Artists Respond
Artists Respond
Artists Respond is an ongoing series of web-based creative projects by artists responding to exhibitions and collections on view at LACMA.
Anthony Lepore | Jody Zellen | Michael Trigilio | Bari Ziperstein | Ben Meyers | Marisela Norte
Anthony Lepore created Night Walk, inspired by the exhibition Robert Adams: The Place We Live, and, in particular, by Adams's photos of suburban Colorado in the series Summer Nights.
Lepore maps a series of his own photographs created on evening dog walks near his home. From pictures of found debris from an epic windstorm to a favorite view of the Los Angeles basin from the mountains of the Angeles National Forest, the project documents Lepore's exploration of the urban geography of Southern California.
Read Lepore's statement about the project and his relationship to the work of Robert Adams. View Night Walk.
Art Swipe
Inspired by the exhibition In Wonderland: The Surrealist Adventures of Women in the United States and Mexico, Jody Zellen designed this app for iPad and iPhone, simulating in digital form the exquisite corpse parlor game popular amongst early 20th century surrealist artists. She talks about the project here.
Jean Claude Wouters
Shaman, Dervish, & Esprit Frappeur
Jean Claude Wouters, a dancer and artist, once took part in a ballet in Brussels in which he wore a crinoline very much like those that give structure to some of the garments in our exhibition Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700–1915. Exhibition curators Sharon Takeda and Kaye Spilker invited Wouters to revisit the crinoline and its relationship to the body in a series of exploratory movements.
Jean Claude talks about the experience here.
Taking her inspiration from the work of Steve Wolfe, Jody Zellen scanned all the books in her library and used them as a point of departure to create Spine Sonnet, a web based work that invites viewers to read the titles of 14 randomly juxtaposed book spines as found poetry.
View Spine Sonnet | Read an interview with Jody about the project
"I have often thought about how reading multiple titles of my art and theory books becomes a kind of concrete poetry," Zellen says. "Seeing the books and records recreated by Steve Wolfe inspired me to delve into this project."
Michael Trigilio
The Resonant Pavilion—an interactive sound work
Be part of the art. Michael Trigilio has generated a 10-minute soundwork designed to be heard at LACMA in the vicinity of the Resnick Pavilion. Download or stream the piece here.
Visitors are encouraged to call 1-888-361-4NPR and contribute their own voice by humming, singing or sharing a comment. These interactions will be folded into the soundwork over a period of a few weeks, allowing the resonance of the Resnick Pavilion to evolve with public engagement.
The evolving soundwork will be available here, and by subscribing to the podcast feed.
Click here to see the digital thaumatrope.
Taking as her inspiration the thaumatrope, a "persistence of vision" toy popular during the 19th century, Bari Ziperstein has reworked and juxtaposed photographs she made during the installation of Fashioning Fashion: European Dress in Detail, 1700–1915. She combines them with original text by writer Justin Lebanowski; traditionally, thaumatropes often included riddles or lines of poetry.
Read an interview with Ziperstein here, about her inspiration and source material for the piece.
In her work, Ziperstein, who works with photography, collage, and sculpture, draws attention to the way various built environments, ranging from architectural to consumer-oriented constructions, relate to desire and aspiration. She creates site-specific sculptures, ceramics and photographs that challenge viewers to discern the familiar from the strange and to question psychological, economical and emotional attachments consumers have to objects.
She says, "Through this combination, I am able to create sculptures and photographs that waver between the fantastically absurdist and the comfortably commonplace."
Artwork by Bari Ziperstein. Riddle by Justin Lebanowski. View more work by Bari Ziperstein.
Click here to read more about the piece.
Ben Meyers "plays" the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Exhibition Pavilion at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
"Playing LACMA" is an original composition, created entirely by Ben, using a Cannon 7D, a few microphones and a brief moment of quiet during construction of the museum's new exhibition pavilion. The museum invited Ben to respond to the new architectural space after seeing his video "Empty School" on YouTube.
Marisela Norte
In Your Presence
Marisela Norte is a writer from East Los Angeles. Her poetry and spoken-word performances often address every day life in Los Angeles, particularly her observations and experiences riding the bus.
As part of our Artist’s Respond series, she contributed an original poem responding to the exhibition Olmec: Colossal Masterworks of Ancient Mexico.
In Your Presence
by Marisela Norte
You
Disappeared
Between rivers
The muddy low lands
A Technicolor jungle
Color formed
Against an obsidian glass sky
Where stars
Once connected
Begin to tell a story
Of the lonely
Impenetrable jungle
And the rains that
Did not stop
The jaguar emerges
The howling babies still cry
The ghosts of fingers
Trace the shape of
Your lips
Olmeca
Eres Mexico
Eres Africa
Those flame eyebrows mine
The memory of you
A bag of bones
Fragments
The small, polished stones
Laid out like petals
Red mirror sun
El rojo amanecer
Reflects your presence
Casting its light
On what is still here
And what is yet to be seen
Among the transplants
Like Los Angeles palm trees
Wilshire Boulevard commuters
Who will make the pilgrimage to stand before
Your stern gaze
Leave offerings of
Blue green translucent jade hearts
Foot printing
The advance
We take our place
Before the burial
Under a veil of vermillion dust
We disappeared
Between rivers
In your presence
We begin the eternal return home
