REDSTARTstudio

Yesterday we participated in this year’s Bouquets to Art event at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. Along with Holly Selvig we made an arrangement that was inspired by a rubbing made by Merle Green Robertson from the ballcourt at Chichen Itza on the Yucatan Pennisula. Holly and Lauri did the arranging while I photographed. Greens for the piece came from Blake Garden and Holly picked up some red lilies and roses at the SF Flower Market. Our statement of intention was as follows:

Our floral piece is inspired by the materiality of the event represented in the “Rubbing from the Ball court”.  The stylized nature of the stone carving tempers the extreme drama of the event: the beheading of the loser of the ball game.  We tried to capture that drama in color,  form, and material, and at the same time, also honor the brutal cultural tradition.

Recently I made some hand hewed monkey bars for Eve. She’s 4, and they are just her size. Last week my nephew Neil was visiting from Maine, and he gave them a try.

A walk around the Albany Bulb on 10 December 2011. Strong smells of fennel, dog and human shit. More Clearings and more encampments. Dogs and humans off leash. Invasive plants tall and strong: broome, pampas grass, acacia, the ice plant, and more …

Release occurs when documentation proves to be impossible. Such was the case this past month at Blake Garden. Shall I spoil it for you by telling you that 2 large mirrors were placed and suspended on either side of the narrow path above the wild tangle of the old cow pond (an area also known, only to me, as “The Hollow of the Screaming Woman”, and also to another, as the “Dell”)? And that there, surrounded by the persistent sounds of El Cerrito, Scrub Jays and the neighbor’s dogs, documentation became performance?

E PHLOMIS is the 5th collaboration-intervention between Peter Suchecki & Rusty Lamer at Blake Garden. We spent the morning dead-heading a patch of Phlomis. After lunch the process of assembly proceeded as follows:

1. cuttings tied into 21 small bundles
2. 21 bundles merged into 7 bundles
3. 7 bundles merged into 2 bundles of 3 & 4
4. bundle of 3 tied to bundle of 4

Once assembled E PHLOMIS was taken to the event lawn for a photo-shoot and 4 impromptu performances around the driveway circle. The performers were: Nathan, Lauri, Peter & Rusty. Later E PHLOMIS was used for some trawling|raking|dredging exercises. The final resting|decomposition site for E PHLOMIS was found in the redwood grove.

Photos:

Performances:

This past Sunday at the  The Nature of Art Festival in Redwood Regional Park we completed the 25 redwood circumference drawings in the “Redwood Gallery” grove. Our photos don’t show it, since we took them at the end of the day after the festival officially ended, but 100′s of curious visitors passed through our area during our performative drawing (which took us 8 hours to complete). Throughout the day groups of roving musicians came and played in the grove.

This year we are participating in The Nature of Art Festival in Redwood Regional Park on October 2 from 11am to 5pm. Our project is called Circulation –  a site specific performative drawing. This week, in preparation, we began measuring trees, drawing and photographing the site:

Circling the trees at breast height using a contour tool, inch-by-inch recording the contour/texture of each tree and transfering the recording onto paper to be made into folding books. The results have the look and feel of landscape drawings, sound waveforms and heartbeats.

We invite questions and inquiries from the public but we will do the “recording” ourselves. We invite any or all of the other artists to collaborate with us with music or dance. We hope the scientist will stop by to challenge our process.

We will be there the entire time between 11am & 5pm, probably breaking for lunch but will remain on site for answering questions.

REDSTARTstudio: Peter Suchecki & Lauri Twitchell
Art in Nature Festival
Redwood Regional Park
2 October 2011