Winter of our Contentment

The light looks beautiful in the winter.
Our skin looks warm against the cool colors around us, grey sky and white ground, so many variations of grey and pale pale blue.
We have this time to go inside our thoughts, to conserve our energies, and to build our ideas so we can arise in the spring and the summer, burst out of our winter skin like phoenixes in the sun!

The Lot on Lawley

photo by Jon Brumit

The Lot set up on Lawley Street this October to meet up with Luis Croquer (Director of MOCAD) and Joel Wachs (President of the Andy Warhol Foundation). It was a lovely get-to-together. Thanks to Jon Brumit across the street!
This marks the beginning of The Lot's transient phase, where the The Lot is a venue wherever the letters are. We are looking to partner with friends, strangers, and organizations in Detroit and beyond. Think about it! Let's come to your neighborhood!

Golden Indeed

Photos from the "Golden Casket of Earthly Marvels"!

Drawing Power

"Drawing Power"
Mary Beth Carolan & Robert Reese

Sat. May 22 6-10pm
(dance performance at dusk)
Popps Packing
12138 St. Aubin
Hamtramck

Description
An interactive sculpture that will transform through two stages of
energy. The first stage will be a high energy dance performance.
Dancers silhouettes will be lit with high powered industrial lights
that draw power from the grid. The performance will be viewed from four
different sides of the cube. As night falls the sculpture will
transform into a quieter experience. Solar powered lights will kick on,
drawing power only from the storage provided by the sun that day.
Audience members will be invited to come inside, lounge around, and
gaze at the solar light show.  (Dance by Tzarinas of the Plane)

Bios
Mary Beth Carolan is a multidisciplinary Detroit artist and is the recent recipient
of a 2010 Kresge Community Arts Grant for $9,000.00.  In the fall she will be attending
the University of Michigan Masters of Fine Arts Program.

Robert Reese is currently an industrial electrician at the Ford Rouge
Center. Outside of "working on big machines and poking them with
probes and stuff", he's passionate about building projects. Recent
"volunteer projects" include a scratch built "vacuum forming machine"
for the University of Michigan-Flint's Engineering Science Department
and an "arc vapor deposition chamber, used to create buckyballs and
nanotubes" for UofM-Flint's Physics Department. This year he made a
personal metal-casting furnace and is working with metals. Upcoming
plans include a CNC machine that "uses an additive process to print
three dimensional chocolate sculptures."

Miroslav Cukovic

"The Golden Casket of Earthly Marvels: Bulging the Question"
May 22 6pm-10pm
Popps Packing
12138 St. Aubin
Hamtramck

Yugoslavian-born American artist, Miroslav Cukovic, a graduate of College for Creative Studies, has exhibited extensively both in North America and Europe. Most recently, he has completed a public project entitled "Hoops" which was made through a grant from the City Council of Maribor. He lives and works in Maribor with his wife Jelena and son Boris.

David Prince

Saturday, May 22

Popps Packing 12138 St. Aubin, Hamtramck

Balloon Launch 7pm

BIO

David Prince is a sculptor, explorer, lumberjack, amateur scientist, community advocate, and inventor, creating artworks in a wide variety of materials and media. His subject matter frequents the topics of ecology, heroism, civic engagement, and impermanence. He received an MFA in Sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2006 and a BA from Colorado College in 2001. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA and is a part-time nomad, living and working from his minivan-studio.

balloon launch : Alternative Energies

The Alternative Energies Project explores themes of resource and energy consumption and investigates creative engineering as a means of inspiring new approaches to how we expend and consume energy. This project encompasses a number of recent installations and performances including my most recent project, balloon launch.

balloon launch was initially inspired by my father's work as an astrophysicist - he would use enormous helium balloons to carry gamma-ray imaging payloads into the upper atmosphere. I’ve always been drawn to the imagery and gesture of releasing these balloons, and today I see it as a metaphor for the greater process of scientific inquiry. In my father’s work, the goal for the payloads was the retrieval of data in the form of gamma-rays. As an artist, I have grown most interested in the release of the balloon itself, as a metaphoric embodiment of the activity of questioning. For me the balloon launch has come to represent a venture into the unknown and the whimsical sense of hope that accompanies scientific investigation.

The balloons are constructed from hand-made, bio-plastic film, designed to be entirely biodegradable due to their composition of cornstarch and corn husk fibers. These images document the successful launch of one of my prototypes, using a combination of hot air and helium propulsion. I am currently developing a solar heating coil that will enable future balloons to rise solely by means of hot air.

My balloon launch project interprets the process of scientific inquiry as an activity based in wonder, and depicts discovery not as an endpoint, but as an opportunity for new openings. Through the launch of these balloons I hope to re-imagine the purpose of technology as a creative force and escape the paradigm that technology exists solely for the sake of commodity. I also aim to illustrate some of the tensions in relationships between human innovation, human consumption and our environmental predicament.

Tzarinas of the Plane

"Tzarinas of the Plane"
Faina Lerman
Bridget Michael

"From all space between the edges and the blood, the Tzarinas emerge from the plains in colors, without pardons to refuse your warmest kisses and exude forgotten delights. Praise and glory are not the ways to enlightenment, instead, despair, confusion, beauty, and joy deliver us to the oneness we seek.

Tzarinas of the Plain imitate and summon primal modes of communication and expression, relying on our senses to arrive at an experience that is playful and meaningful, yet unexpected. As innate human instincts disappear from a world of mindless distractions, our reactions to these infiltrating voids are evident. Our performances create a space between the real and imagined where we let go of our identities and take on new roles as fantastical creatures in absurd operas of life and death."