Performance

Spotlight on the composer: Wiley Webb

in Exhibitions / Performance / Video  by Cheri Gaulke

The composer for my Peep Totter Fly installation at LACE is Wiley Webb. Wiley is a young talent who already has a good body of work available online at http://soundcloud.com/wileywebb. I teach Video Art at Harvard-Westlake School where Wiley is a senior. Last year he asked me if he could get involved with my student filmmakers by providing audio sweetening, sound effects and original scores. I was very impressed with his work and his professsionalism. I was already working with some of my just-graduated students — Nick Lieberman was the assistant director and Gabe Benjamin was the editor — so I asked Wiley to join the team. He put together a beautiful soundtrack — a rich layering of natural sounds, many of which he gathered himself, to accompany each scene. He then added a subtle but powerful layer of tones derived from a recording session with musical artist Ananda using her voice and instruments like a harmonium, frame drum and singing bowl. I put together this video documentation for Wiley to show off his music (although the final version that I went with is a little different than this – more natural less human-generated sounds). The sound is an important aspect of the installation. It causes the video to become mesmerizing (even for me who’s seen it a million times)! But to really experience it you need to go to LACE at 6522 Hollywood Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90028.

Peep Totter Fly was commissioned by LACE and is part of Los Angeles Goes Live: Performance Art in Southern California 1970-1983, September 27, 2011 – January 29, 2012, which is part of the Getty initiative Pacific Standard Time: Art in LA 1945-1980. For more info go to http://www.pacificstandardtime.org/.

– Cheri Gaulke

Peep, Totter, Fly on Hollywood Blvd

Peep Totter Fly: Cheri Gaulke at LACE

in Exhibitions / News / Performance / Video  by Cheri Gaulke

photos by Paul Redmond http://paul-redmond.com/

Here are a few shots from my performance Peep Totter Fly at LACE on September 27. Performers in white activated my wall of red high heels by putting them on and walking on Hollywood Boulevard. When they returned to the gallery they offered the shoes to the audience and all mayhem was unleashed as people tried on the red high heels. I’ve got shoes in women’s sizes 5-16 which means they fit men sized 6.5-17.5 or so. The wall of shoes is meant to be interactive and viewers are allowed to wear the shoes while in the gallery. I have found that men really get a kick out of this as they have been curious about what it feels like but have never had a chance to try on shoes that would fit them.

So I invite anyone and everyone to come check out the installation which will be open through January 29, 2012. The installation is more than a wall of high heels. It has a beautiful video of high-heeled legs walking through natural environments – slogging through streams, lavafields, beaches, geo-thermal sites and against dramatic vistas. It was shot in locations as varied as Los Angeles, Death Valley and Iceland. There’s also a lovely sound score that makes the video quite mesmerizing. For more info and the hours of LACE, go to http://www.losangelesgoeslive.org/. All photos in this post are by Paul Redmond.

– Cheri Gaulke

About the LACE Installation

in Exhibitions / News / Performance / Video  by Cheri Gaulke

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2011/10/pst-a-to-z-los-angeles-goes-live-at-lace.html

Quote from the L.A. Times Culture Monster by Sharon Mizota: “Although there are ten artists or collectives included in the show, only three of them have installed works in the gallery in any traditional sense. Cheri Gaulke’s installation greets viewers like a shoe store with only one choice—hot red high heels. The shoes are provided in most women’s and men’s sizes, and viewers are encouraged to wear them while walking around the gallery. Building on early performances that advanced a feminist critique of women’s footwear, Gaulke has also created a video loop of various people walking in the shoes across different natural terrains—mud, sand, rock, etc. It’s amusing and gets its point across—nature never planned for high heels.”

The book “Marriage Matters” is “Out There”

in Artists' Books / Exhibitions / News / Performance  by Cheri Gaulke

Marriage Matters, the artists’ book that Sue Maberry and I created in 2005, is included in an exhibition called Out There that opens tonight.  http://laaa.org/out_there_2010/index.html

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Los Angeles Art Association (LAAA) and the City of West Hollywood are proud to announce the third annual Out There exhibition celebrating the LGBT experience during West Hollywood’s Pride Month festivities. This effort commemorates West Hollywood’s lasting commitment to raising public awareness and appreciation of the talents and abilities of all artists.

