"Yellow Pages" a self-portrait

Judith Wray

  I bound it with twine and shellacked it all over several times.

  On the top of each curved section I wrote the verses from a poem by Thoreau.

  Those words run just as sinuously through our days and all our creating together in the last few years.

Where do I begin?

A carved telephone book?

 leather bound,

"let your fingers do the walking" went an old ad for the yellow pages...

These pages illustrate a transition

On the left are Laci's fingers and my head!

We caste his feet first in bronze

 then moved on to his fingers and his ear.

Later, we would laugh about having a group show.

BABELARTE

Judy Wray & Laszlo Krisch

Laci taught me a new medium. He introduced me to computers and showed me how to write html. I am still learning!

******************************************************

No one had ever baked a loaf of bread for me before. Laci loves to cook.

He was baking bread and had enough dough for two loaves.

He made his loaf first, all neat and straight and orderly.

Then he came to mine, and made mine in many sections, all wild and crazy.

When he presented it to me, all hot and brown and crusty and smelling

wonderful, I wanted to do something more than eat it.

Commemorate it!

 

The Poem by Thoreau
"We must learn to re-awaken and keep ourselves awake

Not by mechanical aids, but by the infinite expectation of the dawn

which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.

I know of no more encouraging fact

than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life

by a conscious endeavor.

It is something to be able to paint a particular picture or to carve a statue

and so to make a few things beautiful.

But it is far more glorious to carve and paint the atmosphere

and medium through which we look. Which morally we can do.

To affect the quality of the day, that is the highest of arts.

Everyman is tasked to make his life even in its details

worthy of the contemplation of his most elevated and critical hour."

Thoreau

The blood red story behind the bread..

This is actually important to me..

the way that art works.

The way it does not matter 2 cents that Thoreau is dead or not.

Art lies dormant waiting to snare.

The poem by Thoreau  was on a tea box above our stove for years, till one day,

 reaching up,

 the words grabbed me by the throat.

The grants people always make me laugh and cry, they ask questions like "how

many people were affected by the artist on such and such a day, (to justify their

 giving of funding).

I remember once I was at a copying business, busily copying, and I looked out the

 window

to the train station across the street.

There was a billboard.

Rolling Rock Beer was being advertised..

but more than that..

Jim Morrison was

talking.

Jim Morrison was dead (The Door's)

"Same as it always was" was what was

written..

but it was not written the same as it always was,

and the whole experience was an art experience

one did not go into a museum for,

dressed, prepared, ready to be enlightened.

Art is a funny thing.

I don't like commerce, the selling of art

but I do like the way death doesn't have to stop anything.

Kind of makes life worth living.

****************************************************************

We all have beginnings!

Mine didn't begin with me, nobody's does!

My father inherited a Chapel in the woods and got to be minister by default,

 slid right into it, singing his off key heart out and getting my sister and I to come along for the ride.

 I don't think it is important where people are in space or time.

Somebody said "Let death have no dominion",

well that's how I feel.

It doesn't.

We work, play and communicate together, leaping boundaries all the time.

( Good tried and true example: Libraries )

So what has this got to do with Digital artists?

They possess skills which allow their creativity to take multiple leaps past any art form previously expressed.

New technology has unleashed creativity from a thing with solid form to an idea in a virtual realm.

Houdini asks 100 people from an audience to come to the stage and stick out a

finger to levitate a large body and together ..lift !

Together we can levitate large projects barely trying.

The community draws value and inspiration from artists of all kinds.

Together, we are an engine for change, to re invent, to explore and problem solve.

 I began levitating unusual arts projects

using who and what is all around

 with simple copying machines

 then Photoshop and the Internet.

The projects were born beginning about 18 years ago

with a collage using the photo copied images

of hands and arms and even a few bones..

ARMS FOR ART,  1993

The collage of arms was 31 ft. wide and 12 ft high.

The section shown here is the top, center portion.

For the few weeks leading up to its assemblage,

we made a call for photo copied arms and hands.

Different color paper was welcomed.

Different sizes were welcomed.

No maximum quantity was stipulated.

Seniors lined up at the YWCA in New Brunswick by the copying machine,

chuckling that this was unusual and fun.

Children from New Brunswick's Head Start program were welcomed to Kinkos

(when it used to be across from the New Brunswick train station ).

The manager passed out paper and crayons

and the children spread out across the rugged floor

and waited their turn to have their little hands

photocopied in both black & white and color.

Michael Preston, from Middlesex, NJ

made 50 large copies of his long, (and hairy arm.)

