Monday, June 18th, 2018

Honor Awards

On June 16th., I had the pleasure of attending Honor Awards 2018 at Art St. Louis. Curated by Brian D. Smith (artist, Professor of Visual Art, Saint Charles Community College), the exhibition featured artwork by ten regional artists and spanned a diverse range of media from ceramic sculpture to handcast paper. Speaking with artists on an individual basis, I learned a great deal about their process and delved deeper into the motivation behind their work.

Rick Battram had several works on canvas illustrating the New Media Age. Through his use of bold palette knife strokes, Battram communicated various emotions felt by his subjects while interacting with their devices–casual, relaxed, determined, unfulfilled. Focusing on blue light for his light source (of our technological devices), Battram’s works might leave you in your own emotional daze as you consider the subject at hand.

Often utilizing models in her work to convey what she desires, Connie LaFlam’s experimental photographs were evocative and mysterious all at once. A described portrait of the artist, As I picture Myself was very soft and subtle while Led a Colorful Life was bursting with such heat and intensity. In speaking with LaFlam, I learned more about her diverse body of work and I plan to stop by Houska Gallery where she is also represented.

Honor Awards 2018 featured a total of ten artists:

Bruce Alves

Rick Battra m

Ken Clay

John DenHouter

Linda Horsley

Connie LaFlam

The exhibit will be open through July 19, 2018 at Art St. Louis. I encourage those in the area to stop by and see the diverse range of work offered.

Saturday, June 2nd, 2018

Grimanesa Amorós at BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival

As part of its 40 year anniversary season, BRIC has commissioned former E-Squared artist Grimanesa Amorós.

HEDERA can be viewed from June 5 to August 11 at the Prospect Park Bandshell as a special element of the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival.

Special Artist Reception // Thursday, June 28th 8PM – 10:30PM

Take a peak at her spread in Issue #3 of E-Squared Magazine: Featured Artist, Grimanesa Amorós

Thursday, May 31st, 2018

…and the bunny goes POP!

…and the bunny goes POP! Tales of a rabbit gone viral.

Don’t miss Eduardo Kac’s opening exhibition …and the bunny goes POP! at The Horse Hospital, London. Eduardo (featured in Issue #4) will be present at the opening and on Saturday, June 2, from 4 – 6 pm. Opening reception: June 1, 7 – 9 pm.

The exhibition presents a selection of Eduardo Kac’s works and pop culture responses to his celebrated artwork GFP Bunny, a transgenic bunny that glows green under blue light.

Curated by Bronac Ferran and Andrew Prescott, the exhibition is supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council Digital Transformations theme.

Thursday, May 17th, 2018

Working Towards a Solution

Greetings! I hope you all are well. This year E-Squared has traversed through some valleys and mountains, so I thought it was time for an update.

December consisted of a 1200+ mile move for E-Squared.

January was filled with a request for all E-Squared issues to be archived at Stanford University which was very exciting!

In February, just as Issue #4 was ready to go to print, I found out that my printer was closing their operation in the United States and would no longer cater to the U.S. market.

I decided that transparency was best so in March I reached out to all of you at E-Squared and asked for help. I was taken by the number of e-mails I received with referrals, support, and encouragement.

The time between then and now has been filled with many phone calls, sample prints, frustrations, and more quotes than I want to count but with all of that being said, I am very happy to confirm that I have found a new printer located in the United States.

Most importantly, I want you to know that I could not have done this without you. I cannot express how thankful I am to the network I have formed and the help, patience, kind words, and support you have extended to me in this challenging time.

Issue #4 is compete and will go to print June 1st.

Thank you for your patience and understanding. Let me know if you have any questions–I am more than happy to answer them.

With deepest gratitude,

Emily A. Dustman
Founder & Director
E-Squared Magazine

Sunday, March 25th, 2018

MeconoMorph Comes to Providence

On March 29th (5:30-8pm), the VETS Gallery in Providence will be hosting MeconoMorph. What is MeconoMorph, you may ask? MeconoMorph was developed by Viktor Genel and is a blend of art, science, and business to generate ideas, creative thoughts, and collaboration between individuals and organizations. Mecons themselves are constructed from paper that are then put together to create a large, 3-D structure.

