SEGMENT EPISODE! Busy + tired = Stephen is grumpy. But you listeners saved me by providing all the stories and topics you wanted covered and we ran through them all (saving some for later episodes as well because they were just so good)! It’s a brisk 1hr episode this time so enjoy!

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The post Oil Painted animated film “Loving Vincent,” new Final Fantasy movie, and Andy Kennedy’s experimental short “Slow Wave” – RubberOnion Animation Podcast #127 appeared first on Artiholics.

San Francisco, CA – July 26, 2015

Katharine Henning shot a series of delinquent Polaroids for her contribution to the mail art exchange, Special Delivery in 2013. The artist packaged 27 snapshots into purple envelopes, keeping each photo facedown so that the first bit of information recipients encounter is the neat print on the photo’s backside—the title, Full Moon.  Flip the photo over, and encounter another moon: a lovely, bare ass slipping out of dark pants.

That benign title did not prepare me for the actual face of the photo. If I came across this image hung on a wall, I wouldn’t have experienced the piece in the same way.  To only interact with the face of the photo allows the viewer some level of control, some constant readiness to soak in the offensive image.  As a piece of mail, we get the pleasure of being fooled by the front and backside of the photo (or could we say that the photo has two backsides?). It’s not just an image of mooning. The envelope and flipped Polaroid work together as an action, an actual prank.

Creating the shots must have felt like a prank. Henning walked through several locations around the West Village mooning for a camera held by another friend.  In the background surrounding the artist’s pose, you can glimpse elegant pieces of architecture from brownstones in the neighborhood.  These secretive performances also took place on Super Bowl Sunday.  That night, fewer people traversed the streets as Henning pulled down her pants in the open air.    “ Took 10 minutes or so to get comfortable with taking my pants down in public, but then I was dropping trou like a pro,” Henning wrote in an email exchange. She recalls that the actual lunar Moon did not make an appearance.

I shared this piece with a friend while we waited for public transit in San Francisco.  She pulled out the photo, laughed, and slipped the picture back into the envelope while looking embarrassed.  Mooning expresses provocation, disrespect, or protest to another party. Henning gives us pure mooning, without context or reason. The piece acts as an affront to the viewer. This art teases and challenges, which are common traits of other strong video and photo works by Katharine Henning.  At the same time, I imagine how some viewers might feel turned off by the subject and chide “Full Moon” as lowbrow, or just young.  For me, the importance of the subject matter later became apparent during 2014 when I met this pointed phrase:

“… the control of female bodies.”

Photo courtesey of Katharine Henning, 2013

In 2014, I attended a reading of Emer Martin‘s third book, Baby Zero, at the San Francisco Public Library.   The Irish novelist used those words herself to describe key ideas in Baby Zero. In this piece, veiled female bodies in the Middle East contrast with the bodies of Buotox common to habitats like Malibu, California. Martin weaved into her talk the form of control carrying the deepest of consequences–abortion rights.  She described how control can manifest in different forms.  It is not just a physical veil.  It can also be an action, like the choice to modify or augment one’s body. Control can move deeply into one’s understanding of self and values, of one’s human rights.

During that year, I also picked up Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran. In this memoir, an Iranian professor of literature (Nafisi) invites 7 former female students into her home to discuss Western classics that are deemed controversial and forbidden by the Iranian authorities of the 1990’s. They are not partaking in schoolwork. For 2 years every week, the women choose to read and gather out of the belief that fiction itself can offer a freedom that they could not find elsewhere.  In this special weekly retreat, remembered by paintings left leaning against walls and pitchers of flowers on the floor of Nafisi’s living room, the women also choose to remove the coverings they used in public. Nafisi documented the distinct differences between each women’s bodies, hair color, hair length, choice of colored shirts or pants. From Nafisi’s perspective, that freedom to be without coverings must have added another layer of bonding.

Though there are many facets and complexities in this book, I wanted to highlight just two important photographs that weave in and out of Nafisi’s memories near the beginning.  In the first photo, she and her students stand wearing black robes and scarves; in the second photo, they appear with the clothes worn beneath their coverings while standing in the same positions. Of the first photo, Nafisi writes that they stood as women “shaped by someone else’s dreams […]. In the second [photo], we appear as we imagined ourselves. In neither could we feel completely at home.”

The 2^nd photo is Nafisi’s Full Moon at that time. The cost of sharing Nafisi’s picture would have been high, much higher than the public circulation of Henning’s Polaroids. When pitched together, Nafisi’s memoir and Henning’s photos indicate how manifold the experience of being a woman must be—how it appears as more of a spectrum than any one viewpoint of struggle or achievement.

I cannot imagine Henning’s photos in Tehran. These pictures appear in and are surely informed by a culture that feels familiar with seeing undressed women as art. Henning’s series also recalls Manet’s Olympia, (whose subject must also be remembered as the artist, Victorine Meurent) or Carlo Mollino’s secret Polaroids of the 1960’s.  As an artist who photographs many subjects without clothing, Ryan McGinley makes a distinction about they way Americans read nudity in an interview. By definition, the word “Nude” is meant to separate the naked form from any pornographic perspective, and yet, Americans still frequently confuse the Nude from any salacious intent. When thinking about Full Moon, we have an example of both humor and liberty in American culture.  It can be shared as artwork or conversation, but this unquestionably is not the case in other parts of the world.

Written by: Audrey Tran

Robert Szantyr initiated Special Delivery five years ago. Essentially, it consists of a community that sends art pieces through the postal service. Last year, seventeen art makers took on the project. We each created an artwork that exists in multiples, distributed the items, and then received about 17 artworks in return. Within this circle, I’m the one who blogs on various mailed items that leave lasting impressions or good questions.

The post Special Delivery: Katharine Henning’s “Full Moon” Polaroids (NSFW) appeared first on Artiholics.

On Saturday Dag Hammarskjold Plaza on 47th Street and 2nd Avenue in Manhattan came alive with body paint, camera shutters, simulated camera shutters (on smart phones), and a literal ton of bare skin, for the second ever Bodypainting Day.

King of the body painting world, Andy Golub has pulled it off once again, breaking all kinds of records for previous “group outings,” this time with 100 fully nude models and 80 artists painting on this year’s theme “What The World Needs Now.”

I was there for the first two hours of what turned out to be an all day event, so with most articles about this event you are seeing mostly the finished product – fully painted models. I captured the sketching phase, or the initial lines and the base coat.

It is interesting to see how the artists all had different techniques for how to start working on the various models, which came in all shapes and sizes.

Written and Photographed by Cojo

The post Artists & Nude Models Take To The New York Streets For Bodypainting Day (NSFW) appeared first on Artiholics.

 Photo Courtesy of Vera Kachouh, 10/25/2014

Tuesday, January 20, 2015 – San Francisco, CA

During Open Studios at the Noonan Building, I experienced a unique element that you wouldn’t easily find at any studio event – Vera Kachouh’s pastry Pop-Up known as The Moon in My Kitchen. That is also the title of this Oakland-based artist’s food blog, which I’ve been exploring throughout this year. After hearing that The Moon in My Kitchen would make an appearance during Open Studios, I became excited, not knowing exactly what to expect. What might a food blog look like when taken offline and made available in person?

In one of the art studios that Saturday afternoon, Kachouh set up a table of creative baked sweets. She warmly offered me custard-filled cornbread (with a healthy drizzle of maple syrup), almond crescent cookies, palm-sized fruit galettes, ricotta plum cake, and a rare take on pie (apple with a touch of rose and pink peppercorn). I choose the peppery pie and savored it while walking through a few studios.

Having that bite of pie while looking at art left a pleasing imprint in my memory. I’ve complained about this before—when collecting blog pictures, I forget to really stop and look around without the eye of my camera. With a 4-inch tall slice of pie, I at least had to put down all mobile devices in order to hold the dessert. It made me linger near the paintings of Rob Minervini and Alice Raymond, which felt very healthy. Both sets of paintings require a tranquil mode anyway when experiencing the pieces in person.

As the author of The Moon in My Kitchen blog, Kachouh draws us into her exploration of different recipes, often adapting several combined or edited recipes from other contemporary cooks and bakers. For this baker, food and stories often feel interchangeable. Some posts incorporate food with glimpses of Kachouh’s private life (moving homes, traveling, memories, her honesty about significant loss and heartache).  You may also find the blog’s publicity on Bon Appetite  in one online article on seasonal strawberries in 2012).  Other rich posts contain meditations on art and literature (If you gravitate towards Virginia Woolf, you’ll love her more in Kachouh’s post regarding apple trees).

Going through the blog, one feels accompanied by a voice naturally adept in food writing. We catch Kachouh’s healthy knowledge of cookbooks.  Her research spans multiple interesting and popular cookbooks like Tartine (the SF-based bakery), The Four and Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book, WWII Era’s How to Cook a Woolf, A Homemade Life, and Ripe: a Cook in the Orchard. Julia Child feels so familiar to the author that the blog refers to her by the first name sometimes. They appear to be friends, even without ever being introduced. It hardly matters that Julia Child is no longer with us.

