These images come from the site Laff in the Dark (http://www.laffinthedark.com/articles/mp/mountainpark.htm)




The artist who did these paintings was Dominic Spadola. He created the aesthetics of the fun houses at the former New England amusement parks Mountain Park (Mt. Tom, Holyoke, MA), Lincoln Park (North Dartmouth, MA), Rocky Point(Warwick, RI), and Whalom Park (Lunenburg, MA). I am trying to find out more about him. When I was a kid my favorite part of Whalom park was the fun house.

It is crazy looking at these web sites and reading about the parks' histories, looking at pictures, and reading how strongly people feel about theses places. It fills me with a deep sense of longing for some reason. I think it has something to do with how festive and bizarre these parks were. I went to Rocky Point and Whalom Park as a kid and believed they were places, even though they were a bit dated, would not close because they were amusement parks.

Mountain, and Whalom Park started as trolley Parks. This kind of a picnic/recreation park that was located along or at the end of the trolley line. These parks were the precursor to amusement parks.

the jingle from Whalom Park ads on tv

If fun and excitement are waiting for you,
Then Whalom Park is the place for you!
Lots of rides and loads of fun,
Whalom Park for ev-ery-one!
Fun and excitement,
A place to unwind,
Whalom Paaaark...for a whale of a time!
Whalom Park, you'll have a good time

here are some links to articles and pictures about these parks

Lincoln Park:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Park_(Massachusetts)
http://www.artinruins.com/arch/?id=decay&pr=lincolnpark

Mountain Park on Mt. Tom:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Park,_Holyoke,_Massachusetts
http://www.defunctparks.com/parks/MA/mountain/mountainpark.htm
http://www.karenandjay.com/mtpark/mtpark.html

Rocky Point:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocky_Point_Amusement_Park
http://www.artinruins.com/arch/?id=rip&pr=rockypoint

Whalom Park:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whalom_Park
http://www.laffinthedark.com/articles/whalom/whalom1.htm

In the basement of Mass MoCA

Currently Mass MoCA gets 5% of its energy from solar panels on top of the museum's roof.

The Sol LeWitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective is open and will be up for the next 25 years. The gallery space for the work looks amazing. There also is a nice video showing the apprentices creating the work. There was over 60 people working on the drawings during the install, that should be an indicator of how much work is the space. It spans three floors specially renovated for the retrospective with earliest work on the first floor to later work on the top floor. Personally my least favorite work was in his mid career.



In the largest gallery Simon Starling: The Nanjing Particles

Here is what the museum has written about Starling.

"Starling investigates the social, cultural, and material implications of object-making, examining how his own artistic
processes overlap with industrial production. Engaging with MASS MoCA’s industrial past, Starling’s installation began
with an 1875 photograph of a group of Chinese immigrant workers brought to North Adams to break a strike at the
Sampson Shoe Company (once located on what is now MASS MoCA’s campus). Literally and figuratively mining this image,
Starling extracted silver grains from the photograph and presents these particles as stainless steel forms enlarged one
million times their original microscopic size. Forged and hand polished by workers in Nanjing, China, the sculptures
connect the museum’s past and present to global economic conditions. The shiny forms reflect the museum’s historic
architecture as well as the visitors who have replaced workers in the space."

Up on the second floor at the back of the large gallery there are tables set up with documentation of the process of making The Nanjing Particles. There were contact sheets for the enlarging of the images of the silver taken from the photo to create the silver objects in the installation. Also on the table were books documenting this project and other projects Starling has worked on.

After spending time in North Adams this summer and learning more about the history of the town and the Mass MoCA campus I really appreciated this work.

On a side note, the surfaces of the silver sculptures reflectected the ceiling and the windows of the building in a very exciting way.


Hello,

it is chilly.

I was rejected from Vox Populi in Philly this weekend, and rejected from Smack Mellon's (in New York) residency program but was named a "hot pick", so I will be on their web site.

The Amherst Community Art Center closed this month. It was a non-profit art space that offered classes in ceramics, painting, jewlery, comics, and a variety of other classes and a camp called Art for All. It wasn't able to keep afloat due to the current financial situation.

