Video Vortex = a weekly installment of our favorite videos from MASS MoCA artists and trailers for upcoming events, plus a few random viral creations as well.

Nomadic Wax

This Film + Live Music event is going to have you throwing your hands up in the air. Below is a trailer for the Award Winning Documentary Democracy in Dakar screening before the bands get this Dance Party rockin’

Califone

Oh Califone! Your melodic roots rock gets me every time. First watch Califone do what they do best, then watch the trailer for All My Friends Are Funeral Singers.

Meta and the Cornerstones

Did someone say Reggae Dance Party? Yes, yes we did!

Happy Friday,
Brittany

Our fabulous Education Intern Kate wrote a great blog about our July Gallery Quest. Take a look at what we created last month and then follow the link at the bottom of this blog to reserve your spot on the next Quest!

Last month, we hosted the first Gallery Quest of our Summer 2010 season. Gallery Quest is an opportunity for our younger patrons to engage with current exhibitions by creating their own artworks within the galleries. In lieu of the many mediums currently employed in our exhibition spaces, the theme for this event was “The Artist’s Toolbox,” thus emphasizing the different materials all of us can use in order to create art.

As it turns out, art-making in the galleries was a perfect way for us to kick the gloom brought on by the blustery weather and we had quite the turn out. We began our quest looking at Petah Coyne’s sculpture Untitled # 638, Whirlwind and questioned what materials we normally use in art: crayons, pastels, markers, paint. Our astute questers determined that Coyne in fact uses black sand as one of the materials in her pieces, and demonstrated their mastery of the medium in the creation of their very own black sand drawings:

But we quickly learned that Coyne also incorporates many other materials in her sculptures, including silk flowers dipped in colored wax. On the next step of our quest, we went on to look at another sculpture titled Scarlett to check out how to make our own types of flowers. Layering different colors of tissue paper together, we created a bouquet of beautiful tissue flowers:

Next, we headed into Material World: Sculpture to Environment to look at Wade Kavanaugh and Stephen Nguyen’s White Stag. Here we investigated how the artists twisted and turned paper in order to create an old growth forest. We each hand twisted and rolled white paper and taped it to cardboard to create our own miniature trees:

Our last gallery stop on the quest was a visit to the Sol LeWitt Retrospective to explore the artist’s use of two-dimensional colors and forms to realize wall drawings. Here, the questers thought about depth and dimension and how the use of color and shapes could make the walls look three-dimensional:

The quest ended outside of Kidspace where we combined what we learned looking at the LeWitt wall drawings to create ultra psychadelic three-dimensional felt shakers. We layered different colors of wool felt material around plastic toy eggs in order to create fun shakers that make music. The questers came up with completely original designs by picking their favorite wool colors and combining them in order to create unique color patterns, just like how Sol LeWitt’s color combinations could create different hues:

Our next gallery quest will be held on Saturday, August 28, at 1 PM, when we explore various environments created in the MASS MoCA galleries. We hope to see you and your little art lovers there.

It’s official. We survived Solid Sound Festival weekend. Not only did we survive, but we succeeded in putting on a music festival that made a big impression on everyone who attended. Over the past few days we have been inundated with positive feedback from the festival so we thought we’d share a few of our favorite comments here.

Photo Credit: Rick Levinson

From the Twitter Feed:

MusicGeekSvcs: #solidsound 3 cheers to the MassMoCA and Wilco crew for a flawless day 1 at Solid Sound. Pronto was a pleasant surprise. Mike’s got soul!

anniesezso: #solidsound This decade’s Woodstock for the Hipsters

beaucolburn: Been here 20mins and I can already tell coming was one of the best calls I’ve made in ages. Incredible.

theRSL: Love the fact that there’s a live comedy stage @MASS_MoCA – just a brilliant idea #SolidSound

marcc212: I mean, seriously perfect on every front:music, comedy, the grounds, exhibitions, food/drink…& tweedy in the dunk tank. #wilco #solidsound

JaminDime: Mavis Staples has one of those gorgeously booming voices. I got the chills.ahhhh #solidsound is where its at

paulcalypse: Might have been the best Wilco show I’ve ever seen. Lots of rare tunes for the hardcore fans. #solidsound

Read the rest of this entry »

Video Vortex = a weekly installment of our favorite videos from MASS MoCA artists and trailers for upcoming events, plus a few random viral creations as well.

