CLARA DIAMOND (1982, United States) received a BA in Studio Arts from Bard College in 2004.

 

Clara’s performance practice is based upon impermanence, degeneration, and transformation. The impermanent nature of action expressed by the physical body’s movement through continual states of degeneration and time acts as a tool for viewer transformation. In this way, the actualization of imprinted flexible memories function as implanted intangible narrative relics in the mind; ultimately challenging the notion of impermanence.

 

Clara’s performance work often exhibits tactile environmental elements such as plaster, earth, and wax to wrap, coat, and layer the physical body within a contextual environment. Incorporating spoken words as sound and durational nuances, as well as text and writing, she exploits symbols, stories, physical space, and other subtle notions of relationships. A persistent theme of object-making as a performance runs through Clara’s work, often resulting in the manifestation of inconsequential art-objects or garbage.

 

Clara has been creating performance art since 2012 and has performed at The Great American Performance Art Festival at Grace Exhibition Space in Brooklyn, NY as well as The Uptown Gallery in Kingston, NY and The Sunday Supper Salon at The Old Glenford Church in Glenford, NY. Recently she has been collaborating with artist Nina Isabelle at Star House Gallery & Studio in Kingston, NY to fortify their Q: Entity project which has generated an interwoven mass of snarled material expressing it’s own agenda to incorporate itself and become alive.

 

NINA ISABELLE (1973, United States) received her BA in Art from Westminster College in 1999. 

 

Nina is a multi-disciplinary artist, working most recently with abstract painting and performance. Her background also includes alternative process photography and interpretive / improvisational physical movement.

 

By applying abstraction, Nina finds that movement reveals an inherent awkwardness, a humor that echoes our own vulnerabilities. She also considers movement as a metaphor and looks to a self-developed cryptograph based on archetypes, body metaphors, disease process and instinct to decipher authentic mark-making and pedestrian movement.

 

Her paintings focus on the inability of communication which is used to visualize reality, the failure of dialogue, the dissonance between form and content and the shortcomings of literal language. In short, the lack of clear references are key elements in her work. By investigating language on a meta-level, she creates personal language by means of rules and omissions, acceptance and refusal, luring the viewer round and round in circles.

 

Her work isolates the movements of the human body in relationship external sensory input. By doing this, new sequences often emerge which reveal hidden relationships between motion, sound, and objects. Her interest in the transformative capabilities of sound waves and the correlations between specific Hz and physical body structure resonances have recently lead to the integration of auditory elements in her performance work. By questioning the concept of skeletal movement and breath in relationship to sound she grapples with further nuances of language. Transformed into art, language and perception become a phenomena of psychic imprint and, ambiguities and discrepancies inherent to the phenomenon, are forced to the surface. Nina’s works rarely reference recognizable form. The results are deconstructed to the extent that meaning is shifted and interpretation can become multifaceted. 

 

Nina’s work has been exhibited locally and nationally, including at The Barrett Art Center in NY, Artspace in Falls Church, VA, The Mills Pond House Gallery, and at The Parliament Arts Organization in York, PA. Recent project developments have included The Random Community Generator and The Pain Project. Nina has done performance-based art projects at The Jewett Center for Performing Arts in Salt Lake City, UT and at The Gunnison Art Center in Gunnison, CO. For the past 7 months she has collaborated with artist Clara Diamond to fortify their Q: Entity project, generating an interwoven mass of snarled material expressing it’s own agenda to incorporate itself and become alive.

 

Nina Isabelle currently lives and works in Kingston.

 

STEPHANIE LOVELESS is a Montréal-born artist who works with sound, video, film and voice. She makes soft-speakers out of paper cups, performance prescriptions for audience-identified ailments, and sound works that attempt to channel the voices of plants, animals, and musical divas.

 

Her sound, video and performance work has been presented widely in festivals, galleries, museums and artist-run centers in North America, South America, Europe and the Middle East. She holds MFAs from Bard College and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a certification in Deep Listening. She currently lives and works in upstate New York

 

ERNIE HOKANSON,  lectuer is on observations of the Electro Magnetic effects on our lives.