The hypothesis is the heart of the exhibit — positing that processes followed by artists and scientists have much in common. Hypothesis explores these scientific and artistic processes and is itself an experiment.

UCCS Anthropology, Chemistry, and Geography faculty are partnering with artists who have responded to the faculty’s research and data in sculptural and video installations. Process is examined through both the faculty’s research and the artist’s finished work, bringing about greater understanding of the inherent connections between the scientific and creative processes.

Curated by Daisy McConnell, the opening of Hypothesis coincides with the Grand Reopening of the Science Building (newly renamed “Centennial Hall”) at UCCS. The Gallery of Contemporary Art at UCCS is located in the newly renovated Centennial Hall. Highlighting the interconnectedness of the arts and the sciences is the basis for this experimental exhibit.

ARTIST BIOS

Kim Abeles is an artist who crosses disciplines and media to explore and map the urban environment and chronicle broad social issues. The Smog Collector series brought her work to national and international attention in the art world, and mainstream sources such as Newsweek, National Public Radio, CBS Evening News, and The Wall Street Journal.??A mid-career survey curated by Karen Moss and sponsored by the Fellows of Contemporary Art for the Santa Monica Museum, Kim Abeles: Encyclopedia Persona A-Z, toured the United States and South America, and was awarded the Best Regional Museum Show category for 1993-94 by the International Association of Art Critics. She continues to exhibit internationally, including recent projects in Vietnam, Thailand, Czech Republic, England, and China. She represented the U.S. in both the Fotografie Biennale Rotterdam and the Cultural Centre of Berchem in Antwerp. Her work is in numerous private and public collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art; United States Information Agency; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Yucun Art Museum, Suzhou, China; Sandwell Community History and Archives, U.K.; and is archived in the library collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper-Hewitt Publication Design Collection of the Smithsonian. Abeles work was awarded grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation and Peter Norton Foundation and fellowships from J. Paul Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Arts, Pollack-Krasner Foundation, and the California Arts Council.?
Chris Coleman received his BFA in his native state from West Virginia University in 2001 and his MFA from New York State University at Buffalo in 2003. A number of his undergraduate years were devoted to studying Mechanical Engineering, knowledge that he brings to bear in his installations. His work includes sculptures, performances and videos as well as interactive installations.

Chris Coleman was twice a participant in the VIPER Basel Festival in Switzerland and has had his work in exhibitions in Singapore, Finland, Sweden, Italy, Germany, France, China, the UK and Latvia. In North America he has had solo shows at Big Orbit in Buffalo NY, Pratt at Munson Williams Proctor in NY, and NE plus Ultra in Toronto as well as exhibitions at the Albright Knox in Buffalo NY, Spaces Gallery in Cleveland OH, and other shows in Minneapolis MN, Austin TX, and New York City to name a few. He currently resides in Denver CO and is an Assistant Professor at the University of Denver.?

Erin Elder is an independent curator, writer, and teacher interested in collaboration, sense of place, and expanded notions of culture. Her research has focused on Drop City, the first of the ‘60s era artist-built communes and continues to do research and write on the countercultural activities of the American Southwest. She has produced projects with a variety of institutions including Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Creative Time, the Center for Land Use Interpretation, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver. She currently teaches experimental art practices at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. Erin holds dual self-designed BAs from Prescott College and an MA in Curatorial Practice from California College of the Arts. She enjoys hiking, hot springs, and building forts. She has recently learned the art of making wine from scratch.??Scott Johnson was born in 1969 and grew up in the Colorado Rockies. He obtained his BFA from The University of Colorado at Boulder and his MFA from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. His work as an artist has been informed by such as experiences as herding cows on the Navajo Reservation, traveling upon the Silk Road and living in Venice, Italy. He presently teaches at The Colorado College in Colorado Springs.

FACULTY BIOS
Minette Church, Assistant Professor of Anthropology ??Dr. Church has been a part of the University of Colorado Community since 1997 and Assistant Professor since 2002.
B.A. 1987 University of Colorado, Boulder
M.A. 1991 University of Pennsylvania ?1992 University of Pennsylvania Museum Curatorship Program, Department of American Civilization [Certified]
1992 University of Pennsylvania Museum Curatorship Program, Department of American Civilization Ph.D. 2001 University of Pennsylvania

