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On the first weekend in March, we held an amazing group art show at St. James by the Sea Episcopal Church in La Jolla, called Working Title, which showcased a diverse offering of works from sound artists, video artists, painters, sculptors, performance artists, and musicians. Audiences were guided from the front steps through the sanctuary and chapel to the courtyard and library, encountering different performances and works along the way, and hopefully gaining a new perspective on this iconic example of Spanish Colonial architecture, a true San Diego landmark.
While we knew that there were only a handful of COVID-19 cases in San Diego at the time, we didn’t quite realize that it was to be our last weekend of public life before the virus began its rapid spread throughout the United States. In case you missed it, we’ve put together a few videos of the event. Please enjoy these few videos of what was a simultaneously meditative and celebratory evening, and we hope to be able to do it again in the future.
Artist Spotlight
A series of interviews featuring participating artists. We discuss practice, self-isolation, and the role art is playing in the world at this trying time.
DIANA BENAVIDEZ, Piñata Artist
SAN DIEGO, CA / DIANABENAVIDEZ.COM
La Culpa Por Estar Eecha de Papel [The guilt for being made of paper], 2020
La Culpa Por Estar Echa de Papel [The guilt for being made of paper], a 25 ft long Rosary piñata examines the concepts of ritual, guilt, gender, and sexuality. Upon reflecting on her experiences growing up as a Mexican Catholic woman, Benavidez is astounded by uncanny similarities between a Rosary and piñata. Through the use of sound, scale, and prayer, these two objects of ritual come together to reveal their similarities in religious origin and tradition.
JOE CANTRELL, Digital Artist
SAN DIEGO, CA / JOECANTRELL.NET
Lights Out, April 2020
Everything gets old, breaks down and eventually dies, and technological decay mirrors its biological counterpart. I find various types of electric lights to be especially fascinating as they start to flash out and fade. This piece is a collage of cell phone videos of failing lights in public places. Their light affects the sound of various recordings of large electric power transformers (another fascination), and are accompanied by an old upright piano.
ANNA CHIARETTA LAVATELLI, Video Artist
RALLEIGH, NC / SOLIDPINKPRODUCTIONS.COM
The Eyes, February 2020
A psychedelic vision of being watched by a field of a woman’s eyes multiplied. They monitor and wander over the viewers, frequently locking their gaze dead on, yet twinkling in a star-like sky of eyes. The image is inspired by the hour-long song cycle Harawi: chant d’amour et de mort by Olivier Messiaen, most specifically the ecstatic the eighth song cycle, Syllables.
MICKIANNAFACE Hie to Kolob, 2020 (Digital Video)
A low-tech vision of the escape from earthly demise in the giant spaceship that will carry the people to a God seated in a celestial throne, seeking a place among the stars. MICKIANNAFACE is a collaborative video art project between Micki Davis and Anna Chiaretta Lavatelli. Together, they explore indulgent visual experiences outside of their personal art and film practices.
KATE CLARK, Interdisciplinary Artist
PACIFIC NORTHWEST / KATECLARKPROJECTS.COM
Kate sculpted a wax replica of a Venus of Willendorf figurine. Then she made a plaster mold from this figurine, and began her Venus of Willendorf factory. After casting the wax figure, she adds new accessories to each Venus. The original Venus of Willendorf was created to be prone, so a pair of shoes for the Venus allows her to stand upright. These wax figures will eventually be cast in bronze. The Venus series are an extension from her Bread Virgins series, which were exhibited for Working Title.
SHARON CAROL DEMERY, Painter
SANTEE, CA / SHARONCAROLDEMERY.COM
As a painting instructor at the Anthenaeum in La Jolla, Sharon has been keeping busy creating works that are accessible to novice painters, and invite others to explore their own surroundings.
“The first assignment I gave my online abstract students was to do a abstract landscape from a favorite place from photos. They were to simplify, to subtract detail and find a pleasing composition along with color. I wanted to lift spirits by going to pleasant memories at a time like this. This image is of Monument Valley that I took last summer on the BMW [motorbike] riding through the national parks. It is like flying.
“The second painting is of a sunspot done in oil. I was missing the sun with all the rain recently.
“The third and fourth paintings are images were for the online Impressionism Alla Prima classes working in oil with lots of paint. Here again, landscape is a tranquil place.”
beck haberstroh, Interdisciplinary Artist
SAN DIEGO, CA / RHABERSTROH.COM
A proposed apology for Louis CK. A text version of the script can be found here.
At Working Title, beck installed a moving interactive sound piece in which guests could listen to the recorded anonymous confessions. Patrons were invited to leave a confession of their own. You are also invited to listen to the left, and submit your own confession by clicking here. Your anonymity is guaranteed.
“In a confession, a person acknowledges past actions or thoughts that cause embarrassment or shame. To be confessional is to be open, unguarded, self-revelatory- or at least to appear this way.
“The idea of the confessional has made a journey beyond the confines of churches to instagram, facebook, and reality television, so much so that it is now considered a trope and a ‘culture’. Confessional, March 2020 queries the meaning of confession in the absence of performance. This is the second installation of Confessional and includes confessions submitted at a previous exhibition in Long Beach, as well as from the artist’s community, which are read aloud by voice actors to preserve their anonymity.
