Off Label by Debora Alanna (Digital Art Weeks 2011 - DAW11)

Here is the 'Report' I wrote (with pictures) on the Digital Art Weeks 2011 International event (DAW11)

'The Off Label Festival' that took place in Victoria last autumn.





http://www.digitalartweeks.ethz.ch/web/DAW11/Press?action=download&upname=OffLabelReport_ALANNA.pdf


 http://www.digitalartweeks.ethz.ch/web/DAW11/Press                                                              

Recent Drawings

Here are some recent drawings done at the end of this year, and this month. 


http://www.flickr.com/photos/embellish4art/

Drawings - Victoria BC 2011

Absorbed, drawing to mark out a secluded life amongst strangers, segregated by dispossession, I allow arduous thought to transform, become tenuous acts of creation.

Fright wakens and slinks into weedy grounds where positive acts strive to flourish. Black and white lines enable my transition into new understanding. Drawn from some unacknowledged terrain where I am past worrying, the drawings reshape tolerance and capture my curious nature, where buoyancy supports insight and breathes delight.

Here's some drawings I made this year...

“ In search of the absurd “ by Philip Willey

“ In search of the absurd “ by Philip Willey

Here's the bit about me at the end of the article by Philip Willey on Exhibit-v...

"It’s been a good year for the Xchanges balcony. Back in May Helen Rogak, Betty Meyers, and Cheryl McBride transformed it with tar paper and paint. Later Christine Clarke’s vultures flew down from Deep Cove. It’s a conceptually challenging space and now it’s Deborah Alanna’s turn to tackle it. She has hung out some laundry. Clothes dipped in plaster of Paris to be precise. It’s about being frank, letting it all hang out, exposure. And by some curious piece of synchronicity she has been watching a film about the Franklin Expedition and the poor souls who died of exposure in the Arctic.

So there we stood in the parking lot behind the Dairy Queen looking up at a balcony. LED lights in the frigid laundry stared back at us like a row of eyes. A very strange experience. Debora Alanna never disappoints." ~ Watch Video ~

Thank you, Philip!

Here's a slide show of this work and more...

Hanging Out the Laundry - Video by Exhibit-v

Hanging Out the Laundry - Installation

I think there is more than laundry, there is 'Mistress Quickly', laundress and so much else. (Merry Wives of Windsor/Shakespeare) And the stream of streams, the Balcony proved to move thoughts: "This stream had been the good angel of my thoughts all the day, keeping them ever moving and ever fresh, cleansing and burnishing them, quite an open-air laundry of the mind." (The Quest of the Golden Girl/Gallienne)

Will stares of clothed apparitions last the month? How transitory are our hopes and fears, that they need to be wrung out more frequently than our clothes? Laundry is a comfort, if it does nothing but allow time to pass thoughtfully in the open air.

Evening...

Daylight...

One year ago, I was making this...

Hanging Out the Laundry - Poster

Artist of the Month

Exhibit-v has chosen me as Artist of the Month for October!

http://exhibit-v.blogspot.com/2011/10/debora-alanna-october-2011-artist-of.html

Hanging Out the Laundry

"Hanging Out the Laundry"

12 sculptures by Debora Alanna

Curated by Christine Clark 

Balcony Gallery
(part of Xchanges ARC,  2333 Government St).

Opening: Saturday 15 October 2011 @7 pm.

Manifest - A group of sculptures by Debora Alanna - 2011

Here's a group of sculptures I made... (Paraffin and jewler's wax on dental plaster)

Syngja

Here are some of my videos of Syngja, solo recordings of talented Tyr Jami, known as the cellist, composer and singer of The Winks performing the in Vancouver BC on December 2010 are accompanied by stunning visuals created in situ by Jasa Baka.

Tyr Jami and Jasa Baka are artists that live and work in Montreal PQ.

