Imagine a Muppets movie written by Kevin Smith, and you’ll probably get a decent idea of what’s going on at Elmwood Productions, a puppet-focused film production studio in central Connecticut. Jon Bristol founded the company (named after his hometown) in 2002, around five years after he started building his own puppets.

Elmwood’s work embraces humor in the absurd and the uncomfortable, aided by the additional reality-bending possibilities (what Bristol calls “the Looney Tunes element”) afforded narratives focused on puppets. The company’s original film follows one man waking from a nightmare to find his id manifest as a puppet, and its new series The Risley Brothers takes notes from Clerks. Many of the crew members used to work in retail, and strange customer-related anecdotes have found their way into the material.

Bristol works out of an old converted barn in West Hartford, and tries to distance his puppet aesthetic from Jim Henson’s. He bases some characters—like one of the Risley brothers—on himself, but often finds inspiration elsewhere. “I’m always carrying a sketchbook with me. If I’m in public somewhere and I see an odd-looking person, I’m gonna doodle them really quick and hopefully maybe turn them into a puppet.”

Jon Bristol–founder, Elmwood Productions
West Hartford, Connecticut
Website

top image: Jon Bristol and friends at Elmwood Productions. Photo by Paul Specht

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Morgan Bulkeley is a humble genius. The Mount Washington, Massachusetts artist’s Nature Culture Clash—on view through February 4th at Berkshire Museum—presents a 50-year retrospective of his successful career in painting, drawing, and sculpture, as curated by longtime friend Geoffrey Young of Great Barrington. But when Bulkeley discusses the process of digitizing slides of old works to organize the massive show, he begins by self-deprecating about his limited faculty with computers.

Technology isn’t the sole source of tension in Bulkeley’s work, which among many things reflects the chaotic relationship between humanity and nature in a manner that’s often darkly humorous but never polemical. The aggressive encroachment of society on the natural beauty of the world has “been a startling event in his life,” largely due to its sheer contrast with the pastoral serenity of his childhood.

“It was practically like living in Noah’s ark as a kid. We had all kinds of wild animals around,” Bulkeley says of growing up with naturalist parents on a small farm, the same one where he lives today. He graduated from Yale in 1966, then spent the next year in Newark, New Jersey, where he worked with VISTA Programs. The summer of 1967 proved particularly troubling as he witnessed the Newark riots.

City with Past, 2014, oil on canvas, 30 x 36 in.

“People there were just kind of hopeless in a way. There were tanks driving down the street. It was like living in a warzone,” he says. “It was a real shock to me coming from my little woodsy background and moving into that kind of a scene, and it began to just be a theme for me.” He continued to see that theme of “growth of urbanism sneaking into nature” play out while living in Boston and Miami over the subsequent years.

Familiar and distorted pop culture iconography appears throughout Bulkeley’s art, and he alternates between paintings that are “tangled up and hard to travel through” and pieces with more navigable spaces, finding a certain relief in the transition. Switching between the meticulous detail of painting and the raw physical act of sculpture helps reenergize him in both forms. Throughout his work he aims to draw humor out of the often foolish behavior of his caricatured figures.

“I hang on to wanting to chuckle at things and look at people’s mistakes and be able to not damn them but laugh at them,” Bulkeley says.

Behind Spurr’s, 1971, gouache, 18 x 15 in.

He’s certainly observed turbulent times, but recent national and international trends give Bulkeley particular pause. “If you don’t listen to science, what are we doing?” he says, citing deregulation of toxic waste disposal and climate change among the more frightening current issues. His more recent work pulls both from these external disturbances and from the sadness of losing many close friends and family members in the last few years. “I do think there’s a little more desperation in the later works.”

Even when the work reaches its bleakest points, though, Bulkeley finds a way to laugh and keep looking up. “I’m certainly a hopeful person,” he says. “I’ve loved that balance between something horrific and something absurd or hilarious.”

Aim, 1984, oil on canvas, 60 x 78 in.

“My mother, when she could get up the stairs to my studio, used to come up. She never really got my work, but she would look at my paintings and say, ‘Oh, that’s really beautiful. Do you feel all right?’ I always kind of liked that response.”

