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7/19/10 -
Apologies for my lack of updates. I'll likely be transitioning to a wordpress site in the near future.
I'll update this post with a time frame soon.
Archive
5
/16
/10 -
For the sake of efficiency I want to mention my screenings and talks
of the upcoming months up front:
This my first post since attending the Indie Grits Film Festival and I should
say that Columbia, SC supports a thriving arts and independent film scene.
Andy Smith and Larry Hembree as well as countless other dedicated, passionate
staff put together a festival that was sincerely focused on the filmmakers,
community, and bringing the two together in a meaningful way. Some of the many film
highlights for me were "Passenger Pigeons",
Lauren Gregory's "TV", and the Jacksonville, FL production "Chiaroscurro Baby." The shorts program that
"Elements of Time" was included in
featured several Strange Beauty alumni. The well organized peripheral events surrounding the film screenings made for a complete experience (live music, video installations, and
VJing in the Arcade Mall) and honestly, the only reason I was able to attend for the full
five days without sleeping in my car was because they put me in touch with Britt Hunt
who let me stay in the guest house adjoining his unique pre-civil war historic home which survived
the Columbia fire.
Pecha Kucha 9 is sort of a return to more direct interaction with a local design and arts community for me. When I lived in San Diego I had some work screened twice at the Casbah and monthly at the Wednesday Night Social in Leucadia in the summer in addition to making it up to Venice Beach and Los Angeles occasionally for other opportunities. The internet hasn't even come close to replicating the value of live face-to-face
interaction between artist and audience or even between friends for that matter.
Since my last post I've also enjoyed some significant new school and old school press. My hometown paper,
the News-Leader, featured an article about my
"Carapace and Shell" exhibit in the MOSH. It's nice to find some appreciation for video art in a small southern community. Just before Citrus Cel took place my work was featured on the prominent animation blog Cartoon Brew.
The Cartoon Brew post is significant to me because I've discovered some incredible independent animation through the site over the past few years, I feel privileged to be in the company of artists like
Mirai Mizue,
Nina Paley, and David O'Reilly.
3
/26
/10 -
It's starting to feel like spring and opportunities are budding like my garden.
It took me nearly a year to find it, but Jacksonville has a thriving film and design scene.
During the course of one week I found myself talking to the Maps/Mattes/Masks course at the
Arts Institute of Jacksonville taught by Isaac Brown of Jellyfish Smack Productions,
attending the city's 8th PechaKucha night organized by the likes of Tiffany Manning, and getting an
installation featuring some of my recent work with local seashells set up at the Museum of Science and History.
Not to mention the fact that three of my 2009 films will be featured in the experimental section
"Apples to Oranges" of the inaugural Citrus Cel Animation Festival, 12 noon on April 10th at 5-Points
Theater. I'm looking forward to checking out "The Secret of Kells" on opening night (7:00 PM April 9th).
Last week I was lucky enough to be involved with the opening festivities of the Gainesville Environmental
Film and Arts Festival, projecting some of my loops on the facade of the Hippodrome on the opening night
(March 19th) and producing a handful of 30 second promotional spots highlighting some of the direct
relationships between technology and the natural world.
This weekend signals the start of a good run of live screenings for many of my recent experiments. Today
three of my films will screen in the 5th edition of Magmart | Video Under Volcano in Naples, Italy at
PAN - Palazzo delle Arti Napoli. Next Friday, April 2nd "Grow Worm" will be showing as part of Manipulated
Image #12 at the Santa Fe Complex in New Mexico starting at 7:30PM. The weekend after that will be Citrus
Cel 2010 April 9 - 11. Finally, the Indiegrits Film Fest will take place April 14 - 18, which will be
screening "Elements of Time" and a couple shorts that played alongside "Pollenating" at the Strange Beauty
Film Festival back in January such as "Ichthyopolis." You can catch "Elements of Time" at the Fox Theatre in Columbia, SC on
April 15th at 6:15PM. Maybe I can set up screenings on the last two weekends of April to keep the momentum
going.
"Carapace and Shell" is the name of the installation I mentioned in the first paragraph which is
currently screening in the Museum of Science and History Jacksonville, FL alongside the A-mazing Seas
exhibit through May 2, 2010.
2
/11
/10 -
January was a great month for offline/live screenings of several of my films.
The Daacha show in Gainesville, FL was a success. I have my wife to thank for much of that as she was able to take an empty space and create a naturally flowing room/exhibtion with no bottlenecks, while I spent the entire set-up putting computers in the crawlspace and hanging projectors with a convoluted series of adjustable straps. I felt a sense of accomplishment seeing that many of the attendees stayed for the entire program on the main projector. There were three traffic pulses throughout the night where the gallery looked like it was bouncing and I have to brag that my grandmother was part of the late crew stopping by after seeing "Dead Man's Cell Phone" at the Hippodrome with a couple of her friends.
The Strange Beauty Film Festival was transcendental. The program seemed ready to explode into chaos at any time, but a passion for independent film and a witty sense of humor provided the threads that held the whole thing together. While nearly every film left a significant impression in my mind a few that really stood out to me were: "The Empress" by Lyle Pisio, "Notes on a Fair" by John Scott and Karen Rodriguez, "Jornada del Muerto" by Neal Hutcheson, and "DeVon Smith: Robot Man" by David Craig.
February looks to be a month of collaboration and organizing with a dozen or so personal projects on the back burner; one of those months where you spend all your time typing e-mails and web updates, sending DVD's all over the world, and trying to indefinitely postpone purchasing more hard drive space. I do have a few concrete things worth mentioning. I'll be producing some content for the Gainesville Environmental Film and Art Festival that should go live in the next week or so. I'll be volunteering with the Amelia Arts Academy in some capacity this year (brings back memories of the classical guitar trio I played in during highschool as a part of their music program). Lastly, in an attempt to promote my film screenings in a more timely manner "Grow Worm" will be shown as part of Manipulated Image #12 at the Complex in Santa Fe, NM on April 2nd.
1
/9
/10 -
I checked out Daacha Gallery in Gainesville, FL for the first time yesterday which happens to be the venue for my first solo show on Friday, Jan. 15th. The building which is solid, but showing its wear, will provide a perfect study in contrasts in opposition to the "new media" art that I'll be displaying. It will compliment the content of my work beautifully as well.
One of my latest pieces "Aesthetic Species Maps" (yet to premier on the web) was developed specifically for the 'Sacred Geometries' edition of Deep Leap Microcinema which first screened at the Waypost in Portland, OR on Dec. 15th. This program will be shown again on Jan. 17th at 992 Valencia Street In collaboration with the San Francisco based Artists' Television Access (simultaneously a venue and interesting organization).
One of my last stops planned for this month is the Man Bites Dog Theater in Durham, NC, which will host the Strange Beauty Film Festival on Jan. 22nd and 23rd. In response to another inspirational theme that I like to think perfectly suits my work, I submitted "Pollenating" as I think it still ranks as the strangest beauty in my body of work so far. The festival organizers paid me the compliment of including "Pollenating" in the section entitled "Love me, love me, say that you love me" which wraps up the festival on Saturday night.