Curt Holder, PhD. teaches courses in physical geography and human-environment relationships. Curt received his B.A. degree in geography from Clark University. After graduating from Clark, Curt developed an appreciation for the potential role of scientific knowledge in addressing community needs when he served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guatemala (1988-1990). Curt worked on reforestation, soil conservation, and watershed management projects in Peace Corps, and following a two-year service, Curt received a M.A. degree in geography from the University of Georgia. Curt returned to Clark University for a Ph.D. in geography. Curt works at the nexus of hydrology, biogeography, and human-environment interactions in tropical montane cloud forests of the Sierra de las Minas Biosphere Reserve in Guatemala. Results from his studies have contributed to the theory of vegetation influences on watershed management by addressing the significance of fog precipitation in hydrological models. His current research focuses on three topical areas, including vegetation-atmosphere processes in tropical montane cloud forests, foliar biogeography and ecology, and human influences on forest change in Guatemala. 
Curt is currently working on two major research projects: the first project was funded by the National Science Foundation and examines the significance of leaf water repellency, leaf optical properties, and photosynthesis of cloud forest and non-cloud forest species in order to expand existing hydrological and ecophysiological models for cloud forests. The objectives of this study are to define the spatial patterns of leaf water repellency between different habitats and to assess its importance in the overall water balance in cloud forests. With a clearer understanding of the interactive responses between leaf water repellency, gas exchange, and leaf optical properties among dominant species at a site and between sites, better models of forest hydrology processes can be formulated that incorporate leaf surface variables. As well as conducting extensive fieldwork on tropical ecosystems, Curt’s research experience also includes investigations of temperate forests. Specifically, he has studied the ecology and biogeography of leaf persistency in pine forests in the southeastern United States. As a trained forest hydrologist and biogeographer, he relies on a multidisciplinary approach to address research questions that often requires a research team from various disciplines to understand relationships between social and physical processes. 

Brandon Vogt, PhD., is Asst. Professor of Geography at UCCS. He received his BS in resource management from the University of Missouri in 1992, his MA and PhD in Geography from Arizona State University in 2002. His current research is related to 1) sandstone weathering in southeast Colorado, 2) mapping Late Pleistocene glacial landforms on Pikes Peak, 3) pedagogy for classroom and field studies curricula in physical geography, and 4) cloud-to-ground lightning interactions with topographic high points in southeast Colorado. ?
Janel Owens, PhD., is Assistant Professor of Chemistry at UCCS. Dr. Owens graduated with a B.S. in Chemistry with Honors from Southwestern University, a small liberal arts college in central Texas, in 2003, and a PhD in 2007 from the University of California at Davis where she was part of the Agricultural and Environmental Chemistry graduate group. Postdoctoral research was conducted in a position at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.  Current research interests include the development of quantitative methods for the analysis of pharmaceuticals, personal care products, and nanomaterials in foods and environmentally relevant samples. Of particular interest is the interaction and effect of food components (such as polyphenolics or similar antioxidants) on the stability and bioavailability of such environmental pollutants.
David J. Weiss, PhD., is Associate Professor of Analytical Chemistry at UCCS. He received his B.S. in 1992 from the University of California, Riverside and his Ph.D. in 1997, from the University of Kansas. Postdoctoral research was conducted as a Fellow at the University of Kansas, 1997-2000. Dr. Weiss’ research involves the development of enzyme based biosensors for diagnosis and monitoring diseases such as PKU, and developing new capillary electrophoresis methods for the analysis of pharmaceuticals, nutraceuticals, and chemical warfare agents.

In the exhibition American Places William Wylie focuses on the concept of place; how we respond to the landscape, how we move from the general to the specific in our personal associations with it, and how our lives are interwoven into the histories of places. In his work over the past twenty years, Wylie has balanced a striking formal sensibility with a dedication to a documentary role for his photography. In this respect, his photographs are marked by both intensity and dispassion. He writes: “The landscape is a visual presentation of forces at work, from the biological and geological to the human. As an artist I am interested in the evocative quality of that presentation. I make photographs not only to honor what is in front of the camera but also to invoke a sense of inclusion (my own and hopefully an audience). The act of attention is a way of connecting and photography is a tool that supports our involvement with the world. “

For the two bodies of work represented in this exhibition Wylie used a landscape feature to create an itinerary by which to document the place, in both cases a pathway. One is a river, the Cache la Poudre River in northern Colorado, the other a two-lane highway, Route 36, traversing northern Kansas from border to border. By using an established geographical reference as a trajectory into the landscape Wylie accepts his route as a given. Concomitantly, these photographs document the personal experiences of the photographer. He spent four years working on each project, traveling (and in the case of the Poudre River, walking) the entire lengths of the commons. With this in mind, they can’t be viewed as only referencing the places themselves but also as locating a moment in time when a specific individual stood in front of a subject that mattered. That relationship is always paramount in Wylie’s images.

