ArtSake

Since 2005, Boston-based artist Christine Arveil has been creating an abstract volcano expressed through writing and painting. The Volcano Project was first installed in 2009 in the Azores islands; key pieces return to Boston and will be on view at the Massachusetts State House, Doric Hall, June 1-11.

What was once the expression of the imagination of a singular artist – the Volcano Project – has met the Azorean collective memory of an historical event – the eruption of the volcano – that is part of the identity of the new American-Azorean generation. Arveil’s artwork assembles organic paintings in vibrant shades of red, white sculptures incorporating Azorean deep-black basalt stones, and stone-drawings displayed over metal stands. Ilha Ardente – Ember Island installs an island of art which strength bridges lands and cultures.

Five years ago, I painted a vertical red image of a new kind, The Price of Freedom. A powerful piece that both intrigued and challenged me, as its elusive complexity precluded any attempt at reproduction.

Around the same time, I began writing a new novel. I was intensely drawn to this fiction, which setting and new style fascinated me more than any of my previous writings. I refined it over three years, focusing on crafting sentences and words that would embody rather than simply describe the art creation process. The vision was that of an imaginary volcano, inhabited by a sculptor; both vision and fictional character sustained my drive for new creations in the painting medium, and revealed an autobiographic undertone. The medium I use on my gesso/panel is based on violin varnish, and as unfit to painting as flowing lava is to sculpting, but allows me to elaborate organic images. I visually “built” the Volcano all over again in expressing how burning life is.

All of this remained secluded in my studio, until it reached a critical mass and people started to know about my projet fou. My husband suggested that we should look for the location, so far unknown to me, of the volcanic fault that I had so precisely described; we visited several islands before finding the area of Ferraria, Azores. In this location, my art, a work of pure imagination, was now been invested by the Azorean world, its land and its people. When I started my Volcano Project in 2005, I had not foreseen that my abstraction would embed itself deeply into real ground beyond my own, nor resonate with so many people.

The first installation of 70 pieces of the Volcano took place in São Miguel in September 2009. In Boston today, the invitation to present part of the Volcano Project at the Portuguese Heritage weeks came as a surprise and a great honor. Lava flows had changed the destiny of the Azorean people and drove their families to America. Time passing, the narration of the event from generation to generation made the volcano legendary. Seeing my artwork mirror these memories and bridge cultures, shows that when the emotional charge remains and facts blur, art may become the medium of expression.

 

While news of the recent Icelandic and Indonesian eruptions cast more realism each day over my creation (in the spectators’ view), my art process remains centered on inner feelings and solitude. In this dialogue, meaning lies at the center of talk. Meaning is the currency of the emotional exchange.

Christine Arveil
Ilha Ardente / Ember Island
Massachusetts State House
June 1-11, 2010
9am-5pm M-F
An event of the Boston Portuguese Festival 2010

Image credit: All images courtesy of Christine Arveil
From top to bottom:
Photograph of the artist Christine Arveil.
Mendiants, 2009, lava stones, gold leaf and lacquer on wood, 41″ x 14″ x 10″
Spinesax (detail), 2008, violin varnish and pigments over gesso on wood
Spinesax, 2008, violin varnish and pigments over gesso on wood, 48″ x 48″
First Right of Refusal, 2008, violin varnish and pigments over gesso on wood, 48″ x 48″
First Right of Refusal (detail), 2008, violin varnish and pigments over gesso on wood

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The 2010 MCC Artist Fellowship awards have been announced for Choreography, Fiction/Creative Nonfiction, and Poetry. Applications for the MCC’s Artist Fellowship Program were open to all eligible Massachusetts artists.

A total number of 967 eligible applications were received; 58 in Choreography, 530 in Fiction/Creative Nonfiction, and 379 in Poetry. See a complete list of this year’s fellows and finalists.

Read profiles of the fellows/finalist on Gallery@MCC.

Images: Cover art from books by MCC fellows/finalists. Top, l to r: Cold Snap by Cynthia Morrison Phoel (SMU Press 2010); For the Confederate Dead by Kevin Young (Knopf, 2008); Edinburgh by Alexander Chee (paperback edition, Picador, 2002); Bottom, l to r: Post Moxie by Julia Story (Sarabande Books, 2010); The Dangerous Joy of Dr. Sex and Other True Stories by Pagan Kennedy (Santa Fe Writers Project, 2008); Scattershot by David Lovelace (paperback edition, Plume, 2009).

