Part Time Pittsburgh Artist, Swoon @ The Brooklyn Museum

Swoon's Brooklyn show returns to the familiar ground (and water)- idealized life size prints, & intricate cutouts creating an ethereal magical environment while attempting to build human links and political awareness.

Centered around a huge cosmic "tree of life" reaching into the infinity of the museum's domed roof she docks segments of her swimming cities raft projects.

The show does lack some of the gritty, earthy, street qualities that kept it from feeling trite. I also wish she included more videos explaining her projects.

Swoon: Submerged Motherlands

Brooklyn Museum of Art

April 11–August 24, 2014

Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Gallery, 5th Floor

Some previous posts about Swoon.

http://diggingpitt.blogspot.com/2010/04/famous-part-time-braddock-resident.html

http://diggingpitt.blogspot.com/2009/07/swoon-opening-of-new-carnegie-library.html

http://diggingpitt.blogspot.com/2009/06/swoon-junk-boat-city-floating-into.html

http://diggingpitt.blogspot.com/2011/03/callie-curry-aka-swoon-ted-talk.html

Carnegie International 2013 (Part 2)

Phyllida Barlow TIP

Last week, I finally posted about the Carnegie International, which is within days of its closing on March 15. I have made two trips to see the exhibit over the last month; I waited until after the second to try to put my thoughts in order. So, continuing with where I had left off --

Zoe Strauss

Special care was taken to involve community groups in and around Pittsburgh with the curators and artists involved in the current exhibit. An apartment was rented in Lawrenceville, where curators and CI!# artists met with selected members of the Pittsburgh arts community. Zoe Strauss (above) set up a portrait studio in Homestead. Transformazium has instigated an Art Lending Collection in Braddock.

Survey shows really are meant to expose trends and not necessarily an individual vision. This survey exhibit covered a lot of ground, showcasing work in several mediums. The artists are from as close as Philadelphia and as far away as China. Some are steeped in the nuances of current art trends while others can easily be categorized as outsider artists. Figurative, abstract, time-based; whatever your preferred form, has their own trends within the larger sphere. A few years go, the term pluralism was used to try to tame the tangle of directions. But it seems now like that term was just a way to make it seem like a fractitious‎ period of art-making had a unifying purpose.

Over the last week, reviews began to roll out for the Whitney Biennial. I was very interested to read what Jerry Saltz had to say. The Whitney Biennial, like CI13, was curated by a team, but included a producing artist along with the professional curators. It made me wonder if CI13 would have been better served if the curatorial team had included somebody whose career wasn't dependent on curating.

CI13 was self-referential, with art and artists chosen that furthered the dialog of the art sphere rather than the expressive value of the art itself. It would have been a pleasure beyond belief to discover a masterwork among the works in the exhibit; something that compelled to action or contemplation. But I think that the art sphere isn't really meant to support that level of work.

2013, Carnegie International List is out & includes Transformazium Artists actually living in Pittsburgh area

Off hand this seems like an interesting list, with lots of artists I don't know, from a wider range of places.

Artists include Ei Arakawa/Henning Bohl, Phyllida Barlow, Yael Bartana, Sadie Benning, Bidoun Library, The Collection, Nicole Eisenman, Lara Favaretto, Vincent Fecteau, Rodney Graham, Guo Fengyi, Wade Guyton, Rokni Haerizadeh, He An, Amar Kanwar, Dinh Q. Lê, Mark Leckey, Pierre Leguillon, Sarah Lucas, Tobias Madison, Zanele Muholi, Paulina Olowska, The Playground Project, Pedro Reyes, Kamran Shirdel, Gabriel Sierra, Taryn Simon, Frances Stark, Joel Sternfeld, Mladen Stilinović, Zoe Strauss, Henry Taylor, Tezuka Architects, Transformazium, Erika Verzutti, and Joseph Yoakum.

Of course, any show that includes Zoe Strauss gets my attention.

I may check back with more thoughts.

See the list and a video about the choices here.

http://ci13.cmoa.org/artists-projects

Pittsburgh Biennial @ Miller Gallery Reviewed in Hyperallergic

It's a bit strange that the awesome online art magazine, Hyperallergic only reviewed this one part of the multi venue Biennial. However, in some ways it's not that surprising since this show of artist collectives and collaborative projects might have the greatest relevance outside of Pittsburgh.

