For my 2017 Cultural Community Outreach Project (the 6th project in this annual series), I successfully created a residency for Luminarium at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton for the entire week of April school vacation. Every day from 10am to 5pm, Tuesday, April 18 through Sunday, April 23, 2017, five company members performed throughout the museum, personifying each of the museum's five crafting elements in a project we titled Kinetic Craft.
Over the course of four months, I painstakingly constructed a series of “breathing installations”—a concept I first developed back in 2011 with my fabric installation for Luminarium's residency at the Boston Center for the Arts’ Movement at the Mills—this time highlighting the five crafting elements: Textiles, Ceramics, Wood, Glass, and Metal.
The museum's 471 visitors that week perused the museum at their leisure as dancers from each installation performed and interacted with those passing by. Engaging for all ages, the event was free with museum admission, and garnered high praise from artists and participants alike. Luminarium received many lovely notes from those who attended saying that the week-long event "spoiled" them, and that it was the "best event that's ever come to the museum." To quote Titilayo Ngwenya, Director of Communications for the Fuller Craft Museum: "I wanted to congratulate you on a series of installations that not only captured the essence of the different craft media, but also engaged the audience with wonder and beautiful motion."
In addition to the hundreds of locals who attended, Luminarium was pleased to see many of its own followers wandering the museum—many of whom had never been, but commented on wanting to return. This was excellent feedback to receive, as one of Luminarium's goals of its annual Cultural Community Outreach Project is to introduce new patrons to the landmark it is honoring.
I'm especially grateful to the Brockton Cultural Council, whose grant helped make Kinetic Craft possible. It filled me with pride to be able to hire our network of company members and local performing artists at an hourly wage instead of a token stipend at the end of a long week. It allowed a total of 12 performers to sign up for as many shifts as they were able to take on, and by the end of the week, several of our company members were surprised to see how quickly their hours added up to a healthy paycheck! (A reality that in itself pains me—to see the surprise of fellow artists upon receiving fair compensation for the amount of work they put in. But that's a societal issue I'll address in a later post.) So thank you, BCC, for making this possible.
GLASS
This installation morphed dramatically from its first concept to its final manifestation. Consistent throughout was my desire to capture glass's beautiful ability to melt, drip, liquify—and then to freeze in time. In the end, it wasn't a large, complex installation that needed to be built, but instead, simple and mobile. Inspired by my glass-blowing adventure with Kim, dancers were instructed to move with liquidity throughout the space while holding a white-hot glass orb. As they slowed to a static pose, they tapped the light attached to the orb I'd found—turning off the light and revealing its opaque opalescent swirls.
TEXTILES
Kinetic Craft offered me the opportunity to restage Untitled Breathing Installation #1, originally created for Luminarium's Movement at the Mills performance for the Boston Center for the Arts. Over the course of the week, dancers crept in and out of their blanket fort, asking viewers to select their favorite fabric scraps, then sewing them artfully onto this once-white dress. By the end of the week, the dress had become a patchwork medley of colors and textures—paying homage to textiles' role to clothe us, whether out of fashion or necessity.
Please enjoy some footage of the week via Luminarium's promo video below:
And additional footage via the Fuller Craft Museum's video thanking Luminarium for its hard work:
Photos of the event can be viewed via Luminarium's Facebook album (click the thumbnail below) including some moments captured of our youngest viewer interacting with the installations:
Thank you to all who supported and participated in this out-of-the-norm residency, and to the network of performing artists who continuously make my Cultural Community Outreach Project a success.
Over the course of four months, I painstakingly constructed a series of “breathing installations”—a concept I first developed back in 2011 with my fabric installation for Luminarium's residency at the Boston Center for the Arts’ Movement at the Mills—this time highlighting the five crafting elements: Textiles, Ceramics, Wood, Glass, and Metal.
The museum's 471 visitors that week perused the museum at their leisure as dancers from each installation performed and interacted with those passing by. Engaging for all ages, the event was free with museum admission, and garnered high praise from artists and participants alike. Luminarium received many lovely notes from those who attended saying that the week-long event "spoiled" them, and that it was the "best event that's ever come to the museum." To quote Titilayo Ngwenya, Director of Communications for the Fuller Craft Museum: "I wanted to congratulate you on a series of installations that not only captured the essence of the different craft media, but also engaged the audience with wonder and beautiful motion."
In addition to the hundreds of locals who attended, Luminarium was pleased to see many of its own followers wandering the museum—many of whom had never been, but commented on wanting to return. This was excellent feedback to receive, as one of Luminarium's goals of its annual Cultural Community Outreach Project is to introduce new patrons to the landmark it is honoring.
I'm especially grateful to the Brockton Cultural Council, whose grant helped make Kinetic Craft possible. It filled me with pride to be able to hire our network of company members and local performing artists at an hourly wage instead of a token stipend at the end of a long week. It allowed a total of 12 performers to sign up for as many shifts as they were able to take on, and by the end of the week, several of our company members were surprised to see how quickly their hours added up to a healthy paycheck! (A reality that in itself pains me—to see the surprise of fellow artists upon receiving fair compensation for the amount of work they put in. But that's a societal issue I'll address in a later post.) So thank you, BCC, for making this possible.
While Kim tackled the theme of Ceramics, I took on the other four. It's always an eerie moment to look back at my original notes and compare them to the end results—whether nearly identical from sketch to reality, or watching my thoughts morph and reshape themselves throughout the creative process. Below are my four breathing installations, then and now:
METAL
The goal was to create a full-bodied wind chime to highlight the resonant tones that metal can make. Our dancers would demonstrate the installation's ability to be played by any part of the body—foot, shoulder, knee, head—and encouraged visitors to set the metal bars into motion themselves. A hit with both young and old alike, the Metal Installation could be heard echoing through the halls of the museum, as engaged participants performed new melodies of their own.
WOOD
Here, I chose to highlight wood's ability to be either strong and structural, or so thin and fragile that light can diffuse through it. The result was my trickiest installation to build: A large wooden structure supporting three semi-opaque walls of tissue paper, allowing the sunlight in the window to highlight the dancer's shadowy movements within. Being only semi-opaque, we quickly learned onsite that the performer needed to move closely along the paper walls, or else she'd disappear. This allowed for some interesting dialogue between performer and viewer, as those passing by were not always initially aware of her presence inside.
GLASS
This installation morphed dramatically from its first concept to its final manifestation. Consistent throughout was my desire to capture glass's beautiful ability to melt, drip, liquify—and then to freeze in time. In the end, it wasn't a large, complex installation that needed to be built, but instead, simple and mobile. Inspired by my glass-blowing adventure with Kim, dancers were instructed to move with liquidity throughout the space while holding a white-hot glass orb. As they slowed to a static pose, they tapped the light attached to the orb I'd found—turning off the light and revealing its opaque opalescent swirls.
TEXTILES
Kinetic Craft offered me the opportunity to restage Untitled Breathing Installation #1, originally created for Luminarium's Movement at the Mills performance for the Boston Center for the Arts. Over the course of the week, dancers crept in and out of their blanket fort, asking viewers to select their favorite fabric scraps, then sewing them artfully onto this once-white dress. By the end of the week, the dress had become a patchwork medley of colors and textures—paying homage to textiles' role to clothe us, whether out of fashion or necessity.
Please enjoy some footage of the week via Luminarium's promo video below:
...
Kinetic Craft was supported in part by a grant from the Brockton Cultural Council, a local agency which is supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council, a state agency.
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