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Dorothea Rockburne: Astronomy Drawings
Opening reception: Friday, July 10, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Free for BMCM+AC members / $3 non-members


On Friday, July 10th from 6:00 – 8:00 pm, the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center (BMCM+AC) will open the third of three exhibitions celebrating the women of Black Mountain College and their many accomplishments in the visual arts, literature, dance and academia. This final exhibition in the series concentrates on the work of a single artist, Dorothea Rockburne and her Astronomy Drawings. The exhibition is accompanied by a 24 page color catalogue.

A student at Black Mountain College in the 1950s, Dorothea Rockburne is a highly influential contemporary artist whose innovative work incorporates ideas based in mathematics and astronomy. Throughout her interesting career she has exhibited widely and received many prestigious awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Award. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Department of Art, in 2001 and received the National Academy Museum Artist's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009. Her work is included in numerous public collections including: The Museum of Modern Art, Fogg Art Museum, Harvard Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, High Museum of Art, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Brooklyn Museum, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, and The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Rockburne participated in the first Happening at Black Mountain College (1952) and was part of that scene in the 1960s in New York along with Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg and others.

Dorothea Rockburne’s Astronomy Drawings exemplify how the seemingly disparate worlds of art and science can merge with grace and clarity. She describes their genesis: “A friend had given me a very good small telescope, which I could mount on the hood of my car. I would drive to the beach at night and study the stars…The Astronomy Drawings are an exciting direction my work has taken, which, in a way, came as a complete surprise. They combine nature, geometry, topology, and painting in an easy and natural way. The transition to move from certain higher forms of geometry, which I had used in former work, to astronomy just seems to flow. I have been working that way ever since.”

Rockburne credits her deep interest in the intersection of art, nature and mathematics to Black Mountain College mathematics professor Max Dehn. A friend and associate of Albert Einstein, Dehn was a beloved member of the BMC community.

Dorothea Rockburne: Astronomy Drawings was curated by Ann H. Murray, Professor of Art History and Director of the Beard and Weil Galleries at Wheaton College where the show originated. After it closes at BMCM+AC it will travel to the New York Studio School.

RELATED PROGRAMMING

PRESENTATION
7:30 pm, Thursday, September 24
Visualizing world views:
Explorations at the boundaries of perception
David McConville, Media Artist + Researcher

Is it possible to effectively communicate an experience of reality? David McConville proposes a pragmatic framework for considering the unique perspectives we each have on the nature of reality. He demonstrates how integrating artistic and scientific approaches can experientially illuminate sensory limitations while raising awareness of the ways in which we create our own unique "maps" of reality. Gaining a deeper appreciation of how worldviews are formed is essential if humanity is to successfully address the interconnected challenges of the 21st century.
$7 / $5 for BMCM+AC members + students w/ID

PRESENTATION
7:30 pm, Thursday August 13
Scientific Foundations in Art and Music
Michael J. Ruiz, Ph.D.
Professor of Physics, UNC Asheville

Two fundamental characteristics of western art and music are linear perspective and the cycle of fifths. The scientific foundations of these will be discussed, along with demonstrations of how these provide an added dimension to art. The presentation will include multimedia with animation, video and sound clips.

Michael J. Ruiz is a professor of physics at UNC Asheville with a doctorate in theoretical physics. He is also a pianist and composer. His innovative multimedia teaching techniques have been featured on CNN.
$7 / $5 for BMCM+AC members + students w/ID

CONFERENCE
October 9 – 11 at the University of North Carolina Asheville
Re-Viewing Black Mountain College
The legacy of Black Mountain College continues to influence contemporary culture in multiple realms. This conference aims to investigate its history as well as the multiple paths of influence, actual and possible, identifiable in the contemporary world and beyond.

Keynote speaker: Dorothea Rockburne
A student at Black Mountain College in the 1950s, Dorothea Rockburne is a highly influential contemporary artist whose innovative work incorporates ideas based in mathematics and astronomy. Throughout her interesting career she has exhibited widely and received many prestigious awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Award. She was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Department of Art, in 2001 and received the National Academy Museum Artist's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009.

