May 7, 2007
Contacts:
Elizabeth White, Community Arts Administrator/Grants Administrator
617-349-4385 or ewhite@cambridgema.gov
Jane Beal, Director of Community Arts
617-349-4381 or jbeal@cambridgema.gov
Moving Art: Temporary Art Installations
at the 28th Cambridge River Festival
Saturday, June 16th, 2007
Cambridge, MA – The 28th Cambridge River Festival is all about movement: Bodies twirl on the Twist Stage, voices carry on the Shout stage, little ones bounce and burble on the Wiggle & Giggle stage, and festivalgoers will be “moved” by the various art installations that populate the mile-long site.
The Cambridge Arts Council, producers of the River Festival, held a Call for Proposals, inviting artists to submit ideas for temporary mobile visual works that would engage audiences and compliment the festival environment. The project, Moving Art, is an opportunity for artists to participate in a community-building festival, and have a chance to create and exhibit work that normally does not “fit” within the confines of a gallery space.
Five artists/artist teams were selected to participate in this year’s outdoor festival, including the Public Art Youth Council, Ken Reker, Mitch Ryerson, the Skraeling Scavengers and Kris Wills.
Public Art Youth Council Thirteen Cambridge teens make up the Public Art Youth Council, a program within the Cambridge Arts Council’s Public Art Education & Outreach curriculum. Members represent the voice of youth for the Public Art Program by designing activities and events tailored for teen audiences. Youth participants will create a found art sculpture incorporating four elements of the festival atmosphere (light, sound, wind and water), and mount items on wire tracks, which can be shifted through a pulley system.
Ken Reker Swampscott-based artist, Ken Reker, will create an environmental sculpture that floats on the Charles River. For Robin, All Style No Substance, is a 13’ by 14’ traditional gilded frame that floats, upright on recycled water bottles, which will act as pontoons. With each twist and turn of the River’s current, the ever-changing environment will be framed within its empty void. It is likely that each one of the 100,000 festivalgoers will see a unique “picture” framed by Reker’s installation.
Mitch Ryerson Mitch Ryerson is a nationally known studio furniture artist, and has participated in the River Festival many times throughout its 28-year history. He is best known in Cambridge for his public art project in and around the city, through which dying trees are carved into public seating. Ryerson proposed reincarnating Star Wheel, a wooden sculpture powered by human movement, and is working with Cambridge high school art students to create graphics to update the piece.
Skraeling Scavengers A trio of artists hailing from Cambridge, Somerville and Arlington will create a Mastodon-shaped structure compiled of found objects. Although the base will be prefabricated, festivalgoers will be encouraged to add to the sculpture by attaching trash and found materials from the festival site. The artist team sees this as an opportunity to emphasize the variety of ways trash can be recycled, and prompt conversations about climate change through global warming.
Kris Wills Kris Wills and the House A’Fire Scooter Drill Team will bring their Sport Utility Temple to the River Festival from Brunswick, Maine. Wills and artists Stephen Petroff, Lindsay Nelsen, and Mark Nelson created a Japanese-inspired vehicle that resembles a pagoda, complete with dragons, leaves, fire, water and crowned by flames. As the mobile temple travels, a theatrical scooter drill team will exit the vehicle, and perform for festivalgoers.
While Moving Art participants will stun the audience with their visual works, artists Ben Emerson and Jeff Jones will capture the ears of festivalgoers through their sound installation along the Weeks Footbridge. Cambridge Cityscapes is an aural journey through Cambridge on the MBTA red line. Using the train as an anchor, each T stop will begin a section that combines iconic sound representative of its respective neighborhood in Cambridge. All sound material used in this piece has been collected by Emerson and Jones over months of field recordings and research. As pedestrians cross the Weeks Footbridge, they will travel through an aural landscape of Cambridge.
As Sound Designers and Faculty in the Theatre Sound Design Department at Boston University, Emerson and Jones spend much of their time listening for those defining sounds in order to recreate and represent different locations, themes and moods. Cambridge Cityscapes is the first collaborative effort between the artists, taking their craft from outside of the theatre, and creating a site-specific sound installation for the River Festival. This interactive installation invites festivalgoers to explore “Boston’s Left Bank” in a new way, and challenges Cantabridgians to identify their stomping grounds solely by sound.
Learn More About Cambridge Cityscapes -->
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For more information, visit www.cambridgeartscouncil.org or call 617-349-4380.
Cambridge Arts Council gratefully acknowledges the generous support of its sponsors: Novartis, Burt's Bees, Dunkin’ Donuts, Luna Bars, Microsoft, WGBH: Boston's NPR Arts and Culture Station, Harvard University and the Department of Conservation and Recreation.