Cassilhaus

SHEN WEI DANCE ARTS

For the 3rd straight year (see post on our first party here) we were asked by the American Dance Festival to host a post performance party for one of the major touring companies in this years festival.  It is something that Ellen and I really look forward to every year and enjoy as much as the amazing dance performances themselves.  We were so honored to be asked to host Shen Wei Dance Arts this year--one of the premiere modern dance companies in the world.  Most recently Shen Wei came to the world's attention by being asked to be the principal choreographer of the opening ceremonies for the Bejing Olympics. As usual Ellen prepared a yummy feast and we had a great opportunity to get to know the company.

Sarah Tondu, ADF czarina, wtih co hosts Jim and Jane Finch.

Ellen and Co-host extraordinaire Ellen Ciompi

Shen Wei

Choreographer Mark Haim, our most recent artist in residence, with friends.

"The dance is the mother of the arts.

Music and poetry exist in time;

painting and architecture in space.

But the dance lives at once in time and space."

- Curt Sachs

 

 

MARK HAIM

In our ongoing efforts to establish collaborations with major arts organizations we contacted our friend Jodee Nimerichter,  the co-director of the American Dance Festival to inquire about hosting our first choreographer in residence.  She enthusiastically recommended Seattle based Mark Haim (rhymes with time) who incredibly would be spending his 18th!! summer in Durham with the ADF.

From student to master instructor he has become a festival institution. Mark was a delight from day one and we discovered we had many friends in common. We had a dinner party one night and dessert was the opening of a piece of art we just purchased from one of our previous artists in residence, Aldwyth, called Cigar Box Encyclopedia (stay tuned for an exhibition sometime this fall.)

(Mark is at far right)

Mark celebrates with fellow ADF instructor Raphael Lopez-Barrantes

Mark gave a fantastic artist talk while he was here (so much so that his scheduled QiGong demonstration never happened) and talked about his dance career and inspirations and spoke in depth about a major work in process that will premier in March 2012 at On the Boards in Seattle that explores two very different approaches to the perception of the passage of time.

After having primarily visual artists in residence it was particularly fascinating to talk with Mark about his process and how much text and image were important in creating his movements.

Mark has a devilish sense of humor.  Not to be missed is his reinterpretation of Beyonce's Single Ladies video performed live at the festival in 2009.

We have a renewed appreciation for the incredible amount of time and effort that go into making a successful piece of choreography.  Thanks for everything Mark. We will really miss having you around here.

MOTEL 6

Back in 2000 I took a sabbatical from my job and spent 3 months travelling in Arizona, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington. I was pretty serious about photography and shot a bunch of 35mm slide film along the way.  As it turned out the Motel 6 chain was in the process of renovating all of their motels in the West and every night I was staying in a different brand new Motel 6.  I started shooting the interiors and produced a series of photographs that I eventually framed and installed in the men's room at my office in downtown Durham. They had the characteristic sickly green tint of unfiltered fluorescent lights and became a celebrated permanent installation. Fastforward 11 years and I get a notice in the mail about a gallery in Charlotte that has put out an artist call for entry for NC photographers for a show called Eyes of Carolina.  The show was to be juried by the director of the NC Museum of Art Larry Wheeler.  I forwarded the notice to all of my photographer friends and my friend MJ dared me to enter the Motel 6 series. To my shock and delight my work was chosen along with 4 other talented NC photographers for a 3 month show at DOMA Gallery in Charlotte.  If you get to Charlotte check it out. Otherwise, here is the series!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enjoy.

Milestone and Cassilhaus.com

 

To celebrate our 25,000th visitor here at the Cassilhaus blog I finally decided to launch the Cassilhaus website. No graphic designers need fear for their jobs but it covers the basics of our residency, exhibition program, and has the requisite photos.  Take a look around and thanks to everyone for continuing to read my posts.

DOUG BEUBE

As usual I am a little late with this.  Doug Beube, a Canadian who hails from Brooklyn, was our resident artist back in April and May.

He was here for 7 weeks and boy did we learn alot about "bookarts".  We discovered Doug's work in a book I got Ellen for her birthday.  She is a super map geek and Katharine Harman's The Map as Art is dinner and dessert for a map geek.  It was like finding a whole new world of art. Doug is a mixed media artist and although his MFA is in photography, his prime focus currently is bookarts. Among other things he is the curator of a private collection in New York City entitled, The Allan Chasanoff Bookworks Collection: The Book Under Pressure and his time here at Cassilhaus was spent working on a commission for Mr. Chasanoff.  Doug was the first artist we invited who was a complete unknown to us and there was excitement and a bit of risk in that--fortunately he turned out not be a hamster strangler!

I have given up predicting what will and will not happen during residencies here but I must say zipper dyeing was not even on my radar.

In addition to dyeing the zippers Doug needed to shorten them by painstakingly removing metal teeth.

Doug did a piece for fellow Canadian artist k.d. Lang called The Many Lives of Miss Chatelaine which was one of his first to incorporate zippers as a low tech method of "cutting and pasting" sections of the "book" and allowing quick rearrangement.

When we first talked to Doug about coming to Cassilhaus he said he would need a shop with a dust capture system for his physical manipulation work on books.  We contacted our good friends at the UNC Art Department, Jim Hirschfield (chair) and Jeff Whetstone and they put us in touch with Pat Day at the UNC Art Lab which turned out to be a fabulous resource.  UNC has been a great collaborator for us with our residency.

In this particular project, Doug has placed a plastic "resist" at a certain point within the book and is grinding a large hole through the cover of the book and down into the pages. He will then begin to develop the interior content.  He has a fascinating method of developing a new narrative from the existing text of the book by highlighting certain words using painting and drawing.

 

Each section can now be moved around to change the narrative.

Doug gave a wonderful artist talk near the end of his stay where he showed works in progress and talked about his photographic, sculpture, and bookarts work.

The main thrust of what we are doing here at Cassilhaus is trying to engage the local arts community with our resident artists.  It was particularly exciting that Doug's talk connected us with a vibrant (and unknown to us) books arts scene in the Triangle and specifically a newly formed books arts group of artists, many of whom were in attendance. We are continually finding new constituencies that bring new energy to Cassilhaus.  Thanks Doug.

Only common things come when common sense prevails.                 --Anonymous