Art & Music & Making People Happy: Cinedork Interview with Billygoat

It’s pretty rare something comes across my desk that I just love to pieces.  Usually if I love something to pieces, I will specifically ask to write about it.  But hey, I don’t know about everything in the world, and when something shows up that I’ve never heard of but come to adore, it’s a pretty great feeling.

Such was the case with Billygoat.  I consider myself lucky to have found out about this group and gotten a chance to interview them.  The work they’re doing is astounding, and, to my mind, unlike anything else out there.

The duo makes stop motion animated art films and then scores them.  But that description doesn’t do it justice.  You have to see for yourself.

Your films are incredible detailed. How long does it take to make one?

Only 1-2 minutes of footage is created each month because stop-motion photography is so extremely tedious. It’s the prepping that really takes quite a bit of time and what we are doing behind the scenes that consumes equal if not more time than actually shooting photos. If you’re hasty with this process the results can weaken. It does take about 12-16 months to complete an animation.

Can you describe the process you go through to make each film?

Our process involves shooting in a room and recording images that inspire us. The set dictates where subjects are going to be placed as it morphs over time. It’s a lot like the game MouseTrap, in that everything is cause and effect. We rarely script and our ideas can completely change overnight sending the animation down a completely unpredictable avenue.

Continue reading at Cinedork.

Summertime in Fishtown

My previous post (the title of which is totally what I’m naming my Atlanta memoirs, btw) got me thinking about urban art projects and city ephemera.  Luckily, I live in a neighborhood in Philly with scores of both.

When I first moved here, in the midst of the hottest August ever, my favorite thing in Fishtown was the summertime mural under the 95 overpass.  The celebration of “Vacation” and “Chillin’” seems a little silly now that the air has gotten crisp, but when the temperatures were pushing 100 degrees everyday, the shade and the bright colors under that overpass really made the difference.

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I was really hoping the mural would be a seasonal exhibit kind of thing, but who knows?  We may still be looking at “Summertime” all winter long.

And for photos of my other favorite Philly mural project, check out A Love Letter For You.  I used to see these everyday as I rode the MFL out to 69th Street, and I miss them now that I’ve given up on the environment and started driving.

In which the PMA doesn’t disappoint

I have a tight 2-year schedule in which to fit in all my Philly culture before moving on to the next grueling step of my education.  It’s my goal to hit all the major things I possibly can.  Being that I’m probably the biggest museum nerd around, the Philadelphia Museum of Art had to be one of the first things on my list.

It would’ve been so easy to be let down.  Just the weekend before, I had hiked about 10 miles around the Met with bff Justin.  It’s hard to compare anything to that, but the PMA held its own quite nicely.  The outside is, of course, epically gorgeous (and host to like 10 couples taking wedding photos at a time).  The inside is impressively large, and, though not tremendously well-laid out, still a lot of fun to wander through.

 

From Jasper Johns' American flag series

 

My museum style is casually haphazard at best — I didn’t know till I stumbled upon it that the PMA has one of Van Gogh’s sunflowers.  I wouldn’t say they hold many other truly iconic works, but many of my favorite artists do grace the walls, from di Chirico to Jasper Johns.  The only real let down were the strangely dark and boring Manets (nothing like my all-time favorites, Le Bar aux Folies-Bergère and Olympia), especially since they had no explanatory text to help me situate them within his career.

For being a pay-what-you-can first Sunday, the museum was wonderfully uncrowded, and there was much more to see than could fit into 1 day.  I’m not sure it’s worth a membership, but a monthly-or-so first Sunday visit could definitely figure into my future.

Bonus Philly experience: afterward, we headed down to Reading Terminal Market, where I was introduced to the joys of DiNic’s.  I wish I had reason to stop by more often, because there are several more restaurants and vendors I want to check out.  (No way am I missing the upcoming Harvest Festival, though.)  Extra bonus points for a truly hideous piece of “art” found on the street during our walk.  It’s like the 80s threw up Pepto and pearls all over some kid’s woodshop experiment.  I wish more things like this awaited me every time I left the house.

Dalí in Atlanta

I recently got a chance to pop over to Oglethorpe University Museum of Art’s new Dalí exhibit, and it was wonderful.  The museum was gifted with 14 of the artist’s lithographs which had never before been exhibited to the public.  The images, which are now part of the museum’s permanent collection, range from precise and scientifically strange to loose and bright.

Particularly wonderful were the three lithographs from a proposed Tarot card series.  All three shared the same vibrant blues, and, since they were exhibited on the same wall, could be studied individually or as a set.

Love’s Promise by Salvador Dalí

Dalí is having quite the showing in Atlanta this summer.  The High Museum is poised to open their exhibition on the artist’s late work in August.  In the lead up to the opening, the museum has been using their Twitter feed to stir up excitement by posting links to behind the scenes photos and other fun tidbits.  Seeing museum workers uncrate works like “Santiago El Grande” or “Christ of St. John of the Cross” is pretty epic, and definitely has me excited to see the paintings in person.   The museum also teamed with Delta to put a Dalí mustache on a plane, which is awesome and hilarious.

And just today, they revealed their new Dalí microsite, which uses flash to “reveal” many of the works as well as provide basic information about the exhibit.  The site shows selected highlights — though it’s hard to truly get a sense of the scale of these works, many of which are massive.  Visitors can also “dissect a Dalí,” by mousing over particular elements of “Portrait of My Dead Brother” and reading explanations of the imagery.  The site is gorgeous and fun to play around with, with lots of tiny pieces of information.  It includes guidelines for teachers, as well as several videos relevant to the exhibition.

It’s nice to see the High use social media like Twitter and Youtube, paired with a well-designed site, to increase exposure and get potential patrons interacting with the art online.  Oglethorpe’s museum, which is admittedly much smaller, could have potentially gotten an increase in traffic by using some of the same techniques.  It would be as simple as updating their Twitter feed more often, possibly @mentioning the High and getting some dialogue going about the exhibits, and posting some behind the scenes photos.  The art is beautiful, but tucked away on the top floor of the campus library, how many art lovers in Atlanta are getting the chance to see it?

Dalí: The Late Work opens at the High on August 7th.  They will also run a Dalí film festival in late August and early September.  (Sadly, I’ll have moved out of town by late August, but hopefully I’ll get a chance to see and blog about the exhibit before I go.)  The Dalí exhibit at Oglethorpe is open until September 5th.

Art Review: ARThouse [09]

Atlanta isn’t usually known around the country for its art galleries.  Theater and fine dining we’ve got covered, but art tends to get left out of the talk about us in other towns.  But ATLart[09], this year’s citywide annual event presented by the Atlanta Gallery Association, is working to change that.

The centerpiece of the three-week celebration is ARThouse[09], a museum-style exhibition showcasing many of Atlanta’s art galleries.  The house where it’s being held is a work of art itself: 541 West Paces Ferry, otherwise known as the Pink Palace, an Italian Baroque-style home not far from the Governor’s mansion, is 16,000 square feet of luxury.  From the 18th century English tapestry to the exposed brick work and original incinerator fixtures of the expansive basement, just touring the house would be worth the admission price.

Continue reading here.