Quit petting me little girl, you’re distracting me. Why must I always wait outside the museum? I love Eva Hesse! -Thoughts from anonymous, a dog tied up outside the ICA, Boston.
Playwrights Cape Cod Community College is continuing its Play with your Food series, featuring local playwrights’ original scripts for workshop readings. All productions take place in the college’s Tilden Arts Center Studio Theater, with a limited dinner menu available for purchase to enjoy during the show. The evening concludes with a talk-back session. Submissions are now being accepted via email for production dates in October 2011 and February/March 2012. Questions: nwillets@capecod.edu.
Deadline: August 26, 2011
Public Art Want to make the experience of waiting for the bus slightly more pleasant for your fellow humans? New York’s MTA Arts for Transit is now accepting applications from artists to create original two-dimensional proposals for the Mother Clara Hale Bus Depot in Harlem. The commissioned artist will create artwork that will be reproduced in fused or laminated glass and/or mosaic along the windows and exterior wall of the building. ArtSake suggests a secretive Red Sox theme to infiltrate enemy territory and give subliminal messages to Yankee fans while they wait for the bus. Just a thought. Questions: artsfortransit@mtahq.org. Read more.
Deadline: August 26, 2011
Film, Video, and Multimedia Entries are now being accepted for the Rencontres Internationales which will be held in Paris at the Pompidou Center on November 18-26, 2011, and in Madrid and Berlin in 2012. The event will feature an international program focused on film, video, and multimedia, gathering works of artists and filmmakers recognized on the international scene along with young artists and filmmakers. Learn more.
Deadline: August 31, 2011
Call for Performance and Art Works Mobius is now accepting submissions and proposals for Momento Mori, a performance and art event that explore the theme of mortality, mourning, remembrance, and memory. This event will take place at the Mobius Alternative Arts Space in Cambridge, MA October 20-24, 2011. Learn more.
Deadline: October 1, 2011
Female Performance Artists Silver Glass Productions seeks female performance artists for second annual New Seeds Festival in Tampa, FL. The festival seeks original, socially relevant performance work across all disciplines. Participating artists will be included in pre-event promotion and their work will be included in post-event follow-up as well as a possibility for their image to be used in next year’s New Seed’s promotion. Learn more.
Deadline: October 15, 2011
So, you want art this weekend. You’ve come to the right place. Here’s a handy dandy guide to your art-seeking travels.
Your starting point is Taunton, Massachusetts, on Sat., June 4, 2011, for the Dighton Cow Chip Festival. There, you’ll behold chainsaw sculptor “The Machine” Jesse Green as he lives out his slogan – “Carving Dreams into Reality” – by sculpting (live, in real-time, and using the previously mentioned chainsaw) a cow sculpture that’s to become Taunton’s newest fixture.
Then, make your way due north until you reach the cool waters of the Charles River, where the Cambridge River Festival (Sat, June 4) can offer you music, puppetry, dance, theatre, improv, a parade, children’s programming, and all manners of interactive and creative fun.
Cross the Charles River to Boston – specifically, to the Rose Kennedy Greenway. There, FIGMENT Boston (June 4-5) awaits you. FIGMENT Boston is a part of the national FIGMENT project, a “forum for the creation and display of participatory and interactive art by emerging artists across disciplines.” Over 80 artists are participating in FIGMENT Boston this year, including live video installation, interactive music performance, architectural dance installation, and many, many other interesting projects that are too hard to compact into a reasonable sentence. May we humbly suggest this event is likely to be far out.
Next, head north to Salem, MA. You’ll find the Salem Arts Festival, a weekend-long (June 3-5) celebration of visual, performing, and literary art. You can take a magic carpet ride, learn bellydance, do improv, and see tons of art.
Now, I understand that, with four festivals already under your belt, you’re weary, hungry, possibly a touch over-festive. But you must persevere. For a little over 30 miles from Salem is the formidable city of Lowell, where you’ll breathlessly rush through the doors of the Merrimack Repertory Theatre. There, the Lowell National Historical Park hosts an evening of Irish dance and fiddle music Saturday night, featuring master artists and their apprentices, from the MCC’s Traditional Apprenticeship Program. Read more at our sibling blog, Keepers of Tradition, on this fascinating evening of solo, duet, and group performances.
You may rest now.
It’s Sunday morning (almost noon – you slept late). Rise, and see art.
First, head to South Boston, where there’s a Spring Open Studio at the Distillery & King Terminal (Sun., June 5, 2011). See the current participating artists and check out some previous work by some of those same artists in an older post we did about their Fall open studios.
Finally, make your way, by roller skate, rickshaw, unicycle, or – if need be – an easier mode of transport, to the Tufts University Art Gallery in Medford. A show of MCC Fellows just opened (see pictures of the opening on our Facebook page). If you want a sense of the range and vision of work being produced by visual artists in Massachusetts, you have arrived at your destination. While you’re there, use your cell to call a special number for audio commentary by the artists.
There. You’ve reached the end of our guide. But feel free to expand the map.
Image: Gallery view of paintings by Monica Nydam, from a show of MCC Fellows at Tufts University Art Gallery.
