lighting design at the PHCA

This past November I had the opportunity to create a lighting design for, Strangers from a Strange Land, a Salt Lake City tour to The Packing House Center for the Arts in Denver, Colorado. The show was curated by Matt Beals of emerging dance and performance artists: Anderson, Emily Terndrup, Becca Dean, Mallory Rosenthal, Patrick Barnes, Kitty Sailer, & Lisha Nie. Thank you all for the photos.

A revelation along the Pathways

After the second showing of the Pathways series at the Packing House Center for Arts I quickly saw that I had not sculpformed Pathways II twice, but had actually sculpformed Pathways II & III.

So for documentation purposes and for simple clarification:


Pathways I, the first in the series debuting at Fort Lewis College in the Gallery on September 4th in Durango, Colorado. ( 2 photos below, both taken by LeAnn Brubaker)

Pathways II, the second in the series debuting at the Packing House Center for the Arts on October 8th in Denver, Colorado. ( 2 photos below, both taken by Barbara Charter)

































Pathways III, the third in the series at the Packing House Center for the Arts on October 9th in Denver, Colorado. (photos above, both taken by Tom Murray)



































I look forward to the next development in the series. I would like to expand the piece durationally and further explore the pulling deeper in the viewpoints of the work.

Thank you to all who came along one of the Pathways.

Anticipate:

• More Photos from Pathways I, II and III
• An Announcement for Pathways IV
• The release of an original and actual Newsletter
• A new work

Peer Theatre Project

Co-Directing the Peer Theatre Project with Kathryn Moller and working with the talented writer, Desiree Henderson at Durango, Colorado's liberal arts college proved to be a rewarding and challenging experience.

Working with the actors collaboratively in first an improvisational than compositional setting allowed us to develop material for the production in an organic and research driven way. We were writing performance as we investigated and rehearsed different forms.

The vision for the piece was to empower incoming first-year freshman's percpetual abilities rather than control their perspectives. We addressed topics such as; Gender and Race Misperceptions, Room-Mates, Sexual Assault, Classroom Ethics, and Substance Abuse. We discussed each topic and tried to get to the core of each issue and then chose the best way to enter a performance score that would most articulate our findings.

Impressively, we were all able to completely develop, document, and perform the project in approximately 3 weeks (excluding pre-production meetings).

We were able to lay a foundation for demonstrating a program that had never been done before on the campus, and show how powerful theatre can be in shaping people's understanding. The politics within art making is made up of a complex web that can weave both controversy and enlightenment.

The following photographs were taken with a my father's old Canon 35 mm camera. They illustrate the body casts made for the project that were used during our performance about substance abuse. They are made out of: cling wrap, clear packing tape, acrylic sheeting, and metal dowels.

The figure on the right represented a human vessel of substance abuse the figure on the left represented a human vessel of healthy alternatives. Throughout performance, actors would present scenarios in either case and then "deposit" objects from those scenarios into the appropriate vessel; Such as beer cans, cigarettes, excessive Facebook logos, pills, junk food and adversely water bottles, fresh fruit, planners or organizers, hiking trail maps and so on.

Healthy Alternative Vessel

_________


Substance Abuse Vessel

The second in a Sculpformance series

October 8 & 9
7:30pm Gallery Opening
8:00pm Sculpformance Show
$15 at the door or $12 Online
Packing House Center
for the Arts
835 E 50th Ave
Denver, CO 80216

PATHWAYS II, A SCULPFORMANCE
AMELIA CHARTER

An innovation of the art forms: Sculpture and Performance.
A confluence of gallery and theatre. Stunning visuals,
and beautiful landscapes, capitalizing on stillness,
and unique articulation of light and shadow.
A must see powerful experience.

Sculptural landscapes reveal shifting environments
that become home to our journey of an individual enduring trauma,
suffering and recovering from abuse, revealing identity,
navigating survival, and entering the infinite.
A keen balance of ephemeral and lasting 3-dimensional artwork.

This autobiographical work stems from a culmination and distillation of journals, letters, and artifacts during the artists time in rehabilitation. The piece exposes an individual’s raw vulnerability, yet in a world of beautifully abstracted imagery and visceral moods that resonate with universal feelings and concepts.

............Always a work in process.............

For more information regarding the
Packing House Center for the Arts visit
www.controlgroupproductions.org
or call 303.947.2827

To purchase tickets online please visit:
http://www.eventbee.com/view/packinghouse/event?eid=706360362

Directions to the Packing House:

Take Exit 214A off of I-25 onto I-70 E towards Limon.

Exit I-70 at Washington (1st exit East of I-25).

Go North on Washington and turn right on 50th Ave.

PHCA is the last building on the left painted green and white.

Debuting the summer's fruition

My travels have taken me to New York City to meet amazing artists and see wonderful work, out to the far reaches of the mysterious Montana landscape and back to Colorado- down in the corner of Durango and soon back up to Denver.

I've been working hard and I am thrilled to say that I will be presenting my first one woman show very soon.

