H2O: Film on Water Redux

CYNTHIA-REEVES Gallery

Reception  November 19th, 6:00-8:00

tuesday-saturday 10:00-6:00

Gallery Information:

535 West 24th, 2nd floor

New York, NY

212.714.0044

cynthia-reeves.com

H2O:Film on Water is no longer on view at:

The Newport Mill, Great River Arts, Spheris gallery and the Brattleboro Museum

Standing in the massive (18,000 square foot) space – part of the recently renovated Newport Mill – the viewer is surrounded and lifted by the light, movement, and sound emanating from dozens of pieces of art. The integration of the mill’s architecture and the art associated with the exhibition is beautiful, powerful, and timely.

The show was organized by Cynthia Reeves, a long-time friend of Orion who has connected the magazine’s staff with a number of visual artists whose work has subsequently appeared in Orion. Cynthia is the creative director of the Great River Arts Institute, and the owner of the Cynthia-Reeves gallery in Manhattan.

For the complete article click here:

http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/newsfrom187/

“From the water problem to water as metaphor. Our story begins in a former woolen mill on the banks of the Sugar River in Newport, NH. To get there, I drove past The Dollar Store and strip malls, the spray-painted signs advertising cord wood and coal, and onto South Main Street, where space for rent signs fade in store front windows.

Newport is one of the American towns where Sturm, Ruger and Co. has been manufacturing guns since 1949. Firearms magnate William Ruger, Jr., meticulously restored the old mill to house his extensive collection of antique cars. Bill Ruger then turned over an entire floor – 20,000 square feet – of the mill bulding to H20: Film on Water. It’s a collection of films, video, photographs and contemporary installations linked to the Connecticut River waterways.”

To read or hear more please click here:

http://www.nhpr.org/node/27343

NEWPORT, N.H. – Outside an old brick woolen mill here, a dam in the Sugar River pools the water and releases it in a crashing waterfall. Inside, reflections glint on the walls, and the sounds of water rushing and burbling fill the vast third floor, part of “H2O Film on Water,’’ a themed art exhibition now up at four venues along Connecticut River Valley waterways.

“It’s a yellow brick road of contemporary art,’’ declares creative director and art maven Cynthia Reeves, founder of the educational nonprofit Great River Arts in Bellows Falls, Vt., and owner of Spheris Gallery in Hanover, N.H., two of the project’s other venues. The fourth is the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center in Brattleboro. “We’ll lead people up the river,’’ Reeves says.

“H2O Film on Water’’ features a juried show of 40 water-related videos and a curated exhibition of work by 26 artists, ranging from young emerging artists to such big names as Mike and Doug Starn and rising star Cui Fei. A portion of the proceeds raised by the project will be donated to Water for People, a nonprofit that works to create sustainable drinking water resources in developing countries.

The exhibition was put together on a shoestring: “Virtually all the artists did everything at their own cost,’’ Reeves says, standing beside a spiraling fabric installation by Georgie Friedman in the Newport Mill space. The juried videos run on televisions donated by a hotelier friend who was switching to plasma screens. And the Newport Mill space is rent-free.

It’s quite a spectacular venue. At a generous 18,000 square feet, the mill’s third floor houses most of the artworks in “H2O: Film on Water.’’ At the time last year when Reeves proposed the art project to the building’s owner, William Ruger, the mill had been losing industrial tenants and was in need of an overhaul. Ruger has owned the mill since 1980, leasing it to businesses that made combat boots, miniature light bulbs, and more.

Reeves, who also owns Cynthia-Reeves, a New York gallery, found Ruger through mutual connections and was curious about his space. Ruger was no stranger to art; he has a collection of 19th- and early-20th-century American art.

“She came over a year and a half ago,’’ Ruger says in a phone conversation from a vacation in Maine. “She said, ‘We could open in 2009.’ . . . It seemed like the dim and distant future.’’

Reeves nearly swooned when she saw it that first time. Oh my God, this is fantastic. Oh my God, this is so huge. What will we do with the space? she remembers thinking.

