Doris lives up the street. She is a retired teacher but has never stopped teaching. She invites our kids into her yard and gives them shears to cut her flowers, reminding them to pull the leaves off before we put them into water so they’ll last longer. Doris was a professor at the University of Texas where she taught weaving and textiles. These pieces of art are hers. She spends hours each day on her knees working in her garden and visiting with passers-by.
Bob Dylan went electric at the Newport Folk Festival in 1965. There are a host of stories and myths surrounding this controversial move to use an electric instrument at this famous folk festival. The audience booed and heckled Dylan and his band… the gentle Peter Seeger tried to cut the electricity. It seems to me that Dylan’s move to bring electricity to a folk-purist crowd was another battle in Tesla and Edison’s ‘War of Currents‘.
This piece will be for sale this weekend at The Tesla Project event.
My neighbor Cathy Savage is a huge Nikola Tesla fan and an artist. To honor him she is co-producing an event at the Pump Project Satellite on Shady Lane July, 10, 2010.
I was asked to participate. Nikola Tesla is the father of alternating current technology, among other very important inventions (like the RADIO). He is far less known than his chief rival Thomas Edison. Tesla won the “war of currents” – where Edison went to great lengths to discredit AC power in favor of his own weaker DC power invention, including performing animal electrocutions to showcase the inherent danger of high voltage electricity. Today, every house in the world utilizes Tesla’s AC version of power transmission.
I was drawn to showcase how Tesla’s invention exists in the world today. His technology has become a part the every day life of billions of people. Today the transmission of electricity is ubiquitous. It shows up in our houses from plastic outlets. It is completely taken for granted. The outlets, like friendly faces, beg us to plug something in. We tap into this resource without thinking twice about how the electricity is produced think strip mines and noxious gas belching from ancient power plants. We gobble it up. Our houses pulse with it. All brought to us by these seemingly benign plastic faces the great grand children of Nikola Tesla.
This diptych, titled “Tesla circa 2010″ is 20×40 inches. It portrays our modern day outlet at an increased scale. These images were derived from digital photos I took which were scaled up and rendered into half tones. Printed and affixed to cotton canvas w/ matte medium and varnished. This piece will be for sale along with Tesla inspired art from many other artists.
Profits will benefit Easter Seals and the Pump Project. There will also be live music by the band ArcAttack as well as a Tesla Roadster on display. Don’t forget on-site tee shirt screen printing, public poetry reading and a screening of a Tesla film. This is a family friendly event. See you there.
April – June 2009 @ The Bass Concert Hall.
Visiting Hours Monday – Friday 11AM to 2PM.
Work is displayed on the 3rd floor adjacent to the cafe.
In a unique mixed media collaboration shown at the Bass Concert Hall in Austin, TX, Jared Dunten and Marty Butler challenge the viewer to intimately experience their journey that began under the big skies of West Texas. A journey both crushing and liberating that still continues today. The two cheated death and began their fight against paralysis. (more…)