My “Little Queen of Nothing” by ~Charlette Hove

Walking into a small, dark gallery like the Project Space, located within Crane Arts, one might expect to be confronted with the unknown – the bends or flows of traditional painting or sculpture – something that puts one at an arms length from the thoughts of the artist. This was not the case.

The walls and floors here were covered with the familiar. Objects rendered from a genre scene of everyday life and transfigured into a conglomeration of thought or memory. Very personal, yet universal in thinking. I believe that one could associate the objects and drawings used in this collection with very specific memories and moments from their lives.

Rebecca Tennenbaum, David Meekins and Arielle Passenti made their own little pieces of everyday life speak to a larger audience, even better with one another’s art. I like the assemblage of everyday objects or recreation of thing’s known in visions of ways unexpected.

Walking first left and then clockwise around the room, there was a grouping of red, yellow, blue, and green objects, including a ping-pong paddle, blurting out their thoughts from the wall; there was a gray, taxidermed something or other purring in conjunction with some rotary system on the floor;there were some semi-origami and green meshed collages with string that made you feel, for some reason, like you were at a childhood lake-house; and there was a bright yellow painting that resembled a video camera shooting a sheath of Mylar containing a dictated black squiggle.

Continuing on, these pieces felt both simultaneously synthetic and organic; there was something to be said about a connection between the natural and the mechanical.

As if one’s mind snapped a photo of a scene somewhere out in the woods and also happened to have seen a construction sight and crane earlier in the day, and married the two.

Or a long day at school with pens and pencils mixed with a Christmas setting or a dinner out later in the evening.

Specifically, there were a few pieces that struck me personally: there was a strong metal sheet hanging as if it were ripped from a large mechanism and glued to the wall, which it matched in color.

From the metal hung a red fruit sack, containing papers and plastics. In the sack, there was a drawing of a terrified or angry chef stirring soup. These objects in cohesion with themselves served up no answer, but allowed me to draw my own connections. The metal sheet becomes a meat cleaver, and the Christmas wrappings made me feel as if this job were someone’s present to their customers. An imprisoned worker.

There was a red abstract painting in the shape of a diamond. Within, were pale yellow and black markings, which draped above yet another Mylar sheath swathed in red paint. Another imprisoned little being.

Further on, a collage of red and pink torn paper, some 70s type pad with perforated holes and a duck’s foot in a blue cradle. Another caught victim of the workplace.

I wonder if these familiar items, often found in either work or play, were meant to hearken images of the daily routine, and break my mind’s association of something stuck.

They feel oddly warm, yet also mundane. The idea that maybe I am presently somewhere, yet am envisioning something more.

I furthermore liked the humor these pieces held. Most left a little something to snicker at, or an unnoticed snippet that caught me later in the evening. A tender jest from the artist that made the everyday a little more tolerable.  

Follow Charlette @ www.charlettehove.com & www.fakingfashion.com

The ~curARTorial LAB joins efforts w/Crane Arts @ the Project Space

On July 6 The ~curARTorial LAB opened its doors to the public to inaugurate the Summer of Love 2012 Exhibition series by showcasing Rebecca Tennenbaum’s latest work in Fixed Necessities.

Local talents Tantrum Tonic and Matt Cue, together w/New York-based DJ and designer Masha Lunara a.k.a. Siberia, provided an afternoon filled with transcendental musical vibes.

Little did we know we would soon have a “new and definitely improved” gallery space made available to us before the season ended! By invitation of the ever generous Crane Arts team across the street, we now have full access to the Project Space @ 1400 N. American Street for our curatorial endeavors.

The Project Space, formerly referred to as “the Media Room”, is located just around the corner of the Ice Box, Crane Arts 125,000 cubic feet monumental exhibition space.

Wasting no time, we staged Kate Perkins‘ Girls On Film exhibition of oil paintings, including her excellent Superbass 2012 GIF based on images from Nicky Minaj’s Super Bass video, and received Mireille Guy and Roberta Fallon of theartblog.org on Friday, August 3 during our second First Friday reception of the season. A review of the exhibition has recently been published as the result of that visit.

Please take note that all upcoming exhibitions will now take place at Crane Arts main building, located on 1400 North American Street, Philadelphia, PA 19122.

The ~curARTorial LAB joins up with the Crane Arts Project Space. All we can say is THREE LOUD CHEERS TO THAT!

~@/AR-L

Girl On Film: An Interview with Kate Perkins

AR-L: Tell us something about your upcoming exhibition titled Girls On Film, which opens in Philadelphia on August 3, 2012 (First Friday) from 5-9pm @ The ~curARTorial LAB in Crane Arts Old School (1417-25 N. Second St., Studio 3A).

Japan, oil on panel, 30″ x 48″ (76 cm x 123 cm), 2011

KP: The paintings Japan and Girl on the Phone come from my senior thesis show, Gaijin Scheherazade, which used pop images of young women from a variety of cultural backgrounds, in the context of film stills and portraits, in order to explore the female construction of identity in an internet-driven world.

Girl on the Phone, oil on panel, 30″ x 48″ (76 cm x 123 cm), 2011

The new paintings are a continuation of these ideas. In the Superbass series, I tried to deconstruct and reconstruct something that means a lot in internet girl culture, not because of the content of the image, but because of the way it is manipulated and shared online.