“In this confessional there are no sins and there is no absolution. Listeners at the exhibition can respond to what they hear, and those responses are shared back with those who confessed, forming a communal and collaborative loop that explores how we as individuals devise our own rubrics for our thoughts and actions” - beck
ZARA KUREDJIAN, Interdisciplinary Artist
SAN DIEGO, CA / ZARAKUREDJIAN.COM
The presented photographs are part of a new and developing body of work that investigates still lifes. The images employ carved wax as well as glass and light as main elements of investigation.
FRANKIE MARTIN, Interdisciplinary Artist
SAN DIEGO, CA / FRANKIEMARTIN.ORG
In case you missed Frankie’s “Born Again” at Working Title, you can now become Venus herself in the form of a Zoom background! Frankie has been keeping busy by creating personal Zoom backgrounds to help inject some colors in your never-ending meetings. Contact Frankie for more info @ therealfrankiemartin@gmail.com.
TODD MOELLENBERG, Interdisciplinary Artist
LOS ANGELES, CA
Convergence Studies, March/April 2020
The four Studies presented here consist of tempo canons, in which music video clips are played at multiple speeds simultaneously until they converge at a given point. The examples here include a performance of Khachaturian’s Sabre Dance by the Berlin Philharmonic, Fleetwood Mac’s “Landslide,” Madonna’s “Hung Up,” and The Andrew Sisters’ rendition of “Don’t Fence Me In,” featuring a lip sync performance by the artist himself.
CAROLINA MONTEJO, Interdisciplinary Artist
SAN DIEGO, CA / CAROLINAMONTEJO.COM
Displace / Anchor, A conversation on plants and humans
Voice performed by: Oliver Ayers and Carolina Montejo
untitled(matter), 2020
This performance is located around the Dracaena Draco Tree that sits in front of the church. The gesture suggests ideas related to ecology, culture, and belief, as well as the reality of the physical world represented in the body (human or more than human).
JONATHAN NUSSMAN, Sound Artist
SAN DIEGO, CA
The Four Marys, 2020 Sound Installation
The Four Marys is a four-channel sound installation based on “The Ballad of Mary Hamilton”, a folk song originating in 16th-century Scotland (Child Ballad #173). The song tells the story of a lady-in-waiting to the Queen of Scots, and the tragic aftermath of the birth and death of her child. Centuries of oral transmission in Europe and the Southeastern United States have splintered this ballad into countless versions, and the events it describes have been transformed and adapted to fit various competing historical and apocryphal accounts. In its retelling of the story of Mary Hamilton, The Four Marys creates a shifting sound world that hints at the complex history of the song’s origins, while remaining squarely focused on its archetypal narrative.
The stereo mix of the piece heard here is best experienced with headphones. If you would like to download an mp3 of The Four Marys, please feel free to email the artist directly at jnussman@gmail.com.
Persistent Gaze is now available in Instagram filter form! Send a private message to @deathmerer to get your own.
MEREDITH SWARD, Video Artist
SAN DIEGO, CA / MEREDITHSWARD.COM
Persistent Gaze, 2017–2020 Video Installation
Persistent Gaze looks at the our relationship with our screens and the plethora of eyes that watch us and that we look through. It includes imagery of a glass eye being made, security cameras being built and scrolling through social media. The construction of the glass eyes (glass eye and security camera) represents the individual’s loss of vision which is replaced by the artificial lens of screen-based realities.
MEGHANN WELSH, Interdisciplinary Artist
SAN DIEGO, CA / MEGHANNWELSH.COM
(w)retch, 2020
A writhing onomatopoeia settles in and becomes it's homophone. Holding still against the accelerating vertigo, the coward petrifies into representation.
writhe of a curve, 2020
In knot theory, writhe measures how much a curve kinks and coils. While "flattening the curve" during the coronavirus pandemic has become a collective pursuit, the global community still faces a complex tangle of immanent challenges and lasting fallout - a snarled mess, whether flat or curved.
A chantar m’er de so q’ieu non volria (I must sing of that which I would rather not) by Comtessa de Dia, 12th century
with Batya MacAdam Somer, violin
Any act of singing can feel like prayer. Singing, like praying, is an invocation, a summons to connect with something bigger than ourselves. With or without words, we hope our vocalization will be received and understood - by a deity, by an empathetic soul, by our own ears alert to something that we may have missed in the silence. We vocalize to escape the confines of our solitary experience and to extend ourselves through a shared connection with others. A song feels like a prayer when its deliberate expression transcends the limitations of everyday communication. Whether we are the singer or listener, songs help us endure, comprehend, or celebrate everything from the trivial to the profound. We engage with songs somatically, through vibration and breath, and affectively, through emotion. We can relate to another’s singing voice through somatic and affective empathy regardless of language or lived experience. In this improvisation on A chantar, I invite the audience to eavesdrop on a twelfth century example of an abiding universal need to compose thoughts into shareable expression. Hear the invocation and feel the song despite the Old Occitan language and medieval sonorities.