Mike_Preston.jpg (37907 bytes)

The night we began to assemble all the collected images.

Mike came and sat in the hallway helping to cut them all out like paper dolls.

We took his 50 arms and created a wave spreading out on one side.

It was the Arms for Art project which began to cut a path in front of me,

leading me along.

I received envelopes of photo copied hands in the mail from strangers.

There was a feeling of being on target and a momentum going past myself

as though some flow or current had been tapped into.

the Wizard behind the projects

Digital Projects & Shows Sponsored

The Elephant Project, 2001 

http://www.valweb.org/elephant/picture_page.htm

The idea was that the images were links to the artists' internet servers and could change or disappear at any time. Some of them eventually did disappear. We all moved on. We liked the idea. One could continue the landscape by scrolling to the side, or down into the ground! At any moment the images might change. The images were also clic-able, so you could visit the person behind the image.  

The Floating Art Project , 2002    ( Below )   http://www.valweb.org/floatart/about_floatart.htm
 

No gravity! We invited small images to float together and have kept them up floating.

The project took a leap with the Pipe Dream show.

The floating objects on the new pages are tennis balls from the Citizen School Ball Pipe

(At the bottom are a sampling of both virtual and real. Scroll down, way down!)

 

WINDOWS-The Transparent Flower Show, 2001

http://www.valweb.org/windows/flowers.htm

"The Transparent Flower Show"..a visual experiment in working and playing together. Basically, it is a transparent / translucent, photocopied images show with a floral theme. Scanned flowers, painted flowers, e mailed, multiplied, reduced, enlarged, superimposed, floral in feeling! Abstracts...patterns created with all the incoming images, combining them, coming together from all over the country.

For the month of May, the show developed and filled a one hundred foot glass wall at The Old Bridge Public Library. To show simultaneously in two places, we cloned the imagery and took half to Newark, University of Medicine and Dentistry and half to the Old Bridge Library. Multiply! Add! Divide!

After that it moved to the South River Library where a piece was created by a group of young people and we framed them all in a hoola hoop. Then the show moved to the Metuchen Public Library for another month. Then on to the University of Medicine and Dentistry in Piscataway, NJ. Next it went to the Cork Gallery, Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, NY. All the while, the show was posted to the internet so all the participants can follow it along.

Phillip T. Baker, the Rock & Roll artist, worked all night and then went to Cambridge School in Kendall Park, NJ and worked some more. This piece was created by 19 little children in the Head Start program, 3 and 4 yr olds, and measures about 48" across and is done on transparent, heavy vinyl. Using non-toxic paints, the children took turns by Phillip's side squishing their little fingers into the brightly colored paint and then creating an impression on the vinyl surface. By noon we had achieved the effect seen here. Within a few days the photos were on the web site.
 
As the children slowly moved around concentrically, artist Judy Wray followed with a heat gun drying the paint to prevent smearing. At another table, children were coloring fish for the "Traveling Magnetic Show" which moves around towns on the fire engine red Val VAN, the transportation for the Visual Arts League which doubles rolling road show. The finished piece joined the "Flower Show" January 2001 at  the Cork Gallery, downstairs from Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, New York. 

The children's flower piece is in the collection of work hanging at the South Brunswick Library in the children's room and it is featured in "The Book of Hope", by Icelandic Poet, Birgitta Jonsdottir. (The Dalai Lama and Lawrence Ferlenghetti are in the same book.)

caimbridgekids.jpg (298628 bytes)

The Internet was used throughout the project to teach many things all at once and add mileage to what was a few hours experience.

"The Great Grape House",

by Robert Rakita, Union, NJ

  Can we bring great art into

  our communities as

  opposed to budget art?

  Art feeds us -

  what will we serve up as a community?

  This mural has not happened, not yet!

 (and it won't either..too close to the highway,

insurance, structural problems..

whatever, not going to happen,

but WOW! if it could!

Art in Our Communities, 2004

http://www.valweb.org/NewsLetter/muralstodiefor.htm

The Dream Precedes the Act. We are the dream weavers.

VAL - 1st DIGITAL SHOW-2000

http://www.valweb.org/lincoln2000/digital.htm

              
  David Camp, Wisconsin  

   
  Christine Tyler, New York
The New Brunswick Food show, 2002

http://www.valweb.org/new_brunswick_city_market.htm

As a tangent to a real one day show of art & food sampling in local restaurants,

we began an Internet Food show of our own.

