Cultural Transcendence

Please mark your calendars!

Opening Reception: Thursday, December 17, 2009
December 18, 2009 - June 19, 2010
Cultural Transcendence
The Wing Luke Asian Museum
Featuring Robert Hodgin, Eunsu Kang, Heidi Kumao, Horatio Law, and Brent Watanabe
Seattle, WA

In Cultural Transcendence, five Asian Pacific Islander American artists exhibit works that focus on a step forward from traditional to new media: materials expanding beyond their inherent meanings. Their conceptual themes peer into history but do not dwell on a negative past -- inequality, discrimination, and alienation; instead they search the present and envision a better tomorrow. Cultural Transcendence explores the importance of technology in our modern experience and technology's influence on contemporary installation art.

Bumbershoot 2009

Thank you so much to everyone who made it to the Kerfuffle exhibition at Bumbershoot!

 

  

If you weren't able to see the show, there are more images here, and there is some great press here. 

Links to the artists' web sites:

Vaughn Bell 

Joseph Gray

Chris Jordan 

Allison Kudla 

Julie Lindell

DJ Spooky/Paul D. Miller 

Karen Rudd 

Christina Seely 

Brent Watanabe 

Kuros Zahedi

Lunar Resonant Streetlights

Christina Seely, one of the artists in our upcoming Kerfuffle exhibition at Bumbershoot, is a principal member of Civil Twilight, a design collective committed to brilliant simplicity.

Civil Twilight's Lunar Resonant Streetlights respond to ambient moonlight, dimming and brightening each month as the moon cycles through its phases.

The project was nominated for the INDEX Award in Copenhagen which comes along with a jury prize. From the INDEX web site:

* * *

Willis agrees that Floridian coastal communities could be particularly right for this lighting system because of the needs of nesting sea turtles on the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico shores. "A sort of peripheral area of research I was into involved how natural and astronomical cycles are involved with physiology and the human body and other animals.

"Sea turtles are particularly interesting because they live almost their entire lives in the sea, but come in to the beach during particular times of night at particular times of year to lay their eggs. When the turtles hatch" months after they're laid, " they instinctively crawl toward a light source to reach the water."

The turtle hatchlings interpret whichever major source of light they see as moonlight. In areas where streetlights are on, it's been known for decades that the young turtles can be thrown off course. "Instead of crawling to the water," Willis says, "they head inland toward the lights and they can die of dehydration."

While many coastal communities have lighting ordinances now, requiring residents and municipalities to keep bright lights away from turtle-nesting beachfronts, Lunar-Resonant lighting would automatically resolve the issue because on the bright-moon nights of sea turtle activities, the sensors would have dimmed the streetlight systems.

* * *

Please take a moment to read a little more and VOTE for the People's Choice Award! This will help Christina and her team move forward with getting Lunar Resonant Streetlights out into the world.

Kerfuffle: A Preview

 
Please join us for the opening of Kerfuffle (or The Uneasy Relationship Between Humanity and the Environment) on September 4 at the Seattle Center Northwest Rooms. The Bumbershoot Visual Arts Exhibits will open with the Mayor's Arts Awards at noon and will be free for the public to view until 7pm.

Bumbershoot Festival, Seattle, WA
Fidalgo and Lopez Rooms
Curated by Chris Weber and Lele Barnett

Opening: Friday, September 4, 12-7pm (FREE)
Festival: September 5-7, 2009

Kerfuffle
\kər-ˈfə-fəl\
Etymology: alteration of carfuffle, from Scots car- (probably from Scottish Gaelic cearr wrong, awkward) + fuffle to become disheveled

Kerfuffle is an uncompromising look at the environmental mess we have created in our world, the awkward tension the problem has created, and a search for answers in starting anew. We examine exactly how many plastic bottles the United States consumes within five minutes and the light pollution caused by the world's major economic and political centers. What does one man's garbage look like after one year's time? Should we pack our bags and relocate to the unclaimed lands of Antarctica? Or can we change our ways and grow new cities with green, living matter? This exhibition is an exploration of the challenge we face along with many creative possibilities.

