If you were at Courthouse Square for the Urban Nights celebration, Friday, Sept. 14, you couldn’t miss the Dayton, Ohio: You Are Here! installation featuring a 12-foot-tall balloon placed above the Old Court House and a light show projected on the historic building.
A collaborative program with local artist Terry Welker and the Blue Sky Project’s parent organization Involvement Advocacy, the citizen-driven initiative was designed to spark the imagination about what it means to be here in Dayton, in this moment. The Greeks called this “Kairos Time.”
On Friday, it meant being at the hub of a very exciting evening where art, history and community came together in a unique way.
Slackwire evolved out of an interest of mine that is present in almost all of my work. At once threatening and hypnotic, Slackwire asks the viewer to consider the space they inhabit and how an imposition into this space affects them physically; how this act of interference starts to skew their metaphorical construct of personal boundary. By questioning the comfort one feels with regards to space, I am attempting to enlarge the discussion and question their relationship to their desires, their willingness to forgo self regulatory behaviors in order to possess and object or experience that suddenly attracts them, like a moth to a flame.
Michael and Sandy Bashaw of Puzzle of Light perform with Blue Sky Project artist Rodney Veal in the Blue Sky exhibition space at 8 North Main Street. The performance was a collaboration between Blue Sky Project and Cityfolk, as part of the Downtown Dayton Partnership’s Arts Week.
Work continues on “Sticks and Stones,” a Blue Sky Project collaboration between Michigan-based husband and wife team Kaz McCue and Pam Ayres and a trio of young Dayton-area artists.
The project began in June with a trip to Michigan by McCue and youth participants Samantha Enright, Keaon Shephard and Lesley Johnson (see previous posts by McCue.)
Last week Ayres came to Dayton to advance the work, creating a sculpture installation, adding to their video production and creating a projection space in the Blue Sky exhibition space at 8 North Main Street. The work draws on various Celtic motifs and deals with the concept of passages. The group traveled around Dayton taking rubbings from bricks, door jams, manhole covers and memorial plaques that also will be incorporated in the piece.
The final work will be presented as part of the Blue Sky Project Final Exhibition on Saturday, Sept. 15.
Blue Sky Project supporters attend an Artists Reception in the Old St. Lukes Church, the home of hosts Harry and Ruth Slone. Guests were treated to a performance by artists Rodney Veal, Shaw Pong Liu and Katherine Mann. Yellow Springs visual artist Michael Casselli was also in the house.
Months of brainstorming and preparation paid off Friday, Aug. 10, and Saturday, Aug. 11, as Blue Sky Project artists Shaw Pong Liu, Katherine Mann and Rodney Veal presented their new collaboration 2,3,4, … in the exhibition space at 8 North Main Street.
Dancers, musicians and chorus provided a mesmerizing show full of fun surprises, including live painting by Washington, D.C.-based visual artist Mann and the quadraphonic sound of a chorus that began from their seats scattered around the performance space and continued as they rose and encircled the audience.
The work also employed sensor technology and programming by Fred Webber, an engineer from the Tech Town business IDCAST that allowed dancers to trigger sound effects using XBOX Kinects.
Blue Sky Project artists and collaborators have been working late this week preparing for the opening Friday, Aug. 10, of a new work by resident artists Katherine Mann, Rodney Veal and Shaw Pong Liu enititled “2,3,4 …”.
The performance piece pairs Liu’s sound artistry with Veal’s choreography inside an environment created by visual artist Mann.
Among their collaborators, the trio have enlisted the help of technicians from UDRI and IDCAST to allow dancers to create sound with their movements. Using XBox Kinect sensor technology, the dancers will activate sound synthesizers using programming designed to recognize specific dance gestures.
Performances will be at 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 10, and at 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 11, in the Blue Sky Project exhibition space at 8 N. Main St. in the PNC Bank building. And it’s all free and open to the public.
Blue Sky Project is proud to present work by Brooklyn based Blue Sky Artist Adam Parker Smith and Springfield based artist Charlotte Gordon. Please join us on Friday, August 3, between 5 and 8pm, for an evening of installation and sculpture to take place in two downtown locations:
• 8 N. Main Street (old CVS space/PNC Building)
• 33 N. Main Street (Blue Sky Gallery, Courthouse Square).
The exhibitions are free and open to the public. They are presented as a part of the First Friday Art Hop.
Adam Parker Smith is multidisciplinary artist who constructs visual paradoxes and parodies to create aphoristically condensed visual tableaus and phenomenon isolated from the everyday and glorified. Smith’s reimagining of his three-dimensional wall treatment installation “This Side of Paradise (I Lost All My Money in the Great Depression and All I Got Was This Room)” uses everyday objects such as plastic flowers and fruit, varnished baked goods, elegantly wrapped hard candies, jelly beans, and costume jewelry to create large scale wallpaper patterns. His new work can be viewed in the exhibition space by appointment through Sept. 14th.
Charlotte Gordon specializes in ceramics but her current interests lie in multi-media sculptural and installation art. Her series “Vessels” combines this core interest with new works in sculpted paper forms. The boat vessels consist of ceramic forms based on the shape of a dugout, or pirogue. A simple form with graceful lines, not necessarily built to transport objects, but to convey the spirit or soul. These same forms transposed into paper are translucent and yet more unseaworthy, yielding a vessel capable of transporting not much more than the light it holds. Her work can be viewed in the Blue Sky Gallery through September 14.