The original imagery comes from rapper Nicki Minaj’s music video for her song “Super Bass”. The video was screenshotted and reconstructed in a moving GIF by an anonymous tumblr user, who then posted it on that blogging site and let it disseminate by having hundreds of people share it by re-blogging. I took the GIF, separated it back into its still images, and chose four of them to bring into the physical realm of paint.

AR-L: What about your process for selecting images and creating the eventual “painted montage”?

KP: Images that existed in the physical world (in the person of Nicki Minaj), were transferred to digital film, then transferred and assembled onto still images, which then became a moving GIF image. I then reorganized them into still images, which were brought back into the physical realm in the form of paintings, which were then transferred to photographic images again, and into a moving GIF again.

The whole thing is a great exercise in the interactive nature of technology – how we can use one artist’s expression these days and have it be endlessly share-able and manipulate-able. It creates a kind of community of people who are in varying degrees active participants in pop culture and art, and also makes this huge, expansive, organic piece of art that is just the journey taken by one image or a set of images throughout the internet.

AR-L: How would you define the relationship between your love of moving images and your approach to painting?

KP: Right now I’m really interested in the idea of series, and the way viewers can be participatory either through technology (scanning the QR code to see the GIF), or just with their eyes, following the series to see the subtle movement.

In my newest works I am experimenting with making subtle visual shifts in each of the paintings in a series, not just by the placement of elements but by tweaking colors and brushstrokes in ways that are almost indistinguishable when the series is put together in a GIF but still make each piece unique.

Ar-L: You have referred to your role as a painter as being similar to that of a storyteller. Do you think this implied notion of “the narrative” is the driving force behind the images you select to paint, or is the story being told via an aesthetic stylization (i.e. through the textures, brushstrokes, etc.)?

KP: I hope that it is both. The narrative of the Superbass series is, in my mind, a kind of upfront femininity and sexuality that is more about being assertive than being objectified. I try to convey this through the confrontational body language of the figures, the “eye contact” and expressive faces, but I also try to convey it in the over-saturated color, the vibrant hues, the thick lusciousness of the paintstrokes of the pink hair, and the layers of metallic paint and gold glitter on the surface. I think that the overstated glitter and shine, the indulgent colors, all combine with the raw roughness of the underlying wood panel (which has a pronounced grain and cracks) to make an in-your-face statement material-wise as well as image-wise.

AR-L: What are your current plans now that you have graduated from The University of the Arts (Class ’12)?

KP: Staying in Philadelphia this year (I’m a resident artist at Glodilocks Gallery until October), to be followed by grad school in Chicago or L.A. next year for Art History.

AR-L: What is your favorite piece in this exhibition and why?

KP:My favorite piece is actually the moving GIF. It is wonderful to see your paintings actually come to life in a way, and to see the brushstrokes moving of their own accord. It’s kind of a fantasy come true.

Fixed Necessities: New Work by Rebecca Tennenbaum @ Crane Arts Old School

Tonight we host the Second Thursday reception for Rebecca Tennenbaum‘s exhibition of new work titled Fixed Necessities @ Crane Arts Old School in Kensington, Philadelphia.

~Join musical guests Tantrum Tonic & Matt Cue after 6pm, as they bring sultry grooves during a live set specially fitting this perfect weather summer evening~

This exhibition is part of the International Curatorial Exchange (ICE) Series @ the Malkovich (Studio 3A) in Crane Arts Old School – 1417-25 N. 2nd Street, Philadelphia PA 19122

*For private appointments to schedule a visit to The ~curARTorial LAB call or text (267) 304-7402

Two views of Fixed Necessities: New Work by Rebecca Tennenbaum, July 2012 @ The ~curARTorial LAB

Photography by ~@rg designs 2012

Interview with visual artist Rebecca Tennenbaum

AR-L: Would you describe your work as intentional or processual ? Is there a specific method to your most recent work, that is, do you predetermine the pattern it results in, or is it spontaneous parsimony that results in your wall installations?

RT: Each painting begins with very specific intentions, as they are each reflections of a once happened experience. As I go through each day, certain alignments of sensory experiences occur and are stored. I try to break down the experience by its separate elements, minimizing them into their basic forms and presence of color. Once I have those ideas solidified, the process of applying the paint straight from the can engages time directly, and I lose the ability to manipulate the paint as it releases itself.

The final step in assembling a painting comes when the layers of mylar are each dry. This alignment is undetermined beforehand, and I regain control of the situation by playing choreographer to their revealing. The most exciting part of making the pieces rest in this step, as the feeling of attaining the “right” alignment secures the re-created sensation as a physical fact of the world. The feeling I experience when my mind is triggered to store an experience is brought back in the acknowledgement of the correct alignment of layers making the painting, and I feel as though I have marked time through their creation.

AR-L: What can you tell us about your latest work @Goldilocks in Philadelphia, PA?

RT: My latest works at Goldilocks are new in the sense that I’ve been investigating more of the directional mapping of a situation as part of the separated components. For example, a painting that describes the sensation of being in the shower and having water run over my ears; the gravity of standing and having the water pour vertically down would be as equally important as the elements of the water, skin and plugging of the separately. This results in harsher angles and pulls in the marks that were not as prominent before.

AR-L: Where and how do you source your materials?