Here’s the latest installment of Fellows Notes, the current news of past fellows/finalists from our Artist Fellowships Program.
March comes in like a lion with readings, exhibitions, awards, books, world premieres, and more. (I have a feeling that when it comes to artists, March will defy proverb and go out leonine, too.)
MCC is honored to have two opportunities to present awardees from our Artist Fellowships Program this month: the Commonwealth Reading Series, a schedule of literary events featuring awardees in prose and poetry, and State of Art: Massachusetts Cultural Council Fellows and Finalists, a showcase of MCC’s 2008 Painting and 2009 Crafts Fellows/Finalists at the Concord Art Association.
Salamander, a magazine for poetry, fiction, and memoirs hosts Peter Brown (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’06) author of A Bright Soothing Noise, Daniel Tobin (Poetry Finalist ’10), author of Belated Heavens, and Valerie Duff, author of To the New World, for a reading on Wednesday, March 9, 7 PM at The Suffolk University Poetry Center.
On February 9, 2011, the 2010 New England Art Awards were celebrated at the Burren in Somerville. The event, organized by the New England Journal for Aesthetic Research, honors the best art made locally and the best exhibitions organized in New England. On the NEJAR blog, Greg Cook solicited nominations for New England Art Awards in 19 categories. Numerous past fellows were among the awarded artists: Alicia Casilio, Sara Casilio, Kelly Casilio, and Cary Wolinsky, aka TRIIIBE Sculpture/Installation Fellows ’09) won the People’s Choice award in “Performance or spectacle” for their event Crime Night in conjunction with a show at Gallery Kayafas. Rania Matar (Photography Fellow ’07) received the People’s Choice award in Photography for A Girl in Her Room, a show at Gallery Kayafas. Caleb Neelon (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’07) is the Critics’ pick for “Essay by a local writer about locally-made art” for Ten Short Memos to Young Boston Artists on the New England Journal of Aesthetic Research blog. Cristi Rinklin (Painting Fellow ’10) won both the People’s and Critics’ choice award for Painting for her show at Zevitas Gallery. Evelyn Rydz (Drawing Fellow ’10) won the People’s choice award for “Standout work by a local artist in a group show” for her work in ICA Foster Prize exhibit. Deb Todd Wheeler (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’03) won the People’s and Critics’ choice in New Media for Blew at the Miller Block Gallery and the People’s Choice for “Solo show by a local artist (or collaborative)” for the same show.
Chris Abouzeid (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’04) recently wrote a guest post for Grub Street Daily, the new blog from the Boston-based writers’ service organization Grub Street, sharing his hilarious definitions of social media terms. His definition, for example, of a “post”: A blog article featuring useful information cribbed from other blogs and capped with an image used without permission.
Photography by Claire Beckett (Photography Fellow ’07) is included in two recent publications: The Collector’s Guide to New Art Photography Vol. 2 from the Humble Arts Foundation and 5 Cities / 41 Artists / Artadia 08/09 from Artadia. What’s more, Claire’s solo show You Are… exhibits at Carroll and Sons through March 26, opening reception Friday March 4, 5:30 – 7:30 PM. Claire is also among the artists currently exhibiting in The Truth Is Not in the Mirror: Photography and a Constructed Identity at the Haggerty Museum of Art at Marquette University in Milwaukee, WI, through May 22, 2011. Finally, her work is featured in Reality Check at FOTODOK in Utrecht, The Netherlands. The show explores the use of fiction in documentary photography, and Claire will give a lecture in conjunction with the show, along with Dr. Martijn Stevens of Radboud Universiteit, Nijmegen, on Friday, March 25 at 8:00 PM at Domplein 5, Utrecht.
We’re excited to share that Shawn Cody‘s (Playwriting Fellow ’07) new music theater work The Water Dream is playing in concert, featuring Anthony Rapp (Original Broadway Cast and Feature Film of Rent) Karmine Alers (also from Rent) at the Bushwick Starr in Brooklyn, NY. It plays in a double-bill with Clear by Paul Oakley Stovall on Friday, March 11, 2011, 8 PM. The Water Dream (read an excerpt) is a multi-media musical with whale puppets and an on-stage aquarium.
Patrick Donnelly (Poetry Fellow ’08) is new director of the Advanced Seminar at The Frost Place, one of three summer programs at the poetry conference center at Robert Frost’s old homestead in Franconia, NH.
Joshua Fineberg (Music Composition Fellow ’11) will premiere Speaking in Tongues, a new concerto for 6 percussionists and orchestra, performed by the world’s pre-eminent percussion ensemble, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, at Tsai Performance Center at Boston University, March 10, 2011, 8 PM. The concerto, conducted by John Page, was commissioned in honor of the 50th Anniversary of Les Percussions de Strasbourg. Also this month, Jeff Means and his new group Sound Icon will perform Joshua Fineberg’s piece Receuil de pierre et de sable, for two harp soloists and sextet, for their inaugural concert on March 26, 2011, 8 PM, at the Boston University Concert Hall. In April, watch for the composer’s work to be featured at Brandeis University as part of the 2011 BEAMS Electronic Music Marathon and the Boston Cyber Arts Festival.
