LAND/ART openings: Equation: a balanced state?; Second Site; CLUI Display Facility

Katherine E. Bash, Fugue, featured in Equations: a balanced state?

516 ARTS announces three concurrent exhibitions for LAND/ART, all opening on Saturday, August 1, 6-8pm at 516 ARTS in Downtown Albuquerque. The three exhibitions are:

Equation: a balanced state?
Second Site at 515 ARTS
CLUI Display Facility, an off-site project with
the Center for Land Use Interpretation

Equation: a balanced state?

Ted Laredo, room, acrylic, canvas, wood, aluminum, lights, timer, 89” x 99” x 85.5”,
featured in Equations: a balanced state?

Curated by Thomas Cates of THE LAND/an art site, Equation: a balanced state? is a series of gallery installations exploring the virtual, built and natural environment, featuring artists Katherine E. Bash, Paula Castillo, Ted Laredo, David Niec and Mayumi Nishida. Each artist’s installation is a small environ-ment in itself, constructed to emphasize that in the present age of information and technology, our larger “natural“ environment is inter-related with other types of environments we inhabit. The exhibition includes digitally simulated waterfalls, built environments that glow in the dark and explorations of the division between day and night in the natural environment as observed in the night sky of New Mexico. Science, technology and the study of climate and land usage play an important role in the research and development of these art projects. The artists are working with two additional locations in the process of creating these works at 516 ARTS:
• Rural worksite and exhibition space at THE LAND/an art site near Mountainair, New Mexico
Site projects on view Sunday, August 2 starting at 2pm
For directions, call 505-242-1501
• THE LAND/gallery, 419 Granite NW, Downtown Albuquerque
Documentation and ephemera relating to site projects at 516 ARTS
August 1 - September 19
Reception: August 1, 4-6pm (preceding the opening at 516 ARTS)
For more information about THE LAND/an art site and THE LAND/gallery, visit www.landartsite.org
or call 505-242-1501.

Second Site

Basia Irland, receding / reseeding, 300 pound ice book sculpture with cottonwood seed text
photo by Claire Long
featured in "Second Site"

Second Site is an exhibition and reference site for LAND/ART, featuring related gallery installations, art works and information for many of the outdoor site projects including those presented by 516 ARTS and a selection of those presented by the City of Albuquerque Open Space, Bosque School, the Harwood Art Center, Richard Levy Gallery and UNM Art Museum. Artists include Anne Cooper, Bill Gilbert, Steve Peters, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith & Neal Ambrose Smith, the Center for Land Use Interpretation, Patrick Dougherty, Nina Dubois and Jeanette Hart-Mann, Nan Masland Erickson, Benjamin Forgey, Basia Irland, Marc Schmitz, Robert Wilson, and Chrissie Orr & Michelle Otero’s public art installation on the D-Ride buses. Second Site is curated by 516 ARTS.

CLUI Display Facility

The Center for Land Use Interpretation, From the CLUI Display Facility, CLUI Photo Archive

On August 1, 2009, The Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI) will open a site-specific landscape display facility on the fringes of Albuquerque. This facility will be located at a site that draws people into a part of the city that is not often visited. Inside will be information about the region, including an exhibit about the New Mexico landscape. The facility will be open to the public during regularly scheduled hours, over the course of the Second Site exhibition at 516 ARTS, which is sponsoring this project. Information on visiting the facility, including directions and hours, will be available at the Second Site exhibition at 516 ARTS.

