Here’s some of what we saw Friday night, cut short by the Mayor’s town hall meeting for the arts (see post).
Amy Adams, Our Boat That Is Made Of Flowers pair of portraits of the bride and groom
You may have missed the news of Amy Adams recent marriage, but she’s letting the world know in her exhibit Our Boat That Is Made Of Flowers, at Vox Populi Gallery. The exhibit may include only two pieces, but they capture a lot.
One piece is two large portraits of Amy and her new husband. They are side-by-side print-outs of the last year’s personal emails between them, with all the words placed in alphabetical order. The pronouns (I, you, we, me) have a powerful visual presence as some of the most used words, which create stripes across the printout. Love is another biggy. I am reminded of the buzzy stripes of tv interference screens. Adams herself expressed sadness at the limited vocabulary of daily language, and laughed at her own verbosity (her printout is almost twice as long).
Amy Adams, Our Boat that is Made of Flowers, sea video projection, 11 second detail
The labor of hand alphabetizing, looking for meaning, reminds me of computer data mining, as if we only had a big enough picture, we can find the hidden message!
The other piece is a video project of waves taken from maritime paintings of Dutch maritime painters, Willem Van de Velde, the younger and the elder, whose work the couple had seen in Holland, while on their honeymoon. Adams loved the paintings but was provoked to remove the battleships and the nationalism and war and greed that they represented. Left with just waves, she pieced and animated them. The result is a storybook idyll of love.
Also at Vox are Corey Antis’ show of works on paper, Anna Neighbors’ installation, and Rebekah Tolley in the Video Lounge. Also, still hanging on from last month, a collaboration between Vox alums Justin Witte and Olivia Schreiner.
This was one of the kazillion pieces for the live auction tomorrow at Space 1026. I don’t know anything about it, but I loved it!!! [the piece is by James Ulmer. Thanks for letting me know, James!–Libby]
At Space 1026 was the preview for tomorrow night’s auction. There was plenty of great stuff, including, ahem, a donation from Libby and Roberta. The prices were reasonable, with merch selling in the $25 range, some of it really great, and with auction items asking $100 range. Plus there’s the ebay auction for prints. Donors include Shepard Fairey and Jason Hsu and more.
Tomorrow we’re off to New York, so Roberta and I won’t be posting.
It’s all I got! I’ll have to get back later on with some of what we saw during the day Friday.