Morgan Bulkeley–artist
Mount Washington, Massachusetts
Website

Top image: Moose in Town (cropped), 2014, oil on canvas, 30 x 36 in. All images courtesy of the artist.

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With the country careening into the abyss and my personal problems both increasingly difficult to ignore and comparably banal, I embraced a cultural cliché. I ran away and joined the circus.

Housed inside a repurposed 5,000-square foot 20th century railroad car repair facility, Circus Maine offers an exciting circus journey for the uninitiated and the experienced. The overarching organization includes Maine Circus Academy, a circus school with youth and professional level training programs; and Pinion Productions, a production company through which Circus Maine organizes its large theatrical performances and intimate cabarets.

Kat Finck, Circus Maine co-founder and producing/casting director, aims to merge the pure physical spectacle of traditional circus with modern circus’ artistic potential for making statements. “I don’t think that it’s possible to do a contemporary art and say that you’re not drawing on what came before you,” she says.

“In so many ways Cirque du Soleil is a traditional circus. It’s just there’s no animals. And that’s where people draw a huge line,” Finck says. “But I don’t think the line between traditional and modern is about whether or not you have animals. I think it has to do more with what the message you’re trying to give your audience is. I think there’s value in both.”

Mike Kelly and Sierra Nicholls. 

My run-away day started with an introduction to the basics of contemporary circus art by Finck and Circus Maine instructors Mel McGovern, Sierra Nicholls, and Mike Kelly. That was followed by handstands, at which point I quickly remembered that my overall athleticism could use some improvement.

My choice of trampoline over high wire for a second activity makes little sense in retrospect. I’m afraid of open uncontrolled heights, so the guided assistance for a high wire demonstration would have probably been more comfortable than my freeform flopping on the trampoline, which left me with momentary lower back compression after I butchered proper landing technique.

The Opening Act for Circus Maine

Circus Maine began in earnest in the fall of 2015 after a company called the Circus Conservatory of America shuttered. Finck and her partner and fellow co-founder Josh Oliver inherited the space. “We were essentially the anchor tenant here when there were no streetlights, no parking lots,” she says. “It was really Wild West.” A supportive arrangement with the landlords helped them get the company off the ground and undergo a massive build-out that involved repouring the concrete floor (which now boasts hydronic heating) and digging the trampoline pit “by hand with shovels.”

Finck, who hails from a small fishing village on an island off the coast of Nova Scotia, began her journey to the circus while nannying in Germany. “I didn’t speak the language and I didn’t know anybody and was really lonely, so I spent all of my free time juggling in the attic of these people’s house in Germany. And of course I’m six feet tall and I’m under the roof so it was really low so I was kneeling so that I could have room to throw the balls. Eventually I really enjoyed it and I stuck with that.”

Kat Finck

In a circus troupe in Newfoundland she joined upon moving back to Canada, Finck juggled and learned a variety of traditional circus acts and took up partner acrobatics. She moved to Maine with the plan of going to school to become a midwife while her husband (who’s from the west coast of the United States) was living in Montreal. The two were hired by Circus Conservatory of America. “It’s just been following our lives where they lead us that led us to New England.” She says. “It was in America but it was on my coast, so to say. I came across the border and he came across the country.”

McGovern, who was one of Maine Circus Academy’s first students, also had a unique journey to the circus. She’d done yoga before, and started training in aerial fabric while living with her partner in Colorado. The two moved to Portland as Circus Maine was starting up. McGovern threw herself at the three-year professional program, which introduced her to a variety of circus arts, dance, and acting skills, unlocking “so many doors that I didn’t even know were there to open.”

After specializing in aerial straps and aerial fabric, McGovern now hopes to continue making circus art and growing the school and company. “I love coaching,” she says. “I’ve been working with some people now around a year and it’s really cool to see their progress and help them achieve that, and also internally their confidence is higher. I find that just as gratifying as being onstage and getting applause.”

Mel McGovern

Finck recently produced an all-women’s cabaret, a performance she notes happened to take place in the wake of reporting on Harvey Weinstein’s history of sexually assaulting and harassing women in Hollywood. “I felt like it was important to give women a chance to step to the forefront. And I feel like I want to do that as a producer and as a director as much as I can — create space where everyone can be heard, not just the people who we always are listening to.”