Vaughn Bell
Biosphere Built for Two

Vaughn Bell creates interactive projects and immersive environments that deal with how we relate to our environment. Vaughn has exhibited her sculpture, installation, video, performance, and public projects internationally in diverse venues including Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Exit Art in New York, The Soap Factory in Minneapolis, and the town of Kamiyama, Japan. Her work has been featured in Artnews, Afterimage, and Arcade Journal, among others. She received her MFA from the Studio for Interrelated Media at Massachusetts College of Art in Boston.

Joseph Gray
Crystalline Chlorophyll

Joseph Gray makes stuff, usually involving digital electronics and/or sculptural forms. He received his BFA from Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle, studying video and sculpture. He has exhibited or performed at Unit B Gallery in San Antonio, Texas; Meridian Gallery in San Francisco, California; The Landing Pad in Edmonton, Alberta; and the former James Leslie Gallery in Lewiston, Idaho.

Gray is actively involved with operations and administration at 911 Media Arts Center in Seattle and is also a resident visualist and graphic designer with the Monktail Creative Music Concern, a collective of musicians and composers dedicated to new uses of improvisation based in Seattle.

Chris Jordan
Plastic Bags, 2007
Plastic Bottles, 2007
Cell Phones #2, Atlanta 2005

Chris Jordan's series, Running the Numbers, looks at contemporary American culture through the austere lens of statistics. Each image portrays a specific quantity of something: sixty thousand plastic bags (five seconds of consumption in the United States); two million plastic beverage bottles (five minutes of consumption in the United States); and so on. Jordan's hope is that images representing these quantities might have a different effect than the raw numbers alone, such as we find daily in articles and books. Statistics can feel abstract and anesthetizing, making it difficult to connect with and make meaning of 3.6 million SUV sales in one year, for example, or 2.3 million Americans in prison, or 32,000 breast augmentation surgeries in the U.S. every month.

This project visually examines these vast and bizarre measures of our society, in large, intricately detailed prints assembled from thousands of smaller photographs. Employing themes such as the near versus the far, and the one versus the many, Jordan hopes to raise some questions about the roles and responsibilities we each play as individuals in a society that is increasingly enormous, incomprehensible, and overwhelming.

Allison Kudla
capacity for (urban eden, human error)

Allison Kudla is currently a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Washington’s Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS). She holds a BFA from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago (2002) and is interested in creating art that encourages both innovation of and reflection on the technologies and materials that it uses. Her most recent accomplishments include an honorable mention in the international competition Vida 11.0, participation in Artbots Dublin 2008, a commission for DesCours New Orleans, and a paper presentation at PerthDAC 2007. Additionally, her work has been written about in many magazines, and her writing was published in the Leonardo Electronic Almanac for a special issue called Embodiment and Presence. She has recently accepted a two year appointment at Srishti School of Art, Design, and Technology in Bangalore, India. There she will be a visiting artist and teacher at their Center for Experimental Media Art (CEMA).

Julie Lindell
Revolution, 2009

Julie Lindell is a Seattle artist educated at Cornish College of the Arts. She recently finished a two year residency at Pottery Northwest in Seattle. Her work has been included in numerous group shows, locally at the Catherine Person Gallery, nationally, and internationally at Natsuka Gallery in Tokyo, Japan. Lindell’s work can be seen at the Wells Fargo Center for the Arts, Santa Rosa, California; Tryon Creek State Park, Portland, Oregon; and The Port Angeles Fine Art Center, Port Angeles, Washington. Lindell’s sculpture was recently purchased by the Seattle Public Utilities Portable Works Collection, and she has been awarded a James and Janie Washington Foundation Residency for 2009/2010.

Paul D. Miller (a/k/a DJ Spooky)
North/South
Poster Manifesto

Born in 1970 in Washington D.C., Paul D. Miller re-contextualizes elements of cultural detritus as archival video sampling, digital prints, installations, and drawings, thus calling into question the validity of maintaining disparate categories such as copy vs. original, appropriation vs. creation, and auteur vs. audience. Finding inspiration in historic documents and film, Miller explores the fluid range of "truth" in modern portrayals of the explorer's path. In addition to his art, he contributes as a cultural producer by touring the world constantly under the pseudonym DJ Spooky. He currently lives and works in New York.

