Haunted Hungerford

Two terrifying nights of of spooky studios!

So, once again I am going to interrupt our usual art history programming to promote an art event in Rochester. This time though, it's all about Haunted Hungerford!

The Hungerford Building is already a popular destination for First Friday, but you have even more reason to come next weekend! Here's what's happening October 2nd and 3rd, 5pm-9pm.

Over a dozen studios got together to create this delightfully disturbing event featuring lots of themed activities for you to experience. 

Explore the whole building as you visit:

Basement - GruntWerk & Khaos by Design - Spooky year 'round with bone jewelry

Stuidio 150 - Bohan Sather Custom Apparel - Screen print your own Haunted Hungerford-inspired tee

Studio 157 - Grassroots Gallery presents the Ghost Factory - Resurrecting the spirits of our building's history

Studio 205 - Osiris Tattoo Gallery - Featuring the Ghost Buster-inspired poster art by D.john_Rochester

Studio 225 - Genesee Libby - Spectral Photobooth. Instant analog portraits may reveal the mysteries of the undead!

Studio 242 - Cat Clay - Awaken the Totum, introducing The Knotty Owl's new jewelry line plus Cat Clay's ever-creepy ceramics and a spooky playlist

Studio 258 - Blue Toucan Studio - Rip off heads in AMPUTHEATRE: the worlds goriest board game!

Studio 258 - Creativ Framing with Blue Toucan Studio - Get an exclusive look at  the Imaginary Findings of the Elusive Adventurer, Camden Flannery

Studio 316 - Aslam Fine Art - Featuring a selection of dark sculpture

Studio 364 - Lighthouse Tattoo - Hand-printed t-shirts and a screening of The Nightmare on Elm Street series

Studio 368 - Metal Some Art - Design your own metal belt buckle

And once you're done with the tricks, get ready for some treats!

Studio 148 - Eat Me Ice Cream - A dark twist: squid ink soft serve

Studio 154 -  Brown Sugar Pastry - Haunted bakery with ghoulish treats, ghastly delights and a witch's brew!

Then see everyone come together in The Night Gallery. Studio 244 is transformed into an exhibit of the creepy and curious featuring the artwork of Haunted Hungerford studios. You can purchase pieces throughout the night, or wait until 9pm for the lights to come on.

Don't forget to come in costume! There will be a costume contest in studio 225 and the winners will get special gifts from the Haunted Hungerford studios! Follow on facebook and instagram and "like" your favorites to vote after the event. 

There is no admission fee, but please bring a toiletry donation for Sample Soap, which can be delivered to Studio 244 or Studio 242. 

Hungerford First-Timer? Here's a pro-tip: parking on First Fridays gets pretty packed, so come early, or come to the Saturday event! Bonus: Saturday will be even creepier as you roam the almost-abandoned hallways of this old factory building. A great kick-off to the Halloween season!

Click here to join the Facebook event, or like the Haunted Hungerford page to stay updated during this final week. 

Art in Rochester

It's that time again. I am prepping to sell my ceramics at an art show this weekend so I'm keeping this blog entry short. Fall in Rochester means lots and lots of art festivals and events, so I made a short list of some of the events I know of happening around town. Students - here are some great ideas for a weekend study break!

Artist Row at the Rochester Public Market

September 20th, 10-4pm

Hundreds of largely local artists, plus local food trucks and entertainers! The Public Market has a covered walkway - so it's great rain or shine!

Admission and Parking are Free to the Public!

The NOTA Fall Equinox Faire

September 20th, 12-5pm

Visit Artisan Works for a day jam packed with art, live music, dance performances, yoga classes and more. With over 20 local vendors, food and wine tastings, door prizes and a charity raffle.

Tickets are $20 pre-sale and $25 if purchased the day of the event. 

