Ok, I finally have a moment to stop and reflect on the last month or so of frenetically paced art making (or really it feels more like art doing...)
Shall I summarize?
I think things are mostly captured online here already, but NO RUSE, the wackadoo project I was working on with Liz Nofziger, went off not so much without a hitch (as there were many ill-timed technical difficulties,) but quite satisfyingly. We're still going to need to figure out funding for the catalog and to produce it, but the event itself was really great. We managed to keep the surprise (that we were producing Boston's first underwater art exhibit) and achieve maximum impact when it was revealed. No small task considering how many people were involved...
Then Andi Sutton and I managed to finish our (equally oddball) collaboration Last Gasp Radio that same week, which was an especially amazing feat on Andi's part as she's a pretty brand new mom. The piece was made for Proof Gallery's BOSTON DOES BOSTON 8 show and will be on view through February 21.
The only bummer this month is that I have time to write this blog post today because an interactive performance piece that I'd been developing for presentation at Panolpy Performance Lab as a part of their MEGABUS SOCIAL RESEARCH ARTISTS' RETREAT was cancelled due to inclement weather. (It has been rescheduled for early March, but I'll have to think carefully about whether or how I can participate as I'll be operating under the restrictions of the RESIDENCY FOR ARTISTS ON HIATUS at that time...)
I may add a second blog post later this week to introduce my plans for my time with RFAOH, which begins on February 1. Both to explain what will be happening here (in my blogging space) during that time, and to extend the theme of taking stock with that project specifically in mind.
Meanwhile, I'll end this post with an image from yet another highlight of this month. Through a personal connection who knows how sad I was to have to put my smell-based art project on indefinite hold for financial reasons (see August 2014 blog post for the sad details,) I had an opportunity last week to participate in a workshop with a contemporary artist who works with odor a lot (Anicka Yi) and a biologist turned artist (Tal Danino) that focused on an upcoming collaboration of theirs. It was very helpful to me in understanding the technology (still far beyond my current economic grasp) involved in doing the kind of smell-based work I want to be doing someday, as well for deepening my thinking about the importance of smell based creative work. I got a few book recommendations (one of which I've already ordered) and cultured my own (very smelly!) dish of bacteria from the mouthpiece of my water bottle. I mean eventually to get to my studio and photograph it on top of my lightbox, but for now, here's what it looks like on top of a lamp in my office with a bit of tracing paper as a makeshift diffuser. If it lasts until February, maybe I'll rephotograph it as my first official piece of non-art. Until then, it's officially not only art, but super smelly art!
