Enid Baxter Ryce

Enid Baxter Ryce

March 5 to May 1, 2015
Reception Thursday March 5, 2015 at 5:30 pm

Enid Ryce
THE WEST – a history of the colonization of California’s water in 3 parts.

Enid Baxter Ryce (formerly Blader) is an artist, filmmaker and musician whose investigations explore the lyrical relationships resonating in places between ecology and hidden histories.  Her works have exhibited internationally at venues such as the Smithsonian, Washington, D.C; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Location One, New York; Sundance, Park City; The Arclight Theater, Los Angeles; The Kunsthalle Vienna, The Arnolfini in London; the Director’s Guild of America; Center for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, CCA Andratx, Mallorca, and many others.

Enid’s work was featured in the Getty Museum’s retrospective of California Video, 1960-present.  Her animation, Olive’s Backyard Concert, screened in film festivals internationally and regularly on California PBS.  A collection of her filmic art works, A Film is A Burning Place, was released by Microcinema International on the Aurora Video Label.

Enid’s work has been written about in The New York Times, Artforum, Artreviews, The Los Angeles Times, Bitch Magazine and many other books, journals and magazines.  She has exhibited in and curated several museum exhibitions based on her projects Water, CA and Planet Ord including one sponsored by the Irvine Foundation at the Crocker Museum (2011), one NEA-funded at the Armory in Pasadena (2012) and one funded by Cal Humanities at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (2014).  She curates participatory arts and science projects for the biennial Bay-Delta Science Conference, Sacramento.

In 2008, Enid founded the Monterey Bay Film Society was awarded a Federal Stimulus (ARRA -BTOP) grant to fund an ongoing community program of film workshops for over 2000 at-risk, incarcerated and migrant youth annually.

Enid has been the community curator for the Philip Glass Days and Nights festival since 2013. She also works with the US Army and the Library of Congress to create materials for their archives about Fort Ord. She has received grants from the California Council of the Humanities, Durfee Foundation, Kodak and others. She has won awards for her work as an artist and arts educator from government agencies and non-profit festivals.

Enid received her BFA from The Cooper Union (1996), was a fellow at Yale University and received her MFA with a fellowship from Claremont Graduate University (2000). She is Associate Professor of Cinematic Arts and Environmental Studies and Chair of Cinematic Arts at CSU Monterey Bay.  She lives and works on the former Fort Ord, with her husband Walter and their two children.

Sean Clute: Memory Reset and the Great Modesto Bouncy Thing

Sean Clute

Sean Clute: Memory Reset and the Great Modesto Bouncy Thing

January 29 to February 27, 2015
Reception Thursday February 5, 2015 at 5:30 pm
Artist Talk at 2:30 pm, Art Department Digital Media Studio.

Sean Clute is an interdisciplinary artist, composer and performer. His work has been presented internationally at venues such as The Kitchen, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, MuseumsQuartier Wien, ISEA2014 – Dubai, and the Autonomous Mutant Festival. Currently, Clute lives in Vermont where he is Co-Artistic Director of intermedia dance company DOUBLE VISION, the founder and director of the Media Arts Research Studio (MARS) and Assistant Professor of Digital Art at Johnson State College. Occasionally, he attempts to cross-country ski.

Sean Clute

 

Clute-installation

Memory Reset and the Great Modesto Bouncy Thing

Memory Reset and the Great Modesto Bouncy Thing is a video installation that uses a distributed network to visually reconstruct friends jumping together on an inflatable structure in the outskirts of the Central Valley, CA. Projected on two screens, found footage of the jumpers is blurred, cut-up and colorized. The viewer can imagine the composite of each screen depicting the original footage, while if viewing only a single screen, the viewer experiences only part of the total. The video installation is a reminder of how both the brain and digital technology can record, store and transform memories.

As English poet Stephen Spender exclaimed:

“Memory is not exactly memory. It is more like a prong, upon which a calendar of similar experiences happening throughout the years, collect. A memory once clearly stated ceases to be a memory, it becomes perpetually present, because every time we experience something which recalls it, the clear and lucid original experience imposes its formal beauty on the new experiences. It is thus no longer memory but an experience lived through again and again.”

The video installation Memory Reset, while influenced by the idea of memory, isn’t an attempt to emulate it as a human would. Rather, video pixels are programmed to algorithmically construct half of the computer’s video matrix. For example, one screen may present half of the colors used in the original while the other projector shows the remaining half. Furthermore, the video installation randomly cycles through many processes (nothing is fixed). Because two computers are networked, the subsequent projections always sum the complete image.

Art Faculty on Main

Art Faculty on Main

September 5 to October 24, 2014
Reception Thursday September 5, 2014 at 5:30 pm
Artist Talk at 6:00 pm

Professor of Art Jessica Gomula-Kruzic will have three works on display in the video gallery.

“My visual arts research explores the relationship between the immediate environment, the audience, and the artist, as interactive media and DIY culture continues to blur those relationships. My goal is to create collaborative intermedia artwork in diverse public spaces, which addresses socially conscious subject matter.

Through large scale video and animation projections, live performances, and responsive systems, my projects creatively respond to the physical and social character of an environment, working to animate public and private spaces, in an effort to bring diverse people together to inspire, and be inspired.”

dreams-affection

ACTION: The Central Valley Film Community by Chad Pickrel

ACTION: The Central Valley Film Community.
Premiered on Thursday, June 21st, 2013.

Created in Modesto by the Building Imagination Center’s resident filmmaker Chad Pickrel.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X51qTI0DJc8&w=320&h=240&rel=0]

This documentary explores the filmmaking community in the Central Valley, and how it has evolved and grown over the past several years. Chad Pickrel is the founder and owner of Shadowjacked Studios, an entertainment based company that works in films, comics and graphic design.

