Identity Tapestry at the Marjorie Barrick Museum

I am pleased to announce that The Marjorie Barrick Museum in Las Vegas has commissioned Identity Tapestry #12 as part of a community initiative in Healing Through Art in the wake of the shooting there.  It will be on display in the West Gallery from February 2 – May 12, 2018. From there it becomes part of the permanent collection. 

I will also be speaking in an artist panel on “Art with Social Purpose” hosted by Nevada Humanities on May 4^th, 7PM at The Writers Block in downtown Las Vegas.

I have been happy to prove to myself, with this third installation in a museum since I became so ill with CFS/ME that I am now in a specialized wheelchair outside the house, that I can still work productively as an artist.  This has been thanks to the support of friends, family and assistants.

Almost ten years ago now my process and my work went through a serious change with pregnancy and the birth of my daughter.  There were “limitations” that made me use different materials and ways of working, and they prompted the shift to Particaptory Installation.   That work has lifted my art and my career as an artist.

This is another shift, and it is already teaching me a lot that I can put into my work and practice.  I fully expect it will continue to lift my work.

Bearing Witness: Surveillance in the Drone Age is Opening Tomorrow!

Link to San Francisco International Arts Festival information

Link to Bearing Witness as part of San Francisco International Arts Festival

Calender for Bearing Witness: Surveillance In The Drone Age

May 21 – Jun 7, 2015 Fort Mason Center, SF
The San Francisco International Arts Festival and curators Hanna Regev and Matt McKinley present:Bearing Witness: Surveillance In The Drone Age

May 21 – Jun 7, 2015 Fort Mason Center SF, Ca

Festival Opening Night: May 21 6 – 7:30pm

featuring performances by artpaul Cartier, Co-Related Space, Igor Josifov, Justin Hoover & Rachel Znerold, Latifa Medjdoub

Reception with the Artists: May 27 6-9pm

featuring performances by Igor Josifov (film screening), Justin Hoover & Rachel Znerold, Kinetech Arts

Curator’s Tour 1 – May 23 1 – 2:30pm

Convene in the Fleet Room at 1pm for viewing and discussion of works in this location before heading to the Herbst Pavilion and Cowell Theater Atrium where the tour concludes with a performance of Latifa Medjdoub’s ‘Conversations With The Root’ in the Cowell Theater Lobby at 2pm; free event

Curator’s Tour 2 – May 30 Noon – 1:30pm

Convene in the Fleet Room at 12pm for a special performance of Kinetech’s ‘Mirror #1, Time Bubble’ followed by a viewing and discussion of works in this location before heading to the Cowell Theater Lobby and Atrium. The tour concludes at 1pm with an encore performance of Igor Josifov’s ‘Wit-ness’ performance in the Herbst Pavilion; free even

Show Description:

“Bearing Witness: Surveillance in the Drone Age” is a comprehensive look at the wide reach and capabilities of technologies that trap us under a complex umbrella of surveillance technologies consisting of drones, phones and ubiquitous cameras and tether us together in unprecedented ways thanks to social media and the Internet at large. This exhibit is an opportunity to engage in conversation about the potential benefits of surveillance technology as well as the threats posed to fundamental rights of personal freedom and privacy.

The idea that as individuals we watch and, in turn, are watched on a local to a global scale within groups we self-select and by ‘eyes’ we will never see is the greatest source of angst within our current milieu of evolution toward a globally wired community. The prevalence of digital surveillance combined with ‘analog’ surveillance makes personal privacy a diminishing and prized commodity. The by-products of digital surveillance (pictures and video) immortalize both personal and public events and this documentation is readily accessible thanks to cheap memory and social pressure to network and share digitally. Easy access to information capturing devices and storage allows for unprecedented documentation of all types of data, innocuous to important, in massive quantity, which not only leaves behind the greatest footprint of a single generation’s existence, ever, but poses real threats to our identities, rights to privacy, and unique ways of experiencing life.

