well as national and local law. The process of listing any hiparian specimen as ‘threatened’ or ‘endangered’ could have negative implications for the funding, training and ranking of Fort Bringham’ere’s personnel. Access to the means by which such an act can be performed is therefore monitored with an extensive CCTV network as well as armed guards trained in relevant disciplines such as Zoology and martial arts.
Monthly reports are compiled for historical record-keeping and internal reference only. Such reports use carefully selected segments of survey and informational testimonies on northern mainland China’s hiparian-dependent life-forms. Oral history, folklore (including ancestral superstitions) and supporting interviews of expert upright citizens with extensive experience in the region, as well as qualified family members, provide additional source material when necessary.
All reports aim to create a thorough yet entertaining picture of the rare, common and otherwise compromised populations existing on and around Fort Bringham’ere over time. While content generated thusly can be used to enhance tourism revenues in future, studies conducted on Fort Bringham’ere are currently closed to the public as well as non-briefed personnel.
Aspects of high-quality hiparian habitat such as low pu-pu fecal cover, abundant alcoholic and diverse nectar sources, and high-rise dormant VIP colonies can be correlated with all regional species’ diversity and abundance. In the absence of such opportunities to propagate, many of the rare and special species will undoubtedly achieve extinction before the year of the Dragon, a decidedly important passing of amorphous energies that dictate the deepest of all meaning to all living creatures in all known economically viable locations.
Thus, all men of high-ranking cloth at Fort Bringham’ere endorse the passing of the mandate RU4-DiRoll and the doubling of munitions used in Q1 and Q2 in our on-going efforts to protect surrounding Technology Parks, as well as nearby residential and commercial development zones from any species known and unknown to pose a threat to the protocol we all work so diligently to uphold.
Your support is appreciated!
Yours Truly,
Lt. Colonel August Finis, Operating Commander
Fort Bringham’ere Military Biosphere Reserve
Tags: renee reynolds
Blocking the Exits: The Slowpocalypse is Here
11 AugNotes from the Studio: Catalysis Project’s Resident Artist Isaac Schankler talks about his recent collaboration with video artist Christopher O’Leary, Blocking the Exits (currently on display at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions).
What is the nature of our culture’s fascination with the apocalypse? This dystopian thread connects so much of our literature, our films, our popular consciousness. There’s something riveting about the spectacle of it all, something that seems to mask a hidden desire, or at least conflicting impulses. What does it mean when you take something horrifying and render it beautiful? What are the aesthetics of the apocalypse?
These are some of the pointed questions implied by video artist Christopher O’Leary’s Blocking the Exits. In his words, the project “depicts an apocalyptic world where four characters have the final experience of crumbling pillars of civilization: water, food, energy and communication.” When Chris asked me to supply a soundtrack to this quasi-narrative video, I jumped at the chance (since I too am not immune to the fascination of the apocalyptic).
The visual aspect of Blocking the Exits consists of still photos that are then animated through morphing algorithms. Chris’s images are extremely stylized; there’s no attempt to disguise or apologize for the influence of comic book art. For a composer like me this is wonderfully inspiring; his images are so evocative that when he first showed them to me I had almost immediate sonic “images” come to mind.
There’s also a mesmerizing slowness to the morphing animations, and this led me down some musical paths that are a bit unusual for me. I composed four electronic musical vignettes, one for each “character” in Chris’s video. Each vignette follows a very simple process from one sonic place to another (e.g. low to high, sparse to dense, and so on). Each process is drawn out so that the development is almost imperceptibly slow, and the video also dynamically cuts between characters, making the processes even harder to track from beginning to end.
Usually when I’m working out a composition I feel compelled to subtly shade these processes, to round off the edges and hide the seams — or if I’m feeling more antagonistic, to disrupt and complicate these processes with even more processes! But in this case it seemed to fit the project to doggedly pursue something to its bitter end. Here the end of the world doesn’t happen with a bang but as a dull, persistent roar. It happens while we’re not looking or listening: an ongoing, inevitable, eternal moment.
Blocking the Exits is on display in the Speculative exhibit at LACE (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, 6522 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90028) until August 28th.
The Life of Objects
9 AugNOTES FROM THE STUDIO - Catalysis Projects’ Core Artist Kim Ye gives a sneak peak of her proposed project THE LIFE OF OBJECTS for High Desert Test Sites.
Background / Abstract
This project started as an exercise in processing the leftovers of family tradition. In January 2011, I cruised the streets of Los Angeles, picking up curbside Christmas trees in my minivan. Some pick-ups were planned, involving prior communication with the owners. Others were more spontaneous, where I pulled over upon spotting a tree trunk sticking out between a mass of pine needles, sometimes wrapped nefariously in an overgrown plastic bag. All in all, I collected 58 Christmas trees over the course of a month.
