Nava Atlas at Abecedarian Gallery in Denver, April 3

The work of New Paltz artist, Nava Atlas is included in a three person traveling exhibit called In Retrospect: Artists' Books and Works on Paper.  The exhibit will open at the Abecedarian Gallery in Denver on April 1 and run through May 8 .  The opening reception will be held on April 3 from 6-8 pm.  Nava will be in Denver to give a presentation at the gallery 5 pm, prior to the opening reception.  The gallery is located at 910 Santa Fe

Nava will also have work included in The Edge of Art: New York State Artist Series at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse NY from Apr 17- July 11. 

Kork: Matthew Hereford, through April 30, 2010

As if unwilling to relent to the very notion of spring and vivacity it embodies, Mother Nature delayed by several days the installation of Matthew Hereford's installation at kork earlier this month.  "Highland Path" is testament to the coming of a new season. 
The work is a sort of visual onomonopoeia.  It is what it looks like.and it looks like something real.  And it is real; real components are playing themselves as if in a walk on roll in a sitcom in the formation of a fictionalized representation of a view of itself, of nature.
The scale is a little disorienting.  This is a God's POV and  the size relationships between elements and composition engender a frenetic blurring and refocusing of the eye as it works to discern what is in the fore and what is receding.  It's this constrained view finder onto a distant pastoral scene lends the entire kork board a sense of receding.  Even as the work itself is a dimensional and additive amalgam of collaged elements, the work as a whole functions as a negative; a removal of the constructed office interior to reveal that natural scene through or within the wall mounted portal.
 

The components of Highland Path were collected during the many walks Matthew takes in the Hudson Highlands. 
Maybe it's just me, but the more I look at this work, the more I get the sense  of time and space folding in on itself over and over again.

Matthew Hereford's work will remain on view through April 30, 2010.

Diary of an Art Hand....lete?

Here's breakdown of one person's date on the event of the inaugural Art Handling Olympics:

7:45 am - Wake up and check my look in the mirror - I likes what I see.

7:57 am - eat breakfast consisting of pineapple and yogurt, topped with some corn flakes (I pretend they're Wheaties)

8:21 am - I do my morning stretches, 'cause I'm playing old and I'm dealing with some back pain.

8:35 am - Consider shaving my entire body from the neck down. Might make up for time lost due to back pain, but decide I don't have time for another all day project. Settle on just shaving neck.

9:50 am - Meet up with teammate Sara to head to rendevouz with the rest of team rBad

10:51 am - A united rBad convoy is city bound

11:27 am - Potty break pit stop/detour in the wilds of Westchester County.

Descend here all ye with hopes of glory and fame.

12:42 pm - arrive at Ramiken Crucible, official AHO venue.

1:26 pm - rBad's team photo is taken

The Stripped Screws' striped stockings.

2:05 pm - rBad team knuckle tattooing

2:53 pm - Opening remarks and layout of events from AHO organizer Shane Caffrey

The Nitro Lords!

The all LADEES team, Screw 'Em

The Well Hungs Team.  I only just now got the connection between the team's name and the logo of the horse...It takes me a while sometimes.

AHO official blogger, Paddy Johnson of Art Fag City tweeting the event.

3:15-3:20ish pm - The qualifying event "Special Delivery" begins.  rBad is in the second 6 team heat.

 rBad in the home stretch.  Even though all looks copacetic, at least one of us at the very moment is convinced he is dying, his thighs feel like bundles of stretched out bra straps and he wouldn't be surprised if blood started spurting from his eyes.

 A brave bystander rescues the Quick and Dirty team from a surprise attack by another bystander

 This image and the previous one, courtesy of Rachel von Wettberg

3:41 pm - O god, o god,  god, o god o god, o god, o god.

3:52 pm -  The Well Hungs and the Kings of Cleats participate in the first heat of "Hang This."  I've regained my breath from the grinding ordeal of the Special Delivery.

4:20 pm - The Quick and Dirty and Dept 13 are in heat two of Hang This. And I insured that the dumplings and whiskey I consumed in Special Delivery would stay down by burying them under a supressive layer of cheese balls.

4:45 pm - rBad is hungry so we pack up gear, and head into Chinatown for dinner.

6:12-6:17 pm - Watching the woman from the restaurant trying to rustle an eel out of the tank.  It's a real contest of wits.

6:35 pm - Walking back from the restaurant, we pass the gallery, considering whether we should rejoin the gathered crowd.  Instead we head to the cars for our long drive home, champions, not of of international art handling primacy, but of our own.......whatever.   Really, the Art Handling Olympics is like the Special Olympics in that everyone is a winner.....any other similarities between the two contests, is for the viewer to decide.

