Category: Visual arts Page 1 of 14

Of giant monoliths, and a small place in Hell

On September 20, 2024

In Cultural events, Music, Uncategorized, Visual arts

Rochester Fringe Festival, Day 10. A night of things large and small. Large, as in a visit to “Craig Walsh, Monoliths,” projected into the trees at East Avenue and Meigs Street. Small, as in about 50 people squeezed into The Spirit Room, the festival’s home base of consistently odd shows, for the eclectic duo Charming Disaster.

“Monoliths,” a free outdoor art experience, runs from 8 to 10 p.m., with three huge images projected onto towering trees. They are the faces of your fellow Rochesterians. On the left, Ann Culbreth, a volunteer community gardener. In the middle, Bruce Schaubroeck, co-owner of the House of Guitars, who quietly involves himself in community work throughout the city. On the right, Kristin “Kat” Sweeney, a radio host involved in the LGBTQ+ community.

Walsh is an Australian, and his projections were at the Fringe last year as well. The initial thought is these giant faces are frightening. But no, they are oddly soothing. And startling, when they unexpectedly blink, and their eyes move. These are not projections of still photos, but very subtle moving images.

There is nothing subtle about Charming Disaster at The Spirit Room, 139 State St. It is a match made in Hell. The room’s tangle of skulls, religious curios and occult brick-a-brack (church and Satan work together very well) look on as the Brooklyn duo of Ellia Bisker and Jeff Morris weave their goth magic.

(I suppose it was merely an accident that the room’s first two rows of old wood church pews were filled entirely with people wearing black clothing. I did not get the memo.)

“Charming Disaster’s Musical Underworld Tour,” returning with two more shows Friday evening, set the mood with an opening of chirping crickets. “Great news, we’re lost, and surrounded by wolves,” they tell us. “Ever since you’ve found me, I’m afraid that I might die.” Then they are lost in the bottom of a well. A portal to the underworld. Opening with a song about obsessive love, Morris explains, “It’s so important to establish dominance.” Charming Disaster urges the audience to howl, and we obey.

Bisker and Morris accompany themselves with guitar, ukulele and foot percussion. Their harmonies revolve around each other, like incantations. “Something wicked this way comes,” Morris warns, drawing on the title of Ray Bradbury’s darkest of novels.

Their stage presence re-enforces the dark humor. Bisker in particular, with her black lipstick and eye shadow, and black hair that looks like a raven in landing. Bisker walked into the audience, and tossed a piece of candy to Morris, which he caught in his mouth. Then, venturing deeper into the room, she pulled a piece of white ribbon from her mouth, unraveling it the entire length of the room as she walked back to the stage.

Oral hijinks combined with tarot cards. Ancient Egyptians and resurrection. Charming Disaster sings of poisonous plants. “It’s never too late to find out that you’re doomed,” Morris explains.

The art of being an alien

By Jeff Spevak

On September 15, 2024

In Cultural events, Music, Visual arts

Running away with the circus isn’t always about spending an afternoon with a bunch of hobos at the railroad yard. The vision presented in Aerial 51: A Galactic Circus Variety Show, unfolds in a much larger universe.

With its usual high-flying spectacle missing from the sides of downtown buildings or Parcel 5, this year the Rochester Fringe Festival offers this more intimate, but perhaps equally breathtaking, show by Aerial Arts of Rochester.

Aerial Arts of Rochester describes itself as “a Circus Arts Training and Wellness Center,” as well as an event and performance venue. After two shows Saturday, two more are set for 1 and 4 p.m. Sunday.

Two towering aliens – closer examination reveals they are Aerial Arts artists walking on stilts – greeted the full house of perhaps 150 people for Saturday’s first show in the cavernous, industrial interior of the Aerial Arts building, 1046 University Ave. A complex invisible to most of the city.

Aerial 51 (it’s a word play on the alleged space-alien hotbed of Nevada’s Area 51) unfolds with big music, ranging from booming dub electronica to an instrumental version of The Beatles’ “I Want You (She’s So Heavy).”

And the visuals are equally big. Drawing from an Aerial Arts cast of more than 20 acrobats and technicians, mostly women, dancers emerge in the murky atmosphere from lighted tents and cubes suspended in air. Cow people dance in hoops. Assorted aliens in wildly colorful skin-tight suits of otherworldly anatomy dance around the business of creating crop circles and building pyramids. They lift each other into the air, and spin from lighted hoops and ribbons of cloth suspended from the ceiling. It’s a choreography of alien aerobics, their bodies pretzeled into sculpture. The Aerial Artists themselves appear to have undergone alien abductions, as well as the accompanying surgical procedures we’ve heard stories of, leaving them with extraordinarily supple spines.