Riverwalk (1994-1998) is a collection of 49 photographs documenting the landscape surrounding the watershed along the Cache la Poudre River in Colorado. Both a Wild and Scenic River and one of the most polluted in Colorado, the place is being developed at a rapid pace. At the same time, Wylie attends to the river itself, its shifting flow and fluctuations in light, as well the manner in which it has shaped the environment through which it passes. The publication Riverwalk (UPC, 2000) won the 2000 Colorado Book Award.

Likewise, Route 36 (2004-2008) functions as both a program and a subject. Though Wylie’s images, we glimpse the Western prairie through the frame of trucking and agricultural industries. The turnouts and roadsides that draw his attention prove sparsely populated and largely neglected. His photographs are revealing not only of American spaces, but spatial practice: our production and consumption of space, our way stations and movement through it. This documentary series of photographs moves progressively westward, beginning at the Missouri River crossing, where oxbows form the platforms for the city of St. Joseph, and ending where the two lanes of Route 36 disappear into Interstate 70 at Byers, Colorado, within sight of the Rocky Mountains. These photographs document not only a geographical landscape, but a social one as well, recording a particular moment in the history of vernacular culture. Route 36 has just been released by Flood Editions.

As the poet Merrill Gilfillan has commented, “It seems continually necessary to reassert that landscape study and its reflective arts are anything but passive disciplines, that civilization in a sustaining, daily sense emerges most surely from good relations with one’s surroundings (the perfect word) and the inner landscape of possibility held in the head and heart.” (Merrill Gilfillan will be participating in an artist discussion with William Wylie in September, details will be announced shortly.)

ARTIST BIO
William Wylie received an MFA from The University if Michigan in 1989. He has published four books of his photographs, Riverwalk (University Press of Colorado, 2000), Stillwater (Nazraeli Press, 2002), Carrara (Center for American Places, 2009), and Route 36 (Flood Editions, 2010) all concerned with landscape and place. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in photography in 2005 and a Colorado Individual Artist Fellowship in 1998. His photographs and films have been shown both nationally and internationally, including A Complex Eden at The Museum of Fine Art, St. Petersburg, FL, 100 Great American Photographs at The Amon Carter Museum. Fort Worth, TX, and Forged Power at Arizona State University Art Museum. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Yale University Art Museum, among others. He lives in Charlottesville where he teaches photography at the University of Virginia.

The Colorado College Summer Music Festival brings their extraordinary students and faculty to join with GOCA121 on June 18 to bring music and art together. These incredible musicians will be creating new work based on their responses to the current exhibition, 4×4.

The evening promises to woo you with world class music, fabulous art, free wine and great place for dinner right next door (Nosh).

7 pm at GOCA 121
121 S. Tejon

SAY WHAT is a new forum for poetry in Colorado Springs.

Poetry and contemporary art can be difficult to approach—they don’t always seem to make sense, but this program eases visitors into conversations about both (with a glass of wine and expert interpreters at hand). SAY WHAT is the product of community collaborators interested in teaching people about poetry through art and vice versa. Each session explores ideas related to structure, theme, language and content in poetry that can also be seen in the corresponding visual art exhibition.

The second installment of SAY WHAT will feature award-winning Oregon poet Matt Schumacher. Schumacher’s second full-length book, The Fire Diaries, was published this year. A shorter version, Fire Diary, was selected by Matthea Harvey for the Well Lit Press chapbook contest, and his first first collection, Spilling the Moon, appeared in 2008. Virgil Suarez writes, “To read a Matt Schumacher poem is to enter a world of riotous word riffs and fire-related incantations. Meditative, hauntingly chaotic, and beautiful, these poems will singe your memory. This ample collection glows with great personal and historical revelatory spark.”

BYOP (bring your own pillow) and enjoy the program.

AT GOCA121 | 121 S. Tejon St. | Suite 100

4×4: 4 artists, 4 curators developed out of a series of conversations between four local contemporary art curators. After many informal discussions about artists and exhibitions we decided to explore further the similarities and differences of our curatorial approaches by collaborating on a project featuring four Colorado artists.

While the artists are diverse in their chosen media and conceptual choices, taken as a whole, 4×4 challenges the viewer to consider space, scale and stories and ask questions about the relationships between objects, between object and space and between local visual arts institutions.