KettleFest at Kettle Ridge Farms - Victor, NY

September 26th, 10-5pm

A one-day celebration of local sustainable farming and artisanship, KettleFest will offer plenty to see and do in a beautiful natural environment:
- demonstrations of honey, maple, and mushroom production
- booths with local artisan and food vendors
- awesome local musicians on an outdoor stage
- a variety of workshops in a beautiful log cabin — cooking, beekeeping, and lots more
- children’s events including the soon-to-be-world-famous Chicken Chunnel Races

Haunted Hungerford

"First Friday" October 2nd and Saturday October 3rd, 5-9pm

Located in the already popular Hungerford Building, the first annual Haunted Hungerford will kick off October in a spooky way. Visit a dozen delightfully disturbing studios including a creepy group show, "The Night Gallery." Come in costume for chances to win prizes and enter the studio raffles for even more prize opportunities! Check out the postcard for even more info.

Hate the crowds of First Friday? Come Saturday for great parking!

Harvest Hootenanny on South Avenue

October 3rd, 11am-9pm

The second annual Harvest Hootenanny will be held on South Avenue between Gregory Street and Averill Avenue. There will be vendors, food trucks, carnival games, an Oktoberfest-style beer garden, and much more! This year, come out to see a special Wall\Therapy event during the festival, as artists paint a street mural on South Avenue for the neighborhood. Fun activities for kids and adults alike.

The Four Humors

I’m surprised I’ve been able to go this long without writing about my favorite artist, Beth Cavener Stichter. She is an amazing ceramic artist whom uses animal figures to convey very human emotions. She first sculpts her giant animals with solid clay on armatures. The sculpture is then cut into segments, hollowed, fired, and reassembled. 

I discovered her work around the same time that I was in my first Art History class. We were learning about Albrecht Dürer’s print, Adam and Eve, which features the animal personifications of the Four Humors. I couldn’t help but connect the print to Beth Cavener Stichter’s Four Humors series, and the association has always stuck.

The Four Humors are the liquids once believed to make up the human body: blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm. Depending on the season of your birth, you were prone to an overabundance of a particular humor, which contributed to your personality. When a person got sick, birth charts were used to decide if their humors were imbalanced compared to their natural ratio. Adam and Eve were believed to be the only humans with perfectly balanced humors, but they became imbalanced after indulging in temptation.

Albrecht Dürer, Adam and Eve
Can your spot all the animals in Dürer’s print?

The four personality types based on the humors are:

Sanguine - Those born in the spring have too much blood, which makes them overly lusty. This is represented by a rabbit.

Melancholic - Those born in the autumn have too much black bile, making them susceptible to various mental illnesses/imbalance. This is represented by an elk.

Choleric - Those born in the summer have too much yellow bile, which results in uncontrollable rage. This is represented by a cat.

Phlegmatic - Those born in the winter have too much phlegm, and so embody sloth and laziness. This is represented by a cow.

The rabbit is the only traditional animal used by Stichter, but her other animals still successfully embody the nature of each personality. Look at the way each animal interacts with its black form – they fit so well!

The Sanguine

The Melancholic

The Choleric

The Phlegmatic

Resources:
Doot Bokelman, "Art History Survey II" (lecture, Nazareth College, Rochester, NY, Spring 2012).

David Altmejd at AGO

Around this time last year, I took a day trip with some gallery colleagues to Toronto for a whirlwind tour of the galleries and museums there. Now, I’m longing to go back, and the top attraction on my list is the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), which is actually an art museum with artworks as old as 100 A.D. I love visiting museums because there is an exclusive nature to historical art. You will almost never see an artist’s full collection at a single museum, so you have to travel to see the works of a favorite artist. Any art history nerd will agree that there is an amazing difference between seeing an image of an artwork and seeing it in person (which is probably why I tear up almost every time I am faced with the enormous scale of a tapestry.)

The AGO’s European collection holds master artists including Anthony van Dyck, Auguste Rodin, Peter Paul Rubens, Edgar Degas, and Claude Monet. Since I was on a research trip for a contemporary gallery, my rushed visit did not include much of the historical collections. But, what I did see stopped me dead in my tracks.

A walk up the newly added Baroque staircase leads you to the centre for contemporary art – and that’s where I first saw the work of David Altmejd, Canadian-born sculptor and installation artist. I was immediately captured by his installation, The Index, and I spent the majority of my time allotment exploring the mirrored caverns and gawking at the crystallized taxidermy of his imagination. Of course, pictures will never do justice to the way this installation made my heart skip a beat and my breath catch in my throat. 

