Summer Street Fair
Last night the Summer Street Association of Merchants (SSAM) hosted the first Summer Street Fair and it was a tremendous success! The weather had been miserable earlier in the day, but by late afternoon the rain was gone and we had a beautiful evening, with hundreds and hundreds of visitors to our lovely street. There were games, magicians, lots of food, and music by the Dammit Band. Above, Abbi demonstrates Lumens to the nuns of Saint Stanislaus Church.
Congratulations to the Summer Street Association of Merchants who worked so hard to make this event happen.
- Marianne
Arduino Workshop at Greylock Arts
As part of Networked Realities:(Re)Connecting the Adamses, our collaboration with Turbulence and MCLA Gallery51, we had the extraordinary privilege of having Tom Igoe (ITP Professor, Physical Computing Guru, author of Making Things Talk, and member of the Arduino Development Team, run an Arduino workshop here at Greylock Art. It was a great and inspiring afternoon. Thanks, Tom!!
-Marianne & Matt
Thanks to Roy Thompson
Very special thanks to Roy Thompson who had Matt, Sean, Ven, and myself on his NBCTC cable show, Hardline to talk about Lumens, Networked Realities: (Re)Connecting the Adamses and DownStreetArt. We had a great time. And special thanks to Paul Marino for keeping the video and audio signals going.
To learn more about NBCTC and it’s programming, visit it’s website.
-Marianne
DownStreetArt Press Conference
Yesterday we participated in a press conference at MCLA Gallery 51 to officially announce DownStreetArt, an initiative to open four new galleries in North Adams, Massachusetts for the 2008 summer tourist season.
• 107 Main Street, the new home of North Adams Co-Op Gallery
• 73 Main Street, the new home of Maya III by Jarvis Rockwell
• 61 Main Street, the new home of Lumens by Ven Voisey, Matthew Belanger and Sean Riley, part of Networked Realities: (Re)Connecting the Adamses
• 28 Holden Street, the new home of Primary Secondary Volumes 1 & 2, curated by Denise Markonish and featuring 24 of the drafts people working on the Sol Lewitt retrospective at MASS MoCA.
DownStreetArt opens June 26th and runs through October 31st and is sure to be incredibly exciting. While Lumens officially opens on July 10th, we will have a preview of it on June 26th.
Thanks to everyone who is making this possible!
-Marianne
Welcome Abbi Hermosa
We are so excited to have Abbi Hermosa join us at Greylock Arts for the summer. Abbi is part of the B-HIP Internship Program. and has already been doing an incredible job with our upcoming Lumens installation and the Summer Street Merchants Association Website. Abbi is even keeping her own blog about her experiences here in the Northern Berkshires. If you stop by Greylock Arts please wave hello to Abbi.
- Marianne
SoBRO TEC Final Presentations
This evening I had the pleasure of attending the end-of-year SoBRO TEC final presentations. SoBRO TEC is an NSF funded program and a collaboration between three organizations – SoBRO, Vision Education & Media and Columbia University’s Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS). I’ve attended the student presentations every year and have seen amazing projects using Cricket Robotics, Google SketchUp and more.
This semester the students worked with sustainability and cardboard carpentry.
Students visited the Adaptive Design Association, which builds adaptive equipment for children with disabilities out of readily available materials, such as cardboard. They’re an incredible organization. Adaptive Design founder, Alex Truesdell, and staff member Lille Troelstrup, attended this evening’s presentations and both were really impressed with the student work.
In the photo above students Victor Filpo, Franchell Polanco, Timothy Nwachukwu, and Gio Madden present their projects, which include a cardboard coffee table, a cardboard lamp, and even a cardboard couch that can support the weight of several people. Also seen in the photos are their incredible instructors, Myoshi Primo, SoBRO Youth Worker and Eduardo Bringas, Technology Mentor.
Congratulations to all the students, faculty and staff on tremendous work.
- Marianne
Storefront Artist Project Art Circus!
