Brother and sister Pascal and Lauren Balthrop met WAMC Roundtable producer Sarah LaDuke when WAMC broadcast live from MASS MoCA on May 22 for our 10th Anniversary.  Their music struck a chord with Sarah and she asked them to come back up to the studio to record Performance Place for Roundtable. They brought two more band members and made so much music for Sarah that the interview will .  The first segment airs tomorrow at 11:30 and another will air on Wednesday, August 26 at 11:30.  Tune in to 90.3FM to hear the interviews and their music.

Balthrop, Alabama will be LIVE at MASS MoCA on Saturday, August 29 with a huge band and Michael Arthur “accompanying” them on pen and ink.  He’ll sketch the band as they perform and the sketches will be projected behind the band.

The beauty of blogging: Since I just linked to Michael Arthur I clicked on his blog page and found this beautiful succinct, travel journal about his month on the road with the good folks of Balthrop, Alabama. You owe it to yourself to read it. Scroll down after the entry about Chita Rivera and scroll down further for his stunning video for Good Ideas Grow on Trees. And, if that isn’t enough, he was just in the NYT in mid July with the moving story of how he got started as an artist.

Looking forward to Project Bandaloop here August 21 – 23?  The week preceding the performances follow company founder Amelia Rudolph and operations manager and rigger Thomas Cavanaugh on twitter to learn about the work behind the magic you’ll see in their vertical dance on our 19th century buildings.

MASS MoCA Fest artists Josh Ritter and Ben Kweller joined the marketing department (MacKenzie and Brittany) for a tour of MM. This is a photo log of their adventures.

After we made it through all the galleries we headed back down to the lobby in the freight elevator.

The guys met with our Education Coordinator Cortney to learn a little more about MASS MoCA and it’s history.  They were very excited to wear group tour stickers during this portion of their visit.

After doing a little browsing in HARDWARE the MASS MoCA store both Josh and Ben hit up the ATM so they could purchase gifts.

Finally we stopped at the light board in the lobby to get a photo of the guys with the advertisement for the music fest. Mackenzie and I had such a great time showing Josh and Ben the galleries and introducing them to our friends here at the museum. As they walked away we marveled at how cool our jobs were and how excited we were to see the guys again at the festival.

The REAL Josh Ritter and Ben Kweller will be on campus today from 3-11 PM as part of MASS MoCA Fest! It’s going to be a beutiful day and the line up of musicians will rock your socks! Join us if you aren’t planning to already.

Can’t make it to the show? Follow the fun on Twitter by seraching for the tag #MMFest!

Cheers,

Brittany

MASS MoCA Fest artists Josh Ritter and Ben Kweller joined the marketing department (MacKenzie and Brittany) for a tour of MM. This is a photo log of their adventures.

After visiting all three floors of the Sol LeWitt exhibition we moved into Building 5, MASS MoCA’s largest gallery space. Artist Simon Starling’s Nanjing Particles captured Josh and Ben’s attention immediately.

Moving into the back of the space the boys got a chance to admire the canoe Starling recently took on a journey down the Hudson River.

Excited to see more of the galleries we quickly moved into the next exhibition These Days: Elegies for Modern Times. Our first stop was a jungle-like room created by Micah Silver. Josh and Ben decided to test out the comfort of the artificial grass near the pink flamingo lights before we left the space.

The guys also really enjoyed George Bolster’s Reckoner which features a hand carved narwhal.

Curious what happens next? Tune in tomorrow to find out just what happens when you let two muscians loose in a musuem gift shop.

Thanks for all your help spreading the word about MASS MoCA Fest. Congrats to Jeremy Clowe for winning two free MM Fest tickets.

See you tomorrow at the event!

B

We had good intentions to spotlight weekly the great art on display just around the corner from MASS MoCA at Downstreet Art. Though we took a couple of weeks off, the art downtown is still going strong.  This week we loved the show of work by Debi Pendell (a fairly recent transplant to North Adams) at Gallery 51.

In addition to creating her own art, Debi teaches art (in fact, Brittany from MASS MoCA has taken classes with her). Her works are investigations of semiotics, language, and meaning based in the format of landscape painting. Her hazy natural landscapes are layered with a dusting of disembodied alphabet characters in a variety of fonts and scripts.

As Debi explains:

I’ve been playing with the combination of acrylics, collage and mixedmedia for about 15 years and several series of works have unfolded. The series focused on in this exhibition, the Landscape/Letters Series, began quite unexpectedly in 2005. An art school in New York asked me to teach a class in ‘winter landscape-based abstraction.’ Up until this time, I had never worked in landscape.

She went into the studio to toy around with the idea.

Methods and materials from my other series—collage, text, image transfers, drawing, painting, and an acrylic faux encaustic process—joined with the abstract landscape imagery and the results simply ‘spoke’ to me,� says Pendell. “When I exhibited them it quickly became apparent that other people also ‘read’ them and ‘heard’ them. My exploration of these communications continues to delight and surprise me.

Debi’s show is only on display through August 23.  You’ve only got 9 more days to see it.  Stop by Gallery 51 on Main Street in North Adams soon!

MASS MoCA Fest artists Josh Ritter and Ben Kweller joined the marketing department (MacKenzie and Brittany) for a tour of MM. This is a photo log of their adventures.

After taking a quick break in the greenroom we encouraged Josh and Ben to head back to the galleries. On our way through the back stage we found the disco ball that we hang in Courtyard C for dance parties. We had a quick dance party of our own and then kept moving.

As we were leaving the Backstage area we ran into our friend Tim who works on the Production crew. People are always telling him he looks a lot like Josh Ritter. What do you think?

Back in the galleries we headed to the new Sol LeWitt retrospective where the guys pondered lines and colors while we looked at all 105 wall drawings.

Curious what exhibition the guys will visit next? Stay tuned for Josh and Ben’s run in with their own reflections.

In the mean time help us spread the word about MASS MoCA Fest happening on August 15. Post our e-flier (below with HTML code) on your favorite social networking sites by August 13 and we’ll enter you into a drawing for FREE tickets! Just send me a link to every site you post the flier on at bbishop@massmoca.org (subject line: MASS MoCA Fest E-Flier). You can also e-mail the flier to your friends, just make sure to CC me on the e-mail.

500 x 710 E-flier

<a href="http://www.massmoca.org/event_details.php?id=480">
<img src="http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2452/3765377289_22756b894e_o.jpg"
border="0" /></a>

Thanks for you help!

Cheers,

Brittany