RT: My materials are mostly plastic and fabric. The plastic, latex paint and mylar, are store bought materials which aid in the artificiality of the recreated sensation. The fabric, however, grounds the painting in the real, as I use materials we encounter in both our clothing and our environments everyday. My primary fabrics are cotton and polyester, usually found but sometimes purchased. The fabric grounds the viewer in the familiarity of the senses and as well as providing even color fields for base layers.

AR-L: Anything you want preview with us know about the work you’ll be exhibiting at the LAb @ the Malkovich in Crane Arts Old School after July 2012?

RT: I plan on continuing with the investigation of “directional pulls” for sometime, and seeing where I go once I’ve further discovered them. The only way to see where to go from there is to keep making, so we’ll have to see!

AR-L: Three major influences in your work are…

 RT: The three deepest influences in my work would be Helen Frankenthaler, David Reed and Joan Miro. Miro’s “Blue II” from 1961 is one of my favorite paintings I look at everyday. Frankenthaler’s “Canyon” as well as her works on paper continues to inspire me regularly, as well.

Fixed Necessities: New Works by Rebecca Tennenbaum ~ Summer of Love 2012 Exhibition Series

The ~curARTorial LAB, a collaborative art space founded and directed by independent curator Anabelle Rodriguez-Lawton, is poised to launch its Summer of Love 2012 Exhibition Series with:

Fixed Necessities: New Work by Rebecca Tennenbaum

AR-L: Rebecca Tennenbaum’s work came to my attention as an unexpected and delightful surprise during a couple of studio visits to fellow painter and current studio mate Kate Perkins. Seen together, the artists’ emerging work made an impact so crisp, clear, and direct, that I offered consecutive B.A.O. (By Appointment Only) exhibitions, with public receptions during First Friday, and Second Thursday during the months of July and August. Both shows are being staged in a room aptly named The Malkovich.

The Malkovich  is an hypnotic, meditative A-frame attic room atop a 19th Century Catholic School in the West Kensington neighborhood in Philadelphia, PA. Notwithstanding recent massive renovations conducted by Crane Arts, LLC, the school has remained alive in more than spirit: classroom partitions remain, original blackboards run continuously along most classroom walls, many preserved windows let in enormous amounts of natural light, all the way down to the wooden lockers in the middle of one of the halls, and a pigeon cooped room labeled “Nurse’s Office” with original wooden cabinets. More than once I have heard visitors say “this place is definitely haunted”, and if so they must be beneficent spirits ~ it’s been nothing but good times in here.

The opportunity to launch the Summer of Love 2012 Exhibition Series with Rebecca Tannenbaum’s new work in the ~LAB @ the Malkovich is simply ideal.

Anchor – latex, mylar, cotton on wood panel – 2012

Tennenbaum’s work exhibits surprising combinations of more or less malleable materials into three dimensional wall-bound installations. Effectively functioning as manipulated surface sculptures, these complex paintings are acted upon by gravity in controlled, graceful ways. The result is often inventive, always daring, and ever fresh, while remaining an elegant solution to the play in tension portrayed in each of the delicate yet weighty pieces.

The Protective Welcome – latex, mylar, spandex on wood panel – 2012

There is more than surface treatment here. Often ambiguous combinations are pregnant with significance that ought to be carefully considered, then admired. You don’t want to miss this one…

Launch – latex, mylar and cotton on wood panel – 2012

A copy of Tennenbaum’s senior thesis, recently defended at The University of the Arts, reflects simple and sublime, humble revelation. I include it in its entirety as part of this ongoing post about her new work for The ~curARTorial LAB Summer of Love 2012 Exhibition Series. An exclusive interview with the artist will soon follow.

~@/Anabelle Rodriguez-Lawton ~ 6.19.12

The Tumbling Dice

Rebecca Tennenbaum

“You’ve got to roll me, and call me the tumbling dice.” – The Rolling Stones

I traveled once in Morocco accompanied by my mother, father, and sister. I was 9 years old and had been fighting a losing battle with head lice. I thought I’d ended the unfortunate experience in the States, but found they had returned somewhere between Fez and Marrakesh. One humid evening, in a large-windowed hotel room in Rabat, I began the familiar process of spreading the thick foam through my hair and waiting for the creatures, inconspicuous as dust, to appear and be combed through to their death. The lice began to emerge just as the day’s fifth and final Islamic call to prayer began to sound through the city. I stared at myself in the mirror, allowing the lice to come forward while the prayer lulled the day to an end.

I felt the burn of the treatment radiate from my scalp while the sounds of prayer caused the air to have a thicker density. I was caught somewhere between the two realities of the awakening lice and the hushing of the city, the leader and destroyer of one civilization and the silent outsider of another. This unexpected duality caused me to undergo a new surrounding, while physically I was in the same spot I had been minutes before. This is my earliest memory of the alignment of sensory experiences removing me from familiarity and placing me into a state of heightened awareness.

Reflection on this memory raises the desire to achieve the same removal again, as it remains the only true uncanny experience I’ve ever had. The nature of why it occurred is rooted in many elements (being a child, being in a foreign country, etc.) but it holds place in my adult life as a reminder of the capabilities I carry within myself for transcendence into the unknown. I aim to share a fraction of the realities of life through my painting practice, giving viewers an opportunity to associate and reflect on their own lives through the fragments of my own.

