Notes from MASS MoCA Director Joe Thompson:

I love March.  Outside, early signs of mud amid shrinking piles of black snow (New Englanders know what I mean by that).

But inside at MASS MoCA things are better when art-making reaches maximum density. I just took a stroll across our campus, and here’s a short  visual diary of what was going on between 10:15 and 10:30am  this morning:

In the B10 theater, a bevy of documentary filmmakers including Christie Herring, Robbie Gemmel, and Luisa Dantas are in residence in conjunction with our four-day Working Films Forum. Hosted in conjunction with Robert West and Judith Helfand’s North Carolina-based Working Films, which plows the fields between documentary filmmaking and social change, this annual conference provides select filmmakers a chance to screen work in progress, plus discuss alternative modes of distribution, financing, and marketing.

That’s Lila Kuth of the L.E.F. foundation (which funds New England-based docs), standing on the right, saying a few words, with Robert on left in the white cap.

On the third floor galleries our own man-of-all-skills Gregg Eastman is putting final touches on what will surely be one of the most amazing videographic venues in the world: a 12′ tall,  35′ diameter cycloramic screen (that’s about 110 feet in circumference if I remember my geometry), onto which Pawel Wojtasik will project a new video about New Orleans at the watery edge of its existence.  Pawel is teaming up with Steven Vitiello on sound, and the lush footage, coupled with Steven’s amazing tonescapes promises to be compelling.  Getting the eight LCD projectors to properly interlace the 360 degree video has been a tricky technical challenge, but our A/V genius in residence Gian Pablo Villamil has found brilliant software solutions to that, and our own Dante Birch has puzzled out the intricate projection mounting and optics.  You can go out and buy this sort of “in the round” filmaking hardware and software if you are Disney and have a spare half million dollars or so to spend: we don’t, so we’ve rolled our own solution, crafting up the cyclorama and video solution by the seat of our pants. I’ve seen test footage, and I think it might work out just fine, though there is still a lot of testing scheduled for this weekend:  the video itself is an exquisite visual lamentation, which is apt, as it’s one of the works-in-progress for curator Denise Markonish’s show These Days: Elegies for Modern Times.

George Bolster, Shown here, is also in that exhibition. George has  us all in awe at his draftsmanship.

Here are a few details from in ink on birch ply drawings, which will form the lay ceiling of his rather baroque installation, which you see Robert Thomas working on here.

George has plans for mirrors, magnetized iron shavings, music by Radiohead, and a rather intricate plumbing system.   And a narwhale (which I had always thought was a unicorn-like mythical creature, but which George assures me is an actual sea mammal).  But narwhales are not easy to come by, so George enlisted the help of our head of fabrication Richard Criddle, himself a sculptor, who I found carving away in his studio. 

In the earlier photo of George he is making a clay model of the tail, which here Richard is rendering in wood and bondo…that’s right, bondo, which comes naturally to a Vermonter like our Ishmael Richard.  The narwhal cometh.

Back in the theater, Cynthia Hopkins (who may hold the record for return appearances as an artist in residence at MASS MoCA – we love her work) is on site developing the third component of a theatrical trilogy.

This last chapter is called The Success of Failure (or, the Failure of Success).   If you don’t know Cynthia’s music (most of which is available under the name of her band, Gloria Deluxe), you owe it to yourself to take a listen. Cynthia’s voice is beautiful, and she’s great on accordion and saw.  The album Accidental Nostalgia is the soundtrack from first chapter of the trilogy for which the current Success of Failure is a sort of keystone/prequel.

Her costuming table is interesting.

Here’s one of Cynthia in civvies, in our Lickety Split café.

AND, Matt Bua is here working on CRIBS to open March 21 in the new expanded Kidspace.

The art making is humming right along this mad March morning in North Adams.

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