"The exhibition at Miller Gallery, curated by gallery director Astria Suparak, features five artist-teams, all with some connection to Pittsburgh. Although the Biennial’s publicity describes the show as an exploration of the art of collaboration, I found concern about space, place and the planet to be another significant thread weaving the works together.

Each collaborative asks the viewer to re-picture the interconnections that make up our experience of the world — to borrow Smith’s terminology. For Smith, this impulse involves the representation of cultural and economic networks on a global scale. The artists at Miller Gallery, however, focus on a wider range of intertwining relationships, spanning not only the global but also ecological, local, urban, public and domestic spaces."

An excellent, long review with a number of images.

The show ends, Sunday, Dec 12

Green Building Deconstruction Workshop With The Transformazium @ The Queens Museum

Oh the irony, I booked my trip back from NYC to see the Hold Steady play a benefit at The Braddock Library, only to find that the folks from North Braddock's Transformazium, Caledonia Curry,(AKA, Swoon) Leslie Stem, Dana Bishop Root, Ruthie Stringer will be talking at the Queens Museum the same day.

"Initially attracted to North Braddock because of the radically different set of resources it offered (in the form of abundant space and cheap real estate as well as a moody landscape of aesthetic decay), Transformazium rapidly realized a need to pause and examine the realities of their post-industrial neighborhood and build relationships with their new neighbors.

After doing a personalized tour of Detroit Disassembled, Transformazium will bring their experience living and working in a neighborhood that in many ways parallels neighborhoods in Detroit to QMA’s Detroit Project Room, and will use their Deconstruction activity book as a framework for generating questions, discussion, and reflection on the appeal of the post-industrial landscape, the challenges of relocation, the potential social and economic impact of Deconstruction on areas struggling with abandonment, and the possibilities for communication and exchange that can exist in a neighborhood."

Deconstruction: Coloring and Conversation with Transformazium
Saturday, November 12, 2:00 pm – 4:00 pm, 2011
The Queens Museum

Pittsburgh: Grey Market curated by Josh Tonies @Fe Gallery Opens Tonight

"Fe Arts Gallery is delighted to feature local and national artists who challenge notions of value. A Grey market enables person-to-person exchanges, like Craigslist and eBay, where individuals can negotiate value. With the proliferation of artist run spaces, the gallery has expanded to include alternate modes of distribution and exchange. Each artist in this exhibition speaks to various facets of this phenomenon.

Jim Kidd is the artist in residence in Transformazium’s screen printing shop. Transformazium is a collective emphasizing the neighborhood as a center for production of innovative ideas, collective action and public health. Kidd’s work challenges the archive by presenting a collection of objects and images that reassign historical value. Evoking nostalgia, Brianna Rigg reassigns cultural value through artistic composites of familiar objects. Chad Gordon’s work conceptually and figuratively juxtaposes the aesthetic of ubiquitous glossy magazines with his own reinterpretation that engages the global market economy. Questioning the concept of value altogether, Edgar Um Bucholtz presents an installation, using video of a burning car from a "Eurosleaze" cult film in dialogue with wall text."

FE Gallery non profit art space is one of the more important venues in the city series of great shows and events.

This Friday, Artist, Josh Tonies, who is on the west coast getting an MFA, returns to curate this show-which gives another peak at an artist connected to North Braddock's Transformazium.

Fe Arts Gallery
4102 Butler St. Pittsburgh, PA 15201

Opening Reception:
Friday, June 24, 2011
7:00-9:00pm

Exhibition runs June 24 - August 1, 2011

A Few Pictures From The Transformazium

The Transformazium











Lot across from Transformazium



Mysterious Building/Art Project on lot (A prototype for the Haiti project?)



Swoon piece outside Braddock's Unsmoke Systems

Yesterday, Artist Image Resource's Industrial Legacy symposium gave a bit more insight into some of Pittsburgh's DYI printmaking scene. Dana Bishop Root, of the Transformazium spoke about the Braddock Library Screen printing shop but didn't give an update on progress of Their space. Here are some images we took when we were by there more than a month ago.