Karen Rudd
Last Stand

In 2005, Karen Rudd was awarded an artist fellowship to participate in an archeological dig in Darrington, Washington through Earthwatch, funded by the Ford Motor Company. With a group of scientists, artists, and volunteers, she helped excavate a former homestead belonging to a Sauk-Suiattle tribe woman, her Norwegian immigrant husband, and their children.

Because of the fast rate of decay in the damp woods of the Pacific Northwest and because the nearby river had changed its course, the excavation site had few stable landmarks, with the notable exception of the enormous, old-growth cedar stumps. For a week, she helped locate, measure, and map these ancient stumps ranging from 10-18' in diameter with a few reaching nearly twice that size.

Since this influential experience, Rudd's work has focused on tree stumps and recreating the form from reclaimed corrugated cardboard boxes. Reconstructing the organic form from its original material, she draws connections between past and present by creating a historical subject in a ubiquitous and contemporary material. The sculptures are a bold commentary on consumerism and natural resource use.

Christina Seely
Lux

Christina Seely is a photographer and professor based in San Francisco, CA. She has been exhibited nationally and internationally and her work is featured in many private and public collections such as The West Collection, The Walker Art Center, Yale University, Fidelity Investments, The Boston Public Library, Wellington Management Company, and The National Museum of Women in the Arts. Born (1976) and raised in Berkeley, CA, she received a BA from Carleton College (1998) and an MFA in Photography from Rhode Island School of Design (2003). Christina is also a principal member of Civil Twilight, a design collective who won Metropolis Magazine's 2007 Next Generation Design Competition with a proposal for Lunar Resonant Streetlights (streetlights that dim and brighten in correlation with the moon phases).

Brent Watanabe
Stack:Heap:Loop

Brent Watanabe is an artist, filmmaker, and computer programmer living and working in Seattle. He stumbled into art almost 20 years ago, designing and illustrating hundreds of posters for punk rock shows. Since then, he has focused on video, film, and computer controlled installations. His short films have been screened at film festivals internationally, and his drawings, videos, and installations have been exhibited in galleries and museums across the U.S.

Kuros Zahedi
Finding Away

Kuros Zahedi is an artist and a teacher. He is originally from Iran and has lived and traveled extensively in Europe. He is inspired by his spirituality, the natural world, and a vision of hope for civilization on earth. His work explores consciousness, the human being, and its ultimate inseparability with nature.

Kuros has worked with non-profits, educational institutions, and governmental organizations to successfully complete community-based art projects which stir significant and relevant questions about the future of humanity. He believes that art can play a powerful role in the renewal of human civilization. He has worked with groups such as Sound Transit, 4Culture, The Green Festival, Seattle Parks and Recreation, Bellingham Parks and Recreation, the RE Store, Sustainable Capitol Hill, and numerous public and private schools. His work has been featured on network television. Kuros lives in Bellingham, WA.

Bumbershoot and the Mayor's Arts Awards

Bumbershoot

Our Bumbershoot exhibit is coming together with some truly amazing artists:

Kerfuffle (or The Uneasy Relationship Between Humanity and the Environment)
Bumbershoot Festival, Seattle, WA
Visual Arts Exhibition: Curatorial collaboration with Chris Weber: Fidalgo and Lopez Rooms
Featuring Vaughn Bell, Joseph Gray, Chris Jordan, Allison Kudla, DJ Spooky/Paul D. Miller, Karen Rudd, Christina Seely, Brent Watanabe, and Kuros Zahedi

The exhibit opens with the Mayor's Arts Awards at 12pm on Friday, September 4. Visual arts exhibits will be free to the public that day until 7pm. The official Bumbershoot Festival (lineup here!) runs from September 5 - 7. Ticket information here.

New Media at The Wing Luke Asian Museum

I am extremely excited to announce that I am curating my first museum exhibition:

December 17, 2009 - June 19, 2010
Cultural Transcendence
The Wing Luke Asian Museum
A new media exhibition of Asian Pacific American artists in the George Tsutakawa Art Gallery
Featuring Robert Hodgin, Eunsu Kang, Heidi Kumao, Horatio Law, and Brent Watanabe
Seattle, WA

More details to come!

Also, the Bumbershoot festival has given a sneak peek at the 2009 lineup. It's going to be a great festival this year, and I'm thrilled to be a part of it. Again, I'll post more details soon.