Christy Georg (Sculpture/Installation Finalist ’11), currently artist-in-residence at the Boston Center for the Arts, will have an open studio on Saturday, March 5, 1 – 4 PM at the Boston Center for the Arts, Artist Studios Building (above the Mills Gallery). Later this month, Christy will have an artists’ residency at Jentel in Banner, WY.
Winner of the 2009 Clauder Competition, Gregory Hischak‘s (Playwriting Finalist ’11) The Center of Gravity has it’s world premiere at Portland Stage Company (Portland ME) in March 2011. His short play Hygiene is included in this year’s Humana Festival of New American Works in April (Louisville KY); his new play Clueless & Lark (& Other Geologic Variations) will be staged as part of the 2011 Source Festival (Washington DC) in June, 2011.
Liza Johnson (Film & Video Finalist ’07), winner of the 2010 Rappaport Pize from the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, will give a Rappaport Prize Lecture on Thursday, March 10, 7 PM, at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline. The lecture is free on a first-come, first-served basis, with tickets available at the box office day-of show only. Lisa will screen two of her recent video pieces and discuss how she worked with participants in the Mississippi Gulf Coast and an Appalachian circus school for the respective works. She’ll also discuss new projects, including the feature film Return, featuring Michael Shannon, Linda Cardellini, and John Slattery. To learn more about Return, check out Liza’s guest post on the post-production process for the independent film-in-progress on the Sundance blog.
Tara L. Masih (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Finalist ’96) reads from her award-winning short story collection Where the Dog Star Never Glows and discusses the art of short story writing on March 27, 2 PM, at Duxbury Free Library. The event is part of the library’s “Short and Sweet” series about short stories.
Caitlin McCarthy (Playwriting Finalist ’11) was interviewed on WCVB-TV Boston’s Chronicle, on Friday, February 18, 2011, about her screenplay Wonder Drug, which explores the DES drug disaster. Learn more about Caitlin’s advocacy efforts on the DES issue on her blog.
Koji Nakano‘s (Music Composition Finalist ’11, ’09) Time Song III was performed by Del Sol String Quartet at Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC on February 19. Plus, a concert of his music was performed at the Kennedy Center on February 20.
Vaughn Sills (Photography Fellow ’09) has a solo exhibition of photographs at the Trustman Gallery at Simmons College in Boston. The show, which runs March 21 – April 22, is in conjunction with Vaughn’s new book of photography Places For The Spirit: Traditional African American Gardens. There will be an opening reception, book signing, and artist talk on Thursday, March 24, 5-7 PM at the Trustman Gallery.
Rachel Perry Welty (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’09, Drawing Fellow ’04) was featured on Greater Boston on WGBH in conjunction with Rachel Perry Welty 24/7, her solo show that runs through April 24, 2011 at deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum in Lincoln.
Deb Todd Wheeler (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’03) exhibits a series of prints called Holoplanktonica: an illustrated book of impressions, at ningyo editions. Deb created multi-layered monoprints by running thin forms of polyethylene plastic that she had manipulated repeatedly through the press. The works are inspired by The Drawing Center‘s 2004 show Ocean Flowers: Impressions from Nature, an exhibition of 19th century prints, color plates, imprints, cyanotypes, and early photograms of oceanic vegetation by artists and botanists alike. Holoplanktonica runs March 10–May 7, 2011, with an opening reception Thursday, March 10, 6-9 PM: an evening of “monotypes, woodcuts, sea shanties (complete with a 10 piece ukulele band), libations, and oceanic bliss.”
Leslie Williams (Poetry Fellow ’10) takes part in the Dire Literary Series on Friday, March 4, 8 PM, joining Marc Jampole and Debrah Morkun for a reading at Out of the Blue Art Gallery in Cambridge.
Are you a past fellow or finalist with an event, honor, or other bit of news you’d like to share? Tell us about it.
Images: Brian Corey, NE BOUNDARY (2011), acrylic, ink, graphite on panel, 24×24 in; Martha Jane Bradford, HERMIONE (2010), digital drawing printed on canvas and assembled as wall hangings, 32×32 in; promotional image for CENTER OF GRAVITY, a play by Gregory Hischak, at Portland Stage Company; clip featuring Rachel Perry Welty on WGBH’s Greater Boston.
Here’s the latest installment of Fellows Notes, the current great news of past Fellows/Finalists from our Artist Fellowships Program.
November’s got some terrific stuff: Claire Beckett’s photos on DC buildings… TRIIIBE’s ongoing installation at Boston University… Eric Henry Sanders’s new play in New York. Read on.
On the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene blog, Steve Almond is entertainingly interviewed by Cam Terwilliger, in advance of Steve’s participation in the Somerville News Writers’ Festival, November 13, 2010, at the Center for the Arts at the Armory in Somerville. (Both Steve and Cam are 2008 Fellows in Fiction/Creative Nonfiction.) Here’s a sample of Steve discussing his recent, DIY self-publishing projects: “Of course, there’s a lot of schlepping involved. And some low-level humiliation. But that’s the life of a writer anyway these days.”