New Levi's Ad Campaign Focuses Cash and Attention On Braddock

Image of Levi's ad as seen on New York Times Website

Regular television viewers have seen plenty of the tough dedicated mayor of with the local zip code tattooed on his arm. So far I've been sort of ambivalent about the effects of all this. Often, Fetterman is photographed at Carrie Furnace, which isn't even in Braddock or really all that close while the actively working clanking, belching ET Works is rarely shown (actually I've never seen it in a national story about Braddock)

If one was going to shoot the mayor at nearby landmarks not in Braddock, why not Kennywood? Why not the busy, if ugly Homestead Waterfront mall? Even worse, most stories skip over the positive wonderful assets Braddock does have, like the Landmark Carnegie Library, or Unsmoke Systems or the thriving urban farm, the mayor helped start. Or that it's just a few short miles outside of Pittsburgh. The media is clearly portraying Braddock as a hopeless dying place, and Fetterman ("he went to Harvard") as saintly (white) hero for being there. The rest of the town's residents, are hardly seen.



This long PBS interview is pretty typical.

Of course, some positive press in the art world has followed Swoon, the famous, talented and attractive, young (white) street artist, helping to launch the Transformazium in North Braddock. This isn't to say the mayor and folks like Swoon, are not playing critical, interesting and likely leading roles, but this is clearly a team game. Anyone comparing the town they see today with what was there five years ago can see the sweat and care of lot's of people.

Now, a new Ad Campaign by Levi's will both bring more than a million dollars in cash for projects in Braddock, and hopefully put a more realistic spotlight on the town and the people working everyday to make it better.

"The town will also be featured in video clips and an hourlong show, sponsored by Levi's, to appear online and on the IFC and Sundance cable channels.

The idea to use the residents of a real community, shown trying to overcome tough times, was prompted by the introduction of a line of Levi's work wear, which includes jeans, corduroys, shirts and jackets. The print ads and billboards will carry headlines like "Ready to work," "Everybody's work is equally important" and "We are all workers."

"We wanted to engage consumers in a conversation about real work," said Doug Sweeny, vice president for Levi's brand marketing for the Americas at Levi Strauss headquarters in San Francisco.

"The apparel category can be about posing, about being somebody you're not," he added, whereas the Levi's brand promise is that "you always feel your true, authentic self when you put on a pair of Levi's jeans."

Pending further info, I give this a big thumbs up. The ads will begin appearing on TV next next week.

Transformazium Update In POP City: Braddock Deconstruction Workshops Tomorrow and Friday

Pop City has a long piece about progress on The Transformazium in North Braddock. I'm sure lots of us want them to just get it over with and get an exiting new art and community center up and running.

But these folks are not just talking the talk about sustainable reuse, they are using the building as a lab project and lesson in building deconstruction. The goal is to save as much of the building as possible and adapt it to reuse through as few steps as they can. If you've been to Construction Junction you know what that's about and also have a clue as to the precious quality unique material and craft went into buildings here.

"All reuse is a form of recycling, but not all recycling is reuse," says Brian Swearingen, the head of Construction Junction's deconstruction crew. "In deconstruction and reuse, we're taking that same material, but using it for the same purpose, or slightly altering it for another purpose. When you do that, you're saving energy, because you have less transportation costs, less energy costs, and no remanufacturing costs, which are high. A good example is a metal table. If you recycle that at a landfill, you have to put it on a truck, probably put it on a train, possibly put it on a ship, and send it maybe halfway around the world to make what is oftentimes a similar product."

Construction Junction was set up eight years ago by the Pennsylvania Resources Council to spearhead a movement in Pittsburgh away from disposing waste in landfills without exploring its other purposes. They operate a store, which accepts donations of reusable materials from individuals and businesses renovating or demolishing buildings, and sells those materials at a low cost so they can be repurposed.

Want to learn about this process, and the emerging industry developing around it? There's are workshops tomorrow and Friday.

Update--Crap, the link on POP City didn't work and I can't seem to easily find the details. One has to realise just how broke and pressured many of the organizations and people involved are.

Perhaps you can hunt this info out?