Video: an excerpt from THE BEHOLDING by Deborah Abel (Choreography Fellow ’10).

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Call to artists and writers: Vermont Studio Center awards a number of fellowships to artists and writers for 4-week residencies throughout the year. In addition to VSC Fellowships, a variety of special fellowships are also available for full or partial funding. You can find more online. Upcoming Fellowship Deadline: June 15, 2010.

Call to artists and artisans: Two upcoming community fairs are encouraging artists, artisans, and craftspeople to vend their wares. The Noche de San Juan Party, at Heritage Park in Holyoke on June 27 from 3-7pm, is a festival of traditional live music and arts. Artists/craftspeople with roots in the community can display and sell their work ($20 fee, vendor brings own tent or table). Contact Nancy Howard for more information. And, the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole is seeking vendors for summer craft fairs at Waterfront Park on July 16 and August 13 (8:30 AM to 4 PM, both days). There is a $35 space donation for each date, payable in full with registration. Past fairs have included photography, jewelry, pottery, and sculpture. Information and vendor applications available by contacting Ann Woolford, MBL Human Resources Office.

Call to would-be Washington Post cartoonists: Sketch, write, and humor your way to the top for a chance to win a one-month stint in the Washington Post Style section. The paper is looking for six original, unpublished single- or multi-panel cartoons. A panel of judges will narrow the field to 10 and the voting audience will choose who moves on to become America’s Next Great Cartoonist. Send your funniest funnies by June 4, 2010. More details.

Call for 2D art: Concrete and Steel, an exhibition sponsored by Alternate Currents and WorkBar Boston Gallery, is calling for 2D art by Boston-area artists, under 4′x4′, influenced by the urban landscape, street art, inner-city subjects and conspicuous construction. There’s an entry fee of $10 for up to 3 works. All works on paper should be properly prepared for hanging. Deadline: May 30, 2010. The show runs June 9-August 30, 2010. Heidi Kayser, Founding Director of Axiom Center for New and Experimental Media Show, will curate. More info at Alternate Currents.

Call to filmmakers: Cinereach Grants Program supports feature-length nonfiction and fiction films that possess an independent spirit, depict underrepresented perspectives, and resonate across international boundaries. Grants range from $5,000 – $50,000 and are awarded to films at any stage, including development, production and post-production. Next letter of inquiry deadline is June 1, 2010. Past recipients include Liza Johnson (Film & Video Finalist ’03, ’07) and Marlo Poras (Film & Video Fellow ’05).

Call to poets: The Frost Place Resident Poet Award is a prize of $1,000 and a six to eight week residency at Robert Frost’s former home in Franconia, New Hampshire. The prize is given each year to a poet who has published at least one poetry collection. Email the organization or visit Frost Place online for more. Deadline: July 2, 2010.

Image: Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT.

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The Boston Foundation will host Diane Paulus, Artistic Director of the American Repertory Theatre (A.R.T.) and Elizabeth Streb, Artistic Director of the Streb Laboratory for Action Mechanics (S.L.A.M.) at a special discussion forum called “Performance and Participation: the Art of Audience Engagement,” on Thursday, May 27, 8:30 to 10:30 AM.

The discussion will explore audience engagement as not just a marketing effort, but an artistic challenge. For this, Diane Paulus, whose flourishes at the A.R.T. have included a disco adaptation of Midsummer Night’s Dream and Macbeth reimagined as an immersive audience adventure, is a perfect fit. Elizabeth Streb brings a similar verve to engagement – the doors of her Brooklyn-based dance company are literally open to anyone who wants to experience it. Catherine Peterson from ArtsBoston will moderate.

The program is part of a Wallace Foundation initiative. More information, including how to RSVP, here.

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For artist Jenn Falcon, all it takes is a handfull of colored pencils, a sharpener, an erasure, a keen eye for observing nature, and patience to build up multiple layers of color in her drawings. ArtSake recently caught up with Jenn and asked her to tell us about her drawings and the inspiration for her subject matter. Below are her thoughts about her work.