CURATORS
Caitlin Green (GOCA)
Blake Milteer (Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center)
Jessica Hunter Larsen (The I.D.E.A. Space at Colorado College)
Holly Parker (Smokebrush Gallery & Foundation)

ARTISTS
Andrew Beckham
Carol Golemboski
Kate Petley
Stacy Steers

FREE CANDY! is the annual Visual and Performing Arts exhibition highlighting work from 2010 graduating seniors. The exhibition is planned and executed from start to finish by the visual art students as part of their professional development course and is the sampling of work from 10 students working in sculpture, drawing, painting, digital media, video, and photography.

FEATURED ARTISTS
Laura Bearl
Jen Blair
Lisa Cross
Tracy Falsetto
Tiffany Gray
Frankie Medeiros
Emily Morgan
Daniela Oettinger
Gretchen Piper
Monica VanConant
Tim Winkelbauer

Taking inspiration from a sound that straddles pleasure and pain, Moan features art work in a variety of media by UCCS Visual Art faculty and students as a part of the City Dionysia Festival. A maelstrom of violence, The Bacchae is a potent source for examining the heart of revelry, intoxication, and vengeance. Opening reception: March 4, 6 – 9 pm. Closing reception (with a live performance of excerpts from the Bacchae score): April 2, 6 – 9 pm.

COMPLIMENTARY PARKING IN LOT 3 PROVIDED BY UCCS PARKING SERVICES.

Featuring work by:

Carol Dass
Aaron Graves
Claire Rau
Kim Lovelace
Corey Drieth
Laura Bearl
Erik Schubert
Taylor Stamp
Mariya Zvonkovich
Amber Marchlowska
Matt Barton
Courtney Matthews
Olivia Lundberg
Elizabeth Raitz
Pauline Foss
Brett Wilson
Valerie Brodar
Dom Puleo
Erin Elder
Lisa Cross

The Gallery of Contemporary Art and THEATREWORKS are proud to host the world premier of the ENTIRE Autoteatro Series by Rotozaza, a UK-based performance group. Three works make up the series: ETIQUETTE, GURUGURU and WONDERMART.

BUY TICKETS or call 719.255.3232 to make reservations.

ETIQUETTE by Ant Hampton and Silvia Mercuriali
Etiquette is a half-hour experience for two people in a public space. There is no-one watching – other people in the cafe or bar are not aware of it. You wear headphones which tell you what to say to each other, or to use one of the objects positioned to the side. There is a kind of magic involved – for it to work you just need to listen and respond accordingly. Etiquette is theatre at its most raw; it is live, insightful, philosophical and incredibly unique. The participants are both the actors and the audience, and the show offers the fantasy of being able to speak without having to think what to say.

GURUGURU by Ant Hampton with Joji Koyama and Isambard Khroustaliov
You have been told what to do every moment of the day, for years on end. The voice in your headphones has understood who you are and gives instructions which mirror what you’d be doing anyway. A life free of dither and uncertainty! In your job, this voice is a career-saver… but the day has come when you need to come ‘off the headphones’. You need help.

Five audience-participants enter a brightly lit room and discover chairs positioned for them around a screen. As they each follow different instructions via headphones, they find themselves at the centre of an oddly familiar dystopia, and that they’re wearing headphones permanently, ‘for their own good’. Proceedings are led by an on-screen, animated character whose twin roles of marketing and spiritual Guru are confused by his reliance on untested and accident-prone technologies. The overproduced, digital sheen of this focus-group world begins to crack, as the group edge towards the dangerous situation of having to think for themselves. In true Rotozaza style, a beautifully orchestrated chaos develops, exposing today’s consumer-mad inability to distinguish between what we want, and what we need.

WONDERMART by Silvia Mercuriali with Tommaso Perego and Matt Rudkin
Wondermart takes a mischievous swipe at the dominance of supermarket culture and consumerism. This interactive audio tour takes you on a journey of rediscovery through the familiar surroundings of the supermarket. Wearing headphones and anonymous behind your trolley, you are guided around the aisles immersed in a private world, as the carefully constructed soundscape overlays a fictional world that blurs the real with the imaginary.