I am fascinated by the process by which the Christmas tree falls from preciousness to worthlessness. A symbol that takes its place at the center of family gatherings and acts as such a loaded, often sentimental, representation of religion and relationality is discarded in the same manner as common household waste, dust, and dirt. The trees I rounded-up were completely used up—abandoned unceremoniously by the very family units that had chosen them.
Why does the becoming of a Christmas tree involve such a degree of pomp and circumstance, while its ending is treated with the irreverence of a chore like taking out the trash? Does this say something about a larger tendency to avoid facing the material consequences of our culture’s socially meaningful—but economically and ecologically impactful—traditions? In an effort to confront these questions, I reorganized and modified the trees in stages, giving them a newly collective physical presence. The first two configurations can be seen below. The third and final configuration is planned for the Wonder Valley desert in the vast stretch of land behind The Palms.
Kim Ye, The Life of Objects (Installation #1), 2011
Kim Ye, The Life of Objects (Installation #2), 2011
Installation / Location
For the desert installation, the trees are coated with strontium aluminate glow-in-the-dark pigment, and then fastened together in an organically chaotic arrangement. This configuration results in an object that is reminiscent of an overgrown radioactive tumbleweed—its size and luminosity confronting and activating the viewer’s body. The placement of the sculpture at The Palms puts it within the range of human contact—fitting since the sculpture’s conglomerated form mirrors the function of the restaurant, which acts as a rhizome that generates social activity and interaction.
As part of the Homestead Act, Wonder Valley has a history of being a site for new beginnings, redefinitions, and unavoidable endings. Within this uncanny setting that is at once magical and unforgiving, hopeful and terrifying, is it possible for these glowing tree parts to embody the affective motivators that pattern human behavior? To realize the final stage of The Life of Objects in this landscape is to postulate a new function for the material byproducts of networked human relationships. Perhaps these discarded symbols can act as a beacon that encapsulates the resonant activity inherent in all endings.
Tags: alternative sites, assemblage, bricolage, Christmas, Christmas trees, Dada, family, found object, High Desert Test Sites, Installation, Joshua Tree, Mojave Desert, scavenging, Sculpture, Wonder Valley
REVIEW: 50 Fingers & 88 Keys
28 JulREVIEW by CP composer Veronika Krausas
50 Fingers & 88 Keys (…actually 60 fingers and 176 keys)
I just attended one of the most delightful events of the year. Yes, I did just use the word ‘delightful’. 
I was at a lovely Sunday afternoon garden party organized by Jacaranda Music that included a delicious lunch and a wonderful piano recital, hence the title with lots of fingers and keys! It was at the Music & Art Atelier: David Anderson Pianos and Tanya Ragir Studios.
The pianists were a line-up of excellence: Aron Kallay, Danny Holt, Steven Vanhauwaert, Yana Reznik and the duo Joanne Pearce Martin and Gavin Martin. All will be featured in Jacaranda’s upcoming season. The repertoire ranged from Mozart, Granados, Rachmoninoff, and Ravel to 21st Century composers David Lang and Nico Muhly.
pianists: Steven Vanhaueaert & Danny Holt
During a sublime performance of the quiet and delicate Etudes by Muhly, sirens and ambulances started up down the street and then disappeared. Not missing a beat or a finger (one of the 60) pianist Aron Kallay smiled slightly and kept on serenely playing.
pianist: Aron Kallay
It was a magical afternoon: as the music wafted through the garden, the shadows of the rustling leaves in the trees danced on the white table cloths.
If this event is a prelude to their next season we can all be very excited! Jacaranda
Patrick Scott - Artistic Director Jacaranda Music
Tags: jacaranda
DEBORAH MARTIN: Notes From the Studio
23 Jul
This NOTES FROM THE STUDIO column features CP Core Artist Deborah Martin, a contemporary realist painter, fine art photographer and curator. Visit her work online here.
Deborah Martin Pillows, 2011 Oil on Canvas 36 x 36″
I am still deeply immersed in the final stages of producing NARROW LANDS a collaborative project with CP Core Artist Quintan Ana Wikswo. The exhibit opens at the Patty DeLuca Gallery August 5, – 23rd, 2011 in Provincetown, MA. Reception August 5- [6-10pm.] I will be present for the opening. If you are in town, I hope you will get a chance to see this exhibit.
The Narrow Lands exhibition will move onto The School House Gallery opening Labor Day weekend September 2-21st. This Exhibit will feature additional new paintings including the Fine Art Book- NARROW LANDS Deborah Martin [Paintings] Quintan Ana Wikswo [Prose Poems] which will be avialable in both soft and hard cover.
If all goes well, Quintan will be arriving from NYC and I will be arriving from LA to attend the opening, and perhaps we will be holding a reading , book signing and Q & A at The School House Gallery over Labor Day weekend….more on this TBA.
Lately I have had to abandon Polaroid. My last batch of film was dreadfully pink-which started to translate into my paintings. Regardless of what I tell myself… my eye picks up exactly what I see. Pink is not the tone I am looking to recreate. Never mind the expired film [which is a total crap shoot] the price for it is beyond ridiculous.
