Archive for the ‘Art’ Category



Collaborative Art Santa Fe: Pt. III

The big ship has sailed.  If you didn’t get around to enjoying The Due Return, you missed one of the most ambitious, awe-inspiring, jubilant art adventures this town has ever seen. QR codes, video, sea trees that changed colors and other extensive interactive elements “helped submerge the audience into a fully-operating fictional world.”

I have been a fan of Meow Wolf’s hearts-out approach to creation since I spent a bent-necked hour sucking in the delights of Geodecadent I, a swirling dome of 20th-century household flotsam. Meeting the team only cemented my fandom.  Never once have I found a member to be snobby or self-important.  Fun, humble, curious and free-spirited, The Meow Wolf Pack is potent with all the hope and possibility of children: good for the art world and the kids they’ll be serving through CHIMERA, a cooperative program between Meow Wolf and The CCA.

Following is  Changing Gallery’s interview with Vince Kadlubek, a founding member of Meow Wolf, who generously answered my many questions.

How did Meow Wolf get its start?  Did you guys know one another already?

I had just been let go by W21 and I felt the need to carry the energy I had from that –the frustration, the skills, the passion– into a project of my own. Found a space for rent, called people that I knew and knew of, and we committed to the concept.

Why a big ship? Did this spur off of a past project or was it an entirely new idea?

Entirely new idea. It was originally from the mind of Chris Hilson, and then quickly became a collaborative idea between about 25 people. We create ideas that act as containers for collaboration and inclusion. The ship was perfect for such.

How did you choose who joined the expanded Meow Wolf, or did you take on whoever came and was willing to work, or…?

Meow Wolf is entirely open door. Individuals choose their own level of involvement. The more they are around, the more they are a part of MW, the more responsibility they are entrusted with, the more ownership they feel, which leads back into the being around more.

How did you determine who would do what?

First, it is who wants to do what. And then, for the The Due Return, I personally asked specific people that I trusted to act as ‘leads’ of certain areas. It was a first for us, but with a project so large it was entirely necessary. Ultimately, though, people can do whatever they want.

Did you get what you wanted out of the experience?

Hahaha… Uh, yes. Personally speaking, yes. I got to supply our community with an amazing, unique, and vivid memories.

You mentioned the possibility of working with elementary school kids ongoingly & pursuing a grant for this. Is this going to happen?


Meow Wolf is currently involved with an Educational Outreach Program, code-named “Kinderblitz”, in collaboration with CCA. [ed. note: since our interview, this program has been unveiled under the name CHIMERA - Collaborative, Hands-On, Immersive, Multi-Disciplinary Education Raising Artists!] The program will involve all ages of student. We definitely need funding!

Other projects? Tell me about the shows in New York and Las Cruces?


Flux Factory in NYC is organizing a conference, month-long event, called “Congress of the Collectives.” MW was invited, and we will be participating in discussions, presentations, as well as creating an installation inside the main space. NMSU down in Las Cruces invited us to produce a show in their 3500 sq. ft. gallery. The show will open in late November. It will be decadent and fabulous.

Who inspires you, artwise?


Me personally? Disneyland. Tarantino, PT Anderson, Aronofsky, Terrance Malick, Nick Toll, David Foster Wallace, Animal Collective, tons of other bands/musicians. But to reiterate, that is just me.

Anything you want people to know about Meow Wolf, what you do, what you stand for, etc.?


Meow Wolf continues to learn deeper reasons for being as we move from project to project. A most recent revelation for me has been what a tremendous asset we are for newcomers to Santa Fe. A 22 year old gets their BFA, moves to Santa Fe, and can instantly plug in with us, finding a social group, art materials, art space, and projects to be a part of, etc.

Anything coming up about which I should know/which I should promote?

We got something in May we wanna keep quite for now. But, in November, we’d love for people to visit us at Recycle Santa Fe!

 

Collaborative Art Santa Fe: Part II

Interference, Wasteland Scene

If you caught Currents 2011, you likely remember the video installation Interference: a  rubble-strewn urban wasteland that shifted to lush forest when intersected with human presence. Interactives were a big draw at the Currents exhibition (I had particular fun playing with John Carpenter’s Dandelion Clock.) With Interference, cooperation yielded a greater payback: the more people clustered together, the more forest could be reclaimed.

