Ian Garrett

CalArts Alumnus Stephen Nowlin’s ENERGY Show Extended Through January 23, 2011

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Director of the Alyce de Roulet Williamson Gallery at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, and CalArts alumnus, Stephen Nowlin (BFA Design 71) has curated a beautiful and multifaceted exhibition, simply titled ENERGY, which is currently on view at Art Center through Jan. 23, 2011.

Nowlin has long been a significant voice in the contemporary discourse between art and science. In his 18 years as director of the Willamson Gallery he has curated a number of exhibitions exploring this relationship, often partnering with colleagues at Caltech, and featuring artists who work at the intersection of art and science.

The exhibition includes two large-scale video and sculpture installations by L.A. artist Rebeca Méndez; a series of works by New York photographer Richard Barnes; small-scale archival videos documenting post-war growth in energy consumption and Cold War fears driving the development of atomic weapons; and artifacts from scientific exploration at the beginning of the modern industrial era.

Finally, to directly connect ENERGY to Art Center’s students, Nowlin invited a class called “Design for Sustainability” to install its solutions to energy-based assignments on a wall in the exhibit. As it unfolds over the course of the semester, the wall continually changes, becoming “like a performance piece”–pedagogy on display. Assignments revolve around a designed product’s extended life-cycle analysis. Working within the context of the exhibition, says Nowlin, “reminds students that if they want to be enlightened designers for the 21st century, they need to understand issues relating humans to their environment. And to do that, they must factor science into their design equations.”

In June 2011 The Institute for Figuring, founded by Chair of CalArts’ Writing Program in the School of Critical Studies, Christine Wertheim, and her sister Margaret Wertheim, will bring their Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef to the Williamson Gallery. Currently on view at the Smithsonian Institution’s Sant Ocean Hall in Washington, D.C. through April 24, 2011, The Hyperbolic Crochet Coral Reef, weaves together strands of art, science, mathematics, and conservation.

More information about the current exhibition can be found on the Williamson Gallery’s website or on its Facebook page.

ENERGY

Willamson Gallery

Art Center College of Design

1700 Lida St., Pasadena

through Jan. 23, 2011

via 24700 » Blog Archive » CalArts Alumnus Stephen Nowlin’s ENERGY Show Extended Through January 23, 2011.

Call for Proposals: Environmental Sculpture Installations in Taiwan

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2011 Cheng Long Wetlands International Environmental Art Project

KUAN SHU EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION

www.artproject4wetland.wordpress.com
Curator Jane Ingram Allen
Contact allenrebeccajanei@gmail.com
Phone: 886-930375160

Address:
KUAN SHU EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION
Lane 79, Wu Lang Street
Taichung City 403
Taiwan
Call for Proposals: Deadline Feb. 11, 2011

2011 CHENG LONG WETLANDS International Environmental Art Project in Taiwan

‘Children and Artists Dream of Greener Wetlands’

Artists from all countries are invited to send a proposal for a site-specific outdoor sculpture installation that will involve working with local elementary school children to create an artwork focused on making the Cheng Long Wetlands a ‘greener’ place where biodiversity can flourish. This year the emphasis will be on sculpture installations in the waters of the wetlands that can improve the habitat for wildlife and increase biodiversity as well as provide aesthetic enjoyment and raise public awareness about the importance of wetlands. Any living plants used in the artworks should be able to survive in salty water and difficult growing conditions. Artists will work alongside other international artists and Taiwanese artists and with children at Cheng Long Elementary School, teachers, and the community during a 24-day residency in rural Yunlin County, Taiwan.

Deadline for Entries: February 11, 2011.
Artists will be notified by March 1, 2011.
Installation and Residency at Cheng Long Wetlands: April 8 (artists arrive) – May 2 (artists depart)
Dates of the Exhibition: April 29 (opening ceremony)- July 30, 2011

About the Exhibition Place:

The Cheng Long Wetlands is a developing wetlands preserve and environmental education area in Yunlin Country located on the southwestern coast of Taiwan. The Cheng Long Elementary School has about 75 children in grades 1-6 (ages 6-12) who will join with the artists in this project. This area in Taiwan is economically depressed, and most jobs have been traditionally connected with fish farming and nearby oyster farming. Most young people now have to move away to find jobs. There are no super markets, movie theaters or coffee shops, but this place will offer artists a unique cultural experience and an opportunity to share life with a community in rural Taiwan. For more information and some photos of the Cheng Long Wetlands, please see the blog on the wetlandcenter.blogspot.com/ There is also a blog in Chinese and English that contains information about the 2010 Cheng Long International Environmental Art Project, and more detailed information about the 2011 art project will also be on this Blog: www.artproject4wetland.wordpress.com