If you are unable to make it this time, don't fret. I will be taking the piece on tour around the front range of Colorado to the East Coast and hopefully out to the West.


Salute!

The Urban Irony

The Six Viewpoints & Sculpture.......SPACE & MOVEMENT Class 3/3 at the Packing House Center for Arts

Today is perfectly overcast for Tom's photography. The sun peeks through here and there to warm us up just enough. Today we explored a diamond in the rough; The Northside Park. The industrial ruins have become a site for majestic sculptural architecture that sets the park a part from it's surrounding pollution, land-fill junk yard, slaughter house, camouflaged-soldier lurking surroundings. What a simple joy it was to be outside and how rejuvenated we all felt afterward.

With my recent struggles to adapt my work into an urban setting compared to my previous home in Durango, Colorado of a more rural landscape....it seems as though the striking and beautiful irony of the park was just what I needed.....

The History of The Northside Park (These links will tell you about about why and how this abandoned sanitary sewage plant became a community-boosting, habitat-encouraging, artistic site):

http://www.asla.org/meetings/awards/awds01/northside.html

http://www.westword.com/bestof/2000/award/best-reuse-of-a-sewage-plant-39987/


Today's last class would be uplifted and carried through with fresh air and sunlight:
Deconstructing, Isolating, Meditating, Listening to SPACE & MOVEMENT




A sonic landscape of singing bowls that followed us outdoors

Suspending the moment

Thank you Steven

SPACE- perceptual ability to see and feel physical relationship

Observing and Participating with SPACE

Initial entry into the park

working in 3 columns
Walk, Run, Stop
attuning your awareness acutely
the body's relationship with the architecture

MOVEMENT - perceptual ability to experience kinetic sensation

blindfolded
working with partners
visualizing the Kinetic Sensation from points of contact
moving the sensation from place to place
(above)


responding to kinetic sensation with movement

The following 3 Series:

Visualizing a pathway from beginning to end
moving along the path
leaving a trail of earth
along the way.....
allow a kinetic sensation to provoke any movement the body wants

All Photos by Tom Murray

With the series ending I have absolutely no feeling of being finished. Perhaps because I never will be. I constantly feel like I am on the brink of a beginning. With a process that offers a new discovery, with each new moment, the work is being constantly reborn.

Although this series has been so brief, it has taught me an ocean of thought: I've identified how strongly rooted the work is with the immediate and natural landscape- however "unnatural" it may seem. There is strong vibrating unknown within the work that feeds participants and myself to explore new ways for building the bridge between performance and sculpture every time. I've come up against the reoccurring frustration of not knowing how to reach more people through the work. And yet, been humbled and blessed with my family's openness and unending support.

I could not have been possible without those who were able to come. Thank you.

Thank you Tom. For a photographer's role in extending the life and providing visual reflection to this ephemeral but yet so residual work.

Thank you Packing House Center for Arts. What a wonderful gem.

Thank you Mary. For the words and your own work. For your gift is always giving.

There will be another Project to begin in the Spring. Be ready!

We will be diving even further off the cliff into each individual Viewpoint in hopes of someday, submerging our entire bodies in the undulating sea of The Horizontal!

New Breath for a growing body of work

The Six Viewpoints and Sculpture.....SHAPE & STORY Class 2/3 at the PHCA

The day was warm and sunny. I was able to find a way to recycle all the topsoil I'd acquired for last weeks class. I feel like I am having an honest dialogue with the Viewpoints again. They demand it. I have been researching and meditating on the work being so rooted in the environment and the landscape. Mary Overlie says, "You find yourself through your surroundings, or you don't find yourself at all."

I wanted today to really be about not being denial of anything in your immediate surroundings and to focus intently on observing the subtle qualities of everything that already exists.

I also wanted to try exploring two Viewpoints with the same sculptural materials, but at different times in the class so as to keep the focus on isolated individual perceptual abilities.

SHAPE - perceptual ability to see and feel physical boundaries

observing and participating with Shape;

visualize the mechanics of following a kinesthetic impulse

execute

excavating the plaster from last classes TIME exercise total tactile and sensual discovery


physical boundary of the dirt

physical boundary of the hands

physical boundary of the ground

the shape will inform you where to go next

investigating a logic system non-verbally in groups
sharing the research with each other
using the dirt and the body

All Photos by Tom Murray

When the work, research, and meditations come from diving into the unknown, there is a
reciprocal relationship between the participants and I. A give and take between the work and my body. I can feel the difference between last class and today's and it is good.

I gave each participant time at the end of class to journal about the vocabulary and tools they learned from class and how they could use it in there own work. This is a fundamental quality of this research. It is non-product based and as such, the practice simply opens new pathways for entering your own challenges and visions in life.

The longer and more dedicated the participate stays with each individual Viewpoint, the more free and innovative their structure for their own processes in their life will be.

The next class is the last of the series. I will be sad to see this project end to quickly. It has been fast and furious.