| VOLUME 6 | * * All Arts News On the Web * * | March 28, 2002 |
ArtBits always features a calendar of the goings on of Franklin County artists. Check out these events around Franklin County. Each issue includes the entire text of our weekly newspaper column. STUFF YOU SHOULDN'T MISS
Stop in for the AAC CoffeeHouses at 7 p.m. on the second and fourth Wednesday of every month. These gatherings bring new opportunities, gossip, "show-and-tell" and workshops. We come together on the second Wednesday for a booked musical performance and an art exhibit at Simple Pleasures in St Albans. On the fourth Wednesday come to the Kept Writer in St Albans for acoustic Open Mike Night featuring music, readings, and more from the best new artists in Vermont.
The All Arts Council and the St Albans Recreation Department will embark on a formidable performance art and science project on Monday. The "theater" will be above Taylor Park and audiences should be able to see the results from most areas of Franklin and Grand Isle Counties. SPRINGBOARD TO ART
"Sky Art this Monday is the most ambitious performance project we've tried yet," said Recreation Director Mike Boulerice.
Eye catching and fleeting, skywriting is almost a thing of the past.
"We applied to NASA for an opportunity to combine their science with our art," said AAC treasurer Tim Stetson. "Several AAC artists have designed a giant mural for the noon sky."
The 16 planned mural images include a dancer photographed by Wayne Tarr, one of Eric Bataille's Covered Bridges, the Taylor Park fountain from Bob Brodeur's photograph, an Ionic column painted by Valerie Ugro, and a reproduction of Peter Hawksworth's well known Agri-Art.
Sky Art and skywriting is performed at an altitude of about 10,000 feet. Originally the result of smoke made by burning oil, the large letters or figures can be seen for about twenty miles in all directions.
Working with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA engineers have developed a new cloud-forming material. The new technology uses a reverse venturi to spray ionized micro particles in accurate patterns across the sky. The particles slowly form precisely shaped clouds that are expected to last about two hours. As the art-clouds dissipate, they in turn force significant localized rain showers.
In mid-2001, NASA designated northwestern Vermont as one of four aerial testing stations around the United States.
"We are excited about this event because your topography is perfect for cloud forming, New England is experiencing severe drought, and the project also fits the mission of the NASA Art Program," said JPL Project Manager Ian M. Park about the Monday project. Area residents will recall that NASA contributed theArtistry of Space exhibit to the AAC Railroad Days Festival in St Albans.
Early skywriting efforts stayed in the sky for only twenty minutes or so, depending on conditions, and the first letters of longer passages often dissipated before the whole message was written. Skywriters could write about 32-36 normal-size letters per flight. Thanks to the new particulate delivery technology developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Rohm and Haas, "We expect this imagery to last much longer," said Mr. Park.
The lead pilot will be Dan Handy of St Albans. Mr. Handy recently purchased a Maule M-7/260C from NASCAR driver Bill Elliot. The 1988 Winston Cup champion, Mr. Elliot finished 21st at Bristol on Sunday and holds the record for the fastest run in a stock car, 212.809 mph at Talladega. That is faster on the ground than the planes will fly in the AAC Sky Art project.
"The Maule is a perfect aircraft for this project," Mr. Handy said, "because it is usually configured as a seaplane. Mine doesn't have floats, so the NASA engineers have been working all month to add a pair of microparticle distributors that look pretty much like the original floats."
The actual cloud making will be computer controlled. As Mr. Handy and the other pilots fly a prescribed pattern, onboard digital controllers will mix particles of different density and color to form each mural image.
The science component is rain from sky salting. Rain-making "plants the clouds" to increase rainfall artificially and improve distribution of rainfall. It increases the abundance of rainstorms, improves surface flow, and increases the stores of groundwater. Although often planned during the early stages of the growing season, groundwater experts here want to improve the aquifer level before most planting occurs.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory will also set up a web site to feed live pictures from two orbiting satellites, and the NOAA weather radar stations will monitor the results.