As a writer, Kachouh seems invested in exploring more ways to describe and think about food.  When testing a griddle for pancakes, she tells us that instead of merely looking for sizzling water drops (the common directions on your store-bought pancake boxes), we must watch the drops dance madly over the hot surface. In another instance, see them dance chaotically, and know that it is the right time to pour batter.

Her summary on chef/writer David Tanis rolls playfully in our ears: “[Tanis,] the master of simple elegance; master of the unfussy, but remarkable, culinary creation.”

Kachouh’s chosen words for this blog title set an image and a mood in mind, one that you could describe as romantic and mysterious. The Moon in My Kitchen. A window is implied, along with beams of moonlight in whatever shades you can imagine. Of this carefully chosen title, Kachouh said that her baking used to always take place in after hours—early mornings or late nights. The real joy of those hours came from being on the periphery of other daily obligations. She wrote in an email exchange, “I found these twilight or dawn hours to be really beautiful and profound. It was a special secret time that gave me permission to do what I really wanted. “

Artists Vera Kachouh and Robert Minervini in front of the Pop-Up during Open Studio day at the Noonan Building 10/25/2014

After completing her MFA with the San Francisco Art Institute, Kachouh began to take her baking seriously. She’s a self-taught baker, whose true start to this craft began when Kachouh was very young. Around the time when she completed graduate school, Kachouh made video installations. In her view, that video work continued to feel more and more intangible, which translated into something unfulfilling. As a reaction, Kachouh found solace in the visceral nature of baking, and then writing. Through the blog platform, she began to chronicle her life, document her “changing culinary moods,” and she began to feed people, an act that makes this artist truly happy. The information on The Moon in My Kitchen certainly feeds others in an indirect and valuable way.

Until coming across Kachouh’s blog, I didn’t think about how much the writing on food affects me. Images of food might remind me that I’m hungry, but writings that involve food stick with me.  Words seem to send me towards very specific actions. Here are few examples:

Sigrid Nunez’s The Last of Her Kind, deliciously describes crab salad over a fresh halve of avocado. This simple dish makes a minute appearance in Nunez’s account of 1960’s era New York, but it sent me towards crab and avocado before I finished the novel. No pictures or illustrations appear in this book. I just could not escape the main character’s memory of this dish. Side note: this piece of fiction is an especially good book to read right now, amongst all the protests and discussions on race, on the nature of our justice system.

Recently, I embarked on a long walk for good doughnuts, an unusual journey for me, as doughnuts previously have never had a huge affect. I assumed that they can be found on any street corner… KQED’s take on the 5 best doughnut places in the East Bay assisted my hunt, but that’s not where this craving began. I traced the sudden doughnut desire to the humorous food component of Michelle Kicherer’s short story, “The Loneliest Gynecologist.” Her main character guiltily eats dozens of doughnuts alone in a car, as a way to beat the stresses of being a doctor. Dr. Oswald also lies about her large orders, telling the baker who knows her by name, “They’re for the office…” I ended up at Doughnut Dolly in Temescal, ordering less than a dozen doughnuts, but like Dr. Oswald, I did contemplate some of the guilt that sugar brings.

During this past summer, after glancing and re-glancing one of Kachouh’s posts, I felt the need to not only consume, but to bake her adapted recipe for rye biscuits with roasted fruit and freshly whipped cream. I had not made time for baking in months, but The Moon in My Kitchen wrote about such appealing flavors and textures in this dish alongside some jovial after effects. She mentioned breezes and memories of store-bought, gooey, yellow-spongy versions of the dessert that could not be forgotten. Bakeries nearby did not carry this dish. Later, no bakery could help me because more than the sweet and nutty flavors, I began to crave the fun of a messy kitchen.

In an email exchange, Kachouh wrote that she plans to expand The Moon in my Kitchen. Currently, growth for her business entails Pop-Ups for special occasions and also orders taken for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Thereafter, Kachouh plans to partake in a series of pop-ups throughout 2015 accompanied by “an exciting spring season with lots of beautiful Bay Area fruits ripening and showing up at the markets.”

 Galettes baked by Vera Kachouh

In a much larger picture, Kachouh aspires to create a brick and mortar spot for her business. It would be a place where the surrounding community could gather and enjoy fresh pastries with coffee while becoming closer as neighbors. See the end of this post for a more detailed vision and the philosophical twists of Kachouh’s dream restaurant. These are my favorite components of that environment: Honey-water, a record player spouting plucky bluegrass tunes, bowls of yellow cherries and figs on every table in the summertime.  The artist/baker conjured those images and details while she wrote about custard-filled cornbread. That would be the first item on her menu.

I highly recommend reading this blog. You will find familiar and unfamiliar recipes, enjoyable prose, fetching food photography, and a welcoming author.  If you’re on the West Coast, pay attention to Vera Kachouh’s Pop-Up sightings, some of which may include partnerships with artists and craftsmen. On her blog, you will come across more than one way to connect with a generous, imaginative home.

Written by: Audrey Tran

Find more of Kachouh’s photography on her Instagram page.

The post Vera Kachouh’s The Moon in My Kitchen – The Baking Artist appeared first on Artiholics.

San Francisco, CA – Thursday, September 4, 2014

In June, New York-based artist Vanessa Albury gave an exclusive interview to Artiholics on the eve before her journey through the Arctic Circle.  Along with 26 other residents, Albury took part of the Summer 2014 Arctic Circle Residency.  Aaron O’Connor, who leads this program, directed a diligent crew that housed, fed, and safe-guarded the residents as they all worked on individual and collaborative research in the Arctic environment. This program brings artists, writers, musicians, educators, and scientists together to study one of the coldest, harshest regions of the world (-10 degrees Celsius). In total, the residents visited 18 landings.

Our report on this residency continues, first, by reviewing Albury’s unique documentation of the journey (a few images come from the program itself).  In the above photo, Albury captured a star-shaped sun with strong beams of light  high above the horizon after midnight. For 17 days in the Arctic, no nighttime sky appeared, nor stars, or sunsets.  Everyone worked in sunshine and then hours later slept in its bright energy.

View of the Antigua, Photo courtesy of the Arctic Circle Residency Program

In the photo above, we see the temporary home for the residents–the Antigua, a 152-foot Barkentine sailing ship equipped with 3 masts.  Furnished with cabin space, a kitchen, deck, and a communal salon, the Antigua presented the safest arena for the travelers to bond and discuss projects.  Albury credits O’Connor and the guides Theres Arulf, Sara Orstadius, and Sarah Gerats (she is also a performance artist), as the masterminds behind the Antigua’s daily activities. With what seemed like innate finesse, the team juggled the needs of each resident on any and every task or equipment necessary for the multifarious projects. For Albury, they located landings close to glaciers and helped arrange portable power sources for her bulky projector.  Other projects required similarly specific considerations. The team communicated with everyone tirelessly and effectively for each daily expedition.  Above all, O’Connor, the guides, and the crew kept the residents safe.

Safety became a major concept keenly felt and then explored by some residents like Albury.  During the travels, many participants felt awakened to the high degree of precaution constantly surrounding them. During hikes through icy terrain, the three guides doubled as polar bear guards and would scout the path of the expedition. They formed safety zones encompassing 300 to 400 meters at the widest point, in which the residents could work on projects.  While traveling, the residents walked in a line or tight group, sometimes with only one guard.  Albury fondly describes the polar bear guides  as “amazing, rifle-totting, adventurous women.”   If any polar bears appeared, entire hikes could be redirected or even aborted.  Thanks to a presentation on polar bears by one of the guides, Sara Oristadius, the participants came to understand that “polar bears are fearless, curious and ferocious.”

On deck and anywhere close to the edge of water, residents had to be aware of the immediate doom resulting from a simple slip. Man-overboard in the Arctic does not resemble Man-overboard in warmer seas.  According to the captain of the Antigua, in the waters around Svalbard, Norway (where the journey began) you would not die due to hypothermia, exactly.  Before that, your layers of heavy clothing would pull you down into endless depths. There’s just no way to keep afloat without a lifesaver.  On top of that, if the ship is sailing, it would be very difficult for any crew member to keep an eye on a small head bobbing in water. Closer north, any fall into the water could result in death from hypothermia.  On land, danger comes from above. The explorers kept a minimum distance of 200 meters from any glacier to avoid sudden calving, the deadly splintering of heavy or sharp crashing ice from the tops of glaciers.

Photo of Vanessa Albury working with her pinhole camera during one of the landings in the Arctic Circle. Courtesy of the artist.

However hazardous the expedition felt, the members of the Summer 2014 Residency all returned safely. They may have joked about Scurvy, hoarding the limited supplies of chocolate, and other jests emanating from paranoia, but the group never stopped looking out for one another.  Albury found herself in deep conversation with the writer and co-resident, Susan Rogers on this sensitive topic.  Rogers talked about the precautions taken for safety, i.e. the strict boundaries to protect against polar bears and the rules aboard the ship. Albury could relate, thinking of the ships’s rails.  She also contemplated the “edges of life and living,” while recalling tales of whalers and early explorers, many who did not return from these Arctic expeditions.

