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  • Altar(er) Hex opens at the Temple in RiNo Art District, Denver

    Altar(er) Hex is an exhibition curated by Hexus Collective, and opens at The Temple in Denver, CO, on October 31, 2019. The exhibition runs through January 3rd with open hours on Saturdays from 12-5pm at 2400 Curtis St.

    The exhibition emphasizes the altar as a vehicle for ritual exchange between humans and the divine. By presenting contemporary altars as platforms of resistance, altar-makers illustrate the potential of the altar as a tool for reclaiming power and agency from mainstream institutions. The exhibition also reflects the banishment of magic and magic practitioners to the margins of society and the forced development of secretive practices. Thus, featured artists are presented with the opportunity to negate this secrecy, while also revealing the concept of alterity, or “otherness,” in their multiple interwoven identities.

    This exhibition features collaborative piece "What grew in the garden before it was known" by Catherine Nelson (wall piece) and JJ Austin (sound piece).

    What grew in the garden before it was known
    Catherine T Nelson with JJ Austin
    2019
    Catherine and Austin met working for the instruments-as-art music venue, The Music Box Village, in New Orleans in 2017.  Since then they have both relocated, but continue a conversation through music and visuals between Denver and New York.  
    Catherine's art practice centers on somatic improvisation, or a curiosity about bodily knowledge -- what the body stores and has to express if given space and time to move freely.  Austin developed this sound piece in response to her visuals, reflecting on the ancient language systems and "illegible" marks he often sees in his day job in object conservation at the Metropolitan Museum if Art.  Together, in this piece, they explore contemporary touch points with ancient knowledge.

  • RedLine's 6th Annual Juried Exhibition "Was it Worth It" opens August 10th in Denver

    "Genius Loci of the Yangtze" (drawing series)

    These contours developed after a week of silence and observational drawing on a boat ride up the Yangtze river.  When I arrived at my destination apartment in Chongqing, I acquired paper and watercolors and started linking the forms together from my memory of the week.  Moving slowly, I did not move my pencil unless I conjured a specific reference memory.  The components of these shapes are not composed hierarchically.  They come from the landscape of urban relocation, infrastruture, growth, and river industry that I soaked in as I floated. 

    I felt like I was from the future and wanted to warn everyone about the myth of the perfection of the US, about our plastic islands and diabetes and oil, about our wealth gap.  I wanted to tell everyone drinking bubble tea in plastic cups that it isn't worth it.  

    RedLine’s 6th Annual Juried Exhibition
    Curated and Juried by: Ivar Zeile

    Opening Reception: August 10th 6-9PM

    Participating Artists:
    Alexandra Basford, Brenda Biondo, Sarah Bowling, Karen Breunig, Bug, Jessica Cannon, Niri Cath, Christian Cumber, Rodney Durso, Ross Everett, Mark Farrell, Jarvis Fosdick, Brian Fouhy, Lili Francuz, Camila Galofre, Lindsay Garcia, Monica Goldsmith, Jeremy Grant, Jay Hollick, Ronald Knepper, Cindy Konits, William Krieg, William Laemmel, Trevor Leach, Ryan Lewis, William Lewis, Joshua Littlefield, James Long, Max Maddox, Don Manderson, Cherish Marquez, Addie Kae Mingilton, John Morrison, Aaron Mulligan, David Namaksy, Selena Nawrocki, Catherine Nelson, Christy, Nelson, Duncan Parks, Caroline Peters, Victor Proulx, Jabari Reed-Diop, Paul Rodgers, Suzy Savoy, Heather Schulte, Elspeth Schulze, Stephen Shugart, Bill Sieber, Brady Smith, Alexander Stark, Emilie Trice, Austin Turley, Devin Urioste, Joshua Ware, Jen Watson

  • Bulbancha is Still a Place, Vol. 2 Release!

    Bulbancha is a Choctaw word combining “someone who speaks a foreign language” and “be there” in reference to the land that became New Orleans, making it “a place of foreign languages.”

