Vanguard PROJECTS
the studio
Vanguard Projects is the studio home and project management team of Artist Ali Beletic. It was founded to both to develop works that promote experiences outside of our normal human experience and share that with the world in various capacities, while simultaneously developing new visions in the worlds of fashion, art, parties, business and music. The mission is centered around vanguardism, celebration, peace, sensuality, shared ancestry, participating in a citizen of the earth perspective - all from a positive proactive forward thinking light. Its scope is intended to work both within and beyond the typical artistic fields, including large giving back initiatives, a brand, and prototype development.
Ali and her studio team
Ali has built a studio centered around the ideas of the conversation between the classic and the ancient and the the hyper-modern, throwing parties, and collaboration on a global scale. While the Vanguard Projects studio headquarters is based in North County San Diego. The studio is comprised of thinkers and artisans dedicated to marrying business with visionary and forward thinking creative solutions and expressions working across continents, in many fields and mediums, we are honored and excited to have collaborators across the globe. We are commited to sustainability and our mission of integrity, and visionary development.
Some organizations we donate to include: The Endangered Species Coalition, The Women’s Earth Alliance, The Nature Conservancy, The Earth Island Institute and UNICEF.
She has hung works next to Le Corbusier, Picasso, Shepard Fairey, Alexander Calder, Barbara Kreuger, Alma Allen, Rick Owens, Pia Camil, Isamu Noguchi and featured in the Vogue and fashion director Eva Chen’s collection, as well as among the collections of sophisticated collectors around the globe Ali’s work Soapstone Fire Bowl was recently featured in his LA Frieze week exhibition “Vessels” curated by Alexander May, celebrated by fair director Christine Messineo, as well as in Cultured Mag, Wallpaper and Interior Design Mag as shows not to miss during LA’s Frieze art week.
RECENT EXHIBITIONS: F.w 2024
Beletic’s Neon Primitivism series is a natural extension of the artist’s commitment to primitivist ideology and ‘bringing the party and the fun’. This new series celebrates the canvas and painting as a form with the power to transfer primitivism, sensuality and emotion to a space in a modern return to Ab Ex style, mixing the ultra mattes of her signature clays, sourcing untraditional pigments, botanical dyes and oils. Pointing to forms that enlight the viewer towards multiple directions of cave paintings, the new york school, ceremonial body paints, line work, weathered artifacts, Charles Olsen’s Archaic Post Modern and pop art, Ali celebrates the vivid marriage and simultaneity of our shared archaic and contemporary inheritance.
This follows in the tradition of her prior sculptural work (almost an artistic take on experimental archeology) which traces primitive technologies and works with the experiential and the sensual - i.e. hand building mahogany and glass rain catchments, working with fire as a sculptural element, exploring artifact creation using primitive tools and techniques as a means to explore human ancestry, lighting up a boulder strewn desert for invitees to walk through, and building a surfboard from Tule reeds.
RECENT EXHIBITIONS: S.S 2024
Beletic’s Neon Primitivism series is a natural extension of the artist’s commitment to primitivist ideology and ‘bringing the party and the fun’. This new series celebrates the canvas and painting as a form with the power to transfer primitivism, sensuality and emotion to a space in a modern return to Ab Ex style, mixing the ultra mattes of her signature clays, sourcing untraditional pigments, botanical dyes and oils. Pointing to forms that enlight the viewer towards multiple directions of cave paintings, the new york school, ceremonial body paints, line work, weathered artifacts, Charles Olsen’s Archaic Post Modern and pop art, Ali celebrates the vivid marriage and simultaneity of our shared archaic and contemporary inheritance.
This follows in the tradition of her prior sculptural work (almost an artistic take on experimental archeology) which traces primitive technologies and works with the experiential and the sensual - i.e. hand building mahogany and glass rain catchments, working with fire as a sculptural element, exploring artifact creation using primitive tools and techniques as a means to explore human ancestry, lighting up a boulder strewn desert for invitees to walk through, and building a surfboard from Tule reeds.
