Studies in OCCU(PY)(PATION)

STUDIES IN OCCU(PY)(PATION)
Saturday 17 December 2011 (8am-8pm)
Westlake Park, City Hall & Seattle Central Community College
SEATTLE

CALL FOR ARTISTS
Artists experimenting in movement, performance, process, dance, text, sound, voice, music, visual and other media wanted for Studies in Occu(py)(pation), a full-day, outdoor, live art event, 8AM–8PM, on Saturday 17 December at (1) West Lake Park, (2) City Hall and (3) Seattle Central Community College (Seattle, WA). Select a 15-minute, 30-minute, 1-hour or 2-hour time slot. Engage in a stationary or moving study anywhere in one of the three locations. All genres considered. No plug-ins available. Self-supporting, low-tech only. Situated in an open urban area. Standing audience unlikely. Studies overlap and continue for the length of the event. This is a free and independent event generated by working artists in Seattle.

APPLY
Send an informal e-mail to mimiallin@gmail.com with your: (1) name, (2) contact info (3) work history (brief) / link to your website, (4) one sentence expressing your medium and idea for the study, (5) desired study location and (6) desired study time and length. There is no formal deadline, but to receive proper attention and be placed on the schedule, before 10 December is best.

STUDIES IN EVERYTHING
Studies in Occu(py)(pation) is 5th in a quarterly series called STUDIES IN EVERYTHING, preceded by Studies in White (January 2010), Studies in Monk, Mompou and Melancholy (April 2010), Studies in Forgiveness (July 2010) and Studies in Memory (November 2010). The goal of STUDIES IN EVERYTHING is to form a temporary community and to have that community study, in a collectively and public way, a topic, mood, color, place or idea. Studies aren’t about finished, choreographed work, they are about the artist’s process. We do not spend a great deal of time preparing for or reporting on studies, but spend time partaking in studies and thus evolve as artists. 10-40 artists participate in each study. For examples of past studies and to see images and videos, visit our FB group page STUDIES IN EVERYTHING.

INFO FOR ARTISTS
Artists are encouraged to visit the site before their study to consider weather and other conditions that may affect their work (noise levels, crowd flow, lighting, pedestrian pathways, bottlenecks, nearby bathrooms, warm dry places to retreat to, parking situation and bus routes). This is a rain or shine event. Performances will be photo and video-documented.

WHY A STUDY?
Studies free us. Unlike their finished and focused counterparts (rehearsals, choreographed pieces and performances), studies show us the artist in the process of discovering. We believe this work helps situate the artist in the community and manifests a real artist-to-world connection. We hope to encourage artists everywhere to envision and set into place parameters for studies and to spend time exploring the world publicly.

WHY OCCUPY?
This study comes in response to the international political event—Occupy Wall Street. Artists may find it helpful to attend the Occupation, if they haven't already, to help clarify and/or broaden their ideas and approaches. It is not, however, necessary to respond in a political way or to offer a politics-focused study. Studies may be as personal, as quiet or as pedestrian as you wish. Artists are encouraged to take their study in the direction of their choosing, as far or as near the current political situation as they wish.

oc·cu·py verb \ˈä-kyə-ˌpī\
1: to engage the attention or energies of
2a : to take up (a place or extent in space)
2b : to take or fill (an extent in time)
3a : to take or hold possession or control of
3b : to fill or perform the functions of (an office or position)
4: to reside in as an owner or tenant

oc·cu·pa·tion noun \ˌä-kyə-ˈpā-shən\
a : an activity in which one engages
b : the principal business of one's life : vocation

LINKS
Occupy Seattle
West Lake Park Seattle

PEG &FRANK @ Gallery 110

Saturday 8 October at 5PM
Featured ArtsCrush Event
Gallery 110 (TK Building)
Seattle, WA

PEG &FRANK is an elastic collective born in 2011 from the imaginations A K Mimi Allin & Vanessa DeWolf. PEG &FRANK bring visual art, writing poetry, performance art and critical viewing together to manifest a new field of work that lives between the art object and the viewer. We plan events for galleries and artists that facilitate a closer viewing of art, using a process that requires an intensive amount of time in the gallery. Those experiences are then shared with the artists and their audiences at public and private events.

For the exhibit of manipulated photographs by artists Ray Schutte and Jan Cook (Gallery 110), Peg &Frank spent 20 hours with the works of art, including an overnight. We navigated our responsive structure and edited and culled our materials to what was viewed in the gallery on on Saturday night. It was a thrill and an honor to have shared that process with poets Stephen Roxborough & Lyn Coffin and with fellow art maven Mylinda Sneed and cellist Natalie Hall.


To bring PEG &FRANK into your art space, contact: mimiallin@gmail.com.