EVENTS:
Saturday, Aug. 1, 6-8pm: Opening reception at 516 ARTS preceded by reception at THE LAND/gallery, 4-6pm

Sunday, Aug. 2, 9am - noon: Trip to the CLUI Display Facility with CLUI director Matt Coolidge, departs from the Albuquerque Museum, $10, pre-register with 516 ARTS, space is limited

Sunday, Aug. 2, 2pm on: Equation site projects at THE LAND/an art site in Mountainair, call 505-242-1501 for directions

Saturday, Sept. 12, 2pm: Gallery Talk at 516 ARTS

WHERE: 516 ARTS, 516 Central Ave. SW, Downtown Albuquerque, open Tue - Sat, 12-5pm

CLUI Display Facility, an off-site art project
Location and public hours to be announced at the opening of Second Site

THE LAND/gallery, 419 Granite NW, Albuquerque, 505-242-1501, www.landartsite.org

MORE INFO: Suzanne Sbarge • t. 505-242-1445 • e. suzanne@516arts.org
www.516arts.org • www.landartnm.org

photos from the openings can be viewed here

Hudson Valley Artists 2009: Ecotones and Transition Zones

A new exhibition at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz

"This year's SDMA exhibition of work by emerging area artists surveys connections between culture and environment. Museum curator Brian Wallace selected 21 artists/artist teams from the mid-Hudson Valley and organized an exhibition featuring artwork, information, presentations, activities, and other projects connecting global issues such as sustainability, ecological awareness, and bioethics to our immediate surroundings.

Michael Asbill, Practice Vessel (hull), 2008

New Paltz is an ecotone, a place where overlapping natural and social ecologies—the river and the mountains, the cosmopolitan and the rural—exist in a fragile tension. The artworks and art historical narratives associated with this region suggest the great opportunities (and responsibilities) that area artists, residents, and visitors have to visualize and act upon opportunities to contribute to a better world.

One component of the exhibition, Habitat for Artists, will offer temporary studio space in repurposed structures in several locations in New Paltz." Learn more on the SDMA site

Bob Capozzi, Processing / Patterning: 1A, 200

Artists featured in the exhibition: Michael Asbill Robert Capozzi Robert Capozzi / Lorrie Fredette / Dylan McManus / Laura Moriarty / Jill Parisi Ryder Cooley Dick Crenson Simon Draper / Habitat for Artists Dana Duke Beth Humphrey Heather Hutchison Tanya Marcuse Susan Miiller Wayne Montecalvo Itty Neuhaus Franc Palaia J. Gilbert Plantinga Emily Puthoff Jill Reynolds Ryan Roa Camilo Rojas Thomas Sarrantonio Ida Weygandt

Updates on the Spiral Jetty

photo: Jamie Kruse 2007

From Chris Taylor on the Land Arts Listserve:

Recent discussions about the Spiral Jetty.

http://www.artsjournal.com/man/2009/07/examining_the_latest_threat_to.html

http://www.artsjournal.com/man/2009/07/conservators_talk_spiral_jetty.html

http://www.artsjournal.com/man/2009/07/yesterday_i_posted_about_a.html

http://blog.art21.org/2009/07/21/extending-the-conservation-framework-a-site-specific-conservation-discussion-with-francesca-esmay/

LAND/ART EXHIBITIONS this weekend and beyond

Thursday, July 30, 6-8pm
Elements
at the South Broadway Cultural Center, 1025 Broadway SE, 505-848-1323, www.cabq.gov/sbcc
July 30 – August 31

The South Broadway Cultural Center presents the opening reception for Elements, featuring artists Matthew Cohen, Rhiannon Mercer and Yulia Pinkusevich. Each artist explores an unconventional interpretation of land through painting, drawing and photography. Curated by Augustine Romero.




Saturday, August 1, 4-6pm (preceding reception at 516 ARTS)
Equation: a balanced state? (documentation)
at THE LAND/gallery, 419 Granite Ave NW, Albuquerque, 505-242-1501, www.landartsite.org
August 1 – September 19

The five artists featured in Equation: a balanced state? at 516 ARTS are working with two additional locations: the rural worksite and exhibition space at THE LAND/an art site near Mountainair, New Mexico; and THE LAND/gallery space in downtown Albuquerque. Support materials, documentation and ephemera related to the artists’ projects will be on display at THE LAND/gallery in Albuquerque.