RECENT EXHIBITIONS: SIGGRAPH
We cordially invite you to the opening of “Points for Clouds, Dreams Aroused” a design and media art group exhibition featuring a curation of pioneering artists working at the confluence of art and technology including: Film, Animation, Sculpture, Light, Generative Art, Projection, Paintings, Performance, and Time. Hosted at Future Factory the exhibition will feature three gallery rooms, a panel discussion and an afterparty in the new Future Factory venue featuring a lineup of surprise live performances. Presented by the combined forces at Projekt______, AI LA and Future Factory this will be a historic night in the LA Art + Technology scene.
About the Panel: Researchers, creatives, and founders in Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs) come together to talk about exciting opportunities resulting from NeRFs in the entertainment industry. Recent discussions around AI’s use in the entertainment industry has become the leading deal point in current strikes. But some subsects, led by NeRFs will enhance and empower filmmakers in ways not previously possible. This conversation will explore this topic and more. Panelists include Paul Trillo (Art Class Content), James Perlman (TurboNeRF), Fernando Rivas (Volinga AI), Wren Weichman (Corridor Digital).
Come celebrate Siggraph with a full bar and surprise performances late into the night. Sculptures will be on display and for sale in person and online via open edition NFTs Starting Aug. 10th.
RECENT EXHIBITIONS: Apieron
Exhibition centered on the energy behind creating with no limits. Apeiron, Greek for “that which is unlimited” features a diverse range of works that express the energy of life and the importance of uninhibited creativity using various mediums including paint, film and clay, exploring the interplay between chaos and calmness of ideating with no bounds.
RECENT EXHIBITIONS: Light Reflections
"Beletic’s Light Reflections series, following the thread of her ‘ancient meets modern experiential’ thesis, creates spectral color field environments through radiant paintings made using Ali’s signature blend of clays with vibrant pigments, harnessing the beauty of the reflection of incident light on a vibrant palette, paired with the absorption of light utilizing her signature clay material."
Ali says about the work, “Something so matte and of the earth, but reflecting light at such a high refraction rate - it’s not like it’s a mirrored polished glass - it has a truly gorgeous sensual serenity. It sort of has a similar effect to a reflection pool, or the metallic reflections of the ocean at sunset, but it is earth and this super vibrant shocking color.”
RECENT EXHIBITIONS: w/s 2023
Featured in Luxe Magazine
Beletic’s Neon Primitivism series is a natural extension of the artist’s commitment to primitivist ideology and ‘bringing the party and the fun’. This new series celebrates the canvas and painting as a form with the power to transfer primitivism, sensuality and emotion to a space in a modern return to Ab Ex style, mixing the ultra mattes of Mexican folk art by sourcing untraditional pigments and incorporating clays, botanical dyes and oils, and pointing to forms that enlight the viewer towards the multiple directions of cave paintings, the new york school, ceremonial body paints, line work, weathered artifacts, Charles Olsen’s Archaic Post Modern and pop art, celebrating the marriage of archaic and contemporary tradition, sensuality and artistic expression.
RECENT EXHIBITIONS: “OFFLINE” Frieze LA 2023
Featured in Surface Magazine and Socal Magazine.
The opening exhibition, cheekily titled “Offline,” features paintings, sculptures, and textile art by the likes of Fei Li, Firoozeh Neman, Ali Beletic, and more artists whose work plays with materiality and texture. Ever the digital natives, QR codes accompany each exhibited piece to allow potential collectors to learn more about the artwork and the person behind it.
—Jenna Adrian-Diaz
RECENT EXHIBITIONS: Invocation for Rain
Invocation for Rain
Speaker, Rainwater, Clay
RECENT EXHIBITIONS: “POP-UP” TAPPAN NYC
Featured in Architectural Digest and Glamour Magazine. Attenzione, was recently featured in Architectural Digest, Gotham NY and Glamour as part of Olivia Kim’s New York pop-in ‘Moma Store-like’ curatorial.
Ali Beletic’s Neon Works (For the Vanguards to Take Home with Them) were recently in Architectural Digest, Gotham NY and featured in both curator Olivia Kim’s curatorial as well as the curator of Sized Gallery Alexander May’s curatorial.