Last night we attended the Storefront Artist Project’s Art Circus in Pittsfield. It was a super fun evening full of art, circus acts, performances, and great Mexican food from Ponchos. As you can see, our good friend Jonathan Secor, Director of Special Programs at MCLA, got a little face paint.
Congrats to the Storefront Artist Project!
M&M
Eclipse Mill, Berkshire Salon Opening Reception
Congratulations to the Eclipse Mill Gallery (North Adams). Last night was the opening reception for its first annual Berkshire Salon. Over 48 artists, both local and regional, participated. Many people turned out for the opening event. It’s a great show. Congratulations to the organizers and exhibiting artists.
-Marianne
Opening Event - Being There: A Geocoded Landscape
Thanks to all the artists and friends who attended last night’s opening of Being There: A Geocoded Landscape. Despite the cool weather and rain at the start of this Memorial Day Weekend, we had a great crowd ready to enjoy the start of summer.
- Marianne
Adams Historical Society Annual Meeting
This past weekend we attended the Adams Historical Society Annual Meeting, which took place on the second floor of the historic Adams Public Library.
If you’ve never been to the second floor of the library I heartily recommend it. It was built as a Civil War Memorial and is a beautiful site to behold with incredible original details. In fact, take a look at the chairs in the photo above — we were sitting in original chairs that were in fact used by Civil War veterans.
The meeting was led by Historical Society President Eugene Michalenko. After attending to organizational business, members of the Board made presentations from the Society’s collection — from quilts and bridesmaid dresses, to vintage postcards, historic trunks, and pieces made by the American Zylonite Company.
It was a fascinating afternoon and we look forward to working with the Historical Society as part of Networked Realities: (Re)Connecting the Adamses.
- Marianne
CATA's Greatest Hits: 15th Anniversary Performance and Gala
Last night we attended the CATA (Community Access to the Arts) 15th Anniversary Performance and Gala at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox.
Community Access to the Arts is a non-profit arts organization that provides over 1,000 visual and performing arts workshops for hundreds of individuals with physical and/or developmental disabilities in the area.
The highlight of the evening was an extraordinary performance filled with singing, juggling, tapdancing, music, movement, and Shakespeare.
Congratulations to all the performers and to everyone at CATA!
- Matt and Marianne
New York Comicon
It was a busy weekend with New York Comic Con.
Highlights included Matt having a lovely chat and getting a signed limited edition print of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from Turtles co-creator and North Adams native Peter Laird, and Marianne moderating a panel of Scott McCloud and Douglas Rushkoff.
For more information re: Comic Con visit the New York Comic Con website.
- Marianne
Thanks, John Mitchell!
We want to thank John Mitchell of the North Adams Transcript for writing such a lovely profile about us and Greylock Arts in yesterday’s Transcript.
We always read his column (and his blog!) and it really is an honor to have him write a piece about us. Thank you!
If you haven’t seen it, here is a link to the full article in The North Adams Transcript.
And, if you haven’t seen John and Jana’s work, you really should check out Shuffleboil.com.
- Marianne
First Annual ROBOFEST NYC
We participated in Vision Ed Inc’s first annual ROBOFEST, which was a day-long event for youth celebrating the world of creative robotics.
Robofest was a collaboration of Vision, the Sony Wonderlab, with additional sponsorship from MAKE magazine.
The atrium was filled with robotic wonders at the Young Inventors Expo, and then teams took the stage for the Dancing with the Robostars competition.
It was a pretty amazing day. Congratulations to Vision Ed. Inc. and thanks to our friends at Sony Wonderlab and MAKE Magazine for making it happen!
-Marianne
Programmable Media II
Our friends at Turbulence, in collaboration with the Pace Digital Gallery, sponsored a one day symposium examining the current and future possibilities of network-enabled music.
Based on the rapidly expanding archive of music and sound experiments to be found on the Networked_Music_Review and the fifteen short works recently commissioned, the symposium aimed to stimulate critical discussion on emerging art and sound art practice.