I'm not sure what this posting is for.  I just liked the way it fluttered in the breeze.

In the end, the Kings of Cleats take the day with the Well Hungs and the Quick and Dirty also making to the medals platform.

Here's a video piece on the event by the NY Daily News:

For more info and better pics of the event, check out:
The NY Times article and slide show
Art Fag City's exaustive coverage, including  photos by Marina Galperina.

My City Was Gone|What is ever lost? Mapping Place and "Space with Freespace

Matthew Slaats is not a fellow who is ever wanting for a way to fill his down time.  He concluded the Hyde Park Visual History Project last October with a long awaited interactive projection at the Hyde Park Drive In and now he's fully involved in the Midddle Main Revitalization effort, working to leverage artistic activity to invigorate the cultural and economic life in a stretch of Poughkeepsie's Main St.

Matthew's work is interactive and participatory.  His impulse is toward community building and he engenders that in activities which are engineered to pool the knowledge, experience and creativity of a given community.

His latest project is an online and real world project called Freespace.  The website of Freespace seeks to generate a network of sites of of significance - of personally held significance as opposed to significance on an institutional or national scale.  The nature of the project is open ended and will ultimately be determined by the aggregated character of submissions by the public, and the site will map those locations and experiences and individual's experiences tied to that location.   As stated in the website's About section, the impetus for the project arose out of a visit to the Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park as a way to spur a sort of National Park System that reflects the American experience of the common individual.  The project is a cataloging of the relationships built between people and place.
When Matthew sent the link and an invitation to participate I was reading James Fallows' article How America Can Rise Again in The January 2010 issue of The Atlantic and the pairing felt particularly synchronous.
In the article, Fallows questions several individuals on the state of the nation's well being and tracks the attitude that's been ingrained in the American psyche since its infancy that the society's high point has passed and the downhill slide is underway.  Fallows' inquiry takes stock our current state and indexing the values of today's society against the real and perceived visions of our history.  Freespace is a similar activity, codifying the involuntary habit we all have of staking claims on our surroundings based on our experiences and emotions.  Freespace charts this new territory in land we all already to navigate it with new insight;
it's just one particular approach on remaking the concept of the commons.  Stake a claim, then open it up for your neighbors to enjoy and share.

The Pressure is mounting; more details on the Art Handling Olympics

Paddy Johnson from Art Fag City has an interview with Art Handling Olympics founder Shane Caffrey reveals valuable details of this Sunday's competition, including, the menu that is part of the qualifying event: dumplings and shots of whiskey.
The members of rBad are getting psyched with every passing moment.

Link updates, Artist Talks at the Hessel Museum

I've made a couple additions/updates to the artist links in the right sidebar:  Greg Slick has a new website catelogueing his various works.  Robert Brush's new website is listed in the sidebar.

I've also added a link to Ron English's website.  Juxtapoz.com recently did a two part profile on the artist who moved to Beacon a little over a year ago.

Blogger now has the option of creating pages.  You can see above that I've created two pages for area art venue/resource links, and for web resources.  If you have a link to suggest, shoot me an email or make a comment here,and I'll work on getting it added.

Finally, artist Nicole Eisenman will be giving a talk tomorrow, March 18 at the Hessel Museum as part of the current exhibition project Living Under the Same Roof, curated by the CCS Bard curator in residence Ana Paula Cohen.  The series of talks of which the Eisenman talk is a part is co organized by Judy Pfaff for her course "Art in conversation."  Martha Rosler kicked off the series on March 11.

Here are the upcoming talks:
April 8 - Stephen Shore
April 15 - Matt Mullican
April 22 - Robert Longo
April 29 - Judy Pfaff

All talks are scheduled at 2pm.

Get It On!: The Art Handling Olympics @ Ramiken Crucible, March 21 3pm

Periodically, I condition my wallet by working as an art handler at a couple of esteemed art institutions in the area, one of them being the CCS Bard|Hessel Museum. The CCS|Hessel installation crew is fielding a team  (rBad) for the first ever Art Handling Olympics which is coming up on Sunday, March 21 at Ramiken Crucible down in the Lower East Side of Manhattan.  The competition kicks off at 3pm with the Official Opening Ceremony.
rBad, along with r support crew will join some fourteen other 4 person teams will be vying for glory via a handful of absurd feats of skill and endurance indigenous to the often absurd world of art handling and installation.
Think of it as MXC with booze, box cutters and measuring tape.

If you're around the LES that day come show your colors and cheer us on to either said glory, orto immediate and inglorious indignation. 

Oh, It's on, alright.  It's on!