( A few tidbits )

Dian Sirken, Freehold, NJ
Lica's Freezer, Ansgard, Thomson
              TOWN CLEANERS Internet Experimental Project, 2004

                   http://www.valweb.org/New_Bruns/sunrise.htm

Town Cleaners, been around forever. The first design to come in. Ansgard Thomson, Alberta, Canada.

On these web pages began an Internet project using the boarded up windows of vacant buildings (or partially vacant), experimenting with digital artists from around the world.

 I would like to get people thinking  creatively about ways to use negative space in positive ways, bringing art out onto the street, creating an exciting interchange using digital art which can easily involve high school seniors in computer art programs with digital artists from around the world. Kind of a low budget, world school using negative space in a positive way.

Together we can impart integrity to a world which is so divided by specialists, nobody having the scope of view or time to step back and create in a holistic way. Artists of all kinds function as roving free radicals knitting good things together for its own sake.

Shankar Barua, New Delhi, India
Robert Rakita, Union, NJ
  A Possibility:  Art is Food Virtual Pillar Show, 2004

  http://www.valweb.org/AP/artisfooditfeedsyou.htm

Another Project Begins-This is one small portions of the front of a local supermarket in any town, our world. (Happens to be in my town!) The pillars are approx. 11' high and 58" around. We are beginning a virtual food related show on these pillars, as it is a SUPER-market! This is a take off on the Pipe Dreams show. We post designs coming in and add a link back to the artist sending. Designs accepted, we will attempt to make the virtual materialize via the same idea we used with the digital designs sent for the Pipe Dreams show.

The 2nd VAL Sponsored Digital show which is now a permanent installation at the University of Medicine and Dentistry-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, Piscataway, NJ

 
Poster design by Ansgard Thomson, Alberta, Ca.
Renata Spiazzi, La Jolla, Ca.
David Zeines, New York
Chuck Ferris, San Rafael, Ca.

 

"Headeye" Randy Roberts, Lisbon, Iowa
Dale Copeland,

Mt. Taranaki, New Zealand

Ed Fillmore, Rahway, NJ
Judy Wray, Jill Ferguson, David Camp,

Sheila Barrera & Doug the Mortician @ UMDNJ

Renata Spiazzi, La Jolla, Ca.
Jill Ferguson, Hatfield, Pa.
Warren Furman, Montrose, Pa.
Miriam Lozado-Jarvis, New Mexico
Michael Huffman, "In Progress", Mn.
Michelle Anderson, "In Progress" Mn.
Mina Blyly-Strauss, "In Progress", Mn.
Regina Mitchell, "In Progress" Mn.
David Bornoff, Hollywood, Ca.
Ansgard Thomson, Alberta, Ca.
Don Archer, Brooklyn, NY

Susan Holland, Washington State
Nancy Wood, Texas
Kent Oberheu, Berkeley, Ca.
Ursula Freer, New Mexico
Barbara Patera, Washington State
TOGO, New York
Vicky Culver, Howell Twp. NJ

Jay Zimmerman, Moors, Indiana

 

Below, past history and development.

"Scream", Bronze, 12" X 8" X 5", 1987

( The bronze period ! ) When I worked at the Johnson Atelier Technical Institute of Sculpture, State of the Art foundry in Mercerville, NJ, (1987-89), we were taught processes leading up to and including bronze casting. This was a formative experience, as a cast could be endless variations in addition to a perfect and identical caste. It was these variations that grabbed my attention.

Working along side serious and gifted sculptors from around the world was an educational experience in many ways. We were all aware of the health risks and could see the effect that years or even months of working in an unhealthy environment had on each other.

One of my most unforgettable experiences was when a sculptor whom I admired very much invited me to see a storage area where his bronzes were kept. We drove over to an enormous old warehouse. Artists had created studio space on all the floors. We went up the elevator and the door opened to an area of space maybe 3000 sq feet. In the dusty, dim lighting we stood there silently seeing the hulking ton sculptures under gray tarpaulins, tied down.

In those wordless moments many things were said. I knew that each month the rent had to be paid for space like that. I knew the cost in money and labor to produce the sculptures. I knew the wonder of the sculptures themselves. I saw dinosaurs. Something going extinct.

 

 Ten years past between the bronze scream (above) and Tyeast's Piece (Below )
"Tyeast's Piece-Flower Power" 1997
46" diameter, Photo-copied images of Tyeast's fingertips, framed in cast hydrosome.