Conceptual cues from journalism, vanguardism, mythology, and primitivism are layered within this body of work. Each sculpture expands on themes from Beletic’s “Neon Primitivism” series, in which she juxtaposed symbolism from ancient cultures with features of modern art and music. The new neon pieces serve as punk, pop art gestures, lighting up rooms and demanding attention. Beletic fittingly titled the series “Neon Works (for the Vanguards to take home with them),” hoping the sculptures will define space for extroverts and partiers.
RECENT EXHIBITIONS: f/w 2022
Featured in Vogue and Architectural Digest.
The colorful explosion of modern neon colors and primitive forms in Neon Primitivism is a natural extension of both Ali’s primitivist ideology and her commitment to rock n roll. This new series celebrates the canvas and painting as a form with the power to transfer primitivism, sensuality and emotion to a space in a modern return to Ab Ex style, mixing the ultra mattes of Mexican folk art with earthy clays, and vibrant charcoals and oils, and pointing to forms that enlight the viewer towards the multiple directions of cave paintings, the new york school, ceremonial body paints, line work, weathered artifacts, Charles Olsen’s Archaic Post Modern and pop art.
RECENT EXHIBITIONS: “PArallels” EN BLANCO GALLERY, MX
Solo exhibition in Baja Sur, Mexico.
Naturally due to her subject matter, her work grapples with the imminent desire to hold on to the beauty of our ancient selves and values, while also discussing how we can move forward, employing modern sensibilities, techniques and technologies, and intends to allow that conversation to celebrate both intelligences and allow them to be in discussion.
Her installation light environments, more subtle and peaceful, have been time based, and intend, to entice the audience into a stream of conscious peace of mind state, allowing the sense of space to expand to the reaches of the stars, from day into night and the vastness of the landscape around them, the clouds that send rain to earth, reflecting the vastness of space and light and perception and the boundaries of ourselves.
RECENT EXHIBITIONS: “VESSELS” SIZED GALLERY Frieze LA 2022
Exhibited at Sized Gallery space in Los Angeles during Frieze week as part of the show "Vessels" alongside Alma Allen, Ei Arakawa, Fai Khadra, Avi Kovacevich, Gaetano Pesce, Thomas Barger, Pia Camil, Shozo Michikawa, Kazunori Hamana, Rick Owens Furniture, Ali Beletic, Rooms Studio, JF Chen, and Grace Prince.
Celebrated by Frieze Director Christine Messineo, Culture Magazine, Wallpaper and Interiors Magazine
RECENT EXHIBITIONS: alivenique merch bar
Let's Light this Candle
Installation work for 100 Shells with flame, to be installed across the globe via collectors to create a serene ceremonial, sensual environment.
In this work, the shells are vessels for quite literally carrying the torch of our shared ancestral sensuality and survival paired together.
Released in collection with Ali’s music project Alivenique.
RECENT EXHIBITIONS: PRIMITIVE LIGHTING
Exhibited T Los Angeles in Culver City. Ali’s work reviewed by curator and art critic Corrina Piepon (Hammer Museum).
The Primitive Lighting series are simple beautiful objects the create ceremonial and experiential ways for collectors to interact with the element of fire. They are part of both my broader sculptural projects Reflections on Artifacts and Modern Objects for Primitive Living, as an artistic take on experimental archeology as well a more modern expression of bringing these ancestral inspirations into our modern every day venture.
The Brass and Ceramic Firebowls are elegant sculptural objects built to hold small celebratory and ceremonial fires. The architecture is built as portable and breaks down into 8 pieces, so the fire can be shared in any environment.
Chandelier #1 is both part of Ali’s modern objects for primitive lighting series as well as her Icons of Party series.
Group Exhibition: Rosemarie Auberson, Ali Beletic, Molly Berman, Eric Chakeen, Daniel Fletcher, Katy Krantz, Martinet & Texereau, Claire Oswalt, Matt Trygve Tung, and Anna Valdez
RECENT EXHIBITIONS: MOdern Objects for primitive living
Modern objects for Primitive Living is an ongoing series of modern sculptures and art objects designed to bring primitive and ancestral experiences to the collector and art goer, by artist Ali Beletic.