This exhibit features work by:
Shay Arick, Alex Benedict (1030 Art Group), Tana Lehr (1030 Art Group), Yoni Mayeri (1030 Art Group), Teddy Milder (1030 Art Group), Jane Norling (1030 Art Group), Lanny Weingrod (1030 Art Group), Anna Kaminska (1030 Art Group) and Michel Bohbot, Matthew Silverberg (1030 Art Group), Lark Buckingham, artPaul Cartier, Irene Carvajal & Alex Shepard, Justin Hoover & Rachel Znerold, Phillip Hua, Philippe Jestin, Igor Josifov, Ali Kaaf, Pantea Karimi, Jonathon Keats, Scott Kildall, Mary March & Christopher Saari, Kara Maria, Latifa Medjdoub, Wes Modes (Co-related Space), Lanier Sammons (Co-related Space), Brent Townshend (Co-related Space), Daniel Newman, Maya Smira, Melissa West, Weidong Yang (Kinetech), Daiana Lopes da Silva (Kinetech), Lisa Blatt, Tayeb Al Hafez, Antoine Kem, Trevor Paglen

Featured Events:

Panel Discussion: The Edward Snowden Revelations and the Public Right To Know – May 30 1:30 – 3pm

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and artists Phillip Hua and 1030 Art Group members in conversation with curators Hanna Regev and Matt McKinley; free event
About the Festival:

The San Francisco International Arts Festival (www.sfiaf.org) celebrates the arts by bringing together a global community of artists and audiences. The organization presents innovative projects that are focused on increasing human awareness and understanding. SFIAF’s curatorial priorities include developing collaborative projects led by Bay Area artists working with their national and international peers and presenting world-class international artists who often do not have US representation and whose work is rarely (or never previously) seen in the United States.

Still Collecting words for Endangered Languages artwork. Participate!

I am still collecting languages for my Endangered Languages Project!

What it involves:  if you speak an endangered language or dialect (list here) I would want to speak with you for 15-30 minutes over the phone, skype, google hangouts or facetime.  You would not need to turn on the video part if it is over the computer. Basically I would just record audio of the following:

-a word or phrase that you feel doesn’t quite translate and which may say something about the culture

-your translation of that word or phrase

-a personal thought or story about it.

Other information I’d collect is where you grew up and where you live now, and what sort of fabric you would suggest goes with the language.  For example: the Irish speaker suggested a brown tweed, the Lowland Scots suggested a Douglas Tartan wool, and the Estonian speaker suggested a natural linen embroidered in a traditional pattern (which I am embroidering).  Otherwise no information about you (name, etc.) would be included unless you would like me to include your name in a “thanks to” list.

I am making a sort of cabinet where the fabrics will be displayed.  When a person approaches, one of the languages will start to play and the corresponding fabric with move with air as if the breath of the speaker is moving it.  It will mimic a Natural History display in certain ways… except with an emphasis on these things still being very much alive.

If you would like to participate, please email me at contact@marymarch.com

This piece is part of a an art exhibition on Endangered Languages curated by Hanna Regev at Root Division in San Francisco which is potentially traveling afterwards.  Previous post here.

Installing for “I am. And you?

Did I mention the space is absolutely amazing?  When I saw that piece of set (a huge factory wall which can be back-lit through the windows), the height of the ceilings, the space generally I knew I had to do a piece in that space.

So over the last couple days we put up Primary Text and my new work Transparency, created especially for the space and the “I am.  And you?” show at Zspace.  Primary Text is hung in this image (left), but not yet anchored.  I’m excited to see that one in action Participation-wise.

Yesterday I finished creating a warp for Transparency (the up and down part of a weaving on the loom) over 15 feet long.  It’s right in front of the windows, and the material you will be weaving into it is the colored gels theaters use over lights.  You can just see the 3 cables I used to hang it.

Each person will answer a question and write it on the gels and weave it into the warp.  They can also respond to someone else’s answer as if that person asked “and you?”. The physical result should be a kid of stained-glass window lit from behind.

I’ve been thinking a lot about ideas and experiences of introversion and extroversion, backstage/onstage/audience, the parts of ourselves we show differently in different company.  Filtered selves, not fake, but you don’t let the same parts of yourself through to your coworkers as you do to your lover or your child or vice versa.  One odd discovery is how many theatre performers are actually introverts offstage.  Given the environment of the theatre and the way lights and windows an that set-piece were working I had to explore transparency and filters while using the visual materials of the theatre-space (sand-bags, lighting gels, a “set” of flat black).  I’m excited to see how it all comes out when it’s been interacted with!

Please join us Monday night from 6-10 at ZSpace in San Francisco.

Directions

Officially installed!