Diane Arvanites-Noya and Tommy Neblett (Choreography Fellows ’08, ’04), aka Prometheus Dance, are part of Dance and back again! A 19th Birthday Faculty Concert in the Julie Ince Thompson Theatre at The Dance Complex. New and renewed pieces by Prometheus Dance, The Prometheus Elders, and numerous other groups will be performed on Saturday, November 13, 8 PM and Sunday, November 14, 7 PM.
Claire Beckett (Photography Fellow ’07) is one of the artists included in the 2010 Photolucida Critical Mass Top 50. Also, her work will be on display during FotoWeek DC in the show 100 Portraits – 100 Photographers: Selections from the FlakPhoto.com Archive, curated by Andy Adams of FlakPhoto.com. This exhibition is part of the NightGallery series of projections on display from November 6-13, 2010, with a launch party at the Corcoran Gallery of Art on Friday, November 5. The images will be projected on exteriors of significant buildings across Washington, DC, including: Corcoran Gallery of Art and College of Art + Design, Newseum, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, American Red Cross, National Museum of the American Indian, Satellite Central (M Street – Georgetown) and the Human Rights Campaign buildings.
Liza Bingham (Painting Finalist ’10) is one of the over 80 artists exhibiting work in the 34th Annual Waltham Mills Open Studios, on Saturday, November 6 (12-6 PM) and Sunday, November 7 (12-5 PM).
Martha Jane Bradford (Drawing Fellow ’85) collaborated with Chantal Harvey to produce Acquarella: The Fable, digital/virtual art on view in the Air Tree Exhibit in the Madrid Pavilion of the World Expo in Shanghai, curated by Spanish curator and virtual arts leader Cristina García-Lasuén. Martha (Alizarin Goldflake in Second Life) produced, directed, and designed most of the virtual environment, while Chantal Harvey helmed the 3-D computer animation. Watch the clip with narration in English or Chinese. Also, Martha recently constructed Second Life sets for a real life play, The Winter Bear, which premiered in Anchorage October 29, 2010. Martha’s virtual, immersive art is integrated into the show’s the stage design (watch a video trailer). Find more information about the play The Winter Bear, a story of a troubled Athabascan teenager whose video game skills come in handy against a marauding Winter Bear. The play runs at Cyrano’s Off-Center Playhouse, Anchorage AK, Oct 29 – Nov 13. Read more about the project.
Sarah Braunstein (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’04) was named as one of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 selections, recognizing five young fiction writers chosen by National Book Award Winners and Finalists. She’ll be formally honored at a celebration at powerHouse Arena in NYC on Monday, November 15, hosted by musician and author Rosanne Cash with music journalist Rob Sheffield as DJ. Sarah’s novel The Sweet Relief of Lost Children will be published by W.W. Norton in 2011.
Congratulations to Peter Brown (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Fellow ’06), whose short story collection A Bright Soothing Noise is published by University of North Texas Press this month. The book won the press’s Katherine Anne Porter Prize in Short Fiction.
Alicia Casilio, Sara Casilio, Kelly Casilio, and Cary Wolinsky (Sculpture/Installation Fellows ’09), aka TRIIIBE, are turning Boston University’s massive 808 Gallery space into a site-specific installation. In Search of Eden will evolve as creators and observers participate in developing a present day version of the Garden of Eden. The installation will encompass photography, sculpture, painting and daily performances by the artists.
Lorraine Chapman (Choreography Fellow ’04) and her dance company join Contrapose Dance for an afternoon of dancing and dynamic work by Gianni Di Marco, Courtney Peix, and Lorraine Chapman. The event is on Sunday, November 14, 2:30 PM, Green Street Studios in Cambridge, MA. Among the works by Lorraine Chapman, The Company are “Pulp Tango,” the gold section from “Displaced Here Persons There,” and a new solo danced by Lorraine Chapman.
Regie Gibson (Poetry Fellow ’10) will emcee the literary feast A Taste of Grub, a November 5 fundraiser for Grub Street, a writers’ service organization based in Boston. Regie has plenty of experience behind a microphone; he’s a former Poetry Slam National Champion.
Jane Gillooly (Film & Video Fellow ’07) will be a guest at EventWorks SIM (Studio for Interrelated Media at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design) on Thursday, November 4, 2010, at 7:30 PM when her documentary Today the Hawk Takes One Chick has a free screening.
Cathy Jacobowitz‘s (Fiction/Creative Nonfiction Finalist ’10) short story “You Made Me Leave My Happy Home” (drawn from her novel Melly Mockingbird) will be published in the Santa Monica Review spring or fall of 2011.
Congratulations to Liza Johnson (Film & Video Finalist ’07), who won the prestigious Rappaport Prize from the DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum. The prize is a $25,000 award to an individual artist, “an investment in both an individual and the broader community.”