Selected International Artists will receive the following:

  • Artist’s fee of NT$70,000 (about US$2,302) for international artists, and this fee is intended to cover airfare to Taiwan and train fare to Chiayi HSR Station as well as an honorarium to the selected artists. Detailed travel instructions will be sent to selected artists and an official letter of invitation that can be used to seek other funding if the artist desires. *Taiwanese artist’s fee will be NT$45,000, and they must pay their own train fare to Chiayi HSR Station.
  • 24 days of accommodations in a local house with other international and Taiwanese artists. The houses will have a bedroom for each artist and a shared bathroom and kitchen for preparing meals.
  • Local transportation by car to Cheng Long Wetlands in Yunlin County Tours to local sites will also be arranged. Bicycles will be provided for the artists to use around Cheng Long Village.
  • Volunteer help from school children and adults in the community to create the artworks. We also plan to assign at least one adult volunteer to help each artist for the entire residency period.
  • Meals provided for breakfast, lunch and dinner each day. A local cook will prepare dinner for the artists; lunch will usually be at school with the children and breakfast food will be provided for artists to make their own breakfast.
  • Help to find local free materials and natural materials to make the artworks. Reeds and oyster shells are the most common available materials, but bamboo and tree branches and other materials may also be available. Artists should use only natural and recycled materials and processes that will not harm the environment. Artists will have to use some of the artist’s fee if they need other materials than those available for free locally.

Qualifications of Artists:

Artists who apply should have experience working with children and creating site- specific outdoor sculpture installations in public settings and involving ordinary people in their thoughts and process. The artists should also have an interest in wetlands and environmental education. The selected artists should be able to speak English and be able to get along well with other artists, the local community and school children. The selected artists should also introduce their home culture to the students and community in Cheng Long and possibly establish a connection with a school or environmental organization in their area to share experiences. We plan to select 3 international artists from different countries around the world and two artists from different places in Taiwan.

Curator of the Exhibition:

Jane Ingram Allen, an American independent artist, curator and critic, living in Taiwan since 2004 when she came to Taiwan as a Fulbright Scholar artist in residence, will again be the curator for this exhibition. Jane will work with the Kuan Shu Educational Foundation in Taiwan, to administer and coordinate all aspects of this project, including the selection of artists and supervising art installations and public programs. Jane has experience curating international art exhibitions and working with public art projects and children in communities around the world. Jane was the founding curator for the Guandu International Outdoor Sculpture Festival at Guandu Nature Park in Taipei, from 2006 – 2009

To Apply:

Send the following in English by e mail to Jane Ingram Allen by the deadline of February 11, 2011, at this address: allenrebeccajanei@gmail.com

Entries in Chinese may be sent to Ms. Chao-mei Wang at 觀樹教育基金會 Kuan Shu Educational Foundation ks.kk696@gmail.com

  • Description of a proposed sculpture installation for the 2011 Cheng Long Wetlands Project (limit one page) as a Word .doc file or a .pdf file, including dimensions and materials to be used in the proposed work.
  • Statement about your interest and experience working with children to create sculpture and installation art projects and about your interest in wetlands environmental issues (limit one page) as a Word .doc file or a .pdf file. This statement should include details about the school or environmental organization that you can introduce to the children at Cheng Long Elementary School for cultural exchange.
  • Sketch or rendering of your proposed artwork for the Cheng Long Wetlands project (.jpg file of less than 1 MG)
  • 6 images of previous related works (each sent as a .jpg file of less than 1 MG each)
  • Image list to give details about the 6 images such as title of work, date made, materials used and location of the artwork (sent as a Word .doc file or .pdf file)
  • CV or Resume in English that details your education and experience, previous awards and exhibitions. Be sure to include your name, present address and nationality.

Support for the Cheng Long Wetlands International Environmental Art Project

Supported by: Taiwan Forestry Bureau Organized by: Kuan Shu Educational Foundation, Taiwan (www.kskk.org.tw) Additional Support from: Cheng Long Elementary School, Kou-Hu Township, Yunlin County, Taiwan

APPLICATIONS OPEN FOR 2011 INDY CONVERGENCE

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Applications for the 2011 Indy Convergence are open.

Once a year The Indy Convergence brings together a group of professional artists from around the country to collaborate on cross-disciplinary projects. We seek out professional artists with a passion for exploration and a unique talent or approach that will contribute to the ensemble. Participants also have the opportunity to focus on their own genre specific works and are required to teach a workshop that is open and free to the Indianapolis community. The goal of the Convergence is for working artists of various disciplines to gather, collaborate, learn, share and teach.