Saturday, August 1, 6-8pm
Air cube +
a global perspective
presented by Richard Levy Gallery, 514 Central Ave. SW, 505-766-9888, www.levygallery.com
June 19 – August 28, 2009

Opening reception for seven contemporary environmental artists: Lisa K. Blatt (San Francisco), Ben Delevoye (Paris), Nicole Dextras (Vancouver), Diagram (Stockholm), Katie Holten (New York), Christine Weir (Los Angeles) and Matthew McConville (Baltimore) at Richard Levy Gallery. This exhibition focuses on the transient relationship between nature and man. Each artist explores, manipulates, and records the environment in very diverse ways. More details




Saturday, August 1, 1-4pm
Receptions for: Botanical Watercolors by Nan Simpson; Basketweavings of Indigenous New Mexico Flora by Susan Gutt; Reading Rivers by Basia Irland

at the City of Albuquerque Open Space Visitor Center
6500 Coors Blvd NW Albuquerque, 505-897-8831, www.cabq.gov/openspace

Saturday, August 1, 2pm
Artist Basia Irland presents a talk about her projects at the Open Space Visitor Center.



Sunday, August 2, 2pm on
Equation: a balanced state? (site projects)
at THE LAND/an art site, Mountainair, call for directions at 505-242-1501, or email theland@comcast.net

Outdoor, site-specific work by the artists in Equation: a balanced state? is on view at THE LAND/an art site near Mountainair, a rural 40-acre art site located 80 miles from Albuquerque. The artists have worked with the art site as an outdoor studio or laboratory–a place to reflect, experiment, collect materials and create.



Through November 1
Spiral Resonance Field
an art installation by David Wood
presented by the Albuquerque International Balloon Museum

Connecting earth and sky, and providing an ever-changing experience with the movement of the sun, wind, light and dark, Spiral Resonance Field is a large outdoor sculpture by Nashville artist and Vanderbilt University professor of philosophy David Wood. The piece is located immediately north of the Anderson-Abruzzo Albuquerque International Balloon Museum. It "emerges" at the Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe as a small spiral and also at Mountainair, knitting together all three LAND/ART sites.
More details

Land Arts in Outer Space

Chris Taylor sends a heads up about two exhibitions that extend "land" arts from the earth to the moon and beyond. Deceitful Moon is at the Hayward in London and Orthostatic Tolerance is at the ICA in Philadelphia (see below).

Tavares Strachan: Orthostatic Tolerance

Tavares Strachan's Orthostatic Tolerance is currently on view at the ICA in Philadelphia: http://www.icaphila.org/exhibitions/strachan.php You can read Strachan's artist statement here: http://lhfproduction.com/ot/page0/page0.html

And at the Hayward Gallery Project Space, Southbank Centre, London:

Aleksandra Mir First Woman on the Moon (detail),
1999 © The artist 2009

Deceitful Moon
21 July - 31 August 2009

FEATURED ARTISTS: TOM DALE, WILLIAM HOGARTH, MATTHEW DAY JACKSON & DAVID TOMPKINS, GRANT MORRISON & CAMERON STEWART, ALEKSANDRA MIR, AMALIA PICA, SAM PORRITT, KAREN RUSSO, JOHANNES VOGL, KEITH WILSON, CAREY YOUNG

Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, Deceitful Moon is an exhibition in the Hayward Gallery Project Space that explores the moon as a site for misinformation, misrepresentation and mistrust. Touching on a long-standing tradition of hoaxes and conspiracy theories that found its first modern expression in the 'Great Moon Hoax' played by The New York Sun in 1835 (in which a series of newspaper articles detailed life on the moon as observed through a powerful telescope) the show, like the tarot card that bears its name, turns on obfuscation and doubt.

