Thursday, January 15, 2015

Longest Nights for Never Ending Night‏


DIRT PALACE
DECEMBER 2014


Thanks to Kate Wells at PPL for finding this beautiful picture of the building for us. It's from around 1900.

Katrina Ellis
Katrina Ellis was born in rural Central New York State in 1981. She lived in Brooklyn for ten years after receiving her BFA from Pratt Institute, but moved to Providence, RI in 2013. Ellis’ work has most recently been included in “The Power of Place” at the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art (HVCCA) in Peekskill, NY (2013), the Collaborative Concepts exhibition “The Farm Project 2013″ in Garrison, NY, SWELL at GRIN, Providence, RI in January 2014. She will have work included in TEEM, opening November 22 at GRIN, Providence, RI and at the LORE Collection Pop-up Gallery in December.
Katrina Ellis’ mixed-media works explore themes of memory, mortality and alienation. Pulling from traditions of craft, storytelling and mythos, she explores the realm where memory and dreams are blurred, aware of the tension created by a natural world that feels simultaneously full of wonderous connections, spirituality, and can also be overwhelmingly alienating. As a creative only-child, Ellis grew up looking for the magic in the everyday, and her works often attempt to unveil the possibilities of the flexible reality human consciousness grasps at while trying to recapture the wonder of looking at the world through child-like eyes. Ellis is interested in the human propensity to view life through constructed narratives: visual art, cinematic works and music all play into this desire.
Jesse Kaminsky: Particle Guardian
Jesse Kaminsky is a multimedia artist who lives in Providence, RI. He has a broad-based approach to media, often combining common, recognizable materials with video and audio components to create immersive, transformative environments. His work examines the fictional spaces of daily life.
Jesse received his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and his MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. His recent investigations into popular media have led him out of a period of rigorous, material-based, systems-oriented sculpture into a more subjective and performative system for making art. By combining his long time interest in sound and video with a deep interest in the material world, he creates temporary environments that attempt to undermine the fundamental mental processes that people use to shortcut the sensory world.
Particle Guardian is an inflatable sculpture made from sewn tyvek and sharpie marker. It’s a little like some big sad vegetable roots or a tuft of massively overgrown hair follicles. Partially owing to the fact that it doesn’t quite inflate to the point of what we would perceive as vegetable ripeness, these sculptures are somewhat confusing objects. Their matte white surface is a rare or unnatural state for most plant or animal life, causing them to appear somewhat feeble yet ominous, like Bunnicula’s ghost carrots or the white stalks of grass trying to grow without light. They can be the warning signs of a natural disaster if you like, a small indication of normal biological functions gone horribly wrong. Or like ghostly carnivorous triffids, the leading edge of a natural world at constant war for survival. Everyone is on the lookout for evolution, a dangerous tool in the constant battle for species survival. Our senses are adapted to sense the warning signs. These might be them.

*****UPDATES!!!


As part two of a book series that presents thematic collections of writing/pictures by visual artists/musicians/performers/people who have some affiliation with a broad and vaguely defined "world of art", Xander presents: TroubleIt's either a book about finding trouble, or being trouble, or getting out of it all somehow. Contributors include some of the best troublemakers Rhode Island (or it's nearby environs) have to offer: Mike Leslie, Annapurna Himel Wagner, Katrina Salander Clark, Matthew Derby, Mark Baumer, Mike Taylor, Rachel Lewallen, Tom Bubul, Heather Benjamin, Lisa Carver, Matthew Lawrence, V Manuscript, Jamie Lowe, Mimi Chrzanowski, Daniel Daley, Mary-Kim Arnold, Bert Crenca, Suzy Gonzelez, Rudy Cheeks, Mickey Zacchillli. Buy ithere. Also a 2 for $25 deal with last years Witch Fingers here. To buy locally go to Ada Books or the AS220 project space...for trades/schemes/direct purchase from my studio send me an e-mail (contact info here)

The Holiday Sale Season had Muffy ricocheting from craft sale to craft sale. 
She has been reveling in taking her studio time and Etsy shop in a new direction that reflects her love of kitsch sleaze and even more colorful and dizzying patterns.