Although the tough economy has seen many empty commercial spaces open to artists just to fill up square feet, Ruger says he had planned a renovation anyway, and Reeves’s project locked in the timetable. “I’d made the decision to change the nature of the tenants before the economic conditions set in,’’ he says.

The two signed a lease and a memorandum of understanding, and each went to work: Ruger on his renovations and Reeves on organizing the show.

“The artwork started arriving, and the elevator had just been finished,’’ Ruger reports.

The result is dramatic. The lights are dimmed, but brighten around certain works of art. The industrial feel of the space remains, with its brick walls and exposed pipes, but the wood floor gleams, and the 32 vast windows have been covered with black fabric to make it easier to see the videos. Daniel Wheeler’s brilliant, shimmering color photographs, “GULP (Generative Urban Landscape Project),’’ shot underwater in pools, hang suspended from the ceiling down the center aisle, leading the eye to the one uncovered window in sight, and a view of the Sugar River dam and waterfall.

Curated works in the Newport Mill include the chilling video projection “Seas,’’ by Jenn Moller, of a nearly frozen Cape Cod Bay throwing slushy waves ashore, and Amy Globus’s freakily beautiful video “Electric Sheep,’’ in which two octopi squeeze their way through narrow tubes between two larger plexiglass aquariums.

In addition to videos, there are two-dimensional works such as Stephen DiRado’s funny, fraught, black-and-white photo series “JUMP,’’ featuring swimmers taking the plunge off the American Legion Memorial Bridge on Martha’s Vineyard, and installations such as June Ahrens’s “In Depth,’’ in which a rotating light over a floor covered in mirror shards casts a spectacle of reflections on the wall. The monitors showing the juried videos line two long walls.

Reeves is thrilled with the result, and she has another show in mind to propose to Ruger. “For anyone to say, ‘Here’s the key to this building, have at it,’ it’s incredible,’’ Reeves says.

Ruger, never a fan of contemporary art, says he’s pleased. “I think it worked perfectly,’’ he says. “I’m delightfully surprised to find myself interested in something I wouldn’t think I’d be interested in.’’

And the mill’s future? “Who knows, maybe even people who visit as a result of the art show might be interested, maybe this will be some help in marketing [the space]’’ Ruger says. “It would be delightful if it turned out to be a building for the arts, if it could be made financially feasible.’’

Article

I enjoyed each water video on a different level because they were so diverse in technique, presentation, and subject. The artists brought their own take on the work by using color, black and white, people, animation, and various sources of water.

“Sounds on Water” mesmerized me as I watch the black and white presentation of a body of water moving in different rhythms, coupled with the sound of water in the background. Since I love spending the day in the water and believe I am part mermaid, it was pure Nirvana for me.

In addition to the videos, which were in a competition from across the United States, there are impressive displays from artists with galleries in New York City and beyond. The artwork in “alleverythingthatisyou” was created by Mike and Doug Stam. Made with archival inkjet prints and varnish, it portrays an array of snowflakes each uniquely different. The artists are twins, have two studios, and featured in Fine Art Magazine in April 2009, and The New York Times magazine in March 2009.

Some of the 21 artists represented are…

Photographer, Daniel Wheeler represented in Los Angeles by Duncan Miller Gallery.

Joey Morgan, whose artworks and multi-disciplinary installations were shown in site-specific contexts and gallery exhibitions in the United States, Australia, Denmark, France and across Canada.

June Ahern has galleries in New York City and New Haven CT and has an exhibit made with mirror tiles “In Depth.”

Peter Brooks has a group of paintings on a new collection of Poems by Charles Wright titled ” Sestets,” and his works been shown throughout the US.

Photographer Stephen DiRado has been exhibiting his photographs since 1983. DiRado is the Photography Senior Lecturer in the Studio Arts Program in the Visual and Performing Arts Department at Clark University. His black and white exhibit ” Jump” is an interesting study of people on Martha’s Vineyard jumping from the American Legion Memorial Bridge into the ocean 18 feet below.