I’ve lived in different parts of the country where I’ve been lucky to explore, sketch, photograph, and research the landscape. There are many plants, animals, geologic formations and other wonders to see. Now that I’m back home, I’m also finding natural beauty right here in Worcester and around New England.

Last year, ArtsWorcester agreed to show my work, and I received a grant from the Worcester Cultural Commission to put it all together. I included some of my photographs with basic information about the subjects of the works in hopes that people would be inspired to get out and experience these special places, maybe even try to protect them.

Of course, it’s impossible to recreate actually being there, and it’s different for everyone, so sometimes I add patterns and other designs that go along with the visual geometry of the scene or express temperature or sound. Some animals are depicted whimsically to express their liveliness. Then I combine it all to create pieces that express some of the spirit of what they represent. This year, the Worcester Public Library has agreed to let me show the work for the month of June in its main branch where it will reach a wide audience.

California Condors: Arizona and California

In 1987, due to poaching, lead, pesticides, habitat loss and other human causes, only 22 of these birds were left. Today there are 332, but their future is still uncertain. Shown clockwise from the right are 3 of their homes, Vermillion Cliffs and Pinnacles National Monuments and Grand Canyon National Park. The drawings depict Pinnacles and the Grand Canyon.

Upper Antelope Canyon or Tse’ bighanilini, LeChee Chapter, Navajo Nation

The canyons name means “the place where water runs through rocks”, and that is how it was formed. Water continues to flow through and change the smooth sandstone contours. The canyon is protected by Navajo Parks and Recreation, and can be visited by guided tour.
 

Green Hill Park, Worcester, Massachusetts
The land for Green Hill Park was sold to the city for half price by the Green Family in 1903. It is now home to a surprising variety of wildlife for an urban park. Several trails crisscross it including the East Side Trail which connects it to Bell Pond/East Park. City parks are a haven for us all. We must protect them from dumping, litter, illegal vehicles, intrusion, and misuse.

Image Credit: All images courtesy of Jenn Falcon.

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Imagine a continuum that extends from a painting of a puppy riding a unicycle* (pure aesthetics) all the way to the Boston City Hall (brutalist functionality). Common Boston sits smack dab in the middle of this continuum, half art, half function, all creative.

The Common Boston Festival (June 17-27, 2010) is an all-out, multi-armed (and -legged, in the case of the walking tours) celebration organized by the Boston Society of Architects that exemplifies how good design benefits Boston communities.

To me, this festival brings up the same the argument we keep implicitly making on ArtSake: our region has 1. Great brains and 2. Magic potion-esque creative spectacularity. Like the artists we often feature here, the state’s top minds in architecture and design compliment their finely-honed skill sandwiches with just the right mustard of creative innovation.

The Common Boston Festival, now in its fourth year, includes 10 days of lectures, art exhibitions, and walking and building tours. And every single one of these design- and architecture-lovin’ events is free as a wild cockatoo. Talk about neighborly!

Of particular interest to artists: you can submit photographs to the Common Boston Neighborhood Photography Project until June 1. The theme is “Building Communities, Behind the Scenes” (showcasing the often invisible process behind the building of Boston’s physical landscape). Winning entries will be displayed in an online gallery or – and this is super neat – on the large exterior LED media screen on the Carpenters Center (which faces I-93).

Other highlights:

• An open-invite design party (dParty) for everyone interested in design and Boston’s neighborhoods. Attendees get in free when they wear monochrome outfits (examples, as depicted by co-organizer Katie Flynn, above).
• Common Build (co-sponsored by LostinBoston.org) is a 72 hour competition to design/build creative wayfinding on an active pedestrian site, to orient and connect people within the neighborhood. Janet Echelman (Crafts & Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’09), the only artist to ever win simultaneous MCC Artist Fellowships in different categories, is on the jury!
• Among the walking tours is one exploring the TUTS concept – that is, the Tremont Underground Theatre Space, the proposed multi-use arts space in an abandoned T tunnel. It won the SHIFTboston Ideas Competition!

More information about the festival, including a full schedule of events, here.

* (By the way, if anyone owns/has created a picture of a puppy riding a unicycle, I will trade you a creatively mustarded sandwich for it.)