Click for larger view
This image is a composite poster showing "Tyeast's Piece" in the upper right corner, Tyeast herself, (center), and her friend Alex (lower left) along with a guest appearance from the shark and the turtle, and Chuck the puppy. (Almost forgot! that's me, Judy Wray, with the red hat.)

All these creatures were involved in creating during the 10 years between bronze sculpture and producing "Tyeast's Piece" and others below. (The shark leaped off Ginny Wick's ocean mural, if you pull up " Plastique-the Ocean Show", you can see him again, where he is supposed to be, but he peels off and there is no stopping him now. He goes anywhere he wants).

Chuck the puppy was around at the beginning when we made clay impressions of Tyeast and Alex fingerprints. When it came time to pour the plaster in the clay impressions, the mold sprouted several leaks. White fluid gushed out all over, and Chuck rushed in to lap it up. Tyeast saved the day by plugging leaks with one hand and fending off Chuck with the other.

Now the turtle.
The turtle has always been around, it seems. From the time my dad would drive down country roads, bringing turtles home, over and over again, in all shapes and sizes. The turtle is a symbol and a friend, of steadfast persistence, showing up everywhere, even on doorsteps in far away places.

Now, on the side of our home, we call "The Art Yard" is the Giant Tortoise"

The Tortoise (The original design by Little Bob Duncan reproduced by Mark Nerys (16), Somerset, NJ

 


"Floating", 1992

56" diameter, Styrofoam, velvet
satin, plaster of Paris and Crayola crayons.

"Floating" was a piece created in reverse logic, using negative space. The problem was digging out the 3-D shadow of the fish images, then pouring in a solid to catch the ghost of the shape. The rest of the forms grew up around them. Styrofoam puzzle pieces.

 

Frozen waves, covered in satin and velvets. The fish were cast in plaster and slathered with melted crayon. It was light weight, except for the fish. The whole thing was beautiful, but highly breakable, and so the next piece was created to be a more durable variation of a floating fish theme. It weighs a ton!

 


"Floating (Variation 2)", 1993

Four kinds of Exotic Wood, Imported from Venezuela, Cast Bronze

This piece sat around in closets and spare rooms for a long time. It is so ominously heavy, it is uncomfortable to stand next to! Floating from a far, falling up close! But you don't take it anywhere. The easiest place to send it, is into cyberspace, on this web page, where I have no trouble sending it anywhere, and the real piece can sit safely in my living room.


 1993
Judith Wray and Phyllis Castells

Terracotta, Raku Glazed, Lead Fishing Weights,
bronze, hay baling hook. 6' X 2' X 2'

The fish was produced as a result of a class assignment to work with a partner

 creating a piece with many parts.

When we were done, we were faced with mutual ownership.

All along we had to contend with our differences and afterwards too.

What developed was a kind of birth, a brain child born of us both.

What now? The project created a dilemma of ownership.

Something was "born" in that sculpture that neither of us recognized as our own.

We looked in wonder. The sum of the parts was more than a simple count of pieces.

 

The fish hangs by its head from a hay baling hook. It has a spine of large three-pronged fish hooks.

It goes together on the same principle as a Christmas tree. Each scale or group of scales going on in clusters or individually. The head crowns it all. It is a fish kit. It could come in a box, and be different every time it is assembled. The clay scales are raku fired. Raku is an ancient Japanese method of glazing. Each clay piece is heated to a red hot state in a kiln.

The pieces are then removed with tongs and thrown into a pile of twigs and leaves (or sawdust) which bursts into flames. Quickly, an airtight lid is clamped down. Flames consume the oxygen and create a vacuum. Minerals from within the clay are drawn to the surface of the clay where they mix with the chemicals  in the applied raku glaze. Instantly, a chemical reaction begins to take place and crimsons and coppers and turquoise and iridescent appear, depending on the minerals present and glaze used and timing and heat and oxygen. There are a lot of variables, which produce an infinite variety of results.

Originally, each piece was 8 feet high by 4 ft wide, done on transparent heavy vinyl. They were designed to be seen from both sides whenever possible to take advantage of the great expanses of glass throughout our communities and the changing light. They can be hung from suction cups directly on the glass. Over two thousand children have been touched by this project, involving them in production of actual pieces and tributaries since its inception.

Concept Behind the Ocean Show, 1997

Denizens of the deep, fish creatures,

ooze and murk and the beginnings

of things. Come with us on a voyage

of the mind and the heart in the shape

of a fish. Send us a fish image

of your own. We will multiply it,

reduce and expand it and take your

fish for the ride of its life.