Deceitful Moon is, in part, a response to the current vogue for exhibitions marking the anniversary of major events in world history. But rather than commemorating Neil Armstrong's famous 'one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind', it pays tribute to a lingering uncertainty somewhere on the dark side of our cultural imagination as to whether human feet have ever touched the moon's grey, inhospitable surface.

While the Apollo 11 mission was concerned with scientific verification and the glory of a nation and of a species, the works in Deceitful Moon propose speculative 'lunar landings' of a different sort. Satires of social and political control share space with meditations on technological absurdity, perception and misperception, and a very earthbound form of moon-gazing romanticism.

Deceitful Moon is curated by Tom Morton, Curator at the Hayward Gallery.

DISPERSAL/ RETURN at the Art Museum of the University of New Mexico August 28th to November 25th, 2009

Geordie Shepherd's LAND/ART project will open August 28. Geordie received an MFA from the University of New Mexico in 2004. He works in ceramics, painting, and writing to explore "humanistic narratives of the essence of self and of things both fictional and real."

His website describes the interactive project and invites audiences to take a "traveling box" into the field, alter it, and return it for others to take up and reshape:

Throughout history, travelers have recorded in diaries their thoughts about sights seen, creating documents tracing and transmitting the events to themselves and others. In time the person fades but the document and the land remain. Land is essential, more than just something under our feet, we rise from it and inevitably fall into it, our lives are mere limbs granted mobility and extension from the land’s body. In drawing or writing it, we undertake a self-portrait. The document is culture, understandings we lay upon ourselves, to aid, guide, torment, enlighten, relate, comprehend, progress, and destroy ourselves. However, for those precious few original moments, everything is one.

This interactive project requires participants to borrow a Travelling Box from the museum for the day and travel to a site of my or their own choosing. Once at the site, they then write or draw upon the ceramic forms in the box using the provided ceramic paints and pencils. There are six boxes, Nothing, Fantasy, Shape, Beauty, Blood and Eros, themes elemental to our lives. Participants must return the box by the end of the day. Overnight, the ceramic forms will be sinter-fired and made ready for another participant to travel with the next day. After five or six participants have layered their drawings and writings over one another, the ceramic forms will be glaze-fired to maturity, fusing the form and layered surface together.

Two boxes will be completed prior to the exhibition and exhibited as finished objects, but four uncompleted boxes will be available throughout the exhibition for participant's use.

This project will be presented as part of the Dispersal/ Return exhibition taking place at the Art museum of University of New Mexico August 28th to Nov. 25th, part of the Land Art symposium.

Atelier Real offers residencies on "Documentation practices in contemporary creation"

Leftovers, tracks and traces: Documentation practices in contemporary creation

Atelier Real has called for proposals of original projects, to be realised in the frame of 5 artistic residencies of research and experimentation, which approach the subject of “documentation” as an artistic practice. Each residency lasts for a period of 2 months, not necessarily in a continuous mode. The outcomes of the research and of the experimentations led will be presented to the public in the frame of the programming of atelier real.

The selected projects will get a financial support of 2’000 Euros, as well as logistics: working space, technical equipment and accommodation (if needed).
The call for applications is open to the proposals of anyone interested:
artists, spectators, curators, theoreticians…
The application should include:
- a description of the project (goals and modalities)
- biographic note(s) of the author(s) of the project
- other relevant elements for the appreciation of the project
- contact (telephone, e-mail, address)

Send before July 31st to: d.gueniot@re-al.org
The decisions will be announced per e-mail before August 15th.
You can download more information about the residencies here.

atelier real
Rua Poço dos Negros nº55
1200-336 Lisbon, Portugal
www.atelier-real.org

Miss Rockaway Armada Takes Philly

The bicycle-powered Ferris Wheel on board the Armada in 2006, photo: Allen Brisson-Smith for The New York Times

This week via the Land Arts of the American West listserve we learned that the Miss Rockaway Armada will be floating into Philly sometime this year. Their work for this project will be supported through the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative.