That bonus-through-alliance was fitting for a piece that was itself a matrix of logistical, technical and professional harmony. The creation of three artists, Brian Bixby, Charles Buckingham and Mike Root, working cooperatively from three far-flung cities –Berlin, Portland, and Santa Fe—Interference is a monument to concord and methodical cooperation.  How the piece came together was nearly as fascinating to me as the result, so I pummeled Mike Root for answers he happily supplied.

What was your intention?

We wanted to make sure the interaction didn’t feel like a game. A lot of the best interactive work I’ve seen is basically a video game mechanic. I love video games but we didn’t want to create one. So we developed this concept of 3 layers in 3D space and began playing with the idea of allowing the audience to move around inside this augmented space of 3 dimensions. Our intention was to create an experience where the viewer’s presence immediately effected the scene, first mysteriously and abstractly, then as the viewer got closer the interaction became more concrete and a message emerged: “You effect your environment.”

How did you pick the team and choose your roles in the project?

The three of us share interests in similar digital art forms, musicians, film directors. We’ve known each other for about 10 years, in which time we’ve worked on video and music projects together, including collaborative work an online ambient video series (Snowflakes) as well as developing web applications, like the website for SITE Santa Fe’s 2010 Biennial, The Dissolve. To realize our idea for this piece was really a matter of matching what we know of each other’s strengths, both technically and creatively, to the tasks at hand.

Tell me about the mechanics of working together over a distance.  How did you communicate ideas and build the installation?

We held bi-monthly Skype meetings…during [which]…we critiqued each other’s work in the context of the direction of the overall piece. Much of the honing of the idea and execution happened during these exchanges… A great asset was the ability to share huge digital files via a shared server.  “Working” files in After Effects, Photoshop and Jitter were easy to view and “demo” once we each had the source footage and photography on our individual computers.

Who did What?

Charles and videographer Eric Macey shot several days of HD footage in scenic spots around Oregon. Charles also did the sound design, which fades between idyllic natural river sounds and haunting urban soundscapes.

The piece exploits infrared data captured by an Xbox Kinect unit.  Charles spent many hours exploring how to best interpret and utilize this three dimensional data to make the installation react in “human” ways to the viewers. He configured a Mac computer to access and control the Xbox Kinect, then created a Jitter patch which took infrared data from the Kinect and used it to manipulate the audio and video components of the installation.

Brian shot high resolution photography of urban rubble and construction sites in Berlin, which he assembled into large scale seamless panoramas in Photoshop.… Through careful and tedious use of effects he transformed the images into a post-apocalyptic scene, eventually adding animation of smoke and rain along with 3D lighting.

I sorted through the extensive Oregon footage, eventually settling on a panorama of a forest, with river foreground. [I then] stitched together a giant-scale video composite from six high definition camera angles, [and] added 3D lighting to bring out certain areas of the scene. Brian and I collaborated on fine-tuning the rain and lighting of the Berlin rubble heap.

I also coordinated and interfaced with Currents curators Frank Ragano and Mariannah Amster who really “got” the piece and afforded a perfect space within the exhibition for the piece.

How did it feel when you saw the installation on site?

What was most gratifying was seeing the people who attended the Currents exhibition react in unexpectedly profound ways with our piece. We witnessed people go through an experiential envelope from curiosity to puzzlement to elation after spending a few minutes interacting with our piece. The “take away” from this experience was a spark of inspiration to re-envision the polluted decay of urban landscape as something you can affect and reclaim.

People commented on it and interpreted it in very positive and inspiring ways. One of the highlights was watching viewers grab other people nearby and create a human wall, which reclaimed the entire scene from ruins to pure nature.

New direction or never again?  

This piece was the first time for us to work on something interactive as a team, so the resulting work is something new and unexpected for all three of us. We’re applying to other exhibitions with this piece and hope to install it on a larger scale.  We’re curious to see how people in other places respond.

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Interference, River Scene

If you missed Currents 2011, or are nostalgic for a revisit, check out this video documentation. It’s no substitute for the full experience, but it’s a great commercial.