The 2011 Convergence will be March 9 -19.

Over a ten day period each artist:

  • Participates in one wholly collaborative “Umbrella Project”
  • Works on one or more personal “Side Projects”
  • Teaches at least one “Workshop” in their field of expertise.
  • The Indy Convergence concludes with a culminating presentation where work is shared in an open lab environment. All workshops and events are open to the public and free of charge.
  • At the core of the Indy Convergence we are “artists at work” — at work in our community and at work with one another.

Join us in Indiana this March to share space with other dedicated artists for 2 weeks of open space.

To Apply, visit the application page by CLICKING HERE

To view video and images from the last convergences, check our archives to see the artists at work!

Call For Papers – Imagining Spaces & Places

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IMAGINING SPACES / PLACES: An international interdisciplinary conference

24−26 August 2011, University of Helsinki, Finland

“You are not in a place; the place is in you” (Angelus Silesius)

Literature and art mediate our experiences of the spaces and places surrounding us as well as within us. In contemporary discussion we use, besides the old term ‘landscape’, other ‘scapes’ which reflect a new interest and new thinking with regard to spaces: we speak of cityscapes, bodyscapes, mindscapes and even memoryscapes, and their relationships to one another. The intertwining of what, of old, was called ‘macrocosm’ (nature and society) and ‘microcosm’ (body and mind) and the role various art forms and media play in articulating and negotiating these chiasmic encounters is the focal point of the Imagining spaces/places conference. How are the interfaces between ‘the place in you and you in the place’ depicted? How are these imagined and material landscapes gendered and sexualized?

The conference seeks to produce an interdisciplinary dialogue between art history, literature and gender studies. We welcome papers addressing issues of representing and creating spaces in literature, art or film, and emphasizing the gendered, emotional and political or ideological character of these cultural mediations and re-mediations.

Sessions and suggestions of possible approaches:

LANDSCAPES

  • landscapes as medium for political, religious, psychological themes
  • landscape as pictures vs. (nature) as process
  • man in landscape; space, place, genius loci as objective places or subjective experiences
  • borderlines between nature and culture/cultural landscape and wilderness

CITYSCAPES

  • urban spaces and urban people
  • city images and chronotopes
  • the idea of metropolis
  • gendered/utopist/political/public/private city

MINDSCAPES

  • invisible cities and erewhons: fantasies of places and spaces and their role in arts
  • allegories of mind
  • dreams and other alternatives to actual world(s)

BODYSCAPES

  • bodies and belongings
  • affective, material, represented bodies
  • postcolonial corporealities
  • bodies of knowledge

MEMORYSCAPES

  • sites of mediations of past, present, future
  • methods of memorializations: regimes, archives, museums
  • collective memory (nation and nation building) /private memory
  • missing past, negative heritage (palimpsest traditions), melancholia

Deadline for abstracts: March 15, 2011.

Go to abstract submission.

via CFP – Imagining Spaces & Places.

Influential Element: Exploring the Impact of Water

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January 13, 2011 through April 3, 2011

Influential Element will feature 26 contemporary works by California-based artists who seek to explore the infinite ways in which water impacts our everyday life. The exhibition will feature works in a variety of media, including oil paint on a variety of surfaces, photography, video, color pencil, and mixed media. Furthermore, it is especially fitting that Influential Element: Exploring the Impact of Water debuts in a city in which water has historically played a vital and complex role, both from a recreational standpoint and as a major source of industry and commerce supporting Port operations. Not only will this exhibition offer breathtaking images of water, but it will also reflect upon our increasingly complex relationship with the element – immersing the audience in a visual conversation about this unique element. This exhibition has been sponsored by The Long Beach Water Department and Merrill Lynch of Seal Beach.

Sunset Highway, 3pm by Elizabeth Patterson

Artwork: Elizabeth Patterson, Sunset Highway, 3pm, Color pencil and solvent

Click here for a press release on the Influential Element exhibition (opens in a new window)

Exhibitions & Collections, Long Beach Museum of Art.

A breath of life by Fraser Ross

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httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_05vlfm_gTs

A breath of life 2010 [Laboratory Report]

This is an expedition involving the artificial study of plant life.

Materials – Flexinol (shape changing wire), recycled electronic components, specimen jars.

Ten propagated flowers from a living plant. Each flower has a ‘death state’, until human interaction triggers its ‘life state’ and just for a brief moment, you may recapture the flowers in full bloom. When the viewer blows into the specimen jars, each flower begins a shape change. Blowing is the appropriate interaction as trees and plants grow on carbon dioxide.