Aiming for Change by Brittney Miller

Aiming for Change.

Premiered on Thursday, May 17, 2013.

Created in Modesto by the Building Imagination Center’s resident filmmaker Brittney Miller.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iORohTU2b3k&w=320&h=240&rel=0]

This documentary explores the alternative curricular structure of the Aspire School System through interviews with parents, teachers, administrators, and kids at a local Modesto Aspire public school.

 

 

An Obsolete Dialog by Gina Clark

An Obsolete Dialogue by Gina Clark

Premiered on Thursday, February 23, 2013.

Created in Modesto by the Building Imagination Center’s resident filmmaker Gina Clark.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Hx-_T26t0c&w=320&h=240&rel=0]

“An 84 year old Painter will discuss the (mis)adventures of her youth; the boys in the mental institutions, dancing tables for nickels from the mob, and her own secrets toward adventure in her life – along side all of it’s absurdities.”

Gina Clark is a Visual Anthropologist working within the fields of Photography, Video, Installation & Sound, and Experiments in Linguistics.  ‘Re-inventing the ritual’ might better describe Gina’s unconventional creative process. Her recent collaborations have been alongside  Composer Robert Alan [Vitamin Wig C],  and Video artists Lindsay Laven & Aimee Goguen. She is the Founder and Creative Director of OdpoledneTV [a subsiduary of Beaubourg268, Oakland, Ca], and Co-Executive Curator for Chris Carroll’s  Periwinkle Cinema  [Los Angeles Branch].  She currently volunteers as a Photographer for Organizations such as The Children of the Night Shelter for Prostitute Children. Her latest project, Ataraxic Play ; a Documentary on Shamans and Energy Healers in the San Fernando Valley, CA; has started pre-production. Excerpts from her unpublished novel What is Natural will be on display during The Lost History of Concord,  a Publication at the Verge Gallery, University of Sydney, Australia [Curated by Concord, in February of 2013].

Josh Carlson

Josh Carlson

Premiere of Manifest.AR, a film about the Augmented Reality installation in downtown Modesto. Thursday, March 21, 2013. Produced by the Building Imagination Center’s resident filmmaker Josh Carlson.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P30LHShhTvE&w=320&h=240&rel=0]

 

For as long as I can remember I enjoyed movies, Star Wars was the all time greatest to me. But I didn’t know at the time you could make money from that. So I always wanted to different things. I liked Magic and I saw David Copperfield on a t.v. special. I thought I bet he makes good money. So I was into all sorts of little tricks and illusions, I still am but that’s another story. Then I remember when I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark, I wanted study archeology. I was there for a while. Then Jurassic Park came out and I switched my focus to Paleontology. Actually, these overlapped, I wanted to be an archeologist/paleontologist. The same thing happened when Apollo 13 came out: astronaut.

In 2007, I was diagnosed with brain cancer and the reality set in for us. If we’re going to do this, we better start now. So we started Second Star Productions together with only $2,700. In 2010, we released our first feature length movie. I’m primarily working in the world of short films now however as that is how various video streaming websites like YouTube work. I suppose I can be summed up like this.

My goal is to simply entertain.
 
My medium is film.

If you learn something or I am successful in my job, terrific!

If I am ever able to make a living at this, even better!

Mecca by the Runnels Brothers

Mecca by the Runnels Brothers

Premiered Thursday, December 20, 2012.

The Runnels Brothers have been working together creatively since the early 1990’s. While living in Los Angeles, they produced and directed the collection of one-act plays HIGH CITY MILES, the one-act play YOUTHANASIA and the full-length play SUNSET LIQUOR. They have directed several short films, commercials and music videos. In 1997 their short film THE MIDDLEMAN, a mockumentary about a pot dealer shot in the style of the television show COPS, premiered at the Lo-Res Film Festival in Los Angeles. Their Converse shoes commercial STAY TRUE has received over 33,000 hits on Youtube. Their feature film YOUTHANASIA was shown nationally on Palm Pictures Video On Demand Film Festival, was acquired by York Entertainment and is available through Netflix.

Their animated short film BREAKFAST WITH BUKOWSKI, with music by Tom Waits, had its world premiere at the Sonoma International Film Festival in 2011, has been screened at several festivals, and this year won the Slamdance Social Shorties Film Festival. After screening BREAKFAST WITH BUKOWSKI at the Long Day Short Film Festival in Alameda, they were asked to sit on this year’s panel as jurors. They recently finished the short film REUNION (starring Modesto actor Jack Souza). They are now in development on the feature film BUKOWSKI: AN ANIMATED LIFE, a bio-pic about the late Los Angeles writer Charles Bukowski, and two reality television shows through a production company in Los Angeles, where they are acting as writers and co-executive producers.

An excerpt of their work:
[youtube]rLWh43rDZA8[/youtube]

Uncle Hartwick by Rachel Nanstad

Uncle Hartwick by Rachel Nanstad

Premiered Thursday, November 15, 2012.

Rachel Nanstad grew up in the remote wilds of Oak Ridge, TN, secret birthplace of the Atomic Bomb. She currently lives in Oakland, CA and works in the Mission District, San Francisco as an editor and videographer.

Works screened at the Center were made between the years 2004-2012. The content ranges from a short documentary about a cat who got his head stuck in a jar to experimental, hand-processed films about dreams, unusual Uncles and music videos.

These pieces explore psychological space, cosmic space, identity and true stories of life on earth.

Also included is a trailer for a documentary work in progress about a public access girl group from the late 1970s that wanted to become rich and famous. Coming soon: The Reed Sisters an American Story.

photo taken by  Diana Elliot