Conference co-sponsor: University of North Carolina Asheville
Check our website for updated conference information: www.blackmountaincollege.org


Citation:
Dorothea Rockburne
Tacoma Bridge Resonance, 1998
Caran d’Ache Neocolor II on indigo pigment 90% cotton 5% abaca 5% line paper and translucent abaca paper
33” x 29 1/2”
Courtesy of Dorothea Rockburne and Greenberg Van Doren Gallery

For more information contact Alice Sebrell at 828-350-8484.

Support for this project has been generously provided by: Helga and Jack Beam and Don and Cynthia Carson

Black Whole Performance
Video excerpts from the Black Whole event on April 25, 2009 at the Food Lion Skate Park.

BLACK WHOLE featured Brooklyn based dance artist Janice Lancaster (www.janicelancaster.com), projection designer Adam Larsen (www.hum-bar.com) and musician Jason Daniello (www.moogmusic.com) along with additional dancers from New York City and local skaters. The performance was an extraordinary immersion in video, sound and dance exploring the connections between life and landscape through image, sound and movement. Inspired by the groundbreaking experiments in interdisciplinary performance at Black Mountain College, Lancaster, Larsen and Daniello designed an event not to be missed.


Black Whole from Black Mountain College Museum on Vimeo.


Read more...
The Shape of Imagination: Women of Black Mountain College: Triangle

Opening reception: Friday, February 27, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.

Free for BMCM+AC members / $3 non-members

On Friday, February 27th from 6:00 – 8:00 pm, the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center (BMCM+AC) will open the second of three exhibitions celebrating the women of Black Mountain College and their many accomplishments in the visual arts, literature, dance and academia. This second exhibition in the series concentrates on three women who changed the worlds of art, craft, design and education: Anni Albers, Ruth Asawa and M.C. Richards. The show includes, paintings, prints, weaving and ceramic works dating from the 1940s to the 19990s.



Anni Albers Study for Unexecuted Wallhanging, 1926, 1983 screenprint, from the portfolio “Connections” 21 1/8 x 14 1/8 inches Collection of The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation © 2009 The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation/Artists Rights Society New York

BMC faculty member, Anni Albers is known for her unique modernist graphic and textile designs, as well as her articulate aesthetic philosophy. Anni and her husband Josef Albers came by boat to BMC in the fall of 1933, shortly after the college opened. They came from the Bauhaus School of Design in Germany which was closed in 1933 with Hitler’s rise to power. The Alberses remained at BMC until 1949 and had a lasting influence on the college’s art and design curriculum. Anni founded BMC’s weaving workshop, and her teaching approach relied heavily on hands-on experimentation with materials and a focus on the industrial aspects of textile production. After BMC, Anni continued her work in textiles and received many commissions, becoming the most renowned textile artist of the 20th century. She was the first textile artist to be given a one-person exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1949. She also made a number of prints that demonstrate her impressive design sense in a two dimensional format. A portfolio of these prints is included in this exhibition.









Ruth Asawa BMC.88/Dogwood Leaf, No Date Watercolor on paper 11 x 15.75 inches Courtesy of the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation

At the age of 16, Ruth Asawa and her family were interned in a Japanese-American camp on the West Coast. After her release, she attended Milwaukee State Teachers College. At he suggestion of fellow students there, Ruth then came to BMC in the summer of 1946 and stayed until 1949. Over these three years her teachers included Josef Albers, Ilya Bolotowsky, Max Dehn, Buckminster Fuller and Merce Cunningham. In the summer of 1947 Ruth studied basket weaving in Mexico, which influenced her inventive experimentation with wire sculpture. A successful artist, she received many public art commissions in San Francisco, where she settled with her husband Albert Lanier, also a former BMC student, including San Francisco Fountain at the Grand Hyatt on Union Square, the Mermaid Sculpture at Ghirardelli Square and the Japanese-American Internment Memorial Sculpture at the Federal Building Plaza in San Jose, California. Ruth also became an avid supporter of arts education in San Francisco.





