Kilns, Bones and Marisol

On another unseasonably warm day this week (is anyone else completely freaked out about global warming?) Brent & I decided to head out to State College PA to pick up the ceramics pieces he has been working on out there...I didn't understand why he had been spending so much time in the art department at Penn State until I saw it with my own eyes: a magical wonderland of art facilities, filled to the brim with bright & talented professors, artists & students! O, and an on campus creamery who, rumor has it, sells ice cream that is so creamy it is illegal to sell in stores because it will kill you....delicious!

Anyway...the ceramics studio at Penn State is phenomenal, kiln after kiln (pictured above) was available for students and an energy just permeated the entire space as kids seemed to be everywhere sculpting or firing or brainstorming. This feeling of creative wonder extended beyond the ceramics studio too with students roaming the halls crushing charcoal onto a painting with their feet or trying to plasticize raw food or determining the best way to make a head out of cheese balls all while the profs were on hand urging along and offering their own kind of brilliance...! If anyone is actually freaked out by global warming it might be the art students here, a certain natural element was buzzing through a lot of the work including some cast bronze crab legs & ceramic coral (pictured) by one student and mussels & bones drying in the sun (pictured) belonging to another and also some robot and dinosaur mugs (which we most certainly own a few of now!)...one student's detailed ceramic mushrooms looked so real you couldn't tell the organic from the sculpted! I didn't see too many finished pieces but all of the precise and beautiful work I saw in progress made me really wish I could follow the projects everyone was working on...

The Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State was a weird one...a lot of classical paintings, and pottery but also a really strange array of other genres as well. One exhibit was composed of paintings from the 30s & 40s, a WPA, carnival, Hopper vibe that portrayed weird tableaus of alienated life in painted form. Another exhibit of Hogarth's satirical engravings was pretty neat, social and political commentaries from the 18th century, a precursor to modern political cartoons but with so much more artistry....The one artist I discovered at this museum that has since blown me away is Marisol, a French born, American, Venezuelan & European raised sculptor who is now 82 years old. The piece on display was titled Blackfoot Delegation to Washington 1916 (poorly pictured at top) and it has a crazy history about it: Native Americans invited American artists to contribute art to a World's Fair Pavilion in exchange for a blessing from a Shaman, Marisol was the only artist to respond. The piece that she created for the exhibition was based on a photo taken to commemorate when members of the Blackfoot Indian tribe attempted to negotiate a land deal with the US Government in 1916. There was something so detailed but so rough about her work, depicting something so important and forgotten in a way it will always be remembered- I completely love it! Her other pieces I've since seen online are equally as disturbing in their execution, an edginess in form and content that looks so contemporary in style and vital in content, she is amazing!

...and then there was ice cream! And an impromptu dinner party (at an insanely talented professor's house)! And a trip to a really nice grocery store! And a brief stop at the indelible Helen O'Leary's house (a joy & a wonder whose Irish accent I am convinced makes Brent listen to the Pogues more)! Yes, Penn State Arts...and you thought they were only good for football!

Film Review & Spring in Central Park

The one thing I miss about New York (apart from the food, the public transportation and my darling friends of course!) is the movie theaters. I was a movie junkie when I lived there. Anytime I had a two hour block of free time I was in those span of blocks where the Angelika, Film Forum, IFC Center, Sunshine Cinema, Village East Cinema, Cinema Village & Anthology of Film Archives all seemed nearby- air conditioned (!) escapes for the sometimes overwhelming city, brimming with new (and old!) cinematic ideas! Earlier this week I practically bailed out of our car on a trip to NY as we passed the Angelika Film Center (lobby of pictured below) so I could make it to a screening of We Need To Talk About Kevin, a film that I had heard a few things about, mainly that Tilda Swinton (swoon) was fabulous in the main role and that Jonny Greenwood (bigger swoon/Radiohead member/composer) was on the music, two things that pointed to something worth jumping out of the car and into a theater for!

Based on a novel of the same name, the film is a portrait of a sociopath teenager, a seemingly emotionless kid drawn to violence and hate told through the story of his mother (Swinton). The characters were ones I have never seen (a slightly un-motherly mother forced to deal with her increasingly detached son, the coming of age of an angry teen, the aloof father whose love and manipulated state cannot see past his son's intensifying problem, even the brief role of the little sister who is eager to please her eerie sibling) and were all portrayed in a withholding story structure that tensely inched along, giving you some information, implying, doubting- the construction of the film alone was truly unique and it kept me engaged even through the obvious symbolism and the humdrum (un-Greenwood-like) pop song interludes...and even engaged through the audience of elderly people punctuating the action through retellings in the name of broken hearing aids and plot misunderstandings, "It starts off weird 'cause she was a flower child" the woman behind me (inaccurately) proclaimed...(I cannot wait to get old!)