Albury thinks of how those crucial moments come from the simplest places. It could have been just one small item left behind that might have made all the difference for those explorers who perished.   An entire journey could be ruined, or an entire life might splinter and end from simply forgetting to think about the entire scope of needs for an expedition.  While sharing these thoughts with Rogers, Albury noted that this interest may resurface in her future work, stating also that, “the best gift a residency can give an artist is fodder for new thoughts and new ideas.”

  Another series of photos come from capturing the different scenes splashing round and round the porthole (11” diameter) in Albury’s cabin.  All residents stayed in similar rooms during this two-week expedition.  Sometimes, a view of the icy landscape and edges of shoreline are caught in this round window.  More often, bubbly blue, clear, and green waters completely invade Albury’s round window.  Leads one to wonder if the ocean is not actually one large glass of soda.

I am reminded of stargazing, and how surely hypnotic those porthole scenes might have appeared to someone resting from long hikes through snow.  Deeply, I enjoy those moments when art objects resemble or rather, cause a sense of star-gazing in me, a relaxed state where one dreams quietly, not even noticing that you are—as they say, in the moment.

This series of pictures feels intimate, as the images come from the artist’s private quarters, which is a part of the journey that shouldn’t be forgotten.  The porthole views remind us that we cannot leave the vessel out of this story.  It played a very real and present part of the exploration and residency.  Not everything took place outside.  Albury noted that this was certainly true for the residency’s writers.  While many joined in on the daily hikes, the writers often stayed in for hours to practice their craft.

Albury’s craft also involves developing her film, when possible.  In past residencies and travels, she has been known to scope out the right closet or bathroom to turn into a temporary dark room, which is what she also did aboard the Antigua. Though she brought several heavy pieces of equipment, Albury did not pack an enlarger.  The type of developing she worked on involved chemicals and exposed film.  A dark room on a ship works well, only when the ship is not moving, or when her neighbor does not need his shower.

Photo courtesy of Vanessa Albury.

One of the more relaxed characters in Vanessa’s photos includes a portly “Red-Bearded Seal”. The name might be related to the patch of rusty bronze color of the fur or skin on his face, but I’ve seen humans with more red and beard than this fellow. Place those terms, “red-bearded seal” into an Image Google Search, and you will come across a few male homo sapiens.  Lying on his left side, Albury captured the seal softly blinking his coal lump eyes as he allowed the group to come as close as one meter. The residents and their guards did spot polar bears during two expeditions—a single bear the first time, and then a mother and 2 cubs the second time. Four bears in total made a record for any ship traveling during those 2 weeks. No one was allowed to get as close to a polar bear as Albury got to the blinking seal. Almost immediately, when the first bear dived into water, the group had to quickly return to the ship.  Polar bears swim fast, act stealthily, and are skilled at hunting.  During the second sighting, the traveling group only redirected the path of their hike.

Near the end of the residency, Albury documented one of the final hikes around the curved path in this picture.  Note the dark grey stone and the blue ice covering the curved rim.   Layers and layers of ice create the most fascinating shades of translucent blue, frosty on some edges, other times jagged, or fragmented.  In another shot of the terrain, Albury captures blocky rocks that have the grey color of elephants.

After hikes like this (some lasted up to three hours), the travelers came home to a warm Antigua set with healthy, filling meals.  Albury recalls a “lovely chef” who catered to all the food allergies from the group.  The artist remembers abundant servings of pudding (with almost every meal!), dishes with fish, pork, chicken, pastas, and European fashioned salads (cucumber, tomatoes, corn, and onions, notably salads made without leafy-greens, which Albury missed).

Most of the images reviewed above come from the artist’s documentation of the journey, but this does not describe her artwork very well. We should not think of Albury as a photographer.   During our 2^nd interview, we talked about how often people refer to her as a photographer. It’s an easy mistake.  After all, the artist did return from her past two residencies with hundreds of rolls of film. However, the goals between this artist using photo-based processes and a photojournalist, for example, vary widely.

Net Diptych (Bodøgaard XVI & XVII).  Vanessa Albury created this Cyanotype  print using nets and rope. 2014

Albury’s work centers on how light behaves, the mood of it, and our response to these images.  They often carry abstract forms that she experiments with, often incorporating other sound or performance-like elements from projectors.   The different ranges of cameras available to us, the kind that have been replaced by a lot of digital technology still interest Albury.  Holga cameras (her favorite), pinhole photos, or projectors are all devices that allow her a range of ways to experiment with light.  The different film speeds and shutter capabilities from these cameras give the artist many options, almost like the varying colors on a painting palate. When looking at her work, I do feel as though I am looking at paintings.

Documentation of Waves (The Impossibility of Distinction for Mr. Palomar. Projectors, recorded sound. Vanessa Albury, 2024

To better illustrate Albury’s use of photography, we can refer to the show she participated in right after the Arctic circle Residency.  In an exhibit named The Dream Time curated by Rachel Mason at Trans Pecos in Queens, Albury showed a projection piece to a sitting audience. She projected 48” x 48” black and white 35 mm slides depicting a dozen different images.  The pictures move in an irregular pattern. Some repeat more than other, so that viewers cannot spot a pattern. Simultaneously, the audience heard clicking projector noises that ticked against the sound of Albury’s heartbeats while she settled into a rest mode. By making those components work together, Albury aligned “The delicate human body to the corporeal nature of waves.”  The artist also found herself incorporating the meditation in Italio Calvino’s essay “Reading a Wave.” In this piece, one of Calvino’s most known characters named Mr. Palomar contemplates the colors, constant movement, and motley body that waves take on—how they never cease to change. Can Mr. Palomar possibly observe just one wave without the legions of others? Like snowflakes, have any two waves ever existed with complete a likeness?  The piece is documented in the image above, and it is titled Waves (The Impossibility of Distinction for Mr. Palomar).

To echo an earlier conversation from our first interview, Albury says that  “Photos are objects.  We tend to think of them as these windows into the world, but they are not.  They are objects,” and the artist treats them as such.  Instead of seeing photos as just images, Albury considers the entire scope of factors that come from taking a photograph – the processing, the act of capturing light phenomena, or the site specificity of projections.  She focuses on these elements can be recombined with other elements, like sound, and result in these exploratory ways of drawing in viewers.   In pieces like the Waves (…Mr. Palomar) the key concepts come from mixing sound with images.  Another future project will bring fire to the development process.  Albury found inspiration from the duality of heat (there is some with, ie the midnight sun) and the obvious cold elements of the Arctic.  Spotting that phenomena unique to the polar environment inspired this unusual photo process. She plans to burn an image while developing it.  We’ll have to wait to see the end results of that creation/destruction process. Call the items resulting from this Fire-Photo-Bath, Albury’s artifacts. We may not be there for the ritual, but can see the end results and observe how they contrast and work together.

Net (Bodøgaard XXIII), Vanessa Albury, Cyanotype Print, 2014

The Arctic environment kept Albury from completing some of her work. For one project, the artist intended to project images of decaying buildings upon glaciers. She wanted to connect failing or neglected man-made buildings with these majestic formations of nature that are also sadly breaking down. Her idea work intuitively found a connection between the environments, for they both seem “vulnerable and on the edge of collapse” wrote the artist in an email exchange. The decay of both formations originate from man’s actions.  Those projections would cover the glaciers and easily be removed without a trace left in the surrounding environment. In order to project, Albury sought glacial caves where her projections could fully appear in the shadows.  However, she could not safely get close enough to the caves due to the dangerous summer calving.  Still, Albury called these “beautiful failures.”   At the time, her co-resident, Jess Perlitz, who is a sculptor and performance artist, offered to create a large projection screen out of snow.  After Perilitz fashioned the screen, Albury  said it looked like a tiny white theater.  In the end, the power source still did not allow Albury to use the projector properly.  That day, Perlitz also constructed a fort made of cinder block-sized snow bricks, and later the residents “had a house, a theater, some industry in the form of a snow brick mining site and a graveyard, all in a day’s work and through Perlitz’ practice,” wrote Albury in an email.

Photo courtesy of Vanessa Albury

In one instance, Albury found a way to project onto cave walls.   The large part of this projection project still remains to be continued.  Without the least bit of dissatisfaction, Albury said she intends to return to the Arctic terrain, during one of the seasons outside of the Summer Solstice.  This was a fantastic first run for future work.  Partly, the wanderlust now ingrained in this artist must have been talking.  In our interview, we spoke about the places where art making comes from.  For many, it involves stationary hours in the studio.  For this photo-based artist, travel to distant lands will influence many of Albury’s concepts.  So she’ll need to travel and understand how to do it.   As someone who has never gone camping, I asked Albury how easy or hard would it be to make a trip to the Arctic Circle.  For her, the path would take lots of work, but thanks to this residency, it seems clear to Albury how she could make that trip happen.

