A global reflection by contributing artists, curated by VC Projects
SLOW ART DAY, APRIL 15, 2023
EL NIDO BY VC PROJECTS
HOMAGE TO SAM FRANCIS
An online exhibition and observation of the American artist known for interpreting color and light
BY SLOW-READING SELECTED POETRY BY SAM FRANCIS
GUIDELINES FOR READING AND MORE
1. Read the text slowly out load
2. After reading, go outside or look through a window to see the sky (either day or night.)
3. Contemplate in silence
4. Create a work in any medium in reflection of this text
CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS
Shane Guffogg - Strathmore, USA
L. Mikelle Standbridge, Mosso, Italy
AKAT - Tokyo, Japan
Bjarni Sigurbjörnsson - Hellissandur, Iceland
Mark van Drunick - Arnhem. Netherlands
Victoria Chapman - Los Angeles, USA
Stevie Kincheloe, Los Angeles, USA
Mark van Drunick, Homage to Sam Francis, In Depth choreographed dance, Slow Art Day, April 15, 2023
VC Projects: We sent Sam’s poetry along with the guidelines for this exhibition to Mark, a professional dancer in the Netherlands; he created this powerful work full of intrigue.
He wrote back:
I found the text very inspiring, as well as your instructions.
I decided to put the beginning of the text in the video as it became overwhelming for the spectator to have to read too much text too fast.
Please let me know your thoughts; for me, it was a valuable creative experience. - Mark
Mark van Drunick completed his dance training at ArtEZ Dance Academy in the Netherlands. After this, he joined the dance company Introdans as a full-time artist.
He has performed nationwide and internationally dancing works by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Jiří Kylián, Hans van Manen, Alexander Ekman, Robert Battle, Ruben Chi, and more.
Mark is a dancer, teacher, and choreographer that aims to discard the labels that dance usually has. Creating a fusion between ballet, contemporary, and breakdance, he makes and performs dance that transcends conventional boundaries.
Improvisation is a crucial aspect of his journey to being a free-movement artist without traditional restrictions.
Mark resides in Arnhem, the Netherlands
Shane Guffogg, Crossings #7, 2001, watercolor on paper, 16 x 12 inches
VC Projects: We were honored to share this watercolor by Shane, as he worked with Sam in his studio during the early 90s and has told us some fascinating stories about Sam and studio life in Venice, California. Shane further mentioned this work, created in 2001, was inspired by Sam.
Shane Guffogg is an American artist who looks through the lens of humanity at civilizations, both past and present, and views time as threads that connect all people. His work is a visual language that is informed by the spiritualism of abstraction and the realism of the old masters. These two ideas are usually seen as separate but Guffogg fuses them seamlessly into works that transcend and become testaments to thoughts that inform us of who we are in the 21st century.
Victoria Chapman and Stevie Kincheloe, 2023, Homage to Sam Francis - Depth is All, photo from the ritual
VC Projects: (Victoria Chapman) I felt it necessary to do a ritual related to everything I had been researching regarding Sam Francis. This all started a few months ago when I was blessed to write a short piece on Sam’s self-portraits. Of course, I have been a fan of Sam’s artwork for years; I didn’t know that he also wrote poetry. I immediately fell in love with his writings and, in particular, this text we are featuring for the entire online exhibition, which I received from Beth Ann Whittaker-Willams, Associate Director, Sam Francis Foundation, amongst many other books related to Sam’s life, his art, and poetry.
Victoria Chapman, Homage to Sam Francis: Depth is All, ritual incorporating Sam Francis audio (selected text) layered within music by John Cage, In a Landscape, observing pages from: The Visible and the Invisible, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, The Letters; Freud and Jung, I Ching, and for the senses: Frankincense and myrrh. With the aid of interdisciplinary artist Stevie Kincheloe, listening to the audio, tossing the prepared pages, and slowly turning clockwise for Slow Art Day, April 15, 2023.
The prepared pages from The Visible and the Invisible were carefully collected from the gallery floor after the ritual. And will be dedicated to the next phase of this experiment by selecting the first sentence of each page to become an audiobook. Merleau-Ponty’s book was selected because of the sensorial philosophy relative to the living body, seemingly relative to the poetry written by Sam Francis. The page from I Ching, randomly selected, set the stage for the room. Through research, I found Sam Francis attended lectures at Carl Jung Institute in Los Angeles; I thought it would be interesting to incorporate a dialogue with the letter randomly selected from that book, The Letters Freud and Jung. All of this preparation led to an engaging environment for Stevie to be and turn slowly clockwise, contemplating all of the elements listening to my voice resiting Sam’s poetry with an additional sonic layer of John Cage’s In a Landscape, which I felt the cadence of the composition felt appropriate.
Below are the items use for this experience
Victoria Chapman is a Los Angeles-based curator and writer exploring visual and experimental narratives.
An interdisciplinary artist, Stevie Kincheloe, understands movement as a conversation between the physical and metaphysical planes. What began as a path to opening that notoriously elusive portal of inspiration, her movement meditations are becoming their own medium. A dismantling of the masks and false faces we show to the world, the intuitive moment is channeling the raw expression of the truth, moment to moment.
Upbeat symphonic rhythms by A.K.A.T.
VC Projects: We emailed AKAT the poetry and my mother and I recorded ourselves reciting Sam’s text. I thought doing something with my mother relative to Sam’s work would be fun. I sent these audio recordings to AKAT and said do as you like! He jumped at the opportunity and created two sound pieces with our audio, each uniquely different.
A.K.A.T. Homage to Sam Francis - Above and Below selected text by Sam Francis, whispered by VC Projects with symphonic rhythms
Born in Kumamoto, Japan, A.K.A.T. moved to Los Angeles in 1990 and now resides between Japan and California, working on various creative projects related to sound and film.
