OPENING THURSDAY JANUARY 26th @dencontemporary art.

Link Name

As part of the New Every Day Life Series, Gabie Strong and I will lead a sun-print cyanotype process workshop using 19th century photographic techniques and contemporary materials gathered from the desert floor to produce images of white on a sea of bright blue. Blast Site is a monument to future failures, marking survival in the high desert, invoking both the ancient and the new. The workshop includes a post-apocalyptic narrative hike through Blast Site— through the urban, rural and mythic areas of the high desert – followed by a cyanotype process printing demonstration using sunlight and detritus. Workshop attendees will learn how to create beautiful, blue-print like photographs to commemorate their travels through Blast Site. The workshop demonstration will be followed by a barbecued vegetarian lunch including native vegetation.

We have designed and printed an exclusive, hand-made limited-edition artist book and CD soundtrack for workshop attendees. Titled italics Blast Site: A Field Guide to Excavating Our Future Failures%italics%, this book presents high desert field research including essays on the military-industrial complex, indigenous mythology of the region, poetry, survival cooking recipes, maps and ephemera.

Workshop fees include a guided tour through Blast Site, cyanotype process printing demonstration and prints, a copy of the limited-edition artist book, and lunch.


Itinerary

Saturday Nov. 12, 2011

High Desert Test Sites Headquarters, Joshua Tree

09:00 – 09:30 - Workshop Introduction
09:30 – 10:30 - Guided Tour of Blast Site
11:00 – 13:00 - Cyanotype Printing Demonstration (Solar Noon @ 11:30 AM)
13:00 – 14:00 - Survival Cooking Demonstration and Lunch



Logistics

This is an early morning, sun-printing workshop: The cyanotype process requires the use of sunlight to print images on paper. The workshop is set to start at 9:00 am so that workshop attendees can be printing during the strongest hours of sun, for maximum printing efficiency. It is important that workshop attendees arrive to the workshop on time. If guests driving from Los Angeles would like to camp or stay in near by lodging the Friday night before the workshop, please contact info more information.

Registration Fee:The cost is $120 per person for the workshop. The fee includes the cyanotype printing demonstration, lunch and a limited edition commemorative book handmade by the artists. All proceeds are used to cover supplies, event materials, and a small honorarium for the artists.

Enrollment: Due to the intimate nature of this event the group will be limited to twelve people. Spaces will be filled on a first come first serve basis. If you would like to enroll please email info.hdts@gmail.com to confirm your interest and complete your payment for the weekend through PayPal. The fee is non-refundable, however you can give your reservation to another person if you are not able to make the event. Please sign up by November 7 to complete your reservation.

To enroll, email info and make a payment directly through PayPal by clicking on the following link: | https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=ZKQ6ZK6SPD94E
|PayPal button|

If you prefer to make another payment arrangement, please contact
info

*bold*To secure a reservation, payment must be received by November 7, 2011.bold

Our November 12th event at High Desert Test Sites has been covered by the LA Times Daily Dish Column.

Below is a link to the article:

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/dailydish/2011/09/survival-cooking-demo-at-high-desert-test-sites-workshop-in-joshua-tree.html

www.workspace2601.com

Art Sale

one day only, affordably priced works
to benefit Workspace and artists

May 1st, 2011
From 2 to 8 pm

with a special Five Points Reading
in honor of May Day starting at 6 pm

With works by:
Akina Cox
Alexis Disselkoen
Alison O’Daniel
Amir Nikravan
Anna Mayer
Ariane Vielmetter
Asher Hartman
Betsy Seder
Bjarki Bragason
Bobbi Woods
Brian Getnick
Cameron Crone
Carolyn Pennypacker Riggs
Christine Frerichs
Cody Trepte
Daniel Ingroff
Danielle McCullough
David Gilbert
Davida Nemeroff
Elonda Billera
Emily Joyce
Erich Bollman
Eve Fowler
James Anderson
Jamie Chan
Jed Ochmanek
Jenny Yurshansky
Johanna Breiding
John Burtle
John Seal
Joshua Nathanson
Julia Paull
Julia Sherman
Katie Herzog
Katie Ryan
Lesley Moon
Lisa Anne Auerbach
Mario Ybarra Jr.
Matthias Merkel Hess
Maura Brewer
Michelle Lee
Neal Bashor
Nick Aguayo
Nick Lowe
Nicole Capps
Patrick Walsh
Paul Heyer
Paul Pescador
Rob Doran
Samantha Roth
Samara Golden
Sarah Beadle
Tyler Coburn
Zachary Leener
and others…

high desert test sites presents
BLAST SITE:
a field guide to excavating our future failures

Join us on Saturday May 14th and Sunday May 15th for an overnight camping expedition at one of our most isolated HDTS sites. At the far edge of Wonder Valley in the shadow of the Sheephole Mountain Wilderness artists Danielle McCullough and Gabie Strong will lead us through Blast Site, an imagined remnant of mythic global disaster in an event that is part workshop, and part interactive ritual experience. Over the course of the weekend guests will engage in workshops and demonstrations, watch films, listen to music and stories, eat a fire and chemistry cooked meal, and bring home artist books with recipes, maps and soundtracks.