Dawn Lane (Choreography Fellow ’10) was recently invited by Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival to a Creative Development Residency to develop a new work, one potato, two potato. The work uses aspects of Irish culture and history as a metaphor for exploring excess, loss & insufficiency. Joined by dancers Lorimer Burns, Jane Goodrich, Susannah Millonzi and Leslie Nelson, Dawn spent a productive week in October in the Doris Duke Theatre that culminated in an informal showing of the work in progress on October 15.
Scott Listfield (Painting Finalist ’10) was selected as the creator of this year’s First Night Boston button. The design will be unveiled this month.
Rachel Mello (Painting Finalist ’10) has a solo exhibition on paintings, prints, and collages at Club Passim in Cambridge. The exhibition runs November 15, 2010-January 3, 2011. Additionally, she has two pieces in the Nave Gallery’s Our Town exhibit, featuring works of and about Somerville, MA. Opening November 18, Rachel’s work will be included in Plenty at 13FOREST in Arlington. It’s the annual small works holiday show (gift ideas, anyone?).
Eric Henry Sanders’s (Playwriting Fellow ’09) play Reservoir will have its world premiere at The Drilling CompaNY Theatre in New York, running November 4 -24th, 2010. An earlier draft of the play helped Eric win an MCC fellowship, and you can read about its development (as well as hear an excerpt performed by Company One) on ArtSake.
Leslie Sills (Crafts Fellow ’95) created a sculptural teapot, called High Tea, that is among the works included in The Teapot Redefined. The exhibition of sculptural teapots ran at Mobilia Gallery in Cambridge through Oct. 31. High Tea was inspired by Leslie’s artist residency this past summer at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts, which borders a sheep farm in Newcastle, Maine.
Rachel Perry Welty (Sculpture/Installation Fellow ’09, Drawing Fellow ’04) has a solo photographic exhibition, Lost in My Life, at the Yancey Richardson Gallery in New York. The work is a series of photographs in which the artist herself is immersed in an environment of flattened cereal boxes, bread tags, twist ties, and other miscellaneous leftovers of modern consumption. Lost in My Life runs November 4-December 23, 2010, with an opening reception November 4, 6-8 PM.
Jeff Zimbalist’s (Film & Video Fellow ’05) documentary The Two Escobars is being released in San Francisco this month, is currently running in New York, and will have an LA release next week. The film recently received a glowing review by The Onion’s AV Club (and those discerning hipsters are tough to impress!). The highly lauded documentary will be released on DVD Blu Ray this month.
Are you a past fellow or finalist with an event, honor, or other bit of news you’d like to share? Tell us about it.
Images: poster for RESERVOIR by Eric Henry Sanders, produced by The Drilling CompaNY; still from a trailer for THE WINTER BEAR, with virtual environments designed by Martha Jane Bradford; still from THE TRAVELERS CABARET by Lorraine Chapman; Scott Listfield, GRAND CANYON (2008), Oil on canvas, 24×48 in; Rachel Perry Welty, LOST IN MY LIFE (BOXES) (2010), Pigment Print, represented by Yancy Richardson Gallery.
THE ROYAL FROG BALLET is an amoeba of collaborators, a producing body, a shouting household of households, and an aspiring dance team in search of parade.
- from the troupe’s website (do you, too, get the feeling its audience is in for an interesting time?)
The Royal Frog Ballet is a cross-disciplinary group that blends performance, visual art, music, movement, and a sensibility that’s equal parts Vaudeville and avant-garde. And that encapsulation undoubtedly leaves out important facets of the RFB, because it’s just one hard-to-encapsulate group.
So we asked Sophie Wood, co-director of the troupe (which is based in Northampton but includes members from elsewhere on the East Coast), to elaborate, in advance of an appearance in the upcoming HONK! Festival in Somerville (October 8-10) and a Surrealist Cabaret and Pumpkin Walk in Amherst (October 22-24).
ArtSake: I’m interested in a recent collaboration by The Royal Frog Ballet, The Leaving Nest at the A.P.E. Gallery in Northampton. Can you talk about the interdisciplinary nature of that project – it was billed as “an installation, performance series, and window garden” – and how it relates to the identity of your troupe?
Sophie Wood: Our original idea for using the gallery was to expose our art making process, as well as a product or performance, as part of the showing. The A.P.E. Gallery (as a space) is aesthetically very different from the spaces that we were used to performing in and creating installations for: usually we’re in a barn or a field or a community center or someone’s living room. I think that we were all a little unsettled by the idea of being in a very classy, clean, professional gallery space, and have spent lots of time intentionally creating art that isn’t meant for galleries. But we also wanted to try something different, and were really intrigued by the giant window that is the front of the gallery space which is right on Main Street in Northampton, and generally the down town location as a way of reaching new audiences.
The desire to present our process is part of our aesthetic and identity, I suppose, in that we want to create art that is accessible, that feels down home, that feels like you could make it too, without compromising the quality or the vision. We try to use materials that are cheap or reused, to use spaces that aren’t traditional performance venues, singers that have never sung before. I think part of that is a desire to create art that inspires other people to make art, and part of that is a desire to inspire ourselves to try anything that we want to, regardless of whether or not it’s the ‘art’ that we study or practice. We want to make encouraging art, not untouchable art.