End Notes:

Out of 27 residents, 7 came from foreign countries.  The rest are U.S. citizens, like Albury.  The Summer 2014 group had an unusually high number of females to males, however, Albury says that past groups more often carried an even number of males to females.  Everyone spoke English, including the crew and guards.  Canada Goose gladly sponsored Vanessa’s travels by providing her special attire for -10 degree Celsius weather.  The Arctic Circle Residency program ships 2 groups (about 30 people in each group) to the Arctic Circle every year.

Written By: Audrey Tran

The post Vanessa Albury’s Journey through the Arctic Circle Residency – Part II appeared first on Artiholics.

You’ve may noticed that a good number of bus shelters and billboards around the city are not so lame anymore. In the rush of traffic and commutes we don’t normally pay attention to trifles such as outdoor advertisements, but lately there have been some reasons to wait for the next bus.

It won’t take you long.  You can spare a couple of minutes to spend with the art displayed in your bus stop. If you just scan it with your smartphone you’ll immediately discover more about the piece, the artist and its history, as well as the museum it comes from.

This is not a natural phenomenon as you can expect, but a nationwide campaign to promote American art and raise awareness for a group of museums. The art will be displayed in all sorts of billboards, telephone kiosks, subways, newsstands, bus shelters, and oversized screens such as the all mighty LED screens of Times Square.

This artistic campaign is a collaboration ( #ArtEverywhereUS ) between the Outdoor Advertising Association of America and five museums: The Art Institute of Chicago, The Dallas Museum of Art, The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and The Whitney Museum of American Art. These museums aim both at educating the public and of course sparking interest in the American art they display at their sites.

Once you are aware of the existence of this campaign, the images surprise you everywhere. There are 58 different art works disseminated around the City, and all over the country, but that’s too much of a wide field for this modest urbanite. The big screens in front of the Madison Square Garden spot art from time to time. The horribly overcrowded Port Authority Station displays “The Brooklyn Bridge: Variation on an Old Theme” by Joseph Stella in the steps of a random staircase. Inside metro cars, or in a pathway at 14^th Street, the list becomes too diverse. You can drive by 23^rd Street between 8^Th and 9^Th Avenues and get instinctually stopped by a big Rothko that resembles a STOP sign. We can travel to Egypt in 8^th and 38^th Steet. Or reconcile with your lovely one at Broadway and West 91^st because after all we get along so much better than the couple in Grant Wood’s American Gothic.

American Gothic, 1930 by Grant Wood

My Egypt, 1927 by Charles Demuth

Written and Photographed by Alejandro Pardo

The post What the ART is Going on with my Bus Stop Advertising? appeared first on Artiholics.

New York – Thursday, July 31st , 2014

Artist Sui Park is a rising star in the New York City art scene with work that is both innovative and traditional. Park practices the ancient techniques of basketry using mono filament and cable zip ties as elemental units. She produces organic flexible forms that seduce the eye and fit the body.

It is perhaps these aesthetical and functional simoltaniously concurring aspects that are boosting the popularity of Sui Park’s work in America. This summer alone, her work has been exhibited in Chelsea, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, and Como, Italy. 2014 has been a whirlwind for her, with eight shows, two major creations, and an A’ Design Award.  We caught up with her for an interview last week:

Artiholics: Has all this activity affected your creative process, or do you find a way to keep experimenting regardless?

Sui Park: The first half of 2014 has been great for me. I expect the second half to be greater. I participated in a variety of exhibitions that differ in concepts, themes and gallery spaces. They were great opportunities for me to view my work in various perspectives. While my work theme and process mostly stays the same, site specific installations do affect my work. Sometimes I am inspired by the space that I will be exhibiting. I highly value interactions between my work and the site environment.

I said “experimenting” since I’ve seen many art studies you developed during your work on your thesis at the Rhode Island School of Design, which are clearly in the same vein as your current work. Do you keep making those models before jumping into the big projects?

The term “model” and “experiment” may not be used as often in art as in architecture. But, since most of my artwork involves creating object or space with lines, I guess I do “model” or “experiment” more than some artists. Building models of my sketches may be one of the most important steps of my artwork. It tells me whether or not my thoughts can be precisely created and visualized. It also helps me figure out possible structural issues of my artwork.

I’d dare to say that your work resembles an evolution of a diversity of echinoderms adapting to human activity, but what’s the author’s take on its own art?

My work involves creating organic forms. I think it makes our lives more dynamic. Some features of my artwork emphasize remarkable forms of nature. For example, I attempt to show that organic forms that seem static are really dynamic and alive, without using kinetic components. On the other hand, I try to show that dynamic forms can be achieved under a system of modules, just as our nature is comprised of cells. In such processes, I try to add some characteristics or identities to the forms. I hope my emphasis can create inspirations and make our lives more exciting.

Your media and the technique you use are also singular. What are the properties and advantages you find in exploring basketry through cable zip ties?

Mono filament and cable zip ties are wonderful materials to work with. They are the building blocks of my artworks, like modules in architecture. They are very easy to fabricate that I can exactly manipulate in order to precisely structure my initial thoughts. But, what really fascinates and excites me is that I am constructing 3-dimensional objects and spaces with these 2-dimensional materials. The materials also perfectly fit my artwork theme. They are very flexible and translucent such that they are very effective in creating dynamic forms. Moreover, the materials effectively create irony in a sense that mass produced artificial materials of repeating patterns are used to make organic shapes.

I’ve noticed that you want to integrate your organic shapes in larger architectural structures. Could you explain the nature of this implementation? And how do you find materials strong enough to hold one or several human bodies with such dimensions?

I think it’s very attractive to anthropomorphize structures. You bring life, characters or personality into what may be merely an object, space or instrument. I think it’s very feasible to construct my artwork in an interior setting. However, it would be a challenge to apply my artwork to an exterior of a large building, say 50 storage. There should be a technology for such construction. To build and have one in the middle of a city or on a waterfront will be very attractive and aesthetic.

I’d really like to see them in place, defying traditional rectangular spaces. Is it the next step for all of us? When will we see some examples?

It is very appealing. I think such integrating projects should be carried out by carefully reviewing the original characteristics of a given space. An integration or augmentation should be taking place only if a positive result is expected. But, I think there is a great chance and even a dramatic change if an abandoned or void space can be revitalized. I expect to engage in various projects and hope to set a variety of examples of such cases.

What’s your next project? Or better, what’s the next project you would like to be commissioned for?

I always look for opportunities to super-size my artworks. A size that people enter. I think it will be influential on discussing organic forms as an art piece as well as architectural structures.

Written and photographed by Alejandro Pardo

The post Artist Sui Park Weaves Innovation & Tradition With Future Tech appeared first on Artiholics.

Last month when it was announced that Björk’s Album of apps Biophilia was being purchased by MoMA for its collection I noticed they hadn’t mentioned Max Weisel.

What I thought was the most profound thing at the time the album was designed was that a large portion of the apps on the album were designed and programmed by a teenager.

I met Max at the 2012 Volta NY pre-party  at Villain in Williamsburg few months before this article in Vice was written.  He told me about how he and developed apps for Björk’s Biophilia album, and that they constructed a playable iPad rig on stage, so he could control a lot of the music and was now touring with Bjork.

I was a huge fan, and had a huge crush on Björk in my teenage years (who didn’t?), and he introduced me to a few of her Icelandic choral background singers who were also at the party; Ester Auðunsdóttir invited me to come to their show at Roseland ballroom the next night as their guest .

Needless to say, the show was an INSANE mix of music, singing, performance art, and technology.

I caught up with Max in June 2014.  We chatted online, me from my studio in NYC, he rather appropriately on a tablet in an airplane flying to California. We talked about the inclusion of the app in MoMA’s permanent collection, his involvement in the project at such a young age (he designed the app at 18) and how it all came together.  Enjoy the Artiholics Exclusive interview with artist / programmer Max Weisel.

Artiholics:  So how did Björk find you in the first place?

Max Weisel: At the beginning, Björk had the idea to do an app album. Normally, when someone goes to do a music video or something like that, the label has people they can reach out to. They know production companies and directors. Björk herself knows a lot of people too of course. However, when they started this project (early 2010) no one was making apps for albums.

She was talking with her manager who she’s been with for 30 years and he suggested they reach out to the developers of her favorite apps. I had made some small apps at the time. Nothing too crazy in the music / creative space. I woke up one day to a comment on my wordpress blog asking for my info on behalf of Björk. I actually laughed it off and assumed someone was just messing with me. However, curiosity got the best of me. I started looking into the name attached to the comment and found a record label and a phone number. I called them up.

“Hey, this might be odd, but someone wrote a comment on my blog asking for my info for Björk”

Artiholics:  Where were you living at the time?

Max Weisel:  Arizona with my parents, I was 18 and had just graduated high school (barely :P).  The person on the other end of the line was like “Yeah! Thanks for reaching out. We’re still figuring this out, but let me get your info and I’ll shoot you an email.”