Every living thing needs a home, plants change themselves to survive in their habitat.

www.fraser-ross.com

YouTube – A breath of life by Fraser Ross.

eco-art course

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The 1st International Eco-Artists’ Residency

Call for artists

We are happy to announce the opening of the first international artist residency which specializes in ecological art, in the world.

The Photography & Eco-art Centre, includes a charming and relaxing artist residency which allows the artist to create, explore or fill batteries, in a homely environment.

To apply for the residency please send us information about you and your artistic achievements:

  1. Full name, country, state, address, phones and e mails, website.
  2. Short CV, including a list of solo exhibitions, locations and issues addressed. Short list of group exhibitions.
  3. Abstract of at least two of your main projects ( short description, not more than 300 words each)
  4. Five-ten Photos of your artwork ( JPG, 70DPI), preferred those which are related
  5. to environmental issues and captions/descriptions in a net quality.

Please indicate, what would you like to do while you are here according to priority?

  • Receive eco-art workshops, and/ or an environmental photography workshop, and/or ceramic workshop, or work in a welding and wood studio* ( *only for experienced artists)?
  • Register for the Eco-art course
  • Walks and hikes, create new artwork  ( please describe )
  • Make your research for a new artwork based on the ecosystem near the residency?
  • Volunteer in studio office, in the garden?
  • Make contacts with local artists, ecologists?  Receive environmental consultant for a new artwork?
  • Studying at the eco-art studio, archive and professional library
  • Other?

Please indicate preferred dates and desired length for residency ( minimum a week-two monthes)

Costs: The artist is encouraged to apply for a grant in his/her own country/university/ community. A letter of invitation can be sent to selected artists. Please send request for costs of stay.

The Eco-art Residency is making a huge effort to find grants for needed guests, and is looking for funding.

To support the residency please call- 972-2-9912101

or write to eco.art.center@gmail.com

via eco-art course.

Hands off culture and media in Hungary! – Petitions24.com

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Hands off culture and media in Hungary

Artistic freedom and freedom of the press are under threat in Hungary.

If one theatre director can be dismissed for political reasons, anybody can be dismissed for anything: for being liberal or conservative, for having blue or brown eyes, for being Catholic, Jewish, Roma or homosexual.

Art is a profession and evaluation of art is also a profession. Art should be evaluated by professionals, not politicians. If politicians can decide what is good or bad, what is contemporary art and what is not, what is moral and immoral, political control over the freedom of expression will break loose. We had enough of that in the 20th century.

If a politically biased committee other than the court can have legal control over the content of media, freedom of the press will be curbed.

We cannot accept political control in art and media.

(If you cannot sign this petition, try doing it with another browser)

For more infomation go to:

http://www.wan-press.org/article18748.html

http://www.enpa.be/en/news/hungarian-media-law-fuels-international-concern_50.aspx

via Hands off culture and media in Hungary! – Petitions24.com.

CicLAvia on Kickstarter

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Earlier this year, Los Angeles hosted it’s first CicLAvia — an event which closed off 7.5 miles of city streets to cars for a full day allowing cyclists and pedestrians full use of the roadways. It was a huge success with over 100,000 residents showing up on 2 wheels rather than 4. Yes, this happened in Los Angeles, dare I say one of the most “car-positive” cities in the world. The organizers are working on plans for the next CicLAvia for 2011 and have teamed up with Kickstarter to help raise some funds. They are hoping to bring in $5K, and have a bit over $1K right now.

CicLAvia on Kickstarter – Boing Boing.

ashdenizen: four podcasts on culture and climate change now online

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A new series of four podcasts on Culture and Climate Change is now online at iTunes U. The discussions bring together artists, writers, film-makers, scientists, academics and journalists with a comedian, a choreographer, a campaigner, and an entrepreneur.

The Mediating Change series is hosted by Quentin Cooper and contributors include Tim Smit, Marcus Brigstocke, Siobhan Davies (see pic), Roger Harrabin, Joe Smith and two of the Ashden Directory’s editors, Wallace Heim and Robert Butler. More details here.

The producer, Vicky Long, says:

Cultural activity in this area is gathering real momentum, with ‘Greenland’ opening at the National Theatre and ‘The Heretic’ opening at the Royal Court early next year. We feel it’s vital a critical framework is developed alongside this emerging work.

This series represents a first sustained exploration of culture and climate change in a publicly-available broadcast-quality format.

See also: Tipping Point launches first of four discussions
Tim Smit and Marcus Brigstocke join debate on popular culture and climate change

via ashdenizen: four podcasts on culture and climate change now online.