Collaborative Art Santa Fe, Pt. I

Michael Rohner/Gwen A.P.: Collaboration in Process

Collaborative Art: What springs to mind?  The Dadaists of Cabaret Voltaire? Andy Warhol’s Factory? Jeff Koon’s Studio? (or any number of less famous examples.) I’m used to the idea of collaboration in the workplace, or in improvisational theater, where good work can become great work when spontaneous sharing reigns and egos take a back seat. But co-production of an art piece opens the door to a crowd of questions: Who owns the work? Who’s the author (of particular concern where one talent has the idea which another talent executes)? Where is the work made?  Your place or mine?  Same time or consecutively?

Mark Dunhill and Tamiko O’Brien reflect thoughtfully on issues central to the process of artistic collaboration in their blog Collaborative Arts: Conversations on Collaborative Arts Practise  And truly, there are no static, definitive answers. There is, however, rich potential.  Two outstanding local examples are Meow Wolf’s Due Return, showing through August 21st at the CCA and Interference: an interactive video environment created by Brian Bixby, Charles Buckingham and Mike Root, featured at Currents 2011 in June. Watch for reviews of both productions in upcoming posts.

Bonnaroo Tree, Michael Rohner/Gwen A.P., On Site Collaboration

This weekend, delight yourself with a first hand look at spontaneous co-creation at the 39th Annual Girl’s Inc. Arts and Crafts Show on The Plaza. Look for Booth G-18, near the intersection of Old Santa Fe Trail and San Francisco. Santa Fe Emerging Artist, Mike Rohner will be painting with Gwen AP, of Pittsburg PA. The pair met in Tennessee, at the Bonnaroo music festival. “Our artistic vibes clicked,” says Michael,”and we began immediately collaborating on paintings, taking turns working at the canvas in front of the main stage and thousands of music fans.” After each went home, they started a long-distance venture, where one of them would begin painting a canvas and the other would finish it up. To the right is a sample of what happened in Tennessee, since sold. Below are the fruits of the pair’s long-distance efforts. You’ll have your chance to pick up a Santa Fe spawned collaboration tomorrow and meet the gracious and ever-amiable Rohner in the bargain.

Calvin Tree, Michael Rohner/Gwen A.P., via long distance collaboration

Changing Gallery Presents “Practical Nonsense”

a Mercantile of the Bizarre and Unusual in the Spirit of Dadaism and Mad Humor

Victorian Skateboard

On April 16th, from 4-8 PM, Changing Gallery hosts the Opening for “Practical Nonsense: a mercantile of the bizarre and unusual.” This solo exhibition by artist Esteban Bojorquez features “assemblage and readymades in the spirit of dadaism and mad humor.” Many pieces were crafted specifically to play off the special character of Changing Gallery’s current venue, The Palace Grocery Store.

Practical Nonsense is a Mom & Pop convenience store in the Twilight Zone, an emporium of delightful oddities and witty wonders. Look for the * Alien Space Helmet and Assorted Ray Guns * The Dutch Disco Shoe * Expired Goods –100% off! * Money Hungry Bank (with teeth!) * Golf Ball on the Moon (a victim of extraterrestrial forces) * The Do-it-Yourself Series, including * “You Can Be a Space Cowboy * the Vampire Kit (complete with mirror, mallet and silver tipped bullets.) * and an unforgettable freezer display, “Joe the Butcher and His Calvacade of Meat.” All this plus, The Frolic Room….

HOURS:

Saturday, April 16th, 4:00-8:00 PM

Sunday, April 17th, 1:00-4:00 PM

Saturdays, April 23rd and April 30th, 1:00-4:00 PM, and By Appointment.

As Changing Gallery, real estate agents Malissa Kullberg and Joshua Maes use their listings, where appropriate, to showcase the art, photography and music of local, independent and emerging creative talents. Artists receive 100% of the proceeds from any sale.