There is only a couple days left for the online art auction benefiting the Kinji Akagawa interdisciplinary scholarship fund at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. There are some great pieces by Molly Roth, Ursula Husted, Robin Cotton, Bethany Kalk, Erica Ritzel, Mitchell Dose, Adam Collignon, Jennifer Hibbard, Paul Shambroom, Sharon Koelblinger, Todd Norsten, and many more! I have a piece in it too.

follow this link
http://www.cmarket.com/auction/AuctionHome.action?vhost=paradigmshiftart

Since the early fall my household has been watching David Attenborough's nature documentaries. We have watched Life in the Undergrowth, Life in Cold Blood, Planet Earth (British version), and are currently watching The Life of Mammals. The series are filmed beautifully and the information is stimulating. There are so many creatures that I have not seen before or had any idea about how they live and look. Attenborough is a very enthusiastic host and it seems he cares deeply about the creatures he is talking about. On the Life in Cold Blood DVDs there are bonus interviews with the scientists who study the different reptiles in depth, here too Attenborough is engaged and asks interesting questions.

I saw the Life of Birds series several years ago but am ready to watch them again. We are also on the look out for The Private Life of Plants, and Life in the Freezer.

I am not in Minnesota anymore but I am still excited for the Art Shanty Project which opened today. Happening on Medicine Lake in Plymouth, MN (15 minutes out of Minneapolis) the temporary shanty town is a festive winter destination.
If you happen to be in the neighborhood it is a really good time. There are performances, Karaoke, augers, puppets, and Retroactive Minnesotan Lessons given by the charming and informative Andy Sturdavant.

It is happening until February 14th, forget going south for the winter, go to the upper mid west!

The mission of the project is "an artist driven temporary community exploring the ways in which the relatively unregulated public space of the frozen lake can be used as a new and challenging artistic environment to expand notions of what art can be."

check out the schedule of events at
http://www.artshantyprojects.org/
Here you will also find links to the different shanties' blogs and web pages.


Here is the link to the snapshot shanty blog: http://thesnapshotshanty.blogspot.com/ (my pals Molly Roth and Emily Darnell and friends)

Here is the link to the Imperial TransAntarctic Expedition blog: http://antarcticshanty.blogspot.com/ (pals from Elsewhere Artists Collaborative)

(pictured above is medicine lake in the "soft lake shanty" from 2007 by Adam Collignon, Molly Roth, and Angela Zammarelli)
(yes the lake looks like a giant ghost fetus with a claw hand)

My friend Isa Gagarin made me this "crazy eye" paper necklace back in September. I am finally putting a picture of it up now. It is amazing. It was a total surprise. She is amazing, a real explorer. To me she seems really unafraid of experiencing life and making art that is apart of it.

Here is a link to her MNartist page http://www.mnartists.org/work.do?action=list&rid=114446

Fixtures & Foibles
Line Bruntse has work at the Stone Soup Gallery. The show is up until March 8, 2009. If you happen to be in the Western Mass area I highly recommend checking it out.

Pictured above are Bruntse's "Orphans". In the gallery the Orphans are lined up against a wall on the floor. Across from them in the center of the room, raised on low cement pedestals are the Orphans separated shadows. The fleshy Orphans are made of pink leather and are adorned with embroidery. The nubby little ones command a fair amount of space when you see them in person.

Stone Soup Gallery
221 Pine St. (Arts and Industry Building)
Suite 165
Florence, MA 01062

Line's website:
http://www.linebruntse.com/index.html

Stone Soup Gallery website:
http://www.stonesoupconcrete.com/art.php

Jane Lund playing accordian.

Jane is a local artist who does incredible pastel paintings and also these really weird paintings/assemblages. When I say weird I mean that in the most loving way, I mean I relate to them.
I met Jane when I was working at a frame shop in Northampton. I framed some work for her and she invited myself and co-workers to be in some small work shows. She is really supportive of young artists and older artists.

I admire her.

Tumble Cat Poof Poofy Poof aka Joshua Vrysen has a really nice interview in the Valley Advocate (western mass).

Behind the Beat: The Cat's Pajamas
Tumble Cat Poof Poofy Poof's boom box ensemble extraordinaire.

here is the link:
http://www.valleyadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=9011

"I feel like when you're playing the same show over and over again, you're fighting against what you've already done," says Vrysen. "Where you're constantly repeating this thing that has already happened—you can go back to that moment, and you can do it again, but why would you do the same thing over again when you can try something different, or grow upon it? And even if it's falling apart, or decaying, that's more interesting to me than being this stagnant thing."