Here’s what the press has to say:
“Wondermart is an absorbing journey into the heart of modern consumerism.” The List (Wondermart)

“The concept is clever and the result an altered engagement with the commonplace.” Irish Times (Wondermart)

“gripping… If the line between audience and performer seems blurred, Rotozaza’s Etiquette erases it entirely.” New York Times/Herald Tribune (Etiquette)

“This is a magical, unthreatening experience… the act of relinquishing responsibility for thought, word and action is unique and the effect is unmissable.” British Theatre Guide (Etiquette)

“Hugely entertaining… This smart, mysterious exercise in programmed thinking and collective chaos is strange but exhilarating.” The Times (GuruGuru)

“You may find yourself frantically looking for yourself again in the moments after the performance has finished.” The Guardian (GuruGuru)

MORE INFORMATION ON ROTOZAZA CAN BE FOUND ON THEIR WEBSITE: www.rotozaza.uk

$2165*
Includes roundtrip flight from Colorado, lodging, daily breakfast, guided excursions, theatre performances, art events and one amazing way to earn college credit!

You can register for this course with SPRING 2010 registration in November, a $500 deposit is dur on November 30. ROLE OF THE VIEW will be led by Gallery of Contemporary Art director Caitlin Green & THEATREWORKS executive director Drew Martorella. More info on our FACEBOOK PAGE.

Questions? Call 255.3232 or email cgreen@uccs.edu.

*Does not include airport taxes and fees or tuition

Read full article at wemakemoneynotart.com

The gent in the pink jumpsuit and clown mask is known as Shawn Crahan on his driver’s license. To metal fans, he is known as “Clown” (or sometimes “#6″), a percussionist in the Grammy winning band Slipknot. Three days ago, Crahan turned 40–a milestone for all of us, but especially so for a heavy metal musician. He celebrated “art, music and growing old” by staging a free, one-night exhibition of his photography and paintings at the Moberg Gallery in Des Moines, Iowa. As you have doubtless guessed, I think everyone should make art, so would like to offer both an “Atta boy” and a “Many happy returns” to Mr. Crahan.

Read more

IFF 2009 features award winning films and documentaries from Turkey, Iran, the Arab Middle East, and North Africa which explore the theme of women’s lives and experiences. The films document contemporary realities of the Middle East from honor killings to drug addiction and sexual abuse, from sharing intimate stories and frustrations in a beauty parlor to waiting for the return of one’s migrant working spouse. Experiences further include the challenges of pursuing one’s film studies in a war-torn city and getting married in a zone of conflict. Post-screening discussions/Q&As follow five out of the seven featured films and documentaries.

IFF 2009 is part of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs (UCCS) support of cultural programming along the Front Range expanding an already vibrant fall film festival line-up. MORE INFORMATION.

We are pleased to be working with:

- ArteEast, a New York-based, international, non-profit organization supporting artists from the Middle East and North Africa
- Moon and Stars Project, a non-profit organization promoting Turkish culture and arts
- Fictionville Studio, LLC, a Brooklyn-based independent film production company
- Arab Film Distribution and Typecast Films, Seattle-based
- ANS International, Abdullah Oguz’s Istanbul-based production company

The SCHEDULE

Opening Night, Friday, October 16th at UCCS Dwire 121

6 PM
Opening Reception
6:45 PM
Welcome Statement – Dr. Carole Woodall, IFF Executive Curator
7 PM
Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis (France 2007), 95 minutes
Discussion with Dr. Rashna Singh, Department of English / WEST at UCCS

Saturday, October 17th at UCCS Dwire 121

10:30 AM
Hiba Bassem’s Baghdad Days (Iraq/UK 2005), 35 minutes
Discussion with Dr. Aditi Mitra, Department of Sociology / WEST at UCCS
Screening held in conjunction with the 4th annual Woman-to-Woman Dialogue Series “Women’s Experiences: Surviving and Thriving” sponsored by the American Association of University Women and the Matrix Center.
Noon
Yasmine Kassari’s L’enfant Endormi [The Sleeping Child] (Morocco/Belgium 2004), 95 minutes
3 PM
Abdullah O?uz’s Mutluluk [Bliss] (Turkey/Greece 2007) 126 minutes
Discussion with Dr. Sölen Sanli, Department of Sociology at Metro State
6 PM
Hamid Rahmanian’s The Glass House (USA/Iran 2008), 92 minutes
Q&A with director, Hamid Rahmanian, and producer, Melissa Hibbard

Sunday, October 18th at the fine arts center

4:30 PM in the Music Room
Hany Abu-Assad’s Rana’s Wedding (Palestine 2002), 90 minutes
Discussion with Dr. Livia Alexander, Executive Director of ArteEast
6:30 PM in the Lobby
Closing Reception
7:30 PM in the Upper Gallery
Nadine Labaki’s Caramel (Lebanon/France 2007), 95 minutes

The Bureau of Land Management says the final environmental impact statement for the proposal by husband-and-wife artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude is scheduled for release in January 2011.

