No Place But Now at CIIS, San Francisco

2010-08-12T12:33:00.000-07:00

video and interview by Michael Hall

No Place But Now from Michael Hall on Vimeo.

Studiowalls presents a tour of "No Place But Now" with artist Ethan Worden.

NO PLACE but NOW is a transcontinental, collaborative project created specifically for the Minna Gallery at CIIS in San Francisco. Worden and Lavery, both sculptors, worked together, despite 2700 miles between them, to investigate the notion of place. Using a range of media and means, the artists gradually, over the course of the exhibition, accumulated works at the gallery, culminating at the opening on May 21, 2010.

About the Artists

Ethan Worden lives and works in Oakland, California, where he is the studio technician for sculpture and ceramics at Mills College. He has exhibited his work nationally and internationally and is represented by Swarm Gallery in Oakland.

Christopher M. Lavery is an assistant professor of art at the University of Maine, Farmington. He has exhibited his art both nationally and internationally and is creating a large-scale public art project titled Cloudscape at Denver International Airport. He has also performed and recorded with his noise-based, electro-acoustic band, Noise
Furniture.

Worden and Lavery met at the University of Colorado at Boulder and have since migrated to opposite sides of the country. This site-specific project allows them to work more closely than they have for nearly a decade.

Thanks to Deirdre Visser!

Dan Miller at Ricco Maresca Gallery NYC

2010-07-30T13:38:00.000-07:00

Dan Miller - Large Paintings from CGAC VPW on Vimeo.

I have had the pleasure to work with Dan Miller at Creative Growth Art Center for the past six years. In that time I have watched Dan's work develop steadily and be recognized as exceptional outsider art and finally as the work of a gifted and unique artist - cemented when a series of drawings by Dan were added to the permanent collection at NY MOMA. This June Dan had a series of new large paintings shown at Ricco Maresca Gallery. I was able to film Dan as he created this impressive body of work. The video above was produced to coincide with the opening and is graciously hosted on both CGAC's site and Ricco Maresca's as well.

Below is a great discription of Dan and his work by Matthew Higgs:

"Diagnosed with autism, and a few conventional verbal communication skills, Miller has developed an intensive body of work that employs language as its fundamental subject and departure-point. His extroidinary drawings take the form of accumulations of descriptive texts, alphabets, and numerical sequences. (The texts often have strong biographical references, e.g. acknowledging specific Bay Area locales, and aspects of his immediate day-to-day life and family history.) Typically superimposed on top of one another, these individual words, numbers, and phrases start to merge, creating all-over fields of partially obscured and often illegible texts.

Juxtaposing formal methodologies (e.g. the use of indexical lenguage and alphabetical and numerical systems, and repeated motifs such as light bulbs and books) with dynamic, yet highly disciplined drawing and mark-making, Miller's drawings intuitively combine both conceptual and expressive approaches, to create a truly idiosyncratic hybrid form."

-Matthew Higgs, Director, White Columns