A week or so later, I got an email from Björk and her assistant with some of their ideas and the themes she was thinking about for each of the songs on the album. We kept emailing back and forth for awhile and I started putting rough concepts together.

Header photo by Joris Bulckens

Interview by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

The post Artiholics Exclusive Interview: The Teenage Programmer Behind Björk’s Biophilia App… The One MoMA Recently Acquired appeared first on Artiholics.

Svalbard, Norway – Monday, June 16, 2014

On Saturday Artiholics caught up with New York-based artist, Vanessa Albury one day before she embarked on a journey to the Acrtic Circle.  She is a member of the 2014 Arctic Circle Residency Program, an initiative that sends artists, writers, scientists, educators, and a variety of researchers to the Arctic Circle, together.

The program seeks to create collaborations among people of different disciplines while engaging in key issues of the Arctic environment. In the best scenarios on the trip, research and different insights will spark even more idea work, while contesting views and challenges are expected and welcome too.

Simultaneously, the experience of living and working on an arctic expedition research vessel, amongst magnificent glaciers, deeply cold weather, and the summer solstice provides a matchless experience to bind the residents.

She spoke to us from Svalbard, Norway on the work it took to get into the residency, her planned projects for the trip, expectations, difficulties, and stories of problem solving.

Artiholics:  How are you feeling these days? It sounds like you just left a big project and are now going in to an even bigger one.

Vanessa Albury: It’s exciting.  It’s nice to have this time to focus on my work.  This is the kind of work that I want to be doing with my time. At the same time, it’s a lot of work.

Artiholics:  How long have you been working to get into this program? Can you tell us about the different parts for applying and preparing?

Vanessa Albury:  I first applied to this residency 3 years ago, to go on the 2012 expedition. I got rejected the first year, then rejected the second year in 2013, and accepted in 2014.  I found about the program 5 or 6 years ago, so this has been on my radar. While applying, you have to develop a project that ties in to the environment of the Arctic.

Then, after I got notification about 8 or 9 months ago, I had to sort out the fee for the program, which is $ 6,200.

I applied to 6 different grants from the United States, but I won’t hear back from any of them until the expedition is over.  So, the Kickstarter was essential. I also invested some of my own money into this.

Sounds like that campaign was very successful.

Yeah, it was.

I’ve seen other artists work on this.  It seems like the type of thing that you do once in a while. You probably won’t rely on this for a long time?

Yeah, no, you have to use it for something special, something that people will get something out of contributing to it.  Not a statement,

I thought you made good use of the internet for one of those rewards.  You broadcasted your supporters through your website.  And you’re going to bring back things for people, photographs?

Yes, and it’s important to be generous to the people who are generous to you.  Even the people who contribute $2, because $2 can make or break a campaign.  If you’re $2 under and time is up after 30 days, you don’t get the money.

I didn’t know that.  That sounds awful.

When I pressed the green “Launch” button, I went into a panic and thought, Oh my Gosh, what am I doing?  But then I found that a lot of people care about this and they care about me.

I sent group emails to some of my contacts, and then about 150 personal emails.  So 67 people contributed and that’s about 60% of the people I reached out to. They all came back and donated.  So if I were to advise someone on starting a Kickstarter, I would advise them to personally reach out to people and talk to them frequently.

[ Vanessa’s Kickstarter Campaign raised $4,886.  Originally, she set a goal of $4,700. Some of Vanessa’s incentives to donors include sending back prints, or documentation of personal messages written in the snowy Arctic landscape.]

Also, there was a lot of prep for clothing, and prepping gear – how am going to prepare for these photo based projects?  I’m not just bringing pencils.  I’m also creating a dark room on the ship and bringing projectors.

There seem to be a lot of logistical issues. Even admin work for a trip amounts to a lot.  I mean, we’re artists, but we’re also project managers.

Yes. That true. Not only project managers, we’re the creative problem solver.  Your issues involve these services companies and customer service. They don’t know how to solve the issue.  So, you just transfer and transfer until you get to the executive level and then they begin to help you.  And it still takes them hours and hours to figure out.

Oh wow.

And then you keep calling them and calling them over the course of a few weeks.

I’m glad you didn’t run into a straight “No – We can’t do this.”

You know what, I did run into a lot of “No’s.”.  But you just say, “Can I talk to your manager?”

(laugh) I’m going to remember that.

And the other good one I learned – Ask for the executive branch.  They make shit happen.  The conversation that would take hours with the customer service level, takes ten minutes with the executive level.  Here in Norway, I learned that the customer service tends to say no.; and then you just keep asking and eventually they say yes.  You just have to keep on talking to them like they are people.

I definitely like that advice … Let’s talk about the visual part of your work on this residency. I’m curious about the mediums and how you’re thinking about the pieces.

Sure, there’s two projects. One involves 4 x 5” pictures made by a 50 mm pinhole camera. I’m going to be observing what light does up here, the light play, and the how light works on the surfaces that exist up here.

There will be gelatin silver prints, fiber prints and the other project is based on a 50 mm film based, which is more involved.  I like to have more than one project going on at any given moment so that I can bounce between them.  So one that is kind of easy. The pin hole camera is not so involved.  I’ll be taking a 50 mm projector onto a boat, to project onto a glacier. And powering it with a battery.  On these glaciers, I’ll project films I shot while filming deteriorating buildings in Germany.

In my mind I’m thinking about a recent report from NASA on the unstoppable melting of the ice caps and I am trying to created a parallel space in my mind with deteriorating buildings and ruins, where the building is no longer usable but it’s still standing and has a space in the world.  The glaciers become future ruins.  So I’m projecting these building images onto the glaciers and then documenting that process.

I see. Those elements feel fitting for what you’re trying to connote.

We’re in the midnight sun right now and I’ll be competing with that situation,  seeking out caves and darker areas. At the same time, you don’t get so tired.
Oh man, really?

It’s kind of bizarre.  It’s been midnight sun since May, and I’ve been up here since April 8th.  I find that I don’t get tired so much, and I might not know what time it is.  You sleep less, and experience some manic feeling … (laughs) You get a little loopy sometimes.

(laughs) But at least everyone around you is feeling the same thing, so you can be manic together.

Yes, we’re all in the same boat …  I should mention, I’m also bringing my Holga camera, shooting some 120 film and dunking my camera under water, in a plastic bag, but that’s my version of a waterproof camera.

That’s a beautiful camera to use.

I love Holga.  It’s my favorite.

I also want to ask you about the nature of image projection (from a description of Vanessa’s work on her Kickstarter).  It sounds like it has a really cool history.

I enter that conversation through stills and the projection of stills, and dissatisfaction I found involving this conflict between images and object. People don’t think about photographs as objects they think about them as 2-D images. They think of them as windows into the world, but they are actually objects.

So I started projecting images, in my thesis show (for Graduate school at NYU).  I wanted to take the image out of a permanent place. Some of my ideas come from wanting to pull images out of space and time, so that it isn’t stagnant, it’s interpreted that way [as stagnant,] and I wanted to mess with that.

I only recently came across this idea while writing about Polaroids.

That’s an interesting space, and I live with it all the time.

So, the installations that I’ve created, they come from wanting to expand a moment, or a still into an experience or series of moments, even the video works become like that too, or looped.

I’m curious about the final project of the residency.

Yeah, I plan to do a public talk and an exhibition. Another curator invited me to show work on a performance night.  Was thinking about a film-based performance on some of my work here. We’ll be shooting some 16mm footage.  I have not figured it out exactly yet.

It sounds like that will be ok, because you’re going to be meeting all these other people, and maybe something will come about, something you’re not expecting.

Yeah, you have to be able to experiment.  I’ve been inviting happy accidents into my practice.  I like to set up projects with some looseness so that those kinds of things can come.  But I do envision screenable film, some stills, photographic prints, and installations.

Do you know anyone in that program or are you all going to meet when you begin the trip?

We met tonight.

That’s right, at the Meet and Greet.

There were about 20 people, writers, two science researchers, an architect …
Aaron O’Connor who runs the program.  He also makes work, but he doesn’t do it while he’s on the boat.  It’s a little overwhelming because every one is so interesting and there’s no time to meet everyone at the same time. They have really good projects going on.

Yeah, I’m sure you’ll get a chance to really get to know everyone when you set sail together.

