Robert Bryn

In Honor of St. Francis Academy

Performance

Following in traditions of both bravery and bravado, artist Robert Byrn performs a monologue about his life and lessons gained from his own journeys riddled with self-inflicted difficulty. He sets his scene on a boat setting off into the distance, so that the audience’s arrival is his departure. Employing the traits of evangelical sermons and the signature temperament of his own works as a playwright, his performance is both a call-to-arms seducing those on shore to follow him into a life of unexpected adventure and a personal introspection reconsidering it.

Directions from Route 9: Driving north, you will reach Route 78 about a mile after passing the Gaslight Inn on your left. Take a left, drive 3 miles, stay straight when you cross 9G...

...Stay straight through Tivoli. When you reach the river (and before the road veers to the right), park where available. Walk across the train tracks to the shore, where you will be greeted by the artist.

Performances:
Friday, May 18, 12:00 and 5:00 pm
Saturday, May 19, 12:00pm
Sunday, May 20, 12:00 and 5:00 pm
Friday-Sunday, May 25-27, 12:00 and 5:00 pm

Robert Bryn is a playwright and artist who primarily works in performance and video. In 2004, he started a project entitled “44 Cinder Blocks” in which the artist makes a yearly pilgrimage carrying a cinderblock across the width of his homestate of New Jersey. He writes and directs plays with production company Bonnie Pipkin Presents including “I Ate Her Heart, Still Warm” and “Eagle the Terrorizer”. He lives and works in New York City.

James Walsh

The Strange Life of an Old Man Clad Entirely in Leather

Video

For more than 30 years in the late 1800s, the Leather Man—so-called because he dressed in all leather—continuously walked a 360-mile loop bound on the west and east by the Hudson River and the Connecticut River. As a boy growing up in Mohegan Lake, artist James Walsh often thought of the local legend as a mysterious, kind, self-reliant recluse who used to walk the same woods. As an adult, he associated the Leather Man with the figure of the wandering hermit that frequented his favorite books by the English Romantics and American Transcendentalists. For this video, the artist sorted through regional archives, interviewed local historians, and walked portions of the Leather Man’s route. In the end, it is a story about the flaws of folklore: he did not learn more about the man, but rather what others, including himself, wanted him to be.

Directions from Route 9: In Peekskill, turn onto Route 35 East. Follow Route 35 past the Taconic Parkway to Route 121 South, turn right and the entrance to the Reservation is on the left. The Trailside Museum is located inside the park about 1 1/2 miles from the entrance. Entrance fee for the park is $8.00 per vehicle.

James Walsh is an artist working with drawing, sculpture, and video. The source material for most of his projects come from long walks in cities, such as London, New York, and Istanbul, and his ongoing study of nature and natural histories. He recently published a book entitled Solvitur Ambulando, which is a record of quotes taken from his extensive reading on walking that produces a similar montage effect as Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project. He lives and works in New York City.

Joanna Malinowska

Yugcetun Qulirat Naaqumalriit Erinaissuutmun

Sound installation

Joanna Malinowska’s practice stems from her repeated visits to the Canadian Arctic to follow in the footsteps of Franz Boas, arguably the father of American anthropology and one of the first Western scholars to study Inuit cultures. As an extension of her obsessive pursuit, the artist and her mother set out on a series of trips until they located the anthropologist’s gravesite in upstate New York. For this exhibition, Malinowska has hand built a radio antennae near his grave and set it to broadcast Inuit creation stories in lost languages that Boas studied and understood. As homage to her Arctic traveling forefather, Malinowska offers tales of celestial beginnings and life at his place of stillness and death.

Directions from Route 9 South: 1/2 mile south past the Highland Diner in Ossining, pass Sabrina Lane and make your next left onto Havell Street (difficult to see street sign from the road)…

Directions from Route 9 North: Pass signs to Ossining city center, pass Yale Avenue and make your next right onto Havell Street (difficult to see street sign from the road)…

…The cemetery entrance is 1/2 mile on the right between two large white pillars. Upon entering, make a sharp left, and follow this road straight until you have to veer right. Follow the small white flags in the ground until you see a red flag and park. Franz Boas’ grave is back near the tree line behind the red flag. The audio can be heard on the viewer’s AM radio once they enter Dale Cemetery and is also playing at Boas’ grave.

Joanna Malinowska is an artist primarily working in performance and video. Her most recent works stem from her trips to the Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic and her research into Inuit culture. She lives and works in New York City. For further information on the artist and her current exhibition at Venetia Kapernekas Gallery, please go to http://www.venetiakapernekas.com/htdocs/jmalinowska.php

Karl Larsson

To See the View

Personalized barricade tape

In 1336, Petrarch—Italian scholar, poet, and the father of Humanism—wrote about his ascent of Mount Ventoux and cited the reason for his climb to be none other than “to see the view”. The story of his ascent slowly gives way to a focused self-reflection on his relationship with man, nature, and God. Centuries later, Stockholm-based artist Karl Larsson and curator Laura Mott channeled this sentiment and set out on their walk between Tivoli and New York City. Encumbered by a difficult landscape of hill and mountain and the inability to walk along highways between towns, they primarily chose to walk through the privately owned sections of woods dutifully marked by trespassing signs and barricade tape signifying property lines. To honor the lineage of coupling the physical and the philosophical, and to champion their difficult but rewarding feat, Larsson produced customized barricade tape printed with the name “Monte Ventoso” (Mount Ventoux in Italian) and tied pieces of the tape around a scattered selection of tree trunks along their entire route. The gesture claims the conceptual property of their journey, but in an aesthetic form of ownership that is understood in this country.

Directions: Look for the barricade tape along the exhibition route and use them as markers for finding other works in the exhibition sited in small towns along Route 9.

This project was supported by a grant from IASPIS, International Artists Studio Program in Sweden.

Karl Larsson is an artist, writer/, and poet. He typically works in collaboration with other art practioners and his projects primarily manifest themselves as printed materials and lectures. He has degrees in literature, philosophy and art and is the editor for the magazine U-N-I-O-N (Sweden). He lives and works in Stockholm.