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Factory Feature: Betsy Damon
April 9, 2013 - 2:56pm
Betsy Damon is an artist whose work is part of Feminist And…, an exhibition we have on view through May 26. Damon is an environmental artist living
and working in Brooklyn, New York. She received her MFA from Columbia University. In 1985 while camping across the country with her children,
Betsy was moved by the dry riverbeds in Castle Valley, Utah, and decided to
devote her life to the investigation, education, and preservation of the
integrity of water. Six years
later, in 1991, Damon founded Keepers of the Waters. As their mission states, Keepers of the
Waters aims "to inspire and promote projects that combine art, science and
community involvement to restore, preserve and remediate water sources."
For Feminist And… Damon created an enchanting installation in our
basement. Equipped with stones, rocks and running water, Water Rules–Life Pittsburgh: Seeking Lost Rivers, Living Waters of Larimer is an inspirited
work of art that completely transforms the space into a
captivating new environment. Described by Damon as a “river,” this installation is meant to represent
the topography of Pittsburgh. Damon explains that, “Water is the foundation of all life. The Ohio River is the foundation of
Pittsburgh, and this very basement is the foundation of the Mattress
Factory. This installation down in
the basement is a foundation.”
As part of her installation, Damon includes a
video, Living Waters of Larimer. In this video, Damon interviews the
residents of Larimer and talks to them about water in their community. Larimer is a plateau neighborhood in the east
end of Pittsburgh upon which more than 75 million gallons of water falls upon annually. As part of her work here at the Mattress
Factory, Damon also expands her installation to include the work she is doing
in the Larimer community. Damon
poses the question, “What would happen if Larimer was able to collect all their
water?” She then concludes, “They
could have playgrounds with water, fountains, ponds, streams running through,
water for fire, water for the basic street cleaning, and it would all be from
the rain water.” Damon continues
to work with the Larimer green team and district to redesign the infrastructure
of the neighborhood in order to accomplish such goals.
One might ask how an environmentalist such as
Damon ties into our Feminist and…
installation. Damon explains, “The
Earth really is our mother. We
were born in water, and most life is created in water. Water is a generative force on our
planet. For many reasons it has
been really important for me personally to find that generative initiating
impulse of life. And that’s very
female.” Damon also was an
activist during the beginning of the women’s movement and taught a feminist
studio at Cornell University. She led a huge national network for twenty years called No Limits for Women
Artists.
On Saturday, April 20, 2013, Betsy Damon will
be at the Mattress Factory to lead ArtLab: You Are Water. In this ArtLab,
participants will learn about how water creates life, form, your body, plants,
stones, etc. She will demonstrate how to create natural filtration
systems, and participants will make a work of art using a beautiful marbling technique on paper and inspired by the important role water plays in our lives.
POSTED BY CAITLIN
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SCREENINGS: Steven Summers, Empire
April 9, 2013 - 2:53pm
Steven
Summers is a Chicago-based artist originally from Pittsburgh. Summers
studied painting and drawing, receiving an MFA in Film and Video at
the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He now works as a
video instructor for DePaul University and The Chicago Academy for the
Arts. Summers’ works range from traditional narratives to experimental installations. Summers installed a two-channel video, XX/XY, at the museum for our 2002 Gestures series. The piece consisted of two screens--one displaying an old man and one a young woman--at either end of a long corridor. XX/XY played with the notion of a moment in time—two screens staring back at each other.
For the current Screenings exhibition, Summers has created Empire. Empire is a three-hour, digitally manipulated video of an elderly man lying dead on the floor in a living room. How long has the man been lying there? What is actually happening? Is anything happening at all? One might ponder these sorts of questions while standing in front of the large projection screen in the lobby of the Mattress Factory. If you choose to stick around for a few (or several) minutes, you might begin to notice something is, in fact, happening. The room begins to grow lighter, becoming more illuminated as time passes. You might begin to notice the clouds outside the window are slowly floating by. The fern in the background is ever so slightly swaying back and forth. A narrative is unfolding, and it is up to the viewer to fill in the gaps. 
Summers’ Empire is a beautiful homage to Andy Warhol’s 1964 film of the same name. I touched base with Exhibitions Manager, Owen Smith and got his feedback on the new installment. Owen mentions, “It is Summers’ own version of a homage to Warhol, but not in the traditional sense that he is trying to achieve the same things. It is totally different.” Warhol’s film is an eight-hour piece in black and white, and is a single, stationary shot of the Empire State Building. Devoid of anything personal, Warhol’s Empire presents a spectator-viewer of the exterior of an iconic building in New York City. It is a commentary on the passing of time, from dusk to dawn. Warhol lengthened the film from six to eight hours by slowing down the speed from 24 frames per second to 16 frames per second. The point of the film, according to Warhol, is to, “see time go by.” Warhol asks the viewer to be patient, and absorb the changing of time, almost in a religious, meditative state.
