ArtSake

What happens if you combine a love of glue guns, vinyl records, yummy vegan treats and amazing original tshirt designs all in one hot, sweaty crowded room at Mass Art?  Well, for the price of a scratch ticket, this coming Sunday Mass Market may just be the answer to satisfy your every DIY (that means do it yourself) impulse and support local artists and musicians at the same time! The flea market is bound to have something for everyone whether it’s art, books, music, clothes, djs’ and vegan and veggie foods. Pass the tanning butter (vegan of course).

On Tuesday, April 29 at 4:30 PM, Barbara O’Brien, Director of the Trustman Art Gallery at Simmons College, will moderate a roundtable discussion with three MCC 2007 Photography Fellows: Anne Rearick, Rania Matar and Claire Beckett.

The discussion marks the opening of Uncommon Denominator, a new photography exhibition running through May 30 at the Trustman. The exhibition features photography by 10 2007 Fellows and Finalists.

“I’m so excited about this show,” says O’Brien, “and its depth, quality and range of ideas.” She’s interested in the way the artists’ work reflects the documentary tradition, from both a political and a personal perspective, and the intersection of the two.

Since starting at Simmons in 2006, O’Brien, who oversees the arts administration program in addition to directing the gallery, has specialized in organizing group shows “that create dialogue.” She often selects artists that don’t know each other, or several artists from Boston along with one from outside the region. O’Brien, who previously served as editor-in-chief of Art New England for four years, brings an uncommon perspective to her assessment of the Massachusetts contemporary art scene, having served as a critic, curator and photographer in her own right.

As the curator of a college gallery, O’Brien feels a responsibility to create opportunities for artists that commercial galleries do not. She sees the density of colleges and universities in the region as the biggest asset to its professional art scene.

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We’ve posted the May installment of MCC Fellows Notes, with loads of good news about former fellows and finalists, including:

• Laura Harrington’s new musical at NYC’s Zipper Factory
• Four MCC-honored artists in the Artadia Boston 2007 show
• Andrew List’s composition “Noa Noa, A Gauguin Tableaux” in Dedham
• Visual art by Jane Marsching and Deb Todd Wheeler at Allston Skirt Gallery
• Salvatore Scibona’s new novel The End soon to come from Graywolf Press

Read the MCC Fellows Notes here.

Image: Hannah Barrett’s “The Luddites” (2003), oil on montage, 50″ x 69 1/2″. Hannah is one of the artists featured in the Artadia Boston 2007 show at the Boston Center for the Arts.

If an avant-garde composer and a pinhole photographer were trapped on a sinking lifeboat, could they get beyond their media’s differences to find a solution? Can a political performance poet ever truly - TRULY - see the world through the eyes of an experimental sculptural knitter? Are dance and theatre the ultimate frenemies? Our new series, Artist to Artist, probably won’t answer any of these questions. But it will bring together artists of different disciplines, to talk about their work and explore common issues they share as art-makers and innovators.

Below is an excerpt of the first installment of Artist to Artist, featuring the intriguing artists Karl Iagnemma (a robotics engineer and fiction writer) and Brian Knep (who often incorporates cutting-edge science and technology into his installation art) discussing the intersection of science, technology, and art in their work.

MCC: It’s tempting to assume that work incorporating technology and science would somehow be about science. But that’s not necessarily the case here. Could you speak about how you use your work to reveal something about human beings, or human nature?

Karl: I would argue that my work is, in part, about science, but that the scientific focus is secondary to the more “traditional” preoccupations with character and story. I have found science (and pseudoscience) to be a fertile subject area, since the everyday work of science gives rise to surprisingly rich palette of emotions and conflicts–the stuff of fiction. The clichéd view of science is that it’s cold, analytical work performed by cold, analytical individuals. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

Brian: I love when I look at something that happens on a sub-cellular level, and it feels like things that are happening in society. You’ve got cells that are talking to each other and interacting and dying and giving birth. It’s all stuff that we deal with. These similar dialogues are happening at a different scale, the scale of the cell and the scale of the human, and I love that. And I think we can make those connections… I see science as a very rich way of making the art work on deeper level for people.

Read the full Artist to Artist dialogue.

It’s a tough go, being an artist. One way to keep the career moving along (and avoid the scenarios depicted in Jeff Warmouth’s pathos-ridden groceries, above) is to take advantage of artists’ conferences and convenings.

One such opportunity is coming up for film & video artists: early bird registration is now open for the Making Media Now 2008 conference. The May 30 conference, organized by Filmmaker’s Collaborative and held at Bentley College, will include panels and discussions on film financing, animation, the future of documentaries in the Internet video era, and a lot more. Especially with the growth of studio filmmaking in Massachusetts, one panel of interest will be a discussion of how to parlay your independent filmmaking skills into jobs in the new Massachusetts film industry.

(Speaking of studio films being shot here, Ricky Gervais, better known as The Office’s David Brent to those who confuse actors and fictional characters, is filming in the Boston area and is funnily blogging about it.)

Image from Jeff Warmouth’s “SuperJEFFUMarket Installation” (2001), aluminum cans with custom labels, 15 oz (4 1/2″ x 3″ x 3″ each)

Let’s take a peek at what’s going on in Clara Lieu’s studio.

I am currently working on a new series of figures wading in water. The project focuses on the dual nature of water as a substance which can be responsible for sustaining or ending life. As humans, we turn to water as a source of healing and comfort that can be small in scale and intimate. (more…)