The best part? It’s free and very simple to take part since MeconoMorph is built entirely from business cards! As Viktor says, “MeconoMorph must grow,” so check it out and consider being a part of this ever-growing structure that is all about art, science, and collaboration!

You might even find an E-Squared orb in Providence and/or in future installations!

Wednesday, March 21st, 2018

Edward Burtynsky Awarded Master of Photography

Cover Image: Phospor Tailings Pond #4. Polk County, Florida, 2012.

Edward Burtynsky was recently announced Master of Photography for 2018 by Photo London. The award is given annually to a leading contemporary photographer who is the subject of a special exhibition at the fair. As such, Burtynsky will present a specially curated display of new and rarely seen images exploring the complexities of modern existence. Drawn from across his portfolio and featuring a preview of his new body of work entitled Anthropocene, the images explore such diverse subjects as: Australian and Canadian mines, oil bunkering and sawmills in Nigeria, the salt pans of India, and sprawling cityscapes; at once conveying the sublime aesthetic qualities of industrialized landscapes and the unsettling reality of depleting resources on the planet.

The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) and Canadian Photography Institute (CPI) of the National Gallery of Canada will be co-presenting the exhibit co-produced by the MAST Foundation. The exhibit is a part of the multi-disciplinary Anthropocene Project consisting of photographer Edward Burtynsky and filmmakers Jennifer Baichwal and Nicholas de Pencier. Organized by the artists in partnership with the three organizations, Anthropocene will run at the AGO and NGC simultaneously from September 2018 through early 2019. Accompanying the exhibition, Burtynsky will be speaking as part of the Photo London 2018 talks program on Thursday 17 May at 5:30 P.M. Tickets will be available to the general public via the Photo London website.

Burtysnky will also be exhibitingWater Matters in London at Arup Phase 2, an exhibition in collaboration with Flowers Gallery. Water Matters will run until June 8, 2018.

Wednesday, March 14th, 2018

Luca Pozzi’s Hawking Series

This morning’s wake carried the news of the loss of a great…Stephen Hawking. Hawking was the Dennis Stanton Avery and Sally Tsui Wong-Avery director of research at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics and founder of the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at Cambridge. He was also former Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge and an author of numerous publications. He will be deeply missed by the world.

Former artist of Issue #2, Luca Pozzi reminds us though that Hawking’s departure date is shared with the birth of another former great, Albert Einstein. Studying quantum gravity, teleportation, time travel, cosmology, and particle physics, Luca Pozzi’s work reaches wide. Covering topics from relativity to string theory, he converts theoretical research into installations characterized by magnetized sculptures, levitating objects, light drawings, and performative use of photography. With investigations on the Higgs boson, extra dimensions, and dark matter his work may seem perplexing at first (or always) but emotionally, it evokes a strange feeling of being frozen time and may stir up a new curiosity for an otherwise abstract field.

In lieu of the world’s loss, let us continue to honor Hawking in many ways. Below is a statement from Luca Pozzi about his series which you can view here.

“Theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking’s portrait is reproduced on commercial PVC, and affixed to the wall with a magnetized ping-pong apparatus – his eyes seemingly fixed on the space between the balls. Much of Hawking’s theoretical writing about black holes has been instrumental to Pozzi’s work for the past several years. Stephen Hawking Series draws our attention to a set of asymmetries. Known for his radical, progressive and dynamic thinking, Hawking is nevertheless rendered virtually motionless and wheelchair bound due to neural disease. The mind that theorized some of the most energetic entities in the universe also occupies an immobile body.”

Friday, March 9th, 2018

Story of the Heavens with Sarah Sanford

E-Squared’s debut issue featured work by Santa Cruz artist Sarah Sanford. Intrigued by the scientific process in which intense investigation of minute subunits are integral to understanding the whole picture, her work transitions between the micro and macro cosmic worlds.