Also my housemates George and Dan had an interview in the same column last week about

Behind the Beat: For the Sake of the Songs
DJ duo Purity Supreme shares the love.

http://www.valleyadvocate.com/article.cfm?aid=8966

Tales of Grizzled Warriors
by Michael Fallon
posted on Dec. 14, 2008 - 10:36pm at
http://www.secretsofthecity.com/magazine/blogs/thousandth-word/2008/12/tales-of-grizzled-warriors#comments

This piece is posted on Minneapolis's Secret's of the City online magazine. Michael Fallon is an artist, arts writer, and arts administrator based in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

It isn't one of my favorite pieces of writing from him but I do think it is very timely topic and was glad to come across it.

"Ensuring continuity—both for individual artists and among the arts community—is what concerns me the most when I think about how the art community treats its aging artists, forgetting them at the twilight of their career. I can only imagine what it might feel like to work creatively for an adult lifetime, to survive while holding down multiple jobs, perhaps a mortgage, and all the attendant worries involved with being a modern American—only to meet up with a immoveable brick wall just when you finally have time to take on all the creative projects (during retirement) that you someday wanted to get to. Is it possible that any of the golden-curled young artists emerging now, so stuck in their own internal battles to make it big on the scene, have any ability at all to learn the lessons from the grizzled artists who came before them? Is it possible they even care?"

infection in the face

Hello

Did I tell you I had my bottom wisdom teeth removed two weeks ago, well I did. They were big ones too. I stayed awake for it, which wasn't bad at all. Now I have holes in the back of my mouth that I have to clean out after I eat.

I am working at Reprodepot (http://reprodepot.com/index.html) and Valley Fabrics (http://www.valleyfabrics.com/). They are both fabric stores here in western Mass. Reprodepot is an online and Valley Fabrics is a little quilt shop.

I have started quilting, it is pretty nice. Joshua and I designed a quilt top together and sewed it all by hand and now we are going to hand quilt the batting and backing to it. The next quilt I am making for my niece I am going to sew the top with a machine and hand quilt.

over and out

Hello,

I am in a show at Umass Amherst. The show is called New England/New York/ New Talent 2008 and was juried by David Gibson and Klaus Postler. It is being held at the the Hampden Gallery.

please go to flickr.com/photos/azammarelli to see images of my piece in the show.

It is a cave space for the Spacemaker to make her borderlines in. The knitted border will grow out of one end of the mountain.

how are you?

Obama is prez, yes!

love
angela

dear goodness it has been a while.

last week I met up with two good friends in Hartford, CT to visit Mark Twain's former residence. It was pretty neat. If you are into patterned walls and wood, this would be a good place to visit. Louis Comfort Tiffany designed the patterns for the walls.

I have an opening at Umass Amherst this Friday the 7th of October, maybe I will write more about this tomorrow.

If you are voting for Obama and Biden please remember to vote Tuesday.

It's Your Party, Party

A piece that a young'n did at Amherst Community Art Center.
Not to sound cheese-tastic but there is something kind of sacred spacey about this piece for me.

let us hibernate

Last Thursday was writing night at my old home. The topic for the evening was Maude (pictured right). It was really nice to hear the writings of the 5 housemates on Williams street. Ben, Vanessa, Carolyn, Ella, and Siri. Siri had told me about writing night the week before and invited me to come for this night about Maude. We did 5-minute exercises to different feeder lines.

-What Maude tells us when we are sleeping

-First person account of when Maude disappeared for a couple of days

-Maude in the bathtub

-Maude's conversation with her inner child

-She slinks, she bats, but she don't Yatzee

-Cold room, steaming vomit



Hello.
Hello.
I don't like to sleep alone.
Me Neither.



September 28th was Joshua Vrysen's birthday (pictured left in the photo above)
Happy Birthday Joshua.
Happy Birthday emmett.
Happy Birthday Laura.
Happy Birthday Isabella.

Also not today but any way welcome Kieran Xander.

Fall might be coming early, the leaves are starting to change, last year it happened late, I don't really know but this is what I have seen.