Tyr is returning to the West Coast in August to play in Vancouver, Salt Spring Island, Pender Island and Victoria on Vancouver Island, British Columbia:

August 4th: North Pender Island

August 5th: Victoria, BC @ the Red Door with Freak Heat Waves
http://freakheatwaves.band​camp.com/

August 10th: Saltspring Island: noon hour Music and Munch concert series

August 11th: Vancouver @ The Red Gate

August 12th: Vancouver @ Thors Palace with Aaron Read, Andy Dixon, Garland and Yarn
https://www.facebook.com/e​vent.php?eid=2533676946782​39

Syngja will play in Vancouver and Victoria
http://www.myspace.com/syn​gja

Pender and Saltspring Islands I will play with Graeme Wilkinson (piano)

Arvo Pärt: Spiegel im Spiegel
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi: Sinfonia in F
Sylvia Rickard: Song for the Earth
Dmitri Shostakovich:Sonata in D minor Op. 40
Icelandic Folksongs
George Gershwin

Video of Mary and Moses Sculpture Garden

Here's the Mary and Moses Sculpture Garden video by Exhibit-v You can see my work at 9:15 (at the nine minutes and 15 seconds mark).

Mary and Moses Sculpture Garden show presented sculpture by the following artists:
Christine Clark, Debora Alanna, Elyse Portal, John Luna
Marlene Jess, Michael Jess, Todd Lambeth, Troi Donnelly
Tyler Hodgins, Sarah Stein, Wendy Welch.

"An afternoon at Deep Cove" by Philip Willey

"An afternoon at Deep Cove" by Philip Willey

Philip Willey wrote an entertaining piece on the sculpture show I participated in:


The Mary and Moses Sculpture Garden Show
July 22,23 & 24, 2011
Moses Pt. Rd., North Saanich
Victoria, BC Canada

Mary and Moses Sculpture Garden

White on Black - Yin (Photo by Christine Clark)

White on Black - Yang (Photo by Christine Clark)

The Mary & Moses Sculpture Garden Show


Christine Clark,artist writer, curator of the Balcony Gallery invited a group of artists install sculpture on 4 acres of forest lined with Deep Cove ocean expanse. The garden belonged to Mary and Moses Martin (from England), and their sons kindly consented to share the magical gardens with artists this weekend at the "Mary and Moses Sculpture Garden" show.

Todd Lambeth. Surveyor’s stakes in a grey scale.

Christine Clark. Cabbages (paper and paint)

Debora Alanna. White on black, in the pond.

Elyse Portal. Clay pieces in the trees.

Tyler Hodgins. Tent City in miniature.

Troi Donnelly. Nonsense words and plastic cones.

Wendy Welch. Chairs.

John Luna. String and other things.

Michael Jess. Burial Performance–time capsule.

Review on Exhibit-v - John Luna - Home Show and Sale

Exhibit-v posted my latest review: John Luna's Home Show and Sale

John Luna "is an artist based in Victoria British Columbia. He has exhibited installations of painting and sculpture in connection to poetry, collage, stencils, sculpture and historical artifacts, in Victoria, Kelowna, Calgary, San Diego and San Francisco. John has published catalogue essays and criticism in Victoria, Calgary, Vancouver, Toronto, Winnipeg, Los Angeles and Jakarta, and is an instructor at the Vancouver Island School of Art and the University of Victoria." ~ From John Luna's website: http://johnluna.ca/


Exhibit-v "provides an extensive monthly calendar of openings,ongoing art exhibitions and the most reliable list of art galleries in the community. Video clips of exhibitions and the people attending the events, as well as interviews with artists will enhance exposure for these visual arts events." From the Exhibit-v website: http://www.exhibit-v.ca/

"Outside In" ~ Review by Chritine Clark

Outside In - Ministry of Casual Living ~ Photo by Aubrey Burke - Minister of MOCL

Outside In - Detail 1 - Ministry of Casual Living ~ Photo by Aubrey Burke - Minister of MOCL

Outside In - Detail 2 - Ministry of Casual Living ~ Photo by Aubrey Burke - Minister of MOCL

 Outside In - Ministry of Casual Living ~ Photo by Aubrey Burke - Minister of MOCL

"Outside In" ~ Review by Christine Clark

Outside In: Debora Alanna

At the Ministry of Casual Living this week is Debora Alanna‘s in situ work,

Outside In.

