Maya III/Down Street Art Update
Down Street Art will be opening soon on the 26th of June and running through October. Today I helped with one of the four galleries that will be opening. I along with fellow B-Hipper Caroline Collins spent most of the day walking along a 9 ft pyramid placing all kinds of toys/ action figures with wax upon its upper level. Jarvis Rockwell, the artist of the piece was lots of fun to work with. He gave us freedom to do what we wanted but he also gave us suggestions about where to place items. It will look pretty amazing by the 26th.
The exhibit is located at 73 Main St., North Adams and Jarvis will also be doing a wall drawing in residence. Greylock Arts, Turbulance and MCLA Gallery 51 will be exhibiting the North Adams portion of ‘Lumens, Networked Realities: (Re)Connecting the Adamses’ down the street at 61 Main Street.
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There so many different types of action figures and toys that Jarvis has collected – it was so much fun to go through them and to pick and choose!
Maria spent time unpacking and sorting through all the toys – notice all the boxes in the background. There are tables filled with crazy action figures. One of the most time consuming parts of this project (aside from the building of the pyramid) is taking all the toys out of their child-proof packaging.
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I asked Jarvis to pose for me in front of the pyramid and he happily obliged, and grabbed a wooly figure to accomany him in the picture.
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So, far the smoking baby and smoking cupcakes are my favorite toys. The variety of objects is really astounding.
Summer Street Fair
Saturday night The Summer Street Association of Merchants held Adams’s first street fair of the season. There was everything from fried dough (which everyone ate), to a band, a Velcro wall, raffles and and a bungee run.
Greylock Arts set up a table to demonstrate the upcoming exhibit ‘Lumens’. We got lots of people in the gallery and had fun explaining the technology and ideas behind the project for all the crazy lamps that we have been collecting.
Here Ven Voisey, one of the artists working on “Lumens’, is explaining the upcoming exhibit to a couple of Adams residents.
And here I am demoing how the lamps work to the nuns of Saint Stanislaus Church.
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One of the best moments of the fair was when Hallie and Ven did the ‘Bungee Run’.
Matt Belanger, co-director of Greylock Arts and Dan Rose, an artist currently showing at Greylock Arts got into the fun with a couple of LED headbands.
Greylock Arts holds an Arduino Workshop
This past Saturday Greylock Arts turned it’s gallery space into a classroom and had Tom Igoe (ITP Professor, author of Making Things Talk, and member of the Arduino Development Team), run an Arduino workshop. This is the technology that will be allowing all the lamps for the upcoming Lumens exhibit to respond to a person’s presence across towns and the internet.
Basically I built a microcontroller (with the Arduino kit) and did some basic processing that allowed it to talk and interact with my computer.
Tom was pretty great at explaining everything from basic electronics to programming code. I was way out of my comfort zone with writing code but it was very interesting and cool. Tom was, in a sense, condensing a graduate course that he teaches into a four hour workshop. To be honest, some of the information discussed went way over my head (okay, most of it went way over my head). But I was pretty excited when I was able to make my LED light blink on and off!
Marianne (co-director of Greylock Arts) paying attention and getting ready to do some wiring.
Lamp Update
Currently there are about 70-80 lamps that have been donated for the Lumens exhibit. Ideally, we would like to have 180 lamps. People have been great about donating their lamps (which they will get back unharmed in October).
Here are some of the lamps hooked up to a proximity sensor prototype that Matthew has been working very hard on. At the moment people can make the lamps turn on and off via the internet or from waving their hand near the crazy looking breadboard with all the wires.
Here is a closer look at all the craziness that is going on. I believe that about 35 of these will be built to control all the lamps.
Berkshire Snippets
A View from the center of the MCLA Campus.
Street signs from the city of Pittsfield.
The view of Mt. Greylock from the front steps of Greylock Arts. (I am hoping to try and climb Greylock, the highest point in the state, by the end of the summer)
Art on Main Street (Working the Creative Economy)
For two nights I participated in a painting party. Several empty store front spaces on Main Street in North Adams are being renovated to house galleries. In particular I worked on the space that will be housing the work of Jarvis Rockwell (the son of Norman Rockwell). I know that my father would have been proud of the painting that I did! In the future myself and other interns will also being working to put together Jarvis Rockwell’s piece that will be a large pyramid covered in action figures. I’ll post pictures as the piece progresses.
Johnathan Secor, director Director of Special Programs at MCLA and Jesse Conzo, MCLA Program Coordinator working hard!
Interns, artists and volunteers.
Out in the Berkshires
Hello Everyone!
About a week ago I headed out to North Adams, Massachusetts to begin my Berkshire Hills Internship Program. It is an intensive 12 week Arts Administration internship. I have been lucky enough to have been placed at Greylock Arts located in the small town of Adams.
I am working at 93 Summer St. with Marianne and Mathew (and their two dogs Slomo and Lulu) on an upcoming event called, “Networked Realities: (Re)Connecting the Adamses.” A particular part of this project is called “Lumens” which is a networked installation connecting Greylock Arts on Summer Street, the MCLA Gallery 51 Annex on Main Street in North Adams, and a virtual gallery on Turbulence.org. What does this mean? It means that I have been walking the two main streets of Adams and asking citizens to lend their lamps to this unique interactive project!
My favorite lamp collected thus far has come from the local tattoo studio (Armory Tattoo and Piercing). The owner airbrushed the shade to match the wood that runs through out his home.
The opening for the show is July 10th – I’ll keep updating the progress!
As for my return to dorm living, I have 5 great roommates : Erin, Halli, Kerri Lee, Caroline and Eva. We are all sharing one shower in a “townhouse” on the MCLA campus. It is a quick walk to downtown North Adams.
