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.

Stefan Forbes, the filmmaker behind Boogie Man: The Lee Atwater Story (which won the Polk Award and was a 2008 WGA Award nominee, and a NY Times and Washington Post Critic’s Pick) offers his thoughts about the film and politics in America today.  Boogie Man screens tonight at 7:30 in Club B-10 as part of our Larger than Life documentary series. Those who attend will have a chance to win one of 5 DVD copies of the film, signed by Stefan.

As a kid who grew up in Cambridge and watched Governor Mike Dukakis collide head-on with the freight train that was Lee Atwater back in ‘88, I’m very excited my film Boogie Man is playing MASS Moca. It’ll bring back some hard-to-believe moments from a campaign which remains seminal in American politics. Lee Atwater wrote the Republican playbook that would defeat not only Dukakis in ‘88, but Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004.

I’m still fascinated by the legendary American life of Atwater, a complex, often-mischaracterized figure. How did a guitar-picking rascal from South Carolina rise to such heights of power in American politics, becoming a friend and mentor to Karl Rove, and almost single-handedly creating the Bush dynasty? How did a guy who Read the rest of this entry »

When a patron visits our galleries we try to give them many opportunities to share their thoughts with us during and after the visit. One of the ways we do this is by giving visitors a chance to write their own blog entry. Below is an entry we received about Being Here is Better than Wishing We’d Stayed, an exhibition by The Miss Rockaway Armada. Feel free to leave a comment about your own experiences and thoughts about the exhibition at the bottom of this post.

Cheers,

Brittany

Photo from albany tim on Flickr

Written by Kim Gutschow

The Rockaway Armada truly sings and shines. What a great space to enage kids, parents, free-form creativity. Finally, a wall in a museum one can scribble on!! For the frustrated artist, tired parent, or jaded museum goer, a visit to Rockaway will refresh and reinvigorate.

But, why oh why, don’t the typewriters work well? I had a poem all set to go, but no ribbon. But myabe that was the point. As Thoreau said, “Much is published, but little is printed” – meaning so little of true worth, true poetry comes to the page.

Matt Bua arrived yesterday in a snowstorm and in just 24 hours he’s made enormous progress toward his upcoming installation in Kidspace which opens with a Family Celebration on Saturday, March 21.

He’s creating his installation from hundreds of pieces of detritus — the flotsam and jetsam of life that he has found on city streets.

Here’s a peek inside one of the still-to-be-unpacked crates he brought.

Some of the things he’s already unpacked are batteries,

Read the rest of this entry »

From time to time  Joe Thompson, MASS MoCA’s Director, will let us know what’s on his mind.  Here’s his latest blog…

The previous two tenants of the great site we now occupy were forced to abandon the fort because of the costs of energy: Arnold Print Works literally went south, to avoid the energy transport costs of their raw materials.  And the oil crisis of the early 1970’s was in some ways the beginning of the end for the great Sprague Electric Company.

Making sure MASS MoCA isn’t the third to succumb to the costs of energy is at the very top of my “to do� lists.  Our artistic program is superb.  Our audiences are growing.  Our financial underpinning has improved markedly over the past 2 years.  But energy pricing still represents a huge institutional risk, and I want to put MASS MoCA on the other side of the supply & demand curve.

We’ve started, having installed one of the largest arrays of rooftop photovoltaic solar panels in the Northeast.  50 kilowatts is a very large array, but it’s a drop in the bucket for a huge campus like ours, generating only 4% of our total electrical need.  In conjunction with the solar initiative, we Read the rest of this entry »

We are really excited about our new program a co-ticket with our good friends at the  Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge.  We’re calling  it One Ticket-Two Views and you get into both museums for $25 (would be $30 if purchased separately).  You can buy the ticket at either of the museums and you have two weeks to visit both of us.

We’ve been thinking about ways Sol LeWitt and Norman Rockwell are related and ways that they in sharp contrast. Here are a few things we’ve come up with:

They are both widely recognized icons of distinctly American art.

They both worked in the 20th century and lived in New England

They both have spaces devoted exclusively to their work in the Berkshires

Rockwell’s work was created intensely by Rockwell himself, LeWitt’s work was installed intensely by professional draftsmen

Rockwell’s work frequently focuses on detailed stories, LeWitt’s wall drawings focus the idea over the object

One of Rockwell’s most famous quotes was: “Without thinking too much about it in specific terms, I was showing
the America I knew and observed to others who might not have noticed.”   LeWitt’s most famous quote was: “The idea becomes the machine that makes the art.”

Have you visited both MASS MoCA and Rockwell Museum? Do you have any connections to add?  We’d love to hear your thoughts.