For those of you who don’t know Debora, she is one of the primary art writers currently gracing the webpages of Exhibit V.  Her written work is incredibly learned, incredibly erudite, with reference material drawn from poets to philosophers.  Too, she has a fine sensibility, a great seriousness and a (perhaps somewhat) unusual sensitivity to the processes of other artists.
from Buffet, a Review by Debora Alanna
“Ian Rorie built Hunter-Gatherer with plywood, and fastened a trap, labeling it, so we would know what lurked inside, lighting the way to entrapment. Sustenance begins with death of some kind. Whether it is the reaping of grain, produce and gathering of the harvest or hunting the animal to produce the sustenance of the meal, there is the death, transformation and nourishment, ultimately. But is this really what is happening here? As Baudelaire points out in his 123rd poem of Les Fleur du Mal, “Death… Will grow the flowers of their brain!” Death, personified as the hold that cannot be captured, grown and gathered will, when we are faced with this fact, allow ideas to manifest. Artists must let imitation or misrepresentation die or die creatively. Rorie presents the diversionary plotting we must struggle with, and face to overcome trepidation. We must hunt out our nemesis, gather our wits, be aware of contrivance and allow our minds to feed us. Be hungry and you will capture what you need”.

And here we have her first exhibition of work in Victoria since 1973; a draping, swathing, theatrical (the word has been used) sculptural installation viewable both outside and through the windows at MOCL.
With a budget of $42,  much of the material was found or donated.  The fabric she used came from another artist’s studio space; homey scraps she liberated and transformed with a coating of grout compound.  No longer colourful and flower patterned, the fabric is  grey and pebbled, highly suggestive of classical sculpture;  fraught with a powerful undercurrent, perhaps sexual, and immediately reminiscient (to me) of  Daniel Laskarin‘s now beacon now sea.
now beacon now sea is  a steel chair riddled with bullet holes and draped in a silky grey cloth; the very image of violence and romance; the swirling cloth, the explosive scars of penetration (of bullets ripping into steel), a sense of yearning.
Something similar is happening in Debora’s work, Outside In.  A yearning,  not exactly romantic, but desiring to be so.  The materials and the space almost preclude romance.  Inside of MOCL, the air smells strongly of mildew and it’s cold, bone chillingly so.   The materials are not expensive; the gallery space is not pristine; in fact the work itself is not vaunted.  She gets a week to show and barely anyone came to the opening (although the people who did brought wine).  The connection to Laskarin (and his precursors) has everything to do with the essential emotion, the central experience of yearning.

The violence , though, in Outside In, is the effect of reality; it’s not a theatrical affectation, an idea to muse over; it’s truly present, possibly within Debora’s life, but certainly within her art making.
Daniel welded his chair in his very tight and bright backyard studio space and he shot the gun (many times over).  Perhaps shooting bullets into a steel construction is an invitation to chaos and the unexpected, but essentially he was in control of his process, his materials and in the end, the exhibition space as well, the AGGV, although not directly controlled by Daniel, is certainly a controlled environment.  It’s clean, there are bathrooms, and guards.  People paid attention to the work.  A lot was written.
Debora doesn’t have a studio space.  She needs a job.  She made the work over the course of two days right at the gallery.  She had to bend to the structure of  the gallery (the cement walls, the claustrophobic size) and to time.
It’s impossible to think of the violence of poverty, the poverty of materials, and space and attention, without thinking about vulnerability.  The delicacy and the fragility of art made of bits and pieces, and installed temporarily is almost heartbreaking.  Also the  sweetness of  faith, in the process, and in the need, in spite of any perceived privation, is almost unbearable to imagine.  There is a wonderful quality to the work that speaks of  living rather than enduring, and although it’s difficult to contemplate, it is very inspiring.  Poverty is brutal; poverty destroys dignity.  Poverty is cold and dirty and requires scrambling for the necessary.  Debora’s eyes are closed, I think, to poverty.

Outside In is incredibly beautiful, and I wonder, is it poverty that is beautiful? The making of something from next to nothing?  The insistence of making in spite of poverty? I don’t know.  I don’t think so.  I think the spirit of beauty is there, inherent and relentless, regardless of any void.
Another kind of violence, perhaps.

 

Outside In