Images: Common Boston logo; dParty, as illustrated by Katie Flynn, co-organizer; bus shelter ad for the Tremont Underground Theater Space, proposed by Sapir Ng and Andrzej Zarzycki.

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Jeff Zimbalist screens film at Tribeca and Cannes, ESPN next; Marlo Poras and Jeff Silva receive LEF funding

In an interview with Linda Hassler in Huffington Post, Jeff Zimbalist (Film & Video Fellow ’05) and Michael Zimbalist discuss how their film The Two Escobars originated not with PBS or HBO (as you might expect with an international documentary), but with ESPN. The sports network invited the brothers to create a film for the 30 for 30 project, which commemorates the network’s 30th anniversary with 30 documentary films about sports. The organizers wanted a South American story and knew of Jeff’s film Favela Rising, about a hip hop movement that counteracts the ravages of drugs and crime in one of Rio de Janeiro’s most violent slums (incidentally, it’s the film that won Jeff a 2005 MCC Artist Fellowship).

Searching for a subject to explore for 30 for 30, the Zimbalists learned about the intriguing overlaps in the lives of Andres Escobar and Pablo Escobar, Colombian soccer star and drug kingpin (respectively). The stories of these two unrelated, unalike men make for a fascinating portrait of the world of Colombian soccer in the 1990s.

The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival (where it received great reviews), recently screened at the Cannes International Film Festival, and has its ESPN premiere on June 22, 2010 (the anniversary of a fateful 1994 match between the U.S. and Colombian soccer teams).

Learn more, and see footage from the film, on its 30 for 30 page.

Congratulations to all filmmakers awarded in the recently announced LEF Foundation Spring 2010 Moving Image grants. $165,000 went to New England documentary filmmakers – including grants to Marlo Poras (Film & Video Fellow ’05) and Jeff Daniel Silva (Film & Video Finalist ’09).

Marlo received an MCC fellowship based on the artistic excellence of her documentary Mai’s America, about a Vietnamese exchange student in rural Mississippi. Marlo later won renown for her documentary Run Granny Run, about nonagenarian Senatorial candidate Doris “Granny D” Haddock. From LEF, she received a $15,000 production grant to work on The Mosuo Sisters, about two sisters who lose their jobs in Beijing and return home to a remote Himalayan village to help keep their family afloat.

Jeff Silva, who co-founded and co-curates the Balagan Film Series, won fellowships from the Somerville Arts Council and the MIT Council for the Arts for his film Balkan Rhapsodies. LEF awarded him a $25,000 post-production grant for his film Ivan and Ivana, about a couple from war-torn Kosovo, now making a life in the US.

Have a doc in the works yourself? The LEF Foundation Moving Image Fund is currently accepting proposals for all projects in pre-production. Deadline is Friday, June 18, 2010 (and that’s an in-hand deadline). You can read more about Moving Image Fund, including guidelines and a full list of awarded artists and projects, at the LEF Foundation website.

Read our Fellows Notes for more news about past and present fellows/finalists from the MCC Artist Fellowships Program.

Image: still from THE TWO ESCOBARS by Jeff Zimbalist and Michael Zimbalist; video clip from BALKAN RHAPSODIES by Jeff Silva.

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The following was recently overheard by ArtSake on the banks of the river Charles: “Ok buddy, I’ll let you sit on me. I’m a big fan of modern art and pencil sketching so I’d be delighted to lend my scales to sit on. By the way, have you ever read Alligator’s All Around by Maurice Sendak? It’s my favorite book. I posed for him when I was just a baby gator.”

Call for Performing Artists: The New England Foundation for the Arts invites performing artists to get designated as New England States Touring Artists (also known as NEST). Learn more about the NEST Program here. Funding is available for presenters to hire NEST performing artists.

Call to Artists: Manifest Gallery is now accepting work for an international exhibit exploring the uncovered human form in current art. Traditional and non-traditional genre and media are accepted.
Deadline: May 28, 2010

Call to Choreographers: The 2nd Annual Pittsfield City Hoopla Festival in the Berkshires is looking for Choreography that uses the art and craft of Hula/Hoola Hooping. The festival takes place on July 24th from 12-5pm in Springside Parks’ Public Gardens and from 8-10pm at the Pittsfield State Forest Amphitheater. More information: Stefanie@fertileuniverse.com.

