w y l y a s t l e yFestivals + What’s Next
So I had an amazingly spectacular time at the Smoke Farm Lo-Fi Festival. It was magical. I was particularly moved by Sarah Kavage and Adria Garcia’s Woven Grass Sculpture and Keely Isaak Meehan‘s Whispers to Me. I thought these elegant and perfectly executed works really captured the essence of Lo-Fi’s mission: “to seed the Farm with narrative and inquiry about place and our use of landscape.”
I liked so much of what I saw and experienced and was genuinely thrilled to be a part of Lo-Fi. The only hiccup was that my dragonflies did not endure as well as I’d hoped. Their working parts needed constant supervision and tightening. Two sets of wings came loose and positively battered the delicate fabric. That said, I thought they looked beautiful and were such pretty surprises when roaming through the paths.
The broken mechanisms will end up being an excellent teacher, I know. The dragonflies will fly again; however, not in four days – not for the Nature Consortium’s Arts in Nature Festival.
For AiN I ended up taking the moving parts off and installed the dragonflies together (mostly) as static sculpture. I was very pleased with the arrangement and started to wonder if the dragonflies would actually be improved if they could move.
The AiN festival was excellent. So many good things to do and see. At this year’s festival I was particularly wowed by Trimpin‘s sound sculpture and Cabiri‘s aerial splendor. I also really enjoyed Kristin Tollefson‘s story installation.
Well, the festivals are over and my summer obligations are met. I swept out the studio, took a few days off to camp in the San Juans and have started collecting thoughts and implements for my next projects. I am purposefully not setting any show dates for the next 10 months in order to create the space to go deeper with materials and processes. I am positively captivated by making things work and can’t wait to play with mechanisms of all sorts. Please check back often to see the works!
Thank so much for visiting.
w y l y a s t l e y 