Wednesday, November 16, 2016

IN LOVE AND RAGE XO DP

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DIRT PALACE

NOVEMBER 2016


  Now feels like an important time to hold chosen family and community close, we're sending out our love and care and rage to you all

DIRT PALACE SHOWCASE



Thursday November 17th
with performances, video, and readings by:
Chrissy Jones, Neve Cross with Hannah Devine, TASKMASTER, O Horvath, Alison Nitkiewicz
Xander Marro, Bridget Feral, Nina Ruelle and RECTRIX
@ DIRT PALACE
8pm
$5 - $10 donation


SEPTEMBER WINDOW ARTIST: LINDSAY BEEBE


Lindsay Beebe is a Poet, Painter, Curator, Actress, Teacher, Singer, and Direct Support Professional living in Providence, Rhode Island.  In 2004 Lindsay graduated from Rhode Island School of Design and moved to New Orleans, LA where she worked on the creative team that built floats for Mardi Gras and a handful of other Large Scale Parades.

Some of the techniques used in "The Mermaid Windows" installation at the Dirt Palace were learned during that experience.  The 3-Dimensional sculptural elements of the Mermaid torso and Tail are the main examples of the "Mardi-Gras technique".  What makes this particular style a desired method of sculpture building is that the main material used is cardboard, which is *cheap* and **lightweight**.  These larger sculptures can be lifted with one hand yet sturdy enough to withstand a few bumps and light crashes.

Lindsay was also exposed to the NYC Broadway experience when she was in her pre teen formative years and became captivated by set design, story telling through song lyrics, character development for the stage, and PROPS!  The Mermaid Windows incorporates elements of inspiration from stage design and set building as well as story telling and character personality.  Being a painter of extra large, loud, energetic, sometimes Bombastic yet always Intentional colorful art, Lindsay is used to filling a space with texture, line, color (and **BLING**).  
Lindsay finds inspiration in her current work as a Direct Support Professional for adults living with developmental and intellectual disabilities and is in the process of developing her practice into that of a licensed Art Therapist.  She thanks the Dirt Palace for this Awesome opportunity! XOXO LBB

Materials:

Felt, Staples, Cardboard, Contact Cement, Wood, Screws, Paper Mache, Tag Board, Newsprint, Glow in the Dark Paint, Black Light Sensitive Paint, Strobe Light, Tulle, Craft Butterflies, Sticky Back Glitter Paper, Recycled Items, Glass Vases, Bobbers, Food Coloring, Live Beta Fish (still alive now my pet), Model Magic, Acrylic Paint, Yarn, Gold Leaf, Colored Cellophane, Plastic Bling, Glitter, Spray Paint, Glow Sticks, Black Light, L.E.D.'s, Fog Machine, Mirrors, Shells, Starfish, Pumpkins, Love <3
 

OCTOBER WINDOW ARTIST: MOUNT PLEASANT LIBRARY TEEN COMIC CON AND PROVIDENCE COMICS CONSORTIUM

Alt-Comic Con Gives Providence Kids a Ticket-Free Taste of Creative Arts & Pop Culture       
Big Nazo, Comics Consortium and Local Artists Gather to Entertain and Inspire Youth
The RI Comic Con is a major event in the Rhode Island calendar but many Providence kids and teens can't buy tickets or travel to the big convention. That's  why Providence Community Library hosted Alt-Comic Con at Mount Pleasant Library on Saturday, November 12th, 1:00PM-5:00PM; to give youth a taste of convention day excitement. Suitable for all ages, "Alternative" Comic Con is a free, interactive event that provides local youth with a chance to meet and be inspired by city artists who are actively pursuing creative careers.
The library transformed into a mini convention hall; Big Nazo showed off some of its amazing creature creations, Providence Comics Consortium exhibited comic books created by kids at its workshops and Providence Roller Derby girls dropped by to support a discussion of Victoria Jamieson's bestselling graphic novel, "Roller Girl." Artists from Providence Comics Consortiumcreated a display in the Dirt Palace Storefront Window Gallery and Providence City Arts for Youth was on hand to add to the creative flavor of the day. The Dirt Palace's Own Olivia Horvath led a gif making workshop (see some awesome gif's made at the event below).
"The idea is to introduce kids and teens to people and organizations in Providence who are working creatively in the fields of technology, art and pop culture" said event organizer Emily LeMay. "We hope that they will inspire young people to pursue artistic endeavors and possibly consider pursuing a career in creative arts" she added.     





*****UPDATES*****


DIRT PALACE IS PLEASED TO HAVE ARTIST

CHRISSY JONES

DOING A SHORT TERM RESIDENCY FOR THE MONTH OF OCTOBER AND NOVEMBER
Sagan Youth-Surface
Watch the Video
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Chrissy has been working on illustrations in collaboration with writer Vi Khi Nao.
Tba new vocal project and videos
and is making zine of short stories coming out this week

O had fun at the Providence Alt Comic Con making animations with kids and their family! Check out everyone's awesome work at oliviahorvath.com/comiccon!

