"Gulliver", Montalvo Arts Center, July 30, 2010

"Gulliver"

Final Fridays at Montalvo

Presentation of work in progress

Montalvo Arts Center

15400 Montalvo Road

Saratoga, CA 95070

Friday, July 30, 2010

6:00pm

Working in the Commons Building

Work in progress

Travels with Gulliver

work in progress, 2010

Part 1: Voyage to Lilliput

Studio 60

Have landed at Montalvo for a residency devoted solely to making work in a most luxuriously light, airy, expansive studio. Sprung floor as a bonus. Found D & J Hobby & Crafts in Campbell today, a craft store to end all craft stores. Their motto is "IF IT'S FUN WE GOT IT". I left there with my hands full of balsa and bass wood.

Improvisation within Limits - Trisha Brown Exhibition "So That the Audience Does Not Know Whether I have Stopped Dancing"

Mostly I am so happy to have seen this show (Mills College Art Museum) because I saw video of Trisha Brown's work that I've never seen: iconic work that I'm just coming to view now. Art background, not a lot of time spent looking at postmodern dance...wow. Seeing dancers walking on the walls of the Whitney and down a 7-story building was a revelation.

But my absolute favorite, make-my-hips-move and my body and mind smile was "Spanish Dance (from Line Up)". Funny/desirous/undesirous

/mechanical/gorgeous/diva-meets-minimal! Here is Wendy Perron, one of the dancers, writing on Brown, this piece and more, years later:

www.nytimes.com/2004/01/11/arts/dance-trisha-brown-the-artist-s-dance-partner.html?pagewanted=1

Thinking now, too, about how she uses improvisation within limits, within self-imposed structures, and how she (so says the catalog), borrowed that from musical composition of the time. Hence the way some of the drawings are a kind of diagrammatic space (one, literally, a cubic rectangle with points in space mapped throughout based on the letters of written-out biographical information). Others, like letters becoming figures seen from above.

Also getting to know her wildness and somehow, casualness. It still has something radical about it for me...it's so loose and as she says, ..."so that the audience does not know whether I have stopped dancing." She also said, "unpredictable, unlikely, continuous."

Her drawings remind me of Eva Hesse's compositions on graph paper, and of course there are many other resonances with her later drawings, including the drawing-restraint pieces that come to mind: Carolee Schneeman, how can I not think of Yves Klein, and on their shoulders, Matthew Barney...

This week I'm working on a kind of vest for some more heavy-duty cords or ropes to explore this idea of restraint-and-movement for Gulliver Part 1, and the muslin jumpsuit with embroidery hoops. I'm also looking at different Codices from Aztec culture - I love these drawings so much I can hardly stand it....as I love Durer. They have a mix of cartoon fleshiness, plumpness, and vulnerability.

Another NY Times piece on 20 Years of Trisha Brown from the early '90s:

www.nytimes.com/1991/03/09/arts/review-dance-for-20-years-distinctly-trisha-brown.html?pagewanted=1

Work in progress - Collaboration with Jose Navarette

Chapter 1: Voyage to Lilliput

Collaboration

Thank you, Jose Navarrete, for agreeing to work with me on a project. I'm honored to be working with you.

Here's more on Jose's work:

www.zaccho.org/jose.html

huitlacoche.blip.tv

counterpulse.org/programs/artist-in-residence-program/jose-navarrete-violeta-luna/

We've met twice, and will be meeting regularly to develop our project. At our first meeting, Jose improvised while wearing a muslin jumpsuit from which needles hung from red thread. Watching him stick the needles into the wall while crouching in a corner, tethered there by the draped threads on either side of his chest, led us to exploring imagery from Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. We discovered later with delight that a small muslin doll figure I brought to the meeting is the height of a Lilliputian. In our second meeting, we talked about how Swift's 17th century satire resonates with our contemporary context of global warming and attitudes that contribute to the growing gap between rich and poor. In between meetings, we'll be reading from Swift's classic texts, drawing imagery and connections to the follies and foibles that one could say accompany many of our current headline issues, economic and environmental. As I draw, and Jose moves, and we talk, we progress in our work together.

We've been working with drawings and video to document and provide fodder for subsequent meetings.