Braddock Redux

Transformazium

Construction Junction

Reuse Consulting

Braddock Public Art: Points Of Interest Project

Leon Reid IV







Swoon

Jean and me took some nice shots of The public art a group of artists put together in and around Braddock a few years ago, many of whom are linked to the emerging, Transformazium project--then known as Braddock Active Arts. I should have put them up long ago, but surprisingly a very high percentage of this work is still around in very pristine condition. An art drive or cycle around Braddock is well worth the trip! The Swoon work has almost surely deteriorated but who knows.

These are pretty much ties as favorites with a slight edge to the Swoon and Leon Reid IV works.

There's even a great online map you can follow. Remember, however that a few of these works were meant to be temporary.





Maya Hayuk





Polina Soloveichik






Mary Tremonte

Famous Part Time Braddock Resident, Swoon On Art News Cover

One of the young faces at the recent Braddock Elks Lodge Chile Cookoff belonged to the Street Artist, Swoon who I think will be around putting effort into the Transformazium project in North Braddock. She is the subject of the current Art News cover story.

Transformazium Music Video from Joshua Tonies on Vimeo.

Video by Josh Tonies

"For the time being, Swoon's ambitions are now firmly landlocked. In late January, the artist headed off to the mountains of Virginia with her boyfriend, the artist Ben Wolf, who collaborates with her on some projects. She spent several weeks there making drawings and studying the architecture for an arts center she’s helping to build in Braddock, Pennsylvania, just outside Pittsburgh, in a community where jobs are scarce and the recession is deeply felt, as in much of small-town America. The centerpiece of the project is an abandoned church. "We're going to do some experiments to make the building more sustainable," she says, like constructing an energy-generating playground that will "make the little buggers work," she adds with a giggle. To raise money for this and other projects, Swoon sells editions of her work through several galleries, including Deitch Projects, New Image Art in Los Angeles, and Black Rat Projects in London, with prints and drawings priced from a rock-bottom $100 up to $30,000.

In her free time, Swoon loves to surf, though she confesses she's "terrible at it." She's also an avid traveler; last year she took a motorcycle trip across India. When she's in a strange city, she likes to ride her bike and explore abandoned structures and tunnels. In the studio, she listens to low-key music, like that of Philip Glass and Tom Waits, but once outside, she goes for New Orleans "bounce," as well as bands and musicians like Dirty Fingers, Girl Talk, and Mos Def—"basically music to dance to," she says.

As with many of her endeavors, the Braddock center, called Transformazium, has a socially ambitious agenda, but the end result is as much esthetic as political. "For me," Swoon says, the work "is about trying to understand the world, to gain a consciousness of what's happening, and then creating work that's a document of that process."

Here are some images that I hope capture the beauty of her Switchback Sea show @ Deitch Projects a few years ago.

Links About Braddock

This is a follow up post the one about the Obscurae fundraiser. It's also put together for the out of town press and other "tourists" brought here by the G20 and stories about the "Mayor of Hell".

All of these links relate in one way or another to happenings and life in Braddock.
But, you say the Transformazium is in North Braddock? Well,then you are more likely to part of the problem.

15104.cc Braddock: Create Amidst Destruction
Unsmoke Systems
Community Wood-Fired Oven
Fossil Free Fuel
New Guild Studio
Points of Interest by Braddock Active Arts
Transformazium
Braddock Journey blog
Bill Daniel, Hobo Filmmaker
Braddock Farms
Braddock Youth Project
Delicious Donations

I found this info on Obscurae, which is also a good source of info.

Obscurae Art Exhibit & Fundraiser @ Unsmoke Systems In Braddock, Sept 19TH

Untitled by Jean McClung

"Change is underway in Braddock as groups working within and with the community bring renewed energy to a town that many wrote off. Artists, social entrepreneurs, community organizers, urban homesteaders and others with a pioneering spirit are inspired by the town’s potential for grassroots urban renewal and are using the inherent energy in Braddock to fuel their creativity. It is with this spirit that Obscuræ views the maligned town – turning a photographic eye towards the borough’s oft-overlooked beauty amidst the former grandeur and “urban blight” that Braddock has come to represent for many in the Pittsburgh area."