I imagine so …

~~~

At the end of the program, Artiholics will catch up with Vanessa Albury  when she returns for a follow up article on her adventures in the Arctic Circle.

Vanessa Albury lives and works in New York City, where she also received her MBA from New York University.   Her practice explores analog materials and devices, international curatorial work, and writing for publications such as Art Pulse and Huffington Post.  In late May, Vanessa completed a residency at Kunstkvarteret in Stamsund, Lofoten, Norway.   The Summer Solstice Expedition of the Arctic Circle Residency Program has commenced and will end on July 1st.

Interview by Audrey Tran

Editor’s Note:  BE SURE TO READ OUR EXCLUSIVE FOLLOW-UP STORY PUBLISHED September 4, 2014

Vanessa Albury’s Journey through the Arctic Circle Residency – Part II

The post Artist Vanessa Albury Crowdfunded Artistic Passage to the Arctic Circle appeared first on Artiholics.

Meryl Meisler is a Brooklyn based photographer who captured a very tumultuous, dangerous, and simultaneously glamorous era in NYC history – the 1970s and 80s. During that time, Manhattan was erupting with surreal characters and scenesters, gallivanting in iconic night clubs, while across the bridge in Bushwick, Brooklyn, there was destruction, arson, looting, the crack epidemic, and tensions between the disenfranchised communities that resided there. She taught in a Bushwick public school and with camera at the ready she bore firsthand witness to the opposing worlds, which existed just few subway stops apart.

Meryl carried a medium format camera nearly everywhere she went, and caught a glimpse into two very different social environments. One of those settings was the disco-era music and dance scene. She snapped photos of William Shatner, Andy Warhol, Grace Jones, and frequented  Studio 54. She went to places like the Paradise Garage, one of the most powerful House music venues of all time.

Meryl Meisler referred to the initial lines of A Tale of Two Cities when describing the then NYC dichotomy between extravagant Manhattan nightlife and the struggling nightmare of Bushwick, Brooklyn.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.” – Charles Dickens

I went on a walk with Meryl, and then she took me out to lunch. Her eyes glowed with compassion and warmth. She currently lives in Chelsea, and she supervises/teaches future art teachers at NYU. Her new exhibition highlights photos published in her new book by Bizarre Publishing, called A Tale of Two Cities & her work is displayed in Bushwick’s Black Box Gallery (12 Jefferson Street, Brooklyn, NY 11206). She sent me photos, some of which have never been released. I hope you enjoy them as much as I did:

The original Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, and later to become the Priceline spokesperson, William Shatner is seen above. Meryl didn’t seek these people out, they just showed up in her life without her going out of the way. They seemed to be bizarre characters that had found their place in the media.

I love this one, it’s almost as if there was a crossover with disco night life into the grime and neglect of Bushwick.  My guess is that this depicts the relics of the night a woman got drunk, and experienced that shaky, exciting time. The shoes are evidence of god-only-knows what kind of misfortune and tales of love and loss that accompanied this shoe’s original owner.

 Meryl described Grace Jones (follow the link to view Jones’ YouTube video, ‘Cannibal Corpse’) as a diva, and when she walked in, she looked fabulous and divine.

This photograph cracks me up, the overt abundance of pubic hair, and the benevolent yet devious grin of the man contorting his body. Not to mention the guy with the flamboyant hat, in a mesmerized daze.

I said, “why not ask her for a photo of herself?” This photograph exemplifies the sexy and exuberant energy that I witnessed Meisler to possess ( she is standing to the left).

Meryl talked about where these three amigos wound up – one in jail, one died, and one still lives in Brooklyn. This photo was the first one that caught my attention due to the presence of innocence that had the immanency of destruction and pain.

To see more of Meisler’s photos, check out the show in Bushwick.

Meryl Meisler’s
A TALE OF TWO CITIES:
DISCO ERA BUSHWICK
exhibition and book launch
Exhibit open through September 10, 2014
Gallery Hours: Daily, 11am – 4am
BIZARRE PUBLISHING
8.5 x 11 inches
180 pages
ISBN: 978-0-9910141-1-8
$40.00 USA/CAN

Written by Andrew Kaminski

The post Is This Bushwick’s First Hipster? Meryl Meisler Photographed The Neighborhood Before It Was Cool appeared first on Artiholics.

New York – Thursday, June 5, 2014

The Kara Walker art installation at the old Brooklyn Domino Sugar Factory has been drawing a lot of art world (and Instagram world) attention these past few weeks. Wandering around in the massive empty shell of a building with a sugar coated sphinx and some small sculptural works, you may start to wonder what the giant warehouse looked like when its machinery was in place.

Paul Raphaelson photographed every inch of the Refinery, just before they began gutting the buildings. He was the last photographer allowed access to the site, and the only one given permission for a large-scale photo documentation project.

Rusting hulks doomed to be dismembered and sold off for metal scrap, victims of the modern age.  I love photography of forgotten and abandoned architecture, monolithic industrial devices shedding crackled paint, slouching under their own weight as years of neglect and the natural environment seep in and begin to take over.  The mammoth machines in these photos are gone, and soon so will be the entire building complex.  Enjoy the final photo tour of America’s crumbling industrial past.

He’s currently working on a book, in collaboration with architectural historian Matthew Postal, Pulitzer Prize-winning photography editor Stella Kramer, and several former workers from the refinery.  Until then, prints are available through his website   www.paulraphaelson.com

Photos by Paul Raphaelson

Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

The post After The Sugar & Before The Sphinx: The Domino Sugar Factory [Photos] appeared first on Artiholics.

I was having a conversation with a fellow artist at a gallery opening the other night in Williamsburg, and he was telling me that he wants his work to not only be beautiful, but also to have a practical function.  That conversation resonated with me when I stumbled upon this ingenious and elegantly designed and scientifically crafted work of art titled “The Drinkable Book” by Water Is Life.

Editorial design by Brian Gartside, chemically treated paper design by chemist, Dr. Theresa Dankovich.

Not only is it typographically beautiful, the color and layout stunning, the words within are a tool for learning, and the pages themselves…well…one book can keep a person in the third world alive for four years for a few pennies.  Watch and learn.

Now that’s what I call practical.

Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

The post Functional Literary Art That Could Save Millions of Lives…Literally appeared first on Artiholics.

Long Island City based art collective Flux Factory created an elaborate piece of art which runs all around their building.  Exquisite Contraption, a Rube Goldberg machine triggered by sound activation, dominoes through an elaborate series of events concluding with the timed taking of a group photo after their weekly house meeting.  It’s documented beautifully in this short video narrated by Jason Eppink, and shot by Aymann Ismail for AnimalNewYork.

Unfortunate for the Fluxers in residence, who in everyday life must have to tip-toe around that noise sensor or risk accidentally launching the entire chain of events into motion.  It’s not enough that some poor sucker has to reset all of the balls, cars, and soda bottles of liquid each week, god forbid someone in the house raises their voice or comes down with a loud cough – abrupt volume comes with a price.  But it is a small price to pay for art.

Alas, if they had Chunk from the Goonies around, they could program it to only be set off  when the halls echoed with the hauntingly singular siren song of the “Truffle Shuffle.”

Written by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

Flux Factory video via Aymann Ismail/ANIMALNewYork – Goonies video via Sblankman76

The post Flux Factory Built a Rube Goldberg Automated Group Photo Machine appeared first on Artiholics.

New York City – Monday, April 21, 2014

Under the Skin, starring Scarlett Johansson, immediately caught my attention with its entrancing, artistic trailer. I was drawn to Johansson’s gaze, and the comparison of director, Jonathan Glazer to Stanley Kubrick.

Artiholics gives the perspective of culture as told from an artist’s perspective, therefore I aim to do exactly that with this film that employed an artist’s eye to so many frames of the film [SPOILERS TO COME].

If you’re looking to see a film that doesn’t have a conventional Hollywood plot with predictable punchlines, but rather disturbing and at times uncomfortable dialogue between bizarre characters, ‘Under the Skin’ delivers that and leaves you feeling like you transported to some strange place that only an off kilter story and captivating cinematography can bring you.

The film offers a full spectrum of rich landscapes. A vast beach, rocks on the shore, violent waves, with a crying infant in its vastness and threatening tides. An urban environment, architecture surrounding busy crowds of civilians, with faces and interactions overlaid on top of one another in an orange luminescent glow suggesting the seemingly infinite layers of personalities and entanglement of connections immersed in a metropolis.

A forest dense with green towering pine trees bending and swaying in powerful gusts of wind that Johansson loses herself in as she is swallowed in bright scorching flames to contrast with the vegetation. The film concludes with the billowing clouds of grey smoke exuding into the abysmal sky Johansson’s extraterrestrial host descended from.

The chilling serenity of the natural settings is mirrored by the haunting scenes of the house Johansson lures her male victims in to harvest their skin and essence. The house is entered through a cellar door, and the unsuspecting and sexually hungry men are immersed in darkness with a stark light on them and Johansson, as she takes off her clothes. “Come to me,” she tells them seductively. They walk with a masculine strut, and as they inch closer, they start to submerge into a reflective black liquid.