I was only able to attend the first half of the program (which was also broadcast into Second Life) but sat in a fascinating round table discussion with artists: Peter Traub who presented his MySpace based work, ITSpace; Dan Trueman of PLOrk, the Princeton Laptop Orchestra; Sawako Kato, creator of 2.4GHz Space; Zach Layton, creator of the Network Sonification Project; and Jason Freeman, whose Graph Theory work is currently featured in our Turbulent Works exhibit.
It was a fascinating discussion, and I was sorry to miss the afternoon’s roundtable, which included LoVid, Tobias van Veen, and Adam Nash.
I definitely plan on spending time at all their sound works online.
-Marianne
6,000,000 Memories
Our storefront windows will feature the artwork and poetry of many students from the Housatonic Academy for the next couple weeks. The work, a product of historic research, assignments, and discussions by the students reflects on the 6,000,000 Jewish people killed in World War II by the Nazis. The students have a goal of collecting 6 million pennies to honor victims of the Holocaust. Money raised will fund a trip to Washington, D.C., to see the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. For more information, or to make a donation call The Housatonic Academy at 413-499-7924, ext. 133.
-Matt
Mixed Realities: An International Networked Art Exhibition
Last night we attended the opening reception of an exciting networked art exhibit at the Huret & Spector Gallery at Emerson College in Boston. Mixed Realities, as the exhibit is called, features works curated by Jo-Anne Green and commissioned by Turbulence with funds from the Warhol Foundation. Included works merge real and virtual worlds to produce new environments where physical and digital objects can co-exist and interact in real-time. Mixed Realities links and overlays the Huret & Spector Gallery (Boston), Turbulence.org, and Ars Virtua (Second Life).
Included Artists / Works:
CATERWAUL
by Pierre Proske, with technical assistance from Artem Baguinski and Brigit Lichtenegger
Imaging Beijing
by John (Craig) Freeman
NO MATTER
by Scott Kildall and Victoria Scott
Remote
by Neill Donaldson, Usman Haque, Ai Hasegawa, Georg Tremmel
The Vitruvian World
by Michael Takeo Magruder, Drew Baker and David Steele
-Matt
Todd Holoubek Shows Students From St. Stan's His Work
Students from St. Stan’s made a visit to Greylock Arts for a sneak preview of Artist Todd Holoubek‘s new exhibit Everybody Wins (Hoora!, Hoora!, Hoora!). Todd took the students through each of the pieces in his solo exhibit, explaining his motives for each one. Then the students where encouraged to explore and interact with the show on their own.
The opening reception followed a few hours later. Thanks to everyone who stopped by!
-Matt
The Community Gallery at Net Beans Cafe
Greylock Arts welcomes a new art venue and cafe to Adams. Located at 43 Park St. Net Beans features a warm environment for coffee, tea, a small treat, and a good conversation. WiFi internet access is available to customers and computers are available for rental. Colorfully bold floral paintings by Joanna Gabler and wistful photographs of rusty industrial equipment by Michael Miller adorn the walls at this time. Future shows will be curated by Richard Harrington, an artist we will be featuring in an upcoming exhibit of our own. The gallery currently has an open call to artists interested in showing their work in the space. We wish Net Beans the best of luck, and look forward to their upcoming exhibits. It’s great to have another active presence in the growing arts community here in the northern Berkshires.
-Matt
ITP 2007 Winter Show
I recently attended the New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, Interactive Telecommunications Program’s 2007 Winter Show. ITP shows are always a wildly mixed bag consisting of physical computing projects, networked objects, assistive technology devices, live 3-D, audio, and video manipulation, sustainable energy practice, social and participatory media, and that’s really just scratching the surface. Pictured above artist Rory Nugent (left) demonstrates his work, Electronic Copy (Infrared Detector Cloud). For a detailed account of some of the show highlights read my article on Berkshire Fine Arts.
-Matt
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