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Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Our Lady of the Preserved Sphere, & a Deadpan R.I.P.


Hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable new year's. Here's a parting shot from 2010 -- a few days ago the Library of Congress announced the 25 films they're preserving for 2010. In addition to catching up on some SNC art-related stuff over break, I wanted to link & embed a variety of interesting stuff to read & look at, for any of you out there jonesing for wider art-related material in between the family pleasantries and the wintersport exertions. The Library of Congress list provides a good excuse to embed some of the shorter films -- which can be found on youtube or elsewhere. There was a wide range of selections, ranging from pop-culture heavyweights to independent experimental films. Here's the list (If you want to read some descriptions of the films, click here. There are several personal favorites on it: "McCabe and Mrs. Miller," "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," which is more tough-minded than its reputation might suggest, "The Front Page," "Airplane!", and I still have a soft spot for "The Empire Strikes Back," despite all the oxygen Star Wars sucks up in the culture. The one I most want to see, but haven't yet, is "make Way for Tomorrow," which sounds kind of devastating.)

1) AIRPLANE! (1980)

2) ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (1976)

3) BARGAIN, THE (1914)

4) CRY OF JAZZ (1959)

5) ELECTRONIC LABYRINTH: THX 1138 4EB (1967)

6) EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, THE (1980)

7) EXORCIST, THE (1973)

8) FRONT PAGE, THE (1931)

9) GREY GARDENS (1976)

10) I AM JOAQUIN (1969)

11) IT'S A GIFT (1934)

12) LET THERE BE LIGHT (1946)

13) LONESOME (1928)

14) MAKE WAY FOR TOMORROW (1937)

15) MALCOLM X (1992)

16) MCCABE AND MRS. MILLER (1971)

17) NEWARK ATHLETE (1891)

18) OUR LADY OF THE SPHERE (1969)

19) THE PINK PANTHER (1964)

20) PRESERVATION OF THE SIGN LANGUAGE (1913)

21) SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER (1977)

22) STUDY OF A RIVER (1996)

23) TARANTELLA (1940)

24) TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN, A (1945)

25) TRIP DOWN MARKET STREET, A (1906)

Of the experimental shorts, I've never had the chance to see Mary Ellen Bute's "Tarantella" (if you drop her name in youtube, you can see several of her excellent animations). Larry Jordan's "Our Lady of the Sphere" can be seen in a muddy transfer here (come to think of it, it's probably another source for the Ramona Falls video I blogged about a while back).



Click here for a bio of the San Francisco-based Jordan; if you want to see "Our Lady" in a decent transfer, it's on a DVD called "The Larry Jordan Album" -- review here, and you can order it here.

Another selected short available on youtube is from the Prelinger Archive, a great resource that I leaned on heavily, for raw material for the documentary class last semester. "A Trip Down Market Street" is one of the purest expressions of film-as-a-time-machine I've seen: a camera, affixed to the front of a trolley, glides down Market street in san Francisco, recording all the horses, bicycles, pedestrians, cops, and so on, that pass before its fixed gaze -- shortly before the 1906 earthquake hit, and obliterated much of the scene. As someone who made the Market street traverse several times in my decade+ as a San Franciscan, it holds a special sort of temporal whiplash.



You can download a copy of the film from the archive here. A youtube user going by the name lunarparcel created a side-by-side juxtaposition of the film, and a film taken on Market street after the earthquake, here.

Lastly, the inclusion of "Airplane!" allows me to segue into something I saw at the local Savemart a couple days ago -- a Leslie Nielsen birthday card that probably should've been retired, still hanging about on the racks. I hope Nielsen would find it funny. Though now we're beyond knowing:

2010 Trashion

After a bit of a holiday hiatus, I'm starting to bring the blog back to life a bit. Couldn't let these shots go to waste -- from the Design Class' "Trashion Show," a tradition brought to SNC by Kat Hutter, and now continued by Katie Lewis. At the end of the semester, the students walk the runway in outfits fashioned (in both senses) from recycled materials. Here was the 2010 line, paraded back in mid-December -- enjoy.















Monday, November 15, 2010

Hazards of Love, Origin of Love, and LOVE

Recently someone passed along a flyer to me for an upcoming show in Reno. An adaptation of The Decemberists' Hazards of Love. "A progressive rock opera melodrama resplendent in myth, passion and archetype."

Needless to say, I was intrigued.


Two showings have passed, but three remain. November 18th and 19th at 8:00pm, doors at 7:00pm and November 21st 3:00pm, doors at 2:00pm. The show is to be performed on Th Great Escape Stage at 1575 South Virginia in The Sports West Complex (directions).
The Decemberists, an experimental folk-rock band, released “Hazards of Love” in 2009, and it seemed a natural fit for the stage because the songs tie together to tell the story of a woman, Margaret, who falls in love with a shape-shifting forest creature named William. The dramatic arc involves not only their romance but problems the lovers face with the creature’s jealous mother and another evil being. 
Marlene chose to present the story by having dancers act out the action while a live band plays and sings the songs from the album. Both the dancers and eight-piece band will be visible to the audience. 
“What this is,” she said, “is really performance art with a rock ‘n’ roll kind of foundation.
Full story on Reno Metromix here and event details here.

Below is an animated video created by students at St. Martin's College of Art for a song from the Hazard's of Love album (and presumably, the Rock Opera): The Rake's Song.


Fitting in with rock n' roll, love and animation is a clip from a wonderful rock musical I watched again earlier this month, Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Below is the song The Origin of Love from the film:


But wait, there's more! We have below a small preview of The Beatles LOVE by Cirque du Soleil showing at the Mirage in Las Vegas.


Cheers from this month's Student Blogger,
Logan

Galaxy rise

my dad sent me an email with the link to a night time-lapse on a clear night. its pretty nice

Saturday, November 13, 2010

stencil ephemeral

Cool animation, more lo-fi than it appears at first glance. They give a hint at the method at the tail end of the clip.

Subcarpati - Am crescut pe la Romana from z00x on Vimeo.

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

repurposing

I enjoy this stuff http://www.evanblackwell.com/

Monday, November 8, 2010

Cardboard overflow



After a three day session of stacking boxes up and breaking cardboard down, mixed in with PVC wrestling and inhaling too much saw/playa dust laden air, the gallery has transformed into the late stages of the Burning man show. These photos are from the middle of the installation. The end product, I hope, will be surprising.
You are cordially invited to the Tahoe Gallery Wednesday night for dusty Sangria and some great conversation. The Reception starts at 5pm and the discussion at 6pm.

Friday, November 5, 2010

Pictures at a Junior Portfolio Review: Fall 2010


It was a relatively small JAPR this semester -- only three students, Amanda Dabel, Lane Huntington, and Anza Jarschke were on the slate. Here are some pics of the artists and there work:























A partial list of topics broached:
The aesthetic overlap between cute and creepy
The effect of glazes on spatial perception
The spiral in ceramic forms
The negotiation of price-points for functional potters
The limits of umbrellas
Non-symmetrical rorschach tests

Thursday, November 4, 2010

the dust is here to stay

Sue Webster made some great trash pile art.....

Currently the New Gernres class is preparing to install the long anticipated exhibit "NWGN 430: Starland" this weekend. We have been brainstorming on how to make a large sculptural piece made of cardboard and other things we can find. I was playing around with making box piles and here are some phone snapshots.
I like this but it needs to be 100,000,000 times bigger :)

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

Bugging

Student Jesyka Hayworth has painted a mural in the back stairwell of the art building -- it was a midterm assignment for New Genres. Check it out when you get the chance -- here's a taste of it: