Light Artists Making Places

10.16.2012

Anyone who knows me, knows that one of my main priorities in life is travel with my art.

I love the concept of sharing my work with people in different cities around the world and seeing them transform and create new meanings when installed in different environments.

Friday, October 5th, my animation “Soul Seasons” traveled to New Haven, CT for the L.A.M.P. (Light Artists Making Places) Festival 2012 for a one night installation.

We were lucky to get an unseasonably warm evening so there was lots of activity around the 9th square and dozens of artists exhibited work installed in various spots around town, as well as dancers running around and lots of live music in the air.

Soul Seasons was exhibited on the rear bank lot at 55 Church Street and I’m very proud to say this was the largest I’ve ever seen my work. It makes me want to keep going bigger! I also really enjoyed meeting everyone who stopped by that night and I hope you stay in touch with me here! I gave out a lot of blinky lights and holly danger stickers so I hope that caused you to land on this page to say hi.

If you missed the fest, or if you want to check out how it looked, here are some images of Soul Seasons documented from the L.A.M.P. festival. Photos by Boret Lonh. More to come, including some video clips by me!

Also to come – Stay tuned for a “Soul Seasons Making Of” video!!! I hope to get it out by the end of the month!

Thanks to everyone who came out that night to support!!! It was so wonderful to have my friends there!!

Soul Seasons at the LAMP Festival

09.27.2012

Friday, October 5th from 8-11PM, the Ninth Square of New Haven will light up with video installations, music, dance, performances and all sorts of glowy stuff. It’s the 2nd Annual L.A.M.P. Festival (Light Artists Making Places) I just took a walk around the square on Tuesday where everything is scheduled to happen, and it sounds like it is going to be an incredibly fun night of creativity, art and festivities. This is only the 2nd year in it’s existance but it has already doubled in size with the amount of artists participating and events going on that night. Shops will be staying open late, bars will be overflowing with live music and shops will decorate with storefront exhibits.

I’m proud to say that my video, ‘Soul Seasons’ will be taking over one of the buildings downtown that night at 55 Church Street in the rear lot. It’s a huge white brick building and I think it makes for a great location to exhibit. It will be right between Artspace (50 Orange St) and LAMP Headquarters at the bank (45 Church Street).

If you missed Soul Seasons at the City Canvases exhibit in Bridgeport last month, now is your chance to check it out. 1 night only. It’s free and will be a super awesome night. Come join us in New Haven & support local arts.

If you haven’t seen it yet – check out the trailer for Soul Seasons!

A Crash Course on the Anatomy of Robots

09.17.2012

Hey Everybody!

I’m very excited to announce that I’ll be VJing two very unique shows this week.

My good friend Kent Evans, who happens to be a super talented author, musician and poet has just launched his second book (and soundtrack for the book) called, “A Crash Course on the Anatomy of Robots”.

This unique performance includes the author reading in addition to live music & visual performances. Kent Evans will play guitar, Laura Wilson will be on violin, Andrew Trudeau will join in with multiple instruments and I will be mixing live visuals.

Please join us for a reading at Bluestockings book store in NY on Tuesday, September 18th, from 7-9pm, and then at White Rabbit for the after party for the music & visuals.

If you’re a Stamford local, you’ll have a chance to check out the performance on Thursday, September 20th, from 5:30-7pm.

Click here for more details.

Kent Evans’ A Crash Course on the Anatomy of Robots is a gripping action-adventure novel inspired by personal events in the author’s life. Evans’ explains, “The books is sort of a love song to being an artist, travel, the death of my parents, and disastrous relationships.” The main character, Damien Wood, is a young man whose lived his life as a mere robot, hurling himself with abandon from place to place and from one hollow commitment to another. It is only after a series of tragedies that Damien’s full spectrum of emotions start to emerge, which sends him to Asia on a dark odyssey of self-revelation. The book has been widely praised, including Inés Ferrero Cándenas observation, “Crash Course travels on the wings of poetry, autobiography, relationships and humor to cross-examine modern reality and cultural rebellion.” Kent Evans also collaborated with musicians for an original soundtrack accompanying the book, available now on iTunes.

Here is a music sampling of what to expect! Hope to see you there!

Coming soon! Soul Seasons to be projected on the outside of a building at the LAMP Festival in New Haven + a special VJ performance at the A Gallery in Martha’s Vineyard.

That’s a wrap!

08.08.2012

Thanks to everyone who came throughout the week, hung out with us, drank, danced, partied, helped set up & break down, promoted, photographed, participated and supported Soul Seasons!!! You guys are awesome!!! I had so much fun and truly appreciate everything.

Special thanks to:

Flippy Jeep, Jeff Schram, Paula Ortega, Liz Squillace, Aaron Garovoy, Mark Heneks, Verónica Vixen, Peter Lenahan, Verónica Vîxen, Ruben Marroquin, J.e. Moxham, Amy Irish, Barbara Ann, Diane Anger, Christopher Scalzi, Chris Anger, Christopher Daddio, Margaret Bodell, Marion Schrade and the BA+CC, City Canvases, the Barnum Publick House.. the list goes on to all my amazing friends.

The animation itself will not be available online for awhile, as I’d like to only make it available for public installations at the moment, but stay tuned! I will be posting a behind the scenes video montage to show what went in to the making of Soul Seasons over the last four months.

Thanks to everyone for your continued words of support, encouragement & love.

Soul Seasons Closing Party – Tuesday, August 7th

08.06.2012

Pictured above: Aaron Garovoy, Holly Danger, Veronica Vixen

Thanks so much for everyone who came out to see Soul Seasons!! This piece means a lot to me for many reasons and I am very happy to have been able to share it with so many people.

The good news is, if you missed the launch, you can still catch the video. I’m planning on having a closing party for anyone who wants to come out and join me on the last night of it’s installation. A few folks asked me if I would VJ so I have decided to add that into the festivities.

Please join us Tuesday August 7th from 9-11pm at 1330 Main Street, Bridgeport, CT.

Soul Seasons – 1 week until the launch!

07.27.2012

1 week until the launch of Soul Seasons! I’ve poured a tremendous amount of energy and imagination into this piece and I hope you’ll all come out and watch it with me as it goes up next Thursday. It has been a labor intensive challenge for me to do while also having a full time day job and a life that doesn’t involve being behind a computer 24/7, but it has been worth every second.

I can’t say that I’ve worked on a single piece like this in awhile where it has been 100% all my own. After months of working in my studio and obsessing over every detail I can say that still to this day that no one has seen any part of this video yet. I have not shown a soul. I have only posted a few still shots here and there in the digital world so you can see a snapshot of what is in store.

With only a week to go I’m still not sure if I will show this to anyone yet. I like the idea that it is a direct reflection of what has come out of my creativity in being completely solitary with my thoughts. Creating this piece has been meditation for me, and I hope you will love it as much as I do.

Soul Seasons

07.17.2012

Only two weeks left before the launch of my new project, a stop-motion animation called Soul Seasons.

I’ve been in my studio every day for the past few weeks designing, conceptualizing, and ultimately trying to figure out how to get my idea into an actual video piece. Each day as I play with it, it becomes more real, but I still have a dozen things to do to make it come together. Special thanks to Veronica Vixen and her boyfriend Aaron for modeling their silhouettes for me!

I’ve also wanted to document my process but have found it incredibly tough to do everything all at once. I finally found my little Canon Powershot camera yesterday, so I’ll mount it on a tripod over the next few editing rounds at the studio and try and capture the madness. It has been quite a learning process and worth having documented.

So far I have:

Storyboarded everything and plastered the studio
Shot 90% of my green screen scenes
Taken test shots with light kit & set up studio accordingly
Learned how to use Dragon Frame software
Edited 75% of sequence pre-animation
Done test prints for stopmotion

I still need to:

Figure out what elements go inside & outside of silhouettes
Choose which green screen scenes to use and in what order
~~Print out entire sequence frame by frame, start to finish~~
~~Shoot & animate final frames via Dragon Frame~~
Post work in After Effects
Edit & adjust full sequence & color correct in Final Cut
Figure out how to end the piece (!!!)

Holy $#!! that’s a lot to do in the 16 days remaining. No matter how many hours I work, there always seems to be so much more to do! I’m even more limited now that I’m back at the office 9-5pm every day. Wish me luck!! Looking forward to sharing this with everyone.

Soul Seasons will launch at 1330 Main Street in Bridgeport as part of their City Canvases initiative project, and will be projected in the side of the building each night from August 2nd to August 8th from 9-11pm.

Please come to the launch! LET’S MAKE IT A BIG PARTY!

Vimeo Festival + Awards 2012

06.11.2012

Dr. Reginald Watts delivering his opening keynote performance

Miwa Matreyek performs "Myth and Infrastructure"

Image from a session called "99 Secrets Every Filmmaker Should Know" by Daniels

Awesome weekend! This weekend was the Vimeo Festival & Awards in NYC. My head is full of new inspiration and my heart is racing from all the exciting panels, sessions and craziness.

I liked how small and focused the Vimeo fest was compared to other events I’ve been to in the past, like SXSW. No matter what session I landed in on Friday & Saturday, there turned out to be really great tips & advice for a wide variety of topics. Plus I also enjoyed meeting so many awesome people along the way. Such an inspiring group of folks attended. I hope Vimeo decides to post more content from the workshops because there was so much great knowledge to pass around and a lot of sessions overlapped which made it impossible to go to everything. I assume if they do post, it will end up here on their vimeo festival page. Theres already a lot of great content up there so check it out.

One of my favorite discussions was with the company Stillmotion. Their session was about proactive versus reactive storytelling.

