Artist Profile: Libby O'Bryan

I had the pleasure of meeting Libby O'Bryan when I wrote this article for Verve Magazine. O'Bryan is one of several artists featured in the Out of Fashion exhibit currently on display at SECCA in Winston Salem.

On the opening night of the exhibit, Out of Fashion, O’Bryan performed a piece called “Sewed In,” during which she literally sewed herself up. Sitting inside a bubble of fabric with her sewing machine, she sewed furiously until the bubble collapsed and the material clung to her like a second skin. She ended her performance by breaking out of the wrap, but the performance brought to mind images of suffocation and horrific sweatshops. “I do get a little panicky when I’m in there,“ O’Bryan admits.

“Sewed In” was one of several performance pieces O’Bryan developed as a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago starting in 2008. It’s a way to illustrate, as she puts it, “a physical manifestation of what the sewing machine and I do together.” Like O’Bryan’s other large-scale conceptual performance pieces, “Sewed In” explores the way individuals are implicated in the socio-political and manufactured worlds around them.

Read more: Sew Cool, Verve Magazine December 2011

Stories are alive for you, and you're living them

Connie Regan-Blake as photographed by Rebecca D'Angelo

As an art form, storytelling has gained recognition over the years, but Connie Regan-Blake [who has been a professional storyteller for 40 years] says she still receives the occasional raised eyebrow when she writes it as her occupation on legal documents. “In the 1970s, the National Storytelling Festival was the only festival. Now, almost every state in the union has a storytelling festival,” she says. In North Carolina, she reckons there are more than half a dozen.

Guilds and societies have sprung up around storytelling. The Asheville Storytelling Circle is a group of committed storytellers (Regan-Blake is a member), and she participates in local story slams at places like The Magnetic Field and Firestorm Café in downtown Asheville.

As a pioneer of the storytelling movement, mentors were hard to come by in the early days when Regan-Blake established a lifelong friendship with Ray Hicks. One of the original storytellers, Hicks passed away in 2003. The two met in 1973 at the first national storytelling festival in Jonesborough, Tennessee. “He really lived the stories,” she says. “He taught me that the stories are alive for you and you’re living them.” -Read the full article: Storied Past (and Future) Verve Magazine July 2011

To learn more about Connie Regan-Blake visit www.storywindow.com

Regan-Blake will be performing with Sheila Kay Adams at White Horse Black Mountain on July 29 at 8pm.

Asheville Rites Project: A public art + performance piece

Photo of Molly Rose Freeman by Matt Rose, courtesy of Verve Magazine

For the next two weeks Molly Rose Freeman will be painting five 10' x10' panels for the Asheville Rites Project, a collaborative performance piece that comes together on May 21. The panels are installed in amphitheatre format in the RiverLink sculpture and performance plaza, an outdoor venue located at 117 Riverside Drive, across from the Cotton Mill Studios and 12 Bones Restaurant.

A dance choreographed by Garth Gimball is set to take place at dusk on May 21st (raindate is May 28th) at the plaza with Freeman's panels serving as the backdrop. Live music will be performed by Michael Libramento. The event is free and open to the public. In the meantime, you can swing by and check out the mural as it progresses.

This project is made possible with the help of Kickstarter donations, RiverLink, Arts2People, Asheville Mural Project, The River Arts District Artist Community, and Asheville Ballet

Read more about Molly Rose Freeman: Wall Flower: Verve Magazine May 2011

Closing reception at FLOOD this Saturday

Due to bad weather, Claire Barratt’s multimedia art installation, Dance is the new visual art at The Flood Gallery went a little under the radar when it opened three weeks ago. If you still haven’t seen it, don’t worry: Barratt will be hosting a special closing reception this Saturday, Jan. 29, from noon to 4 p.m.

Barratt shines not only as a performance artist, but also in her ability to push boundaries. Something that is in danger of being overly sentimental — such as her fairytale video “Chloe” — maintains interest with its odd camera angles, rough edits and offbeat costuming. Though it’s not clear how the videos conceptually relate to each other, or to the paper surrounding them, it all works as an exercise in serendipity. In a moment when two videos randomly sync up with a crunching sound and a gestural movement, one gets the feeling that everything is exactly how it ought to be.

More info: Final week of dance is the new visual art; MountainXpress

Asheville Mall Flash Mob

This kind of stuff is so great.

Dance is the New Visual Art

DANCE IS THE NEW VISUAL ART
A video installation by Claire Elizabeth Barratt

OPENING RECEPTION
Saturday, January 8th

7pm – 10pm
FLOOD GALLERY
Phil Mechanic Building on Roberts Street
RiverArts District – Asheville NC

An installation of multiple videos on the subject of dance and movement.

Videos are all created by Cilla Vee Life Arts director Claire Elizabeth Barratt in collaboration with numerous artists from a variety of disciplines.

Collaborators include:
Kimathi Moore – Asheville NC – composer
Charles Elmer – Asheville NC – videographer
Michael Folliet – Asheville NC – videographer
Dr T – Boston MA – VJ video artist
Walter Wright – Lowell MA – sound artist
Randy F Simon – NYC / Jamaica – videographer
Tatsuya Nakatani – Easton PA / Japan – sound artist
Natasha Royka – Ottawa ON – dance videographer

The installation incorporates sculptural forms created of paper, fabric & wire that serve not only as screens for the videos, but also as devices to shape the space. Sound installation by acousmatic composer Dr. Rick Nance is produced by materials used for the installation.