In a landscape of indie/non-Hollywood film styles that have flattened out into formulaic music video kind of unevents, We Need To Talk About Kevin was a newer directorial voice (even when holding onto some hard to shake recent tropes cough-kitschy use of Buddy Holly as seen in every "offbeat" movie in the last 5 years-cough) that told a version of a now that is seldom told and did so in a distinct approach, an approach that I have heard differs greatly from the book too making me think the filmmaker, Lynne Ramsey, is what really made this movie shine.  Beastie Boy Adam Yauch's label (Oscilloscope Laboratories) distributed this movie, a label I feel like I see creeping into the onscreen title cards before films more and more, taking risks and keeping it ill (?eh?) or maybe keeping it fresh (?eh?)...either way Oscilloscope seems to be doing something right, if only they could get even bigger: everyone needs to talk about Kevin! Ok, ok that was a little dramatic...here is a picture of the beginning of Spring in Central Park, another thing I miss about New York...!

Home Recording

Starting to flesh out the soundtrack for the new film has led to a thing I never thought would happen out here at Nervousfilms: we've created a home recording studio with semi-professional equipment! Wha?!?? I am still in disbelief but being that the story for the next feature film, Anatomical Maps With Battle Plans, is a very personal one for Brent, revolving around the fabled tales of his volatile grandfather, it makes sense that he would want some solitude and space to record the dense stories that he has been plotting away at in his little red notebook...it also makes sense that a little more control is wanted over the sound for the next feature film too, a thing that wasn't a main concern with Gravity, especially since that film was most definitely meant to be performed with a live band!

Slowly but surely we become slightly more professional by the day...but, who I am kidding, we did hang all of the guitars in the new studio up on the wall with straight up screws, I am pretty sure that there is a  microphone duct taped to the piano, and the drum kit? Well, it only sort of resembles a drum kit...!

Here are some pics of our new barn recording set up! Another step towards another film! Yay!

Didion, Fischl and Why We Make Art

I've been reading a lot of Joan Didion again. As I walked around the gallery district of Chelsea NY yesterday, after having just finished her new book Blue Nights, thoughts of her kept echoing in what I saw. Of how she takes in the world and is able to make the intricacies of human life worth living, a fascination and wonder in every aspect- from loss, to the building of a tacky government mansion, to the patterning of a generation. The looming Didion was even more pronounced when, to my surprise, I entered Mary Boone gallery and saw a portrait by Eric Fischl of Didion with her husband John Dunne (image below). Fischl's show was strangely beautiful...composed of mostly grotesque pictures of the famous, garish yet reflectively painted, like exalted posed photos taken by a family member on a beach during a vacation but rendered in strokes so crude and huge and thoughtful that the connotations of celebrity lead to pathos, enjoyment is confused in an expression: wonderful!

I started thinking of the work I did like in Chelsea (aside from the Fischl's there was one piece by Alan Rath, pictured below, made of feathers suspended on motors, that cooed and vibrated like a living thing, making us fear the future loss of nature, to wonder if the mating dance will be stripped down to this weird voyeuristic interaction that has no chance of procreation...and I also liked The Dolemites Project by Olivo Barbieri too, geologic porn with the oddest field depths that the nature lover in me couldn't help but resonate with) and the art I didn't like in Chelsea (cutesy little snowy staged landscape images and another show of painted & drilled carpets with kitschy concrete hobo clowns?). I read the artists statements, many of which just described the work and then added things like "it is obviously political" or "I was thinking a lot about walls" with no more explanation or depth. Then, on the way home from New York as I was reading The White Album by Joan Didion I came across this passage:

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the 'ideas' with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.”

I do tend to prefer narrative art. Things that tell stories or are implicating a life experience in them, looking for a meaning or reason or beauty in a line, written or drawn. What I do not like, is things that are not only missing this aspect but are also not affirming much of anything... When abstract art first arrived it wanted to express an intangible quality in being and things, to stray from exact representation and show the philosophically changing world. I think the current contemporary art world tends to think it is following in this tradition: abstracting things, creating a lexicon of images that express the confusion of a new time. But, when the abstraction reaches a point where neither meaning nor feeling is apparent, where no Dada or Fluxus manifesto or profound artist statement is outlining the terms, or even apparent skill is present, then what happens? What story are you guys trying to tell? Is it that the world is so crazy it doesn't make sense? No, it doesn't make sense. But, as artists, writers, filmmakers, thinkers and all other people who are crafting our culture the stories and works we decide to leave behind-whether inherent in the work or as the people making them- should be ones of experience and hope, they should tell a history of when we live and why we live and how maybe we can do so better. If for no other reason, art should do these things in order for there to be a future. We make art in order to live and more contemporary artists should take this truth to heart...or they should at least be funny!

The Most Interesting Thing About Noah

I missed this yesterday thanks to an unexpected, work related jaunt to New York City to drop off some needed materials prior to the Armory art fair...damn! I messed up. But, I am posting it anyway so that people can be sure to catch up on the rest of the online exhibit and maybe see something they normally wouldn't have!