M.C. Richards Alphabet #3, 1994 Acrylic on paper 60.25 x 40.25 inches Collection of the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center Gift of Christina Cowan and Ada Lea Birnie

Mary Caroline (M.C.) Richards joined the faculty at BMC in 1945. There, she taught writing, translated plays, danced, studied pottery and founded The Black Mountain Review. Richards inspired many students by the way she approached art, spirituality, education, and the whole person. M.C. Richards became one of BMC’s most popular faculty members in the college’s later years. She wrote: “I have no criticism of Black Mountain, it was an entirely transforming, maturing and inspiring experience.” While at BMC, Richards played an essential part in maintaining community balance in the wake of Josef and Anni Albers’ resignation and the rise of Charles Olson as the college’s leader. Richards, a prolific writer and poet also pursued a career in pottery and wrote the influential book Centering in Pottery, Poetry and the Person. She directed plays at Black Mountain, and she translated Erik Satie’s play The Ruse of Medusa. Richards was among those who participated in the first “Happening,” entitled Theater Piece No. 1, a multi-media experimental performance orchestrated by John Cage in the school’s dining hall.



RELATED PROGRAMMING

Workshop

    Saturday + Sunday, March 21st and 22nd

    9:00 – 4:00 with a lunch break

    The Awakened Eye: Explorations in 3 Dimensions - This 2 day workshop, taught by Ati Gropius Johansen, is based on the legendary Bauhaus foundation design course. Using simple materials like paper and wire we’ll create dynamic new forms. Ati is a graduate of Black Mountain College where she studied with Josef Albers and daughter of Walter Gropius, founder and director of the Bauhaus School of Design in Germany.

    Asheville BookWorks, 428 1/2 Haywood Road, West Asheville

    $185 / $170 members of BMCM+AC + Interlude Editions (materials included)

    Space is limited! 10% discount for registration by March 1st

    To register: 828-255-8444



Lecture/Presentation

Wednesday, April 1, 7:30 p.m.

    Anni Albers + Ruth Asawa: Two Lives in Art - Brenda Danilowitz, chief curator of The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation will speak about Anni Albers and Ruth Asawa, two artists with extraordinary lives as innovative artists and dedicated educators.

    Co-sponsored by Cloth Fiber Workshop

    BMCM+MAC, 56 Broadway – Downtown Asheville

    $7 / $5 BMCM+AC members + students w/ID



Multi-Media / Interdisciplinary Performance

Saturday, April 25, 9:00 pm

    Black Whole – An immersion in video, sound and dance exploring the connections between life and landscape. Featuring Brooklyn-based dance artist Janice Lancaster and video projection designer Adam Larsen. “Theramin Garden” by Moog Music with Jason Daniello.

    Co-sponsored by the City of Asheville, Moog Music + Centering on Children

    Food Lion Skate Park, 3 Cherry St. – Downtown Asheville

    $10 / $7 BMCM+AC members, city employees and students w/ID. Kids under 12 free



Film Screenings: Three Documentary films about the artists in Triangle

Thursday, June 11, 7:00 p.m.

M.C. Richards: The Fire Within by Richard Kane + Melody Lewis-Kane

Ruth Asawa: Of Forms and Growth by Robert Snyder

Josef and Anni Albers: Art is Everywhere by Sedat Pakay

Fine Arts Theatre, 36 Biltmore Ave.

$12 / $10 for BMCM+AC members + students w/ID

Total running time: 1 hr. 46 min. There will be two short intermissions between films.

For more information contact Alice Sebrell at 828-350-8484.


Support for this project has been generously provided by: BlackBird Frame & Art, City of Asheville, Centering on Children, Betty Clark, Ellen Clarke, Cloth Fiber Workshop, Sarah Corley, Beverly Devereux, Mary Charles Griffin, Deborah Haynes, Elizabeth Holden, Camphill Village, Mary Lynn Kotz, Moog Music, Susan Rhew Design, Cherry L. Saenger, Pat Samuels, Barbara Sayer, Juanita Sommerville, Judy Swan, Susan B. Turner and UNC Asheville.