Summers’ Empire is also asking the same thing of his viewers; however, Summers’ video is much more personal and more narrative than Warhol’s film. We, the viewer, have a bug's-eye-view of the deceased man. We are helplessly present in the room with him, and we--the viewer--are alive. According to Summers, this could be “both a comment on mortality but also the nature of narrative films. Narrative films, by tradition, work in an artificial time bubble. They cut quickly from scene to scene, and jump from day to day. ‘Boring’ unimportant parts are removed.” Empire is not one of these narrative films. It does not run on its own fictional clock, but runs in the same real time that the viewer experiences. Summers wants the viewer to feel time.
Steven Summers’ Empire will be screening in the lobby of the Mattress Factory during regular museum hours until April 11, 2013. Come by and check it out for yourself!
POSTED BY CAITLIN
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EARTH DAY at the MATTRESS FACTORY
April 9, 2013 - 2:53pm
The
natural world, including human beings, is connected through a sacred
energy. When you walk through the
woods or a beautiful garden you are connected to this wonderful energy. Earth Day helps us to remember this and
to realize that we must protect and take care of our natural environment. Art can represent the spirit and beauty
of the natural world by exactly replicating nature (such as photography
and certain painting processes) or through more conceptual art, representing the spirit or ideas of the artist such as Winifred
Lutz’ Garden at the Mattress Factory. With this in mind, we are planning
plenty of Earth-friendly events to celebrate Earth Day!
Earth Day at
the Mattress Factory will
take place Saturday, April 6, 2013. The museum will host three special events: Backyard
Composting, Water & You: How
Rain Gardens Clean & Protect the Environment and Art Lab: From Herbs to Art.
Backyard
Composting
will be held from 10am to noon. Not sure what to do with your
kitchen, garden and yard scraps? Would you like natural, home-made compost for your lawns and
gardens? Expand your recycling
efforts to include kitchen scraps and yard debris. Nancy Martin-Silver of the Pennsylvania
Resource Council--who taught the Rain Barrel workshop, “Celebrate the Rain!”
last fall--returns to present this workshop. Backyard Composting will cover the importance and benefits of composting,
the process of setting up a compost pile, proper maintenance, and ways of using
finished compost. Participants
will receive an Earth Machine Compost Bin, which is approved across the state as
an ideal bin for urban and suburban areas, and has an eighty-gallon capacity. Registration is required and costs $50 single/$55 couple (includes one compost unit per registration). Sign
up at www.prc.org or call
(412) 488-7490, ext. 226.
Water &
You: How Rain Gardens Clean and
Protect the Environment will follow the
Backyard Composting workshop. Free
with museum admission, Water & You will be hosted by The Urban Gardeners, the local and
creative North Side gardening center and artists. The Urban Gardeners are not strangers to the Mattress
Factory: in 2009, they created a beautiful site-specific living plant installation, Lawn, outside the entrance to 1414 Monterey
Street. We are thrilled
to have them back to lead this interactive demonstration about the significance
of rain gardens and how they aid in naturally protecting our environments. The Urban Gardeners will also discuss what watersheds
are and how they function in rain gardens. The Urban Gardeners will provide useful information about
how to build and maintain your own rain garden so we all can do our part in
saving the environment.
Art Lab:
From Herbs to Art is the final installment of Earth Day at the Mattress Factory and
will take place from 1pm-4pm. This
special ArtLab will be guided by museum educator Rosalind Santavicca. Rosalind will demonstrate the special
technique she uses to create watercolor prints of beautiful herbs, plants and
flowers. Participants will be able to pick from
a selection of herbs, or use leaves from plants in the Mattress Factory’s own
urban garden. This is a fun project that can be done at home with your
friends and family as well! ArtLab is free with museum admission.
POSTED BY CAITLIN
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"Screenings"—Q&A with Owen Smith, Exhibitions Manager
April 9, 2013 - 2:51pm
Screenings is a new exhibition in the
Mattress Factory’s lobby at 500 Sampsonia Way. The “screenings” are being created specifically for the
space by six different artists from the U.S. and Canada. Already underway, each artist’s video
will be shown for two weeks, the series ending May 23. I tracked down Owen Smith, Exhibitions Manager,
for a chat about the series.
CAITLIN HARPSTER: How did Screenings come to fruition?
OWEN SMITH: We have had special occasion screenings in the past at the Mattress
Factory, and we have this big, lovely screen, which is an
under-utilized opportunity. I wanted to have something on the screen all day for
the general public to see, so I took inspiration from our Gestures series and invited artists to do something quick and dirty, low budget…a
gesture. The screenings are meant to be
immediate works, more like loose sketches, and in doing so, the artist is
forced to experiment and take risks, perhaps creating something that is different from their
overarching perception of their own work.
I gave everyone carte blanche to do whatever they wanted—to
program that screen, basically. I didn’t have any preconceptions of what I
wanted them to do. I had only two stipulations: I asked that they create
something new, and that whatever they created be silent.