But you know there's a punchline--- they are awesome, talented and doing what they can with what they have-- but they are poor and need help. It's yet another fundraiser this time for arts and other programs in Braddock, PA.

But trust me there's a lot in this for you. Once again, area creatives have donated works to raise money.

Check out some images.

"That’s right, not only is Obscurae’s photography exhibition FREE and open to the public, it’s also lots of fun thanks to so many great collaborators! Jake Liefer of the Pittsburgh Area Coffee Association will be setting up a coffee bar at the event. John Ryan Brubaker will be installing a traveling version of his Portrait Booth Project where you can travel back in time with your very own quirky portrait shot with a 1968 Polaroid on instant black and white film. And don’t forget the fresh wood-fired treats from the community oven.

Obscurae will be housed once again in Braddock at UnSmoke Systems Artspace. Everything kicks off Saturday, September 19 at 7pm. The Art Lottery is set to begin at 8:30pm. If you have a ticket to participate in the lottery, make sure to get there with enough time to make a list of your favorite pieces before the lottery starts. (Details on how the Art Lottery works.) The photography exhibition and watching the craziness of the Art Lottery are free and open to everyone. Participating in the Art Lottery will require you to dig into your wallet. (Or your paypal account.)

Secure your ticket now for the 2009 Obscurae Art Lottery: $45 in advance. $55 at the door. A ticket guarantees you go home with a piece of artwork from the exhibition."

I attended this event last year and picked up a great photo work in a totally unique found object frame for the mere price of the ticket.

Check out some images here.

Please remember---THE EVENT ITSELF IS FREE AND OPEN TO ALL,
YOU ONLY NEED TO PAY TO ENTER THE ART LOTTERY

More info here

Swoon @ Opening Of New Carnegie Library Silk-screen Studio

Sorry for the late heads up. Swoon, the legendary roving street artist with a love of Pittsburgh, will be speaking about her work and talking up the new screenprinting studio at the Carnegie Library in Braddock tonight. She will likely also fill us in on progress on the former church in North Braddock being turned into a community arts center called The Tranformazium.

There will also be a screenprinting open studio with demos and the ceramics studio housed in the building will also be open.

From what I can tell on the poster-- the screenprinting and ceramics open studio runs from 5:30-7:30 and the Swoon artist's talk will start at 7:30.

More info on the Transformazium and how to support it can be found @ Transformazium.org

"Efforts to use the arts to grow Braddock continue with the grand opening of the Neighborhood Silk Screen Studio, a community resource facilitated by the artist collective known as Transformazium. The collective is based in an old church it's renovating as an art center, but the silk-screen studio is in the ever-more-bustling Braddock Carnegie Library. At tonight's reception, enjoy silk-screening demos, an open house at the library's ceramic studio, and a conversation about art in the neighborhood featuring Transformazium's Swoon. A renowned, New York-based street artist, Swoon's beautiful life-sized portraits graced underused Pittsburgh buildings for months after an exhibit she did in Braddock a couple years back."

Brooklyn Fundraiser For Braddock Project

This was the week, I finally got around to taking a tour of the "Points of Interest" tour of collaborative murals and other projects done by local and international artists and the kids in the Braddock and North Braddock area. I will try to post on that later since me and my freind saw almost all the remaining works by great artists like Swoon, Lady Pink, Maya Hayuk and Mary Tremont.

The whole thing, brought me around to thinking about Braddock again. As you might know, Swoon and a group of other artists have been involved in forming something called Braddock Active arts which I think will be centered around a church in North Braddock. I still am not sure where this place is yet, which reflects both the free form, open collaborative nature of the project, it's early stage of life, and just how out of the loop I am. Coursing through this little known and neglected area are little groups of artists, working on the Braddock Farm, rehabbing a small number of homes and involving themselves in a range of floating creative projects.

So anyway, one of them seems to be called -- The Transformazium, and they are held a series of events to support the project last week in Brooklyn, one of which was an auction of art by a long list of internationally known artists like Swoon, Barry McGee, Paper Rad, Lady Pink and Kiki Smith as well as a long list of locally known folks like Mary Tremont, Josh Tonies and Thad Kellstadt. Larger Poster -- Here