The core fact of existence rests in the consistency of change, the exploration of the physical environment, and the growth of the mind. Through awareness of sensory experience and the solidification of experience into paintings, I track my own participation as an individual, marking the moments as they are encountered, acknowledged, and left to the past.

I believe that beauty resides in the impermanence of my own sensation and should be acknowledged as it reveals itself. The revealing comes naturally when elemental forces of physical matter align with deliberate action and choice of the individual. I am merely a spectator of the passage of time, facing the fundamental duality of conscious existence; the external environment I am left to physically explore versus the internal monologue, infinite through its malleability.

My paintings confront this duality, existing as unified alignments of sensations specific to remembered experiences. Layers of latex paint on acetate grounds metaphorically serve as the various elements of the remembered experience, both mental and physical. These elements of time are trapped through the hand-made marks and color choices, allowing each painting to contain the activity of a remembered experience and embraced through its impermanence.

Perception is the link of finding beauty by internalizing our surroundings, allowing personal associations to be determined. Faber Birren, a renowned 20th century color theorist, stated that color comes before form and the two cannot be separated; yet color is more immanent, elemental and primitive than form in perception. Response to form seems to arouse mental (judgment of shape) or physical (sensation of touch) processes, while reactions to color are more impulsive and emotional. (Birren pg 57)

It is through the registration of color, form, and sensory experience that I am able to channel my awareness of being into a daily studio undertaking. Psychological meeting of color with conscious experience allows the colors to signify and be associated with as they are encountered in the world. Color is unavoidable to perceiving as perception is essential and endless to time, and I can accept the passing of time by acknowledging sensations as they occur and coincide with the activity of the mind.

The Weber-Fechner law of the Gestalt theory of Psychology states that the relationship between the external physical facts of environment are linked with human consciousness. The intensity of a sensation increases as the logarithm of the strength of the stimulus increases, causing the correlation between physical stimuli with physical and mental experience.

Nature loses face as the precursor of beauty. More importantly, if there is beauty in nature, it exists pre-born within the consciousness of man. “There is no form apart from the subject who forms it. Man’s sense of beauty is not wholly a matter of inspiration or cultural training, natural law or mathematics. If he happens to see beauty in certain arrangements, this is not because there are any hard and fast principles in nature aside from human consciousness, but that perception itself, the eye-brain of man, holds responsibility for everything. If there are any eternal elements of harmony, they owe their origin to human consciousness.” (Birren pg 14)

According to this theory, the impulse I experience in remembering certain moments over others are results of my accumulated memories of surroundings and sensations. Through these stored associations, I am able to find significance in particular arrangements that trigger my mind to isolate, capture and secure the current situation without questioning the source of the impulse. This process inevitably links the present with the past, allowing the chains of associations to intertwine and thicken with the passing of time.

In the following passage, painter Lynda Benglis describes the nature of marking time through material, and the grasp on time that she achieves through the act of pouring paint directly on the ground. The simultaneous relationship between thought and action resonates with my process of mark making while engaging in the remembrance of the chosen experience:

“I think Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis were really playing with this idea of the accident…But it’s really a marriage between the conscious and the unconscious that occupies the creative mind…I saw visions of clouds yesterday; you couldn’t imagine how complicated they were on all horizons, the kinds of images of the clouds are infinite, I think we deal with an infinite imagination. The artist is always dealing with the bounds of the material and the unbounded nature of the universe and of the imagination, and trying to mark the time.” (Frieze)

Lynda Benglis’ “Odalisque” paintings pay homage to second generation Abstract Expressionist Helen Frankenthaler’s stain paintings, where the stain is the event that signifies the moment. For Frankenthaler, the canvas was the arena in which the activity was created and contained and where the events played out. I echo these ideas of “action” painting by using paint to mark the passing of time, breaking down my experience into color fields controlled through movement. Using the bottom of the can as my primary tool instead of a brush activates time directly in the seconds that the liquid is released, allowing gravity to dictate the production with specific hand movements.

The plasticity of my materials functions in two fundamental ways; it confirms the artificiality of a recreated sensation and places my work in the contemporary world. Although my processes run parallel to the predecessors of Abstract Expressionism, my material choices in plastic and mass-production confirm that my paintings could only be created in our modern day.

The activity of each color remains isolated and suspended in its field of acetate. The slightest boundary between the work and the world, it is the thinnest amount of protection holding the entire weight of the mark. I reveal a false sense of a private connection with the piece by showing the immaculate surface to the viewer, bound by the outermost layer of acetate without exposing the physical evidence of the dried paint.

 The fixed color arrangements I encounter during waking moments are internalized and called upon when reflecting on remembered sensations of experience, linking objects and artifacts through association. Therefore, the colors individualized on the acetate are able to mimic moments of physical life. Colors live as their own atmospheres, never to be reproduced identically.

These components collectively rest on an even color field; a shape associated with an element of the remembered event or perceived sense. The fields are visual triggers, referencing the physical world in which they are derived from while providing solid planes that hold the product. Sincere in their accountability, the grounds are the base planes of the external.

It is through the alignment of the colors that the reconstruction of a precise setting and sensation is possible, even if the colors can be linked to other sensations. In this way, the recreation of a particular moment is also the recreation of previously existing moments, both verifying and counteracting the meaning of any given situation.