As a group of loosely knit people

from all over, we can levitate great

works together barely trying.

There is magic in coming together.

J.Wray

(central image on left by Harriet Leonard, NY

"Plastique- The Ocean Show" - Concept - Judith Wray

(This first image (minus the poem), was created by New York artist, Harriet Leonard before we even thought of the ocean show!) I was trying to think of ways to involve people in any way imaginable.


Each piece created for this show measures 8 ft. H x 4 ft. W, and was done  on heavy, transparent vinyl or acetate in one case. The theme is the ocean and denizens of the deep. We have documented  the show. There are all together twenty-six artists and over 1000 children participating in this project. The pieces came from Alaska, Georgia, New Mexico, Arizona, Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, Louisiana and New Jersey. The show converged for the first time in November/December 1995 in an exhibition at  Lincoln Center's Cork Gallery, 65th Street & Broadway, New York.

Our goal was to begin an experiment, opening doors and gathering artists  to see how far we could make this ocean roll. "Plastique-the Ocean Show" has visited hospitals, libraries, senior centers, schools, and festivals.

At Broadway House For Continuing Care, CARE was not taken of the show, and 11 of the pieces met with a mysterious, unexplained end. The surviving pieces from the show were removed from Broadway House and put into storage.

The summer of 1999, Rebecca Brenowitz from the Human Relations Council in East Brunswick, NJ  called to invite us to come and see the 300 ft wide concrete wall in the woods fronting the old Country Swim Club on Dutch Road, East Brunswick, NJ.

I saw in that bare expanse of concrete a chance for the dreams to rise again and expand. Thirty seven sections 8' X 4', and another 2 sections each approx 25 ft wide for murals. Each section framed by a natural frame of bricks.  I got an idea: to create a customized fish brick and pass them out randomly and easily absorb an additional 400 people in a community project which would touch many people.

...and then we began e mailing Virtual Fish Bricks and inviting digital artists around the world to paint the virtual fish brick in Photoshop and e mail it back to us to join in a fish brick line up on the Internet.

We welcomed fish image designs via the Internet to be reproduced at this end. Below are the works from the original show.

 

Daniel Noll

Scottsdale, Arizona

Judy Wray

East Brunswick, NJ

Joanne Guerra

Milltown, NJ

Mike Preston, Middlesex, NJ

 Janet Simpson, North Port, NY

Carol Freeborn
East Brunswick, NJ

Pat San Soucie
Oregon

Joanne Guerra *2nd

Connie Cherniak
Staten Island, NY

DOJORO
North Port, NY

J.B. Brown
Plainfield, NJ

Steve Getlik
Connecticut

Michelle Santacross
Summit, NJ

Harriet Leonard
NY

Jaru Chang
NJ

 

Chris MacKinnon
Shark River, NJ

Silke Wouters
NJ

Ginny Wick
Hillsborough, NJ

Celeste Fleming,
NJ

Nancy Speelman
Hillsborough,NJ

Sue Schott, Pa

J.B. Brown,NJ

Bernard Axelrod
Jamesburg, NJ

 

Rob Laumbach
NJ

Luci Butler,
Florida

Ginny Wick 
*2nd

Kim Wade, NJ
NJ

Kim Wade
*2nd

Mericelle, EB, NJ ( 11 yr. )

Cathy, EB, NJ

( 11 yr. )

"Little Bobby" Duncan

Rahway, NJ

Jo Dagon

Anchorage, Alaska

Nancy Speelman

(*3rd ) Teens  ADTP Clinic

UMDNJ

Children at the Seafood Festival
Atlantic City, NJ

*2nd ( Nancy Speelman & 
Karen Cicmansky), NJ

Students from Esther Schlossberg's classes

McKinley School, New Brunswick, NJ

The Fish Brick- The Alchemy of Art  (Melding Pixels & Concrete)
Begun the summer of 2000, Using Both Real & Virtual Bricks
Three years ago we began painting this three hundred foot mural in a wooded section of East Brunswick, NJ.

The 5th and 6th piece were originally digital designs sent by e mail from Ursula Freer (left), New Mexico

and to the right, Ansgard Thomson, Alberta, Canada..We are looking for ways to involve people from all over.

The first  brick we sent by e mail. The bricks are all a little different.

Mathew (10 yr ) NY

This top row, samples of the real concrete bricks.

Rebecca, (11 yr.) NJ

Maxine Gantois, Savignac, France

Below are all the Virtual Bricks which came in by e mail.