 
O will be tabling at COMIC ARTS LOS ANGELES on December 3rd and 4th at LA's Think Tank Gallery! More details at comicartsla.com.


This has been out for a while...but not since we've done a digest! so here it is: the new DMNS press book!!

Freedom's just another word for legs with a mind of their own. Fantastic book for travel and plotting escape plans! Sometimes you just have to go, and/or sometimes you look around and realize that you've been left behind.
As part three of a book series that presents thematic collections of writing & pictures by visual artists, musicians,performers, and people who have some affiliation with a broad and vaguely defined "world of art", DMNS presents: Leaving. Perfect bound. 184 pages, RISO printed silkscreened cover on flocked paper. Contributers = a stacked deck of mostly Rhode Islanders past/present/future: Paul McCarthy, Sam Lopes, Rick Benjamin, Kevin Hooyman, Jacob Khepler, Ron Rege Jr, Maren Jensen, Jo Dery, Jieun Reiner, Jim Drain, Cybele Colins, Anabel Vazquez, Jed Hancock & Rebecca Noon, Erik Ruin, Rebecca Seimering, S. Hollis Mickey, J.R. Uretsky, Dailen Willliams, Bob Arellano, Jim Frain, Mark Baumer, and Alan Powell.

Available at Ada books or buy here: dmnspress.com


Daniella performed as Taskmaster at Bach To The Future and had a great time. She is gearing up for a performance at the Dirt Palace Showcase, and recently made a UFO information packet comprised of drawings of UFO sightings from YouTube videos.
UFO info
Watch the Video
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Nina has been zooming in and out a lot lately (remember that movie, Powers of Ten?). For a while she was working at MASS MoCA, installing Nick Cave's show, "Until...". Now she's back in her own studio, playing with patterns and trying not to put all her eggs in one basket.

ALISON NITKIEWICZ

Alison will be screening a new video at the Dirt Palace House Showcase....if she can finish editing it in time!





*~*


ANNIHILVS has released the VVLTVRE 2009 EP My Will is to Self Destruct on CD and it is subsequently sold out on their site.  However, Copies are still available here
RECTRIX, The Sound of It Hammering Against the Skirts performance
Watch the Video
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Live Video from the Sound of It Hammering Against the Skirts, RECTRIX performance this summer
at Grace Performance Space in Brooklyn. Collaborators include: Alison Nitkiewicz, Chrissy Wolpert
Rebecca Mitchell, Neve Cross and the bell singers

RECTRIX will be performing Saturday December 4th at Tommy's Place
with Taboo & AxTx and friends

  



Bridget is still in Europe, but home in a few days. She played some shows irl and on the radio, taught a circuitry workshop, and found old and new friends (mostly in Berlin but also some other places like Leeds and Paris). She is now in Reykjavík, where she did sound for some truly amazing performances by the Bedroom Community musicians during Iceland Airwaves last week, and since then has been spending lots of time lurking about in her most beloved recording studio.


SARAH ROSE LEJEUNE



SR is still terribly far away at the Women's Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY. She has been casting lost socks in paper, working on a stack of abaca cushions, and printing an edition of mezzotints. This work will be featured in the exhibition Becoming, Part One (with Molly Berkson and Chloe Horsma) opening at WSW on December 2nd.





***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

This Hi-Lite just in from our pal Sheryl-Ann Simpson! New Migrant Cities is a look at how immigrants are incorporated in neighborhoods in three countries: Canada, the US, and Denmark. The US neighborhood being considered & compared and contrasted is Olneyville!






Ken's Funeral ///ur dreams are my nightmeows/// forward to a friend

Friday, November 4, 2016

Site Visit #4 Lauren Rosati - Exit Art, Alternative Histories

2016! The Dirt Palace is getting strategic (making a plan)! 
As part of this process we're visiting some organizations/space that we admire and hope to learn from. 

This post is part of a series of profiles of spaces that we have visited. This project is 
supported by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.

EXIT ART: ALTERNATIVE HISTORIES New York Art Spaces, 1960-2010

https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/alternative-histories

Interview with editor Lauren Rosati:
This groundbreaking book—part exhibition catalogue, part cultural history—chronicles alternative art spaces in New York City since the 1960s. Developed from an exhibition of the same name at Exit Art, Alternative Histories documents more than 130 alternative spaces, groups, and projects, and the significant contributions these organizations have made to the aesthetic and social fabric of New York City. Alternative art spaces offer sites for experimentation for artists to innovate, perform, and exhibit outside the commercial gallery-and-museum circuit. In New York City, the development of alternative spaces was almost synonymous with the rise of the contemporary art scene. Beginning in the 1960s and early 1970s, it was within a network of alternative sites—including 112 Greene Street, The Kitchen, P.S.1, FOOD, and many others—that the work of young artists like Yvonne Rainer, Vito Acconci, Gordon Matta-Clark, Ana Mendieta, David Wojnarowicz, David Hammons, Adrian Piper, Martin Wong, Jimmie Durham, and dozens of other now familiar names first circulated.