The paintings are made as exterior expressions of interior states. Once created, they become facts of the physical world. The viewer experiences and interprets the paintings as a part of the exterior, only to internalize them. Through the internalization, the viewer’s own associations are triggered, the varying interpretations of different viewers allowing for new chains of association to be created. Once the paintings remain to be seen, my process is transferred from myself to others, filtering experiences of color through change and time.

A day at the beach; I make the choice to submerge myself underwater, releasing the familiar connection to gravity and disappearing into a greater mass than myself. Yet through my exiting the water the land reaccepts me as my own mass, roaming the territory as I choose. The re-emergence onto the sand allows my skin to absorb the sun, aware of the slow progression into dryness as my body is awakened. If I close my eyes and turn towards the sun, the measureless plane of the sky disappears and my eyelids instantly become a more intimate field of red, a sensation providing a womb-like comfort. The field shifts when the flatness is obstructed by shade that is bound to appear, as the Earth never fails to rotate.

My awareness is fixed on the duration of time from wet to dry, and the moving red shadows on my eyelids that remain to be examined. Both are transitional states, yet without the stillness of my body I would not be able to account for their happening. The awareness of these happenings is linked to the emotive thoughts and self-reflections occurring simultaneously, linking the internal and external.

The ground is a color close to that of my own flesh, on a square shape to represent the balance of the human form. The first layer of acetate holds the activity of the sun on my skin, the flesh color reappearing and colliding with the warm yellow that is a condensed liquid form of the sun. The two cans are turned over at the same time and begin to provoke each other’s positions, moving with each hand and activate the passing seconds, the marks produced accordingly. The second layer of acetate aligns the scene; the gray circle, infinite in its motion, hovers over the sun on skin and solidifies the moment.

-Birren, Faber. Color, Form, and Space. New York: Reinhold Pub., 1961. Print.

-“Harold Rosenberg (American Art Critic).” Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica. Web. 19 Mar. 2012. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/509899/Harold-Rosenberg

-Frieze Magazine | Archive | Time & Tide. Lynda Benglis. Frieze. http://www.frieze.com/issue/article/time-tide/

A Note of Interest about The ~curARTorial LAB @ the Malkovich:

The recently named Crane Arts Old School (CAOS), has been refurbished into impressive working studio spaces by Crane Arts, LLC, thanks to grants directed at the renewal of West Kensington, one of The City of Philadelphia’s once mightily powerful, and now largely deindustrialized port sectors devoted to manufacture and trade. CAOS is the current home of:

The ~curARTorial LAB @ The Malkovich

New Art Research & Promotion

Crane Arts Old School, Studio 3A

1417-1425 N. 2nd Street

Philadelphia PA 19122

BURN THE WATER by Bonnie Brenda Scott

As the inaugural exhibition to be staged in Crane Art Old School’s The ~curARTorial LAB @the Malkovich, Bonnie Brenda Scott is currently at work creating an intervention in which she reflects on the accumulative debris of existence. It is stridently titled BURN THE WATER. In Scott’s own words:

“The show is going to be called BURN THE WATER. I’m gonna be utilizing the floor space mostly–expect a landscape emerging from the window area and progressing towards the opposite wall. I’m going to be using a lot of found material that I come across in my personal travels. Think river waste. If you want to think of the whole thing as the river emerging through the windows at sunset and filling up the space, that will be a pretty accurate description. Mixed in will be some new dimensional flesh-like wood, plexi and plaster pieces. There will be fades on the walls. There may be a soundscape emerging from the hole in the ceiling. the lights will probably be low. The story is about trying to hold onto an idea or an identity throughout a sweeping transfiguration. A softness in a fractured space”.

Anyone who knows Scott’s work will tell you she is both inventive and versatile as an artist, and that she demonstrates to have a peculiar fondness for representing stylized versions of the carnal ~ as in flesh-like, gut-like, inside-like bound spaces:

Scott has been celebrated in the media for a number of effective site specific installations and wall-based works, as well as for her uncannily delicate, and precise brushwork.

Previous training as an animator may well account for some of this technical prowess, but beyond the evident technical feat that is her work, one always comes upon the evidence of great aesthetic resolution in everything she makes.

Effectively transitioning between various media including printmaking, airbrush, and the fabrication of sculptural elements made of light woods, Scott has more recently been incorporating additional ephemeral elements including the use of light. Recent work illustrates this new dimension, one she wants to continue exploring in the immediate future.

Through her process Scott began to formulate a practical strategy in order to continue exploring the media she is now interested in incorporating into her repertoire, and this lead to the realization that a solid amount of time dedicated to the pursuit of an MFA degree can be an avenue for her to manifest this incoming creative state of being. It is all part of the bigger picture that will give Scott the opportunity of reaching for a higher level, especially within a context of hands-on, individual fabrication, in which she is keenly interested at the moment.

I have been wanting to get her to give me an in-depth interview, and it was decided that due to an uncommonly busy period of rampant multitasking for the both of us, an intermittent approach throughout the process period make most sense…(at least for now):

AR-L: I wonder about the desire to mold your artistic vision in 3-D now, as opposed to staying “on the wall”.Where do you locate the source of that impetus at this stage in your life + your work? And why one as opposed to the other?