The weekend will begin with a picnic lunch, a hands-on cyanotype demonstration led by Danielle McCullough, and brief conversation on the uses of cyanotype to document traces of natural history. Following this workshop, the artists will lead a walking tour through the desert to their encampment, a loosely-tethered structure based on post-apocalyptic science fiction. The site will feature a cyanotype fabric lean-to, a food storage unit made of a file cabinet, an adjacent darkroom tent for the cyanotype projects to dry in, and portable movie projection unit made out of a car and a firepit.


Once in the encampment, Danielle McCullough will demonstrate how to sear fungi on rocks by the fire, and will serve cacti that’s been pickled in home-made red wine vinegar, accompanied by a choice of sagebrush tea, herbed liquors, or mulled wine. After dinner, which includes mushrooms marinaded in sassafrass and rosemary (cooked on the rocks and then garnished with seeds for staying power) and kettle boiled herbed mashed potatoes, there will be fireside storytelling and an aural ritual experience led by Gabie Strong. The evening will close with a guerrilla drive- in screening of some of Gabie Strong’s film/video before we camp beneath the light shelter of our leanto.

The following morning, we will rise for a pancake breakfast, and bury a time-capsule containing a copy of the field guide.

Saturday May 14th
1:00-4:00 PM: Lunch and Cyanotype demonstration
4:30-6:00 PM: Guided walk to and through Blast Site
6:30-7:30 PM: Dinner
7:30-8:30: Fireside storytelling
8:30-? Sound/film/ritual time

Sunday May 15th
9:00 AM Pancake breakfast (this will be prepared earlier if everyone has risen beforehand)
9:00-10:00 AM Bury the time capsule


LOGISTICS

Cost: The cost is $100 per person for the weekend that includes Saturday lunch, Saturday dinner/drinks, and Sunday breakfast. All proceeds are used to cover event materials, expenses, and a small honorarium for the artists.

Enrollment: Due to the intimate nature of this event the group will be limited to twelve people. Spaces will be filled on a first come first serve basis - If you would like to enroll please email info.hdts@gmail.com – you will be emailed instructions so that you can pay via Paypal, the first 12 people who pay will be signed up for the course. Unfortunately this fee is non-refundable, however you can give your spot to another person if you are not able to make the event.

Lodging: Blast Site includes remote camping - you should bring your camping gear, lots of water, sunscreen, hats and a trash bag so you leave the desert clean at the end of the event.


Danielle McCullough’s works are a result of materials and processes in which her body is used to create a perceptual vantage point from which to think through tactile manipulations. Her gestures are informed by animal interactions and natural energy – utilizing cyanotype (one of the earliest photographic forms used in plant species illustration) to manifest a permanent blue trace from a momentary arrangement of light. McCullough has participated in a number of exhibitions at Los Angeles art venues including the Pacific Design Center, Jancar Gallery, Workspace, Telic Arts Exchange, Fluxco, The Women’s Building, The Advocate and Gochis Galleries at the Ed Gould Plaza, and Texan Equities. Additionally, she has shown her work and conducted visiting artist workshops and lectures at venues across the continental United States. She is a recipient of grants from the Creative Capacity Fund, Change, Inc., and an artist residency at The Vermont Studio Center. She earned her BA in Studio Art from the University of Northern Iowa and her MFA in Painting from Ohio University. McCullough lives and works in Los Angeles.

Gabie Strong is an artist with a multidisciplinary approach to creating work about nature, technology, power and social resistance. Through her art, she seeks to tease out a feminist-dialectic between pure war and utopia, the state of entropy so indicative to Southern California. With a foundation in conceptualism and research in the built environment, Strong traces entropy in the West by framing vernacular urban obsolescence as speculative landscape futures. Her sound performance and recordings are studies in degeneration. She improvises arrangements and layers of aural textures to emphasize reduced and abstracted musical gestures to further invoke drone and decay. Gabie Strong’s work has been exhibited at Pitzer Art Galleries, LAXArt, Acuna Hansen, Gallery Five Thirty Three, and the Torrance Art Museum, among others. She has performed at venues including The UCR Barbara and Art Culver Center of the Arts, Human Resources, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Las Cienegas Projects, The MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Jabberjaw and Amy and Wendy Yao’s Art Swap Meet at High Desert Test Sites. Additionally, Gabie is part of the artist collaborative team Unmanned Minerals, with poet Jared Stanley and designer Matthew Hebert. She received her Master of Architecture from SCI-Arc (2006) and her MFA in Studio Art from UC Irvine (2008). http://gabiestrong.com

For updates and event listings for future incarnations of The New Everyday Life email us at info.hdts@gmail.com