Dear ones,
As we get back to our desk, after being out on the range, and after quite a few "tell us more!s", Art Ranger will now provide a narrative wrap to the summer art actions so as to mull/mould/hold savor and share the experiences. Firstly, we must broadcast that the founding exhibition of our collective:
Critical Ground launched last week (four local women artists doing very different work but with the same, nearly ridiculous, amount of dedication) and we all met the challenge:
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| from Everybody's Antenna Handbook (copyright 1999). The artist discovered 25 drawings on handmade paper that had been lost, forgotten, and never shown. To broadcast comes from casting seeds broadly so that we may grow food! |
Now to highlight the July art business trip to Denmark: Along with
Doris Bittar and
Todd Ayoung, we were invited by
CAMP: Center for Art on Migration Politics, nestled in a place called
Trampoline House,
"a community center in Copenhagen that provides refugees and asylum seekers in Denmark with a place of support, community, and purpose". Collaboratively, we developed three performances for the Art Zone of the
Roskilde music festival (a week-long
pop-up small city!). Our working title was "Storming the Wall"; and thanks to a team of extraordinarily engaged volunteers, our art interventions addressed themes including migrant labor, de-colonizing our bodies, and worldwide border conditions. Our
art activities were accompanied by discussion, even amidst the raucus, windy, "hot as a frying pan",
crowded, venue. What ensued was a somewhat structured group collaboration, and a bonding experience with our volunteers, shareable through three videos showing on Vimeo:
Art Ranger found it to be a poignant surprise, to have flown over 6000 miles away from home to discover that people there were experiencing, and expressing, - just as directly - the
uncertainty and angst from this tragicomedy as (we/so many) U.S. citizens are. On this trip we also met, and worked with, young people whose lives have been torn and spit out by our foreign policy, in serious ongoing limbo. Our art activities sought to bring attention to these societal/ global issues in a way that was physical, visual and visceral, and yet bearing these topics with enough lightness to digest, to listen in.
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| Name plates from "Red Light Green Light", and "Trackless Shoes" | | | | |
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| After a re-throning, Young Man Tests out the King's Attire with his subjects, while ruling the game |
Our three planned performances morphed into six, as we trained ourselves and others to
ululate, and as an upwelling of protests were planned as bookends, or rather open-ended expressions of world pain, collective grief, loving concern for humanity, the planet, freedom of speech, commonality with a stranger right next to you ...... .
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| De-Colonize the Body March at Roskilde (Above four Photos by Paula Duvå of Copenhagen) |
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| As Art Ranger flew over Greenland and the in-between (melting) glaciers, while
listening to Margaret Atwood read "The Handmaids Tale", the man behind us exclaimed in his dialect/accent "Wheah the fook ahh we?!!!" |
Our regular
Found Art Friday will resume next week and, as always, we encourage your participation. As you stumble through life (who doesn't?) please send images and thoughts, plus cat and dog whiskers, etc.,... to: homelandinspiration@artistatlarge.net. It often works out.
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| Such as, Richard Anthony's hand shake |
"Or, 'Did I tell you I ran out of Thyme?'" : (farmers market eavesdrop sample)
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| Parkinglotpollocks |
Loves and fresh loaves to all....
Art Ranger is back!
Our goal, to highlight random small surprises that seem artful, is quite often intersected by the ((news)) of the surround: 
