soul seasons

Soul Seasons at Digital Graffiti

05.12.2013

Three years ago I heard about a little oasis in Florida called Alys Beach from friend and fellow artist Shantell Martin. Therein lies a very unique festival called Digital Graffiti which she has headlined (quite a few times) with her beautiful live-drawing performances.

Each year’s festival attracts digital artists, filmmakers, musicians, interactive designers, photographers, VJs, producers, celebrities, agency executives and fans of art, technology and architecture.

According to their website:

“Digital Graffiti is the world’s first projection festival featuring artists, using the latest technologies to project their original works onto the town’s iconic white walls.”

With nearly 200 submissions from countries including England, Portugal, France, Australia, Germany, Netherlands, Serbia, South Korea, Sweden, Japan, Cambodia, Poland, Ireland, India, Brazil, Spain, Taiwan, Iran, Ukraine and the USA, Alys Beach announced that my animation, Soul Seasons, is one of 23 finalists who will exhibit and compete at the Sixth Annual Digital Graffiti Festival.

Prizes will be awarded in various categories and judged by a panel of art and industry experts. The winning categories include Best of Show, Most Innovative, Most Experimental Submission, Best in Florida-Homegrown, Best Animated Submission and Curator’s Choice. All winners will be announced on the evening of June 8th at Caliza Pool.

I’m really looking forward to be a part of this festival, meeting the other artists and finally getting to check out the Alys Beach community. It’s not often you come across a festival that honors video artists in this way. Hopefully this type of event will inspire more like it to happen in the future.

Wish me luck with Soul Seasons, and check back for updates!

To learn more about Digital Graffiti, check out this great video:

 

 

 

 

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!

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!