A New Season at ART342

While the summer residents are clearing out of the studios we have been welcoming the fall residents. Andy Brayman and William Wylie are already settled in their studios, and the others will join us within the coming weeks. We’ll keep you updated on their work here at ART342, but for now you can get an anticipatory look at the new residents.

Fernanda Chieco: http://art342.org/showGallery.php?gallery=75

Andy Brayman: http://matterfactory.com/author/andy_brayman/

Peter Fahey: http://art342.org/showGallery.php?gallery=78

William Vannerson: http://art342.org/showGallery.php?gallery=74

William Wylie: http://art342.org/showGallery.php?gallery=73

Joy Wood: http://www.art342.org/showGallery.php?gallery=80

Alicia Shandra Holmes: http://www.art342.org/showGallery.php?gallery=77

A Summer Recap

Fort Collins changes drastically at the end of August. College students arrive from all over the country, and the streets of Old Town are alive every weekend with music festivals and night life. While the leaves on the trees begin to turn yellow, ART342 becomes empty as the summer artists-in-residence leave, but we eagerly anticipate the arrival of the new fall residents. Here’s a look at the highlights of summer at ART342:

The green grass of summer making the artist studios a wonderful and picturesque place to work

A crowded Rendition Gallery for the opening of “The Truth Following the Existence of Something”: an exhibit of ART342 residents’ recent work

A Colorado sunset outside Rendition Gallery during the opening of the exhibit

The annual pig roast

Studio visits; getting to know the artists-in-residence

Meet Past Resident Ajean Lee Ryan

Three years ago this fall Ajean Lee Ryan was an artist-in-residence at ART342. She shared with us the things she’s been doing since then…

Since your time at ART342 what have you been up to?

At ART342 I began working with pastel and ink which I continue to work with today. I am currently having a solo exhibition at the Fort Collins Museum of Art showcasing many new works from the last year. Some of the new and recent work involve three-dimensional collage and sculptural pieces that range in size and scale but are all influenced by my drawings both materially and in subject matter. The drawings have continued to grow in size, scale and palette allowing me to test the boundaries of my use of materials and methods.

You were here 3 years ago in the fall, what do you remember most about your time at ART342?

I remember the windows by my drawing table and how I could see the storms rolling in. I also remember dear friends that I stay in touch with still to this day. After a long day, we would sit on the front deck and have a nice cold bottle of beer.

Where do you see yourself and your work in the next 5 years?

I hope to have a major show in a museum regionally or nationally and to have received a national grant to allow me to work on a large-scale installation that I keep fantasizing about.

What advice do you have for incoming residents?

Work hard, play hard. Go on a brewery tour and bring your bicycle.

Do you have any upcoming exhibitions?

Yes, I will be in a juried group show titled Glitz at the Annmarie Sculpture Garden and Art Center in Maryland and 25^th of September Exhibition at the Alexandria Museum of Art in Louisiana.

Check out more of Ajean’s work at : www.ajeanleeryan.com

Closing Interview with Resident Ian Dicke

Ian Dicke has been an ART342 composer-in-residence for the last half of summer and is leaving Fort Collins tomorrow. Before he leaves he has a few words with us…

Ian performs at Rendition

What have you been working on at ART342?

 I’m working on a commission for flute and vibraphone with interactive electronics. The piece is a “remix” of “Isla de Ninos”, a song by Elisa Ferrari. I will be using the original vocal part as a basis for variation and transformation.

What did you do for the exhibition at Rendition Gallery; The Truth Following the Existence of Something?

At Rendition, I performed my piece “Eight Oh Eight”. The work pays homage to the TR-808 drum machine, which was first introduced by the Roland Corporation in early 1980. The TR-808 has earned a cult status with musicians worldwide through its use on countless pop and hip-hop recordings.

In “Eight Oh Eight”, the percussionist is challenged to synchronize with a series of live loops of varying length, which overlap and shift in seemingly unpredictable ways. The percussionist determines many aspects of the work, including the instrumentation, form, and improvised solos. Although most of the audio material is created in real-time, the unmistakable samples of the TR-808 appear in several places, most notably in the middle mallet section.