Done!  There is  more than this in the full installation (such as 40 more hand-embroidered messages), but this should give you an  idea.  Identity Tapestry is ready to go, the table is built, the tablets together and the envelopes hung.  All ready for visitors and participants.

Please join us at the Mint for the show this week! Details here:  http://www.sfai.edu/principal

Principal (SFAI’s MFA thesis exhibition)

 

For those of you who joined me for Open Studios it  was wonderful, and an extra thank you to those of you who contributed to the beginning of a new participatory piece.  I hope you can all join me for my thesis show!

PRINCIPAL: MFA Exhibition

Thursday, May 15 – Sunday, May 18, 2014

The Old Mint

88 5th Street at Mission

San Francisco, CA,

PUBLIC VIEWING HOURSThursday, May 15–Sunday, May 18 11 am–6 pm Visitors are invited to meander through clandestine bank vaults and decadent ballrooms to uncover site-specific and multi-dimensional displays of work.

PUBLIC OPENING RECEPTIONFriday, May 16 7–9 pm

Here is your map to my work!  There will be two stories full of incredible art.  I will be showing Write Me for Art (for those of you who have been following that piece) and a new iteration of Identity Tapestry.  If you are in the Bay Area and have wanted to try that piece out, now is  your  chance!

Write me for Art has become two integrated pieces which I will install together.  It came from the many people who sent me replies in the mail to personal questions, all of which I have embroidered and included.

Because I can, and Open Studios

Setting up a test version of “Write Me For Art”. Really, this was the perfect height for setting up on stilts, which is way easier and faster. Sadly I’ll be hanging much higher at the Mint in a few weeks.

Tomorrow I’ll be at Open Studios at SFAI’s graduate center.

There will be the usual nibbles and drinks, but in my case there will be an interactive sound piece “Pulse”, created from the stories of San Franciscans.  What story will your pulse tell?

Also I will be working on a new Participatory piece, so if you choose you can become a part of it!

Graduate Open Studios Saturday, April 19, 2014 – 12:00pm – 5:00pm Third Street Graduate Center 2565 Third Street (between 22nd and 23rd) San Francisco, CA

We are on the second floor.  Every Orange door is SFAI.  I’m in C7 (C -bay is just right of the lounge, 7 is the back right-hand studio). I find it easiest to take the entrance on 22nd St.

I hope to see you there!

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If you want to see the finished “Write me for Art” you’ll just have to come to the show next month at the Mint.

Spring Shows and Events!

     April 19^th:         Open Studios 12-5PM   2565 Third Street (between 22nd and 23rd), SF, CA
                                   
May 2-4^th:             Print Show at Mullowney Printing   933 Treat Street, SF, CA 94110

                                    * Opening on Friday the 2nd.

     May 14^th-18^th:      PRINCIPAL:  SFAI’s Graduate Thesis Exhibition

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SFAI Graduate Open Studios: http://www.sfai.edu/openstudios

This is your chance to get a peek into the process.

Navigational Tip:   There is an entrance at 22^nd street.  Go to the second floor.  Every Orange door on the floor is an SFAI facility. 

I am in Bay C (just to the right of the lounge) in a lovely corner spot in #7 in the back right. 

I will send out more information on the second two events as they approach.  I hope to see you at the Open Studios!  I will have an interactive piece running in the studio as well as a Participatory piece you can contribute to.

Cubic (sound)2 Opening Dec 5th

  I have my first sound piece in this show.  Storytelling in SF.  Come see… and listen.

There will be five performances, including one by Laetitia Sonami.

I will have an interactive piece in the show built on participation.

At the LAB.

Next Iteration

As of yesterday it’s official.  I will be doing the next iteration of Identity Tapestry at Southern Vermont College beginning on Sept 15th. I’m especially excited because this will be the first iteration commissioned as a permanent installation!  I’m very excited to see what this community is all about and how it maps onto the piece.

It was so clear in the last two iterations how much the tapestry becomes a portrait of a specific community.  Statements that with one group of people would be chosen by many people (such as “I have never left this country”) can be completely blank in a particular group (in the case of Wisdom 2.0 that one was).  Things that are moderate in one group are absolutely mobbed in another.  You could definitely see wider cultural differences between LA galleries, SF galleries and the Brooklyn gallery, but at Pepperdine and the Wisdom 2.0 conference the specific community emerged.  That’s what I expect to see here- a portrait of Southern Vermont College.

I’m excited!