Pisser de l'oeil

nineRooms
LIVEArtINSTALLATIONS

THURSDAY MARCH 19TH 2009
ONE NIGHT ONLY 5:00-9:00 PM

INSIDE
444 SOUTH CEDROS AVENUE
SOLANA BEACH, CA 92075

STATEMENTS

MELISSA ANNE STAGER
Melissa Stager is currently a gallery assistant at Susan Street Fine Art Gallery in Solana Beach and the curator of nineRooms, live Art installations. She has an AA from MiraCosta College and a BA in Applied Design from SDSU where she emphasized in Sculpture and Furniture Design. She is currently in an exhibition at MiraCosta College. Although she is not presenting a piece for this exhibition, her own work revolves around the family and ideas of the home and self. She primarily works in wood, metal, textiles and spackle. Recently she has been exploring video and projected imagery as a part of her sculptural installations. She has assisted with, curated, and prepared many art exhibits over the last seven years and thoroughly enjoys facilitating creative expression.

YOSHIMI HAYASHI
Yoshimi Hayashi is the head of the sculpture department at MiraCosta College.

“I often find that rather than absolutes, I am more and more fascinated by the decisions that force us to leave our idealistic polarities. Humanity seems to exist somewhere in the difficulty of these departures, and it is there that I feel closest with the viewer of the work. I must force myself into these obsessive repetitive behaviors all the while attempting to mentally be in harmony with the action. Although I would like to be hit with some Zen like awareness, the work reminds me of how punishing the actions are and how susceptible I am to cognitive dissonance. It is only after years of attempting to reach some higher mindful state, that I am left with what is the true awareness: honest failure. The works are the residue of the attempt, a by-product of truly not getting there. I believed at one time that the greatest art was one that stood the test of time, but now, I feel that in my work, the best never existed in the first place and never will. Therefore, more and more, I enjoy the fugitive aspects of my work; as if they themselves are suppose to wrinkle along with its creator and the viewer. Perhaps the attempt to grasp is really the definition of mindfulness”.

ANNA O’CAIN
Anna O’Cain is a San Diego, California based artist who was born in Pascagoula, Mississippi. She is a studio art instructor in drawing, design and sculpture and the art department chair at MiraCosta College. She studied visual art at the University of Okalahoma, received a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago and an MFA from the University of California, San Diego where she continued to work with hybrid media, experimental processes, and installation. She has been a recipient of grants from California Arts Council and Art Matters in New York. Performance actions taken from daily life, i.e. mending clothes, making pies, sewing felt covers for books in a library, and cataloging stories are elements in her installations work. Found objects used in her work often provide historical sources from which to begin the art making process. Sound, interactivity and electronic technologies are combined with more traditional media in her work. Questions about learning, memory and record keeping (how we know, how we learn, what we remember, and what we forget) are at the center of her research and practice. With one foot in both physical and virtual worlds she is still amazed and excited about the hybridization of traditional and electronic media. Anna finds events, materials, and the speech of everyday life to be the most vibrant source of inspiration. Her multi-media installations have been exhibited all over the United States and in parts of Latin America. They address how we learn things, what we remember, what we forget, and what we reconfigure in our personal stories.

HOLLIS SWAN
“Life is a gradual learning experience; one cannot render the speed of this process no matter how hard they try. To truly understand, know, and be part of a whole one must take in the entirety of that situation. By not having control of ones patience, valuable lessons are destroyed in the search of what is sought after. Spending the first twenty years of my life in rural Alaska has shaped my views of the world and my work. My work surrounds tradition, experience and awareness of our surroundings”.

CHRIS WARR
Chris Warr is an artist from San Diego, and one confused individual. He often retracts statements directly after making them, or immediately presents the opposite perspective as if it were his own. The fact is he owns nothing and everything owns him. He is a tool, you must use him. Chris has a BA from SDSU and works in a variety of mediums including photography, painting, sculpture, performance and most recently video. Work most often begins with a process of heavy self-examination or a search to "feel good”.

BENJALMIN ELDWORDS
Storyteller.
“bemjalmin eldwords is. a bumbaccalaureate of the Art, for the paper tells me so. vagabonded to infinity, everywhere else, ever after, ever ever. come from a womb, then a bubble, then a tree. old in the soul/chin, young in the heart/gut, home in the betweens. a figment of your imagination. square becomes blobby, amen. love, bem.”

JESSICA GANNON
Jessica Gannon, 27, graduated from SDSU in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in studio art. That same year, she presented her work at Osaka University of Art. She has been showing her work in San Diego for 6 years. Typically, her work responds to natural forms and processes. For the nineRooms exhibition, Jessica is doing a combination of installations referencing simple scientific process with nature-based drawings. This will include the live creation of a "Dirt Drawing," made using dirt, tea and other natural dyes.

DAVID WHITE
David White has a BFA from The Ohio State University and is currently working toward an MFA at UCSD. David has also spent time in Germany studying traditional stone working techniques and in Brazil studying Art and Technology at the Catholic University of Sao Paulo. Currently, He is the founder of Agitprop, an art space conceived of as a tool for enabling neighborhood connectivity and engagement. He is also the Artist in Residence at North Park Main Street, a position he proposed as a method to help facilitate the mutual benefit and relationship of small business and art practice in North Park. David's work uses art historical conventions as a method of engaging individuals or groups at the scale of the neighborhood. Through the recontextualization of these conventions, he creates forms and situations that encourage, whether individual or participatory, open systems that can advance new interpretations of the everyday and public discourse. These forms and situations may be as diverse as small marble sculptures of everyday objects to video documentation obtained through the use of a bicycle taxi.

For nineRooms:
Title of piece: Engaging in Aesthetics is a Taxing Enterprise
Description: for this event I will hire a tax preparator to assist people in filing their taxes.

JOSHUA BELLFY
I come from Detroit, Michigan.
I attended the College of Creative Studies.
http://www.joshuabellfy.com/

JUSTIN MORRISON
"Justin is a performing artist, dancer and teacher based jointly in San Diego and Amsterdam. He pays the bills by getting technology to play nice for people."
http://justinmorrison.net/