Vampire Kit by Esteban Bojorquez

Check out this short Video of the Show

 

The Art of Upcycling

Sunrise, by Esteban Bojorquez

Upcycling is “the process of converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of better quality or a higher environmental value,” says Wikipedia.  Where recycling converts plastic bottles into microfiber jackets, upcycling turns newsprint into notebooks, or broken skateboards into hip, colorful benches. For the smartest elucidation of the difference I’ve run across, read this post on Intercon.

Trazzlers’ Turning Trash into Visionary Art is a fun tour of “the mind-boggling things people make with junk.”  From an oceanside pipe organ made of cemetery detrius to the tire, bottle, can and scrap metal-composed Earthships of Taos, the article celebrates extraordinary eventualities that come about when trash falls into the hands of manic humans with vision.

I found the post, Fabulous Furniture Made of Unusual Upcycled Objects on the sharp-minded culture-sifter BrainPickings, the blog committed to “curating eclectic interestingness from culture’s collective brain.” If the idea of a coffin couch gives you the creeps, how ’bout one made through a marriage of old-style leather car seats and vintage refrigerators?

Recently, we were introduced to the work of independent artist Esteban Bojorquez who “[collects] and [reconstructs] the discarded refuse of our throwaway society” into dynamic, tactile delights. Bojorquez’ studio is a brilliant fun house chock-a-block with cheerful, burnished castoffs carefully conjoined into visually pleasing, balanced compositions.  (Watch for a future studio visit.)

Alien Skull, by Esteban Bojorquez

The piece that hooked my interest was “Alien skull:” a metal doppleganger of that overworked Western icon, The Cow Skull. His guitars made of 5 gallon gas cans and other found materials dazzle with wit and whimsical appeal. Bojorquez’ work seemed a perfect match for Changing Gallery’s current venue, the old Palace Grocery Store, near the heart of downtown Santa Fe, so we were thrilled when he consented to a show. If you’re in town on April 16th, come see Bojorquez transform the Palace into, in his words, “an environmental installation, a mercantile of the bizarre and unusual, incorporating [his] assemblage art and creating new products in the spirit of dadaism and mad humor.”

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The art of Esteban Bojorquez was featured on CNN’s My City, My Secret.  Professional Skateboarder Terry Kennedy shared his favorite haunts in the San Fernando Valley, including a trip to Cal State Northridge art museum. Watch the video here.

Wee OK: Documentary Photographs of New Orleans

Wee OK, by Grace Berge

Sprayed across the door and siding of a home abandoned after Katrina is the message, “Wee OK” plus three names and a phone number. The extra “e” is blurred, perhaps half erased, perhaps just a burp of the spraycan, an unconscious error and unwitting double entrendre. “Wee OK.” Not fully or grandly okay. Just a wee little bit okay, but enough. Don’t worry. Here’s our number. You can call.

Katrina remains New Orleans’ indelible shadow, the top note and backbeat to any discussion of the city. But New Orleans is a city of deep, rich, dimensional culture, and a wellspring of American music. Changing Gallery’s next exhibition offers two photographic perspectives on life in New Orleans: the dark destruction post Katrina and the enveloping joy of the music scene.

Grace Berge’s documentary photographs of post-Katrina devastation will be projected within an installation that mimics the environments in which they were shot.

Marc Malin, photographer, musician and long time contributor to the New Orleans Musicians Clinic (NOMC), will show photographs of musicians and musical events in New Orleans. Malin describes his work as “impressionist documents:” uncontrived, “captured moments” shot documentary style, but using equipment and processing techniques that “[convey] the feeling; and or energy present.” Head to Main’s website to see the astounding gallery of musical talents– Dr. John, Buddy Guy, The Neville Brothers, Toni Bennett, Brownie McGhee and so many more– Malin has captured on film. A portion of proceeds from the sale of prints and cards will be donated to NOMC.

Social Aid & Pleasure Club Parade, by Marc Malin

Musicians Marc Malin, Mike Handler, Larry Diaz, Janice Mohr-Nelson, Vin Kelly and Arne Bey –The Country Blues Revue– will play a set. Read more about the band, on the bill for this summer’s Thirsty Ear Festival, at their Facebook page, Marc and Mike’s Country Blues Revue

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As Changing Gallery, real estate agents Malissa Kullberg and Joshua Maes use their listings, where appropriate, to showcase the art, photography and music of local, independent and emerging creative talents.  Artists receive 100% of the proceeds from any sale.