CH: How did you choose the artists to showcase?
OS: I really wanted artists who came from all different types of
background in video. For instance,
Stamatis Marinos works primarily with documentary film. Tzarinas of the Plane
are performance artists. Matthew Biederman creates computer-generated video
installations. Carrie Schneider is a wonderful photographer. I invited a
diverse group of artists in hopes that they create something outside of what
they are used to creating.
CH: Can you talk about the first work of the screening series,
Stamatis Marinos’ regeneration?
OS: Stamatis’ background is in documentary film. I was very pleased
that he went outside his normal practice and created something more
experimental. Stamatis took a clip from
the Internet and appropriated it. He wanted time-lapse footage of something
growing and dying. The two mushrooms shown on the screen were out of sync with
each other as they grew and died. It was a very touching little narrative
within the film. The individual grids on the screen were also out of sync with
each other. What I found most interesting was that while it was silent, it was
the equivalent of a musical round. When you sing a round, you are out of sync
individually, but as a whole there is a beautiful rhythm that is created. The
same goes for regeneration. It is a different experience depending upon how
you focus your attention on it.
CH: Tzarinas of the Plane are currently screening their work now. What
are your thoughts on their creation?
OS: Tzarinas of the Plane created two films, essentially. The first
one, Mediation on the Making of Madness is a documentation of the two of them
in free form—how they come up with their costumes and the process of how they
work together. I wasn’t expecting
that at all, but I was very pleased that they focused on that part of their
artistic process. The second part, Ping-pong, is really interesting, especially
devoid of sound. It is accelerated to a speed that, paired with its
silence, appears very Charlie Chaplin-like. And I like the run around the
table and never actually playing ping-pong. They obviously like to have fun.
Last Saturday, Tzarinas of the Plane came to the Mattress Factory for a special performance called, Bag
Animals. Every spring in the artists' home of Detroit, plastic shopping bags will slowly appear as the snow melts. In their performance, Tzarinas of the Plane wore costumes made entirely of plastic shopping bags and acted like animals. Sometimes they were
orangutans, sometimes squirrels, sometimes raccoons. At the very end
of the performance they switched personae and started to beautifully play a
concertina and sing opera. It was great. The best part is that I had no plan
for Screenings to include live performance. It was just something that happened
though the process of working with the artists.
CH: What can we expect from the upcoming artists?
OS: I am really not sure. That is the point, as well as the fun of it.
So far I have had a documentary filmmaker create an experimental work, and two
performers create a documentary work. Anything can happen.
The next Screenings installment, by Steve Summers, will debut Friday, March 29 and run through Thursday, April 11, 2013. For
more information on Screenings please visit the Mattress Factory’s website.
POSTED BY CAITLIN
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MANDY YOUNG, Marketing Manager
April 9, 2013 - 2:44pm
Extra-Curricular Interests
I enjoy web-based collections acquisitions (read: online shopping), devouring British period pieces, whipping up culinary creations with none of the proper ingredients, and continuing my life-long quest for the perfect sweatshirt.
What artists are currently in heavy rotation on your iPod?
MGMT, Moody Blues, Eric Clapton, Fleetwood Mac
If you could bring two things with you to a deserted island, what would they be?
I suppose I should say, "my fiance," and something practical like, "bottled water." But if we're playing make-believe let's say a swarthy pirate and an unlimited supply of fair-trade coffee.
If you could have dinner with one person from history, who would it be and why?
My grandfather. Also Frank Lloyd Wright, because cantilevers.
One more thing we should know about you:
I have an unhealthy obsession with ridding the world of grammatical errors. I also do not like sweet drinks or mean people. I do, however, like mean drinks and sweet people.
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MARIA MANGANO, Visitor Services Coordinator
April 9, 2013 - 2:42pm
Extra-Curricular Interests
Bicycling, clarinet, natural history, making high-pitched noises at photos of cute cats on the internet
What artists are currently in heavy rotation on your iPod?
Don Byron; The Bad Plus; Chamber Music Northwest & David Shifrin playing the Brahms Clarinet Quintet
If you could bring two things with you to a deserted island, what would they be?
A pocket knife, and my husband--he's good at the wilderness survival thing, so he could build us a shelter while I go birdwatching
If you could have dinner with one person from history, who would it be and why?
Marie Skłodowska-Curie. She was an incredible scientist and a true trailblazer for women - the first woman to win a Nobel, the only person to win in multiple sciences, the first female professor at the University of Paris - I could go on. Her pride in her heritage (she used her Polish maiden name professionally), her defiance of prevailing wisdom concerning the ability of women, and her dedication to her career have inspired me since childhood.
One more thing we should know about you:
I taught myself Quenya (the Elvish language and alphabet from Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings) in high school. It gave me some nerd cred for Carnegie Mellon.
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