BIRGITTAfishbrick.jpg (27295 bytes)

Birgitta Jonsdottir, Iceland

Cervenkafishbrick1.jpg (26067 bytes)
Mathew Cervenka, New York

Dima Yakovina,

St. Petersburg, Russia

Jill Ferguson, Hatfield, Pa.

Jill Ferguson, Hatfield, Pa.

warrenFurman1.jpg (33812 bytes)

Warren Furman, Montrose, Pa.

WarrenFurman2.jpg (31259 bytes)

Warren Furman, Montrose, Pa.

Dima Yakovina, St. Petersburgh, Russia

Ansgard Thomson, Alberta, Canada.
Ansgard Thomson, Alberta, Canada.
We have involved about 260 people of all ages in the overall wall and the bricks surrounding the murals and the Internet / virtual extension of this project. One artist can paint a 300 ft span of wall. Today we are challenged to join with a world community to exercise our creativity to aid in global problem solving &  working together in new ways which leap boundaries of space and time. These projects are an exploration.
A 100 ft wide Car Mural - Real & Virtual Hubcaps - Flying Beetles- The Traveling Magnetic Show

This  Mural was on the fence at East Brunswick Foreign Auto Sales, Harts Lane, East Brunswick, NJ. 100 feet of fence plus a beetle sliced in half, nudged the mural into reality. We took a digital photo of the cut in half beetle, de-saturated the color and turned it into a coloring book line drawing. We duplicated it 300 times and passed it out randomly and to Joyce Kilmer School in Milltown,  Hammorsjold in East Brunswick and McKinley School in New Brunswick, (all in NJ. ) Color the VW we said! We received 267 responses. Two years after the project began, we got an envelope in the mail Postmarked "Indonesia".  Inside was a colored Volkswagen by an artist in Indonesia we came to know as "Samuel".

Below: A few of  the Volkswagon Beetles which rolled in to the Cyber Gallery. 

 
The First Volkswagen which we photocopies 300 times and passed out to schools and random others.

Esther Schlossberg, (The teacher at Mckinley School, New Brunswick, NJ

whose class gave us 45 painted hubcaps in a blitz.) Esther's beetle was the first design to arrive by e mail.

 

 

Holly Dey, Neptune, NJ

 

 

Nancy Speelman, Hillsborough, NJ
Samuel

Random  people and students from 3 schools sent colorings for the Volkswagen. They were told that one design would be selected to be reproduced on the real half a beetle. A selection was made and the design was reproduced on the car. Chris MacKinnon, Shark River, NJ, created the "Wings" for the beetle and the Beetle was hoisted into position where it sat on top of the fence as seen in the picture..  For six months after the beetle was completed it sat on top of the mural on Harts Lane. After that, the flying beetle went to the Cork gallery, downstairs from Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center as part of the show "The Hub-With Magnetic Connections".

We thought of another idea, (as we had all these wonderful designs),  how everybody could win. All the beetle designs were laminated and spray glued to magnetic material and became

"the Traveling Magnetic Show"

riding around on the fire engine red Val Van for next few years.

Surprising children at traffic lights!

The ride by art show!

We wanted to create a show of work that stuck together, literally and figuratively. The Traveling Magnetic Show rides on the VALVAN. Artists, children ..an open invitation extends to create a magnetic piece for the van. The show changes, moves around on the body of the van. When it is not on the van, it has been seen on refrigerator doors. December '98 The Hub-With Magnetic Connections visited the Cork Gallery downstairs from Avery Fisher Hall, Lincoln Center, NY and again in the New Brunswick Food Show, summer of2002. 

   
The Volkswagen Beetles Displayed on a Collection of Refrigerator Doors at Quietude Sculpture Gardens

We spent months collecting discarded refrigerator doors of all kinds so we would have a place to display all the Volkswagen designs.

We took the doors to the Cork Gallery, Lincoln Center along with the hubcap show and also to the Quietude Sculpture Garden in East Brunswick, NJ.

About the artists: "Little Bobby" Duncan, (Jamesburg, NJ) did the red car and the green car. Duncan has painted his way across the country on denim jackets, hats, sneakers, walls, giant 60 foot Koala bears, you name it, if it stands still long enough, Duncan will paint it.

Judy Wray created the overall design and orchestrated the idea, pulling artists and students together for the summer. Dewight Braithwaite (12), Justin Price (7), and Richard Campbell (12), showed up every day  for a week painting in the background.

Chris MacKinnon created the wings!