The Leaving Nest was a three week installation. The week before the gallery opened, two muralists started painting on the big walls opposite each other, a team of builders started building a giant boat/house like structure (on wheels) in the center of the room, some gardeners put 30 amaryllis bulbs that had been started a month before in pots in front of the window on Main Street, a pin hole camera was set up with props, and the dancers and writers and costume makers wandered around making little messes in the corners.
The first week we had a gallery opening, and at that point the murals and sculpture were all in a state that could be called finished, the bulbs were poking up in various stages, headed towards blooming, and there were about 8 costumed living human statues amongst the plants and on the boat, and the visitors were being photographed by the camera.
After the opening, we were in the gallery each night after hours, changing the installation, adding to the sculpture, watering the plants painting more on the murals, adding more props, but each day when the gallery opened, all of the art was “finished” and ready for gallery viewing. At night people were always peering in the windows, watching us work or rehearse; we did a lot of singing and dancing in the space at night also.
The second week we performed a costumed and performative singing show from on top of the boat/house, that had been rehearsed and created that week in the space, and the third week we presented a performative choreographic spoken word show that had also been created in the space. The changes made to the murals and the sculpture reflected and added to the performances. Characters from the first show appeared in the murals by the second show, writing from both shows inspired additions to the sculpture and murals, images from the gallery appeared in the writing.
It was an incredibly exhausting, challenging, intensive experience for us as a collective and as individuals. It was extremely educational and thought-provoking and opened up a lot of discussion in the collective about how we present work, how we advertise it, how we structure our decision making. We’re just figuring it out as we go along, following what excites us.
ArtSake: Artists in the Royal Frog Ballet have been creatively collaborating for a long time (you call it an “ever-extending collection of housemates, friends, loves, siblings, classmates, co-workers, neighbors, and networkers”). What are the benefits of a deep and sustained creative partnership?
Sophie: We’ve all been developing our individual art heavily influenced by our surroundings, which, for many of us, for a long time, has included each other. We read lots of the same books, see lots of the same shows, hear lots of the same music; Our thought patterns have become similar, but our brains and how we process ideas, images, organization, are still very much individual. We introduce each other to new concepts, images, sounds, and pick them apart or build off of them together. The benefit is never having to explain yourself and who you are before you explain your idea. The benefits are similar to the benefits of family; Sometimes they drive you bonkers, but their confidence in you is irrationally solid, their support is unending, and their understanding of who you are is inexplicable.
We know what each other’s abilities are and what our weaknesses are and where we struggle and where we excel and when and how to push and when to encourage and make tea, and when to stop. We know how we tick. We can usually read each other, for better or worse, as whole humans, not just as artists. If someone is struggling with an idea or at a rehearsal, we can often read or feel comfortable asking if it has to do with the art or with something unrelated. We know what to expect, and also we know what wonderful, creative, irrational, unexpectable beings we all are. We have a lot of minds to help us create that know us well, that live in our same world of place and of image and idea, but don’t see or process the world in the same way.
ArtSake: I love the premise behind the Surrealist Cabaret: an open studio for performance artists. Can you offer a few snapshots of what an audience visiting your “studios” might experience?
Sophie: That’s top secret. Or, maybe the studio hasn’t even been opened yet.
Could be that they see moving sculptures, a dance number or two, unexpected instruments, extravagant pumpkin art made by lots of ‘pumpkin artists’, magical landscape occurrences, unusual tree fruit, beasts of all shapes and varieties, and masked story tellers of questionable quality.
Couldn’t rightly say.
ArtSake: The Royal Frog Ballet is participating in the HONK! festival for the second time. Can you talk about how your troupe’s aesthetic jells with the spirit of HONK?
Sophie: I think our ‘aesthetic’ as a group is based whether or not it’s going to be a good time, satisfying, joyous, magical, or cathartic. HONK! is an unbelievable event. To me the most radical part of HONK! is how much pure fun it is, how inclusive that fun is, and that the inclusivity doesn’t make the fun lose any of its grittiness or edge. So, when we had the opportunity to bring our clowns (who follow no rules or choreography) to the streets with our ‘instruments’ (sculptures), it was too much of a good time to pass up.
ArtSake: Sophie, do you create your own solo work? And if so, how does it differ and/or crossover with the work of the troupe?
Sophie: I do, I have, I will, it’s complicated. I write poems and little books for bad days, I make exotic pinatas for weddings, paintings and collages for birthdays, papier mache sculptures, I dance, I perform, I make puppets and masks and costumes, I write plays, I dream of mastering the spoons. I co-direct a Shakespeare and physical comedy program for young people in Vermont. I make and do whatever strikes my fancy. Since a fair amount of my time goes towards the organizational and secretarial aspects of the Ballet, and setting up events in which to share work (which I then share work in), the difference between my work and Ballet work sometimes feels murky. I think the bulk of work that I make that seems most clearly my own is work that never gets shown, (or isn’t meant to be). One of the main reasons that working together was so appealing from the beginning is that it’s intimidating and exhausting to show work by yourself. It can lead to a lot of lonely artistic doubt. Support and encouragement to show and put art out in the world, regardless of how ‘ready’ it is, is one of my favorite aspects of working with the RFB.
