SO happy I came across this lovely work by Paul Johnson. I’m really entranced by these little moments.
Landthropologic, Earthworks In Motion from Paul Johnson on Vimeo.
Enjoy. And check out Paul Johnson !
Category: drawing
Drawing Lesson
I am not usually one to share ‘inspirational’ talks or pithy quotes. To be honest, most of that kind of thing leaves me flat – sorry if that seems cynical or jaded, but there’s a tendency toward the superficial ‘instafix’ in this culture that is served by this material.
However – I have also been thinking a great deal about the power of art & creativity to open doors to new ways of thinking and being. Especially pertinent to my mind, given the propensity toward tribalism and divisive language and action in the world today.
And then I came across this:
This little talk by Graham Shaw is all about breaking down patterns of thinking – about understanding better the limitations we impose upon ourselves (and others).
It is gentle and fun – and if you are in the tl;dr world – skip to the end if you must – but I do recommend the 15 minutes it takes to view the whole thing.
Good stuff for a Monday.
Be well.
Animated Nature
I have always ben fascinated by flight, and the movement of birds in general. There’s something rather otherworldly about it (to me) for some reason.
One of the things I would truly love to see in this life is a huge murmuration of starlings. I have seen smaller ‘swarms’ of them once or twice, but nothing even close to this:
I don’t actually know if I’d be overwhelmed by being present for something of this scale – perhaps it would be a little terrifying, actually (cue the Hitchcock moment!) … but I’d love to see it in person nonetheless.
Murmurations, indeed.
For more of this, go to Jan via IJken’s website (he’s got some really amazing work!)
Just a very few more days …
… and Chaotic Bodies will close at Spazio Performativo.
Amazing how fast the month has gone by – I’ve been too buried in the never-ending-cold-that-should-be-spring here to actually grasp that time is really passing quite quickly, and we are over 1/4 of the way through the year.
It has been a great experience re-working this project for static exhibition – being able to look at it again with fresh eyes, dig back into the ideas simmering inside it – and see what potential there was in the conversations between media.
My sincere thanks to Mile Zero Dance for the opportunity to show this work!! And my thanks to everyone involved in the RUCKUS dance project for allowing me to develop this project further, and to use the footage from rehearsals and performance in the video work!
SO: if you want to check out Chaotic Bodies before it disappears into storage again, you have until SUNDAY April 8th. I am striking the show on Monday!
If you have the opportunity, see the work both in the daytime and at night: I have a video work rear-projected in the window that is best seen after dark, and the installation and drawings are available for viewing during opening hours daytime at Mile Zero, and of course in advance of evening events.
If you get over there – drop me a line and let me know your thoughts! I’d like to hear from you.
And there it was … gone!
21st Century Nesting Practices has closed, and it’s all been packed and stored away again.
So strange, that process: how things come out of boxes and wrapping to take on a life of their own for a while, and then disappear again.
It was a great experience – a lovely way to come ‘full circle’ with this work and see it from a different vantage point (coming out on the other side, so to speak).
That was in fact the case when a delightful group of poets I had worked with in 2007 (a decade, already?!) came to the gallery to do a reading of work from a collaborative collection titled Eyeing the Magpie. It was nice to re-connect with these poets, and to have this bird-inspired work presented in the context of this exhibition was really fun. My thanks to Nancy MacKenzie, Anna Mioduchowska, Julie C Robinson, Myrna Garanis, and Rusti Lehay (all pictured below) for presenting their work!
I am so grateful to the McMullen Gallery for the opportunity to exhibit this body of work; the context and the feedback I received throughout the exhibition was invaluable to me, and allowed me to see my work and my practice as a whole in a new way.
Deep Thanks also to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, for the support in creating the soundscape for this exhibition!
So now, a shift to new things – the first inklings of the coming spring are in the air, a new project going up for exhibition this week, and lots of studio work and new ideas percolating.
21st Century Nesting Practices
I am extremely happy to say that the McMullen Gallery at the University of Alberta Hospital will be hosting my exhibition 21st Century Nesting Practices!
This iteration of the work will feature a new video piece, and a soundscape created from a combination of my own field recordings and a selection of recordings from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology holdings.
The Exhibition Opening Reception is January 10, 2018 from 7pm – 9pm.
If you are in the Edmonton area, please stop in! The exhibition is up until February 25, 2018.
My thanks to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for their support in realizing the soundscape for this exhibition, and to the McMullen for hosting me.
Thanks Also to Julianna Barabas & John Waldron for their invaluable assistance in making this exhibition possible.
Sherds Shards Shorelines
Some simple, beautiful work here. A thoughtful dialogue with the land, and our impact upon it as part of an ongoing process of creation …. and destruction. Here, as in all things, we truly do reap what we sow. Nice to know that occasionally that the product can also be beauty.
Natura Insects – Insects made of Flowers
As summer slips into Autumn, I am reminded that beauty lies in the moment, and in those details that provoke a little wonder. My thanks to eMorphes for the shot of colour on a grey Monday.
Movement and Attraction
I have been thinking about a series of related concepts/ideas in the last little while … having the luxury of a little time to allow things to percolate through my brain, see where they take me. The swirl of idea(l)s has caught me up in the last 48 hours, and has insinuated itself in the nooks and crannies of the concepts I am beginning toward with for a new project …
I will perhaps post updates here as my thinking evolves and revolves …
Bodies in space.
from Maria Takeuchi, on Vimeo: https://player.vimeo.com/video/121436114
The way a single movement occurs in time, changes space, changes everything forever.
The fine line and inextricable link between order an chaos.
What can be built can collapse at any time.
2016 AICP Sponsor Reel – Dir Cut, from Method Studios on Vimeo: https://vimeo.com/169599296
The Lorenz Attractor.
The difference between being active and reactive, in all things.
The way a body reaches out to another body:
Intent is Everything.
A thought …
… that I came across today. A quote, actually, from Martin Creed, that sums up some of the ideas that have been rolling around in my head for a while now.
On a more literal level, working some of this out through the creation of the original Boundary|Time|Surface installation in 2014, and in other ways in the work that arose from it and that is now on exhibition in Newfoundland.
At any rate, Creed said:
“I started thinking about the difficulty of drawing lines on a map, making country borders, which is exactly the same as drawing on a piece of paper. Any definite border is against nature and against life.”
Things bleed into one another; that is the reality of it all. Eventually, all the myriad ways of dividing up the world (and ourselves) break down and erode. The edges get fuzzy, or float away.
These compartments we build are convenient, but they are illusions.
Thanks Martin, I needed that today.
{SOURCE: “Martin Creed on Why Art Can’t Ignore the World around It” by Philomela Epps, https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-martin-creed-on-why-art-can-t-ignore-the-world-around-it}