Claire Elizabeth Barratt is a trained dancer, but she prefers to call herself a “motion sculptor.“ It’s a term she came up with while working as a figure model in New York City art schools for five years starting in 2002. Shifting from one pose to the other, she discovered that the contemplative movement was similar to dance. “Organically, it just started happening in my performances,” she says.
Read more: Motion Pictures; Verve Magazine Jan. 2011.

My wish for a new year

Mural on The Berlin Wall

International borders are abstract concepts, little more than lines on maps that we imagine upon the earth. Existing outside of the real world of rivers, mountains, or deserts, political boundaries have no bearing on ecosystems. ~Art against the Wall by Scott Nicol.

In the last decade, border controls have tightened so much that frequently artists are denied entry into countries. Take, for example, the denial of 5 Iraqi artists into Britain last April, who were part of a prestigious art show in Manchester, and the two artists that were refused visas into Scotland in 2009.

It’s not just a security issue however. The strict border laws are also motivated by economics. Last summer, Asheville performer Claire Elizabeth Barratt was denied entry into Canada – a country she has visited several times in the past – because of a discrepancy concerning her teaching a workshop. The border patrol didn’t like the idea of Barratt receiving payment in Canada so they denied her entry.

This is a real tragedy because artists and intellects are being denied collaborative opportunities and the exchange of information. While information transmitted via Internet has never been greater, vital face-to-face collaborations are being threatened. And it’s not just amongst visual artists: musicians, writers, Nobel Prize Laureates, dancers, athletes and intellectuals all face a growing epidemic of tightened border controls.

My wish for the new year is that the collective consciousness will actively reject ideas of borders and hierarchies of power. As artists we will take on more collaborative projects that harbor cooperation and creatively challenge cultural notions of "us" versus 'them."

Happy New Year everybody!

For artists, border fence is subject and venue

The Border Crossing Art Project

Iraqi and American Reconciliation Project

No one is Illegal

Art Against War

Patience: an installation

Patience, a new installation by Bridget Conn is now on display in the Pack Place Gallery in the Pack Square Building. The exhibit is open during business hours. Get there between 3:30 - 4:30 and find Conn seated in a cave of vellum scrolls, at work writing the word "patience" over and over.

"I enjoy repetition as a means of art-making, in the ways it relates to prayer, and in the ways it references methods of learning that I embraced as a child," she writes on her website, www.countingbirds.net.

Also exhibited are Conn's two-dimensional works that incorporate systematically arranged organic materials and textures -- grains of rice laid out painstakingly into rows, for example. It is clear that every creative choice has been made with intention and care. The effect is soothing- something like memories that happen in slow motion.

A closing reception for the installation is planned for Saturday November 13th, 2-4pm.

Spices, rice, tea, seeds and honey, are just some of the ingredients that go into Conn's mixed media works. "Food growing on trees is my inspiration. Reconnecting with such basics makes sense. It transforms my artwork into my own personal alchemy of creating order, understanding, and magic in the mundane."

"Ritual is a means of elevating the importance of simple gestures and observations. Every decision in ritual is imbued with an intent."

"I may not know the stories of my ancestors, but I know historically what the women of my family did in their daily lives. I question why the nature of their work became associated with inferiority."

See more of Bridget Conn's work at www.countingbirds.net

Splat! and Luna

Dancer/performance artist Claire Elizabeth Barratt and musician/composer Shane Perlowin recently joined forces for a live interactive performance at Pritchard Park. I missed it, but fortunately I was able to read the amusing and informative write-up by Jaye Bartell here: (Photos by Jonathan Welch) http://www.mountainx.com/ae/2010/splat_at_pritchard_park/

Barratt will be performing again this Sunday, July 17 8-11pm at FLOOD Gallery in The Phil Mechanic Building. Here's what The Mountain Xpress has to say about it:

Part dance, part performance art, part installation, LUNA — the brainchild of dancer Claire Elizabeth Barratt, set to the music of electronic sound-scape artist Kimathi Moore — is a continuous three-hour performance. Can’t sit still that long? No problem — the audience can come and go as they please. Barratt will be costumed “in a white powder which glows under ultraviolet black-light. This creates an ethereal & haunting effect”; she describes her slow-motion technique as “motion sculpture.” Held at The Flood Gallery in the Phil Mechanic Building on Saturday, July 17. 8-11 p.m. $10/$7 students. floodgallery.org.
From Mountain Xpress Smart Bets Your guide to what's happening in music, theater and the arts in Asheville and Western North Carolina 7/13/2010

Learn more about Claire Elizabeth Barratt at http://www.cillavee.com/

$10 tickets oh my!

If you've visited Asheville or lived here in the last two years you've undoubtedly seen a big purple ornamented bus driving through the streets of Asheville, sometimes being chased by a nun on a unicycle. This is the magic of LaZoom, a theatrical comedy bus tour. LaZoom is now offering local residents $10 tickets between April 15th- April 30th.

This is a such a deal, I can't wait to get on that bus.

Read more at Pollinate Asheville.

Funnys

There are a whole bunch of these Hitler parody videos on the Internet. This one is especially appropriate for this blog, and it made me laugh out loud. Here's the link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9r-SRyO3d4
(Thanks to a reader for sharing it with me.)

This brings be to a whole other train of thought:
The comedian as performance artist.
People don't think of comedy as an art form, but lately I have been. There is so much creativity and theatrics involved in making people laugh. Good comedy is provocative and unsettling while being entertaining. Comedians are often the first to openly point out that "the king has no clothes on." According to different mythologies the trickster is considered a cultural hero.

Other links:

Sarah Silverman

Richard Pryor

Andy Kaufman
Gilda Radner