Sanford is currently showing her work in the exhibit Prinstallations at the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art from February 24 – June 10, 2018. One of her pieces is a new series of prints called, Story of the Heavens. It consists of 60 screenprints suspended off of wooden ledges, measuring approximately 13 x 6 ft. Below she shares with E-Squared a little bit about her new work.

STORY OF THE HEAVENS (2018)

Aristotle said, “It is during our darkest moments, that we must focus to see the light.”

We are living in a time in which science and fact are doubted. The notion of an emergent truth is being debated. Our truth as accepted law is now coming under attack.

Under this pretense, my large-scale print series, Story of the Heavens, contemplates both the phenomena in nature and the achievements of human genius. This series of prints incorporates text from the astronomy textbook, The Story of the Heavens, (1897) with screenprints of light refractions I photograph. Printed with interference inks on Japanese kozo paper, each print is suspended off a wooden ledge- bringing dimension to a material that evokes fragility.

The documented text in combination with light’s glowing, ephemeral beauty within each print, collectively creates the illusion of celestial movements across the night sky. Using the contrast between light and darkness, I explore the veil of our understanding. In addition to our desire to seek truth, elements of time, space and chance are revealed.

Thursday, March 1st, 2018

Robot Mythologies with Geoffrey Drake-Brockman

As we round the corner into March, artist Geoffrey Drake-Brockman of Issue #3 will be showing his work, Parallax Dancer, Coppelia One, and Floribots in the show A Cache of Kinetic Art: Curious Characters at the Morris Museum NJ. The exhibit will be up from March 16, 2018 – June 20, 2018. If you are in New Jersey or surrounding areas, I highly encourage you attend to see his kinetic artwork – it is not to be missed!

Since having completed a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science (’85) and a Masters in Visual Arts (’94), Geoffrey Drake-Brockman has helped sustain the cybernetics art movement in a technological time that seems much more fitting to respond to an artistic approach to communication and control. His work often involves a man/machine dialog that does not intend to create or resolve a conflict more than simply allow a passive expression glazed in subtle air, light, and graceful motion – beautiful, moving gestures made to move or move others – to come alive.

His interactive light sculpture Surface (permanent installation – Perth Children’s Hospital) is made up of 2,080 ceiling-hung pixel-tubes containing over 66,000 full-colour LEDs. It is best described as an inverted light pond. Sensors detect movement, which triggers a “virtual stone” to change the LEDs, causing a ripple effect. Drake-Brockman optimized Surface’s software to reflect a “sense of play” to enable both children and adults to equally interact and is considered to be a key part of the “healing environment” of the hospital. In sculptures such as Luminous and Solar Jayne, Drake-Brockman achieves a different effect in approach and response, providing the spectrum of cybernetic “art” intends to communicate no different that humans – one end being out of reach while the other is often well within our grasp (mentally as much as physically).

Some of the more interesting sciart devices/dialogs/concepts created by Drake-Brockman include “muons” and muon detectors, a water sculpture that utilizes microwave motion detectors and custom software, and robot origami flowers to name a few.

Wednesday, February 21st, 2018

Catalyst for Innovation

I have to say, I never thought I would be at a Venture Café meeting building a tower out of spaghetti and marshmallows, but sure enough, I found myself there doing just that. Most importantly though, I was building it with another person…through a process of collaboration that involved bringing multiple modes of thinking together in order to solve a problem. Suffice to say, we ran out of time and our tower did not hold up, but we certainly have a new blueprint if noodle and marshmallow construction take off in the near future.

In case you’re wondering what Venture Café is, it is a global movement working to build stronger and more inclusive innovation ecosystems and accelerate and enhance the innovation process, in cities around the world. It does this through its use of programming, space, storytelling, and broad innovation engagement. The target industries are Hi-Tech, Bioscience, Advanced Manufacturing, Social Equity, Art, Government, Education, Renewable Energy, among others.

Some notable moments from the evening showcased by Venture Café were an Art + Science exhibit showing science-inspired artwork and an Art of Science talk by Dr. Elizabeth Kellogg and Keith Duncan at the beautiful Danforth Plant Science Center.

Are you doing something innovative? Need to connect with similar folk? Check out what Venture Café is all about and where/when their next meeting is here.