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).

Essay Tips Part 3: How to Write About Whatever You Want

The trick to writing about whatever you want is really quite simple, and boils down to one simple tip: connections, connections, connections. Find a connection between your required topic and a topic that interests you and then write about it.

Sometimes your secondary topic will be something that is already sitting in the back of your mind, and sometimes you’ll discover it during your research.

James Ensor The Bad Doctors

A Predetermined Interest

I took 20^th Century Art History the semester before my Baroque class and fell in love with the work of James Ensor, particularly his painting The Bad Doctors. The painting was still on my mind when it came time to write my Baroque research paper. Remember my essay on Hendrick Heerschop’s The Doctor’s Visit from Part 2 of my essay tips? I really chose that painting so that I could write about Ensor’s painting. Both paintings convey doctors that society believed had bad medical practices. In the 17^th century, old-fashioned doctors were mocked

as fools, and in the 20^th century, patients feared the development of invasive procedures. I researched each era’s medical beliefs (another reason researching outside of art is beneficial) and BOOM, I had the perfect way to connect these two paintings. I got to write the paper I wanted, while still fulfilling my Baroque requirement.

Indonesian Shadow Puppet

A New Interest

If you remember from Essay Tips Part: 1, I picked my Asian art research paper based on aesthetics. During my early research, I found an article that inspired my thesis. I read the article Relationship Between the Art of Wayang Kulit and Disney’s Twelve Principles of Animation by Dahlan Abdul and Sidin Bin Ahmad. With this new lens to my research, I found so many other connections between the shadow puppets and Disney Animation. I expanded on Abdul’s and Ahmad’s thesis to write my own paper. I strengthened my argument by using the animations of Lotte Reiniger as a stepping stone between the two styles.

Now if I had just said that I wrote a Baroque paper on James Ensor and an Asian art paper on Disney, you would have thought I was crazy. But, with the right connections, it’s possible.

The important thing when trying to write a paper about “whatever you want” is to remember that you still have to stay within the parameters of your paper requirements.  Do not completely abandon the period or art movement of your assignment. Even if you write the best paper in the world, you will probably fail for neglecting your real assignment. Art history is such a vast area of study that if you can’t find something that interests you, you probably shouldn’t be taking an art history class.

Some Connection Ideas:

• Compare how the art reflects a change in society over time
• Compare how the art reflects differences in two societies at the same time
•  Explain how an art style was adopted by another culture and used to inspire a new movement (African and Asian art had a huge influence on Western Modern art)
• Was a historical artwork used in a movie? Did they use it correctly? Are the location, time period, and purpose accurate? If not – provide all the corrections with strong evidence.
• Are there stylistic similarities between two far away cultures? Explore why.
• Compare two artworks that are responses to the same societal upheaval (Reformation/Counter Reformation, War, etc.)
• Compare how two artists approached the same topic (annunciation, nativity, the seven deadly sins, etc.)
•  Approach an artwork from a feminist lens.
• Combine the last two – see how a topic is approached differently by a male and female painter (Judith and Holofernes, and Susanna and the Elders are great topics for this)
• And so many more connections to be made!

Good luck with your semester and don’t hesitate to email me with topic requests and essay questions! boiledbunnies@gmail.com