 So for diehard Gravity fans (is there even such a thing? anyway...)  apart from the feature film a few shorts were edition-ed as well, each with different music and in some cases even unused footage! When we exhibited the entire town in museums these shorts were screened inside of the set houses, each house was turned into a little black box theater (using the curtains from the set!) to see glimpses of the feature film in this form. In a rare event, one of the vignettes, will be on display March 6th only as part of an online exhibition! The exhibition is called Time Lapse, a reference to an art exhibit in 1969 called One Month in which the curator Seth Siegelab held an experimental "exhibit" featuring only a catalogue in which different artists contributed for a different day of March, and will be taking place over on the Site Santa Fe website. This exhibit, updated for the fleeting space of the internet and also not exhibiting in real world space, will be featuring different art every day during the month of March so, click on over there to see our short...and also the 29 other transient pieces of art!

The vignette we will be screening is called Noah. It uses footage from both my first live trout buying experience, my first animal & children wrangling on a film set experience and it was also responsible for a 2 week period when everything in my house was covered in blue oil paint and for a time where I had a weird ache in my knees from kicking under the roof, while Leonard hammered above, to make nails flood frame by frame! O, and also, listen to the words! It is a beautiful alternate telling of the Bible tale of Noah, shifting the focus of the miracle to the realities behind it, realities maybe our world should focus on a little bit more too!

Buffalo

So the place we are currently working at up in Buffalo, NY is a strange little hub of arts activity seated in the middle of this little, formerly huge, formerly industrial town. Hallwalls is a contemporary artspace that literally began as a hallway gallery organized by a group of local artists outside of their studios located in an old converted ice house- one of it's founding members being Cindy Sherman!!! Hallwalls has since moved on from it's humble ice house beginnings and moved into the sprawling arts complex that is Babeville. Babeville (partly pictured here!) is a former turn of the century Methodist church complete with a towering steeple and features the performance venue/sanctuary (which we will be playing in tomorrow!) called Asbury Hall, the headquarters of Ani DiFranco's music label Righteous Babe Records and, of course, the newest permutation of Hallwalls- complete with a gallery/exhibition space, an on-site cinema that hosts screenings, and even a full on recording studio which we are in right now!

Hallwalls also offers a residency program, H.A.R.P. (Hallwalls Artists-in-Residence Project), which uses funding from different grant organizations to host artists to shuffle up to Buffalo and work on a project! In our case, Brent, me and Mike McGinley are here through the help of H.A.R.P. and the National Endowment for the Arts (and upon further inspection the Andy Warhol Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts and the Foundation for the Contemporary Arts) to map out the sounds for the new film and to perform Gravity live! Hallwalls is a pretty spectacular model for what a contemporary artspace should be: supporting the work of all types of artists, sharing them with a community and expanding the creation of new work! I think I am starting to love Buffalo...even despite the unearthly frigid winds!

Acquiring and Exhibiting Art of the Present

Buffalo is home to one of the leading American contemporary and modern art collections? Really? Well: IT IS! And it is called The Albright Knox Art Gallery. And it is incredible. I don't think I've ever seen a collection quite like this...only being rivaled by the Tate Modern in my mind! I hate enumerating the works that they have (Emin to Chagall, LeWitt to van Gogh) but at every single turn was another breathtaking, (literal) masterpiece, hanging or sitting in a way that was not only compelling but that also seamlessly flowed through the building- at no point did anything look out of place or jarring or forgotten in a lonely corner of dead space! I scoured the internet for information on the original namesake of this collection, John J. Albright, but the more and more I read about him & the museum the more sprawling and interesting the story seems to get...!

The Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, one of the oldest public art institutions in America, set out to develop a space to exhibit art work. The museum was intended to be part of the World's Fair (!!!!!) Pan-American Exhibition (you know! the one that took place in Buffalo in 1901? where McKinley was shot! And Tesla's AC current brought electric light in its infancy! And Edison debuted the X-ray machine! Why don't we have World's Fairs in this country anymore people!?) but it wasn't completed by the time it rolled around...? Albright, who hailed from Pennsylvania where he got mixed up in the coal business and then went on to become a wealthy industrialist acting on behalf of steel companies and the like, funded a big portion of the museum's completion and later, Seymour H. Knox Jr., heir to the Woolworth's empire and art enthusiast, funded an expansion of the space which now bears his name too. The American history of this space alone makes it such an interesting and inspiring place, the nexus for a new era in the American Dream- art! electricity! culture!

I can't imagine being alive in the beginning of the 20th century to watch as progress unfolded in such strange ways and horizons were being expanded on a daily basis...it's so weird to think that we are sort of on the cusp of the same sort of era, of the fast pace of technology, the abundance of change. One can only hope that we, as a country, keep in mind the need for an openess in ideas that lead to things like the establishment of progressive art institutions and electric light, manifestations of the things that our country was founded on: a feeling of infinite possibility, freedoms and progress, feelings and rights that have become so skewed with each Republican primary debate I bear witness to...roar....I know what would fix this: a World's Fair!