Friday, June 29, 2012

27th Annual Sculpture Celebration

 
Mark your calendars now for the 27th Annual Sculpture Celebration - September 8, 2012 at the lovely Broyhill Walking Park!  (Friday, September 7th set-up 10am-7pm & "Blue Jeans Preview Dinner" (casual buffet) 7-8:30pm with comments from Judge Gerald Bolas; Saturday, September 8 setup 7am-9am; open to the public 9am-4pm; judging occurs 9am-3pm with awards announced about 3:30pm).

http://www.caldwellarts.com/178-sculpture-celebration/

Awards:
$2,500 First Place Award
$2,000 Second Place Award
$1,500 Third Place Award
$1,000 Fourth Place Award
$500 Judge’s Awards (6 Awards)
$500 People’s Choice Award


Judge: Jerry Bolas, Executive Director, City of Raleigh Arts Commission

Over the course of thirty-five years Jerry Bolas directed three art museums, including the Ackland Art Museum at the UNC-Chapel Hill, the Portland Art Museum (Oregon), and the Gallery of Art at Washington University in St. Louis (now the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum). He organized numerous exhibitions, including two with international teams of scholars: Ketav: Flesh and Word in Israeli Art, 1996, and Paris in Japan: The Japanese Encounter with European Painting, 1987. At all three museums he advanced community engagement through collaborations across institu-tional, regional, and national networks, and he nurtured both formal and lifelong learning in and out of the museums through programs like the Ackland’s Five Faiths Project, which was recognized as a national model. In 2006, Bolas launched a consulting business to serve museums, commu-nity arts organizations, and academic institutions. Clients included Clemson University, the South-eastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), the NC Department of Cultural Resources, the Arts Council of Winston-Salem/Forsyth County, the Ackland Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Religious Art at St. Louis University, and the Raleigh Arts Commission. As a visiting scholar in the American Studies Department at UNC-Chapel Hill, in 2008 Bolas taught a course entitled Electrify-ing Art! focused on art that employs televisions, lighting fixtures, computers, and other electrical and digital apparatus for artistic expression. In December 2011, Bolas became executive director of the Raleigh Arts Commission, where he currently collaborates with the 12 city council-appointed commissioners, city staff, community arts leaders and artists to envision and deliver arts for all residents of Raleigh. Bolas has a Ph.D. in American art from the City University of New York and a M.A. in medieval art from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

TH Broyhill Walking Park, Lenoir, NC 28645
TH Broyhill Walking Park
Lenoir, NC 28645 

Caldwell Arts Council
P O Box 1613
Lenoir NC 28645

Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Koumaria 2012 Residency Open Call

 

October 8th – 21st, 2012

By artist collective Medea Electronique

http://www.medeaelectronique.com/

Deadline July 15th 2012

Since 2009 the artist collective Medea Electronique has organized an annual 10-day experimental artist residency, Koumaria, near Sparta in Greece, focusing on improvisation and new media practices.  Avant-garde artists from all over the world, inspired by the Greek natural landscape, come together to create a multicultural and cross-media ‘dialogue’ culminating in a collective presentation in Athens at the end of the residency. Past residents have formed lasting friendships and new artistic partnerships.  For us the residency serves as a model for future creative collaborations.

The residency is held at an organic olive oil farm at the foot of Mount Taigetos in Sparta. The base for the residency, a modern and comfortable house, features dormitory-style bedrooms, large and comfortable common rooms (featuring fireplaces and magnificent views of the surrounding mountains and fields), two primary spaces for project development and practice, terraces, rooftop overlooks, and a large and modern kitchen.  (A second building is being constructed which may be ready for this year’s residency.) The surrounding hills, mountains, villages and the not too distant sea, coupled with a vast expanse of sky, stars, and ever-changing mountain vistas, afford the residents amble space and opportunity for creative work.  Meals are taken communally, with an emphasis on fresh and local produce and traditional recipes. In this environment artists not only have the chance to live and work together interacting with the Greek landscape, but also to trade their experiences concerning everyday life and culture.  Chores are undertaken collectively, but there is ample time for residents to work, create, explore the surroundings and enter into new artistic partnerships.

The residency is held in cooperation with the Onassis Cultural Centre (http://www.sgt.gr/en), who will host the performance of the residency results as part of a major international 3 day event entitled Across the Great Divide—Creative Human—Machine Improvisations.  This event will feature workshops, lectures, performances and demonstrations by many of the leading artist/theorists working in the field of human—machine artistic interactions, including George Lewis, Pauline Oliveros, Evan Parker.  Residents will have the unique opportunity to participate in this event, and interact with these, and other, participating artists.

Accordingly, the theme of the residency this year is Machine-Human Improvisational Interactions, and applicants to the residency are requested to submit with their application a project description that speaks to this theme, and evidence of prior work undertaken in this area.  We construe the theme broadly, and it raises a number of questions that residents may want to pursue   How do machine-human improvisations reveal features of what improvisation itself is, or could be?  What do such interactions tell us about what it is to be human, or to be a machine?  How might we remain humanists as artists yet embrace new technologies and their potentials?  Can machines help us overcome artistic limitations, or do they create new ones?  Are new modes of improvisation suggested by software and hardware systems?  Have the use of new technologies in art changed the notion of what a body is, or what a machine is?  How can we integrate new technologies into art that focuses on nature and the environment?  Is a new age of improvisations powered by machines potentially freeing, or stultifying–should we be excited by the possibilities, or worried by what might follow?

We invite applications from artists working across the spectrum of new media arts (musicians, dancers-performers, video artists, photographers, e.t.c.) to participate in the residency.  We will select up to 6 participants  from the applications received.  We are excited by the fact that innovative artist Miya Masaoka will be in attendance for the end of the residency to both work with the residents, and participate in the collective work.  It is possible that other guest artists may “drop in” during the course of the residency.

Medea Electronique, being an eclectic art collective, is interested in people from diverse cultural and artistic backgrounds.  Past residents have come from a variety of artistic backgrounds, and from numerous countries.  While assorted nationalities and ethnicities have been represented, the common language of the residency is English (although fluency is not necessary, an ability to interact with other artists in English is necessary).

The residency provides:

A.In terms of hospitality

1)    transportation from Athens to the residency and back.
2)    housing and food supplies in Sparta
3)    Internet connection while in Sparta residency
4)    housing in Athens during the presentations

While there are few expenses the residents need to consider while at the residency, it is worth having some funds for trips to local cafes and the like.

Notes:
Rooms, Bathrooms in Sparta are shared
Cooking and cleaning the house during our stay is undertaken collectively
B. In terms of equipment

1) A Mac Pro with Logic and Final Cut, assorted plugins
2) A 32-channel digital mixing desk, high-end monitoring (8 Channel Diffusion Set UP)
3)  A range of studio microphones and sound processors
4)  2 digital recorders (Olympus LS11, Tascam HD2)

Notes: You ought to bring your own equipment/instrument and computers

We do not provide…  Unfortunately no artist fee is to be given for the presentations/performances.  Residents are also responsible for their own transportation to and from Athens.

Paperwork to submit


1)     A participation form (Download Here)
2)    A personal statement saying why you want to participate.
This statement should speak to this year’s theme.
3)    A small sample of your individual  work (site, demo, pictures etc)
4)    First draft ideas for projects related to this year’s theme
5)     Your C.V.

Please read the Terms and Conditions before applying

Please submit all inquiries preferable online at

info@medeaelectronique.com

or at (Please only regular Post)

Manolis Manousakis
Feidiou 11 Gerakas
15344
Greece