    In its second issue (the Language Issue), the zine Bulbancha is Still a Place is full of stories of activating and preserving native cultures through words. My little surface marble from Cocodrie is very honored to be included. Copies at @anchorandarrowdrygoods in the French Quarter or contact info@bulbanchaisstillaplace.org to purchase directly. Edited by Dr. Jeffery U. Darensbourg and Ozone 504.

  • Known Mass No. 3, "St. Maurice" is funded! Set to tour Louisiana!

    This dance theater meets immersive theater meets improvisation project has been grant funded and will tour New Orleans and Shreveport!  Props to director Ann Glaviano for her grit in taking this project from work-in-progress to full production!  My contributions will include improvsiational movement with the cast of dancers, as well as improvised drawing score using an overhead projector, and an improvised paper-folding and conversation score that engages audience members.  Not to miss!

  • Secret Beach Performance 1-Year Anniversary Footage

    Known Mass, "Secret Beach" from ann glaviano on Vimeo.

    In June 2018, New Orleans dance company Known Mass, under the direction of Ann Glaviano, developed an improvisational score in response to artist Catherine Nelson's drawings and installation titled "A Tussle with the Genius Loci."  It was as hot as the referenced Louisiana swamp in the venue, and viewers fanned themselves as they moved among performers, accessing multiple vantage points throughout the space.  Performers included Dewuan Frances, Rebecca Allen, and Ann Glaviano, and installation elements included wall drawings, modified locally found objects, and percussive papier mache pieces.  Enjoy a few excerpts from their hour-long movement and vocal performance.

  • Movement Research Practice with Rebecca Allen

    Rebecca Allen is a professional mover who spent 15 years dancing in Nashville with contemporary dance company New Dialect before moving back home to New Orleans.  She's currently earning her MFA in the Tulane dance department; however, her clay practice earned her a simultaneous studio in the ceramics department for parallel movement and material research.

    We met performing in an improvisation-based dance piece developed by Ann Glaviano last year and connected on an interest in the conversation between movement and material.  Her remarkable presence, freedom and subtlety as an improvisor are also fascinating to watch.

    Recently, we met for our second-ever jam of movement and materials in her clay studio.  We set a timer and explored the space with our preferred tools, me more focused on mark-making while moving and Rebecca on sculptural/movement questions. 

    A dynamic evolved of her creating constraints for me as I tried to draw - taping me to the floor or wall, cutting planes across the space, tearing a surface I was drawing on.  As a result, my lines were re-framed constantly as I created them.  The game forced me to experiment with different distances from my substrate, different body positions and uses of grips and gravity, and even stirred some antagonistic play to inhibit Rebecca's movement in return.  

    It generated a variety of line and broke some habits that needed breaking.  Until next jam.

  • Digi Fab in the Studio

    My next project is involves a doodle made during a particularly brutal real estate development class and translating it into a large-scale wall installation.  I think I like the idea of taking up space with art instead of unimaginitive concrete developments, and this piece is a beginning experiment in how to use a machine to be a little kinder to my body in the process of building an installation.  My sweet pal Erin had to PT me out of some nasty back pain after the last one, so let's see if we can't whittle this process down to only the labor essential to the piece.  

    Update: Some experimental compositions with cuts

  • Crit night at Book Club Gallery

    Artists/makers playing with the objects from "Secret Beach" - the dance performance developed with Ann Glaviano of Known Mass dance company - to generate feedback for future objects.  Topics of conversation included the use of found materials and objects, the range of treatment between the objects, feelings of play without direction, and the importance or lack thereof of the permanence of the objects.  

  • Developing "Secret Beach" performance for "A Tussle with the Genius Loci"

    Dancemaker Ann Glaviano (with whom I've collaborated in the past via her dancing for my work and me dancing in her Known Mass: St Maurice piece) agreed to develop a score called "Secret Beach" for the opening of my installation "A Tussle with the Genius Loci."

