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Weaving Between Structures: May Be Bridge

April 5, 2013

May Be Bridge

IMG_6272maybe bridge color

Approaching a wooden footbridge that seems to rally in light,
bearing the signifier of a potentially slippery response
motioning forward and pausing, struck
wondering emotively, if I turn around
will everything slip and rearrange itself?

IMG_6271maybe caution color

Maybe.

I scan the surface of the terrain sheeted still with virgin snow
noting checkpoints for shadow shelter, including
a twisturned obelisk on an island of moist dead grass, squishy
two figures pockmarked by time, holding hands
compelled into vastness
as if sleepwalking for centuries

MBB_3

I want to run across their expanse

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Weaving Between Structures is a first person serial poem of concussed cartography and explorative dispatch, abstracting a state of continuous arrival in the surreal landscape that is Lynden Sculpture Garden. These writings are responses to time spent investigating and imagining the garden as both a full character with distinctive personality traits and a broad world with its own rules and ecosystems living inside of it.

Weaving Between Structures is a recurring feature on this blog by Lynden Sculpture Garden Blogger-in-Residence WC Tank. To learn more about his work, click here.

Weaving Between Structures

March 22, 2013

We're excited to introduce Weaving Between Structures, a new recurring feature on this blog by Lynden Sculpture Garden Blogger-in-Residence WC Tank. To learn more about his work, click here.

***

Weaving Between Structures is a first person serial poem of concussed cartography and explorative dispatch, abstracting a state of continuous arrival in the surreal landscape that is Lynden Sculpture Garden. These writings are responses to time spent investigating and imagining the garden as both a full character with distinctive personality traits and a broad world with its own rules and ecosystems living inside of it.

I.

As I remove the parachute from over my eyes
I pan my circumference around a horizon spotted
with forms whose immediate visages do not inform motion
yet an undulating stillness cries contrary silently
through an air permeated by fertile invisibility

Expeditions begin with perimeter pondering
through deep winter trudge
beneath hibernating hives
and a blue jay swooping from an interstellar waterslide
thinking its easy to treat behemoths as islands

Until I’m weaving between structures noting
their unseen interconnectivity
The sculpted seem to want to be trees
and the different shades of these reprieve a rupturing
synthesis with an unscalable white wall sleeping on its back

Veined with the shadows of modernist bone
and the footprints of something small
I follow in parallel with what once ran
tailed by the faint scratches of frozen leaves
gliding across the ice like glass tumbleweeds

Mid-March Nohl Round-Up

March 18, 2013

Suitcase Fund recipient Eddie Villanueva was mentioned as part of "This Year's New Talent" at the Scope Fair 2013 by the NY Arts. To read the piece, click here.

Current Nohl Fellow Faythe Levine has released the official trailer for her forthcoming documentary (co-directed by Sam Macon), Sign Painters, and announced the first official screening, March 30 at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington DC. To watch the trailer, click here. For more information on the screening, click here. More screenings are being scheduled.

February Nohl Round-Up

February 18, 2013

Chris James Thompson, Nohl fellow from 2010 in the Emerging category, and Detective Pat Kennedy talk about Thompson's film, The Jeffrey Dahmer Files, on CNN. Take a look here.

2012 Suitcase Fund recipient Marsha McDonald has added an artist talk with poet, photographer and "high Sierras mountain man" Tinker Greene as part of her exhibition at Chandler Fine Art in San Francisco. More information on the exhibition here.

FISTA Chainsaw Safety Training

February 15, 2013

Bob Retko, senior grounds manager and author of From the Wild Side, a recurring feature on this blog, organized a Basic Level Chainsaw Safety Training Certification class at the Village of River Hills meeting room. The class, which was organized in conjunction with the Forest Industry Safety Training Alliance (FISTA) from Rhinelander was led by Ben Parsons. Twelve participants learned basic chainsaw safety techniques from 7 am until 3 pm. See below for some pictures from the training session.

