Artist & Writers ... and other things ...

These are some images from the ARTISTS AND WRITERS Exhibition from last April. This exhibition was curated by Kathryn Shaw-Sweeney at Flippo Gallery, Randolph Macon College. (click on image for enlargement)

Brad Thomas Birchett; The Everyday Act of Exhistence; photo-documenation (18, 8x12" silver geletin prints) of environmental intervention, audio; 2007

In this installation I worked with the idea/theme of story telling, building a narrative over time. I recorded my evening practice of throwing a stick for my dog, Luka. A repetative, physical, and learning experience that I work on every day..

... A detail of the installation.

... another detail.

... and another.

Included is an audio piece created from the every-day sounds that happened during the interventions. These pieces were hand-edited and dubbed by my friend Johnny Hott. At the gallery there were also stacks of cards so people could have something ...

On the back of the cards were various segments of a short story by my wife, Stacie ... an epitaph she wrote for our other dog, Zuzu.

See Artist & Writers review by Christina Esposito: Read Into It

Please see also: Plant Zero Exhibition ... Matter of Time

AND, the Vanderbilt Exhibition ... Rubberneckers

G. Roy Levine, Director of MFA in Visual Arts, Vermont College ~2001

Vanderbilt Exhibition - A Walking Tour by Curator Jodi Hays

Vanderbilt Rubberneckers Exhibition

CLICK IMAGES TO SEE THE SUPER ENHANCED VERSION

After driving 9 hrs installing the artwork for the Rubberneckers exhibition at Vanderbilt was easy ... especially when you have a great curator like Jodi, who dosnt mind climbing ladders ... and of course my assistant & companion ... Estaci ...

The show looked great, the spacing and laying out of the show was what really made it work. Although there were 9 artists/groups showing, there was a perfect amount of space and rhythm between the works to allow them to ebb and flow ... This rhythm of negative space is what made the show both cohesive and the works all relative to the curatorial statement, which was about movement, voyeurism, and how "lookers" sometime get in the way ...

Gleaning Time & Alley Sites Installation ...

Jake Galle's corn field (in back) next to my found object & photo installation ...

Shea Craig & Yvonne Swanson's Most Beautiful Thing interactive web-based piece ... with Victoria Burge's prints as the visual entry ... and there's Jake's corn-art again!!!

Paula Booth's urban paintings & Erika Wollam Nichols' 58 minute video of Shelby Creek Reservoir ...

The rest of Erika's piece - The Trash Mandala - trash found around the same Reservoir

This Must Be the Place's collaborative performative interventive piece a la Bob Ross mentorship video - A Pretty Nice Painting ...

Tania Kupczak's interactive audio piece - the sound of snow ...

... and back to the beginning. The battery in my camera ran out so I don't have an image of Larry Caveney's incredible video of 2 girls fighting at a gallery - arm wrestling actually - or of John Calley's drawings of cars & people -- done with a bit of motor oil ... Nashville is great and Jodi ROCKS!!!

Nuclear Venus and Nest Ring

These are a couple of paintings that were in the Disrobed exhibition at Gallery 5 in Richmond. This exhibitions was last June and the painters were hung in the midst of beautiful peformative works that spoke of co-existance of industry and nature.

Brad Thomas Birchett, Nuclear Venus or Cest Le Vie, ~ 45 x 49, 2005-2007 

Nuclear Venus or Cest Le Vie and her ilk can be seen at Gallery 5, the Disrobed 2 exhibition, June - July 2007.

This Is Brad's Blog ...

Believe me I AM going to get a Web Page one day ...

A couple of years ago I decided to make art both in and out of my studio - out as in outside ... on the earth, as in Earth Art (See Robert Smithson, Ana Mendieta, etc), but at the same time I never stopped painting ... I considered artmaking as seasonal ...

Here I am washing a stone for my Action to Object installation. In this installation I have a stone cairn juxtaposed to a series of 12 average sized formal paintings. Behind the cairn and facing the paintings at an angle is an old cement bench (see below). To the side are 24 small panels, docu-photographs, on the wall - images from the Alley Sites intervention ...

In the photo-painting above I have juxtaposed myself in front of my 2 German Shepherds ... Later, the shepherd on the left, Zuzu, dies, as the one on the right, Luka, becomes the fixation of my newest eco-enviro-intervention, The Everyday Act of Existence, which can be seen at Randolph-Macon College, Flippo Gallery, Artists & Writers, February 18 thru April 20, 2007 ...

As part of the Artists & Writers exhibition you are invited to the Reading, 3:00 pm, April 15th, Randolph-Macon College, Topping Room of the Old Chapel, with a reception to follow in the gallery ...

Pomegranate for the People / Matter of Time Exhibition

Matter of Time exhibition / Plant Zero Art Center / October 2006

Pomegranate for the People / Matter of Time exhibition

Pomegranate for the People, detail

What makes this piece bio, as in bio-art, is mostly about the pomegranate seeds ... There may be some green tea here, but my friend Marlene brought pomegranates to the studio one day when she and Curtis were working on a mural project. I was using "gifts" and found material in my work in those days ... Did you know that after you pop a pomegranate seed and let the juice sit on a panel the next day it is bleu ... as in blue the color??

N=Nan + Wireforms / Matter of Time Exhibition

This painting always seems to work best with the wire forms. The wire forms were from an environmental installation I did at Vermont College in Montpelier Vermont. I hung old Army shirts with inverted wine bottles equiped with small tubes that allowed the wine to drip slowly onto the snow (always about 2-4 feet in February). When it was done, I felt as if the wire forms themselves were the best part of the piece, and began re-making them in multiples - thanks to Megan ...

Megan Mueller, Hair on the Shower Floor, Welded Iron Rod, Life Size, VCU Sculpture Department, 2007

This Is an Artist Named Heather ...

This is my friend, Heather Gray's, newest photography. Heather is in the newest version of Maternal Metaphors, a traveling group exhibition curated by Jennie Klein and including other artists such as Mary Kelly, Ellen McMahon, Barbara T. Smith, and Sarah Webb. These exhibitions question "the hegemonic representation of motherhood as an institution" as the artists "explore their ambivalence about becoming mothers."

For me, Heather's work is exciting because it's current, while at the same time her process, secondary subject matter, and colorization have a flavor of the 70's. This is what makes Heather's work Kick-Ass across the board - narrative, taboo, photo-cryptic, and formal.