Preliminary sketch for Digestion, a performance and installation piece opening on Friday, September 16th at Future Tenant Gallery, Downtown Pittsburgh (as part of the group exhibition Your Place at the Banquet).
I’ve constructed a structure of wood, pipes, tubes, and found objects. The assemblage is both body and ecosystem. I will begin the “digestive process” as a live performance at 6:15 PM on opening night.
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Lately fossil fuel advertisements have been bombarding Western Pennsylvanians with “real” stories of people and families whose lives have changed for the better after dealing with the industry. Whether the subjects “sold the farm” to drillers (and bought dream condos), or can now afford to retire in style (after leasing their land), what we get is a glazed-over momentary snapshot produced by corporate image-makers. What we don’t see is the long-term picture revealing contamination of drinking water supplies, destruction of ecosystems, and health issues related to exposure to toxic substances. These negative effects creep up slowly after the windfall and the photo moments are long past. Smiling corporate execs (or actors playing them) warmly assure us of the benefits of using the resources under our feet. We don’t see them discussing the amount of environmental damage (and compensation) that they are willing to take on. Throughout history, corporations have taken whatever they can get, unless people rally to stop them.
In the neighboring states of Pennsylvania and West Virginia, visual artists have come together to consider the ways in which hasty actions can have disastrous effects on our ecosystems. In organizing, Reflections: Homage to Dunkard Creek, West Virginia artist Ann Payne was compelled to take a look at the big picture. Dunkard Creek experienced a total fish kill in 2009. Water from the creek eventually makes it way to Pittsburgh and the Ohio River, a water supply for thousands.
In Reflections, artists from Pennsylvania, West Virginia and beyond were asked to remember the ecosystem of Dunkard Creek by creating renderings of the lost species. The traveling display of over 90 works (watercolors, oils, etc.) opens September 9th at an art gallery in Morgantown, West Virginia. The show is also scheduled to travel. I hope it will generate awareness and positive action. The long-term health of our country depends on it!
The piece above is my entry in the show, the freshwater drum.
For more info, please check out the project website:
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Please check out this exciting project that I am involved in at Future Tenant Gallery, Pittsburgh, PA.
Illustrations are by David Pohl.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Katy Peace, Co-Executive Director
Your Place at the Banquet
September 16 – October 15, 2011
Opening Reception: September 16 6-9pm
Future Tenant / 819 Penn Avenue Pittsburgh, PA 15222
Your Place at the Banquet is a visual art exhibition and public awareness initiative that critically examines the mechanisms of our industrialized food system and aims to empower people to sow the seeds of change through their daily choices and actions.
A central exhibition hub will be open to the public from September 16 – October 15, 2011 at Future Tenant in Downtown Pittsburgh. From this central hub, bike-powered mobile programming, a poster campaign, street interviews, and public performances will travel beyond the gallery walls to extend the social impact throughout the Greater Pittsburgh region.
The exhibition features new works by Rose Clancy, H.E.A.P. HQ (Kevin Clancy, Dan Mooradian, Ali Reid), David Pohl, Tom Sarver, and Zayde Buti that seek to generate public awareness, critical discussion, and collective action around issues of food politics.
Rose Clancy will contribute Local Soup, a multifaceted work that includes the serving of homemade soups during the opening reception, a sculptural banquet table, and a series of video conversations with gardeners about their sustainable methods and practices. David Pohl will illustrate a series of posters that draw public awareness to key issues, such as industrial food, safe drinking water, genetically modified organisms, and seed saving. These posters will be printed and distributed widely throughout the city. Tom Sarver will perform Digestion at the opening, a piece that comments on the unnatural qualities of processed foods and the cravings that we develop for them. H.E.A.P. HQ will construct distinct bike-powered mobile units that will travel around the city, bringing transient platforms of exchange directly to the public and returning to the exhibition space to park during gallery hours. Zayde Buti will include a collection of his parodic music videos and perform his live one-man show Hungry.
Your Place at the Banquet is made possible by a grant from The Heinz Endowments Small Arts Initiative. The Heinz Endowments supports efforts to make southwestern Pennsylvania a premier place to live and work, a center for learning and educational excellence, and a region that embraces diversity and inclusion.
Future Tenant is a non-profit art space located in downtown Pittsburgh at 819 Penn Avenue dedicated to showcasing the work of emerging artists through exhibitions that offer a cutting edge perspective on the Pittsburgh art scene.
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I’ve drifted away from the blog a bit. Here are some doodles that I drew on the wall this week for a Downtown Pittsburgh event. The wall is 9′ x 24′ and the subject is the new industrialization of Pennsylvania wilderness areas resulting from the boom of deep shale drilling.
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This footage of the 20o8 Art Olympic Theatre event at the Union Project was recorded by Pittsburgh filmmaker Keith Tassick. For this event, a Philadelphia team drove in to challenge two Pittsburgh teams. Check out the pre-event interviews!
This was my studio at the Brew House, a non-profit artist co-op located on the South Side of Pittsburgh. Below are some photographs of the space from 2003 – 2005. I was creating puppet shows, paintings, drawings and lots of kinetic sculpture at the time. To get to the studio, I had to take an old freight or passenger elevator. (depending on which one was working) The window looked out on a dilapidated wall of rusty pipes in a corridor of the 1890 brewery building. To visitors, I probably seemed like the Sebastian character from Blade Runner, living in an old industrial structure with a bunch of puppets!
This was the “kitchen” area.
Puppets and props.