BBS: I will say first off that the rectangle is a daunting object. The page, the panel, the wall: all of these limitless horizons. Having nothing to react to is terrifying. A human being is very little but a creature that reacts to things: making decisions based on circumstances; forming opinions on what he sees around him, or what affects his environment. “I am a happy person because of blank” or “My feelings have been tampered with by blank and I will express my dissatisfaction by doing blank.” My personality can be distilled into a set of feelings about other things–my humanness can be similarly distilled into a set of feelings I have about myself. All of these are reactions and cannot exist singularly within space.

The rounded edge of a non-angular object is a line traveling always with the possibility of an end or a change. The straight line and the 90° angle: these are infinites, traveling forever in a single direction without the possibility of change. They do not react–every action I take in artmaking is a reaction to something.

I will make an object because it is close to what I am. I am a thing and I exist in space. I am not infinite. I am finite. I do not know about what is not me.

More to come…

Public viewings and accompanying receptions for BURN THE WATER will be held from 5-10PMish or later to be held on:  

May 5.10.12: Second Thursday & June 6.7.12: First Friday

 The ~curARTorial LAB @ the Malkovich is located in Crane Arts Old School, Studio 3-A, 1417-25 North Second Street, Philadelphia PA 19133

You may schedule alternate viewing times for this installation “By Appointment Only w/RSVP” = BAO/RSVP

~@/AR-L

Interview with Rob Lucente of 13:28 Productions presents Countdown to 2012

AR-L: Hello Rob, and thank you so much for answering these questions for those of us interested in the Countdown to 2012. What would you like to tell our readers about the mission and vision of 13:28?

RL: The mission of 13:28 Productions is to produces positive consciousness music and concert events. I formed the company earlier this year and COUNTDOWN TO 2012 is the inaugural event!

AR-L: Would you please trace the evolution of the Countdown to 2012: A Celebration of New Planetary Consciousness event for us?

RL: This event is based on the original event called “Countdown to 2012 – Celebrating the Life and Logos of Terence McKenna” which took place on December 15, 2000 in San Francisco. It was a memorial for Terence McKenna who passed away in April 2000. I had a previous production company called “2012 Productions” that was a partnership with four of my best friends. We had launched a popular Web site in 1999 called PHILZONE.COM – a music fan site related to the Grateful Dead bass player PHIL LESH. We did a lot of work with Phil Lesh and his production company bringing the community together after Jerry Garcia had died and the Grateful Dead disbanded.

We were also big fans of Terence McKenna and the concept of “2012” as a symbol of transformation and evolving consciousness. When Terence passed away, we worked with friends and family to throw the memorial concert. We had live music, DJs, and a presentation by visionary artist’s Robert Venosa and Martina Hoffman. The main performance was by a band at the time called LOST AT LAST. They were this amazing ethno-rave-trance band out of Maui and had been friends with Terence. Terence started to do some performances with live bands where he raved and invoked the LOGOS and had done this with LOST AT LAST a few times, so they were a perfect choice to have perform. Also we had found out that PHIL LESH was a big fan of Terence’s too, so when he heard we were producing this concert, he signed on to sit in as special guest.

It was an amazing moment in which he performed some classic Grateful Dead songs “rave-electronica” style! You can see photos of this and hear some audio on the event Web site www.countdownto2012.com. It was amazing – Robert Hunter, the lyricist for the Grateful Dead, wrote a special eulogy poem also titled “WORDS FOR TERENCE”. In addition, we had all kinds of artists, multimedia and art installation throughout the night. Phil himself compared it to an authentic “acid test” from the psychedelic 60’s .. the very stuff that spawned the entire concert industry. It was fitting because the event happened at a club called the 7^th Note, but was originally called WOLFGANG’s and was owned by the great BILL GRAHAM – the renowned Bay Area concert promoter.

I knew that night something special had occurred and for the next 10 years I planned to produce a modern COUNTDOWN TO 2012. Since then 2012 Productions had dissolved and we had all moved on, but earlier this year I formed 13:28 Productions with one of the major driving forces being to do this event again especially now that we are only weeks away from 2012!

 The process for this event came very organically. I had a vision for what should be involved, but the real catalyst came in an unfortunate way. Since the first concert was for Terence who died of the brain cancer Glioblastoma, a cancer I had never heard about… 10 years later I would become intimately close to this tragic cancer again when my dearly beloved 46-year-old brother-in-law was diagnosed with Glioblastoma suddenly in April 2010. My brother-in-law and his wife, my sister, fought a courageous and difficult year and a half long battle but my brother-in-law passed away this October.

It became clear to me that in memory of my brother-in-law Christopher and Terence that I would get this concert produced and work with National Brain Tumor Society to have a portion of proceeds benefit their great work and also use the event as a mechanism to bring awareness to NBTS and to Glioblastoma. It should be noted that a study came out that tracked a 40% increase in Glioblastoma in connection with the increase of cellular phone use and cell waves and towers. I encourage people to use a hard-wire headset for their cell phones and avoid directly holding the phone to their ears. We will have information on display at the event and I also have set up a special fundraiser page where folks can make a direct donation: http://www.braintumorcommunity.org/goto/countdownto2012

 Beyond the awareness for NBTS, it was critical for me to uphold the core of the original event by bringing together genre-blending music, art and multimedia.

