In the news!

EbM is in the news!




The Mountain View Telegraph, specifically.
And the article was run in September, so more accurately, was in the news...

Nonetheless!
The Mountain View Telegraph is "a weekly newspaper serving communities in the East Mountain, Moriarty and the Estancia Valley." Lee Ross wrote this delightful article about our installation with Jessica Segall:

Call it an event, or an amateur film screening or performance art. Whatever it was, something decidedly strange happened in an empty field east of Moriarty on Sunday night.
A few years ago, a group of artists bought a piece of land north of Interstate 40. The land is just across the freeway from a topless bar for truckers and home to plenty of cattle, but there's not much else out there.
The artists collaborative, which is called Earthbound Moon, then set up a snack shop and a movie screen and showed a video of a woman wearing what appears to be a 17th century dress in the Arctic. The film was screened on a piece of frozen copper, according to Amy Sampson, one of Earthbound Moon's artists.
The film was made by artist and sculptor Jessica Segall.

Read More!

Earthbound Light

Levitated mass with moon

Urban Setting Light

Lacma

Urban Light by Chris Burden

My favorite public artwork. I truly believe that beauty builds bonds between people.

Go team Go!

The Economist | Lunacy and astronomy: In praise of moons http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21565958-theyre-number-two-they-try-harder-praise-moons?frsc=dg%7Cb via @theeconomist

A lecture

Cynthia Hooper is a video artist from Eureka, CA. I first encountered her work when I bought a DVD of her videos from The Center for Land Use Interpetation. CLUI is one of LA's gems. It is a fabulous art and information engagement. It is next door to another of LA's hidden gems, The Museum of Jurassic Technology. Next door physically and psychically.
Bobby Conn turned me onto the Museum of Jurassic Technology in 02002. I can not tell you how inspired and in love I am with these organizations (and Bobby Conn.) They are in the DNA of EbM. They are inspirations, in the way Survival Research Laboratories, Re/Search magazine, and The Center On Contemporary Art when it was run by Larry Reid are. They gave us breath. Writing about how much I love them makes me a little teary. You should go visit them. They make life feel better.

I bought a bunch of inspiring books, and one DVD from CLUI, a few years back. Cynthia's video art is a stellar contemplation of humanity's use of land. It is never preachy. It is always beautiful. She creates stunning visual poems. They draw you in, they are riveting. She is an activist, but her work is never abrasive. She works through subtlety and charm.
A year or so after I bought her video, another amazing artist, Phil Ross, mentioned her to me. He suggested EbM contact her. We did. A year of emails about aborted trips north ensued.
Saturday last, she was in Oakland, and, delightfully, so was I!

At Interface Gallery, Cynthia presented a video and lecture on the Westlands Water District.
The video is beautiful. The lecture was inspiring. Also, depressing.
Fortunately, Cynthia is the very picture of joie de vivre. It was impossible to be overwhelmed by the toxicity of the situation in California's Central Valley under her tutelage.

Somehow, someday, EbM will find a way to commission Cynthia, I hope!
In the meantime, I suggest you watch her videos.

A studio visit

Last weekend the always magnificent Alex Clausen and I drove out to Davis, CA. There we met a local artist, Charlie Schneider. He received his MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. While there he was chosen by the Evanston Arts Council for a show next year in their gallery. Our board president, Angela Valavanis, who is amazing in ways that boggle the mind, is on the EAC board. She loved his work and emailed me, suggesting Charlie might be an excellent EbM artist candidate.

Well, holy mackerel, was she right. Alex (with some bastardization by me), sums up our visit beautifully,
"We started at his home where he first showed us documentation of his project The Divided Line in the Form of a Square (the practice of memory).  The project involved trying to sail a ship in the ocean on a path that exactly traces out a square.

Charlie then showed us documentation of a series of installations that were created using a clay slip stencil.  The temporary stencils, often resembling wallpaper, were put up on bridges and a dam located near Davis.  All of the stencils wash away over time.  Most of the installations involve repelling and really tall ladders.  There is a good amount of documentation and writing about the stencils that were done in the US and in Australia. There is also documentation of a vertical dance performance on one of his clay slips that is on its way to the web.

After viewing the documentation, Charlie took us on a tour of sites in Davis and nearby.  There wasn't much left of the stencils, but there is still some residue

Lee and I found Charlie engaging and very dedicated to his work.  Charlie's thoroughness of concept, research and sensitivity to his ideas is wonderful."

 

Yup, Alex and I are both casting votes for Charlie as one of our future commissions.

In case you didn't know, we vote between the six members on as much as possible. It is more an ideal than a reality, the group is decidedly not democratic. That is why we go by the term collaborative, as opposed to collective. There is no consensus, no majority wins on most stuff. But, we find that the more we discuss things in trying to find a consensus, the better the project. It was by voting that we chose Nova and Jessica's submissions to EbM and ISEA this past year. Honestly, neither was even on my short list. But each proposal had a member  who loved it, and made a strong case that convinced the rest of us.