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3rd Annual Winter Carnival Slideshow

February 13, 2013

A (couple days) belated "Thank You!" to everyone who organized, attended and participated in our 3rd Annual Winter Carnival. Howard Leu of ThirdCoast Digest took some excellent pictures, which you can see in a slideshow, here.

Nohl Fellow Update: Brad Lichtenstein

February 5, 2013

2011 Nohl Fellow Brad Lichtenstein has released BizVizz, an iPhone app inspired by his documentary As Goes Janesville. You can learn more about BizVizz and purchase the app at http://bizvizz.com.

2012 Suitcase Export Fund Recipient Brad Pruitt Screens Documentaries in Los Angeles

February 5, 2013

2012 Nohl Suitcase Export Fund recipient Brad Pruitt is screening his documentaries "Bending Towards the Light" and "Mark My Words" in the Watts and Culver City neighborhoods of Los Angeles. More info below:

MKE< - >LAX in collaboration with Watts House Project and Otis College of Art and Design's Graduate Public Practice and Artists, Community and Teaching programs present film screenings with Milwaukee-based filmmaker Brad Pruitt in Watts and Culver City.

Bending Towards the Light
Thursday, February 7
7:00-10:00pm
Otis’ Graduate Public Practice program studios
10455 Jefferson Blvd, Culver City, 90232

Documentary video screening on U.S. educational system with Brad Pruitt and Mark Escribano, facilitated by Sara Daleiden.

Mark My Words
Thursday, March 7
7:00-10:00pm
Public program held at Watts House Project
1726 E. 107th Street, Los Angeles, CA 90002

Documentary video screening and spoken word performances with Brad Pruitt and Mark Escribano, facilitated by Sara Daleiden and Watts House Project.

Programs are FREE and open to the PUBLIC.

Pruitt's latest documentaries Bending Towards the Light and Mark My Words will be screened and include a discussion with the filmmaker and performances by local artists. Sara Daleiden, director of MKE< - >LAX and faculty for Otis’ Graduate Public Practice Program, will facilitate these discussions. Mark Escribano, a Los Angeles-based filmmaker and cinematographer, previously from Milwaukee who worked on the film, will participate. Pruitt will also co-teach a course with Daleiden at Otis’ Graduate Public Practice Program that focuses on education, community engagement and the value of social change work by artists. Pruitt is in residence with MKE< - >LAX from January-March 2013 in Los Angeles. As part of his residency, Pruitt will promote these recent documentaries, and seek support for his new film, Behind Closed Doors.

As an Emmy award-winning filmmaker and artist, Pruitt explores issues such as gun violence and new approaches to public education, finding new voices and ideas to help develop solutions for seemingly intractable challenges.

Inspired by the renaissance of spoken word at home and around the world, Mark My Words is a remarkably poignant feature that documents 24 hours in the lives of some of the nation's most talented poets. The film is a visual gumbo of performances, home lives, day jobs, families, and daily routines, seasoned by the poets' unique perspectives on the power of words.

Pruitt's latest documentary, Bending Toward the Light, explores U.S. educational systems through students, parents, teachers, reformers and activists in our country's heartland. This documentary examines the challenges as well as hopes of youths and adults who are transforming the state of education.

Currently Pruitt is working on Behind Closed Doors, a narrative feature project about fracturing communities and increased isolation, often exacerbated by lines drawn between various ethnic, social and religious groups. It explores issues about community and deep-seated concepts of the "other.”

For more information about the program and these special events, please contact Consuelo Velasco Montoya at 310-846-2610 or publicpractice@otis.edu.

******

This screening series is part of Otis’ Concentric Conversations series, which prompts discourse among cultural practitioners based in Los Angeles. Otis has the only educational program in the Southern California region dedicated exclusively to providing artists with advanced skills for working in the public sphere, focusing both on collaborative and individual art production. Applications currently being accepted for Fall 2013.

Watts House Project is an artist-driven neighborhood redevelopment organization through which artists and design professionals, in collaboration with the Watts Towers area residents, employ art as an economic and community development engine to promote and enhance the quality of residential life in the Watts neighborhood. WHP brings residents together in a creative partnership with artists, architects, design professionals, and volunteers to revitalize the neighborhood and re-imagine the environment through inventive programming, community involvement, and functional and creative housing renovations.