The artists say that means the earliest their “Over the River” project could be installed is 2013. They want to suspend about six miles of fabric over sections of the river, between Salida and Cañon City.

The artists’ previous projects include erecting thousands of fabric panels in Central Park in New York in 2005.

But the three-year-old collective is becoming known in the Philadelphia art world for its monthly exhibitions of work by its members and other artists. And “we actually get awesome turnout for our shows, considering the location and everything,” said Danielle Ruttenberg, one of 25 young artists who either pay for raw studio space in the building or take on chores in exchange for it. (The current exhibition, of bird-centric prints and drawings by a local artist named Tory Franklin, continues through Sept. 13.)

Read entire story.

We all have opinions about the yellow ribbon thing on the median at Cascade Avenue, the giant red paperclips on Tejon Street and the other 11 entries in this year’s “Art on the Street” project.

Now it’s time to let those artists know what you think.

For the first time, project organizer Community Ventures, a branch of the Downtown Partnership, will give a People’s Choice Award.

Read the entire article and see the pieces!

How far?

How about films projected on the walls, objects and trash of a downtown parking garage?

“Site specificity means taking film out of the black box, art out of the cube and theater off the stage,” said Green, director of the Gallery of Contemporary Art at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, which will present “Displacement: Cinema Out of Site,” a series of experimental cinema events today through Sunday. “There’s an element of discovery that I like, with that can come a conversation about the role of arts in the city.”

Her love of discovery is shared by Christopher May, director of The International Experimental Cinema Exposition, or TIE, a Denver-based nonprofit cinema group that’s collaborating with Green. May called the downtown parking garage at Nevada Avenue and Kiowa Street a perfect venue to explore expanded or displaced cinema, avant-garde films shot with 8- and 16-millimeter film.

“Expanded or displaced cinema is projected onto numerous surfaces from more than one projector,” he said. “The idea is three filmmakers projecting on whatever’s available. White concrete walls and broken glass will be creating new images and introducing new ways of viewing film,” Green said.

The subject of the films runs perfectly with that free-form theme: parkour.

Mainstream America glimpsed this free-form, running, vaulting thing in the movie “Casino Royale,” but it’s been a YouTube phenomenon for longer.

“Parkour is an athletic and spiritual practice of getting from Point A to Point B using urban obstacles,” Green said.

May said parkour is different from “freerunning,” a similar practice that highlights acrobatics.

“In parkour, you do everything to be useful; traceurs (parkour practitioners) emphasize the practice of becoming stronger to be useful to society. The practice is noncompetitive and community-based. There’s a firm belief in mentorship. The motto is ‘to be and to laugh.’”

In total, “Displacement” consists of a series of six lectures by filmmakers, theorists and traceurs, and a screening tonight that includes the work of three filmmakers.

There also will be an audio experimentalist who creates rhythm and melody with recordings of traceurs’ hands and feet slapping concrete.

“Displacement” is one of six projects under the gallery’s umbrella program “AWOL: Art Without Limits,” created by Green to bring art into the community.

“Community-based projects create a forum for discussion on public process and they invite participation from diverse audiences, expanding the population that interacts with the art,” Green said.

All of the “AWOL” projects invite discourse and rely on collaboration with other organizations, as well.

For “Flaunt: Evolution,” Green worked with Amber Coté, director of FutureSelf, and Drew Martorella, executive director of TheatreWorks, to create a multimedia fashion show with video art.

While dates have been set for “Displacement” and “Flaunt,” Green is still working to solidify details on the four remaining projects including “Etiquette,” an interactive project in which the participants follow directions from a pair of headsets, all within a public restaurant (Green has been talking to the owners of Shugas).

Green sees “AWOL” as an opportunity to break the barriers between gallery space and public gathering. “This program expands our mission to outside the gallery walls.

It has the opportunity to grow an interest in the arts and to facilitate a dialogue in the arts about community.”