This week, winners of the video competition winners will be announced, prizes are First Place $5,000, Second place, $2,500 and third place, $1,000. Denise Markonish, Curator at Massachusetts MoCA, judged the videos. However, I have a heads up on first place, and the winner is Deborah Wing-Sproul of Cape Elisabeth ME for “Tidal Culture: Part II (Newfoundland)”

This event is sponsored by Great River Arts a New England-based arts center to support and nurture visual and literary artists and provide regional youth programs. They are a non-profit organization dedicated to bringing faculty from the literary and visual arts disciplines to teach in the Connecticut River Valley and other select locations. Great River Arts also provides opportunities for regional schools to supplement their visual arts and creative writing programs with in-school offerings, as well as with after-school opportunities for young people in New Hampshire and Vermont.

Cynthia Reeves, founder and Creative Director of Great River Arts, is the acting Creative Director for “H2O: Film on Water.” Reeves owns Spheris Gallery in Hanover, New Hampshire – the partner gallery to Cynthia-Reeves in New York City.

Hours for the exhibit are 11-5 Thursday through Sunday, and it runs until November 7. Although Admission is free, there is a $5.00 suggested donation. This is a multi site exhibit with venues also at Brattleboro Museum, VT., Spheris Gallery, Hanover NH, and Great River Arts, Bellows Fall VT.

Newport is fortunate to have a wonderful exhibit and organization for its community. Thank you to Great River Arts and Bill Ruger for this opportunity.

http://www.sunacom.com/columnists/croydon/h2o.html

Article

“Man is not an aquatic animal, but from the time we stand in youthful wonder beside a spring brook till we sit in old age and watch the endless roll of the sea, we feel a strong kinship with the waters of this world.”

I stumbled upon this quote once in a book by nature writer and columnist Hal Borland, entitled “Sundial of the Seasons: A Selection of Outdoor Editorials from the New York Times.” There is something so succinct about the sentence that does not attempt to answer or reveal why water holds such mystical sway over us, while communicating without doubt that it does. That is something like the nature of water itself.

This simple elemental force, this random fastening of hydrogen and oxygen, runs through our cells, our kitchens, our streets, our cities, separates our continents. Allows the planet habitation. Gives life, and takes away. And even with science at our backs, there is no reason nor rhyme. We need it, it fuels us and romances us, we play with it and say we love it …

Yet it doesn’t answer back. Its basic truth just keeps flowing, silent and eternal.

Unfortunately its held tongue, like anything, is not safe around artists.

One of the reasons for art’s existence is that the human mind and spirit has an innate need for questing, filtering the findings through our own experience and then retelling. This is true for everyone, not just artists in the traditional sense; storytellers and vivid dreamers merely occupy different rooms in the house where painters rent. Artists may simply feel the impulse to shout their “reality findings” louder.

With water’s relation to our lives so basic, yet unknowable and bizarre, it proved a field day for the upwards of 100 artists chosen to exhibit water-themed work in 2D, 3D and video installation for the sprawling and unprecedented H20: Film on Water traveling exhibition, debuting in Bellows Falls this Friday from 5 to 7 p.m. at Great River Arts Institute with a wine reception.

William Ruger — owner of Newport Mill gallery, a newly renovated landmark along the Sugar River in Newport, N.H. — approached Cynthia Reeves about the creation of an inaugural exhibit for his 18,000-square-foot space. Reeves is a veritable Connecticut River Valley art star: She founded Great River Arts in Bellows Falls and is its creative director, founded Spheris Gallery in 1995 in Hanover, N.H., and founded Cynthia-Reeves in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood in 2001. The Cynthia-Reeves Web site proclaims a proclivity toward “strong conceptual foundation and innovative use of materials, specifically mixed media, three-dimensional works and site-specific installation.” Her recent curatorial fascinations more than affirm this, with H20: Film on Water following in the vein of the current Art & Science series at her namesake gallery.

Reeves prefers shows with an overarching conceptual unification, that toy with the intellect as much as, or perhaps more than, the visual sense. The Art & Science series — highlighting five artists over the course of three spring and summer shows, with the last installment under way — aims to broaden and elucidate discourses around scientific endeavor. Work includes Sheila Gallagher’s drawings created through recording her own eye movement at Boston College’s Eye Tracking Lab and Claire Watkins’ kinetic sculptures mimicking the human nervous system with tree branches and LED lights.