Objects include primitive lighting, adornment pieces, shelter objects, vessels, a tule surfboard, symbolic sculptures, adaptations to rooms, festive and ceremonial pieces, editorial objects, and experiments in modern primitive living.
Shown Left: Primitive Lighting Exhibited at JTHAR Residency Space, Joshua Tree, CA
Shell, Clay, Soapstone
Acacia, Tallow, Flame
Earth Art Ceremonies and Installation: horizon parallel
Horizon Parallel
2015
Flame, Motorcycles
70' x 10" x 10"
The Mojave Desert is a place the American psyche has turned it’s heart to, a unique place in our personal mythology. The poetry of the harshest and most rugged terrain upon which some of our go west, rugged individualism, survivalist identity has been formed. The vastness, the quiet, the trackless landscape. The playas, dried remnant of a prehistoric time are symbol to the ever changing, and the slow timescale of the earth. There is an open story of abstraction and projection alongside the prehistoric remnants that makeup the Mojave. This famous California desert has the perfect intersection between off-road culture, speed trials and earth art, both in it’s history and also it’s present. I was inspired, and I wanted to work on a sculpture that dialogued with this mythopoetic space.
It only seemed fitting to create this piece out in the backcountry, taking a journey and setting out to see if I could find one of those iconic vast Mojave canvases that was that was blank, unpaved, off road and not accessible by anything but bike. This place existed in my mind, but I had to go find it.
Riding out into backcountry is tough. You aren’t really going fast. You’re in soft sand and picking your way through it. We were riding vintage enduros back there. And one of the bikes was from ’74. These bikes are different, they are heavier and they don’t handle like a modern dirtbike. But that’s the way it is out in the wild. Everything depends on you, having enough water, knowing how to read the weather, how to backtrack and know your orientation, how to stay warm, make your own light and so on. That is survival, you really have to learn to depend on yourself, but that feeling of independence, and ultimately interdependence with the earth, is really in my opinion, one of our most fundamental powers and a very real source of joy.
We were all packed up over the back of the bikes. And that’s why I love those bikes - they are tough and well built and you can take them anywhere. The whole world is there for you to roam and in the desert - it’s pretty wide open - so you can ride anywhere. We were picking over rocks and into new territory. We were riding on backroads and dried lake beds. We spied this small passageway up and through the rocks that we could slip through. Just through this rock crevice canyon was this phenomenal natural amphitheater, bowl shaped enclave, hidden. It was dusk, so we unpacked to the sounds of the coyotes down in the playa below.
Most of my art practice is based on getting us back in touch with some latent instincts that I think we left out there in the bush. While we were riding during night fall, we really got that sensation of the wide open blank vast space, the giant infinity around us, and the open sky. That’s not an intellectual experience, its a sensual one. No matter which direction, you are riding toward a horizon, something far and ahead of you that you can’t see. You are making a perpendicular axis, dividing the circular earth with parallel lines, dividing the circle boundary of your range of vision. You sort of spread out over the land spatially. You start to think of yourself separating yesterday and tomorrow and there’s a relationship to speed. It felt as though we were out there in the middle of nowhere cutting the day and night in half.
Human beings are a gold mine. Boldness, backcountry, riding, sensual experience that goes out beyond your skin, loudness, speed, these aren’t just concepts, these are lifestyles. Sometimes you have to burn a blaze, or head out into the middle of nowhere, or ride desert at night, to enliven your sensuality. You are a shapeshifter and you’ve got the power. It’s ancient, it’s in your skin.