Students from area schools will gather in Taylor Park at 11:30 Monday morning and stay until about 2:30 to see the entire event. Audiences normally watch every step of the imagery as they anticipate the final message. "We recommend umbrellas," Mr. Stetson said drily.
Performance art is a new field for the All Arts Council. A performance art piece is often daring, very current and, with events typically only 15 minutes long, quite brief. The phenomenon is difficult to censor since it usually has never being carried out before and may never be repeated. The space and time restraints of performance art usually do not allow elaborate sets or props. The AAC Sky Art project will challenge all those parameters.
There have been other Sky Art projects in the world, including one in Maastricht, Netherlands, Otto Priene's Sky Art Alaska, and the upcoming Sky Art Conference in October. The annual Sky Art Conferences foster a deeper awareness of the environment and of imaginative ways to support it and inspires creative use of the sky and space. Held on the island of Ikaria, Greece, it is organized by the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The AAC is administering the Vermont Sky Art program thanks to major grants from NASA, MIT, and the Vermont Aeronautics Community Foundation.
"We expect to gain an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest, longest-lasting, Sky Art project," Mr. Boulerice said. The performance art exhibition will begin exactly at noon on Monday, Apri1 1.
Editor's note: Check the exhibit date. Rest assured that it is (almost) April 1, there is little or no cloud seeding happening over St Albans, and you have been fooled.
Don't forget: the Vermont Maple Festival is only 30 days away. The All Arts Council will again fill St Albans City Hall with some of Franklin County's best two and three dimensional art. We need more artists to exhibit oil and watercolor paintings, sculpture, fine art photography, digital art, and more. Space is limited so e-mail the All Arts Council soon for info. SWEET CALL FOR ARTISTS
JEFFERSONVILLE--Cambridge CoffeeHouse presents nationally renowned singer-songwriters Steve Gillette and Cindy Mangson at Dinner's Dunn at the Windridge Bakery on Wednesday, April 3, 7-9 p.m. COFFEEHOUSE
The Cambridge Arts Council and IBM sponsor the CoffeeHouse on the first and third Wednesday of each month. Admission is free but donations are appreciated. e-mail for info.
FAIRFAX--Regular Music Session with acoustic instrumentalists playing traditional songs at the Foothills Bakery on Saturday, 1-4:30 p.m. Admission is free by donation. STUFF YOU SHOULDN'T MISS
RICHFORD--Variety Night at Queen Lil's. The Richford Stage Committee presents Hometown Follies on Friday, April 6, at 7 p.m. in Richford Town Hall. Admission is only $2/adults, $1/children.
The Cleveland Performance Art Festival is the largest performance art festival in North America. CLICK HERE: ART SITES OF THE WEEK
This week's other site is both a Call for Entries and fun for every reader.
The English Department at San Jose State University sponsors the whimsical Bulwer-Lytton literary competition to challenge entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels. Edward George Bulwer-Lytton was best known for perpetrating Paul Clifford, whose famous opener was regularly plagiarized by Snoopy. The deadline for entries is April 15, the date we "associate with painful submissions and making up bad stories."
Contest founder Scott Rice is an English professor at San Jose State. His "childishly simple" rules are online here and previous winners can be found here The deadline is April 15,
Sinister forces corrupted the file of entries to the 2002 BLFC. If you submitted an entry before October, 2001, please re-submit. Previous winners can be found here.
ArtBits features a quick weekly peek at the bookshelf or night stand of the folks you know in and around Franklin County. That popular feature has a page of its own at the Franklin County Bookshelf here on the AAC site. FRANKLIN COUNTY BOOKSHELF
Dick Harper, Chair
P.O. Box 1
Highgate Springs, VT 05460
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This article was originally published in
the St Albans Messenger and other traditional print media. It is
Copyright © 2002 by Richard B. Harper. All rights reserved.
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