MKE< - >LAX investigates cultural exchange, through residencies and public programs, between Milwaukee and Los Angeles. Under the direction of Sara Daleiden, the initiative expands the discussion about cultural exchange across regional boundaries. MKE< - >LAX moves between regions to pose questions about the influence that location, size, market, cultural values and other regional factors have on the arts and cultural identity.

For more information on:
Otis College of Art and Design's Graduate Public Practice program, please contact Consuelo Velasco Montoya at cvelasco@otis.edu or visit www.otis.edu/academics/graduate_public_practice/index.html
Watts House Project, please contact Will Sheffie, Executive Director at wsheffie@wattshouseproject.org or visit www.wattshouseproject.org
MKE<->LAX, please contact Sara Daleiden at info@mke-lax.org or visit www.mke-lax.org.

Mark My Words Trailer: http://vimeo.com/19053522
Bending Toward the Light Trailer: http://vimeo.com/19052949
Pruitt's Current & Past Work: http://vimeo.com/28422206

Thank you to the Milwaukee-based Mary L. Nohl Suitcase Export Fund for the generous support.

Nohl: Suitcase Export Fund December Cycle 2012 Awardees

January 29, 2013

Congratulations to the recipients in the 2012 December Cycle of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation’s Mary L. Nohl Fund Suitcase Export Fund. The fund provides support to greater Milwaukee artists who are exhibiting or screening work outside the immediate four-county area. This group of artists will be taking work to Miami, Los Angeles, Delaware, San Francisco; Johannesburg, South Africa; Jeonju, South Korea; Izmir, Turkey; and Tokyo, Japan. The June Cycle opens June 3.

Nathaniel Stern: Stern will travel to Johannesburg, South Africa for “Dynamic Stasis,” a collaborative solo exhibition (with Jessica Meuninck-Ganger) of new works at GALLERY AOP, featuring 14 new print and video works, a catalog, an artist talk. Stern and Meuninck-Ganger will also undertake several workshops in collaboration with the University of Johannesburg.

T9713_Stern_Im-mediate

Eddie Villanueva: Villanueva will be exhibiting a large wall installation at SCOPE Art Fair in Miami. The installation will be a part of Circuit 12 Contemporary's booth.

T9313_Villanueva_Sex_inthe_90s_SCOPE_2012Miami_1280

Shana McCaw & Brent Budsberg: To show video installations and large-scale photographic prints from their series "States of Matter" at The York, a bar/restaurant in Los Angeles, programmed by Culture Reference, a curatorial project based in Echo Park. "States of Matter" depicts a 19th-century Midwestern farm couple struggling with the unfamiliar landscape of the American West. McCaw & Budsberg will participate in two residencies while on the west coast: one at Goldwell Open Air Museum in Beatty, NV, the other at MKE-LAX in Los Angeles.

T4413_McCawBudsberg_Suitcase_2012_Image02

Nicholas Grider: Grider will travel to Los Angeles for "A Public Drowning," a solo installation/performance involving photographs and text, a reading given in a private swimming pool, and a collective reading of a performance text. "A Public Drowning" is organized by Bellyflop Gallery in Los Angeles.

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Brad Pruitt: To screen and discuss his recent documentary, "Mark My Words," in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. The event, hosted by the Watts House Project (an artist-driven neighborhood redevelopment project) in collaboration with the Watts Art Center, Otis College of Art & Design and MKE-LAX, is designed to highlight art and media as a resource for social change and community engagement. This is the first public screening of the film in LA. Pruitt will also co-teach a workshop on public education and community organizing for public practice artists and will screen "Bending Toward the Light" at Otis.

T7113_Pruitt Head Shot

Special Entertainment: Special Entertainment will screen and discuss a selection of their work -- past, new and in-progress -- at Actual Size Gallery in Los Angeles. They will have a simultaneous residency at MKE-LAX, during which they'll be shooting footage for a feature film.