McGovern notes her mission “to put out a different message than what is shown on the stage in some parts of the world. Even though people think of the circus as counterculture, in a lot of the world there’s still that heteronormative girl-meets-guy love scene and that’s not what I’m interested in putting out there. My world isn’t like that.”

Finck explains that Maine Circus Academy in particular provides a useful space to help kids understand the fundamentals of consensual platonic touch. “I feel like one of the things that we give to the kids that come and train with us is actual physical connection to other humans that’s really healthy and really safe,” she says.

“I feel like it’s such a useful tool for kids to grow up meeting people and interacting with them physically in a way that is safe and healthy and normal. It makes it so that it’s possible for people to have a context to understand what good is and it’s something to contrast against when — I hate to say it, but almost inevitably in this world — when people run into others taking liberties with their bodies. I think that’s an interesting thing we’re able to provide to young folks specifically is perspective on that front.”

Aerial fabrics reassured me of my circus prospects. Hanging upside down, my legs splayed out to secure my center of gravity over the knot in the material, I took a moment to meditate. Should I forget about the whole writing thing and stick around with this group of intelligent, talented, and disciplined performers? After insightful conversations with Finck and McGovern, I’m leaning toward trying to find a middle ground.

Kat Finck and Mel McGovern–Circus Maine
Portland, Maine
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Top image: Mel McGovern of Circus Maine. All photos courtesy of Adam Policky.

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Few things are as wholesome as cracking open a bottle of milk (dairy-based or not). The drink’s infantile banality offers a soothing constant amid the increasingly nightmarish absurdity of our modern world. What could be more comforting than washing down a savory sandwich with chalk water while adjusting your kiddie overalls? Sure, rosy-eyed yearning for the mythic “simpler times” can occasionally produce nostalgic junk (the shallow charms of La La Land come to mind), but some cultural signifiers of yesteryear are well worth revisiting and preserving. One fine example: the mid-century milk cap.

Sitting comfortably at the intersection of careful design and commercial hokeyness, the milk cap was once a signature of the dairy business. The caps handsomely marked a bottle of milk (or buttermilk, eggnog, heavy cream, or orangeade) with its place of origin through two-tone art, multiple font styles, and the occasional aphorism. You may still see some of them around smaller farms nowadays, but these caps have mostly disappeared from containers on refrigerator shelves.

Ryan Arruda, a graphic designer and writer from Rhode Island currently based in Worcester, Massachusetts, took a liking to the caps when he first saw them at the Brimfield Antique Show. Since they’re considerably cheaper than typical relics of bygone eras, Arruda scooped up enough to create Vernacular Circles, a “visual survey” that’s one among many artistic projects in his online workshop Midnight Umbrella.

“These graphic artifacts are scrappy. They’re efficient. They have limited resources, but they make as big an impact as they can,” Arruda writes of the milk caps highlighted in Vernacular Circles. “What’s also striking is that these pieces’ ephemeral design feature production techniques—type on a curve, overprinting, custom lettering—whose labor investment is easy to underestimate, especially in comparison to the convenience our contemporary tools afford.”

Vernacular Circles includes vintage caps from around the country, but Arruda’s collection features plenty of New England dairy art history. Hillsdale Farm in Tamworth, New Hampshire, Alford Lake Jersey Farm of Union, Maine, and Ira D. Whitney Milk from Stamford, Vermont, are just a few of the long lost establishments maintained for the record. Bottles from these shuttered businesses and other defunct dairies in Connecticut and Massachusetts have previously been up for auction on eBay, further evidencing the value of this archive project.

Its heyday might be behind us, but the microscale art of the milk cap lives on in New England, proof that sometimes the right mix of nostalgia and pure artistic appreciation can go a long way in holding open a valuable window into the finer crafts of the past.

