WOMS walking tour on Dead Hare Radio Hour

Get ready to hit the Mean Streets err... Main Street in Beacon, NY.

Dakin Roy at Beacon Cycles.

Steve Rossi, Jennifer Mackiewicz, Matt Kinney and Angelika Rinnhofer joined me for a walking tour and review of the Windows on Main St  for this week's episode of the Dead Hare Radio Hour. 

Now in it's seventh year, Windows on Main St. is a store front window based exhibit of artist installations.  This year's exhibit, organized by Melissa Tatge and Hannah Anderson features the work of a whopping 40+ artists. 
In the podcast, Our intrepid group strolls and chats about the Western half of the exhibit (stay tuned for the second half very soon).

This is an impromptu, rough and ready recording this week.  I sought to not edit the recording....something foreign for those episodes I've been responsible for producing, so it's a little cringe inducing to hear so much of me...and to hear so much of me stuttering through my thoughts.  If you listeners might feel the same, by way of an apology, I added a bonus treat to you dear listener, to make up for the lapse of neutral objectivity, we have embedded a special drinking game in this Episode.  Here is the one and only rule:  Each and every time you hear me utter the word 'Context'  take a swig of your favorite cold syrup.  You'll be wasted in no time.

I expect to conduct a second-half walk through of the exhibit next week....if you're interested in joining us, drop me a line.
If I have get the time in the next couple of weeks, I'll post some of my thoughts on this year's installment.
Some images (some of them bad) of some of the things we saw on our walk.

Teresa Marra at Bank Sq Coffee House.

Cristin Hughes at Mountain Tops Outfitters

Cayla Lockwood at Paper Presence.

Nicole Ganas

a bad photo of the sculpture at Global Home.

Myra Kooy at RiverWinds Gallery.

Myra Kooy at RiverWinds Gallery.

Allison Braun at Play.

Amy C. Wilson at Dream in Plastic.

Lynn Isaacson & Shannon Kahan at the Cup & Saucer Tea Room.

Lily Zand at School of Jellyfish.

James Westwater at School of Jellyfish.

Christopher Albert at Artisan Wine Shop

Beth Haber at Beacon Institute.

Chris Sanders at Zora Dora.

Erica Hauser's 2008 WOMS installation still up at Zora Dora.

Your neighbors, out in the world

Ok, let's start playing a bit of catch up here. 

 

Alison Moritsugu, Paradise Revisited installation view, from left to right:

Big Pineapple (oil on panel, koa frame),King Cane (oil on panel, koa frame)

Early Warning repeat (digitally printed wallpaper)

Alison Moritsugu's work is included in the group exhibit American Story at the Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan MI. which will remain on view through January 2010.

I missed posting about Steve Rossi's participation in the Lilliput exhibit at Seton Hall which ended on July 23.  Steve was represented in the exhibit in which no work was larger by 1.5" in dimension by two of his miniature chewing gum camouflage modules. A pdf version of the exhibition catalogue of the exhibition contains images of the work.

Shawn Trail and Jennifer Trail will be setting up house in Copenhagen for the coming year.  Shawn has received a Fulbright Scholarship with which he plans, according to a story in LoHud.com, " to design and develop an electro-acoustic, midi-equipped zylophone."

The working portion of my Summer vacation, had me assisting my own little piece of Germany, Angelika Rinnhofer, with the installation of her two person exhibit with Beatrice Haverich at the Museum Industrie Kultur in Nuernberg, Germany.  PDN Magazine sported one of Ms. Rinnhofer's images on the cover of July's "Fine Art" issue.  The cover story covers the role of non profit galleries in the world of photography and includes some words of wisdom from CPW director Arial Shanberg.

 

Above and below, Angelika's collaboration with her seamstress mother.

 

Peter Iannarelli is one of the artists selected to participate in the 2009 Mohawk-Hudson Regional Exhibition  by this year's juror Matthew Higgs.  The exhibit will remain on view at the University of Albany's University Art Museum through August 8.

