Eye Candy Friday: Stop and Go Traffic

I spent three full days in the car last week, running out to Missouri and Arkansas for kicks and family visits last week.  I loathe leaving my home for any period of time - short or long, but once I'm in the car on such a trip (at least, once I get through Pennsylvania, ugh) I'm feeling in the zone.  I'm not driving in a car, I'm really piloting my mind. 
I don't have have a particular fascination for car culture, although I do have a car...and I do have a soft spot for some signifiers of car culture....strip malls, truck stops and the like.

But your ECF selection for today revels in a car culture.  A very small car culture, amplified in the way that only an artist like Chris Burden, unfettered by the limits of obscurity and lack of funds, can do.  The artist's Metroolis II, from 2008 or 2009, I think, is a real adolescent's Hot Wheel's fantasy come true.

Eye Candy Friday: Smooth Move

While digging around the internet for videos of Cheryl Donegan's works for the ECF of two weeks ago, I came across this little gem. A mash-up of a Smith's song and some tight moves from back in a day when life seemed just a little sexier. It seems this is a video created and uploaded by Donegan herself and it's one of less than a handful uploaded to her seedagain channel on youtube from a year ago. Tho' this vid is relies on found material, the other works collage footage that she captured herself. They feel intimate and exploratory and on the scale of the home-video kind. That there are very few views of these works registered on the view counters, and the texture of the videos themselves make them feel like even more of a discovery. Check 'em out.

Eye Candy Friday: Burning Down the House

The Electric Projected event was finally able to happen last Saturday, Oct 1, after being rained out on it's previously scheduled date in August.  I found my self in an extended studio moment while the whole thing was happening so I missed it.  By all accounts I received, it was pretty cool.

This video uploaded to youtube by OjosBrillantes
seems to be a pretty complete document of the animations projected on to the 1 Main building.




 I was impressed by whatever calculations is must have taken to plot out the location of the individual painted banners and have that information conveyed onto the compositions of the animations.
There are several other videos on youtube and vimeo showing various viewpoints of the event that night as well as some of the individual animations. 

Thinking about Electric Projected recalled for me the video for the Talking Heads song Burning Down the House... which I'd embed here if I could, but I cant so I'm not...

This weekend: Open Studios in Cold Spring, NY

Jeri Coppola's open studio at Spire Studios in Beacon, NY last weekend

Artists in and around Cold Spring, NY are opening their studios this weekend.  Check out the list of participating artists/venues and get all the pertinent information at coldspringarts.com. 

Studios are scheduled to be open from 12-6p today and tomorrow.  As part of the events, Collaborative Concepts' Saunder's Farm Project is holding its mid run reception from 1-6 and Concrete Gallery is holding an opening reception for new works by Susan English from 5-8pm.

In past years, many of these artists would have participated in the Beacon Open Studios (held this past weekend) as several one point or another did work in Beacon.  That there are such a number to constitute a sizable presentation in Cold Spring this weekend speaks, in part, to the mini diaspora that occurred recently when the old Beacon High School was sold, fostering uncertainty about the viability/affordability of artists maintaining their studios there. 

Last week's episode of the Dead Hare Radio Hour included a little bit of audio from the Beacon Open Studios.

On the subject of studios, Bad At Sports Episode #311 features (in the second half of the show) an interview with Joe Lanasa who runs the Fulton Street Collective.  Fulton Street Collective is a studio and gallery building in Chicago that houses artist studios leased by individual artists but it also features a membership level, shared studio program.  This "standard" membership of $125 per month entitles the member a small storage area and use of shared studio spaces along with the use of available tables, easels, etc. This shared workspace concept is similar to that enabled at Beahive in Beacon and Kingston, but scaled up a bit for the visual artist.
Something to think about.  And something that I think would be very workable and beneficial in for artists in the Newburgh/ Beacon area.