Below, the spice rack. The yellowed paper on the wall was a list of
Duquesne Brewery employees that I discovered in the room.
My puppet group completed the show Perseus, Medusa and the Magic Frisbee in the space. The hour-long production involving ten puppeteers, four voice actors, two musicians and twenty puppets was featured at the Black Sheep Puppet Festival in 2003.
I constantly thought the place was haunted.
Well, I’m back to blogging after a long holiday break. I finally got around to condensing my Fishing Report documentary from 2009 into a ten-minute sample. The full version is about 40 minutes long. I cut out a lot of the scenic footage, and chopped the interviews down to give a basic idea of what the piece is about.
For those who are unaware of the project, the Fishing Report is a project that combines my interests of fishing and art into a documentary that explores the creative side – traditions, craft, rituals, etc. – of fishing. The piece was screened at Sarver’s Bait and Tackle, a storefront installation featured at the 2009 Three Rivers Arts Festival in Downtown Pittsburgh. The project was also supported by the Pittsburgh Foundation and the Mattress Factory. I shot a lot of the video myself, but also had assistance from Jeremiah Johnson, Rose Clancy and Mike Cuccaro.
(The Raft, 2010 by Armando Mariño, Queloides, MF)
Now is the time when art mags and newsweeklies announce their “best of” listings. Below is a list of my six favorite art exhibitions of 2010. I’ll review some of the runners-up in another post.
#6 David Shrigley at Anton Kern Gallery, NY. With all of the tricks and tools available to contemporary artists, it is refreshing to see a body of work made with the simplest of tools: ink on paper. Add a touch of wit, a bit of sarcasm and you have David Shrigley. Shrigley can’t really draw or write, but that doesn’t matter. Humans have been making art in his primitive style since caveman days.
#5 Twisted Pair, Andy Warhol Museum. Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol. What would the art world be like without them? (A permanent land of Analytic Cubism or folk art perhaps?) A great work of curatorial scholarship, this show unraveled the uncanny and obvious similarities in the career paths (and inventions) of these trouble makers. For me, it was great to see so much work by Duchamp (even though many pieces were reproductions) under one roof. Although I’m not a big fan of excessive wall text, I thought the information was necessary, in this case to emphasize the thesis of the curators.
#4 Queloides: Race and Racism in Cuban Contemporary Art, Mattress Factory. I’m still in the process of studying this show. I like the fact that it spans two separate buildings in the midst of a neighborhood. (A couple of pieces are viewable outside) The MF staff marches to the beat of their own drummer. (They just installed a video that was recently censored at the Smithsonian Portrait Gallery) They steer clear from art world trends and leave plenty of room for experimentation.
#3 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art. People love to slam this show, but I think the Whitney crew does a pretty good job. I thought the exhibition was a pretty accurate reflection of social, political and creative consciousness of 2010 America. The general mood of the show was somber. Nina Berman’s photographs documenting the life of a disfigured Marine sergeant were devastating. Stephanie Sinclair’s photos of Afghani women suffering from self-inflicted burn wounds were even more heartbreaking. (It’s odd when a visit to the art museum is necessary to catch a glimpse of reality.) The most memorable piece in the exhibition for me was Michael Asher’s concept piece, which merely involved keeping the museum open 24 hours a day, continuously, for several days. My visit involved meeting some friends at midnight for the opening hour. Our small group had the place to ourselves. I caught one guard snoozing in a hallway. I like it when artists mess with the norms of a museum. It’s rare when an artist has enough influence to make this happen.
#2 Marina Abranmović, The Artist Is Present at MoMA. In terms of art historical importance, international influence, and artistic intensity, this show should be #1. This was perhaps the international art show of the year. In 2008, with art sales in a slump, people were talking about the revival of performance art. MoMA caught wind of the notion and put a big stamp on it with this show. I think performance art is dying out in New York City. The art scene seems so gridlocked that there is little room for experimentation, risk taking and failure. Abramavić may be the greatest performance artist of her generation, but at MoMA I felt like I was walking through an overcrowded zoo. The fact that she performed for the duration of her show keeps the exhibition at the top of my list.
#1 TANIA BRUGUERA: ON THE POLITICAL IMAGINARY at the Neuberger Museum of Art. What makes a great work of art? Is a memorable show necessarily a better one than one that is quickly forgotten? Can a complex layer of experiences in an art environment create a memory that is clearer than one captured in looking at a painting or sculpture? Bruguera stacked on layer after layer of raw sensory overload in her mid-career retrospective at the Neuberger. In one room, Gunmen paced back and forth along a catwalk high above, cocking their handguns and staring blankly into a darkness that was occasionally interrupted by a blinding flashes of light. In another vast, dark room, the floor was covered with rotting sugar cane. As one’s eyes adjusted to the darkness, several ghost-like figures appeared fidgeting nearby. A girl slowly chewed a mysterious substance as she stood naked with a skinned lamb carcass hanging from her neck. Another woman balanced on a high pedestal naked against a wall, fastened into position with large metal brackets.
At the opening of the show a long line of people waited and waited to see a live monkey. The commotion created by it was the whole idea. Also at the reception, a performer stumbled around covered in thick layers of mud and sticks. All performances were reenactments of performances once done by the artist. The actions were carefully orchestrated, and performers were meticulously trained. At the show I felt like I was in a different world haunted by forces of oppression and clouded by the mysteries of a distant culture. I still see the show vividly in my mind and I can almost smell the sugar cane. Aside from problems in Cuba, the show got me thinking about oppressive governments around the world.
Tom Sarver 