All images courtesy of Ryan Arruda and Vernacular Circles

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Crazy Foam is likely something you either remember fondly or have never heard of. For the unitiated, it sprays out of an aerosol can as a soft, thick, moldable foam good for scrubbing and bathtime crafting. Insta-beard, anyone? Originally made by the American Aerosol Company in 1965, the “fun foam soap” delighted kids with pop culture character designs on its cans and potentially concerned parents with its isobutane and propane propellants. Don’t even think of asking school cafeteria ladies their thoughts.

Crazy Foam had its heyday from the late 1960s through the 80s, but disappeared from store shelves in the 1990s. While at least some parents and teachers might have secretly clapped (see insta-beard reference), Boston-based entrepreneur Joshua Fink decided to acquire the brand after his daughter was born in 2013. By 2015, he had returned the product to retail shelves. Now a three-in-one body wash, shampoo, and conditioner, the reformulated Crazy Foam can be found around the country for $5.99 per can.

“I decided to bring Crazy Foam back to shelves so that a whole new generation of kids could have the same sense of fun and wonder that I experienced growing up,” Fink told NewsOk, also noting that the new Crazy Foam is dermatologist-tested, hypoallergenic, and non-toxic. Propellants for the shaving cream-esque stuff remain the same.

Since its inception, Crazy Foam has boasted an admirable lineup of collectible caps. The older canisters featured characters such as Popeye and Spider-Man as well as more nondescript animals, clowns, and monsters. New Crazy Foam characters include the Justice League, Transformers, Looney Tunes, and My Little Pony. All but the My Little Pony canisters consistently place the foam dispenser over a character’s mouth, allowing Wonder Woman, Batman, Optimus Prime, and Daffy Duck to spew the same white scented goo as if infected with rabies or an overabundance of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

Crazy Foam Retro Collection. Photo courtesy of BeachPackagingDesign.com

As it’s intended to be a mild cleaning product, Crazy Foam isn’t particularly durable (if it were it might be more troubling), but investigating “crazy foam” yields some particularly attention grabbing projects. A perennial favorite seems to be an overflowing experiment with hydrogen peroxide courtesy of Science Bob. A Lithuanian man used a decidedly non-bathtub friendly expanding foam to turn a scrap car into a sports car. And the Daily Mail reported a mystery woman who mistook expanding polyurethane foam for mousse back in 2015, right around the time Crazy Foam reappeared in stores.

Seems best to get your combination hair and body wash straight from the horse’s mouth—or better yet, from Superman’s.

Crazy Foam
Boston, Massachusetts
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Top image: Crazy Foam. Photo courtesy of Crazy Foam

The post Did You Know? Crazy Foam, A Retro Bathtime Enigma appeared first on Take Magazine.

Ross Normandin doesn’t believe in hell. He does find the concept amusing, as evidenced by his new exhibition at GRIN Gallery in Providence, Rhode Island. But Slabs and a Shell; a Hell has little to do with the fiery damnation realm seen in religious texts. The Waltham, Massachusetts-based artist jovially explains the title for this show of cast silicone rubber objects instead insinuates “that you’re entering GRIN and this is a certain hell. Everyone has their own idea of what that might mean for themselves. I think it’s a bit absurd.”

That absurdity is immediately apparent in the artworks, which Sarah Montross, associate curator of deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, calls “hermetic and comedic.” Pig, consisting of several molded wall-mounted rubber pig snouts and cords of identical design and varied colors, treads the line between painting and object. They provoke questions in the viewer by pushing a functional object (the mask) into a nonfunctional form, while inviting both amusement and discomfort.

“I’m interested in the playfulness of these art objects,” Normandin says. “People laugh at them and I wonder if they think it’s funny or if it’s just unsettling. I laugh when I’m uncomfortable. For me it’s impulse. So it’s interesting that people use that as a reaction to something they’re not quite comfortable with.”

Pig. Silicone and urethane rubber. 25 x 17 x 2 in. 2016. 

The at times bleak sense of humor within his art has demonstrable roots in Normandin’s own experience. His father and mother both died of cancer within eight months of each other, and Normandin says his father’s attitude “has a lot to do with how I make work,” recalling a sense of urgency in life. He fondly notes his father’s ability to make people laugh even in the throes of his illness. That comic persistence resonates with much of Normandin’s work. “I think there’s something interesting about comedy with tragedy, how things can be funny still and we can still laugh.”