Earth Art Ceremonies and Installation: Tule Surfboard
Tule Reeds, Lashing
6' x 22" x 12"
The 36th Hour of my long winded stay, rotary style on grassy pasture, surrounded by whims of cattails, local hollering, bright skies, crisp weather, a diverse reach of ranchers and earth ecstatic rugged life-folk, I found myself birdman style snaking through ponds filled with various valuable, murky, and beautiful reeds on one of those hot Idahoan mornings. Fresh, mossy and extraordinarily clean. I was taking a knife and a fairly sharp one at that, grabbing the Tule reed at its base, telling the reed, this is going to hurt and thanks in advance in case that helps. Lining the knife across at a diagonal angle and cutting the stalk free of the root. I stacked the cut reeds in various places afloat throughout the pond. Miraculously, yet unsurprisingly the bundles floated around me contentedly showing off their inner layering of hollow, yes, hollow reedlike buoyancy. I carefully meandered so as not to take too much from each patch and spied the duck hunters camo-ing up in the mud patch across the way. I laid the rushes in the sun to dry.
A native Hawaiian, who came to California years ago to teach primitive skills, showed me how to lash the reeds as the Ohlone of Miwok Bay had done to make their fishing boats. Because of my love of surfing, we lashed the reeds together with two bundles and shaped them with rocker and tail.
Traveling on the road, through midnight skies, torrential rains, game commissions, in and out of houses, piled into and on top of the car, this now beatnik symbol came to reflect so accurately and intertwine among trips to the beach and new ventures in surf lifestyle.
Stopped by agricultural control at the border of California to check that the rushes had dried. We made it down to the Southern California coast and put it out on the water. king across continents, in many fields and mediums, we are honored and excited to have collaborators across the globe. We are commited to sustainability and our mission of integrity, and visionary development.
Earth Art Ceremonies and Installation: under the same sun
Part of Moca Release Party and Cover Feature for La Motocyclette
Under The Same Sun
2014
Motorcycle, Dirt
1 Square Mile
I see my artwork in the lineage of the Earth Artists. One of my favorites being Michael Heizer, a renegade artist who left New York in the 60ʼs to make monumental sculptural works out West, most famously Double Negative. I have long been inspired by a series he did in the seventies called Land Drawings - some of which he made using a motorbike, literally drawing into the earth with bikes. I was excited to do a large scale work in the tradition of Heizerʼs piece as part of the series I am currently producing out in the Mojave desert.
As I was out there, creating the piece. So much was going through my mind. All of it had been pre-meditated, but still - the moment, the endurance, the perfect circle, a racetrack with no straightaway. The piece is about the sun, and the sun was blocking my view of the track, and i was marking its trace. The track was invisible, and I was thinking about the old Dakota saying, about being remembered by the tracks we leave behind, and here I am making a circle track. While I was working with this concept on paper, I was obsessing over circles and their historic relevance to societies and societyʼs architecture informing a societyʼs language, but even more so, fundamental understanding -- the profound effects of sitting in a circle as a discussion and so on.
I had wanted this piece to be three dimensional, whereas to my understanding Heizerʼs concept was more of a drawing. And the dust I was kicking up was 3 dimensional and being lit in a circle through the setting sunlight. Kicking up the dust - the dust from the tracks I was digging into the earth. I remember thinking about Kivaʼs being dug into the ground as a symbolic link, for the Pueblo people, to their ancestral underworld. Honestly, I have no idea what that means, but I was there circling, thinking about our ancestry, our history, the movement of the sun or the earth - depending on your perspective - it wasnʼt an ellipse though - it was a circle - with the same torque and the same endurance the whole way out - I would speed up, but I would skid. And I was thinking about the ruts we all create in our lives, the tracks, following that same track, with the same speed, and it felt very relevant that I was out there on my dirtbike, expressing all this, in this beautiful manner, remembering why we set out to dirtbike in the first place - and that giving us that sense of attention and present focus that is so specific to this work, Under the Same Sun, and being out on a bike.
I am not sure exactly the place where Heizerʼs work stopped and my own started, but I believe itʼs less about that and more about the human spirit.
And from a distance it looked so beautiful.
90 degrees, 270 degrees. The final remaining drawing had 4 different sized circles, each which determined how fast I could ride, with openings to the sunrise and the sunset over the course of the week it took me to create it. Ending on the equinox, when the sun rises due east and sets due west - as well as for the week to follow - when it will degrade and return to the earth from the elements, the rain and the movement of the sun.
