Prismatic Landscape

artists: MiLa

The Prismatic Lightscape at Occidental Park is a spatial experience that transforms its surrounding environment into a lively and welcoming public place.  Rather than an object or individual performance piece, theLightscape acts as a backdrop below the canopy of the park’s London Plane trees to the brick clad ground plane, totems and art as well as daytime activities.

MiLa is a collaboration of urban activism by Jennifer Milliron and Edward Lalonde which originated through a series of architectural and spatial investigations of the city condition.  Born in Yakima, Jennifer received a Bachelor of Architecture from Washington State University in 1999 and a Masters Degree in Advanced Architecture from Columbia University in 2006.  While in New York, she worked for Daniel Libeskind on Zlota 44 in Warsaw and Reflections at Keppel Bay in Singapore.  She currently works at the office of NBBJ Architecture.  Edward works for Olson Kundig Architects and is Project Architect on the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, The West Chelsea Scramble Tower and residential projects. He received a Bachelor of Architecture from Washington State University in 1999 and a Masters Degree in Advanced Architecture from Columbia University in 2003. While in New York, he worked for Steven Holl on the Linked Hybrid in Beijing, Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City and the Department of Philosophy at NYU, New York. Jennifer and Edward co-taught Design Studio at Washington State University. They are both Fellows of the Northwest Institute of Architecture and Urban Studies (NIAUSI) where they are developing a project titled VERTICAL CITY: Seattle.

Jun 20, 2010 — Aug 31, 2010

categories: contemporary, installation, design

Celebration and Fanfare

artists: Celeste Cooning

Visual artist Celeste Cooning is currently invested in the medium of cut-paper. Using Tyvek, a paper-like plastic fiber, allows for strength and durability in constructing large-scale indoor and outdoor installations. A vocabulary of stylized, amorphic shapes, rooted in the history of ornamentation, solicits varied response from the viewing public. These shapes cascade down from the trees in Occidental Square Park provoking sensations of grandeur and awe.

Jul 12, 2010 — Aug 31, 2010

categories: sculpture, installation, design

Occidental Square Tea House

artists: Christopher Ezzell

Christopher Ezzell, with help from the Seattle Branch of the Urasenke Foundation, will create a freestanding and portable tea house in Occidental Park using recycled 2-liter plastic bottles.  The tea house is a demonstration/performance piece following the Japanese tradition of Chanoyu (tea ceremony).

In the spirit of a traditional tea house, this tea house is a light ephemeral structure, so that, while inside, one’s senses are heightened.  Natural and urban vibrations, wind, sounds of people and cars, light and smell will filter into the space.  Here we will experience a focus of the here and now, not seek to block them 

Traditional tea ceremonies will only occur at Noon and 5:30PM

Christopher Ezzell, AIA, is an architect and a student of tea.  After graduating Rhode Island School of Design, Chris practiced architecture in New York City for fifteen years, then moved to Seattle. In 2004 Chris founded e workshop, an architecture and design studio on Vashon Island. He has studied Japanese garden design at the Kyoto University of Art and Design and in Seattle serves as a member of the advisory council for the Japanese Garden at the Washington Park Arboretum. He is a devoted student of tea at the Urasenke Foundation Seattle Branch

Aug 04, 2010 — Aug 07, 2010

categories: contemporary, mixed-media, installation

Walk in the Park

artists: Jonelle Johnson

"Walk in the Park" provides imagery to enrich the perspective of the park pedestrian, allowing the viewer to make emotional correlations between images of flora and fauna and the surrounding environment.  Freestanding panels will bisect a portion of the park as a kind of sculpture, encouraging the viewer to take in the images from all angles and to stop to reflect on the natural environment.

Jonelle Johnson received a MFA in painting and printmaking from the University of Hawaii in 1977.  She lived in Seattle before moving to Lopez Island in 2005 where she built a printmaking studio.  Jonelle works in the etching and monotype/print mediums, using photopolymer film for some plates.  Her preference for imagery is predominantly boats and birds, usually in a serial form in which harmony and contrast are major issues.

Aug 09, 2010 — Aug 15, 2010

categories: contemporary, multimedia, painting, drawing, installation

Risking to Take Care of a Place

artists: Ben Waterman

For one week, Ben Waterman will make the limits of Occidental Park his primary place of existence.  During the day, he will look and study.  At night, he will build a visual record of the connections that he made during the day through creating thin raw clay lines between the points.  These lines will be almost unnoticeable at first, however, as the day sand the project progresses, these efforts in their accumulation, will become apparent.  These created connections will also be documented through photography and posted on a website mapping my movements, observations, and efforts creating a permanent record of Ben’s actions.

Ben Waterman is a Seattle based artist who graduated from the University of Washington with an MFA in ceramics in 2009.  Ben's projects are influenced by his work as an organic farmer in Olympia, his travels abroad and domestic, and the study of political philosophy at Whitman College.

Aug 16, 2010 — Aug 22, 2010

categories: contemporary, installation

Windmap of Occidental Park

artists: Michelle Arab

Before modern-day weather forecasting was available to us, wind chimes were often used by farmers, sailors and loggers to provide short-term predications of what to expect based on wind direction and speed.  Re-interpreting this notion of the wind chime, Michelle Arab will place small bells of varying sized and tones on the upper branches of all the trees within and surrounding the park.  Barely seen, the subtle sounds of the bells will be an audio map of the wind through the square.  For those who listen or are aware of the project, they will hear how wind moves through the park and can note changes over the course of the day

The relationship and integration of art, nature, and the built environment is the primary focus in Michelle’s work.  Conceptually driven, yet grounded with the practical knowledge of working in public spaces as a landscape architect, Michelle’s work aims to tell latent stories through site specific work that engages people with phenomenological experiences such as movement, light and/or sound

Aug 23, 2010 — Sep 26, 2010

categories: contemporary, installation

Heat Transfer

artists: Britta Johnson

"Heat Transfer" is an investigation of the economy of homelessness.  A coin-operated barrel fire will be temporarily installed in the park as the weather gets colder and the days grow shorter.  The "fire" is a projected light effect, providing no actual heat, and the collected coins are donated to an organization serving Seattle's homeless population.