With Newport Mill situated on the Sugar River and its history being so inexplicably bound with that Connecticut River tributary, in addition to the desire to capitalize on an opportunity for unifying the southern Connecticut River watershed with site-specific art, Reeves chose a fitting water-based theme tying science to our daily lives and decided that it should be a traveling show—that it should flow on down the river, so to speak.
The show officially opened at the flagship Newport Mill location with 50 juried videos and numerous curated photographic series, site-based installations and paintings on Aug. 8. The evening before, Brattleboro Museum and Art Center participated through Shuli Sadé’s “Waterfall,” a 15-video installation, as part of their season’s opening exhibits. Spheris Gallery in Hanover, N.H., supplied the sneak peak on Aug. 6 with six juried videos. There will be 10 videos at the Bellows Falls installation.

A piece by New York artist Amy Globus entitled “Electric Sheep” sharply documents an octopus struggling to make its way through glass tubing, evoking a dystopically futuristic mood inspired by Syd Mead’s set designs for the 1982 film “Blade Runner.” The title comes from the Phillip K. Dick novel that inspired the film, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”

Artist Jeffrey Blondes lives between Paris and the Loire Valley, and creates work exploring the intersection of landscape and time. In his “Summer Solstice: 24-Hour Film,” a tract of land 124 miles north of the Artic Circle on Tornetrask, a large lake on the Swedish-Norwegian border, captures an entire day cycle in real time; thus it transports each spectator visually and temporally to a moment they are now implicated in because of its truth, though distanced from due to geography and its passing.

Other area arts events of note abound this week — though are comparatively landlocked. This weekend is Bellows Falls’ monthly Third Friday Art Walk, and the Italian café/performance venue Boccelli’s On the Canal will feature the Red Fox Session Band’s Irish fiddle jam on Friday from 6 to 8 p.m. and New Orleans’ popular blues vocalist Samirah Evans on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. On Monday, Aug. 24, at Bellows Falls’ Rockingham Public Library, Vermont Independent Media hosts the 5 p.m. workshop “Practical Writing” with Jeff Potter, editor of respected Windham County newspaper The Commons. Come for the water, stay for the tide.

Clara Rose Thornton is a freelance cultural critic and arts journalist originally hailing from Chicago who now lives in an artists’ colony in Bellows Falls. She can be reached at clara@inkblotcomplex.com, or through her Web site, clararosethornton.com.

www.rutlandherald.com/article/20090820/FEATURES17/908200302/1045/FEATURES17

NEWPORT, New Hampshire— A new art gallery housed in a refurbished mill in southern New Hampshire is currently hosting its inaugural exhibition, “H2O: Film on Water,” a show whose theme will concentrate on the ever-relevant topic of, what else, the world’s water.

The Newport Mill was reinvented to serve its new purpose by ownerWilliam B. Ruger, who previously rented the space out to light manufacturing concerns. Much like the nearby Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, the space pays homage to the area’s industrial and economic history, as does its first exhibition, as water was a critical aspect of old mill towns.

Curated by Cynthia Reeves, who owns an eponymous gallery in Manhattan and serves as director of the Great Rivers Art Institute in Vermont, the video-focused exhibition will include paintings, photographs, and more.

http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/32270/new-hampshire-mill-reopens-as-art-space/

For over a century, the Newport Mill has stood along the Sugar River, a tributary of the Connecticut River that helped power New Hampshire’s manufacturing industry. For the next few months, water will spur a different kind of industry inside the sturdy brick building.

The mill is the headquarters for “H2O: Film on Water,” a show featuring dozens of works of contemporary art that explore the human relationship with water. The exhibition is spread among three other sites – at galleries in Hanover, Bellows Falls, Vt., and Brattleboro, Vt. – all of which hug the Connecticut River and further encourage viewers to consider the show’s theme and their own connection to water.

The exhibition was organized by Cynthia Reeves, creative director of Great River Arts, a nonprofit organization that seeks to promote the arts in the Connecticut River Valley. She said the mill’s river setting extends the show’s theme beyond the gallery walls.

