Beth Sorensen April 22, 2023
Two Southern Oregon painters with distinctively indefinable styles find rejuvenation and inspiration in a post-pandemic respite.
This exhibition got started with playwright Octavio Solis sharing images of my work with Vanessa Hopkins, gallery owner, film-maker and artist (poster design below!)
, during preparations for the Ashland Beckett Shorts festival Oct 2024 in Ashland. Octavio had asked me to contribute artwork for the festival. I produced seven short animations for the online program (https://www.ashlandbeckettshorts.com/festival-program) and posters for the plays.
Vanessa invited me to exhibit and we put together a collection of recent work including photography, paintings, drawings and some small sculpture. We invite you to join us for an opening reception November 9, 5-7 pm, at The A, 621 A. st, Ashland. The exhibition will be up until after December’s First Friday art walks.
Left Edge presents Michael Gordon's "Timber"
Performed by Left Edge Percussion, directed by Terry Longshore, along with a newly-created immersive video experience by faculty artists David Bithell and Cody Bustamante. Mantra Percussion, co-commissioners of Timber, write: “Michael Gordon's Timber is an evening-length tour de force, scored for six graduated, amplified, wooden Simantras (2x4s). The work brings the physicality, endurance and technique of percussion performance to a new level. In this work, Gordon shapes the music in both polyrhythmic and dynamic waves of textures — often each players' hands are in separate rhythmic 'worlds', each traversing a different dynamic contour from loud to soft to loud, similar in some respects to his solo for percussion, XY.”
Adding to the aural phenomenon of Timber will be a new, immersive video work projected on three screens, created by Left Edge co-artistic director and SOU professor of Emerging Media, David Bithell, collaborating SOU Art professor Cody Bustamante. Using drawing fragments by Bustamante, and animated by Bithell the work creates an ever-evolving, intricate visual experience to accompany musical material of Timber.
The featured performers and members of Left Edge Percussion will be director Terry Longshore; Master of Music in Performance students Reed Bentley, Greyson Boydstun, Jenny Gray, and Drew Wright; and senior Music Performance major Jake Riggs.
Artist Statement:
In creating a visual work to be shown alongside this performance of Michael Gordon's Timber, we set out many goals for ourselves. We wanted to create a work that:
complements the visual nature of the live percussionists on stage, but doesn't overshadow them;
inhabits similar conceptual and aesthetic terrain as Timber, but isn't merely a visual interpretation of the composer's ideas;
and can be exhibited as a stand alone project in galleries and museums.
The work we created utilizes the timing of Timber as a structural backbone, but is realized via generative computer code such that each performance is unique, each shape or pattern never to be drawn exactly the same again.
The visual language we explored developed out of Cody Bustamante's series of drawings Emergent Forms / Unnatural Selection in which modular forms appear to grow into accretions with complex inner life and potential. Images derived from this series as well as those created specifically for this project are overlapped, set in motion, and grouped into procedurally calculated meta-shapes. As we were drawn to the intricately shifting internal rhythms in Timber (and the haunting quality of resultant sounds seemingly played by no-one), we looked for shapes and larger forms that result in complex patterning when moved or rotated against themselves.
— David Bithell and Cody Bustamante
I'm in the process of cataloging recent three dimensional work. Individual works will be added to the website soon.
Read MorePublished by the University of Texas At San Antonio, Edited by Arturo Infante Almeida 2015.
I collaborated with Master Printer Steve Carter to produce Sirena (image on page 17 of the catalog).
Sirena, a lithograph, honors the sirena (mermaid) imagery from traditional Mexican literature and song. I'm most familiar with the songs. La sirena can be an icon of heartbreaking longing. The drawing in the lithograph is an early example of the process described on my Emerging Forms page.
Last month I received my copy of Curator and Critic Tours Connective Conversations: Inside Oregon Art 2011-2014, The Ford Family Foundation and University of Oregon, Edited by Kate Wagle with photography by Sabina Poole.
The book is a collaborative representing the series that brought national curators and critics to visit 70 Oregon artists in their studios across the state, to present lectures and to participate in a community dialogue. It chronicles an extremely personal time and space---that of the studio practice---where ideas and objects, not yet fully formed, come into being. (from Ford Family Foundation promotional materials)
The book is a beautiful object in itself, but of course it is most interesting as a brief look into the working spaces of 70 Oregon Artists. I was lucky enough to be a participant in the program (page 64). As part of this program I had a studio visit by Jan Schall, curator of modern and contemporary art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art.
Many thanks again to the Ford Family Foundation
September 2015
Dear Cody A Bustamante,
Congratulations, you have been selected for The Ford Family Foundation Fellowship at the Djerassi Program in 2016......
The quality, integrity and direction of your work clearly impressed our panelists.
Congratulations. Let me say it again—YES! Oh, and once more. YES!
We will provide you with accommodations, studio space and all meals while you are in residence. Our chef is top-notch and has been praised publicly by New York author/blogger (and alum) Cheryl Tan.
This is a true artists’ retreat; it is remote and private. We are located on a 580-acre former cattle ranch one hour south of SF on a one-lane road. We are only 12 miles from Palo Alto but it is a 45-minute drive. (Don’t believe me? Just Google-Earth 2325 Bear Gulch Road to see just HOW isolated we are). You will enjoy the collegial camaraderie of 10-12 artists of various disciplines from the U.S. and abroad. Arriving and departing as a group is a defining quality of the “Djerassi experience.”
Don’t make us wait. There are dozens of alternates hoping you’ll say NO. We must hear from you by October 9th (via email, or U.S. Mail) if you are able to accept the residency session offered. In late October, expect an email with detailed information about your residency.
I cannot stress enough how important it is to avoid conflicting obligations while in residence. This wondrous place offers you the gift of time—please embrace it. We hope your experience rivals the late New York sculptor William King’s who said his residency was the best month of his life.
Questions? Call Judy Freeland (judy@djerassi.org) or me (margot@djerassi.org) directly any time.
Respectfully yours,
Margot H. Knight
Executive Director
P.S. POST this acceptance letter to your FB page if you have one. Help us get the word out about YOU AND US!