(The barrell will only be on display between the hours of  6-11PM)

Britta Johnson has been doing stop-motion animation in Seattle for more than 10 years; she makes short films and video installations and has directed music videos for bands including Lusine, Andrew Bird, and Minus the Bear.  Her films and collaborations with musicians (Mirah and Spectratone Int’l, Robin Holcomb) have shown in places including Seattle’s Henry Art Gallery, Northwest Film Forum and Giant Magnet; the PICA’s TBA festival, the Walker Art Center, MassMoCA, and the Boston MFA.  Her recent work includes Crashing Waves, a short film that incorporates time-lapse photography with animation, and Communiqué, a sculptural collaboration with glass artist Christopher McElroy

Sep 02, 2010 — Aug 26, 2010

categories: contemporary, multimedia, sculpture, installation

Open Air Performance Series

artists: Stimulate Dance

he Open Air Performance Series brings dance, comedy, physical theater, and music into Occidental Park.  Stimulate Dance will transform the park into art, and the art becomes a communal experience rather than a spectacle in which viewed and viewer are cut off from each other.  They will create a temporary comfortable place to relax and watch the show that is not private but gives a sense of enclose – with chairs, inflatable furniture, hanging lights, and curtain “walls”.

Both performances are at Noon.

Sep 08, 2010 — Sep 09, 2010

category: contemporary

Red

artists: Joan Laage

Red is a 2-hour-long performance art piece commenting on the role, importance and attachment to the buildings that compose our urban environment.  The principal theme revolves around our decisions, and the emotions accompanying them, to keep or demolish old buildings.  What is the significance or historical buildings in general?  Should we fight to keep history alive in this way?  Or give way to modern and, perhaps, practical developments?  What is the role of memory in our appreciation and valuing the past?  What changes are we willing to accept and what changes would we like to see happen in our lifetime?

September 20, 11:30AM

Joan Laage (Kogut Butoh) studied under Butoh masters Ohno Kazuo and Ashikawa Yoko, and performed with Ashikawa’s group Gnome while living in Tokyo in the late 1980s.   From 1991 to 2002, her company Dappin’ Butoh performed regularly in Seattle including Allegro! Dance Festival, New City/New Dance and the Fringe Theater Festivals.  As a soloist Joan performed in the Cleveland Performance Art Festival, the New York, Portland, Chicago and Paris butoh festivals and at several festivals in South Korea.  She is featured in Sondra Horton Fraleigh’s book Dancing Into Darkness: Butoh Zen & Japan.  Joan directed Operation Theater: body under the knife in 2009 supported by a grant from the City of Seattle Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs.  

Sep 20, 2010 — Sep 20, 2010

categories: contemporary, mixed-media

A Continuity of Parks

artists: Michael McCrea, Nicolas Varchausky, Tivon Rice

A Continuity of Parks integrates sounds, echoes and images of Occidental Park with real-time audio and video performance.  As in Cortázar’s short story, the audience is led from the perspective of a peripheral observer to an active participant.  The sounds and images of the park are transformed through audio and video, gathered and played back in real-time.  This ongoing reflection of the space culminates with a group of artists performing the collected material.

October 7 - at Dusk

Michael McCrea is an artist working at the intersections of sound, light and movement, in both composed and live environments. Working primarily with spatial sound as his investigative medium, he creates systems of perpetual change and reorientation. Incorporating elements of video, sensing and control systems, dance, haptic interaction and acoustics, his work strives for sensorial immersion and spatial transformation. Michael is currently a research scientist at the University of Washington's Center for Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) investigating new interaction methods and spatial and hyper-directional sound.

Nicolás Varchausky (Buenos Aires, 1973) has a Degree in Electro-acoustic Composition at the University of Quilmes (Argentina), where he works as an assistant professor and directs P.A.I.S. (Project Art In Situ-Acoustic Theatre Program-UNQ), a research project on the musical relations between space, sound, speech and memory. His artistic production includes electronic and instrumental music compositions, interdisciplinary projects in public spaces, sound art performances and interactive art installations. He is currently a PhD candidate in Art and Technology at DXARTS (Center for the Digital Arts and Experimental Media, University of Washington, Seattle, USA).

Tivon Rice (b. 1978) is a Seattle-based artist and PhD student at the University of Washington's Center for Digital Art and Experimental Media.  His current research is focused on the transformation of video in physical space through digital media, real-time video, and kinetic sculptural installation. Tivon began his exploration of image and form at the University of Colorado, where he received a BFA in both Electronic Media and Sculpture (2000).  He continued these investigations in the University of Washington's masters program in sculpture, during which time he began his studies in experimental video with.  Since earning his MFA in 2006 Tivon has received numerous local and national awards including the Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA Grant and the Artist Trust Fellowship, and has exhibited extensively with solo shows throughout the northwest and group shows in Los Angeles, New York, and Miami.  In 2007 he taught experimental video as a visiting artist at DXARTS and formally began his PhD studies.

Oct 07, 2010 — Oct 07, 2010

categories: contemporary, multimedia, photography, installation