Visit the Armada's project site to learn more about the team and their high-seas adventures.

Cabinet Magazine's National Library in Deming, NM gets refurbished

Cabinet Magazine photo

Chris Taylor forwards news from Matt Passmore of Rebar. Rebar built the Cabinet National Library outside of Deming, NM in 2003, and Passmore posted photos from this summer's recent, big refurbishing effort. You can view them here.

LAND ART GENERATOR INITIATIVE IN THE UNITED ARAB Emirates

Elizabeth Monoian and Robert Ferry seem to be the two people behind a new Land Art Initiative in the United Arab Emirates. On the Land Art Generator Initiative site they describe the ambitious project with the following words, "The goal of the Land Art Generator Initiative (LAGI) is to design and construct Land Art / Environmental Art installations in the United Arab Emirates that have the added benefit of large scale clean energy generation. Each sculpture will continuously distribute clean energy into the electrical grid with each land art sculpture having the potential to provide power to up to 50,000 homes in the UAE."

The site goes on to say, "The time is now for artists to go further and take an active role in solving the problem through their own work. The Land Art Generator Initiative will provide artists with a forum within which to accomplish this important evolution. Combined with the resultant public capital generated by the publicity that art can generate, this unique project will mark a major contribution towards addressing perhaps the most significant challenge that the world confronts in the 21st century."

If this sounds like work you'd like to do you can visit the competition site or join the mailing list to receive information about upcoming events. The site also includes an interesting collection of Land Art and Clean Energy "precedents".

Porta Hedge observes--and alters--Provincetown's celebrated landscape

Tonight at the opening of an exhibition at Provincetown's Fine Arts Work Center entitled: "browser, inter-actor, coauthor, producer, nomad, Justin Shull parked his Porta Hedge and invited the public in from the outside (or in to the inside of an artificial version of the outside).

Justin Shull emerges from his portable hedge

Calling his project a "self-sustainable hedge," Justin said that the new solar panels just installed are now powering the hedge's ventilation fans, lights, videocameras, and computer. The exterior's hedge-like appearance (called "camouflage" in the artist statement) is achieved with the use of recycled artificial Christmas trees.

What appears from the outside to be, indeed, a hedge, is also a "mobile observation lab" outfitted with an "electronic remote observation system and satellite internet uplink," peek holes, an observation/escape hatch, a chalkboard (presumably for taking notes on observations), and a private porta potti (presumably making it unnecessary for researchers reveal their presence at inopportune times).

Parked at the intersection of play, whimsy, and something a bit darker ("escape hatch"? "camouflage"? "peek holes"?), Justin's Porta Hedge is a critical intervention disguised as plaything. It resembles the "critical vehicles" and "interrogative designs" of Krzysztof Wodiczko. Wodiczko teaches "interrogative design" at MIT, and describes it this way:

"Design research, design proposal, and design implementation all can be called interrogative when they take a risk in exploring, articulating, and responding to the questionable conditions of life. Interrogative design ... responds interrogatively to the needs that should not, but unfortunately do, exist in the present 'civilized' world."

interior of the portable hedge--an interactive space with swings, air filtration plants, and a chalk board

the outside as seen from the structure's "concealed interior for observation"

visitors are invited to swing from the superstructure of the hedge

To see the Porta Hedge as an interrogative design is to see it as a question.


Is a hedge ever anything but artifice? Is the distinction between "indoors" and "out of doors" becoming increasingly less meaningful because of the degrees to which humans have altered the land and recreated landscapes artificially indoors?

As an aesthetic response to today's "questionable conditions of life," the Porta Hedge/mobile observation lab even seems to question icons of environmentalism. The design mobilizes, after all, a number elements that are popularly associated with "sustainability" or "green design." But it does so in ways that don't quite add up: thousands of plastic Christmas tree branches are juxtaposed with high tech solar panels; a seemingly gratuitious remote, internet video surveillance system operates within an interior design that suggests a "green" aesthetic; the questionable carbon footprint of the unit's summer tour coexists with an indoor garden of "air filtration plants."