She has added 
necklaces for each Zodiac sign  her shop.  They are made from vintage flattened pennies, dead stock from a 1980's sex shop.  Each coin depicts a couple enacting the  sex position attributed to that astrological sign.  
The Fall was spent scouring library books for Ancient Greek sex scenes on vases.  She collected her favorite to make an original composition to print on textiles, the full design has over 50 scintillating scenes.  Soon at Muffy's etsy you'll be able to score a sexy ancient scenes print on skirts, leggings, and pillows.  Until then you can snag yourself a small textile that you can use as decor, or a handkerchief, bandana, dinner napkin, or cum rag.
If you missed any in person sales you can shop online. 
Thursday December 18th is the least day to buy for Domestic Holiday Delivery.  
Providence Friends be sure to check out Naughty or Nice at Yellow Peril Gallery.
I've been told Thirsty's Annual Holiday Sale Opening Party  is a blast 
If you are in PVD you can be in touch for a studio visit, I promise I won't be weird to you if you don't buy anything.
Jieun has been in a studio black hole filling holiday orders for Almanac for June. She hopes you enjoy your holidays and wishes you the best of everything for the tail end of 2014!




As of December 4th, Rachel announces her recent book release:
Nearly Inaudible _________ of Internet Lesbian Siblings, 116 pages of visceral semi-autobiographical fiction and poetry, is the result of 9 months of solitary dreamy bedroom writing on the grotesque (read: poetic) subjects of lesbianism, identical twinness, “death”, humiliation, suggestive incest, and the ocean.  [books now available for trade or purchase]
$10.00 in person
Aside from joining the YMCA and freakin’ out daily on basketball courts, Rachel has spent the last month focusing on her solo music/performance project. She had the honor of performing alongside Lydia Lunch + Weasel Walter & PVD local all-star Reba Mitchell (HOUSE RED) on December 5th and has been recovering in multiple regards since ;). The train continues to chug as Rachel anticipates her late-December tape release entitled, Your Body is Walking Alone,comprised of overlain saxophone, vocals, and read poetry.  A taste is found below:
Rachel continues to love her bad attitude.  She also doesn’t need any of your bad attitude because she has her own.  Also, if you don’t like her attitude you are encouraged to quit talkin’ to her.  You also cannot keep her caged up.

If the past three months have taught Nina anything, it's that sometimes you've just gotta stop what you're doing and go squid fishing. What she was doing included:
a. printing and sewing 50 pillows
b. making a christmas snail headdress

c. getting ready for her first-ever craft sale at NUA
d. stringing lots of tiny flags
When she wasn't doing that...


'tis the season



screened work in The HTMlles 11 - Feminist festival of media arts + digital culture inMontreal.
RECTRIX will be performing January 13th at AS220 with PHARMAKON and V MANUSCRIPT


***DIRT PALACE LIBRARY HI-LITES***

MONTHLY PICTORIAL TREAT FROM THE DUSTY SHELVES OF THE DIRT PALACE
FURTHERING THE QUEST TO SPREAD FUN
LIKE GIN AND JUICE, MOSTLY GIN




Your Hyperactive Child: A Parent’s Guide to Coping With Attention Deficit Disorder by Barbara Ingersoll, Ph.D.
The always-romantic National Institute of Mental Health does it again. What poeticism!  What whimsy!  What the heck am I going to eat for dinner tomorrow? Can’t get enough of this book, which has been slowly realized as the autobiography I once wrote after spontaneously changing my name to Barbara, transitioning my wardrobe to a “blurry yellow monochromatic size 3”, chopping my hair into a brunette bowl cut which flows constantly in a stale playground breeze, then subsequently forgot about the entire document because I can’t pay attention to anything for more than twenty minutes.