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

This show opened at the Lichtenstein on Saturday and will be up until August 16, 2008. If you happen to be in Pittsfield come to 28 Renne Ave. and see it. The opening was packed. It was a nice night.

I did the layout and installation of work.

This Thursday night in downtown Pittsfield will be the June 3rd Thursday. If you find yourself in the Berkshires and want to come to a fun night of music, food, dance, and art, stop by Pittsfield, the events will be happening from 5-8pm with some after hours events too.

HelloolleH

Eat your carrots for good vision.

Snot nosed bitch ass.

HowdeeeedwoH

Happy Father's Day.

Working the gardens.

You watching your mouth?

Don't punch the customers.

They frown upon that.

The last tap dance class before the floors get redone at the Lichtenstein Center happened tonight. It sounded great.

I held down the fort today, and did a pretty decent job. Marla and Megan are having a nice time at the NEA conference in Minneapolis. They ate at Nye's. Megan had lunch with Ann Hamilton. Yup Ann Hamilton.

Tomorrow all the furniture goes upstairs and our floors will get redone.

There was a planning meeting tonight for the Pittsfield Ethnic Fair. It went well, it was very concise.

My friend Jazu came in at the end of the day to tell me about a informal critique he and some people are having at his house the last Wednesday of the month. I'm looking forward to it. We went to Umass together in the sculpture department, it will be nice to see what he is working on now and see what other artists in Pittsfield are doing and actually be able to discuss it in depth as opposed to seeing it in a gallery. I like seeing work in progress.

good night

This picture is from the web site http://www.hoosactunnel.net/west.php

It is a picture of the Hoosac Tunnel circa 1874. The tunnels west opening is not this fancy anymore. I am reading about it at the moment via the intra web. A little rock monument in downtown North Adams says that 194 people lost their lives in the construction of the tunnel. It took 24 years to build, 1851 -1875. It is about 4.7 miles long. 24 feet wide and 20 tall.



Some sites to visit for pictures and bits of information

http://www.hoosactunnel.net/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoosac_Tunnel

http://www.boudillion.com/hoosac/hoosac.htm

http://www.jkrails.net/

there are many more, maybe I will edit this list later.

Very hot and muggy today. I am in Pittsfield at the moment.
I am in the office of Cultural Development. There will be music this evening.
I set up the chairs, I will take them down.

Hello
What are you doing?

My bed is very moist from all the humidity, ish ish ish.
Marla and Megan will be in Minneapolis Monday and Tuesday, I will be in the office alone. They will be in the place I was two weeks ago and spent two years, ago.

I retrieved for my sweety a wooden egg today. It is dressed up in Ukranian attire. I miss him.

I miss you.
Hello

Arts All State took place on May 30 and 31. The theme was "limits, no limits". Here is the scoop. Two artists mentors work with a group of 17 juniors in high school on an installation in less than 36 hours. There are 7 groups, so there are 7 installations. My partner mentor was Rosa Ibarra (pictured on the right). Each group is only allowed to work with three items (and an unlimited supply of adhesives), two of which the mentors pick out and one suprise item that is assigned by the Arts All State staff. Rosa and I picked mylar and wallpaper. Our Suprise item was cd stack holders. At first I thought that it was a terrible material, but let me say that the group really used them well.

We ate sandwiches and cookies.

In a purely objective opinion, I think that the students I worked with, as a whole, worked so well together, maybe the best group in terms of team cooperation and effort. They came to a concensus on what the concept of the installation should be and all worked to make it happen. There were a few shining shiny stars who were great leaders of there peers.

The day started by Rosa and I taking our group up to a painting called "A Portrait of Gaylord". The portrait is a painting of the head of Gaylord floating over a city block with other little scenes depicting his life surrounding his head. We had a discussion about the piece and its placement in the gallery of other paintings. The group started to compare it to the painting on the wall that was next to it, siting that the structure of elements in each painting was very similart but that the other painting was more negative.

The installation had to do with television and alienation. The group took more visual cues from the Gaylord painting but conceptual cues from the painting they compared it to.

Hi,

busy busy.

I am doing and internship at the Pittsfield Office of Cultural Development and living in North Adams. Today I begin. I think it is going to be a good learning experience. I will start taking pictures and start posting here.

Last Friday and Saturday I was a mentor at Arts All State at the Worcester Art Museum. It was a great time. I will post pictures on flickr soon.

Meander at the Soap Factory in Minneapolis was a great time. I will write more later, when my thoughts are a little more in order.

love
angela