The HubCap Installation at Quietude Sculpture Garden, Fern Rd. East Brunswick, NJ

The Hub With Magnetic Connections

-1999

 work that sticks together both literally and figuratively

1999-Real and Virtual Hubcaps

albuc.jpg (13284 bytes) dischakra.jpg (12716 bytes) glasshub2.jpg (11899 bytes)
Virtual
orb_hubcap.jpg (14993 bytes)
Virtual
redswirl.jpg (21718 bytes)
Virtual
roadeye.jpg (16179 bytes) axelhub.jpg (8387 bytes) paris.jpg (20318 bytes) swirl.jpg (35567 bytes)
Virtual
Virtual
piggy.jpg (14056 bytes) jean.jpg (17335 bytes) redyelgre.jpg (23126 bytes)
woody.jpg (17299 bytes) zebra.jpg (12571 bytes) edhub.jpg (14565 bytes) ceremonial2.jpg (16158 bytes)
rebeccahub.jpg (9369 bytes) gailcat2.jpg (5727 bytes) ChrisMc1.jpg (47263 bytes) Ginny2.jpg (68226 bytes)
hein1.jpg (22065 bytes) gueganne.jpg (9987 bytes) MicheleS2.jpg (82882 bytes)

 

 

 
1900, an installation at Mason Gross School of the Visual Arts.

Rusted pipes, clay, dirt, bricks. A miniature industrial setting, meant to put the viewer in reverse perspective.

I was invited by the Paul Robeson School to do a project with the students involving the community without a budget.

What follows below is the evolution of that challenge:

A leap from negative to positive.

 

Robert Rakita

 

(center) above design by Ed Fillmore  / Palette Pipes by the Six Town Artists, East Brunswick, NJ

Sinuous Pipes (above) "Forbidden", Robert Rakita, Union, NJ

 

Pipe Dreams Project begun October 2002-Dreaming of Pipes  
We are demonstrating creating with simple things all around, pretty basic
stuff....buckets & pipes, concrete bricks...steadily building a show....a
 create-ur-own adventure show..

 We began one sunny afternoon with 5 students from Paul
 Robeson School, New Brunswick, NJ.



 It has grown like one of those deep rooted, hardy weeds that just won't go
 away and starts to push the rocks over.

The Greek  from the Stone Museum, Jamesburg, NJ gave us two van loads of PVC pipe.

 A week before the Lincoln Center show, a young man from Vienna created a
 series of pipes using corrugated pipe and tape.

  Istvan Papai

 The week before that his friend visiting from Hungary, Judith Rosa,
 created two pipes using tapes and not paint.

   Paul Robeson Students

(Had no idea there were so many different colors of tape!)

 Some of the pipes from the Greek we liked so much in their raw state....

they will stay that way..

 

The show has actually created a side show all
 over the Stone Museum....

The Greek supplied us with PVC pipe for our show and began
 working his own,

using concrete pipes and PVC and East Brunswick artist Chris Cornell.



 We received digital pipe designs from St. Petersburg, Russia

 sent on a CD by Catherine and Dima Yakovina

(Left) This was one of the first digital designs received from Dima,

14 at the time.

We reproduced the design, printing on paper three consecutive times,

each time larger, finally printing on canvas the last and largest of all.

(Written in yellow above the red sun, is the word "Friendship")

Mark Nerys (17), "The Quinn Pipe"

Catherine Yakovina's pipe (next to the stove pipe)

    
Dima Yakovina, St. Petersburg, Russia
 

 

On the right, the pipe design from Seiji Ueoka, Tokyo, Japan

This design by Sharif Ezzat, Ca. borders the top and bottom of Seiji's pipe.

 


 

We have a pipe design sent to us by digital artist

Ursula Freer, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

         

 

Fantastic plastic pipe sculptures came from Henry Sunderland's project

"THE GREAT PIPE DREAM"

begun in Christchurch, New Zealand.

7 Schools sent pipe sculptures of PVC pipe

as part of an exchange between schools in New Zealand and the USA.

   

Here is the list of Participating Schools & Teachers)

Tony King (Art Teacher)

ALLENVALE SCHOOL

Bevan Freeman (Art Teacher)

SHIRLEY INTERMEDIATE

Tom Baker (Student)

ST BEDES COLLEGE

Ken Frame (Art Teacher)

MARION COLLEGE

Natalie Johnstone

CHRISTCHURCH SOUTH INTERMEDIATE

Shona Kelleher

CASSEBROOK INTERMEDIATE

**********************

 

A digital design came from Shankar Barua, New Delhi, India

and we printed it nine ft high and wrapped a tall PVC pipe with it.