Displacement:
cinema out of site
When: After dusk today
Where: Parking garage at Nevada Avenue and Kiowa Street
Admission: Free
Something else: Reception and lectures at City Hall, 6:30 p.m. today-Sunday

Flaunt: Evolution
When: 7-11 p.m. Sept. 12
Where: under Colorado Avenue Bridge
Admission: $30

But in his first sit-down interview since his nomination by President Obama, Mr. Landesman’s comments suggested that he may nevertheless raise hackles on Capitol Hill after he is sworn in in the next few days. Speaking recently in his office above the St. James Theater on West 44th Street, where Tony Awards abut baseball trophies — testament to his prowess as a producer and as a pitcher in the Broadway Show League — Mr. Landesman, 62, made clear that he has little patience for the disdain with which some politicians still seem to view the endowment, more than a decade after the culture wars that nearly destroyed it.
He was particularly angered, he said, by parts of the debate over whether to include $50 million for the agency in the federal stimulus bill, citing the comment by Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in February, that arts money did not belong in the bill. That kind of thinking suggests that “artists don’t have kids to send to college,” Mr. Landesman said, “or food to put on the table, or medical bills to pay.”
In American politics generally, he added: “The arts are a little bit of a target. The subtext is that it is elitist, left wing, maybe even a little gay.”

And while he praised the way recent endowment chairmen have carefully rebuilt the agency’s political standing, Mr. Landesman — who is known more as an independent entrepreneur than as a diplomatic company man — said he was not planning to follow too closely in their footsteps. While Dana Gioia, his immediate predecessor, made a point of spreading endowment funds to every Congressional district, for example, Mr. Landesman said he expected to focus on financing the best art, regardless of location.
“I don’t know if there’s a theater in Peoria, but I would bet that it’s not as good as Steppenwolf or the Goodman,” he said, referring to two of Chicago’s most prominent theater companies. “There is going to be some push-back from me about democratizing arts grants to the point where you really have to answer some questions about artistic merit.”
“And frankly,” he added, “there are some institutions on the precipice that should go over it. We might be overbuilt in some cases.”

Mr. Landesman does believe that the agency should be “perceived as being everywhere,” he said. “But I don’t know that we have to be everywhere if the only reason for supporting an institution is its geography.”
On the subject of the endowment’s budget, too, Mr. Landesman did not hold back. Though he would not put a dollar figure on his own fiscal goals, he called the current appropriation of $155 million “pathetic” and “embarrassing.” And he seemed to imply dissatisfaction with increases proposed by Congress and by the president, which both fall short of the agency’s 1992 budget of $176 million.

“We’re going to be looking for funding increases that are more than incremental,” he said.
As for grants to individual artists — which were eliminated in 1996 after years of complaints from conservative legislators about the financing of controversial art — Mr. Landesman said he would reinstate them “tomorrow” if it were up to him. (It’s up to Congress.)
Mr. Landesman said that as chairman he will focus on the potential of the arts to help in the country’s economic recovery.
“I wouldn’t have come to the N.E.A. if it was just about padding around in the agency,” he said, and worrying about which nonprofits deserve more funds. “We need to have a seat at the big table with the grown-ups. Art should be part of the plans to come out of this recession.”
“If we’re going to have any traction at all,” he added, “there has to be a place for us in domestic policy.”
He was less clear about the details of this ambitious agenda, though he talked about starting a program that he called “Our Town,” which would provide home equity loans and rent subsidies for living and working spaces to encourage artists to move to downtown areas.
“When you bring artists into a town, it changes the character, attracts economic development, makes it more attractive to live in and renews the economics of that town,” he said. “There are ways to draw artists into the center of things that will attract other people.”
The program would also help finance public art projects and performances and promote architectural preservation in downtown areas, Mr. Landesman added. “Every town has a public square or landmark buildings or places that have a special emotional significance,” he said. “The extent that art can address that pride will be great.”
Given the agency’s “almost invisible” budget, he said, goals like these would require public-private partnerships that enlist developers, corporations and individual investors — largely by getting them “to understand the critical role of art in urban revitalization.”

Such arrangements — which he said will be a “signature part” of his chairmanship — will play “right into the president’s wheelhouse,” Mr. Landesman added, speaking of Mr. Obama’s concerns about cities and economic development.
The new chairman said he already has a new slogan for his agency: “Art Works.” It’s “something muscular that says, ‘We matter.’ ” The words are meant to highlight both art’s role as an economic driver and the fact that people who work in the arts are themselves a critical part of the economy.

“Someone who works in the arts is every bit as gainfully employed as someone who works in an auto plant or a steel mill,” Mr. Landesman said. “We’re going to make the point till people are tired of hearing it.”
As for the former agency slogan, “A Great Nation Deserves Great Art,” he said, “We might as well just apologize right off the bat.”
Mr. Landesman said he realized he was not the obvious man for the job. “There are a lot of people whose résumés laid out a lot better than mine,” he said. “But I think the president is serious when he talks about change. I think he wanted to bring a new energy to this agency.”