The first thing they asked us when we walked in the room was – How many of you noticed the sound of the air conditioner hum? The direction that the light was going in? The color of the light? How did you feel when you walked into the room? A lot of their advice was about awareness and sculpting stories through being present, not just creating what is expected. Being present allows you to pick up on the minor details often overlooked which enable you to really describe a situation and truly portray the feeling that goes along with it.

Another session that I really enjoyed was on stop motion animation. It was taught by two truly awesome and very talented folks, Sean Pecknold and Kirsten Lepore. And it was one of the only hands-on workshops. We were broken down into small groups that were assigned various materials (paper, feathers, candy, or clay) and made 3 second stop motion videos using Dragonframe software. My latest project coming up deals directly with using stop motion so this was the right class for me to take at the right time. I just purchased Dragonframe and will begin some tests with it this week!

And of course, it was just as entertaining checking out the Daniels (a duo of two creative dudes named Daniel). These guys were great and did an awesome job of getting the audience to loosen up, play, come up with crazy spontaneous ideas, and even staged a slow motion foam sword battle. Their session “99 Secrets Every Filmmaker Should Know” began with them saying, “There are no secrets in film making” and “You are here because your ideas want to have sex with our ideas!”

Without going through my whole notebook of scribbles and transcribing them here, I want to point out just a few of the things I loved about the weekend.

Miwa Matreyek’s “Myth and Infrastructure” performance piece using front & rear projection and her own shadows to craft a visual story.

Sweatshoppe’s video grafitti painting across Europe.

One of the overall Vimeo winners of the festival, a video called Symmetry.

And of course, Reggie Watts opening the whole festival with his keynote on the beginning of the end, and the end of the beginning.

Great to meet all of you who I randomly met over the course of the last few days, as well as getting to hang out with a few of you who I hadn’t seen in awhile.

Please feel free to keep in touch!

Bridgeport City Canvases

06.05.2012

Hey folks! I am very excited to announce that I have been selected to create a public video projection piece as part of Bridgeport City Canvases to be revealed on Thursday, August 2nd.

The City Canvases initiative is aimed to enhance urban areas in highly visable exterior locations around Bridgeport with projection based public art by local artists. Connecticut received $1 million in grant funding and will be creating various projects in 7 cities across the state. Twelve artists have been chosen to participate in this project and will exhibit their videos in different locations around the city. Each artist’s work will be revealed each week beginning in July. Visit this page for a full lineup of the exhibiting artists.

I serendipitously found out about the project while I was exhibiting work at the 305K gallery art bazaar earlier this spring. I was told that if I wanted to participate that I had two days to submit my concept proposal for a video surrounding their overarching theme of “Change”.

Sometimes I think that my best ideas are born out of pressure, because I don’t have time to over think them.

Strangely, this date aligned to the two days I had taken off work, to be by my dad’s side as he was going through various rounds of cancer surgery. I wrote my proposal while I was sitting in a hospital, hoping to hear that my dad’s cancer had been removed. (Which I’m thankful to say that it has.) Needless to say, my ideas stemmed from a very raw and emotional place. I chose to work with an idea that came from my gut in dealing with the change that was going on around me at that moment. And I plan on dedicating this piece of work to him.

I’m very excited about this event and am looking forward to bringing it to life and sharing it with the city and all of you. I’ve chosen to create a uniquely styled stop-motion animation that I will be building over the next two months.

Look out for more details coming soon because I plan on incorporating YOU into my project!

Please shoot me an email or leave a comment with your email address below if you have interest in being a part of my video and being projected onto a building in Bridgeport during my exhibition. I will be holding a few shoot days in the near future and will only need 5 minutes of your time to immortalize you in my piece. Shooting will take place at the Danger studio in the Loft Artist building in Stamford which is always fun (and usually involves wine).

Thanks in advance guys!!

“Danger’s Zone” article in The Beat Magazine

04.18.2012

Hey guys! Please be on the look out for The Beat magazine, who have just released their spring issue with a dangerously wonderful article featuring my graphic & performance art. I was first approached by editor and chief Wendy Logan and creative director Andy Liverant when Kodomo and I had performed an audio/visual show together at the Factory Underground last year.

The magazine is dedicated to the food, arts, culture & color of Fairfield County and provides a wide range of articles that profile chefs, restaurants, artists, cultural institutions as well as columns dedicated to wine, dining reviews and music.

I’m very excited to be a featured artist this spring, so please check out the latest issue if you can find it around town, or view it here digitally. Please take the time to “friend” them on Facebook and check out all the great work that they’re doing to bring some flavor into our local area.

Also, please check back here soon for the latest projects that I have in store for spring. This includes a new line of graphic work, some installation video projects, launch of a new hollydanger website and more performances with The Moon. To be continued!

Hope everyone is happy, healthy & enjoying the warm weather.

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