One after another, men are lured into her deadly residence, and only after multiple men, does the camera reveal what occurs under the black surface the men have walked into.

In astonishment, the male character moves his limbs with a tinted blue glow on his skin. He spots another being submerged near him. The other has wrinkled flesh, as if he had instantly lost half his weight in a few hours. The two males, facing their surreal predicament, grasp hands, revealing the difference between the wrist of one and the deflated elastic appearance of the other. In a sudden and shocking moment, the wrinkled character is sharply sucked down into the depths of the abysmal darkness. The scene cuts to the bottom of a rectangular tunnel, flowing with sparkling blood pulled towards a vanishing point.

Although it is utterly horrifying, the liquid the characters are submerged within has a solitude and a silence that we can only barely reach in a deep meditation.

Under the Skin takes us through layers of human experience, and as we follow Johansson through cityscape, humans cape, forests, stillness, sexuality, fire, and snow, I considered how we travel from youth until death, searching for something or someone to fill our days, but the only quality that will take us away from our pain, lies beneath us, within us, under the skin.

Written by Andrew Kaminski

The post Layer by Layer ‘Under the Skin’ Artistically Takes Us… [SPOILERS] appeared first on Artiholics.

Haven’t made any plans for Easter Sunday? This Sunday, April 20th, if you live within walking distance of the big apple or plan on visiting, you have a unique opportunity to see New York City’s streets fill up with the adorable, beautiful, humorous, and ridiculous fabulousness that is our stylish fashionsta’s Easter bonnets and costumes.

New Yorkers become mobile works of art, walking along Fifth Avenue from 49th to 57th Streets. New York’s Easter Parade began in 1900 along 5th Avenue and has become an iconic tradition. Now people gather around St. Patrick’s Cathedral to hear mass and take pictures of the informal paraders.

Outside of the church, people let their freak flags fly.

This parade isn’t about floats, it’s more of a fun way to interact with others. People watching has always been a great treat in the fashion and art capital of the world.

Here, you get to pet someone’s dog dressed as a rabbit, run up to the purple man with flowers in his hair to snap a quick selfie, and take a group shot with smiling strangers dressed as bunnies.

Some hats are elegant…while some…

The Easter Parade and Easter Bonnet Festival runs from 10 am until 4 pm along Fifth Avenue from 49th to 57th Streets. The blocks are closed to cars, so it is safe for pedestrians, including children, and pets!

The Stations of the Cross, a group show, becomes the template for artists of various faith traditions to create 28 shrines in two churches, featuring personal relics of their experience on the journey toward death.

On Good Friday a procession will go from Greenpoint to St. Paul’s Church in Williamsburg at 8:30pm. During the procession, lighting of candles, the singing of hymns, readings, and a ritual of carrying a cross from Greenpoint to Williamsburg takes place. Pastor Ben, who’s father is a Professor of Spanish, grew up bilingual. He leads a bilingual, Spanish and English language congregation at St. Paul’s. A French chant of Reproaches is followed by time to meditate on the various stations of the cross. The leads to St. Paul’s, where participants can contemplate the performative reliquaries and meet the artists who created the pieces.

Artists include Aaron Soldner, Chantal Bruchez-Hall, Calla Wright, Andrew Jordan, Betty T. Kao, Baxton Alexander, Ben McKelahan, Raul Barquet, Amy Kienzle, Margaret Semrau, and Rochelle Voyles. St. Paul’s Visiting hours to reflect on the artwork and meditate are Wednesdays: 6-8pm, Sundays: 11am-2pm.

Pastor Ben stands before a photographic installation of an erotic butoh influenced piece, Performative reliquary. Based on Station 2. “Jesus is betrayed by Judas and arrested. Kiss of Betrayal, Wrongful Imprisonment” playing off of the pain, ecstasy, and will to give of the self and sacrifice for mankind. He is given a crown of thrones, a metallic fluid is poured onto him, covered in a glam illumination of gold, as a broken silver coin is traced along his glittering bloody ribs.

Pastor Ben contributed to Station 1, “Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, Sweating blood”, using mementos from his upbringing such as a Day of the Dead scull. Pastor Ben, who was a physics major at Reed College, is a warm contemporary priest. He leads an interdenominational art group that takes place in the church’s bell tower.

He decided to curate The Stations of the Cross as a way for people to become involved with a community minded church. Parables is a outreach project of his with the goal to build relationships in northern Brooklyn through sharing stories, making art, and re-imagining the symbols of tradition through the lens of our lives.

The Lutheran Church is an agnostic faith, the members of the art group range from Christian, Jewish, atheists, to agnostics. On Sunday, April 20th at 3:30pm there will be an Easter Potluck and Egg Hunt at Ben and Elana’s Apartment (they live in a church!). https://parablesnyc.org

Artist / Author Betty T. Kao

Have a great Easter, filled with Parades, Resurrection, Parables, and the cute bunnies reminding you, that Jesus died for your sins.

Written and Photographed by Betty T. Kao

The post Easter: Parades, Resurrection, Parables, Freakshow Fashion & Performance Art – New York City 2014 appeared first on Artiholics.

This afternoon in cities around the globe, people are gathering in town squares to beat the shit out of each other.  Luckily they are using weapons purchased at Bed Bath and Beyond.  That’s because it’s International Pillow Fight Day! If you want to join in on this fun interactive flash mob, check out the list of cities and see where one is happening near you.  Then just show up, and bring a pillow.

If you want to take the fun to the next level, and you have a decent Halloween costume still laying around, the theme for this year’s fight is Superheroes vs. Villians.  If you are in NYC, the pillow fight takes place at Washington Square Park at 3:00pm.

Rules: Please follow these guidelines to ensure a safe and fun pillow fight for everybody!

• + Soft, feather-free pillows only!
• + Swing lightly, many people will be swinging at once.
• + Do not swing at people without pillows or with cameras.
• + Remove glasses beforehand!
• + Deposit pillows in donation boxes or take them with you.
• + Pajamas welcome.

If you don’t want to join in the fray, you can come with a camera and take pictures.  It’s not often you get to see 5000 New Yorkers whomping on each other with pieces of fluffy furniture.  For every five pillow people there is one person who just shows up to take pictures, so you also never see this many cameras in one place.

A great venue for marketing your artblog for example.  If you have a funny, or important  message you want out there to the world, write it on your pillow.  It will be photographed hundreds of times, it will be posted to facebook hundreds of times, and it will be posted on flickr, used in magazines, and shared by social media, 100s  or 1000s of times.

And you have a good shot in getting interviewed.

I attended and photographed the second annual International Pillow Fight Day in NYC back in 2007.  I drew the ArtSucks logo on both sides of a pillowcase and sent my girlfriend Molly in to do battle.  She is only 5’2″ but packs a wallop.  That pillow fight day took place at Union Square Park, but I assume they have outgrown that park and have since moved to their current location, Washington Square Park (the one with the arch and the fountain in the Village).  Here are some never before published photos of the insanity:

Thanks to the writing on the pillow it was easy to keep tabs on her in the crowd, well, before all hell broke loose and the fight started and feathers started flying, then not so much.

It’s not a party till some pillows start to get damaged, then it starts to look like a truck transporting chickens exploded.

The match that lights the flame.

This is seriously fun, you will see more people smiling and laughing than you have in a while, and you will be smiling too, even when you are getting clubbed in the head.  It is pure childish fun, and something you don’t get to experience as an adult very often.

The guy wearing a shirt that reads “MEAN PEOPLE SUCK” getting clobbered by a pillow that says Art Sucks.

A pillow fight selfie 🙂

Someone brought a futon mattress to a pillow fight.

I hope you didn’t need to use those lungs.

This guy thought ahead.

This ginger haired girl had a chicken fighting technique of pillow fighting.

Having the height advantage is good, but also makes you a good target.

Guys can ride on shoulders as well, it just takes a little team to get them up there.

He soon becomes just another pillow in the crowd.

Best bet is to wear leather or at least something not wool or a material that feathers like to embed themselves into.  A lesson I learned that day.

As the fight winds down the park looks like a snow globe that has been freshly shaken, and the particles are starting to settle.  People are winded, and their arm muscles (muscles many of them aren’t used to using) are completely spent.

Written and photographed by Cojo “Art Juggernaut”

Many thanks to Molly Roberson for taking a pillow beating to get these shots. International Pillow Fight Day was created as a flash mob art project by Newmindspace.

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Over the past five years, I’ve been lucky to find myself in an artist community that sends art pieces through the postal service.  We call this yearly exchange, Special Delivery, which originated from the artist, Robert Szantyr.

Around the beginning of each year, Robert gathers a list of snail mail and email addresses to distribute to participants of the exchange. Seventeen of us will take on the project this year.  We each will create an artwork that exists in multiples, distribute the items, then receive about 17 other works of art.

Within this circle, I’m the one who blogs on various mailed items that leave lasting impressions or good questions.  Mail art can feel very intimate and much like a gift. Other times, the slow pace of the mailed items highlights a sense of rush in our other day-to-day forms of communication.

This blog series will cover new art pieces flying through the mail, while also celebrating a few fine works from past years.  Below, I’ve strung together words on a small sculpture sent in 2013.

