Showing posts with label Proteus Gowanus. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Proteus Gowanus. Show all posts

26.5.12

The Fool's Journey


I participated in this exhibition at Curious Matter.


APRIL 1, 2012 – MAY 20, 2012
AT CURIOUS MATTER
APRIL 14 – JULY 1, 2012
AT PROTEUS GOWANUS
The Fool’s Journey is a collaboration between Curious Matter in Jersey City, NJ and Proteus Gowanus in Brooklyn, NY. The exhibition will be presented in two parts concurrently at Curious Matter and Proteus Gowanus. The exhibition is a complement to the yearlong, multi-disciplinary inquiry hosted by Proteus Gowanus on the theme of Migration and will be exhibited in parallel to its Future Migration show, exploring where we may end up as we embark into the future.
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“Every voyage is a journey…. who knows/if the old men/who shine shoes on the Staten Island Ferry/carry their world in a box slung across their shoulders/if they share their lunch/with birds/flying back and forth/upon an endless journey/if they ever find their way/back home.”

Audre Lorde, excerpt from “A Trip on the Staten Island Ferry”


The Fool’s Journey

And so we begin…

THE MOST COURAGEOUS PART of any undertaking is always the beginning. Making the difficult decision to begin pushes aside the doubts and fears of what may lie ahead and calms the expectation of failure. This energy of beginning is the Fool who sets out into an unknown to discover whatever he may find. In the tarot, the Fool is represented by the numeral 0: nothing, emptiness, void. The fool is a blank slate without knowledge, an acolyte who is seeking. He starts out penniless and ragged, carrying all of his meager possessions with him; a young man, just leaving home to make his way in the world. He is a naïf full of dreams, willing to let the Universe show him the way.
Read more at Curious Matter
I was proud to be included with the following artists:

Curious Matter

PROTEUS GOWANUS

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19.5.11

Of Water


Of Water: book: 8¾ ” h. x 6½” w., 36 pages; jar: 3½” d. 4¼ ” h.: 
watercolor on paper, linen, archival board, cotton thread, wheat paste, glass, shells, turquoise

You had to climb wide marble steps and go through the huge and ornate bronze doors of The New York State Education Building in Albany, New York to get to the New York State Museum. Here was truly a temple of learning in the Greek style, with its block long, monumental colonnade. Its very architecture emanated grandeur. Walking through the entrance made you feel important things were to come. A brass, cage elevator took you to the floor where the museum was located. The elevator operator was quiet and knew that the public was allowed only into the fifth floor museum. My young self imagined there were other fantastic mysteries housed on the other floors. When the elevator stopped and the squeaky door was pulled open, it took a second or two for your eyes to adjust to the dimmer light. You heard the sound of trickling water first, then you looked upon a full fledged recreation of a prehistoric forest. Giant club mosses the size of trees perched upon rocky ledges appeared to stretch into a humid distance. Strewn among this vision of Paradise were the fossilized stumps and logs of actual prehistoric trees. The adventure had begun; you were now in another world. 
It was in museums that I learned about collections. They were in oak framed cases with glass windows isolating their contents away from the chaotic world. Everything was labeled and had some sort of explanatory text, which gave name and context to the objects on display. Even the most mundane rocks were elevated to a place of importance. Museums gave everything an aura of worth. Not necessarily a monetary worth, but perhaps a worth of being studied, or a worth of being admired for some unique quality that set the observed apart from its peers. 
Of Water examines the notion of what makes a collection and what makes it have worth. My small gathering of mostly shells is of a common sort. They were collected by me over time from beaches or shops or the cast offs of pets. I had no specific end in my mind, there was just some quality about each object that captured my imagination: a mussel shell had a barnacle attached, the knobby texture of another was a pleasure to handle, or a snail that once spent its hours quietly slithering along the glass of my aquarium left behind an empty shell without an explanation of its inhabitant’s whereabouts. The accompanying book documents and finds the Latin name of each animal (except the stone, for which I give the chemical formula), giving each an identity and placing them among phyla of all the creatures on earth. From their small glass jar, they are ennobled and immortalized with a portrait; rendering them special among all of the other fish of the sea. 
The contents of this installation are all related by the theme of water. Even Turquoise was once considered a solid form of water and has water molecules as a component of its formula. As such, they come under the dominion of Triton, who heralds the opening of the book on the title page. Triton’s name means “of the third” which refers to his father Poseidon. The third lot of water fell to Poseidon when, with his brothers Zeus and Hades, they divided the ruling of the world among themselves. Zeus claimed the heavens, and Hades fate sent him to rule the underworld. The third lot gave Poseidon complete kingship over all of the waters of the earth. Thus, Poseidon’s son, Triton, he born of water, blows his shell trumpet to proclaim the strength and majesty of the sea. 
Museums offer an imposing entrance to other worlds. Whether a window to a prehistoric forest, a doorway into our human past or a peephole into the workings of the universe, they guide us to seeing and understanding what surrounds us. Perhaps this why we collect, to ponder the great mysteries in all things; of Gods and how their great forces act upon the world and of creatures, now in a jar whose curious, hidden lives lived in secret add up to Life.

Of Water was part of the exhibition Naming the Animals at 
Curious Matter and Proteus Gowanus, April 3 - July 17, 2011

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3.4.11

Naming The Animals

I am participating in the group exhibition Naming the Animals at Curious Matter.


This is from the catalog essay:


In our collective effort to understand the world, we’re driven to name and catalog everything around us. From the detailed observations of prehistoric cave painters through modern ecology and zoology, humans have been compelled to describe and render the other living things that inhabit the earth. Not necessarily purely aesthetic or scientific, naming and cataloging can include the assignment of moral or metaphorical associations. Implicit in these actions is our desire to declare and understand ourselves.



Please go to the Curious Matter site to read the entire essay.
Naming the Animals is a two part exhibition in cooperation with Proteus Gowanus in Brooklyn and runs from 
April 3 - May 15, 2011 at Curious Matter
and from April 16 - July 17, 2011 at Proteus Gowanus.


Included in the show are the following artists:


CURIOUS MATTER


Lasse Antonsen
Julia Whitney Barnes
Jill Marleah Bell
John Bell
Arthur Bruso
Travis Childers
Matthew Cox
Joanna Ebenstein
Veronica Frenning
Patti Jordan
Heather Layton
Ross Bennett Lewis
Carrie Lincourt
Eric Lindveit
Colette Male
Marianne McCarthy
Florence Alfano McEwin
Hans van Meeuwen
Raymond E. Mingst
Elizabeth Misitano
R. Wayne Parsons
Inna Razumova
Debra Regh
Andrew Cornell Robinson

PROTEUS GOWANUS

Kristi Arnold
William Brovelli
Christian Brown
Ryan Browning
Travis Childers
Clair Chinnery
Eileen Ferara
Richard Haymes
Ellie Irons
Katherine McLeod
Suzanne Norris
Melissa Stern
Jennie Suddick
Tricia Zimic
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