images from the storm

(photos by Art Bonanno)

the window in my room glowed like the sunset while the sounds of an avalanche whispered in the background. tea was served at dusk and i welcomed my guests to sit and sip and share.





and in the morning i woke to this....





at every point and interval in this house there was something wonderful happening....look!

Sequence of Waves...ever flowing, ever changing movement

This photo was taken on saturday evening, much was done before and after

I arrived at St. Cecelia's late thursday night to find my room on the top floor to be tiny, cold and dark, with pale green paint and chunks of plaster peeling from the walls. the brown tile floor was filthy, tiles missing...sad. neglected. needed more METTA than meta...
I quickly realized that my plan to paint on a screen while Helena played the cello was not going to be possible in this space. The room is to small to project a large image onto a screen....but plans change...i was forced to adapt...such is the nature of site-determined art. So after a minor freak-out (Oh MY GAWD! what am i to do?!?!?!) I began to mend this broken space, opting to peel it open to the outside world rather that close it off. i wanted to let the cold blue nighttime in -- the rattle of the frigid wind and the crunching of the snow beneath your feet.
I mixed paint to mimic the brooklyn twilight sky and invited the shadows inside. then i began painting painting painting the spaces in between the branches of the sycamore trees all around.
i made a sculpture in the center of the room using a motif i've explored in many drawings--a free floating medicine wheel made of tree branches arranged in a mycelium-like formation radiating from the center.
The floor is now coated in a thick layer of smooth white plaster. The only light in the room will be from the tree video/animation that will be projected onto the ceiling above the sculpture.

How to find me in this vast maze? On the third floor, through the baba yaga house, then to the left, down a ladder and at the end of the hall. just follow the white lights....

(on the sequence of waves website there is a graphic of the building---my room is the one with lightning bolts shooting out of it)

Looseworld is making a documentary about this entire process

go to http://www.sequenceofwaves.com/ to see footage, and a live webstream.

THEN COME.



RABID HANDS PRESENTS
SEQUENCE OF WAVES

EXHIBITION: Saturday, January 29th ONLY
HOURS: 2 pm – 9 pm
LOCATION: St. Cecelia’s Convent
21 Monitor Street, Greenpoint, Brooklyn
AFTER PARTY: Union Pool, back room, 9 pm
484 Union Ave, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
CONTACT: Rabid Hands
rabidhands@gmail.com

Rabid Hands is pleased to present Sequence of Waves, the collective’s inaugural sound, visual and multi-media art exhibition. The exhibition is open to the public for one day only, on Saturday, January 29th at St. Cecilia’s Gallery in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and will include scheduled performances. Formerly a convent and school, St. Cecilia’s Gallery is now a hub for rotating art exhibitions and film screenings, effectively bringing life back into the three-story building.

Recognizing the potential for discovery and experimentation in the St. Cecilia building, Rabid Hands has gathered over 40 artists to transform this space during their two-week residency. Given the narrow hallways and cordoned off rooms, the architecture of the building does not inherently lend itself to one large, continuous visual space, nor does it necessarily encourage group investigation. Instead of approaching the architecture as an obstacle, artists will use sound as the organizing and uniting principle. Embracing complete freedom, Rabid Hands encourages all participating artists to look beyond the confines of their personal forms and methods and merge their dialogue with the broader group. While individual works can be seen, what will emerge, more importantly, is the story of how these artists can influence the outcome of each other’s work by way of true collaboration.

Works will vary from: a “red carpet” of bubble wrap weaving through the convent’s hallways; an amalgamation of the exhibition’s microphone cords ascending a three-story tall sculpture made of found materials in the central stairwell, poised for sonic and aerial performance; a robotically controlled symphony of recordings filling the convent’s chapel with sound, as well as many other collaborative projects.

Participating artists include: Adriana Atema, Ranjit Bhatnagar, Jon Bocksel, Terence Caulkins, Skye Chamberlain, Nick Chatfield-Taylor, Ryan Chin, G. Lucas Crane, Jesse Cronan, Vanessa Cronan, Alex Drewchin, Jan Drojarski, Serra Victoria Bothwell Fels, Jessica Findley, Kendall Glover, George Graham, Doktor Greg, James Haddrill, Gaylen Hamilton, Travis Iurato, Elijah Kast, Victoria Keddie, Jesse Kreuzer, Taylor Kuffner, Roberto Lange, Steven Ma, Lili Maya, Zelijko McMullen, Steven Milton, Rob Minervini, Caleb Mitchell, Ben Mortimer, Kelly Nicholson, Ryan O’Connor, Brian Osborne, Mike O’Toole, Brandon Perry, Zac Poff, Nandan Rao, Allen Riley, John Roach, James Rouvelle, Amanda Salane, Isabella Scott, Tod Seelie, Ben Simon, Phillip Stearns, Martyna Szcz, Heidi Tullmann, Emily Willis, Ben Wolf, Nick Yulman, Tyler Zwiep.

A Sequence of Waves: Group Show at St Cecelia's Convent in Brooklyn, January 28 & 29

The space between things...again... a reoccurring theme in my work. this time, an ode to the wind. more precisely the sounds that occur in the interaction between wind and branches.

rattle, swoosh, howl! If it were color what would it be? will you feel it if i paint it for you?

my proposal...

in a little room in a corner room of the convent, i will build an environment inspired by the sounds of wind through the branches of trees. I will project stills of wintery bare trees onto the walls, and draw in the negative spaces between the branches with metallic pencil lines. there will also be several sculptures made of branches and string along with a screen in the middle of the room, with an image of a bare tree and it's mirror reflection projected onto it. during the performance i will stand behind the screen and paint the spaces between the branches with colored inks that will emerge through the front of the screen.

I am so grateful to have Helena Espvell (Fursaxa, Espers) playing the cello with the installation-sliding strings against strings-creating a kind of "windy" sound wave with loops and pedals. i'll riff off of what I hear from her, and hopefully the room and images and my performance would feed her sounds as well...
there will be a lot of sounds happening in the building, but we will have scheduled times for the performance aspect of the piece. 2 performances each night, maybe a 1/2 hour long. I don't want to set anything in stone because i've never done anything like this before, and i don't know how it will all come together....maybe we will perform for a longer if we are feeling it...i'm not sure...you will have to come see for yourself!

the Sequence of Waves at St Cecelia's Convent will happen on Friday, January 28th and Saturday January 29th. more information later as far as performance times and details! also check out http://www.doot.com/cecilia/ to check out what other artists are making


......here is a study of the film i will be projecting and painting on...loops and loops of still images creating color wave patterns

"The Book Quilt" was constructed in two parts, a lustra between them.

the surface is made of an old hardback romance novel that i found in a box on the side of the street in chelsea. I am compelled to remove books from the trash, seeing the raw material----not just words on paper--- the warm color of acid stained pages, the curling gray fonts, and the metallic edge.....and so with this book i cut it apart and glued it back together on one single plane, skimming, gleaning and reconstructing a new story from an old one. after the glue dried i tucked it away, thinking it was finished. i didn't look at it again for five years.

It appeared in my outer consciousness again when i opened an old portfolio. it lay there looking so inviting! It then became the surface for a drawing based on quilt patterns and mandalas I had been planning and sketching. it became a book quilt. it made perfect sense......