 

 

          

                                                       2 from Jane Lawton Baldridge, Wilmington, NC



 We have a pipe sculpture which is a serpent in PVC pipes strung through the
 center with chain and anchored with a boulder.

 


 

Robert Rakita, Union, NJ


 We have a Pipe from a famous artist HOOP, "King of Art", Clifton, NJ

 "Little Bob" Duncan (about as famous) has created an elephant god pipe (right)

(left) Pipe Blond, Harry & Edie Cohen, East Brunswick, NJ

 

 

 

Jean Pierre and Maxine Gantois sent "The Tree of Knowledge"

 Savignac, France

(center)

Tihamer Binner, Somerset, NJ Maxine & Jean Pierre Gantois, Savignac, France Lyka Cox, Bayville, NJ
 

 

Lauren Curtis, Somerset, NJ Marquita Lowe; Nissa Aitkins; Thomas Leal "In Progress", Mn.
                      
Amber Shepherd, Somerset, NJ Nancy Woods, Texas

Roslyn Rose, Hoboken, NJ

Lisa Rejowski

Monroe, NJ

Mathew Cervenka

New York City

     
Glen Buchholz, East Brunswick, NJ


 
We are continuing to pass out pipes and encouraging others to
 find their own.....we will attempt to move the show any way we can......an experiment in
 working and playing together where we post it all to the Internet.

 This can be pretty easy or difficult.....it can be as easy as having a small
 PVC section of pipe sitting on a desk for a few months and asking people to
 sign when they come into the office.....(or it can be more creative...) We are
 looking to draw out a creativity untapped.....a collective creativity.

...To begin a dream together

from all our different corners of the world

 linking the dreamers.

  Judy Wray

 

             

 Two of the pipes in the show involve many students. ( left ) The Rubber Hand Pipe.

( right ) The Citizen School, BALL PIPE

                  

 

Simple Step by Step Development of 1 pipe from the PIPE DREAMS show.

The Rubber Hand Pipe

400 hands

This is the closest pipe to being local artist's, Judy Wray's. Judy is the conceptualist for the Pipe Dreams show in New Jersey. 400 children / teens worked on this pipe  in three stages.

Stage 1.

 Middlesex County Teen Arts brought the teens together.

 Artist, Little Bob Duncan began the pipe, working with Judy Wray and 3 schools from Perth Amboy as part of Teen Arts at Middlesex County College.

Duncan drilled about 150 holes in the top portion of the pipe. Atilla Soltez (mechanic), welded 3 tire rims for a base. So where is Judy? ..the idea was in her head and she managed to convey it with as much clarity and enthusiasm as could be mustered, pulling together 12 ft pipe, tire rims, rubber gloves and people, to converge and keep on running.

 Stage 2

The Rubber Hand Pipe Continues with Career Day and 300 students at Robert N. Wilentz School, Perth Amboy, NJ

Stage 3.

The Rubber Hand Pipe continues. For two days Laurel Van Leer (Girl Scout Leader), invited neighbors to color multi-colored surgical gloves with permanent magic markers. After the coloring, the gloves got stuffed and a knot tied. Then the knotted end was glued into one of the holes drilled near the top of the pipe or slipped into bands running around the lower half. Layer on layer the pipe took shape.

The man behind the rubber gloves - Douglass MacGregor, the mortician at University of Medicine and Dentistry-RWJMS-  Douglass has had a hand in projects with visiting artists  as far away as New Zealand and often has given us a helping hand in unusual ways.

Digitalized Photograph by Maxine Gantois, Savignac, France

Life is short...

 

A Second Pipe: The Citizen School Ball Pipe - A few of the real Balls

 

 

The Virtual Balls (Below)
 
        
 Marlene Leitman, East Brunswick, NJ
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

                                     

                                                                                                          

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CAUTION!  NO GRAVITY HERE!

                     

      


                                                                

  

                                                                      

                   

   Are you dizzy yet :)

   

                                                                   

   

   

    

   

 Jill Ferguson, Hatfield, Pa

 

         

 Warren Furman, Montrose, Pa.

 

Ansgard Thomson, Alberta, Canada

Dale Copeland, New Zealand

Shankar Barua, New Delhi, India

 

Ansgard Thomson, Alberta, Canada

   
150 Students at the Dwight D. Eisenhower School working with Little Bob Duncan as part of the Pipe Dreams show

 
Jessie & Dylon & Philip T. Baker, Rock & Roll Artist

 


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