I went to the Demolition Derby at the 3 County Fair in Northampton on Sunday night. Holy hell!!!!!! Maybe it needed a tad more fire, but it was still amazing. I didn't think I would be as excited by it as I was. The spectacle spectacular. Popping tires and disappearing trunks. Radiators getting crushed and letting out steam. It was invigorating. I’m not really sure how one wins, the rules were a little fuzzy to me. One man told me that there is only one rule and that is one cannot slam into the driver’s side door.

I went with Joshua and my friend Siri. Joshua enthusiasm was the catalyst for the adventure.

Currently I am at Elsewhere Artist Collaborative for a visit. (If you would like to learn more about Elsewhere please click on the links below.)

Last night Guerra De La Paz (who are artists in residence at Elsewhere) spoke at the Weatherspoon Museum located on the University of North Carolina Greensboro campus. The piece they are working on at Elsewhere is called Six Thai Trannies (in Heaven) There is a sneak peek party this Wednesday and Friday is the opening. If you are in Greensboro or nearby come, it is amazing. If you can't, check out their website.


Guerra De La Paz website: http://www.guerradelapaz.com/

Guerra De La Paz's Elsewhere blog: http://gdlpiselsewhere.vox.com/

Elsewhere's flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/elsewhereelsewhere/

Elsewhere's web page: http://www.elsewhereelsewhere.org/

There is far more.

And far more restrictions.

What is happening here?

We are not allowed to see dead.

Distance and disconnect.

If accessable would it make a difference?

hill and dale and hill and dale and hill and dale

where do you want to go? why?

What do you want to do? why?

I am in the midst of writing my final paper for my internship on how to get 20 - mid 30 year olds to move to Pittsfield/The Berkshires and to stay here, create family here, grow their roots into the hills.

Are you ready to stay where you are? If you have committed to a place, why?

Have you been to Pittsfield ever? Have you been to Massachusetts ever? Hello, we are up here in the northeast corner of the United States.

Would I move to Pittsfield?

There is potential in Pittsfield, there is possibility. There is space, cheap space. There are businesses like Dottie's Coffee lounge, Chapters Bookstore, and Mission Bar and Tapas who are owned by young business owners. There are art spaces like Storefront Artists Project, The Copperworks, and Zeitgeist who are owned or manned by young artists.

What is to be done when so many communities are struggling to draw and retain the next generation of community leaders? How do you encourage and cultivate the young adults that you already have?

Patty Chang's video Shangri La (2005) is currently showing as part of Mass MoCA's Eastern Standard: Western Artists in China. The show runs until March 2, 2009. The piece pictured above is a sculpture based on the mountains near the town of Shangri-La and is shown being constructed in the film. The town near the Tibetan border that Chang travels to in the movie named itself in 1997 after the mythical place in James Hilton's novel Lost Horizon. I have been waiting to see this video for about two years (you can see stills on her website). The video builds slow and ends in an amazing sequence. Chang touches upon many layers of East/West perceptions ping ponging back and forth through thoughtful imagery.

I climbed the stairs to the gallery that Chang's work is placed and the "mountain" rose up out of the dark. It was a really lovely moment.

Chang has two videos showing, Shangri La (2005) and Flotsam, Jetsam (2007) a collaboration with David Kelley.
http://pattychang.com/

http://www.massmoca.org/event_details.php?id=335

Massachusetts has 351 towns and cities, I did not know this until today. While working on the Cultural Pittsfield Newsletter this week I can across www.massachusetts351.blogspot.com This couple (Laura and Bobb) is visiting every town/city in Massachusetts and documenting it. I like their map and how they are filling it in as they go. Wicked exciting!


Plus here is a link to Massachusetts swimming holes in Massachusetts http://swimmingholes.org/ma.html

We've got scaley flesh like our fish friends. We are getting ready for our water life, possibly. It is very wet this summer here, good practice.

are we okay?

Good Morning

Yesterday I went to the North Adams' Historical Society Museum and the Hoosac Tunnel Museum, both located in the Western Gateway Heritage State Park in North Adams, MA.

At the Historical Society Museum Marie Rose, a lifetime resident of North Adams, gave me a tour. She volunteers at the Historical Society and Mass MoCA (I also saw her at Bang on a Can). Born in 1938, she has seen the town change over the years. She was an employee of Sprague Electric, formally located in what is now Mass MoCA. The Historical Society was full of objects and images of North Adams history, plus some things like southwest Indian pottery, baskets and dolls, an exhibit on bees, and a rock, insect and small rodent collection. There also was a black-light room dedicated to the disk that Sprague Electric sent the moon. I enjoyed the museum, I enjoyed experiencing it with Marie Rose, but also it made me really sad.