In Jonathan Beilin’s piece above, we see two simple cubes (one about half the size of the other) occupying a slightly larger cube container. This is a  box made of acrylic sheets. One cube sits along the bottom of the box, adhered to a corner (on the diagonal), while the other cube sits on the lid, also mounted to the corner (on the diagonal).

You can open the plexiglass box and rotate the lid so that the two cubes form different angles. That allows you to adjust the inner negative space 4 times. The volume of empty space will never change, but as you turn the lid, you will find 4 different ways of looking at the same space.   You might roll it around, or look under the cube, or from above the lid.

This piece does what minimal sculpture would do if shrunk to fit the size of a petite four.  Think of the piece as minimalism in Fun Size. That scale allows Jon’s box to take on a few twists that of course wouldn’t happen with larger minimal works, which might possibly utilize some of the same transparent materials, shapes, and colors. I’m drawn to minimal works set in white cubes, but cubes that fit in the palm of your hand also impress the mind, delicately.

Through this piece of mail art, I was pleasantly reminded of Robert Mangold’s series of paintings involving geometric forms depicted within shaped canvases. See the similar elements in Three Squares within a Triangle.

Interestingly, of these paintings Daniel Marzona asks where the eye is drawn to most—to the items upon the canvas or to the form of the canvas itself (Essay on Robert Mangold)  Call that a battle between sculpture and painting.

Upon this blog, we should be reminded that there’s no fair representation of that piece’s object-nature. That’s also relevant for Jon’s piece of mail art. I can describe the twists, turns, and agreeable lightness of this cube, but there’s still some separation between hearing about the piece and actually being with it.

Brought together, I also begin to read a puzzle-like quality in both works.  When presented with these shape-within-shape features, the mind seems to desire some flipping, rotations, or re-working of those visuals.  Jon’s piece is made for those twists. For Mangold’s paintings, any readjustments for the shapes must be imagined.

Outside of actual art being sent, it’s interesting to examine the containers and wrappings that come with each arrival.  Some artists create mail art entirely around those materials and the process of delivery. Jon’s project did not enter those concerns, but I was still surprised by his container. He placed his fragile multiples on board simple business envelopes without extra cushioning or tape.

I’ve lost plenty of mail sent in more secure casings.  Regardless, I’m most hopeful for new ways to write about this form of communication. Whether it spotlights our methods of delivery or acts as a standalone art piece (without a conceptual connection to the postal service), I’m ready to document all of it. Let the stream of Special Delivery art trickle in.

Written by Audrey Tran

The post Special Delivery: Jonathan Beilin’s Acrylic Cubes appeared first on Artiholics.

One of Bushwick, Brooklyn’s homegrown original underground art spots (and the only one named after the Kurt Vonnegut novel) may shut down if they can’t pay their various bills. The bohemian Goodbye Blue Monday is facing eviction by the end of the month if they don’t raise enough funds.

You can help save this legendary hot spot where once underground Brooklyn bands like Vampire Weekend played their first shows.

Matthew Silver

On Thursday, March 20th, performance artist and emcee Matthew Silver starts the weekend with a variety show comedy fundraiser, featuring poetry, music, and many of the eclectic underground acts that make New York City great.

Josh Berkowitz

Cheap drinks, interesting installations, a crazy outdoor space, if you’ve never been here it’s worth checking out. Goodbye Blue Monday has been a cultural staple of the Bushwick community for over ten years. It has the homey vibe, strange but not pretentious feel of what you’d imagine the East Village was like during the beatnik era.

Where else can you party for a good cause and enjoy culture from the home of all kinds of artists, film makers, poets, musicians, and performers?

Crimson Kitty

All weekend long from Thursday March 20th to Sunday the 23rd, there will be cheap fundraisers for the venue. All shows are only a $5 donation at the door. All proceeds go toward saving the space.

• Thursday, March 20th: Comedy Open Mic 9-11pm hosted by performance artist and emcee Matthew Silver.
• Friday, the 21st: Rock Show featuring Kung Fu Crimewave, Abby Rock, Space Meow, more surprise artists.
• Saturday the 22nd: Undiscovered Countries all day theater series. And a rave fundraiser party at night.
• Sunday the 23rd: A rave party fundraiser .

You can donate at the event page, think of it as the pocket change tips you’d give to a busker.

Save Goodbye Blue Monday:

https://www.gofundme.com/7kb6vw
https://www.facebook.com/events/348973351901503/?ref=23

Goodbye Blue Monday
1087 Broadway
Brooklyn, New York 11221

Written and Photographed by Betty T. Kao
Header Artwork by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

The post Party Hard & Save ‘Goodbye Blue Monday’ From It’s Last Sad Farewell appeared first on Artiholics.

New York – Sunday, March 9th, 2014

Sunday between 8pm – 10pm I will be performing two 10 minute butoh inspired pieces at THE (UN)FAIR.

Belly full of artifacts by Betty T. Kao
A scientist and a monk reshuffle photos of world events, scientific papers, and diagrams to try to decipher the mystery, and understand what the events of the world are leading toward for it’s strangest sentient being, humankind.

The papers are constantly rearranged as a detective or pathologist would, to see how the data relates to each other, the info comes together to form different shapes, but mostly that of the human body. Performed by Betty T. Kao and Amanda Flowers

Unfair Performance Schedule:

Find us at the freight elevator on the 3rd floor.

THE (UN)FAIR (Free And Open to the Public
500 W 52nd St. New York, NY 10019

Artiholics is a Media Sponsor of The (UN)Fair

Photographs from Thurs 6th, Benefit party art show. Panoramic pictures by Lauretta Prevost

Written by Betty T. Kao

The post Belly Full Of Artifacts: Performance Art At The (UN)Fair Sunday appeared first on Artiholics.

New York – Friday, February 28, 2014

One of the people in these 25 different family portraits looks familiar.

In 2008 over the course of one year artist Christine Rogers posed for 25 family portraits in mall portrait studios.  Unlike your family portraits where you posed lovingly with your family, she is posed lovingly with strangers who looked like they could be related to her.  She met these people in various malls across America.  Check out the photos from her series “New Family,” and then read the interview, the shots are hilarious, and the story behind the project and the making of it just makes it that much better:

Artiholics: “How did you find these people to pose with you?”

Christine Rogers: “They are strangers in a mall who resembled me.  These are really documentary photos, probably the most documentary work I’ve ever done.”

Artiholics: “So what was your pitch to get strangers to pose with you?”

Artiholics: “How long did it take you to collect all 25?”

Christine Rogers: “I worked on it for a year.  Mostly at various malls in Boston and New Hampshire, some on Las Vegas.  I liked that I spent about a year.  I say it’s ongoing in theory,  we’ll see if i need to make more one day.”

Artiholics: “So each one you have a different outfit?  I love that it spans an entire year and you wear different clothes, it’s not like a fake casting call on one day.”

Christine Rogers: ” Yeah, that was tough I don’t really have a lot of clothes, I had to dig deep.”

Artiholics: “Why did you pick 25?”

Christine Rogers: “I was 25 when i started, it felt like a good number.”

Artiholics: “If you were born into 25 different families and got to the age of 25, this is how your life would have looked – captured in one frame, that makes sense.”

Christine Rogers: “Ha that’s a really nice way of looking at it.  I love those corporate picture studios too because they pose you based on your relationships.  A “husband and wife” have a certain pose, “friends” have a certain pose.  So we sort of instantly believe the relationships to be true because of this form they follow.”

Artiholics: “That is nuts, but psychologically it makes total sense.”

Christine Rogers: “Sometimes the photographer would have no idea and sort of not be able to figure out our relationship just quite, maybe we’re related maybe we’re married maybe he’s my dad? So she’d ask and i’d say, ‘I was thinking father.’ and the guy posing with me would say, ‘NEW WIFE!’ and she’d just look blankly and proceed totally confused.”

Artiholics: “Hah, that’s hilarious!”

Christine Rogers: “They’re very special to me. they’re really the only art object I’ve allowed to cross over into my real life and become sort of special to me on a personal level if that makes sense.  The personal backstory to the project is that I never met my dad, so ever since I was little if a guy looked at me for more than 10 seconds I’d start to wonder if it was my dad coming for me”

Artiholics: “Oh, this really takes the project to another level.”

Christine Rogers: “I made these thinking one of these men could be him.  It started with fathers, and then it evolved, because I would like a sister.  My parent’s divorced when I was 8-months-old and he was not allowed to see us.  I know I must have tons of half brothers and sisters out there that I’ve never met, so they could have been there too. ”

Artiholics: “This has just turned into an UPWorthy project, or something you’d see on Oprah.”

Christine Rogers: “There was always an electric charge with strangers for me because of this unknowing.  There was a wonder about them, magic, or what have you.  Part of it too I guess I wanted to send out a ripple into the universe something that would strike him, or hurt him somehow.”

Artiholics: “So maybe he will see this article and can get in touch with you.”

Christine Rogers: “It’s funny now to say…these are very childlike fantasies I think. Since the time I did this project in 2008 I’ve found out that my dad has died, so these are the closest I’m gonna get to reality.”

To view Christine Roger’s other photography work, including the follow-up project to this work in which she confronts the fact that her father is dead, check out her website https://www.cerogers.net

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