T8313_SpecEnt_Ciraldo from Hamlet ADD

Nirmal Raja: Raja will show works including a 15' x 5' stiff fabric quilt and 10 print/mixed media works as part of a group show at the Gyodong Art Center and Gyodong Studio Gallery in Jeonju, South Korea. The exhibition came as a result of a study trip a group of six Milwaukee artists made to South Korea last year to learn about hanji, the traditional Korean craft of making and manipulating paper.

T0713_Raja 'Negotiate'

Yevgeniya Kaganovich: For a solo exhibition at the Heidi Lowe Gallery in Rehoboth, Delaware. Lowe seeks work that transcends traditional thinking about jewelry and focuses on alternative materials. Kaganovich will be showing work from the "Pearl Clasp Necklace" series, which utilizes altered images of a traditional pearl clasp and porcelain “pearls” covered with a glaze that incorporates crushed fresh water pearls. The clasps flatten, inflate, gradate and deform, losing their original function and becoming decorative elements; the combination of porcelain and pearls creates a new precious material.

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Marna Brauner: Brauner will travel to Jeonju, South Korea to participate in a group show at the Gyodong Art Center and Gyodong Studio Gallery. The exhibition came as a result of a study trip a group of six Milwaukee artists made to South Korea last year to learn about hanji, the traditional Korean craft of making and manipulating paper. Brauner will be making 6 new pieces to be hung on the walls. While in South Korea, Brauner will lecture at the gallery and at Jeonju Kije College.

T6613_Brauner_Handle with KId Gloves

Marsha McDonald: For a solo exhibition of recent work-- paintings, drawings, and small bronzes on the theme sort vand or black water at Chandler Fine Art in San Francisco. McDonald will give a gallery talk as well as a public lecture.

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Jessica Meuninck-Ganger: Meuninck-Ganger will travel to Johannesburg, South Africa for “Dynamic Stasis,” a collaborative solo exhibition (with Nathanial Stern) of new works at GALLERY AOP, featuring 14 new print and video works, a catalog, an artist talk. Meuninck-Ganger and Stern will also undertake several workshops in collaboration with the University of Johannesburg, and Meuninck-Ganger will meet with Kim Berman at Artist Proof Studio to coordinate an exhibition of South African prints for the "Print:MKE" conference in March.

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Tonia Klein: To ship 4 mixed media collages, 2 screen prints and a site-specific installation to Izmir, Turkey for a solo exhibition at FLASH Atölye, an independent nonprofit project and exhibition space.

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Rina Yoon: Yoon will travel to Jeonju, South Korea for a group show she has curated at the Gyodong Art Center and Gyodong Studio Gallery. The exhibition is the result of a study trip Yoon led last year of six Milwaukee artists to South Korea to learn about hanji, the traditional Korean craft of making and manipulating paper.

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John Riepenhoff: To open a John Riepenhoff Experience at a new Lucie Fontaine Gallery in Tokyo. The John Riepenhoff Expierence will be in place for at least a year, and exhibitions will change quarterly, beginning with miniature paintings by Los Angeles artist Jeni Spota. From Tokyo, Riepenhoff will travel on to Bangkok to arrange a solo plein air exhibition at Ver Gallery.

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Victoria Tasch: Tasch will travel to Tokyo to exhibit altered and handmade books with screen printed pedestals in the group show, "Distant in Geography, Close in Mind" at the Bumpodo Gallery.

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Zina Mussman: For a solo exhibition, “Under the Sun,” at the Lane Community College Art Gallery (Sister Gallery) in Eugene, Oregon. Mussman will be showing 28 recent mixed-media drawings.

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Nohl Fellow Update: Barbara Miner

January 21, 2013

Barbara Miner, a 2008 Nohl Fellow whose photo essay, Anatomy of an Avenue, documented North Avenue from the Milwaukee lakefront to the town of Pewaukee, has published a book, Lessons from the Heartland: A Turbulent Half-Century of Public Education in an Iconic American City. You can join Miner for a book launch at Boswell Books on Friday, January 25 at 7 pm. More info at http://www.boswellbooks.com.

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