Monday, April 15, 2013

Andrea Dezso Installation at the Tides Museum, Review of Award Winning Book

Andrea Dezso has probably one of the hottest art careers in the Pioneer Valley. She has designed two NYC subway stations as well as creating a mosaic for the Bucharest American Embassy in Romania. She will be having her first Chelsea area NYC exhibit this year. Stay tuned.


http://andreadezso.com/
http://pyrajane.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/lies-knives-girls-in-red-dresses/

http://www.tidesinstitute.org/

http://www.uarts.edu/events/alumni/2013/05/arthur-p-williams-lecture-andrea-dezs%C3%B6

Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Biennial Artist Covers Boston with Wool!

Nancy Winship Milliken & Terry Rooney
Nancy Winship  Milliken, created one of the most impressive installation of ephemeral art during the first Amherst Biennial (Fall 2010). It was a set of seven woolen sails, 20 feet high which "sailed" from the Thistlebloom Farm in South Amherst to the Swartz Family Farm in North Amherst. During it's final installation for the Biennial at the Swartz Family Farm, we (Amherst Public Arts Commission) relit the tobacco barn   Erika Zekos's  Shedding Light project (Public Arts Commission's -  special event for Amherst's 250th Anniversary) http://sheddinglightamherst.blogspot.com/ with Milliken's sails. This iconic image of the first Biennial was documented by yet another talented local artist, Anita Licis Ribak. This photograph has been our banner for this blog from the beginning. Anita did this time lapse photography, which captured these two special public art installation as well as, a visitor to the site carrying a flashlight which became the "Blue Line" in this iconic photograph. http://blog.anitalicis.com/ (Check out Anita's site for her installation at the "pop-up"  Boltwood Gallery during this latest Biennial)

Milliken's Pleiades at Swartz Family Farm photo: Jeff Derose
Nancy's reasoning in creating "Pleiades" - her sail installation for the first Amherst Biennial, was to honor the agricultural and nautical history of New England. She spent two years, gathering the wool from local Pioneer Valley farmers to create Pleiades. Milliken then proceed the laborious task of constructing these sails on a wooden frame that moved with the wind. After the first Biennial, these sails lived on be part of the scenery at the Double-Edge Theater production of the Odyssey the following summer. http://www.doubleedgetheatre.org/


This past Biennial, Nancy created cobb sculpture's using natural material from the land to create sculptures of farmers doing chores that are for the most part mechanized in today's farming. Here's a link to a video of her creating this work. http://nancymilliken.com/ill-arise-and-go-now/

Milliken is blazing new frontiers for her site-specific work The Lighthouse Project, taking it from the pastoral settings in Western MA to the urban center of Boston this Spring/Summer '13. She will be creating a wall of wool, cascading through  Christian Science Plaza, Boston contrasting this natural, soft, cozy of sheep's wool with the concrete facades of the neighboring buildings.

This artist has raised over $4,000 towards her $6,500 goal to rent scaffolding to act as an armature for this installation. How about joining me in helping make this special public art installation a reality? Here's her site to learn more about this project and support it.

http://www.usaprojects.org/project/the_lighthouse

Hot off the presses, a write up in a trade publication on Milliken's upcoming instatallation: http://sheepindustrynews.org/?page=site%2Ftext&nav_id=0458c6b5db2f57731dece320e475d0a8&archive_id