Solid Sound Festival Weekend has finally graced us with it’s presence. These are just a few of the bands, comedians, puppet shows, and more we are looking forward to seeing this weekend. Wondering who else is playing? See the full schedule here. Don’t have tickets? Buy Now!

The Books

Vetiver

Mountain Man

Mavis Staples

Story Pirates

Comedian John Mulaney

Comedian Todd Barry

The Autumn Defense

Avi Buffalo

And of course…. Wilco

Happy Friday
Brittany

12. The Perseid Meteor shower peaks tomorrow night (Thursday) and continues Friday and Saturday. To really see it, you have to get away from the city lights.

11. There’s a sales tax holiday in Massachusetts this weekend (14/15), so you can shop and rock for less.

10. Two words: Jacket Weather. Escape the dog days in the city and head for the mountains: fantastic forecast for North Adams this weekend (sunny, highs in the upper 70s, lows around 60)

9. Admit it, you’re itching for one last road trip before summer ends and reality beckons. Check promotions with Zip Car for rentals and ZimRide for sharing.

8. Speaking of road trips; the journey can be just as fun as the destination. There are 3 drive-in movie theaters en route to North Adams — (Hyde Park Drive-in (NY), Pleasant Valley Drive-in (CT), and Northfield Drive-in (NH/MA/VT border). Or for a different slice of Americana, local minor league baseball teams at home this weekend include the Tri-City Valleycats (Troy, NY), Lowell Spinners (MA) and Pittsfield Colonials (MA).

7. If you’re the outdoorsy type, there is great hiking, kayaking, camping etc. all over the area. Mass., VT, and NY state recreation websites can direct you or check this out here.

6. Plus, there’s excellent dining from one extreme to the other.

5. Once you’re in the festival, you can come and go as you please. Want to go the the Clark or Norman Rockwell Museum, the ropes course at Jiminy Peak or get all spiritual at the Hancock Shaker Museum? No problem… split for a while and come back.

4. When you’re at MASS MoCA you’ll join people from at least 40 states and 10 countries at the festival, making it both an international and cross-country scene (new friends, perhaps?) There, in addition to the festival, you’ll have full run of the museum… including Time Magazine’s #1 museum installation of the year, the Sol Lewitt Retrospective.

3. How about the festival programming? The great music, from Wilco to the band members individual projects to Mavis Staples, Sir Richard Bishop and a ton more cool stuff, plus the comedy and performance spaces where you can see Todd Barry, Kristen Schaal, John Mulaney and Hannibal Buress and multiple performances by the Bread and Puppet Theatre Co. and Story Pirates. Not to mention exhib its including Glenn Kotche’s “prepared drums” (which you can play), Nels Cline’s Stompbox Station… (again you can play), Polaroid photos from Patrick Sansone, Cassandra C. Jones’s video installation, a pair of Luthiers explaining their work, live poster screen-printing, a dunk tank, a record store where you can listen to lots of vinyl (etc.) on a Solid Sound system, plus… A veritable world of fun. Oh and if you get weary, we’ve got some of North America’s best coffee from the Intelligentsia Coffee bar/lab., plenty of local food/drink vendors and a bar.

2. Mavis Staples performance at Lollapalooza last weekend (inc. a guest appearance by “Tweedy”, as Mavis refers to him) was, according to all reports, one of the highlights of the festival. Just sayin’….

1. And, lucky you, it’s not too late. Tickets are still available and will be at the box office all weekend. Be there.