Alone Together at Figment

I can't wait to share the Alone Together dress at FIGMENT Boston on Sat. July 26 in it's new participatory form.

When: Saturday, July 26, 12—8pm

Where: Rose Kennedy Greenway in three TBD locations in the Wharf District Parks; directions

Alone Together is a participatory sculpture and performance that provides a place for reflection while also creating an accumulation of artifacts representing our collective feelings about being simultaneously alone and together. The sculpture, a dress-to-tent wearable, is worn by the artist and erected with a centering ritual. We’re then encouraged to enter the tent and add a message about what it means to be alone/together and connect segments of glowsticks to create a collective drawing. Once the walls are covered, remnants are woven together, left on location, the tent moves and the process repeats.

FIGMENT Boston is returning for a fifth year on the Rose Kennedy Greenway. FIGMENT seeks to continue its mission to offer free, inclusive and participatory art to entire communities, removing the barriers of museum and gallery walls and entrance fees and blurring the lines between those who create and those who enjoy art.

still from Alone Together

we wandered

Last night about 15 friends and neighbors gathered to discover hidden text and discuss the layers of history in the Fort Point that inspired I Wandered. 

photos: Sylvia Stagg-Giuliano

 

I Wandered Lonely

I remember that day 20 years ago as if it was yesterday. Professor George Willauer the tweed-wearing veteran chair of the Connecticut College English Department — and also the man who inadvertently propelled me into the visual arts by destroying all hope that I could be a writer — smiled broadly as he began the first line:

I wandered lonely as a cloud.

This caught my attention. He never smiled. Why was he smiling about being lonely? He continued:

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd, 
A host, of golden daffodils;

By the end of his recitation of William Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely As A Cloud”, and his rhapsody about snapping out of a vacant or pensive mood I too had snapped out of my sardonicism. F'ing Wordsworth got it! What it’s like to wander in your own identity landscape and stumble upon a long forgotten visual. All the way back in 1807 he got that and he got the small miracle of spring. 

And so every spring right before I think I can't take it any longer, when those brave daffys are being bantered about by hail and April showers, the poem begins playing in my mind: I wandered lonely as a cloud…I wandered lonely as a cloud…I wandered lonely as a cloud.

This weekend I Wandered a collaboration with Karen Stein Shanley of GoodGood will open and we’ll all get to share in the profundity of wandering, of observing our geography/place, and reconnecting with the lost art of meditative walking. Select phrases from the poem and graphics will be in six different spots around the Fort Point neighborhood. Check out iwandered.me for the entire poem and exact locations.

I Wandered
May 9—June 3
6 locations in the Fort Point, Boston

 

Rest in peace professor Willauer. May jocund company surround you always.

 

 

a contemporary spyglass

A few months ago I sat down with my stepson Emmett to help him practice for a history class presentation on cultural artifacts from the Concord Museum’s Americana collection. He’d chosen Henry David Thoreau’s spyglass for its significance in Thoreau’s research on native species and climate change. Though the spyglass was an extravagant purchase for the naturalist and scholar, it gave Thoreau new insight into the natural world as observed from his cabin in Concord, MA and recorded in Walden (1854). Today, scientists use his daily environmental recordings in climate change modeling.

Little did I know that a seed had been planted that day.

Currently up through July 6 in “nostalgia” at FPAC Atlantic Wharf Gallery is my version of the spyglass, a loop of 40 landscapes that show no humans, no human artifacts, no roads, and no houses.  A new instrument for recording nature is created when pirated landscape photos from Instagram coded #nature or #landscape are projected onto a pad of paper. Pictures tinged with instant-age effects, overly saturated colors, and vintage filters trigger a longing for a virgin landscape free of human intervention – a landscape that probably never existed and by Thoreau’s time was certainly already under pressure from human intervention and ignorance.

So the pad of paper that sits slightly askew atop the trophy stand declaring “#nature” is all a bit tenuously arranged, a bit fake, and a bit cheeky. But it’s also a bit hopeful. It’s hopeful for a future in which we’ve made an ecological course correction. One in which we are experiencing nature without the filters and the hash tags.
details: (r) trophy stand, model turf, brass (r) projected imag 
"Spyglass", 2013. Paper, glass, trophy stand, model turf, brass, mini LED projector, SDHC Card, and digital images sourced from Instagram.
nostalgia, a group show juried by Mary M. Tinti
April 14-July 6, 2014
290 Congress Street, Boston 02110
open daily 7am-10pm

On nature, nurture and what you show your kids.