 

 

Creating the Perfect Santa Fe

Solemates, Acrylic on Canvas, by Mark Frossard, 2010

A great deal of ink and shutter snaps have been expended by writers and photographers in their efforts to capture the vivid allure of Santa Fe. The latest effort we ran across was “Celebrate Santa Fe” a piece published in Destinations Travel Magazine.

I’m a bit wary of outsiders’ assessments of Santa Fe, or of any city I know well.  Example: a recent Wall Street Journal piece labeling the Albuquerque area near Gertrude Zachary’s “Castle” –an area which includes the Elements Urban Townhomes, a desirable Green Development– as “Skid Row” and “derelict” is an egregious example of the distorted lens of distance.  But Darlene Perrone’s piece rings true in the main. As she says at the start, “There is no place on earth like Santa Fe….”

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A little over a year ago, Zane Fischer, writer for the Santa Fe Reporter (Zane’s World), wrote a column entitled Mirror, Mirror.  In it, he said:

“On the whole, it appears the time is right for Santa Fe to head into the New Year understanding that accolades from travel magazines are nice, but clear-eyed assessments of how to move into the future are nicer. All of us need to consider the short- and long-term paths to maintaining the city’s integrity and character while positioning it as a genuine center for creative innovation.”

Accolades are nice.  We get a lot of them. But what’s more important than plaudits based on surveys and dreamy sketches by swing-through visitors is a healthy self regard.  Santa Fe isn’t perfect, but it is genuinely and deeply creative. Entities such as the Santa Fe Complex, a matrix of interdisciplinary cross-pollination, show this small town’s remarkable reach for innovative action.

On Monday, I read a piece Creating the Perfect City is About Illusions, Such As Shorter Blocks about a grassroots urban planner working to make his city more vibrant and liveable. Anthony Lyons, the planner, and David Green, an urban designer from Perkins+Will, have teamed up “to re-imagine how we address the challenges cities face in the coming decades.”  They started with the simple question, “What kind of city do we want to be?”

So how ’bout it Santa Fe: what kind of city do we want to be? Through Changing Gallery and this blog, I regularly cast my votes in support of emerging and independent artists and musicians.  Joshua Maes and I are also, through lifestyle, affiliations and advocacy, supporters of sustainability and Green initiatives. There’s a hot debate about incentives for the film industry, and bills under consideration covering education, energy, marriage and many other issues core to our civic identity. What do you think?

Polymorphic Polymediac: Artist RosS Hamlin

things i’d love to do: …play kick-the-can with the pharcyde and pooh sticks with tom waits…. –RosS Hamlin on MySpace

When I approached RosS Hamlin, musician, artist and director of Little Wing Performance Space, to ask if he was game for an interview, his response came through Facebook mobile as four vertical quadrangles. I thought it might be an artist thing. Turns out, it was and it wasn’t. RosS wrote “game” upside down which flummoxed my App. But RosS isn’t a vanity artist, posturing obscurity to emphasize originality. Thoughtful, articulate, polite and professional, RosS knows that to get all that wild-minded, perspective-changing creative brilliance before the world, you have to be functional, albeit with a flourish.

“Santa Fe’s newest and most open-minded music and art space,” Little Wing is a bonanza for emerging and independent artists and musicians.  We hear nothing but love for this place and much of that because of the man behind the shows. When I asked RosS how he attracts those who want to use the space, he said, “I don’t have a set criteria. Bands of every genre are welcome here, as are any workshops, clinics or classes that want to rent the space out. If they have the money, they can do whatever they want here,” citing just one incident where he’s turned away a potential renter and speaking with charity about a single workshop that bombed. “We’re all learning.”

We met RosS at a meeting of the After Hours Alliance, “founded in 2010 by a group of music and arts promoters under the mission of connecting the younger people of Santa Fe to meaningful and relevant after-hours events.” (I spoke about AHA in an earlier post, The Care and Feeding of Santa Fe’s Creative Class.) Hamlin’s participation in the all-volunteer organization is emblematic of his generosity. That generosity extends to his financial arrangement with acts who book Little Wing (60/40 split in favor of performers; 70/30 split in favor of gallery artists) and his efforts to make the venue accessible. Indeed, this is a guy spinning with talent –musical, visual and verbal.  He could probably keep the place booked showcasing his own work and personal picks.  But that’s not his way.