Mr. Landesman’s own résumé starts with his upbringing in and around the cabaret theater his father and uncle ran in St. Louis, the Crystal Palace. Performers including the Smothers Brothers and Mike Nichols and Elaine May often headlined there during his childhood, some of them staying in the Landesman family’s basement apartment after their gigs.
Mr. Landesman, who has a reddish beard and lanky physique, did a lot of acting as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin, then went on to the Yale School of Drama, where he earned a Ph.D. in dramatic literature and criticism and stayed on as an assistant professor for four years, until 1978.
After leaving Yale, Mr. Landesman started a mutual fund, bought racehorses until he had amassed a dozen — one successful horse would enable him to purchase another — and about three years ago, he said, “came within about five minutes of buying the Cincinnati Reds.” (He lost out to another bidder at the last minute, which he said was “painful.”)
In 1985 he produced the Broadway musical “Big River,” which won that year’s Tony for best musical, at a theater owned by the Jujamcyn group, the third-largest of the big three New York theater companies, after Shubert and Nederlander. Two years later he was hired as the president of Jujamcyn Theaters, and in 2005 he bought the company; in his new position he will retain his ownership stake but will not participate in the company’s activities.

Jack Viertel, Jujamcyn’s creative director, described Mr. Landesman as smart, decisive and “a very entertaining person to be around,” but also “mercurial,” “unpredictable” and “an extraordinarily hardheaded businessman.”
Paul Libin, the producing director at Jujamcyn, said he was at first “taken aback” by the idea of Mr. Landesman’s leading the endowment, but that he has come to believe that the job requires “someone who is a general,” and that his boss fits the bill.
Mr. Landesman wasn’t tapped for the job. “I’d love to say the president drafted me, and I had to answer the call of duty, but no,” he said. “I put my hand up for this.”

“Everybody I talked to said, ‘This is the worst idea I’ve ever heard, put it out of your head immediately,’ ” Mr. Landesman said. “The idea of running a 170-person federal bureaucracy seemed crazy.”
But it’s an unusual moment in history, he said, and he wanted to be part of it. President Obama was “the first candidate in my memory who made arts part of the campaign,” Mr. Landesman said. “He had an arts policy committee and an arts policy statement and arts advisers.”

Cultural mavens like himself feel they “have one of their own” in the White House, he added. “It makes the arts community feel finally, for the first time in a long time, there might be some wind at their back.”

Only seven performances! Click here for more information.

The road kill toys come with their own plastic bodybag, and some have an “I Love RoadKill” bumper sticker, death certificates and toe tags.

Read on: http://www.artnewsblog.com/2009/07/roadkill-toys.htm

* CLOSES JUNE 28,2009 *

Paul Slocum, New Media Gallery
Curated by Petra Sertic

Paul Slocum’s video You’re Not My Father is comprised of several reenactments of a short scene from the American television show Full House (1987–1995). Slocum recruited amateur participants through ads posted on Internet message boards and Craigslist and provided instructions on how to reshoot the scene with special attention to dialog and gestures. A musician as well as a visual artist, he creates an ominous effect in the video using sound loops, based on the scene’s original music. The work explores issues of defiance against authority, as presented by the characters, D.J. and Joey, and their different impersonators.

Anthony Goicolea, Photography Gallery
Curated by Cydney Payton

Related features the recent work of first-generation Cuban American Anthony Goicolea. Noted for his fantastic photographic narratives where he often acts out provocative charades and exploits, Goicolea now turns to inventing a conceptual family album. The exhibition is comprised of drawings and photographs that resemble portraiture from the mid-1800s, when the innovation of the tintype process transported image-making from the hand of the artist to the camera.

Shark’s Ink, Paper Works Gallery
Curated by Cydney Payton

This group exhibition features 82 prints by ten artists who have created works on paper with Master Printer Bud Shark of Shark’s Ink in Lyons, Colorado. The collection on view represents a survey of his studio since its inception in the mid-seventies. Shark has produced lithographs, monoprints, and woodcuts by renowned artists, largely from the US. The exhibition’s curator, Cydney Payton, has chosen to present artists who have worked with Shark for many years, engaging in a collaborative process that has resulted in works that are technically and visually innovative. The approach employed at Shark’s studio is unique to the creative process, as the artist and the printer work side-by-side to manifest beautiful works.