“One of our hopes is to connect people to the landscape,” Reeves said. “We really want to put a spotlight on the riverway.”

The mill’s owner, William Ruger, offered the building to Reeves last year when he learned that she was thinking of putting together an ambitious project to mark the 10th anniversary of Great River Arts. It took nearly a year to pull the exhibition together, soliciting works from dozens of artists and figuring out how to fit them in the mill’s open floor plan. The result is some 20 videos and several other works of art – paintings, photographs, sculpture and installations – across 18,000 square feet of unbroken space.

Entering the mill gallery, you’re greeted by the projected image of an icy ocean, rippling and curling in a series of slow waves. The sound of other videos

echoes through the hall. Arranging the mill floor to accommodate all of the works was one of the toughest tasks in pulling the show together, Reeves said.

“This space is a huge challenge,” Reeves said. “It’s like putting on a museum show.”

The works at Newport approach the topic of water from several perspectives: ecological, political, personal. Some deal directly with thorny issues such as global warming and public water use. Others take a more playful approach, such as one video that features footage of children frolicking in a New York City pool.

Clare Langan’s “Flooded Rooms” calls to mind images from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Anne Lindberg’s “Vapor,” an assembly of thin blue and green threads hanging from the ceiling, resembles a waterfall or a fine mist.

“Electric Sheep,” by Amy Globus, features long sequences of a squid maneuvering through glass tubes. Over time, the animal’s movements take on the alluring look of a dancer.

“Jump,” by Stephen DiRado, is a series of photographed portraits of people at the exact moment they leap from a bridge into the waters off Martha’s Vineyard.

For “The State of Things,” Ligorano Reese cast blocks of ice spelling out the word “DEMOCRACY,” left them in the summer sun on a street in Denver and taped the results as the letters slowly melted over the next 24 hours.

Reeves said she made video art the focus of the show, in part, because she felt it was a medium to which children could relate. She hopes school groups will visit, and the gallery will host kid-friendly programs starting in September.

The show’s division among four sites is a key piece of the overall exhibition, Reeves said. She hopes visitors will drive from gallery to gallery, “like a treasure hunt,” she said. In doing so, they’ll follow the path of the Connecticut River and perhaps contemplate the themes explored inside the gallery.

http://cmedit61.sx.atl.publicus.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090810/FRONTPAGE/908100303

Cynthia Reeves, the director of the Great Rivers Art Institute in Bellows Falls, Vt. (she also owns the Cynthia Reeves gallery in Manhattan), curated works by artists like Doug and Mike Starn, Daniel Wheeler and Anne Lindberg, while Denise Markonish (a Mass MOCA curator) will be awardingthe three juried prizes in a video competition. The work spreads out to three other nearby venues: the Great River Arts Institute, the Brattleboro Museum in Vermont and the Spheris Gallery in Hanover, N.H., through Nov. 7. And if you tire of all the highfalutin art, book an appointment to see Mr. Ruger’s formidable car collection, which includes various Rolls-Royces, a Duesenberg and two 1920s firetrucks.

http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/now-showing-h2o-film-on-water/

At first glance, artist Avy Claire’s installation, “Big Water,” which opens at the Spheris Gallery in Hanover on Thursday, displays what appears to be 16 paneled photographs of the surface of water. Upon closer examination, however, the viewer realizes that tiny words have been incorporated into the photographs, creating a collage-like image.

For Claire, the piece symbolizes the immense amount of words and thoughts that go into simple things like water, she said. The element in all its forms — complicated, destructive and beautiful — provides a unifying element for “H2O: Film on Water,” an exhibition hosted by four galleries across the New Hampshire-Vermont area. The Newport Mill in Newport Mill, N.H. serves as the flagship gallery for the exhibition.

The exhibition is sponsored by the Greater Valley Arts Center partnered with Water for People, a non-profit organization that works to provide clean water in developing countries by creating local water sanitation facilities. As a result, much of the artwork in the exhibition focuses on the effects of climate change, particularly for those who have trouble accessing clean water.