The Hoosac Tunnel Museum helped put in perspective the history of the Hoosac Tunnel and how and why it came to be. The tunnel is a little under 5 miles long and runs through the Hoosac Mountain from Florida, MA to North Adams, MA. There was a video from WGBH made in 1990 that tied everything together nicely. Above is an etching of workers wearing rain slickers while tunneling in the Hoosac Mountain. The mountain is a very wet mountain especially in the western part. When workers would blow up the rocks many times gallons of water would pour out from the rocks, sometimes people would drown. The mountain has 5 different types of rock. The western rocks are softer and moister.

The Western Gateway Heritage State Park is a sweet little park. It is has the Freight Yard Pub, Berkshire Creative Arts (community art center), and a quilt shop. I think it is the smallest state park in Massachusetts, possibly New England.

http://www.mass.gov/dcr/parks/western/wghp.htm

Pictured above is a piece from the Bang on a Can (BOAC) marathon concert held at Mass MoCA last night. Sorry the picture quality is so poor. The overall concert started at 4pm and went until 11:30pm. It was one of BOAC's marathon concerts. People are free to come and go through out the marathon. This was a relatively short one. They have held 12 and 36 hour concert with a variety of composers. Last nights special guest was Terry Riley.

This piece is called something makes something something. It is composed by Sean Francis Conway, who is on the left in the picture playing the didgeridoo. The two men on the right are Jude Traxler (center) and Mitsutoshi Toda (left) providing percussion for the piece.

http://www.bangonacan.org/

http://www.massmoca.org/

Jessica Park had a show up at Gallery 51 in North Adams, MA earlier this summer. I had never seen her work before. I think it is amazing. The show mainly consisted of color copies of her original paintings, so at first I thought they were all digitally done. I was told that since most of her work gets bought from all over the country, they were not able to get many original paintings back for the show.

Some of my most favorite parts of her paintings are the celestial elements in the skies’ of her paintings, the way night sky can appear in the windows of the buildings, her use of color and how carefully she prepares them, and her attention to minute details and staying true to them. In one painting there is an unfinished doorbell with all it’s wiring hanging out. It was a painting that was commissioned by a woman in Boston of her new home. Instead of painting it out like many people who would paint portraits of peoples houses, Park had to paint it in because that is how it was at the time she saw it.

Her favorite color is mint green.

Park appears in a video by Olive Sacks called Rage for Order. This is also the title of her web page. Park’s is an artist with Autism. She lives in Williamstown, MA and works as a mail clerk at Williams College.


http://www.jessicapark.com/ (Jessica's website)

http://www.autismvox.com/exploring-nirvana/ (short article about Exploring Nirvana, a 97 page book on Jessica Parks' art)

http://shapeandcolor.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/jessica-park-exhibit-opening-success/

I was looking at masks online and came across this.

L'Inconnue de la Seine

The unknown woman of the Seine

"An unidentified young woman whose death mask became a popular fixture on the walls of artists' homes after 1900. Her visage was the inspiration for numerous literary works." - wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27Inconnue_de_la_Seine

This is an overhead view of the former Northampton State Hospital. If you click on the link below it will take you to the Advocates' (a weekly newspaper in western MA) website, which has an interactive tour of the old main building (the building outlined in red). The main building is a Kirkbride structure. Kirkbride designed many state hospitals throughout New England and the Midwest. He believed the way the buildings were set up would provide the best opportunity for people to heal.

The building looks like a bat or bird from above. The two "wings" of the building were seperated by male and female. The place where they meet is the entrace and area of the building and housed nurses stations and clericle offices. The "wings which housed the patients were set up with the most severe patients at the tips of the wings with each section that comes closer to the center houseing patients who where higher functioning.

For the virtual tour visit http://www.valleyadvocate.com/mis/somvrtour/index.cfm

More on Northampton State Hospital:
http://people.umass.edu/asaph/nsh/
http://www.smith.edu/nsh/history.html

More on Dr. Thomas Story Kirkbride http://www.kirkbridebuildings.com/

info about Massachusetts State Hospitals visit http://www.1856.org/

Opera, I think I need to start going.

full of beauty, full of gross