If you are a Polaroid fanatic like myself and have not been following The Impossible Project check them out. They are coming out with all kinds of alternative film…in the mean time I am reduced to my iphone hipstomatic app and whatever color correction I attempt to make to steer away from the dreaded red tones. Until I have time to experiment with The Impossible Projects new film options….gone are the days of wandering around the United States with my cheap plastic Polaroid 600. For now…let it RIP I am moving on.
Deborah Martin, Study for Two Chairs
As I run up against the deadline to ship out Narrow Lands…my mind is slowly turning to the next series WONDER VALLEY which opens October 8th, 2011 at the Red Arrow Gallery in Joshua Tree. For this exhibit I am pleased to announce that I will be teaming up again with CP Core Artist Quintan Ana Wikswo who will be creating a unique installation of prose poems inspired by this new series of paintings based on Wonder Valley.
Below is a preview of the review:
Poised in an arid netherworld between strip malls and car lots, WONDER VALLEY lies just beyond the vacant, shuttered stare of the American Dream. Commercialism gnaws at the edges of this desert mountain wilderness – its embattled landscape of ragged palms, mountains, and eroding homestead cabins provides austere refuge to semi-nomadic enclaves of fringe-toed lizards, kangaroo rats, idiosyncratic visionaries and anachronistic loners.
In WONDER VALLEY, Martin immortalizes a 21st century desert struggle against destruction, and her lamentation for the disappearing landscape is also a praise song to the improbable power of endurance, tenacity, and longing.
Painter Deborah Martin has established a compelling dominion as portraitist of an archaic America – ravaged sites and forgotten wastelands that nonetheless resist destruction. Her luminous paintings and photographs reveal the beauty in the bleak, and speak to the tenuous balance between home, depravation, isolation, community and hope.
–Quintan Ana Wikswo
If you plan to be in Joshua Tree the exhibit opens October 8th and runs through November 6th. The exhibit coincides with the HWY 62 Art Tours which are the last two weekends in October. More on the tours in an upcoming Blog Post…
-Deborah
Rules are Stupid (An homage to Zarathustra):
22 JulJeffrey Holmes: Blog for CATALYSIS PROJECTS, July, 2011.
Historically we privilege the exceptions, and are bored with the norm. My hero is Beethoven. His value that we now derive from his actions is that of a progressive one. This is why we separate him from his now generally considered “lesser” contemporaries like Dittersdorf, Vanal, Gottschalk, etc., all of whom followed conventions of their day. Beethoven, however, is praised for breaking the rules and defying the norm, and that is why he is taught and studied…his exceptions, not his submissions. In fact, in our current society, he would probably be ostracized for his adherence to his believes and unflinching integrity and his obstinate, brash personality. Even late in his own life he was ostracized…having children throw rotten fruit at him on the street, being arrested for vagrancy, and his for his increasing social isolation due to his stubborn and offensive attitude. It is no surprise that his main source of inspiration was always nature. Even though his works do not reveal this on the surface through their titles, his journals reveal that his daily walks in the forest was where and when he conjured his ideas.
This brings me around to the point of sharing my thoughts. I have been told by everyone around me, that I am bound by my employment, bound geographically. Even if that has caged me into less of a fulfilled life than I demand for myself. I have recently broken these rules and moved away, far away…to the top of a mountain. When I was a lost and searching 12 year-old, I was permanently inspired and shaped by Fredrick Nietzsche’s Thus Sparch Zarathustra. This fictional tale describes a thinker/poet who was not a part of the norm of society. He chose to live in on a mountain-top, away from society, to regain spiritual and personal clarity. When he returns to society ten years later, his impressions are profound. It is no coincidence that Nietzsche’s selected name for this character “Zarathustra” is a pun on the word “Zoroastrian”, which is the name of the first mono-theistic sect in recorded history (that either Nietzsche or myself are aware of), and is an obvious illumination of the conflict between mono-theistic divinity and the natural order of our world. So I have finally rejoined my 12 year-old self. I have become Zarathustra, and have claimed my mountain-top.
3. Rules are Stupid:
As I embark upon a collaboration with fellow Catalysis Projects artist Quintain Ana Wikswo, I am reminded of the natural element in art. We are creating a work that from my end is to be titled “Pastoral”, which is the evocation of nature. This is not a literal depiction of natural images, that feat is only for God or Satan. Instead, this is a symbolist portrayal of my internal feelings that arise when submerged in, or deprived of, nature. From here upon my Zarathustrian mountain-top, my Beethovian artistic sensibility is free to roam. Quintain is similarly progressing into nature. She is creating her part of this work from the Catskill mountain range in New York. Our two works are to collide into a third work, either unifying peacefully, or as Beethoven said “lying back to back, like two grizzly bears in a cave, unwilling to fight or to merge but somehow coexisting and informing one another”.
Like Zarathustra and Beethoven, we are adults and artists, we are exceptions to society, we do not need rules.
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