ArtSake: What’s up next for The Royal Frog Ballet?
Sophie: A nap. A meeting. A bowl of french fries. A winter full of of individual touring and art making. A street performance event in Northampton in April, featuring members of our collective and other companies and artists from New England.
The Royal Frog Ballet will participate in the HONK! Parade in Somerville, Sunday, October 10, 2010. They present the Third Annual Surrealist Cabaret and Pumpkin Walk at 5:30 PM (rain or shine) on October 22, 23, and 24, at Old Friends Farm on Bramble Hill in Amherst, MA.
Composers, dramatic writers, and sculpture/installation artists: the deadline to apply for a 2011 Artist Fellowship in Music Composition, Playwriting, or Sculpture/Installation is this Monday, September 20, 2010 (this is a postmark deadline for mailed materials).
In other words: there’s still time! Read full program guidelines and apply – pronto, ASAP, and post haste.
The fellowships are anonymously-judged grants of $7,500 and finalist awards $500, based solely on the artistic excellence of the work submitted.
In this post you can see/hear some of the work that’s been successful in this grant; the image is a still from the performance piece Bailout by TRIIIBE (Sculpture/Installation Fellows ’09); in the audio clip you can hear Company One performing a scene from Reservoir by 2009 Playwriting Fellow Eric Henry Sanders.
And check out our tips for applying, based on feedback from past Artist Fellowships panelists and our own observations.
Image and media: Still from the performance piece BAILOUT (2008) by TRIIIBE; Company One performs a scene from Reservoir by Eric Henry Sanders (Playwriting Fellow ’09), directed by Shawn LaCount, with Fedna Jacquet as Psychiatrist and Brett Marks as Hasek.
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.
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.”
TRIIIBE at Gallery Kayafas; The New Media Curious Experimental Moving Images Festival at Axiom
You know TRIIIBE is an intriguing group of artists when the fact that three of the four members are identical triplets is only part of what makes them compelling (and not necessarily the most majority part!). The work of TRIIIBE, aka Alicia Casilio, Sara Casilio, Kelly Casilio, and Cary Wolinsky (Sculpture/Installation Fellows ’09), lives in that curious place between performance, photography, video, and conceptual art. A solo show at Gallery Kayafas in Boston this month offers a unique opportunity to see the range of their photographic work, with a revealing focus on identity and the politics of identity.
See a video excerpt from Art on Art/People on Plywood, TRIIIBE’s surprise performance at the ICA Boston
The show runs at Gallery Kayafas in Boston, April 17-May 29, 2010. Dates to know: Saturday, April 17, opening reception, 6-9 PM; Friday, April 30, Crime Night, 6-9 PM; First Friday, May 7, Multiples Night (for look-alikes and like-a-looking), 6-9 PM; Friday, May 28, Last Chance!, 6-9 PM.
This Thursday, April 15 will feature INtransit V.6: Scientific American, a video journal of art and technoscience produced by AstroDime Transit Authority. in V.6, artists and scientists examine the question “what is a scientific American” through the lens of their disciplines. Massachusetts filmmaker Karen Aqua (whose interview with ArtSake you can read here), is among the artists featured.
Thursday, April 22 will include Experimental Moving Images from the ATNE, a burgeoning community of people working at the intersection of technology and the arts. Thursday April 29 brings What if? 60x60x60, a participatory media experiment that uses 60 video and 60 sound clips of 60 seconds each, from media artist Gene Gort and composer/sound artist, Ken Steen.
Both Axiom and ATNE are programs of Boston Cyberarts. All show times are at 7:30 PM. Find more info and purchase tickets here.
AXIOM is located on the ground floor level of the Green Street Subway (“T”) station on the Orange line, at the corner of Amory and Green Streets in Jamaica Plain, MA.
Images: TRIIIBE, THE COMPATIBILITY QUIZ; video excerpt from Art on Art/People on Plywood by TRIIIBE; Still from SENSORIUM (2007), co-directed/co-produced by Karen Aqua & Ken Field.
That is, Support Women Artists. Now. Day. (Italics and punctuation added for emphasis. By me. ‘Cause, you know, it deserves some oomph, and punctuation/italics is how you do it in blogs.)
SWAN Day is organized by WomenArts (formerly known at the Fund for Women Artists) a nonprofit org founded by Martha Richards in Northampton, Mass., now operating out of San Francisco. According to its mission, WomenArts is a “worldwide community of artists and allies that works for empowerment, opportunity, and visibility for women artists.”
One of the ways it does that is through SWAN Day, an international holiday celebrating and supporting women artists.
To support said supporting, WomenArts has inspired participation by a host of artists throughout the country, including such names as Famke Janssen and Isabel Allende.
Women Connecting Through Art, an event featuring visual artist Ekua Holmes and poet/performance artist Radiant Jasmine at the Henson Jackson Art Gallery in Stoughton (6 PM).
