The Jefferson Agrarian

ED NOTE: This just in from the Schneider Museum of Art at Southern Oregon University in Ashland:

Please come join us at 8 pm on First Friday, April 6th, at the Center for the Visual Arts, SOU, for an outdoor live video projection event. Located at the corner of Siskiyou Blvd and Indiana St., the CVA buildings will be the backdrop for projected images and sound-works made by students collaborating with Visiting Artist Ali Momeni and SOU’s David Bithell.

This coming Thursday, April 5, from 5:30 – 6:30 in the Meese Auditorium in the Art Building, a presentation about his work by visiting artist, Ali Momeni.

Ali Momeni, born in Isfahan, Iraq, emigrated to the US at age twelve. He studied physics and music at Swarthmore College and completed his doctoral degree in music composition, improvisation and performance with computers from the Center for New Music and Audio in UC Berkeley. Momeni spent three years in Paris where he collaborated with performers and researchers from La Kitchen, IRCAM, Sony CSL and CIRM in Nice.

Momeni is a builder, composer and performer interested in the poetics of gesture, affect and timing. His work makes use of all manners of technology to explore the social lives of objects and their embedded performative qualities. His creative output ranges from kinetic sculptures and sound installations, to urban interventions and music theater performance. He taught at the University of Minnesota and is currently an Assistant Professor at Carnegie Mellon. Momeni has performed and shown work in various venues in the US, Europe and Asia.

Please contact the SMA at 541-552-6245 or 541-552-8248 for further information.

Ed. note: Liberty Arts continues bringing about interesting shows to their gallery in Yreka, putting the town on the map as a valuable venue for original Jefferson art makers. If you feel the same way as we do here at the Jeff, you’ll consider joining as a member and supporting their efforts. Memberships start at a measly $20/year. Heck, you spend that much at a lousy movie theater!

The term “private mythology” was first used to describe the worldview of the painter Paul Klee, especially as Klee formulated it in his world. The term “personal myth” was first introduced into the psychotherapeutic literature by Ernst Kris in 1956…. Carl Jung began his 1961 autobiography, Memories, Dreams, Reflections by writing, “I have undertaken, in my eighty-third year, to tell my personal myth” (p.3). Sall Raspberry and Robert Greenway (1970) spoke of “the personal myths of one’s dreams,” observing that dreams and myths arise “from the same places… in the human psyche…”

PERSONAL MYTHOLOGY:
Submission Deadline: April 19, 2012

What is your Holy Grail?
Who are your heroes?
Have your gods endowed you with Courage? Wisdom? Beauty? Money?
What do you believe about the forces that shape your life?

An artist can scarcely help but reveal his mythology in his work – subject matter, concept, palette, tone, all say something about what the artist believes. But, too, there are explicit expressions of myth in meaningful symbolism, philosophical content, and conceptual story-telling, as in the works of William Blake, Paul Klee, and George Lucas, just to name a few.

This Personal Mythology exhibit seeks artworks created with the awareness and intention of expressing the artists’ own myths.

Personal Mythology is an open call for submissions to a juried exhibit. Jurors will consider work of all media, but space and technical limitations may restrict the final selections for the exhibit.

Submissions are due April 19, 2012.

The festival opens on May 11, 2012.

Click Here for complete Submission Rules & Guidelines >>

Ed. Note: Last fall the Jeff reported on “The Great Ocean”, which premiered way off in Anchorage, Alaska. Now, the good people at Liberty Arts in Yreka have brought the exhibit home to the State of Jefferson.

February 17, 2012, Yreka, CA–Liberty Arts presents “The Great Ocean,” an exhibition by Eloise Larson and Nickki Lee Hill featuring paintings, poetry and photographs dealing with the nature of existence. The exhibit spent two months on display in Alaska late last year, and the artists are pleased to bring it home to Siskiyou County this month.

The seedling for this show was planted when photographer, Nickki Lee Hill’s, dog passed away. An outdoorsy, rural-dweller, she started photographing the various forms of death she encountered around her land, which led to a “year-long inquiry on the nature of Death, with a desire to understand the pathways of consciousness through matter.”

Hill found a kindred spirit in Eloise Larson, who has been collecting dead things since her childhood, without quite knowing why. When Larson saw Hill’s portraits of her late canine pet, the two artists began discussing the concept of “The Great Ocean.”

“Death is such an intricate part of existence,” states Larson. “Since I began preparing for this show almost two years ago, I have had no choice in accepting impermanence as I experience the cycles of life and death around me.”

When asked her intention for this exhibit, Hill replied, “I hope these treasure maps can show you how to tell yourself a story, or how to ask the questions as we navigate through this terrain of form to formlessness and back again in this holy task of living.”

Liberty Arts invites you to an opening reception for “The Great Ocean,” Friday, February 24, from 5–7pm. The Monks of Shasta Abbey will hold a Blessing Ceremony at 6pm, and harpist Anne Johnson will provide music. Liberty Arts is located at 108 W. Miner St. in Yreka. For further information, call 530.842.0222 or visit libertyartsyreka.org.

For Immediate Release
Contact: Nikolas Allen
Liberty Arts Gallery
libertyartsgallery@gmail.com
108 W. Miner St.
Yreka, CA 96097
530-842-0222
libertyartsyreka.org

Ed. note:
As a fundraiser for one of our most cherished local non-profits, the Siskiyou Land Trust, local scholar William Miesse will be presenting his take on the ongoing fascination with Lemuria, and the relevance of this cultural and even spiritual phenomena to the State of Jefferson.

Hope to see you there!