According to my blurry cellphone picture, the gallery label reads:

Human, animal and plant forms collide and intersect in this complex installation. Stuffed birds, squirrels, and werewolves in mirrored crates are [unreadable] alongside quartz, glitter, mushrooms, pine needles, moss, flowering plants and bird-like figures in suits. The title of the work, The Index, suggests collecting and diversity, though Altmejd deviates from the neat and orderly structure we usually associate with indexes. Here he considers the relationship among all living things, exploring issues such as identity, sexuality, community, and the cloning and mutation of species. Architecture and mirrors draw us into the maze-like work, inviting us to create our own narrative and implicating us in the biodiverse hybrid world and the natural cycle of life and death.

Altmejd has quickly made a name for himself in the contemporary art world. He received a BFA from the Université du Québec à Montréal in 1998 and an MFA from Columbia University in 2001. The Index was a pivotal work for Altmejd. The installation was first exhibited in 2007 at the Venice Biennale – making him the youngest artist to represent Canada in this prestigious exhibit. The work was then promptly purchased by AGO. There are already published monographs on this young artist – including a book completely dedicated to The Index. You can also read more about David Altmejd here, here, and here.

If I hope to see The Index again soon, I’ll have to return to AGO before October, which I fully intend to do. For that visit I will be able to go at my own pace and promise to report back to you on the historical art collections of this museum. 

Artist Spotlight: Anonymous

In my last post I mentioned how much I love recognizing art history references in movies and TV shows. Well, I also love spotting art history in real life! One of my favorite places to test my eye is at Rochester Contemporary Art Center's (RoCo) 6x6 exhibition. 

photo by Gerry Szymanski

6x6x2015 is the 8th year of this amazing exhibition. Every year, thousands of individuals from all around the world submit their artwork to cover the walls of RoCo. The artworks are then sold for $20 each as part of RoCo's only fundraiser. Participants range from professional artists, to hobbyists, students, and children of all ages. All the artworks are hung anonymously and the artist's name is revealed to the buyer upon purchase.

6x6 is a really great concept because you are paying $20 whether your piece is by Nancy Jurs or Nancy from down the street – and you won’t know until you have already committed to the purchase. I love looking at all the sold stickers on the walls because it shows the diversity in how people value their $20. Sometimes people try to guess the professional artists, others make their decisions purely on personal taste, and others still are parents paying $20 for a crayon drawing by their own child because they know their money is ultimately a donation to an important not-for-profit art center in their community.

With such an abundance of contributing artists, it is inevitable that you will have a wide range of artistic visions and use of media. Cats and dogs are always a popular theme, but you are also guaranteed to find at least one recreation of a historic artwork. This year I spotted several art history references – can you name them all?

ANSWERS:

1. Indonesian Shadow Puppet (Wayang Kulit) (Similar)

2. American Gothic by Grant Wood (Art Institute of Chicago)

3. Venus of Willendorf (Woman of Willendorf) (in the collection of Vienna’s Natural History Museum)

4. Another American Gothic

5. The Son of Man by Magritte (private collection)  

6x6x2015 is coming up on its FINAL WEEKEND so you have to visit. . . like. . . NOW! On Saturday, July 11^th, RoCo is hosting a closing party from 6-9pm during which you can buy your artwork and take it home with you right then and there. The "Buy it now take it with you" campaign continues through the pick-up dates ending July 15th. Can’t make it to town? No worries! You can make purchases online and have them shipped right to you. You can even buy artworks from past 6x6 exhibitions! 

Helpful hint: The gallery automatically defaults to showing “For Sale” artworks, so if you want to see the entire collection, toggle to “All.”

Interested in participating next year? It's never too early to send in your entries for 6x6x2016, just scroll through the FAQ to learn how.

HEY ARTISTS! Are you influenced or inspired by historic art? Do you want your own Artist Spotlight? Send a proposal with examples of your work and your influences to boiledbunnies@gmail.com and you could be featured on the blog!