 We’ve got DJ SPOOKY – a very talented musician and author – performing his smooth trip-hop. He’s also tapped into the “new consciousness” and has been involved with the great folks at REALTY SANDWICH and the EVOLVER SOCIAL MOVEMENT. This is the movement in part founded by DANIEL PINCHBECK – the best selling author of such books as “2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl.”

 Unfortunately Daniel couldn’t be in attendance, but we’ll have representatives from EVOLVER and REALTY SANDWICH in house with information and new books on sale from their new EVOLVER EDITIONS book line. This line launched the last work of JOSE ARGUELLES – MANIFESTO FOR THE NOOSPHERE which is a MUST READ going into 2012! It outlines the new planetary consciousness which is unfolding.

We’ll also be showing movie shorts from POST MODERN TIMES and 2012: TIME FOR CHANGE – the 2010 feature-length documentary collaboration between DANIEL PINCHBECK and JOAO AMORIM. This movie presents wonderful discussion and examples of how humanity can reengineer our systems to live in a responsible symbiosis with the Earth and regain our natural place as a co-species and not reckless dominators!

 We’ve got all kinds of amazing talent and multimedia – it’s going to be 8 hours straight of non-stop consciousness expanding entertainment!

We’ve got the high-energy hard hitting funk-fusion-jam band KUNG FU out of Connecticut and we’ve put together a special all-star performance being called THE BMD JAM SESSIONS featuring MARC BROWNSTEIN and ARON MAGNER of the psychedelic electronica jam rock band THE DISCO BISCUITS joined by Grammy-nominated NYC drummer extraordinaire ADAM DEITCH of BREAK SCIENCE and LETTUCE.

And then we’ve got my good friend JODY SALINO aka SYNCHRO, out from the Bay Area, spinning the “intergalactic intermezzo” music throughout the night. We also have SCOTT DRAVES aka SPOT – the creator of the mind blowing ELECTRIC SHEEP animation – doing visual projections all night and featured visionary artist GIZEM BACAZ who will have art on display and for auction as well and adding to the overall aesthetic of the event. I’ve also got some surprises in store for special art installation and tributes to Terence and Jose. We also have my friend and Shamanic healer JAMES RIVERSTONE performing invocation and activation to help set the intentions and hold sacred space.

And finally, throughout the night we’ll be honoring both TERENCE MCKENNA and JOSE ARGUELLES. We’ll have 13 Moon / 28 Day calendars available for free courtesy of Jose’s FOUNDATION FOR THE LAW OF TIME.

AR-L: What else can you tell us about the significance of the countdown itself, what it may signal for the development of the planet’s consciousness, for humanity at large; the significance of the tributes to Terence and Argüelles, etc.

RL: The significance of the “countdown” is that we are now weeks away from the long awaited and highly anticipated year of 2012… and one year away from the actual Winter Solstice critical date in 2012: 12/21/12.

 This event is a celebration and activation of awakening that we are entering, what Jose Arguelles calls the NOOSPHERE – the birth of a new planetary consciousness. The folks at the LAW OF TIME have brought attention to the following:

“The Harmonic Convergence of 2012 is the year-long activation of unification consciousness through a rolling wave of globally synchronized meditations to return Earth to natural time, and to launch the long-prophesied circumpolar rainbow bridge.”

It is this theme and concept that I hope to bring awareness to with this event on Friday. It was critical for me to do this in NEW YORK CITY as this is the heart of the OLD TIME FREQUENCY and we need to activate many who are not familiar with these new consciousness concepts and ideas. The Earth is changing and we humans need to recognize that we need to upgrade our “operating system”. One of the tools we can use to do this is the 13 Moon 28 Day calendar. It is a synchronizing tool that helps reinvigorate your natural time and connection to telepathy and synchronicity and harmony with Natural Time.

 The FOUNDATION FOR THE LAW OF TIME also tells us that:

As the earth begins to vibrate at a higher frequency, the lies of civilization are rapidly exposed. Social unrest and collective disillusionment increase as the familiar world hologram is being dissolved and a new cycle is being phased in. According to The Mayan Factor, December 21, 2012 marks the point when earth passes out of a beam 5,125 years in diameter.

 So again, I intend to bring attention to this with this event and with future 13:28 Productions events, music, and art. Also there are key messages to be learned by bringing attention to both Argüelles and McKenna…

 Jose Argüelles promotes that “TIME IS NOT MONEY – TIME IS ART”. Jose put forth the LAW OF TIME – a universal law and principle that states time is the universal factor of synchronization. The Law of Time distinguishes between a natural timing frequency that governs the universal order, and an artificial timing frequency, which sets modern human civilization apart from the rest of its environment, the biosphere. The Law of Time states that: Energy factored by time equals art.

 And to that tenant – the COUNTDOWN TO 2012 is a TIME IS ART event! We will honor and that Jose brought us this knowledge to help us at this Great Transition. And we honor that Terence brought attention to this in his beautiful way and mastery of language. His TIME WAVE ZERO theory shows us that we are reaching a singularity of infinite complexity in 2012.

AR-L: It is clear you’re actively promoting this unique and significant event celebration in the spirit of the 60’s counterculture. What can the public expect? Give us some teasers of some of the surprises the night will hold for those of us joining the merriment while contributing to a very worthy cause.