Bjarni Sigurbjornsson, 2023, Homage to Sam Francis #1, watercolor on paper, 44 x 30 inches
Bjarni Sigurbjornsson, 2023, Homage to Sam Francis #2, watercolor on paper, 44 x 30 inches
Bjarni Sigurbjornsson, 2023, Homage to Sam Francis #3, watercolor on paper, 44 x 30 inches
VC Projects: Iceland- based, Bjarni Sigurbjornsson did his Bachelor's and Masters at the San Francisco Institute of Art; I knew there had to be some kind of influence on his artwork. My intuition was right; Bjarni kindly made a work in homage to Sam; it was Bjarni’s email back to me that gave me the title of this exhibition, “Homage to Sam Francis,” when he agreed to be a contributing artist for this online exhibition.
I remember when first saw a show of his painting in Berkley Museum in the early nineties. When I started visiting LA, one of the things I always did was go to the County Museum, where they had a big beautiful painting by him. But what sticks to me the most was an exhibition in ACE Gallery that had his edge paintings and his biggest work on canvas for me; that is probably one of the shows that had a really profound effect on me. I have a book on him called Lessons of Darkness with text by Jean-Francois Lyotard. Here is a quote from that book;
“ His whole oeuvre will have struggled to make the visible absent while substantiating its presence. Magnificence gives a lesson of darkness."
What I like is this void of white canvas with a small amount of floating colors. - Bjarni
Bjarni Sigurbjörnsson received his Bachelor's and Master of Fine Art at the San Francisco Institute of Art. After completing his degrees, he returned to Reykjavik to continue his art career. The artist received a two-year stipend from the Icelandic Government for a sizeable site-specific land commission that combined painting and sculpture. In 2003, he took part in Los Angeles International Biennial, and the following year, he participated in the Pilsen International Biennial of Drawing. Over the past 25 years, Sigurbjörnsson has had numerous gallery and museum exhibitions in the U.S.A. and Europe.
Anonymous. The guidelines were to read the text, go outside and look at the sky, pause in silence for a time, and make a work of art in any medium
A.K.A.T. Homage to Sam Francis dedicated to Sakamoto Ryuichi, layered sound (5.51 min.) featuring EM Chapman
VC Projects: This is the second work AKAT did. This time with my mother’s voice reciting the text; she did it in one take!
Born in Kumamoto, Japan, A.K.A.T. moved to Los Angeles in 1990 and now resides between Japan and California, working on various creative projects related to sound and film.
EM Chapman is the curator’s mother, a businesswoman, and an explorer of art and culture; she was born in 1934 in South London and currently residing in Southern California.
“I paint time
I am ruin rolled I am rolled
Time is the swiftest of all things
darkness covers light light fills darkness
interpenetration of time and space an increase in light gives an increase in
darkness
light and dark are constellations of each other
cutting away to a new image is
new image
the motion towards death
light is the evidence 4 if the movement 3
of eternity 2
compensating is
the shadow adding to the light what
it must know at this time
We are always at the center of space
we are always at the center of time”
L. Mikelle Standbridge, 2014, Untitled, 10 x 10 inches, photography, and assemblage
VC Projects: L. Mikelle Standbridge, based in Northern Italy, also studied photography in San Francisco. Again I thought it was fitting to select from Mikelle’s early work to contribute to this online exhibition; I knew precisely which piece I wanted to curate. Thankfully, Mikelle agreed to me sharing it here. I felt the poetry I shared in the quotes above related to what I felt when I saw this work by Mikelle.
L. Mikelle has her B.F.A. from San Francisco State University. During her degree, she integrated three years in France to study French, darkroom printing, and Art History at the Univ. of Paris. She was then awarded a scholarship to the Univ. of Chicago, where she got her M.F.A in Photography. She taught photography in Chicago at Columbia College and was also awarded two years in a row the CAAP grant (Chicago Artists Assistance Program) by the City of Chicago. She exhibits in international fairs and at Paratissima Turin; from among the hundreds of artists exhibiting, she was chosen as among the top 15. She has been a finalist in multiple Art Photography contests and consequently invited to exhibit, for example, at the Fotissima Fair, Turin, on behalf of Nikon Talent, at the ‘Triennale of Italian Photography" in Venice, and "The European Festival of Nude Photography (FEPN) in Arles, Fr. She also exhibited this last summer at the Gallerie Huit in Arles during the most prestigious photo event in Europe, Les Rencontres. L. Mikelle, currently living in Milan, is represented by the Milan gallery "Gli Eroici Furori – Contemporary Art." and is as well the founder of the non-profit artist association "Casa Regis - Culture and Contemporary Art
For more information, contact: victoria@vcprojects.art
This online exhibition has the blessing of Sam Francis Foundation
ABOUT HONORING SAM AND WHAT IS SLOW ART DAY?
A Century of Sam
2023 marks the centennial of Sam Francis (June 25, 1923 - November 4, 1994). We celebrate the 100th anniversary of Francis’s birthday and his continued creative legacy through exhibitions, educations events, special projects, articles, and archival explorations. We invite scholars, colleagues, artists, institutions, and historians to explore their relationship with Francis, his art, his creative legacy and his inspiration. -
Sam Francis Foundation https://samfrancisfoundation.org
ABOUT SLOW ART DAY
Founded in 2010, Slow Art Day is a global event (more than 1,500 museums and galleries have participated) with a simple mission: help more people discover for themselves the joy of looking at and loving art.
Why slow?
When people look slowly at a piece of art they make discoveries. The most important discovery they make is that they can see and experience art without an expert (or expertise).
And that’s an exciting discovery. It unlocks passion and creativity and helps to create more art lovers.
https://www.slowartday.com