The Out There exhibition, opening at Gallery 825 on June 11, is an all-media exhibition juried by Hillary Metz of Blythe Projects Los Angeles. Ms. Metz’s past commitment to the LGBT Community via the Santa Fe Human Rights Alliance and the 2009 Create Equality artwalk in Culver City poises her as the ideal curator to jury this important exhibition. Out There celebrates and acknowledges the special opportunities that West Hollywood has provided for creative individuals over the past 25 years. Out There is made possible by the City of West Hollywood Arts Grant Program and the Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission. Out There runs June 11-17 at Gallery 825 (with special Sunday hours on June 13 after the Pride Parade).

Featured Artists: Brandy Eve Allen, Dori Atlantis, Eric Allen Carter, Joanne Chase-Mattillo, Ching Ching Cheng, YaYa Chou, Richard Chow, Raul de la Torre, Bryan Fair, Steve Fujimoto, Alisa Gabrielle, Martin Gantman, Cheri Gaulke and Sue Maberry, Shizuko Greenblatt, Niku Kashef, Siri Kaur, Shelley Kommers, Jonas Kulikauskas, Linda Kunik, William Mackenzie-Smith, Steven Moses, Gustavo Muñoz, Bob Poe, Mei Xian Qiu, Glynnis Reed, Gwen Samuels, Mark Schoening, Steve Seleska, Thomas Skene, Alix Soubiran, Eugenie Spirito, Michael Salvatore Tierney, Daena Title, Dan Vanclapp and Art Weeks.

Reception: Friday, June 11, 6 to 9 pm and after the Pride Parade on June 13. Show runs through June 17.

Admission: Free 

Where: Gallery 825, 825 N. La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90069  

For more information call 310.652.8272 or e-mail gallery825@laaa.org

Marriage Matters was also pictured and discussed in a review of the Love Never Dies exhibition in Minneapolis.  It’s a great review about a very interesting exhibition of work about the “gay marriage” issue. Check it out. http://www.downtownjournal.com/index.php?&story=15466&page=65&category=93

Making It Together: Women’s Collaborative Art + Community opens at Bronx Museum

in Exhibitions / Performance / Video  by Cheri Gaulke

I am excited to announce my participation in this exhibition in New York. The work I am showing includes documentation from two collaborative groups I co-founded, Feminist Art Workers (1976-81) and Sisters Of Survival (1981-85). With the WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution exhibition now in New York (at PS1), it is important to remember that collaboration was also a significant aspect of the feminist art movement. It was in southern California where this work was especially innovated. I am proud to be a part of that history and am delighted that it is beginning to be recognized in this exhibition. For the show, I edited two videos that document FAW and SOS. It was exciting to get together with my collaborators from times past and dig through our archives, select and scan photos, write narration about the work, and even re-stage some performance imagery. Working together was like old times but better. We’ve all mellowed and, with age and experience, know each other and ourselves so well that we could fall into a productive groove. It was lots of work but I’m really proud of the results. We may even post the two videos on youtube sometime soon. I’d like to especially acknowledge Laurel Klick (my partner in editing the FAW video) and Jerri Allyn, Anne Gauldin and Sue Maberry (my partners in producing the SOS video).

Making It Together:
Women’s Collaborative Art + Community

Making It Together explores an important chapter in recent history when women artists, inspired by the 1970s Feminist Movement, worked collectively in new ways to engage communities and address social issues.

Guest curator: Carey Lovelace

The Bronx Museum of the Arts, 1040 Grand Concourse, Bronx, NY 10456
March 2 – August 4, 2008

Go to the museum website and see a picture of me in my red nun’s habit as anti-nuclear performance art group, Sisters Of Survival, perform our Public Action in Covent Garden, London, in 1983.