Earth Art Ceremonies and Installation: illuminated passage, boxo projects
Illuminated Passage
2015
Light
1/4 Square Mile
Invited to create a site specific sculpture for the Joshua Triennial curated by Metacurator and Boxo Projects. I built a Light Sculpture into the boulder field for invitees to hike through. The sculpture revealed itself as the sun set. Installed at Boxo Projects in Joshua Tree as part of the Joshua Tree Arts Festival curated by Boxo Projects and Metacurator.
Exhibition: HyperTropic
In this new series, Ali combines uniquely tropical imagery with punk aesthetics to create a vibrant energetic experience that pairs ideas of beauty and rebellion. “Hyper Tropic” uses the same composition, and repeating it across a series of canvases with variation in texture, shape and color - invoking a pop iconography in iterations that speak to shades of the metaphoric expression of pairing a natural, beautiful aesthetic, with a fun, youthful, vibrant punk self empowerment.
Celebrated by Curator Alexander May (Sized Gallery)
Conceptual cues from journalism, vanguardism, mythology, and primitivism are layered within this body of work. Each sculpture expands on themes from Beletic’s “Neon Primitivism” series, in which she juxtaposed symbolism from ancient cultures with features of modern art and music. The new neon pieces serve as punk, pop art gestures, lighting up rooms and demanding attention. Beletic fittingly titled the series “Neon Works (for the Vanguards to take home with them),” hoping the sculptures will define space for extroverts and partiers.
Exhibition: Neon Works (For the Vanguards to Take Home with Them)
Exhibition: Minimalism
Her directness of emotion communicated through primal, rugged gestures, juxtaposed with an integration of ancient philosophies explores the thin line between symbolic iconography, anthropomorphic figuration, gestural abstraction and a modern pop sensibility. Her confident and rule shattering sensibility pulls on us to be 21st century rebels once again and to seek wildness, experience, humanity, and mythos.
Rain (Pictured Left) On the more conceptual side of Ali’s work, Rain is a process based work, made by layering multiple layers of her clays while working outside in the rain, creating a peace ceremony of the gentle rainstorm recorded into her clay bodies, essentially catching the physical sensuality and transfering it to form.
Earth Art Ceremonies and Installation: oasis
Oasis
2016
Light
1/4 Square Mile
Light Sculpture installed into a dried rushes field that attendees were invited to meander through. The sculpture revealed itself as the sun set. Reflection in geography, as the sun sets creating an isolated area of vegetation in a desert, surrounded by the absent light of day.
Earth Art Ceremonies and Installation: Canoe fire
Celebrated by Ignant and by curator Corinna Peipon (Hammer Museum) for Range Magazine
Canoe Fire
2013
Acacia wood, Acacia branches, Canoe and Paddle, Flame
1 Square Mile
Humanity feels the liveliness, archaism, and the elemental beauty of fire naturally. It really doesn't take much provocation in an artistic sense. The eloquent movement of the flames in the wind, or the speaking of the fuel turning to ash when drawn near to it. The mysterious movement of light illuminating, reflecting cast onto, around and prohibited by the sculptural dimension of space and material that surround, creates a reflective and mesmerizing calm that so many of us sense as part of our evolutionary history.
Canoe Fire was a series of many small fires I floated onto a lake in Arizona to create a sculpture which moved and floated in the wind and the water. The ceremony was exquisitely beautiful.
Earth Art Ceremonies and Installation: lunar ceremony
Lunar Ceremony
2015
Fluorescence
100' diameter
The fourth of my Installation series for the Mojave.
Always showing the same face, synchronous rotation, our only satellite, surrounded by a trace of infinite dust.