“A lot of my work is about me,” Normandin says. “I don’t want to talk about myself, though.” Part of Slabs and a Shell; a Hell actively deemphasizes the artist through “Short Holiday,” a series of silicone rubber molds of his own face. “I don’t want to make all these objects and have people come in a gallery and say ‘Who’s this guy?’ It’s an exact cast of my face, and I made multiples, so at a certain point it’s generic, a generic face.”

Pig (detail). Silicone and urethane rubber. 25 x 17 x 2 in. 2016.

“No longer the question becomes who is this person; it becomes what’s the object, what’s the object do, how is it positioned? The face at that point doesn’t quite matter. That’s what I’m really interested in—to create things that are really grounded in who I am and what I’ve been through and continue to go through and how those things may connect to other people.”

Even while seeking those connections, Normandin avoids making art like a puzzle with a single answer or endpoint. “I don’t want to make work where the viewer eventually has a conclusion,” he says. “I prefer if a viewer sees my work and comes back to that work a year later and they feel completely different about it. I don’t want it to stay put.”

Ross Normandin
Waltham, Massachusetts
Website

Top image: Shell (video still). dimensions variable. 2017. All images courtesy of Ross Normandin and GRIN

The post Breaking the Mold appeared first on Take Magazine.

With daily life under the current administration consistently sinking to new lows, it’s hard to know the efficacy of political satire. Just ask Senator Eric Lesser, representative of the First Hampden & Hampshire District. The Longmeadow, Massachusetts native serves as a political consultant for Veep, the Julia Louis-Dreyfus-starring sendup of American government headed for its eighth season on HBO. Compared to Trump, he says, “sometimes it feels like the show is more restrained.”

“Everything has been turned on its head by the Trump White House, and all of us are trying to reorient toward this new reality,” he says. “I see this play out across the board in all the work we’re doing.” While Lesser is contractually prohibited from discussing explicitly how Veep will explore the current political landscape in its upcoming season, he points out that the changes affect all elements of his work. “Certainly it’s been a new angle for Veep, but it’s also been a new angle for how we approach work for the Massachusetts senate, how we view activism, and the role of citizens in our democracy.”

Julia Louis-Dreyfus in Veep. Image courtesy of IMBd

Lesser assisted President Barack Obama during his 2008 campaign and worked for the first two years of his administration under David Axelrod in the White House. He began consulting for Veep during its initial development. A friend of his in Washington “who does a lot of work around arts, culture, media, and does a lot of work for HBO” asked Lesser if he would be interested in helping the new show accurately reflect the American political system. His involvement, Lesser says, “runs the gamut.” He reviews scripts and acts as a “sounding board and a resource” to help the writers ensure “the feel of [the show] is true to how politics usually plays out.”

While he admits his role on Veep is “fairly modest,” Lesser dedicates much of his time as a senator to promoting the creative economy. He points out that western Massachusetts is “very dependent on culture, arts, and tourism,” and discusses the impact of proposed cuts to national arts and cultural funding programs. “People should be outraged,” he says. “It’s particularly bad for us. We’re a cultural center. It would be devastating for our community and it would cost thousands of jobs, because there are thousands and thousands of jobs linked to the tourism and arts/cultural economies here.”

“I think that makes it even more important that we double down, and we ban together as a community, and we do our best and plug holes where we can on a state level,” he adds. Lesser has worked to do just that. His 2015-16 legislative accomplishments include securing new funding for bilingual accessibility at The Amazing World of Dr. Seuss Museum in Springfield and increasing funding for the Massachusetts Cultural Council from $12 million to $14 million. He recently voted with the state senate to override Governor Charlie Baker’s veto, restoring that extra $2 million previously cut from the culture budget for fiscal year 2018. Lesser points out the need to recognize arts, culture, and tourism “not only as a policy in and of itself but as a core economic development strategy.”

“It’s really important that we not only protect all of those assets and characteristics of western Massachusetts, but that we nurture them and grow them and expand them and work very hard on promotions, and on fostering the community.”