As we move forward, EbM is encountering more and more artists who we want to commission. Unfortunately, we only install two or three works a year. This blog, and a new section of the website we're building, one to highlight artists we would like to commission someday, at least allow us to share these amazing artists with you.

Land Art in España

Beautiful drive from Barcelona to Madrid discovered the fantastic "Toro de Osborne"
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_bull#section_1

A slew of new pics from New mexico!

Amy Rose Sampson's photos are online! Woohoo!

Visit Vime's flickr to check them out!

Excerpt 2 from Jessica Segall's film

A Thirsty Person, Having Found A Spring, Stops To Drink, Does Not Contemplate Its Beauty.
Congratulations to Jessica Segall for creating an absolutely sublime and transporting experience alongside I-40 (historic Route 66), projecting a beautiful film on a copper screen iced with milk.

Excerpt 1 from Jessica Segall's film

A Thirsty Person, Having Found A Spring, Stops To Drink, Does Not Contemplate Its Beauty

I was there at the pop-up drive-in outside Moriarty, NM, USA, and there was no way to avoid contemplating the beauty of this film.

A back-up plan is put into action

Eventually, when refrigeration units are damaged in transit, all humans turn to dry iceto freeze their movie screens with a delicious film of milk!

Sun sets on Moriarty and the arctic

as the Pop-Up Drive-In screen slowly ices up. In preparartion for Jessica Segall's film, 
A Thirsty Person, Having Found A Spring, Stops To Drink, Does Not Contemplate Its Beauty

The Pop-Up Drive-In featuring Jessica Segall's film

A Thirsty Person, Having Found A Spring, Stops To Drink, Does Not Contemplate Its Beauty.
Here we have a test run, the arctic sunset at sunset. The screen has not iced over yet, it is just shiny copper.

Segall on ice

DSC07516, a photo by VIME on Flickr.

Salt, sun, and lamination

DSC07306, a photo by VIME on Flickr.

In Valencia County, New Mexico, in the llano southeast of Los Lunas, there is a solar still with instructions for reclaiming water from the air, waiting for you, my friend

Jessica Segall on the big screen

DSC07517, a photo by VIME on Flickr.

The pop-up drive-in, powered by a car, in the pitch black desert of Moriarty, NM, USA. On the right you can see the lights of cars on I-40, historic Route 66...
This was astounding!
Both our projects this year were truly stellar. It was an honor to be a part of Nova and Jessica's installs.

Goodbye Nova

Penultimate airport trip of EbM 02012.
In four hours Amy and I drop off our rental and board our respective flights.
Goodbye ISEA.
Albuquerque, we will return in a year with Scott Oliver and Travis Somerville to install permanent works in our desert retreats.

Zomg! You missed the best film ever!

Jessica Segall's pop-up drive-in outside Moriarty, NM?
OMG! Brilliant barely describes it.
In the cooling desert outside Moriarty; in a field grazed by horses and cows; on a landscape riven with rattlesnakes, ants, beetles, and cacti, a copper screen chilled to freezing was coated in milk, taking on the appearance of an ice floe floating in the sky. Upon its surface flickered the sublime images of Jessica Segall in the arctic. Beautiful.

We have achieved pop up ice drive in

Artifacts from los lunas, build 1.0

Samael, the Don Taco food cart mascot

Nova says farewell to los lunas

Our last morning of water tastings

Morning at the rose house

Projecting

Testing a copper ice screen

For the pop up drive in

Moriarty audience arrives!

Seven four legged art appreciators visited the site today. They were very excited about installation, so excited they could hardly keep themselves from eating it! (Which they did). The little ones name is "Itchy Zuzax"

Three artists and a reporter go into the desert

And drink air from glass clouds

Art a la' Video (ISEA)

Big outdoor screening by Friends of the Orphan Signs.

Best. Painting. Ever.

Deb's dine n drive

Lunch in new mexico

Sunlight focused to a boil

Separating salt from water.

In the distance note Scott Oliver, next year's EbM commissioned artist for a second work here in Los Lunas.

Clouds of glass and mist

Jamie seeding clouds of glass

With water harvested from the air and distilled by the sun

Cloud vessels reign in the desert

That's what the abq newspaper will say when writing about isea2012. Except no reporters have come out here yet.
Nonetheless, the first EbM project of 02012, Nova Jiang and Jamie O'shea's Cloud Vessels, is a huge success.

Thanks to all who made it possible, especially the brave folks who came out to our desert oasis!
Two mornings left to drink water distilled from the desert air of Valencia county, New Mexico. 10am Saturday and Sunday

Life is attracted to water

Cloud making

Yesterday Nova, Patrick, and I drove up to Santa Fe. The wonderful and amazing Patrick Morrissey of Prairie Dog Glass blew five cloud vessels of glass in his shop at Jackalope. Nova directed, and together they crafted a stunning solution to the problem of additive manufactured clouds being lost in the ether.
I'm in Santa Fe now picking up the finished cloud vessels. Woohoo!
In the desert yesterday, Jamie collected our first water with the solar still!
At ten am this morn we will begin serving water from clouds in the midst of the barren llano outside Los Lunas, New Mexico!