Announcing! Exhibition at Weisman Art Museum! (or... what I've been up to for 10 months)

For the past 10 months I have been planning and creating my first interactive art installation. It is now on view at the Weisman Art Museum in Minneapolis as a part of the Art(ists) on the Verge 2008-2009 fellowship exhibition. The Opening Reception is this Thursday at 8pm and features performances by 3 of the other AOV fellows. The exhibition itself is on view until August 23rd. If you are in the area I hope you will get a chance to come check it out. (the reception should be a really awesome event, and I highly reccomend it, if you can squeeze it in... sorry for the last minute notice)



This installation, entitled Once, is my first experimentation with non-performative interactivity. I have incorporated my photographic and theatrical sensibilities to create a space in which the viewer becomes a participant or character within the artwork:

Once is a mixed media, immersive installation that functions as memory might. Placing the viewer on the precipice of control over an ephemeral space, it aims to incite questions about the placement, origins, and malleability of our memories.

read more at: http://northern.lights.mn/programs/aov/alexandres/

*!*This installation would never have come to life without the help of many wonderful people:
First and foremost, I would like to thank Drew Hammond for his production, technical, and artistic support and collaboration. Also Andy Hammond for his expertise and production support (and generosity!), and Dan Dockery for writing a computer program to integrate the technical elements of this installation. Also huge thanks to: Sarita Woods, Debora and Andy Miller, Muffy Hammond, Tao Ham, Jane Benz at Accent Drapery Inc, Samuel Woods, Erin Appel, Krista Kelley Walsh, George Slade and family, Tim White, Fiona and Tucker Macneil, Betsy Matheson and Justin Symanietz, Ben McGinley, Laura Holway, Anna Sundberg, Annie Rollins, Jay Patsula, Matt Rein, Florence Hill, Kathleen Maloney, Alan Berks and Leah Cooper, Carisa Westbury and Scotty Johnson, Florence Hill, Jen Scott, Joanne Makela, Julia Kouneski, Justin Jones, Laura Holway, Mark Berven and Gemma Irish, Mark Sweeney, Nikki Schultz, Scotty Reynolds and as always my parents Sally and Stefan Alexandres for their constant support.

Once is a commission of Northern Lights’ Art(ists) On the Verge program with the generous support of the Jerome Foundation and fiscal sponsorship of Forecast Public Art. The Weisman Art Museum will exhibit the AOV commissions July 5 - August 23, 2009. Additional support for Northern Lights provided by the McKnight Foundation.



More info on the exhibition and supporting organizations:
http://weisman.umn.edu/exhibits/AOV/home.html
http://northern.lights.mn/programs/aov/
http://www.new.facebook.com/event.php?eid=95955959145&ref=mf#/event.php?eid=95955959145



Artists on the Verge 2008-2009 at the Weisman Art Museum features works or documentation of works made by the inaugural group of Art(ists) on the Verge fellows. Installations of all six commissions are included. Artists are Aniccha Arts (Pramila Vasudevan, Director), Avye Alexandres, Christopher Baker, Kevin Obstatz, Andrea Steudel, and Krista Kelley Walsh.

Art(ists) on the Verge (AOV) is a new Northern Lights fellowship program that supports Minnesota-based, emerging artists working experimentally at the intersection of art and technology, with a focus on practices that are social, virtual and/or participatory. The program is sponsored by the Jerome Foundation.

In September 2008 a jury consisting of Liz Armstrong (The Minneapolis Institute of Art), Steve Dietz (Northern Lights), Ben Heywood (Soap Factory), Ana Serrano (Canadian Film Center Media Lab), and Anu Vikram (Headlands Residency Program) selected 6 artists for AOV fellowships. This exhibition represents the culmination of the fellowship year.


PS. For those out of town- eventually there will be documentation of the installation available on my website (still under construction, sorry!)

been thinking about Greece lately.

2007

Thank you to the New President for closing Guantanamo.

This photo is from the March 15th 2008 End the War Protest march.

2008 year in review

.


2008 .was. quite. a. year.

january

adventure

february

what

march here

april

open


may chicago

june distance

july ouch

august rooftop

september

conversations

october

possible



november cancer

december

important

Three blocks Home (an update)

Today after rehearsal a friend dropped me off 3 blocks from my house. This is what it sounded like.



So perhaps this isn't the most interesting thing you could be listening to. But perhaps you are at work walled off from the sunlight and bored of streaming options. Take a break. Pretend you are taking a walk rather than staring at your computer screen.

********

Well it's been quite a while since I've posted. Here's some of what i've been up to:

I have been really into documenting little funny bits of my life lately.

I've started a new simple photo series with my point & shoot called "Dailies". A photo a day commemorating some little moment. Feels very freeing to not take my imagemaking so seriously- some of the photos arent that great, sometimes the highlights are blown or are taken in barely any light, but they are still little documents that remind me of the day. (ok, so some of them are diptychs and triptychs and took a little more effort than others) Anyway I am really soaking in the summer this year, spending alot of time out in the sun with good people and this series is a kind of celebration/reflection of each day, good or bad. I plan to continue it past this summer, perhaps all my life, but at least for the next year.
A few of my favorites:



There is also a sister series which is a weekly self portrait (again shot with the p&s) titled.... you guessed it.... Weeklies! Here's my latest: (hooray summer!)