THE LAMPLIGHTER

Public Art Project
October 2011
Seattle, WA

Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) is a novella by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry about a little boy who lives on an asteroid with one rose and three volcanoes that come up to his knees, one of which is extinct. When The Little Prince decides he is unhappy, he sets off to learn about life and visits seven nearby planets, the last of which is Earth. On his travels, he meets The Lamplighter, a man under orders to extinguish his lamp at daybreak and light it at dusk. The Lamplighter explains how his task, once useful, has become absurd over time as his planet began spinning more and more quickly. Since a new day occurs every minute now, the lamplighter is so busy he hasn't a moment to sleep. Is not The Lamplighter a metaphor for our own condition? We are all so busy doing things we think are of consequence that we miss the smaller, simpler things that make up the truly significant stuff (seeing the stars, sharing a sunrise, listening to a friend, dancing, putting my hands in the earth, talking to the elephants). The Little Prince is a fable about how money, ego and power close our hearts and turn into dimwitted adults.

PERFORMANCE
Performance artist A K Mimi Allin rolls through the Seattle night with a 10' rolling lantern and spinning, papier-mâché planetoid (conceived of and constructed by inventor/designer Clinton Lee Bliss), illuminating and extinguishing her lamp once per minute. When you see her wink of “good night” and blink of “good morning," think to the things of consequence in your life, then come and commemorate someone who believed in you when you a child by painting a golden star on her lamppost. By mid-October, the entire lantern be covered with golden stars and made bright by the light of our belief in one another, and at last the lamplighter will be able to put down her work and take a much needed rest.

SCHEDULE OF APPEARANCES

• Wallingford Artwalk - 5 October
• Pioneer SquareArtwalk - 6 October
• Fremont Artwalk - 7 October
• Capital Hill Artwalk - 11 October
• West Seattle Artwalk - 13 October
• Greenwood-Phinney Artwalk -14 October

The Lamplighter will light & extinguished her lamp 1,440 times over the next 2 weeks and then install it at the Phinney Center Gallery in Greenwood.

THANK YOU
This project received a CityArtist grant from the Seattle Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs. Thank you for that!! Cosmic thanks go out to inventor/designer Clinton Lee Bliss for his work on my whimsical lantern. Thanks also go out to the talented & beautiful Mylinda Sneed & her brilliant son Beckett Arnold for their support. Thanks indeed to The Fremont Arts Council for use of The Powerhouse & to Christopher Peragine for his time & expressive drawings. Thanks unending to all those who support & enjoy public art throughout the universe.

Thank You, LitFuse 2009

I had a terrific weekend at LitFuse. I gave a slideshow, installed a Ritual Room and offered up 3 participatory works on the Town Green. I feel energized by the poets I shared time with and the town of Tieton!

APPLE TREE / Tieton Town Green
This was a gift to the children of Tieton. The glass apples were filled with cinnamon hearts. I used to love them as a kid. The 6' snake has a quote from Ingmar Bergman. It reads: Art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship.



GOLD SKY & THE ORANGE TREE / Tieton Town Green

It was a gusty, windy day. The wind huffed and puffed into the canopies, snapping and popping the colors and text all the warm afternoon long. In the late afternoon, I took the children into The Orange Tree, which was constructed with them in mind. Its bamboo stakes were set at 4', whereas the Gold Sky was set at 5'. The Orange Tree had prompts and the Gold Sky had little bits of golden poems.

A sign of instruction nearby told people to, "ACTIVATE A CANOPY (or sky or tree) by getting into it. The holes are for putting your head into. Pop your head up through a hole and read what’s there–a bit of poetry, something to say or do. Get a group together and get activate the canopy at the same time. Or try them all on your own. GOLD SKY addresses select “golden poems,” by Katherine Mansfield, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Andrew Marvell and Robert Frost. THE ORANGE TREE addresses a poem by Robert Graves. These canopies are patterned after James Lee Byars' participatory clothing, such as Two in a Hat and Pink Silk Airplane for 100. Gold Sky & The Orange Tree extends Byars’ notion of play and community by asking the audience to participate and by prompting them with text."

Happily, on Sunday afternoon at the open mic, we activated the canopies one last time. A group of poets put the garments on and walked the periphery of the Harvest Hall patio. It was another gorgeous sunny day in Tieton and everyone was pleased at the invitation to step outside. I'm thankful it was a bold and curious group. They did a great job bringing the canopies and poems to life.

NIGHT FISHING / Tieton Town Green

I have a dream. I think if you want something badly enough and dream about it and prepare yourself and go about like it will happen, it will happen. Do you think so too?

