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Else-ing Elsewhere, Josephine Sculpture Park June 5-7, 2014
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Stone Quarry Hill Art Park residency
July & August, 2014
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H.M.S. Hydra video at the Mulvane Art Museum
February - April, 2015
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Área Lugar de Proyectos, Gallery Tally Project
December, 2014
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The Gallery Tally Project spearheaded by Micol Hebron, of which I’m a participant, is on exhibit in Puerto Rico at Área Lugar de Proyectos!
Mulvane Art Museum, Drift and Drag exhibition
February - April, 2014
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My video piece describing my H.M.S. Hydra project is included in the Drift and Drag: Reflections on Water exhibit curated by Marguerite Perret at the Mulvane Art Museum in Topeka, Kansas. The exhibit features the works of 14 artists illuminating water issues in Kansas, the Great Plains and beyond, from a humanities perspective, addressing the practical, spiritual, historical, philosophical and political import of this essential resource. The exhibition will include an installation, a dance, an interactive game, photographs, videos and a community engagement project.
Utah Museum of Contemporary Art
April - July, 2015
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I’ve got some new work in the upcoming Utah Museum of Contemporary Art exhibition entitled Adjunct curated by Jared Steffensen, one of my favorite artists. More soon :D
marin abell
Here’s a preview of a project I’m currently working on at Washburn University that is included in the current Drift & Drag: Reflections on Water Exhibition at the Mulvane Art Museum in Topeka, Kansas.
In summer 2014 I was in New York state near Lake Cazenovia that, along with many of the Finger Lakes, was invaded by Eurasian Milfoil - an aquatic plant species threatening lake health.
The villainized milfoil grows as a vine, forming a thick carpet on lake-surfaces, suffocating other species, and disrupting habitat equilibrium. It is commonly proliferated by boat propellers that
chop and transport it; and then these stem fragments grow into new plants. Communities pump millions of dollars towards solutions - from dousing with herbicides, extracting by hand with
scuba divers, to mowing it with hybrid weedwacker-boats that bail the harvest on deck to then be hauled by the ton to the city dump to decompose for a year, where afterwards it can be used as soil fertilizer.
When I moved to Topeka, Kansas I learned Eurasian Milfoil had invaded Lake Shawnee, and herbicides were being used to keep it at bay. With this project I’m proposing an alternative - to treat this menace as something productive. To help clean invaded water, I’m carefully collecting the weed to be used as fiber, which, when hermetically sealed in resin, I’ll use to build a flat-bottomed trolling motorboat that runs on distilled milfoil ethanol.
Much research shows no permanent solution for milfoil eradication; there will always be sustained conflict. This helps me to reframe this milfoil invasion as a challenging gift that encourages us to think and evolve, and a reminder to consider the impacts of our solutions. My solution is hydra-headed. In using a motorboat, I’m potentially amplifying the problem by generating stem fragments that can rapid cycle the spread of the species, which, however, will be good for my boat making business.
I am one of two sculptors invited to Stone Quarry Hill Art Park (near Cooperstown, NY,
home of the Baseball Hall of Fame) to do outdoor sculptures based on spherical forms.
Part of my project involves mowing their landscape with a lawnmower covered in baseball
pine-tar to collect weed seeds.
I’m giving a presentation titled Before the Casinos Come... in Saturday’s session Artists as Activists: Voices from the Great Lakes Region.
Socially engaged projects can be particularly potent in “rust belt” cities, where traits of a culture can either be on the brink of oblivion or conversely, poised for integrated transformation. While the process of getting one’s artistic activity outside of the white cube in order to generate new relationships with neighbors may seem like a new tactic, it is nevertheless grounded in many eastern and western traditions from Trickster to Homer. Regardless of its history, such an
approach to art involves a paradox: through asserting more space for individuals we strengthen the community as a whole. The authentic transformation of a rust-belt area involves more than rebuilding on the tabula rasa of a topography; rather, rebuilding requires, and triggers the conscientious internalization of the many differences in one’s culture only discoverable through enthusiastic dialogue. Reconstructions that integrate an area’s already rich history can serve
new purpose, such as opportunities for reflection and cultural memory. An artistic practice can be an occasion to uncover those memories and their attendant emotions.
The more collaborative the process has been, the richer are the memories incorporated into it, and the more inviting the work is to unique interpretation and personal meaning for its audience.
I was invited to present at CAA’s ECO ART Panel :)
WHERE: ARTspace Session Location, Hilton, 3rd Floor, Waldorf Rm
WHEN: Wednesday, February 12, 2014, 12:30-2pm
Panel Information
The term “Eco Art” is one that elicits many responses for artists, academics and the viewer. The “Eco Arts: Activism, Methods & Materials” panel held in ARTspace at the 2014 CAA National Conference with panel Chairs Micol Hebron and Niku Kashef of the CAA Services for Artists Committee. In the panel discussion artists and cultural producers interested in sustainability and environmental activism discuss eco-practices, and methods beyond just object or image-based work. The panel includes Marin Abell, NRDC Art Partnerships manager, Elizabeth Corr, author, artist and lecturer Linda Weintraub and curator and arts consultant Jenee Misraie.
Our contributors consider the many questions surrounding their practice including: What the stereotypes are of pseudo-eco art and how that can affect the reception of art that is earnestly addressing eco art issues; what materials and formats they have used, and how
have these been employed; and Eco art activism and socially conscious practice and where these might meet with challenges in the art market.
Website
College Art Association Annual Conference, 2014 ECO ART: ACTIVISM, METHODS, AND MATERIALS
February 12, 2014
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Unruly Engagements, On the Social Turn in Contemporary Art and Design, Cleveland Institute of Art
November 6 - 8, 2014
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News Archives
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Here’s a sneak peak at a project I’m working on with Greg Stewart. We’re both interested in our work becoming more fictional, unbound and less rational. One day we both found ourselves independently thinking about caves, and have been developing a project around this.
The mouth is a cave for language.
Ben Marcus
A cave hollowed out by caves.
Gilles Deleuze
Lifting wax impressions off monuments to be cast in bronze and fused to copper pans for cooking in the mouth cave. Monuments provide a kind of nutrition, of values.
Making giant dental crowns out of wax to be cast in bronze. The crowns will be turned into a speaker box system scattered around a campfire out of which a story will play.
Wax welding hollow sprues- Everett’s brilliant tactic for giving wax more expansion room during the burnout stage.
For more behind the scenes documentation of my projects visit my flickr page.