I'm taking part in the 10x10x10 exhibit in Ellenville this year.  Instead of a singular installation in my given storefront location, I'm doing a series of consecutive projects through the run of the show which ends in October.  The first installation TORRENT or FORRENT which will be on view for another week or so includes For Rent signs created by Todd Sargood, Erica Hauser, Heather Sardanopoli, Franc Palaia.

If you're a Beacon area artist and you've got something going on anywhere, send me the info, and if I can, I'll share it with your neighbors.  Also if there's a postcard or other printed paraphernalia that accompanies any of your activities, please reserve a copy for the Beacon Art Postcard Archive.

Meet yer Maykr: Steve Rossi

I stopped into Steve Rossi's studio in December as he was readying the work now on exhibit in his exhibit In an Effort to Convalesce at Go North through Feb 8.
The works I saw that evening have been joined in the Go North exhibit by photographs of his Hexagon Based Islamic Mosaicsmade of cereal.

Early in 2008, Judy Sigunick of Ellenville wrote on her blog about a visit she had made to Steve's previous studio. In her post, Judy included a quote from Steve's project proposal which developed into the mobile sculpture pictured above called 'Entirely New Through and Through'.

I'm interested in creating a mobile sculpture out of slip-cast porcelain automobile hood ornaments… For me, using porcelain to recreate this object speaks to the vulnerabilities many feel, especially in this Hudson Valley area, where the manufacturing base has collapsed and people still living in this area are wondering what sort of economic systems will be coming in to replace the industry
base, if any.

To my mind, Steve's work resides in the areas where the problematic and political rub up against the average citizen's daily life. These areas, well worn as they are, exist as if invisible in plain view. That hood ornaments share the same enticing line as military aircraft is not surprising. That those jet fighter/hood ornaments carry the fine crackle glaze and porcelain fragility of grandma's tchochke allude to how we are marketed to in a way that prompts us to covet the virtues of some ordained nick knack, be it on a consumer or even geopolitical scale. Rossi's work is a spinning yin and yang of those things that give us comfort and those things that scare us, or at least concern us enough not to want to think about. Seeing one's Honey Nut Cheerios or Foot Loops arrayed in the form of Islamic mosaic patterns or desert camo imply more than any of us wants to deal with in the morning. They're subtle insinuations that result in an intrusion into our domestic tedium. It's a tedium, by the way, that I relish. I embrace the main stream marketing milieu I was raised in. But I also appreciate the ironic incongruities They'd rather we citizens not see. Affinities shared by the mundane and the ominous, are highlighted in the unions of image and material that are presented in Steve's work.


Above and below: 'And then at a certain point'
With no disrespect intended to either party, Steve Rossi is like the Andy Rooney of idea based artmaking. No, his eyebrows are not an overgrown white bushy snarl that looks like a couple of sea anemones trolling for unsuspecting prey. And he's also not a hunched over fellow who's back is so bent that his eyeballs must roll up into his forehead to a point that recalls an image from the Excorcist just to look straight ahead. In fact, Steve's posture seems quite good. Rather, I make the comparison because to my mind, Steve takes the common place, and in a normal, "Did you ever notice how....." kind of way, he offers a slightly divergent, but still entirely indigenous read on a given subject.
A good illustration of this idea is Steve's contribution to the Kamp Maykr Exhibit and Brunch held here at the Kamp Maykr Compound last May.

His untitled Easter-hued pairing of Adirondack chairs resting under the dappled shade of camo netting atop the brow of a rise that looks down onto the Spire Studios building left open the possibility that any brunch attendees who chose to sit in those chairs could just as easily train their cross hairs on the unsuspecting artists exiting the building as enjoy the garden and the view on a sunny afternoon.

Everything's coming up babies

My creative juices are directed toward transforming inanimate objects. Some others, it seems, have the gumption to divide their making tendencies in such a way that leaves room for a little genetic research and family planning.
Congratulations are in order for Kathy Feighery & Matt Hereford and Sue and Steve Rossi. Both couples saw the arrival - possibly on the same day - of baby day girls this week.