Where were you before ART342 and where are you going to next?

Before Art342, I spent three weeks at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, FL. After my time in Fort Collins, I will be heading over to Stockholm, Sweden for a ten-month Fulbright Grant!

Goodbye Summer 2012 Artists-in-Residence

The current ART342 artists-in-residence will be leaving in the next week. We are sad to say goodbye to Joe-Joe Orangias, Leah Cooper, Devin Farrand, Ian Dicke, Alexander Lumans and Sarah Sloane. Before parting writer-in-residence Alexander Lumans shares with us what his time at ART342 was like:

So far at ART342, I’ve been revisiting several recent rough drafts of both short stories and poems. The new environment and fellow residents have enabled me to approach this older work with a more discerning eye and, hopefully, a stronger sense of what revisions need to occur in order to develop and improve this fiction and poetry. I also have a rough draft of a novel that I am reworking, but I find it takes a little while to settle into a routine and space, and that settling isn’t immediately conducive to working on a longer piece. I have to be pretty comfortable where I am in order to sit down and write more on a piece as gigantic as a novel. I’ll be ready to work on it when I’m ready. That’s the great thing about this residency: you can focus on writing and revising exactly what you’d like to, even if that includes ten different things at ten different stages. Sometimes it spreads me too thin, but it also always means I can take a break from one project to further another.

Before ART342, I was at another artist residency called the Blue Mountain Center up in the Adirondacks of New York for a month. Once ART342 ends, sadly, I’ll have to return to teaching down in Denver, where I just moved to. With any luck, though, I’ll have a new teaching gig at another university in Denver that will allow me to teach Fiction Writing courses, instead of simply Composition I and II, which is what I teach at the two universities I already work for. But in among all that teaching, I’ll keep writing. It just won’t be nearly as much as what I’m getting done here at ART342.

Another Great Exhibit at Rendition Gallery

This past week was packed with events surrounding the opening of The Truth Following the Existence of Something, an exhibit featuring residents Leah Cooper, Devin Farrand, Ian Dicke, Joe Joe Orangias, Sarah Sloane and Alexander Lumans.

Sloane reading to the crowd

Thursday night during a private event Sarah, Ian and Alexander performed readings and music for listeners who also were able to view the work of Leah, Devin and Joe Joe. Friday the gallery was open to the public for First Friday crowds.

Ian Dicke performing his music

Kids interacting with Joe Joe Orangias’s piece

A crowded Rendition Gallery during First Friday

The Truth Following the Existence of Something; ART342 Artists-in-Residence show work on First Friday

This Friday will be the public opening of The Truth Following the Existence of Something; an exhibition of the latest Artists-in-Residence at ART342 at Rendition Gallery in Old Town from 6pm-9pm

On display will be the work of Joe Joe Orangias. He explained to us what he’s been working on during his residency and what you get to see at Rendition Gallery:

Reflecting on Doubles. 2 x 4, archival inkjet prints, frames, light box, stool. 34 x 58 x 21 inches

While at Art342, I have been working on two projects. One is an ongoing series of sculptures called Supports of Our Working Bodies, which mixes queer imagery and semiotics with materials that reference architectural models or architectural extensions. This body of work explores doubles, parallels, and attempts to blur subjectivity and objectivity in an optimistic and pedestalled way. I am interested in this series unfolding through factors of inclusivity, support systems, and environment. Every piece is on stilts of some sort in preparation for a forecasted flood in the studio. The flood will be caused from the sculpture Harnessed Pool bursting open in a private performance, and will live on through video documentation. (Image above from series of Reflecting on Doubles.2 x 4, archival inkjet prints, frames, light box, stool. 34 x 58 x 21 inches)

Still from Stump Apparatus video, 2:01 of 15:37 minutes

The other project is a video at Douglas Lake called Stump Apparatus, which will be shown as an installation at Rendition Gallery. This project consists of nine sculptures made with recycled tree stumps, a ball made of their dust, and concrete mixing bags. The sculptures are utilized in the video as tools or translators for how the environment mediates the body and how the body mediates the environment. I have been working with many people from the Fort Collins area for this video and have gotten to know the town in a unique way through these people and the materials collected for Supports of Our Working Bodies. (Image above is a still from Stump Apparatus video, 2:01 of 15:37 minutes)

Meet a Current ART342 Resident; Leah Cooper

This summer we have been lucky enough to host Leah Cooper of Baltimore, MD where she works as an acedemic advisor and teacher at MICA. Her work will be exhibited in The Truth Following the Existence of Something at Rendition Gallery in Fort Collins this coming Friday, and here is an inside look at what she will be showing…

What have you/will you be working on here at ART342?

