REDSTARTstudio

We met early in December at Randi and Greg’s home to celebrate the holiday season. We were told that there would be  dreidel play.

So, we made our own dreidels: an architect’s driedel, better at making interesting atmospheric drawings than winning any money (oh, well), a contemporary dreidel from an online instructions made from penny wrappers that I called “Fity cent” and a traditional dreidel that Peter doesn’t want to describe right now. We also had some wooden dreidels that Greg provided along with some delicious food and drink and great holiday fellowship.

A video shot at an alpine lake in the Sierras a few years ago. 1,000’s upon 1,000’s of tadpoles swimming in a vernal pool. Sound is originally from the “Wildcat Pre-mix” recorded along Wildcat Creek by Lauri while she was doing a field study and then later processed in the studio.

Installed at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Portland, Maine, in the winter of 2000, the wall drawing “Woodnotes” measured 8 x 30 feet. The marks in the drawing were silk screened  wave forms of the sounds of 10 selected birds recorded at Baxter State Park in the Spring of 1999.

The audio was triggered by a motion detector as the viewer passed by the drawing. The bird songs  echoed throughout the gallery. The birds recorded are: Least Flycatcher, Red-eyed Vireo, Oven Bird, Yellow-rumped Warbler, Red-breasted Grossbeak, Wood Thrush, Eastern Wood-pewee, Chestnut-sided Warbler, Yellow Warbler. You can also hear hungry Mosquitoes attacking the microphone and water rushing along the trail.

Woodnotes -- Installation views

The Twittering Machine is inspired by Paul Klee’s painting entitled The Twittering Machine. My version  is an aluminum  box filled with dried grass, sticks and  battery powered sound chips on which I recorded California bird songs and calls. The box is  activated by pushing small buttons on the chips hidden in and attached to the natural material.

I was given an Amaryllis ‘Red Lion’ as a holiday gift by my sister-in-aw Susan. Every morning as it grew, I photographed it in my studio and made the photos into a timelapse video. The sound is a mix  of  a toy piano I recorded at Toys ‘R’ Us and the instructions from the back of the amaryllis box read aloud.

Every year while living in Maine, during the spring bird migration Peter and I would travel to Baxter State Park deep into the Maine woods to look at birds and record their songs. Baxter Duets is a recording from a hike and a panoramic view from the top of the North Traveler Mountain.