27,000- The Music Box at USF Contemporary Art Museum

From June 6th - July 23rd 2016 I happily participated in the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum's exhibition  Amplified: Reverberations from The Music Box which asked participating artists to react to New Orleans Airlift project The Music Box- Tampa. I drove from Miami to see the second performance on March 26th and instantly knew I needed to build a sculpture for the exhibit.

Sketch book drawing made the evening of March 26th, 2016 during the Music Box performance.

Bringing Airlift to Tampa was curator Sarah Howard's vision and the exhibition that followed simply flowed like a river from the site specific to the galleries of USF CAM. This kind of activity was no surprise to those who know Sarah, who has championed public art and intervention through recent years in Tampa (Bringing Rebar's Parking Day Project to Tampa as well).
I visited the site as the Music Box was being built and had a very nice tour with Devon Brady which kickstarted my ideas in regards to the USF CAM exhibition, the site and the environs.

Above-Music Box performance March 26th, 2016 Tampa Fl. with all major architectural musical instruments in view- from left to right- The Lunar Tool Shed. The Syphonium, The Pitch Bow House and in the foreground burms equipped with speakers and also functioning as seating. The artists responsible for building these architectural and musical elements are- Tory Tepp (Lunar Tool Shed), Janine Awai/Devon Brady/Michael Lemieux (Syphonium) and Ranjit Bhatnagar/Alyssa Dennis (Pitch Bow House)
An interesting historical side note, which is documented in the pamphlet documenting the project, is that the Syphonium appeared in a different form earlier as part of an Experimental Skeleton, Inc. collaboration with the BONK Festival of New Music. This earlier version of the Syphonium appeared in a performance in Tampa and Miami (I will attempt to find the documentation in the ES, Inc. archives and post at a later date as an amendment to this post)

Photo by Will Lytch

My contribution to the USF CAM exhibition was greatly influenced by the location of the Music Box installation- on the bank of Hillsborough River. The great oaks and the hanging spanish moss gives one the feeling of something primordial, of great age and of mystery. I thought there should be a monument there, superimposed as if some unknown culture left a puzzling reminder of their presence. I folded this over my current interest in the television program that I watched as a kid- Krofft Entertainment's "The Land of the Lost". Combining the form of an obelisk with the memory of one of the "pylons" from the television program (the pylons were structures that contained a table full of crystals. The crystals would change the exterior environment of "the land of the lost" when manipulated) I made an obelisk shaped optical theremin which could be played by moving the cast crystals around on a bed of silicone impregnated sand. A proper symbolic hybrid (the obelisk of the Egyptians represented a solidified ray of sunlight and the pylon being an agent of change) I called the work 27,000 which is the number of years that the Hillsborough River has been flowing from the mouth of Green Swamp according to geological records. The sculpture is accompanied by four drawings which document the ideas that formulated 27,000 as well as other possible works inspired by The Music Box.

View of 27,000 with drawings in background.
27,000- Upcycled styrofoam, cement, cast plastic and electronics. Photo by Will Lytch

Cast crystals in bed of silicone impregnated sand. Moving the crystals around changes the amount of light received by the optical theremin circuit below the table, changing the pitch of the instrument. Photo by Will Lytch

Two Weeks In September

I was in Florida again for the first two weeks of September. It was a very busy time working on a prototype for an award, buttoning up loose ends around the studio and finally planning and participating in a performance art piece at the Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers. Along the way I also got to take see a great exhibition opening at the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery and participate in an exhibition at the Silver Meteor Gallery in Tampa ( the gallery's 20th anniversary show ).

I created a new process to make a life time achievement award for the Tampa Bay Businesses for Culture & the Arts given posthumously to Theo Wujcik. The award was meant to be a sculptural echo of Theo's 1984 painting Tampa Tornado. Using thermoplastic cut into patterns the shape of the tornado was achieved.

 The tornado was then attached to a cast plastic snail shell ( one of Theo's most enduring images )

Originally I was going to have the object 3D printed but the scans had much of the information missing. So the prototype was used as the actual award.

Cast plastic, black lab epoxy and concrete.

Next I traveled to Fort Myers to participate in an Experimental Skeleton, Inc. performance piece at the 24 Hour Festival at the Florida Gulf Coast University. The group was commissioned to create a half hour performance piece to entertain the crowd as judges made their choices on the student participation in the 24 Hour Festival. We created a framework for executing the first laser level generated poem in human history. Using methods adopted from surrealist games such as exquisite corpse, recently generated collage panels from our Silverfish Revolution project, a skill saw and a crew of interpretive agents filtering down to a typing poet, we did just that.

Also in Fort Myers I had the luck to see the Wayne White exhibition "Here Comes Mr. Know It All" at the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery. Wayne White showed his paintings, drawings and put on a puppet show. Probably best known for his work on Pee Wee's Playhouse and animated music videos Mr. White's artwork is equally engaging.

Most of his paintings are text based and excited on thrift shop canvasses that he finds. Some of the text looks as if the fonts are sculptural studies- like this one above. It reminds me of Max Ernst's painting "Garden Airplane Traps"

The puppet show featured Mr. White himself in a large Rauschenberg puppet that took several other student volunteers to operate. Strange and very unwieldy, the figure moved through the crowd.

The puppet show culminated in the Rauschenberg painting a canvass which grew arms and painted on to its own surface.

Fini!

Nazars for PYT and Sugar Knives for Baltimore

Projects for the end of June beginning of July 2011 include creating a "premium" multiple for Tampa Fl. based Philanthropic Young Tampa and a sugar dagger multiple for Current Space, Baltimore MD.

During 2010 i produced the first of what has become a series based on sympathetic magic. The nazar stickers shown above were made for the Elvenwerks exhibition at The Peacock Room, Orlando FL. They are meant to ward off "the evil eye" and therefore preserve an individual's good luck. Elvenwerks was an Experimental Skeleton Inc. project, more info can be found at(-http://experimentalskeleton.com/Elvenwerks.html and http://experimentalskeleblog.blogspot.com/2010_05_01_archive.html)

Philanthropic Young Tampa( http://www.pytampa.org/ ) is an organization that seeks members to help secure works of art for institutions like the Tampa Museum of Art and puts on small events with lectures. I am now creating a multiple work of art to help boost membership for PYT. The work will take the form of an amulet style nazar seen below. New members will receive one of these works with the eye on the amulet matching their own eye color.

Another project in the works- a multiple for the Current Space "C A R T" exhibition opening in on July 9th in Baltimore, MD. This work takes the form of a hard candy cast dagger. Based on my own memories of Astropops and the candy's tendency to become wicked pointed at the end when sucked, this "Sugar Shank" candy is a functional weapon once sharpened by the owners saliva. Below is a sketch book page dedicated to the project.