“Big Water,” for example, incorporates more than 600,000 words about the global water crisis, taken from writings by scientists, journalists, individuals, lawyers, researchers, and policymakers.

“What’s become fascinating to me … is the enormity of the amount of words and the amount of time, energy and resources that people put into this issue,” Claire said. “Sometimes I feel like it shows this sense that we really need to make a change.”

Claire’s piece successfully incorporates meaning that is relevant to a contemporary crisis while still maintaining a beautiful artistic quality that justifies its position as a piece of art amongst the others on display. Like a Monet, the long-distance view of the instillation depicts the play of light on the surface of a shallow blue pool, whereas a close look at the piece reveals thousands of minutely detailed words.

“When you get up close you encounter the abstraction of the pixels and you get this other element, which is text,” Claire said. “That was a very important part of this piece from the start, because the text initiated the piece.”

While many works’ subject matters and the colors lend themselves to a tranquil exhibit, the deep thematic aspects of the exhibition are not lost.

“The juxtaposition of the heaviness of the topic with the beauty and the lightness of the works is really fascinating,” Claire said.

Daniel Wheeler’s photographs, showing at The Newport Mill, also focus on the play of water, but places an emphasis on the visual effects created by its disruption. Unlike the smooth surfaces in Claire’s panels, Wheeler’s black and white pieces depict water ripples created by his own breath underneath the surface. Through the ripples, the viewer can glimpse the landscape of a garden.

“I’m taking these pictures from the inside of a swimming pool, so there’s a kind of performance to it,” Wheeler said. “Each time I take an image there’s a descent into the water…I’m shooting through the water that’s been disturbed through by descent, and I’m also shooting through the breath that I’m letting out.”

Wheeler said that his earlier sculpture work inspired the photographs, noting in particular the idea shooting from residential pools in an otherwise desert-like Los Angeles, Calif.

“It’s a very strange landscape that exists in these backyards — it’s like a little fake garden,” he said. “Sometimes I’m not actually using permission, so you may see a guy in a wetsuit running across your yard, holding a camera, and jumping into your pool — that could be me.”

“H20: Film on Water” opens August 6th. The Newport Mill and Spheris, along with The Brattleboro Museum in Brattleboro, Vt., and Great River Arts in Bellows Falls, Vt., will show works from almost one hundred artists until November 7th. All four of the galleries are currently open to the public.

http://thedartmouth.com/2009/08/04/arts/water/

A renovated mill in Newport, N.H. — a tiny town (population 6,200) along the banks of the Sugar River in the southwestern part of the state — is not a place where you would necessarily expect to see cutting-edge art. But from next Friday through Nov. 7, it will be the site of “H2O Film on Water,” a show of videos, paintings, photographs and site-based installations by about 100 artists.

Through the eyes of some well-known figures like Doug Starn and his twin, Mike, and Shuli Sade, as well as emerging artists like Amy Globus, Ethan Murrow and Anne Lindberg, the exhibition will explore water and the effects of changes in the global climate.

Organized by Cynthia Reeves, owner of the Cynthia-Reeves gallery in Manhattan and creative director of the Great River Arts Institute, a nonprofit arts center in Bellows Falls, Vt., the show will spill over to other spaces along the Connecticut River (whose tributaries include the Sugar River): Great River Arts; the Brattleboro Museum in Vermont; and Spheris Gallery in Hanover, N.H.

“I wanted to draw attention to the Connecticut River,” Ms. Reeves said, “to draw people up the valley.”

The area includes 18,000 square feet in the Newport Mill, a 1906 turreted red-brick building that will be making its debut as an exhibition space.

In 1980 when its owner, William B. Ruger Jr., bought the mill, he rented it to very different businesses. Over the years a light bulb maker set up an operation there; so did a shoe manufacturer and a warehouse distributor. But two years ago when Mr. Ruger saw such industries on the decline, he renovated the building in hopes of giving it a new life.

“I would love it to be a permanent art space with galleries, art storage, exhibitions,” Mr. Ruger, who retired in 2006 as chairman of the firearms company his father founded, said in a telephone interview. “Sure it’s out of the way, but it would be breaking new ground.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/31/arts/design/31vogel.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=design