RL: One of the ongoing goals for my productions and events is to bring back the essence of the original Bill Graham 60’s “happenings” and I can promise you this will be ONE FOR THE AGES! As I noted earlier, PHIL LESH himself referred to the first COUNTDOWN TO 2012 as an “authentic acid-test”, and Friday’s event will be in the same spirit merging art forms and media and by genre-blending create a them of dissolving barriers and creating Unity. We gather to celebrate positive transformation, peace, art and unity. Thank you for the opportunity to share this with you and your readers! IN LA’KESH (Mayan saying meaning “I AM ANOTHER YOURSELF”). PEACE & LOVE, R. LUCENTE

Please check out my music and art at www.rlucente.com) 

13:28 Productions presents :::COUNTDOWN TO 2012 – A Celebration of New Planetary Consciousness ::: @ CANAL ROOM ~ 12.16.11 ~ 9PM

“Let the COUNTDOWN begin to the Winter Solstice of 2012, closing out the Great Cycle, and ushering in the Noosphere – the next stage in new planetary consciousness. Based on the original Countdown to 2012 – Celebrating the Life of Terence McKenna, held in San Francisco in 2000, this year’s extravaganza features genre-blending music and multimedia. ”

13:28 Productions presents

:::COUNTDOWN TO 2012 – A Celebration of New Planetary Consciousness :::

Featuring

• DJ SPOOKY aka That Subliminal Kid (trip-hop) http://www.djspooky.com
• KUNG FU (funk-fusion-jazz-jamrock) http://www.kungfumusic.com/
• The BMD Jam Sessions featuring MARC BROWNSTEIN and ARON MAGNER of THE DISCO BISCUITS with ADAM DEITCH of BREAK SCIENCE and LETTUCE
• Tributes to Terence McKenna and José Argüelles
• Visual Projections provided by SCOTT DRAVES and ELECTRIC SHEEP (http://scottdraves.com)
• Intergalactic Intermezzo Music provided by SYNCHRO (spinning House & Beyond)
• Movie Shorts provided by 2012: Time for Change and Post Modern Times (http://www.2012timeforchange.com)
• Invocation & Activation provided by James Riverstone (http://www.jamesriverstone.com)
• Featured Visionary Artist Gizem Bacaz (http://gizembacaz.tumblr.com)

Friday, 12/16/11(Red Rhythmic Earth),Doors: 8pm, Show: 9pm – 4am
Canal Room 285 W.Broadway @ Canal, NY, NY http://www.canalroom.com
All Tickets GA. $35.00 (includes sales tax) Ticket price subject to change.
BUY TICKETS NOW

Click to Make Direct Donation to National Brain Tumor Society through the Countdown to 2012 Fundraiser Page

Click here for official press release.

 

 

Welcome to The ~curARTorial LAB

The ~curARTorial LAB is a creative crucible – an alternative space geared towards experimental curatorial practices and the promotion of emergent visual artists from around the world.

The LAB has already served as resource center for Casa de Venezuela’s 2011 Diálogo 365, and is continuously expanding the scope of an interdisciplinary arts initiative that kicked off in 2008 with an exhibition staged in 2009 at the Painted Bride Art Center Independence Foundation Gallery for the Visual Arts titled Synesthesia:The Blending of the Senses as Art (in collaboration with Bryn Mawr College). The LAB’s Synesthesia Initiative has also staged Synesthesia.2 @ SINErgy Project Space + Gallery (2010), and The Synesthesia LAB ~ All Hallow’s Eve Session @ the ICEBOX in CRANE Arts, LLC (2011).

The LAB represents the manifestation of a vision I’ve been giving form to since 2008. It functions as a boundless international project by collaborating with new world-wide initiatives like the Young International Contest of Contemporary Art (YICCA). It has served as the launching pad of suprising contributions to major global art events like the 54th Biennale di Venezia, where I completed an intervention as Biennale Researcher for the Indianapolis Museum of Art in preparation for doctoral fieldwork in visual anthropology.

The LAB focuses on:

• the development and staging of exhibitions in all media (with a recently established focus on video)
• a variety of activities that can be labeled under the umbrella of “curatorial consulting”
• as well as publishing critical reviews of new and recent art-related texts in internationally renowned academic journals such as the International Visual Sociology Association’s Visual Studies.

In complement to my general interest in the state of contemporary artistic practices around the globe, my current academic and critical focus revolves around a long-term doctoral project that traces the circulation, reception, and recognition of contemporary Puerto Rican art on a global scale. The LAB serves as the physical and virtual supporting platform for my fieldwork and dissertation, while also accommodating a variety of additional projects that constitute the basis of my ongoing curatorial practice (1999-present).

The ~curARTorial LAB is an open initiative – we welcome proposals as well as more spontaneous forms of collaboration from artists, curators, critics, interdisciplinary thinkers, and anyone else genuinely curious about art. It is conceptualized as a real + virtual space where the growth of new art forms is encouraged and where inspiration rules.

Welcome to The ~curARTorial LAB!

Anabelle Rodríguez-Lawton, Founding Director + Chief Curator

The ~curARTorial LAB is located @ The Malkovich in CRANE Arts Old School, 1425 North Second Street, Philadelphia 19122