    Glaviano is collaborating with dancers Rebecca Allen and Deuwan Frances using the tools of experimental choreographer Deborah Hay as a foundation for a score that interacts with the installation. 

    Hay's framework generates improvisational choreography based on what each dancer sees.  In a state of constant motion (with prompts like "here and gone" and "I am not fixed"), dancers pass from frame to frame of visual information and respond to each with the physical vocabulary unique to each dancer's body and history.  Glaviano responded to the work I'm developing and generated additional prompts for the dancers ("what if I create the space," etc.) including the exciting and vulnerable introduction of dancers' vocals.

    The visual artwork the show interacts with was born out of a process of looking around at the water's edge and wondering if I really was home after moving back to Louisiana after 13 years away.  I think in that process I discovered that "home" is not fixed, and that it requires me to look anew at every moment and redefine it.  Collaborating with these dancers and Deborah's tools opens up the here and now in a vivid and specific way, and the opportunity to build this show with three women originally from Louisiana makes for a rich and informed "Tussle with the Genius Loci."

  • Known Mass No. 3, "St. Maurice" is funded! Set to tour Louisiana!

    This dance theater meets immersive theater meets improvisation project has been grant funded and will tour New Orleans and Shreveport!  Props to director Ann Glaviano for her grit in taking this project from work-in-progress to full production! The show includes an experimental mass performed in Latin by electronic musician MJ Guider, plus scores performed by different dancers each night, making every show a unique performance.

    My contributions will include improvsiational movement with the cast of dancers, as well as improvised drawing score using an overhead projector, and an improvised paper-folding and conversation score that engages audience members.  Not to miss!

    A Live Performance In Which Six Women Reconstruct A Deconsecrated Church Using A Sheet, A Bathtub, Their Voices, & Their Bodies

    Known Mass No. 3, "St. Maurice," work-in-progress at Art Klub, February 2018. Photo: Camille Lenain.

    Known Mass No. 3, "St. Maurice," work-in-progress at Art Klub, February 2018. Photo: Camille Lenain.

    Known Mass No. 3, "St. Maurice," work-in-progress at Art Klub, February 2018. Photo: Camille Lenain.

  • Interiors Icons Inheritance curated by Danny Orendorff

    Featured Artists:

    John Barnes, Paige DeVries, Ariel Jackson, Jeremy Jones, Kristin Meyers, Catherine Nelson, Jessica Peterson + Sara White, Max Seckel

    Interiors, Icons, Inheritance features the artwork of eight artists selected from Antenna’s 2017 Louisiana Open Call, each exploring their respective personal and collective histories. Rich with character and dense with detritus, these works depict the architecture, landscapes, people, and materials – the very stuff – of New Orleans. Sometimes somber, always eclectic; the tough, honest, and grainy visions of personhood and place featured in Interiors, Icons, Inheritance reveal a shared interest in the grit and physicality of living, working, and artmaking in the American South.

    On view: Sept 9 – Oct 8, 2017
    Opening Reception: Saturday Sept 9, 6-10pm
    Daily hours: Tuesday through Sunday 12-5

  • Illuminate with Miro Hoffman at Courtyard Brewery

    Miro and I shared an interest in using analog projectors and painting/drawing/manipulating light, so we built an installation together at Courtyard Brewery to experiment.

    A 16mm projector running direct animations (painted onto clear film) and an overhead projector covered in my handmade photo films, paper cuts,glitter glue and feathers and steel stencils were both aimed at a screen that hung from the ceiling.  Pegboard installed on the back side split the projected light into dots of color that bathed the back wall.  There was also a light table with overflow transparencies, plus glass drawings and paintings.  The show ran through Mardi Gras and evolved as people played with the films.  More photos on the way.

  • Installing Illuminate: Light Painting Collab with Miro Hoffman at Courtyard Brewery

    Installing "Illuminate" - an experimental projection project with painter Miro Hoffman.  We will be lighting up at Courtyard Brewery (Magazine and Erato) nightly through Mardi Gras with regular changes to the projected compositions.

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