I could be a case study for the impact of public art on a child's development. In CultureNOW's October email newsletter they featured the work of James Wines and displayed this image of his "Ghost Parking Lot".
James Wines' "Ghost Parking Lot"
Hadn't I woken one night to a fever and a similar vision? To bury cars under the grass of the Greenway and make it appear as if they were emerging from the tunnel below? Coincidence? Seeing the photo credit (Hamden, CT 1978-2003) it all came back to me. I'd seen "Ghost Parking Lot" many, many times. Mom confirmed: "Yes, you probably saw this as a kid. It was the parking lot where we did our grocery shopping. I'd forgotten about it." I'd forgotten too. We'd left Hamden when I was about 7 and it was now 30+ years later that I recalled the fascinating and horrific site of cars trapped under asphalt.

 

A similar memory jog occurred in 2010 when Jonathan Lippencot published Large Scale, a history of the Lippencott sculpture production center. Also in the New Haven area, the factory's grounds became an unofficial sculpture park and the site of many of our family walks. Dad tells me I saw versions of Oldenburg's "Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks", but I can't remember that. I do know I am inexplicably drawn to really, really large sculpture and that it's never big enough. Maybe I am trying to recreate being smaller?

 

We lived modestly in Hamden. My dad was a newspaper reporter. We drove an old car and grew vegetables in the backyard. It was the 70s and failure and Utopia weren't yet used in the same sentence. And I was impressionable. But what has made the most lasting impact from those days is sculpture, or art in public spaces - especially works that are inextricably tied to their context like "Ghost Parking Lot". I want kids today to have access to the same kind of inspiration right in their neighborhoods. I want to plant in the recesses of their brains an appreciation for the different, the weird, the grotesque, the magical, the place they inhabit, or whatever experiences result from seeing a work of art in an unexpected place. I don't even care if it takes them 30+ years to credit the artist. 

 

With gratitude to Mr Wines and SITE Architecture and Design for putting me on this path.

Open Studios

The 34th annual Fort Point Open Studios is coming up soon—October 18–20—and I'll be opening my studio to share some new paintings and video. I'm happy to announce that during that time Elisa Hamilton and I will also be presenting Story Lines, an interactive sculpture that encourages viewers to physically and emotionally engage in reshaping our narratives.

FORT POINT OPEN STUDIOS
WHEN:
Friday, Oct 18, 4–7PM
Saturday, Oct 19, noon–6PM
Sunday, Oct 20, noon–6PM

WHERE:
My studio is #A4 in the basement of 300 Summer Street Boston MA 02210. Direct access from A Street, under the Summer St. bridge. Google map: http://goo.gl/maps/ilzs6.

Story Lines will be outside along the Harborwalk.


 

Nite Life, a Street Piano

I believe we need more moments of spontaneity, joy and surprise in our cities and a project like Luke Jerram’s Street Pianos gives us that opportunity; a chance for us to stop, look each other in the eye, and play. But these kind of lets-all-paint-one-of-the-same-thing projects can really bomb. (Case in point 99% of the Cool Globes installed in Boston.) So when I saw Celebrity Series was bringing the program to Boston I decided I was up for the challenge.

 

Step one: choose a piano and listen to her story
When I chose my piano, a petite Starck, I immediately saw it as a feminine form and appreciated the lines created by the original designer. It's low to the ground with curves that wrap around the front. It's finished in a deep mahogany.  When I realized this understated lady would have her backside exposed I knew wanted to gussy her up; to touch up her scratches and create something elegant to commemorate the original designer, the women who played on her, and the pluckiness of women of that era who kept their heads up and looked good despite oppression, financial uncertainty and war. Thus the idea of creating an evening dress and accessories for the piano was born. 

 

Step two: research
Because I’m fresh out of grad school no project goes unresearched. “Nite Life” will be a tribute to the African American women of jazz; in particular the musicians of the late 30s and early 40s like Mary Lou Williams and Carline Ray. 

 

Step three: just make it
So I’ve begun sewing, tacking and ripping out seams. It feels like how jazz piano sometimes sounds to me: a bit clanky but somehow it all comes together. Follow the progress on Twitter and Facebook.

unofficially a graduate

Today I completed the last requirement for earning my MFA from School of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston by submitting my Hide:Seek documentation and catalogue.

I'd like to thank my thesis committee (Barbara Gallucci, Nick Capasso and Jeannie Simms) for sharing their wisdom and Joseph Carroll for opening up his gallery to me. And to my family and friends: thanks for playing along with me!

 

thesis committee or everyday super heroes?