The sign reads, "Here’s my dream. I want to catch fish in Tieton. I know, I know, Tieton is hundreds of miles from the ocean and I don’t have a very big fishing boat and there’s not even a lake to put it in. It might seem silly, but dreams often are. I want to catch fish, enough to feed the whole town in fact. I’m prepared to work all day. I think I can do it. Who knows, maybe with your help, and the help of the children, if we work together and wish and dream, we can do it? Starting at 3PM on Saturday, I'll be right here in my rowboat. Come by and say hi. Send me a fish. Tell me a story. Draw or write a poem. Hook your fish on my line. Tell the story of how a poet came to Tieton, caught a boatload of fish, and fed the whole town.

I can’t catch enough fish on a line to feed the whole town, and I don’t even know what kind of fish live in Tieton, so I brought a big net. I’m planning to stretch it out at 9PM. I need your help! It’s a very large net. I can’t do it alone. Please come to Tieton Town Green at 9PM. Together we’ll set the net and put glowing rings on it. It will remain out "catching fish" until morning. And then….? Join me on Sunday at 3PM for FISH STEW on Tieton Town Green. Assuming I catch fish. O, I hope I catch fish!"

Happily, we did catch enough fish (octopus, mussels, mahi-mahi, shrimp, scallops, salmon) to feed all-comers the next day. The Mexican-American locals were a bit reluctant to come close, given their lack of English, but everyone in sight was (like it or not) brought a full cup of soup. Few turned it down. Most of the kids out that day were courageous enough to try it and liked it too. Indeed it was beautiful soup! I set up a propane stove in a stand and warmed up a huge pot of soup (over 10 pounds). It was a creamy red soup made with roasted red tomatoes, leeks, lemon juice, garlic and cream. One hundred thousand thanks to Clinton Bliss for making the soup and for, in part, funding it. He is a mighty supporter of the arts!

THE RITUAL ROOM / Mighty Tieton Warehouse Gallery

I was thrilled to be able to install The Ritual Room at LitFuse 2009. Thanks to Michael Schein, Director of LitFuse, for letting me do it. The LitFuse group last year was so responsive and amazing, I was looking forward to having them experience this.

The Ritual Room was a seed planted during my residency at Vanessa DeWolf's highly volatile Studio-Current on Capitol Hill. The installation was my then answer to an opportunity to teach my process to my peers there. It was an invitational evening event. Eleven people experienced it and it included a procession and feast. It took 18 hours to install that room and 3 hours to perform it. It was indeed lovely. We ate red velvet cake off of china plates and drank champagne out of fluted glasses. Afterwards we threw our glasses into a wooden barrel. Ca-crash!
The Mighty Tieton Warehouse offered new possibilities and a larger audience already steeped in poetry. I installed The Ritual Room between 9PM- 2AM on Saturday night/Sunday morning. Ed let me into the warehouse and I worked there alone until every last thing was just right. My, my, the warehouse makes some curious and alarming sounds in the night. Though I was tired from the work earlier in the day, the wind and trees brushing against the building kept me awake and on edge.
I added so many new rituals to The Ritual Room I first conceived, it was a totally new experience for me. Things had to be more portable, more spacious and more free-standing for the Tieton space. I added The Runway, The Silk Road, The Ritual Bottles, The Ship, The Immeasurable Self, Bending the Rules, Perfect Tiny Circle, Magic Signal Flags, Chance, Home, Crossing the Rubicon, Whispering Hole, Senseless Desire, Golden Plates, Pulse, The Five Selves and The Pink Artist, The Pink Eye and In the Pink. I subtracted the Nail of the North, The Cocoon and The Stooping Basin. Some of the new ideas came from the new materials I found. Some came from trying to reconfigure.

I'm happy with the way The Ritual Room looked and felt. If I could have added more sound elements, it's the only thing I would have changed, but there wasn't an option of hanging things from the ceiling so my option were more limited.

SHUTTERSHOTS OF GUERILLA POETRY / Mighty Tieton Warehouse Gallery

Putting together a slide show gave me some valuable information about myself. Holy Toledo, I've been busy! Now I see just how busy. Maybe too busy. I included 20 projects in the show, all executed between LitFuse 2008 and LitFuse 2009 (an 11-month time span). I didn't include any of my Field session work or The Poetry Playground work or any of the smaller community installations I did.

Having pulled the projects together in this way, it was interesting to see the shifts in my work: from purely poetry-driven installations to installations that prompted poetry as a response, then on to visual and participatory maneuvers that may or may not have a poetry mind. Well, they do for me, but not as a means of projection. They always do for me. I don't find one art is ever separate from the others. Aspects. They're all aspects of the same problem or situation. Community. Home. Pathways. The condition of the individual and community spirit. And on and on. The human struggle.