Eric Lesser–Senator, First Hampden & Hampshire District
Longmeadow, Massachusetts
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Top image: Senator Eric Lesser. Photo courtesy of Ryan Migeed

The post Eric Lesser: Filling in the Gaps appeared first on Take Magazine.

Stephen Dest and Henry Green have a deeper relationship than simply filmmaker and subject. Green took Dest’s stage acting classes when he was younger, and the two stayed connected over the years. Dest recognized Green’s talent and cast him as Tybalt in a well-received Shakespeare in the Park production of Romeo and Juliet the summer after Green graduated from New Haven, Connecticut’s Cooperative Arts & Humanities High School in 2009. A new documentary called I Am Shakespeare connects them further, as Dest traces an incident that nearly took Green’s life.

In February 2010, Henry Green was shot in the abdomen at point-blank range with a 9mm gun during an attempted mugging—ten feet from his home in the Newhallville neighborhood of New Haven. Dest hadn’t known of Green’s association with gang members in the city; that involvement occurred under the actor’s chosen alter-ego “Renegade,” and Green believes it may have partially led to his shooting.

Green required a rare intestinal transplant to ensure rehabilitation. While he made an unprecedented but protracted recovery from his surgery, Dest thought about how to share the young actor’s story. The writer/director pitched an adaptation to The Weinstein Company and elsewhere, but started to receive frequent suggestions to instead make a documentary.

Henry Green in I Am Shakespeare. Photo courtesy of Stephen Dest

Dest and Green each had reservations—Dest had only made fiction films previously and Green wanted to stay discreet—but they agreed this was the right approach. “Both of us recognized we had to step out of our own worlds a little bit in order to do what’s right for the community at large and what’s right for the story,” Dest says. Production began in typical fashion, as Dest and Green decided on a list of people to interview to help tell the story. But the final film eschews the narrative mosaic common to documentaries in favor of something more intimate and resonant.

I Am Shakespeare consists almost entirely of Green speaking directly to the camera in closeup, alternating occasionally with a three quarter profile. “As Henry and I started to develop our rapport as interviewer/filmmaker and subject, we realized that the way we were connecting, we felt was the way the audience should take in his story,” Dest says. “Henry tells this story better than the seven people we probably would have to get to tell the same story.”

Post-production, according to Dest, was “about not getting in the way of Henry.” He constructed the film around those two main images, and placed emphasis on the unedited cadence of Green’s voice. Driving through Newhallville often brought Delta Blues to mind for Dest, so he brought on New Haven guitarist Solomon Silber to compose the film’s original score in that vein. The moody tones pair well with the focused visuals, creating an experience true to this unique area and narrative.

“I think such a big part of it is I didn’t read about Henry’s story in the newspaper while I was living in some other state or country,” Dest says. “I know Henry. I know Henry’s family. I continue to know Henry after the making of this film.” The personal connection allowed Dest to craft a film grounded in the particularities of Green’s story. “At the end of the day it’s Henry. It was never anybody else.”

In honoring those specifics, however, Dest notes he and Green have been presented with a bigger conversation (about racism, socioeconomics, and more) they hope continues as they tour the film. They’ve visited colleges and high schools, and even screened I Am Shakespeare for around 150 doctors at Yale School of Medicine. “A lot of different emotions are being drawn out, which is exactly what we want to do,” Dest says. He hopes to show the film to as many people as possible before its larger release next year.

Dest says people often think “of the film as the final chapter,” but for him and Green, the film begins a discussion they don’t want limited to any one issue. “We just want to make sure that people are in the room and they’re talking. Nothing gets resolved if the conversation ends the minute the channel changes. So we’re taking it out, old school, like a ’70s rock band. We’re taking it out in the community.”

Stephen Dest–Writer/Director
New Haven, Connecticut
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All images courtesy of Stephen Dest

The post Shakespeare at Center Frame appeared first on Take Magazine.

Following our introductory installment of Showcasing the GIFted, we’re turning our attention to Chris Piascik. You will probably recognize the unique organic style of his daily drawing project, and you’ve almost definitely used his playful and irreverent Facebook stickers.