Call for Artists: The West Springfield Arts Council’s Celebrate the Arts is looking for artists to display and/or sell their work at this years event on June 10th (rain date June 11th) at Landmark at Monastery Heights, West Springfield MA. For more information contact Diane Clark at wespac01089@aol.com or 413-737-1909.
Deadline: May 28, 2010

Call to All Artists: If you have a show, an open studio, a performance, a reading, etc., that you want people to know about, be sure to ‘like’ ArtSake’s Facebook page so you can include it on our wall.

Image credit: Cover image from Gentleman’s Journal

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A green plastic watering can
For a fake chinese rubber plant
In the fake plastic earth
That she bought from a rubber man
In a town full of rubber plans
To get rid of itself
from Radiohead’s Fake Plastic Trees

Deb Todd Wheeler’s (2003 MCC Sculpture/Installation Fellow) recent work explores blown film polyethylene otherwise know as plastic. One thing is for sure, Deb’s work is definitely for real. Let’s dive in and see what she’s up to.

 What are you currently reading? Percy Jackson and the Olympians.

Spring, Summer, Winter or Fall? Fall. (Bonus art treat: check out Deb’s Snail video piece from September 27, 2009 — She recorded the sounds and movements of a group of snails as they organized themselves into a fall ritual rarely seen.)

What do you listen to while you create? Alexi Merdoch.

Do you live with any animals? A rabbit.

What artists’ work do you admire most but create nothing like? Pippolotti Rist.

If forced to choose, would you be an eraser or a permanent magic marker? An eraser.

The unauthorized biography of your life is titled: What The (bleep) is She Doing??

Decide for yourself and check out BLEW: recent works by Deb Todd Wheeler
at the Miller Block Gallery, 38 Newbury Street, Boston, MA.
Opening Reception: May 27th from 6-8pm
Exhibition Dates: May 21-June 26, 2010

Image credit: All images courtesy of Deb Todd Wheeler

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Rebecca Kaiser Gibson joins poets honoring Deborah Digges; Sue Murad returns to Buried; Cam Terwilliger in print and at Emerson

Deborah Digges was a renowned poet and memoirist whose life ended far too soon at age 59, in 2009. A resident of Amherst, she taught at Tufts University and wrote lyrical poetry and prose that won her, among other honors, the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. This Sunday, a group of poets, including Henri Cole, Cynthia Zarin, Franz Wright, and Rebecca Kaiser Gibson (Poetry Fellow ’08) will gather at the Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge (Sunday, May 16, 3 PM) to read from her posthumously published collection, The Wind Blows Through the Doors of My Heart.

Rebecca, a student and friend of Deborah’s, writes movingly about her mentor in an essay for the Tufts University alumni magazine. One detects a life never far from poetry in Rebecca’s anecdote about the two friends stealing a lily from a garden, and later, her discovery that the spontaneous act was predated by a poem Deborah wrote called The Flower Thief.

In March, we wrote about Buried, an intriguing, movement-based performance by Sue Murad (Choreography Fellow ’08) exploring the ancient stories of many cultures. This Monday, Sue reprises the piece, in a free performance adapted from the first; Monday, May 17th, 7:30-8:30 PM, side entrance of the Park Street Church in Boston.

Finally, we recently heard from Cam Terwilliger (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’08), who has two stories about to be published: “The Shut-down Class” will appear in Post Road, and “Happy Trails” in West Branch.

Also, Cam will be teaching a writing class through Emerson College’s Continuing Education program, called “Learning from the Masters: The Art & Craft of Fiction.”

From Cam: “This workshop is for people who want to think like a writer thinks – considering both inspiration and technique. In order to uncover the secrets of great writing, our class will analyze classic short stories, getting at the heart of plot, character, dialogue, and style. Throughout the course, students will use these lessons to write their own stories for workshop.”

More info here.

Read our Fellows Notes for more news about past and present fellows/finalists from the MCC Artist Fellowships Program.

Images: Cover art for THE WIND BLOWS THROUGH THE DOORS OF MY HEART by Deborah Digges (Knopf, 2010); Still from BURIED by Sue Murad.

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