In more serious photo news I've been photographing my apartment. (i guess its only more serious because I'm using my SLR, tripod etcetc) Kind of funny that I'm starting this. I spend enough time holed up in my little sanctuary as it is, do I really need to make images of it? But I call it a sanctuary because I love it. Been thinking about how it is always in flux. So far that is what I have been finding through the camera.
These images probably wont make it up on here for a while though. Too much else to do.... such as--- getting ready for two photo shows and applying for grants. Come mid-September my work will be up on walls in Minneapolis (SpotArt) and St. Paul (Concordia University)!

And now maybe I should get back to that ToDo list.

hugs & kisses,
a

Buttons

Buttons
Grandma's House
October 2007

Discussion

Discussion
Grandma's House
October 2007

on the rocks

On the Rocks
Grandma's House: the family photos
date: circa 1950's
photographer: unknown
Color slide film

This amazing woman

I am related to this amazing woman.


How do I know she is amazing? Well, I don't really. But look at her eyes, that expression, that poise. She HAS to be amazing and well, if not, that's one tricky photographer.

Two weeks ago I was staying at my grandma's house with my mother when I found this photograph. We are not sure exactly who she is, not many of the photos are labeled, but she is likely on my grandfather's side of the family who owned a grocery store and a bank around the turn of the century.

Mom finds a tissue in one of Grandma's nightgowns

Mom finds a tissue in one of Grandma's nightgowns
Grandma's House
October 2007

picnic table

Picnic Table
Grandma's House: the family photos
date: circa 1950's
photographer: unknown
Color slide film

the beauty of liberation

This "Birth Control Handbook" was published in its 12th edition in 1974 by a Canadian Press.
These are the front and back pages. I would be quite amazed to find anything comparably illustrated today. The pamphlets we find today in our doctors offices seem to make such a concerted effort to be as clinical and dry as possible. I think of the "shower card" I have hanging in my bathroom that reminds me to do a monthly self breast exam from the American Cancer Society: Pink lettering with a little illustration of a woman- little dashes behind her signify the shower water- holding one arm above her head while her other hand presses on her chest as far away from her actual breast as possible. Her head also faces as far away from her breast as possible. It's kind of humorous in its cartoonyness. Anyway, its seems indicative of all the health literature illustrations today (that I've ever seen.) So when I came across this handbook in my grandmother's house, I was amazed and kinda of struck by it's "daring" to publish such photographs in a clinical publication.

Here is another photograph from page 13. I mean really! look at this! Its not a diagram but a beautiful image about sex in a health handbook ! Forgive me if i sound redundant, but it's just seems so amazing. Now, years and years after (the Second) Women's movement, sex is visually represented as this clinical thing. What happened to the beauty of it? is that being taught? .... Who knows, perhaps if it were sex would be regarded as a little more sacred.

And Look!
Whoa!
It's a baby!
being born!
by a real woman!

And finally here is another moody/beautiful photograph. There are also anatomical diagrams in the handbook and even though they are diagrams, there is something still moody to them, sensual even. I suppose it is because they are more than simple line drawings. They use shading and the artist's name is even signed along the edge of the drawing.

I can see why this publication decided to use such subjective images of sex and child birth..... the introduction reads:

"When a woman and a man use birth control, they affirm that the goal of their sexual intercourse is mutual pleasure and delight, not reproduction. It is our basic human right to be able to find such delight in each other, and it is our human responsibility not to make an unwanted child the result of our most personal pleasures"

Well said!
hmmm.... though these photos seem a bit dated and the drawings rather intimate to the point of oddly uncomfortable, I wish such a sensitive publication were being distributed now.

toy corner

Toy corner
Grandma's House
October 2007

Canoe Trip

Canoe Trip

Grandma's House: the family photos
date: circa 1960/70
photographer: unknown
Color slide film

sisters

Sisters
Grandma's House
October 2007

rope bridge

Rope bridge
Grandma's House: the family photos
date unknown
photographer: probably Grandpa
Color stereoscope

PS. I have become a bit of an old camera collector these past few years. It began when my Grandmother gave me a whole mess of my grandfather's old cameras. One of my favorites is the stereoscopic camera this image was taken with. Stereoscopic photographs are two images next to one another that are viewed through a viewer that joins them to create a 3-d experience. To learn more check out Wikipedia. And while I would have liked to scan both images in and present them above as a true stereoscopic 'print', I decided against it because I have just sooo many slides to scan in. And anyway, the images are what are important, not the tech.

kitchen window

Kitchen window
Grandma's House
October 2007

Fabric scraps

Fabric scraps
Grandma's House
October 2007

To my dear Mother; Iceland 1943

To my dear Mother; Iceland 1943
Grandma's House
October 2007