Eleven Boston area women playwrights will have their plays/monologues read at the 4th Annual MARCH MADNESS SWAN Day at the Boston Playwrights Theater (2 PM). A scene from Monica Raymond‘s (Playwriting Finalist ’07, Poetry Finalist ’08) play A TO Z will be among those performed. A talkback hosted by Lydia Diamond will follow the event. Refreshments prior to show at 1:30.
in vivo Productions presents The Gecko in Winter series, with readings of exciting new works by award-winning Boston-area playwrights, at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education (8 PM). The program tantalizingly promises a “surprise guest artist.”
This Monday, March 22, at 7:30 PM, Sue Murad (Choreography Fellow ’08) and a group of artists will perform Buried in the Park Street Church overlooking the Granary Burial Ground. It’s a work of performance art that culminates three years of research (or rather, begins to culminate, since Sue plans to continue creating new performances).
Sue is one of those artists – and she’ll tell you this herself – that’s really hard to categorize. The same applies to “Buried” and Sue’s ongoing project. The project has its immediate origins in a series of 30 “word themes” that Sue sent to 40 different people last year. Sue asked for their responses to words like harbor, hymn, government, and those responses could be in the form of anecdotes, poetry, or… you name it.
“There was a nice blend of written response,” says Sue. “Some writers were incredibly short and literal. A friend typed me a nice long letter on a single sheet of paper for each word.” Other respondents were less literary. There were sound files, drawings, and collages (such as the collage above, by artist Jessica Gath). Sue read the words to her art group, and observed the movements they made in response.
Those responses, in all their variety, make up the raw material from which Sue created Monday’s performance. But where did the words come from?
To answer that, we need to look back four years, when Sue began reading Biblical stories with a new curiosity: What was happening elsewhere in the world at the same time? She bought a chronological Bible, in which a theologian had noted historical parallels to the stories – for instance, Buddha was born in the time of Daniel. “It threw me!” Sue admits. Prior to that, “the stories had seemed in the clouds. They were truth to my heart, but they didn’t seem like history.” For Sue, the chronology placed the stories “on the Earth.”
So began three years of research undertaken for “the joy of reading and the beauty of culture and the fascination of the planet being full of civilizations at shockingly different stages of development at the same time.” Sue knew the research would eventually lead to some kind of artistic performance, but hinging that performance on a timeline didn’t feel quite right, because of the discrepancies about dates that often accompany ancient history.
“I decided to look back at my notes and see if there were themes that I as an artist found interesting. That’s where this group of 30 words came from. It was hard to get it down to 30, but once I had this list, then I felt I wanted a contemporary collection of voices to respond back.”
Monday’s performance will begin in the Park Street Church lobby, overlooking the Granary Burial Ground, and will rove throughout portions of the church in site-specific responses to the word themes – which are in themselves responses to a study of ancient cultures. (See what I mean about being hard to categorize?)
Sue received her MCC award in Choreography for her work designing movement for the art rock band UV Protection. The award may not have resolved the “category” question once and for all, but it did validate Sue’s artistic work. “Because I was always in the band world, it felt far from art dialogue. So much art is about conversation. To know that I put something out there to other choreographers, to other people who love dance, and that they would award it, was wonderful to me.”
When she received the grant, she earmarked some for expenses like loans and new equipment, shared a portion with her UV Protection bandmates, and, curiously, set aside an amount to give to another artist she wanted to support and encourage. This choice, too, has its roots in ancient literature. “Biblically, it’s called a tithe,” she says.
Performance details: Buried Funerals and other formal arrangements. Please wear black. Performance art orchestrated by Sue Murad.
Monday, March 22nd
7:15 pm Doors open, 7:30 pm Service
Site specific location: Ockenga Lobby overlooking the Granary Burying Ground Park Street Church (side entrance) in Boston
Developed & Performed by: Kat Callard, Jess Gath, Heidi Katz, Sue Murad, Mehran Namazi, Michal Shapiro, Cari Senefski, Sara Sussman, Liz Weir, Rita Wong, and others.
Image and video: A collage in response to the word buried by Jessica Gath; a video excerpt of DROP POP by UV Protection.
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The Leaving Nest was a three week installation. The week before the gallery opened, two muralists started painting on the big walls opposite each other, a team of builders started building a giant boat/house like structure (on wheels) in the center of the room, some gardeners put 30 amaryllis bulbs that had been started a month before in pots in front of the window on Main Street, a pin hole camera was set up with props, and the dancers and writers and costume makers wandered around making little messes in the corners.
We know what each other’s abilities are and what our weaknesses are and where we struggle and where we excel and when and how to push and when to encourage and make tea, and when to stop. We know how we tick. We can usually read each other, for better or worse, as whole humans, not just as artists. If someone is struggling with an idea or at a rehearsal, we can often read or feel comfortable asking if it has to do with the art or with something unrelated. We know what to expect, and also we know what wonderful, creative, irrational, unexpectable beings we all are. We have a lot of minds to help us create that know us well, that live in our same world of place and of image and idea, but don’t see or process the world in the same way.