As a critical vehicle, the Porta Hedge turns the popularization and commercialization of "green" into a new, "questionable condition of life."

Porta Hedge vehicle and two hedges--one mobile, the other not

LAND/ART announces a public art installation on ABQ Ride's D-Ride buses

In Albuquerque during July - September, 516 ARTS presents a public art installation of El Otro Lado: The Other Side - Albuquerque on the free D-Ride buses which loop around Downtown.

During the spring, 516 ARTS, in partnership with the Academy for the Love of Learning, offered intergenerational workshops in Bernalillo County Community Centers with writer Michelle Otero and artist Chrissie Orr in collaboration with the organization Connecting Community Voices. The participants and guest artists developed symbolic maps/cartograms, visual representations and audio recordings of their stories, journeys, landmarks, boundaries and their sense of place and home in the land.

These images are now being displayed on the interior of ABQ Ride’s D-Ride buses along with an audio component so bus riders can listen to participants telling their own stories (via cell phone, call 505-515-0032).

The D-Ride travels a loop around Downtown and can be picked up at many locations including the Alvarado Transportation Center at 1st & Gold and at 5th & Central near 516 ARTS. It runs 6:30am to 7pm, and arrives every 7 minutes. For information, call 243-RIDE.

In Santa Fe, the public art installation is on view in various locations June 28 through October. Brochures, map of locations and info are available for download at www.aloveoflearning.org, or call 505-995-1860. El Otro Lado: The Other Side is a project of the Academy for the Love of Learning and is supported by the Santa Fe Art Institute and the City of Santa Fe Public Art Loan Program. In Albuquerque, it is supported by 516 ARTS, the Bernalillo County Art Program, ABQ Ride and Connecting Community Voices.

WHEN: July 13 - September 19, 2009
WHERE: on ABQ Ride’s free D-Ride buses
looping every 7 minutes around Downtown Albuquerque
EVENT: 516 WORDS: Saturday, August 29, 8pm at 516 ARTS
Storytelling event hosted by poet Michelle Otero, featuring the work of project participants presented by by local poets

HOW MUCH: Free

MORE INFO: Suzanne Sbarge • t. 505-242-1445 • e. suzanne@516arts.org
www.516arts.org • www.landartnm.org

LA Urban Rangers activate the "public" in "public beaches"

The Los Angeles Urban Rangers describes itself as a "mobile and site-specific interpretive force." Made up of geographers, environmental and art historians, artists, curators, and architects, the group "appropriates the figure of the stereotypic park service ranger" to offer educational campfire programs and guided hikes throughout Los Angeles.

This summer, the LA Urban Rangers will offer several "Malibu Public Beach Safaris." The safaris are designed to find and activate public beaches along 20 miles of Malibu beach that are otherwise "lined with private development." Each safari will visit two beaches and promises to enhance skills needed to use public beaches in Malibu, including how to find, park, walk, picnic, and sunbathe on a Malibu beach legally and safely. According to the Rangers: "skills-enhancing activities include sign watching, trailblazing the public-private boundary, a no-kill hunt for accessways, and a public easement potluck."

The three safaris scheduled in east Malibu will take place on:
SUN Aug 2, 11:00am-2:30pm
SUN Aug 16, 9:00am-12:30pm
SAT Aug 22, 3:00pm-6:30pm

Safaris are free. Spaces are limited.

To sign up, e-mail info@laurbanrangers.org w/name, # of people, and preferred date. A downloadable "Malibu Public Beaches" guide is available here.

CLUI bus excursion in Adobe Airstream

For another account of the CLUI bus excursion check out Ellen Berkovitch's summary, The Womb of the Bomb, Baby, published in the Adobe Airstream.