As an artist who is captivated by the everyday, my focus often narrows
to the smallest of cracks on the sidewalk and the faintest of shadows
on the wall. My intent is to create contextually dependent drawings
that question where the liminal state exists between what is noticed
and what is overlooked.

While in residency at ART342 the tangible product of my investigation
has been realized through site-responsive drawing/installation, both
interior and exterior. I work outside the traditional notion of
drawing, notating a physical site rather than rendering an illusory
version of that site. Drawing is traditionally considered to be a
two-dimensional re-presentation of the three-dimensional. I’ve aimed
to liberate drawing from its conventional role of descriptor and
rather employed it as a strategy where tactics have included
nomination, and notation contingently, by using materials outside of
standard mark makers and paper I hope to implement a situation where a
line created by an existing site element, something as ordinary as a
visible drywall seam is equivalent to a line drawn by the artist.

What are you planning for the exhibition at Rendition?

In addition to perceptibility, I am interested in employing the
contextually dependent nature of my installations as a means to
encourage the viewer to engage as participant rather than observer. My
interest in audience as contributor leads me to question the hierarchy
of the art object.  Is it possible to create work where meaning is not
contained within the object, but rather the object creates a heuristic
state that asks the viewer to complete the piece?

My aim for the show at Rendition is to use the space to begin to
investigate these questions.  I will create drawings that employ the
idea of indexicality, where the drawings point not only to the space they
occupy,  but also to themselves.

Another new work from Leah

Where are They Now? An Interview with Past Resident Jim David

Jim David was a resident at ART342 in the summer of 2009. He was kind enough to share with us what he’s been busy with over the past  three years;

Since your time at ART342 what have you been up to?

I’ve maintained a busy schedule of commissions, performances, and teaching since 2009. Most recently, I’ve received a commission for a trombone concerto for Joseph Alessi of the New York Philharmonic, as well as a new saxophone concerto for the inaugural International Saxophone Symposium and Competition. Last November, through the generous support of ART342, I served as host and director of the Aries Composers Festival, the first ever new music festival held in Fort Collins. This event welcomed sixteen composers from throughout the US and Canada to Colorado State University, and featured multiple concerts, presentations, workshops, and masterclasses on composition.

You were here 3 years ago in the summer, what do you remember most about your time at ART342?

I remember the company of new friends, the chance to work uninterrupted in a serene space, and the remarkable warmth and generosity of Jim and Wendy Franzen. It was a truly special summer.

Where do you see yourself and your work in the next 5 years?

I hope to still be here in Fort Collins composing and teaching! It’s a truly great place to live and work if you’re a creative person.

What advice do you have for incoming/current residents?

 Don’t be afraid to engage with the community and your surroundings in different ways. I think that most residents of the area are open to artists and what they contribute to society. Plus, the natural beauty of the Front Range are an easy source of renewal after a few hours in the studio.

For more information on Jim check out:

Personal website: www.jamesmdavid.com

Aries Composers Festival: www.ariescomposersfestival.com

CSU Department of Music: www.music.colostate.edu

The 2nd Annual Eric Dolphy Pig Roast at ART342

Matt and Paul, friends of ART342 preparing for the big feast

At 10:30 am the pig went into the roaster and by 6 pm guests had arrived and the pig was ready to eat. This was the scene of the annual pig roast at ART342. Friends and artists of ART342 were invited to bring a dish and share a meal together. It was a wonderful evening of drinks, games and food.

Friends and artists of ART342 enjoying the meal

A heated game of pool