Two and three things are happening onstage at once, including tiny details such as the cows nodding their heads to the beat of the music. We witness tribal dances by aliens with painted, sequined faces. Enchanted souls dangle from the ceiling by their braided hair. A forest sprite dances over a sleeping woodsman, who is abducted by aliens. Belly dancers. All executed with strength, balance and fearlessness.

Unlike the Parcel 5 extravaganzas of gypsies imported from France, these shows are put on by high-flying Rochesterians. It is a show far beyond expectations.

Fringe’s Architects of Air

By Jeff Spevak

On September 11, 2024

In Cultural events, Visual arts

Existing quietly alongside the Rochester Fringe Festival’s 12 nights of silent disco, drag queens, boozed-up comedians and Shakespeare getting the Marx Brothers treatment, are a few gentle exercises in spatial awareness. Such as Monuments, with the faces of three Rochesterians projected onto trees on the lawn outside Third Presbyterian Church, the giant images moving with an eerie calm at night as the branches sway gently in the breeze.

And Daedalum, created by Architects of Air, a company based in Nottingham, England. Seen from the outside, and suggestive of Islamic and Moorish architecture, Daedalum is an odd set of gray, egg-shaped domes anchored to the Spiegelgarden pavement at One Fringe Place. It shares that space off of E. Main Street and Gibbs Street with the anachronistic Spiegeltent, nightly outdoor movies, cornhole games and food vendors. And the portajohns.

My friends are trapped inside Daedalum.

Daedalum is what site manager Shanti Freed calls a “luminarium sculpture.” But it is more than a sculpture. Guests must first remove their shoes. Then, in just their socks – or perhaps barefoot – they pad through tunnels of thin, white, PVC material. The sides glow with color panels. Visitors sit in rooms with high ceilings, like the interior of a UFO church. Or they pause amid swirling fabric arranged to suggest a tree. In its largest rooms, Daedalum is 12 meters tall (that’s nearly 40 feet if you’re not working in metrics).

“It’s a shared space for people to experience light and color and to relax,” Freed says.

Once inside, Daedalum feels larger than it appears from the outside. It is a labyrinth of chambers, although Freed offers assurances – without proof – “We are Minotaur free.”

No creature of ancient mythology herself, Freed is a native of New Zealand, now living in London. She calls Architects of Air an “artist-led company,” and is on the Rochester site with fellow luminarium managers Mike Flemming and Matt Warren, and designer Alan Parkinson.

These tunnels and rooms are held aloft merely by air pressure generated by air-conditioning units and fans. The crew keeps a watchful eye on the weather. Rain is OK. With strong winds, Daedalum is deflated as a precaution.

Deflating each modular section of Daedalum, by simply opening the doors, takes about 20 minutes. When ready to move on to its next assignment, Daedalum can be squeezed into seven pallet containers to fit onto one truck.

Architects of Air, which has been building these things since 1992, has brought its luminarium sculptures to more than 40 countries. It takes about four months to build each sculpture, all slightly different in appearance, with as many as seven now on tour. And at five years old, Daedalum is nearing the end of its life span. “I think it’s in its last tour,” Freed says. Daedalum’s PVC fabric will soon be recycled into a new interactive artwork.

Tickets are $7. Daedalum is open 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursdays, Fridays 4:30 p.m. to 11 p.m., Saturdays 12:30 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. and next Sunday 12:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. The last day of Fringe is Sept. 21.

Is it a thing for kids, who under 16 must be accompanied by a parent? Not at all. “I think it’s beautiful opportunity to show someone in their 90s something new,” Freed says. And it is, she says, “a profound experience for special needs people. You don’t have to deal with complexities of the world or distractions.”

Spare me. Someone stop me on the street and please explain why I should read Prince Harry’s biography “Spare.” Even British people understand that the Royal Family is irrelevant.

More reading. In reading in The New York Times about Kodai Senga, the Japanese pitcher who will be joining the Mets for spring training, I discovered that the baseball the Japanese leagues use is slightly smaller than the Major League Baseball.

A plot seemingly right out of ‘Dr. Strangelove.’ Conservative politicians are ranting against some kind of plot that says President Joe Biden and the government is planning on seizing your gas stove. No such thing is happening. Joe Biden couldn’t care less about how you heat water to cook your Kraft macaroni and cheese.