Waxing and Waning the formation of the most ancient calendars. Over the course of the Lunar cycle, from New Moon to New Moon - the course of 29.6 days, patterning the phases. Lighting up the the phases of the moon peacefully, from a hidden plateau in the Mojave desert. Ancient ritual, and symbolic parts of self, as rising and setting with the moon, however only revealed as the night falls to dusk. Circular in nature, but remaining parts, illuminated and drawn into Jungian shadow. Relevant and reflected into the sky
Exhibition: soho house
Mineral Paintings
2013 - 2017
Lazurite, Turquoise, Dioptase, Ocher, Carbon, Azurite on Canvas
Exhibitions: Tappan Collective, Soho House
While working on several large-scale sculptural works in Arizona I started the mineral painting series as a gallery analogue to the work I was doing out in the field. Painting with the mineral rich earth and hidden deposits beneath our feet with their intense array of color, beauty and innate worth was an excellent way to bring my Earth Art Ceremonies into the gallery and collector’s homes.
The mineral paintings series was inspired, alongside my other recent works, to focus on a primitivist and archetypal perspective – choosing to work alongside the natural raw and rugged beauty of ancient technology, natural materials and mythological shapes. The intention of using these universal references to light, primitive survival, architecture & art, symbolism, natural shapes, mythological and storytelling from ancient and a collection of cultures throughout humanity’s history is intended to employ a Jungian archetypal celebration, hoping to bring to mind simple, beautiful, sensual responses and power which has been passed through generations.
The paintings themselves are designed to be viewed in more than one direction. When viewed from the side and lit, the minerals glow in a beautiful and awe-inspiring contrast to the matte canvas. Each mineral is selected carefully and crushed down to a fine powder to be used for its own natural beauty in color and intrinsic properties.
The sales of these works have been donated to the ancestors of the indigenous communities studied.
Exhibition: reflections on artifacts
Reflections on Artifacts
2013 - Ongoing
Reflections in Artifacts focuses on creating works based on primitive methods, philosophies, technologies and artifacts. There are so many ways of knowing and we are left only remnants.
The series is intended to be in dialogue with the strong connection that runs through the endeavors of human beings and the many ways of knowing.
Earth Art Ceremonies and Installation: ice fire
Ice Fire Compass
2013
Ice Blocks, Acacia, Flame
32' x 30" x 45"
Sculptural Ice block with a fire built on top of it, which melted internally to glow in the compass directions. Beautifully the cardinal directions were mapped by shadow. The blocks of ice were glowing witht the color put off by the heat of the fire. The steam buring off the ice displayed the wind direction.
Earth Art Ceremonies and Installation: desert table
Desert Table
2013
Oak, Rocks
30' x 30' x 28"
Site specific sculptural table built into the Sonoran desert - breaking the horizon, continuing the road. Hand carrying 30 foot oak beams up to the top of a Tucson Mountain through the raw desert was arduous and mythic for a team of 4. To celebrate the final build, an inagural party was thrown at the top of the hill as an ode to Gordon Matta Clark and Carol Gooden’s famous project Food.
Earth Art Ceremonies and Installation:
pray for rain
Pray for Rain
2013
Mahogany, Glass, Rainwater
242 x 57 x 12
Pray for Rain was inspired by the Kula Ring in the Massim Archipelago and many other gift exchanges of primitive cultures and aims to gift exchange with the earth - a return of these life giving waters for evaporation back into the cycle of water at the end of monsoon season in Arizona.
Installing the pools into a remote hike in location in the Sonoran Desert was arduous and mythic. Hand building the sculptures over the course of several weeks, hand carrying them into the desert, sourcing water and hauling in rain to be returned to the earth.
Invitees were given a map, to drive to the remote location and then hike in a mile to come to the art opening. The ceremonial aspect of the work began at dusk, unbeknownst to the attendees. This performance was inspired by a conversation I had while recording with the Drum group AFI in Cape Coast, Ghana in 2009. Kweku, the bandleader, and I talked about how their ancestors would use drums to communicate distances. I was excited to recreate this experience for those present. The mountain at the location talked back during the performance. The echo was at least a whole second delay. By the end of the performance it was last light and the full moon just rising. The drummers throughout the landscape created an intimidating and cacophonous drum experience. The ceremony continued using lights and the familiar fragrance of the creosote desert plant released by rain.