Through interviews, photographs, essays, and archival material, Alternative Histories tells the story of such famous sites and organizations as Judson Memorial Church, Anthology Film Archives, A.I.R. Gallery, El Museo del Barrio, Franklin Furnace, and Eyebeam, as well as many less well-known sites and organizations. Essays by the exhibition curators and scholars, and excerpts of interviews with alternative space founders and staff, provide cultural and historical context.

At a Glance
EXIT ART
Founded: 1982-2012 by Jeanette Ingberman & Papo Colo
Budget: $6mil annually
Staff: 6
Board of Directors: 17
Board of Advisors: 17

Mission: Exit Art is an independent vision of contemporary culture prepared to react immediately to important issues that affect our lives. We do experimental, historical and unique presentations of aesthetic, social, political and environmental issues. We absorb cultural differences that become prototype exhibitions. We are a center for multiple disciplines. Exit Art is a 28-year-old cultural center in New York City founded by Directors Jeanette Ingberman and Papo Colo. It has grown from a pioneering alternative art space into a model artistic center for the 21st century committed to supporting artists whose quality of work reflects the transformations of our culture. Exit Art is internationally recognized for its unmatched spirit of inventiveness and consistent ability to anticipate the newest trends in the culture. With a substantial reputation for curatorial innovation and depth of programming in diverse media, Exit Art is always changing.

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Our favorite graffiti in Providence: someone tagged just the word “LIVE”, only to be tagged later by someone else who scrawled “because it lasts a long time”. While there are varying ways to interpret this, as long-term types, we always like think of it as a weird variation of, “if you hang in long enough, you’ll get to see cool things happen. This was our feeling getting to meet with Lauren Rosati to discuss Exit Art and other organizations. Lauren, when we first met her years ago as a young native Rhode Islander, living at AS220 and writing a graduate paper on RI Art Spaces and relational aesthetics is now someone who’s done some of the most extensive and respected research in the field of Alternative Arts Space. What a joy to get to discuss the history of NYC’s changing alternative spaces trajectory with someone who also deeply understands the subtleties and complexity of the Rhode Island arts ecosystem!

Lauren starts out by giving us her quick but elegant overview of the Alternative space movement. She tells us: It has it’s roots in avant-garde 1960’s experimentalism spearheaded by people like Cage and Rauschenberg, concerns around multiculturalism and civil rights, giving a voice to underrepresented people and creative practices. It’s not always about physical space but sometimes takes the form of magazines, nomadic collectives, public art. In recent years it’s become a strategy for navigating space scarcity and arts approaches stunted by the New York money machine.

A thing that was interesting and unique, in the context of our site-visits, about talking to Lauren, was that she could draw on knowledge of a variety of different organizations and talk frankly about how different approaches to a variety of things including transitions panned out. The type of transition that is often the most visible and puts organizations in the most vulnerable places is of course leadership transitions, particularly transitions from founder/directors to a second generation of leadership.  Lauren characterized there as being three basic outcomes of these situations: 1) The organization doesn’t survive. Sometime this is by design - Perhaps the founders/board aren’t particularly interested in seeing it survive beyond themselves for a variety of reasons. Perhaps they recognize that developed projects into their 2nd generation of leadership often require a lot of resources and want to see said resources go into a greater number of scrappy “from the ground up” orgs or spaces. Perhaps there is a block against planning, or just poor planning, perhaps someone dies unexpectedly before there is an opportunity to plan  2) The organization survives but in a new form - perhaps people get fired or retire (sometimes founding leadership), perhaps the mission or programs gets redefined or radically expand in scope, perhaps the institution partners with another organization as a means of survival 3) The organization survives and there’s not a huge noticeable change - No big mission change, programs continue on track and the org goes on doing what it’s set out to do, sometimes with new personalities, visions and approaches, but in general things are relatively peaceful. Examples of situation #1 include Exit Art #2 The New Museum & PS1 #3 Artists Space, Art in General and The Kitchen. When asked if Lauren had any thoughts on why transition worked for the groups in category #3 she offered a couple of thoughts: boards that are professional (not just personal relationships of the ED) and support leadership appropriately, but aren’t afraid to challenge it - correspondingly ED’s who are totally transparent with the board, understanding of the audience for the project, a willingness and interest in “letting go” and letting the project grow outwards beyond the purview and control of the leadership.  

Our conversation about transition led into a discussion of the prevalent yet problematic practice in the arts of not adequately paying people. Skimping on programming or the proper compensation of staff / interns (whether through pay or credit) just doesn’t pay off for the organization in the long haul she warns. An organization is only as good as its programs and the staff that makes them happen!

Our conversation with Lauren covered such a myriad of Arts Spaces in New York.  At risk of sounding like a commercial for the Alternative Histories book, this book is really great -  you should read it!...It’s format, which consists of providing a page long profile of every space with a BIG picture, makes it a great cross-reference compendium to the Julie Ault Alternative Art New York book.