After earning his BFA and MFA from Hartford Art School at the University of Hartford, Piascik worked for award-winning graphic design studios around the Northeast before switching into a career as an illustrator. Some of his past clients include Coca-Cola, the Village Voice, Boston Magazine, Warner Music Group, Converse, and Nickelodeon.

Trump Dump. GIF courtesy of the artist.

Take: Where are you from?
Chris Piascik: Sturbridge, Massachusetts.

T: What got you started making GIFs, and why GIFs rather than something else?
CP: I started making GIFs as an experiment within my daily drawing project. It seemed to be a natural evolution in my work. I love GIFs, but I don’t exclusively make GIFs. Static illustrations are still what I do the most.

Fall. GIF courtesy of the artist.

T: What do you do when you’re not creating GIFs? (i.e. other jobs)
CP: I’m an independent illustrator. Sometimes that involves GIFs.

Go Ride. GIF courtesy of the artist.

You can follow Chris Piascik on Twitter and Instagram, and can also find him on Tumblr and through his website.

Top image: Pattern (cropped), all images courtesy of the artist

The post Showcasing the GIFted: Chris Piascik appeared first on Take Magazine.

Elisa H. Hamilton is a space maker. The Boston-based multimedia artist focuses on shared narratives and the inherent joy in the everyday. Her latest project, Slideshow, celebrates ten of the “ordinary extraordinary” women living around the city she calls home. Made for HUBweek 2017 in collaboration with Now + There, a nonprofit dedicated to creating meaningful public art in Greater Boston, Slideshow fuses art and technology in an intimate expression of community.

The ten women will deliver talks and present 25 images representing a week in their lives using a 1970s Kodak Carousel projector inside one of HUBweek’s Immersion shipping containers. Hamilton herself will deliver an opening talk to contextualize the project. Audiences will be able to see and hold copies of the slides outside of the presentations via a communal light table. “The slides become evidence of the moments of these women’s lives that we can hold in our hands and look more closely at,” Hamilton says.

Elisa H. Hamilton, Slideshow, Image by Audrey Robert Ramirez

Creating for HUBweek posed an initial challenge to Hamilton, whose work doesn’t typically focus on technology, but developing Slideshow allowed her to draw some broader connections between material and affect. All of the photography was taken digitally and then converted to analog slides afterward, which she sees as important to the way the project facilitates community.

“I wanted to bring it back to this handheld object that we can touch and exchange. And be reminded of these foundational elements of connection that technology does create for us. When we think about the original slideshow, it changed everything about the way we share our stories. I wanted to acknowledge the possibility that exists for technology to be discovered that opens those doors for us.”

Elisa H. Hamilton, Slideshow, Image by Clarissa Lynn Robertson

None of the women involved knew each other before Slideshow, and Hamilton only knew some of them when she began the project. Among the group is a teacher, a medical interpreter, an immigration attorney, a wellness coach, and only a couple self-identified artists. Hoping to avoid limiting herself to women in her “direct circle,” Hamilton reached out to women in her network to in turn find women in their neighborhoods.

The throughline for Hamilton is that all of the women involved lead “generous lives,” a phrase she “developed to describe folks who are giving something of themselves to their communities, to their families, just putting something out into the world that is generous and not expecting a return.” She says these women “are just representing their own stories; they’re not meant to be representing all stories,” but adds that she sees them “as emblematic of the multitude of stories that exist in our city.”

Elisa H. Hamilton, Slideshow, Image by Lolita Parker Jr.

“This project is not about me. It’s not about my story. It’s about sharing these women’s stories. I make my best work when I put the focus on the participants,” Hamilton says. Her role in Slideshow is ultimately to be a “cheerleader” for this group of women and support them as they embrace the project space to share their complexities.

“We all do many things. These women aren’t just their jobs. They’re also mothers, sisters, neighbors. We all wear so many hats, we all do so many things, and I don’t think we even realize anymore how multifaceted our world requires us to be. I think these slide talks are going to be evidence of that.”

Elisa H. Hamilton–Multimedia Artist
Boston, Massachusetts
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Top image courtesy of the artist

The post Honoring Generous Lives appeared first on Take Magazine.