Drop in on Hamlin’s website to check out his round robin of abilities, affiliations and inspiration. In addition to arting, composing and music-making, he is also a guitar, electric bass, voice, composition, and music theory teacher through his school, Full Circle Guitar. When he claims that his approach “emphasizes full-brain creativity [and his] style is patient, detailed, innovative and most importantly, fun,” I believe him.  Hamlin’s sincerity and humility are solid and palpable.

Be sure to savor a few tracks on Hamlin’s site on Reverbnation.  I admit to a pedestrian resistant to present day Jazz, which “The Mustache who loved Me” –an engaging fusion of jazz and funk– quickly set straight. Or better yet, treat yourself to an evening’s entertainment at Little Wing Performance Space. Hamlin’s ever-evolving artistic intelligence and expansive inclusivity –a recent event united the potent forces of Meow Wolf and Red Cell’s The Process with out-of-town talent –ensure a bounty of cultural experience that is truly the wellspring of Santa Fe’s “robust art scene,” to quote the New York Times. All Hamlin asks is that you pay your pittance and pull up a chair.

Watch Joshua Maes video of our visit to Little Wing

Fresh Goods & Staples: A Multi-Media Art Show

Beyond the Measure: Artist Alexandra Eldridge

You Must Go By the Way You Know Not, 24x24

I own a piece of Alexandra Eldridge.  A piece of her art, yes, but a piece of the artist as well. It doesn’t entitle me to anything; I can’t hawk it on eBay or take it to dinner. It’s not a byproduct of purchase; it’s available to anyone: to every art tourist who ever tipped her head back to drink in the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and was called back to the world by an aching neck. It comes through giving oneself over to the full-court appreciation of a work of art and its creator. And it elevates the value of an artwork from a dollar figure to priceless.

I met Alexandra through my position at a Canyon Road Gallery.  I came to know her through interviewing her in the course of writing publicity for an upcoming show. As we talked in her studio, surrounded by her paintings, drawings, books, quotes and other objects of inspiration, I began to shift from an analytical appreciation of her skills or the surface beauty of her paintings to a relationship with them.  To be honest, when I stepped into her studio that afternoon, I thought her work was too comely for my taste. But then I saw MY painting, with a quote by Carl Jung feathered across its width: Passion that goes beyond the measure of love aims at the mystery of becoming whole.”

That, in a nutshell, is Alexandra.

In work and life, Alexandra goes beyond the measure to find her whole. Although this deeply trained daughter of two artist/writers is perfectly capable of pulling a fast trick on canvas or paper, that’s not her way.  Earlier life experiences, including her years in a community based on the principles of William Blake, have driven her to embrace art as a spiritual discipline, requiring attention, “devotion, a connection to silence and the unknown and the possibilities of visionary experience.”

Alexandra’s work is feminine, lovely, delicate–but it is not pretty.  Every painted piece holds underlayers of process in its depths. Every plump rabbit, voluptuous egg, house, tree, cup or swing is part of a complex iconic vocabulary whose sum offers a wordless challenge to respect what D.H. Lawrence termed “the struggling, battered thing which any human soul is.”

Passion That Goes Beyond, 24" x 24"

I bought that piece, although it was a mighty financial stretch, because it was an intersection of understandings.  It explained Alexandra; it explained me.  It explained that moment in my life.  It was beautiful, with its luminous blues and demanding blacks, and contained that quote which, like every line of Jung’s I’ve ever read, I wasn’t quite sure I grasped, but which stretched me in the grasping.

To learn more about Alexandra’s life and views, read the complete interview by artist Predrag Pajdic. Or, watch the video footage taken by Joshua Maes during our recent studio visit. Alexandra’s work can be viewed locally at Nuart Gallery, on Canyon Road, and Victoria Price Art & Design in Pacheco Park.

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