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Show brings art and music together |
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Written by Kurt Brighton
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Thursday, 15 November 2007 |
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Art for the non-artist can be an intimidating beast. If you’ve ever felt out of place in a hushed, crypt-like museum wondering what—if anything—you were supposed to be thinking about a certain piece, and perhaps overhearing extremely clever-sounding people saying extremely clever-sounding things, then shows put on by Studio Gallery Wright are a good place to start.
The Wrights, Erin and Jonny, are believers in bringing art to people in their natural habitat, not constructing a sepulcher for art, a cold distance between art and viewer that is heavy with solemnity—something Erin has experienced first-hand.
“That’s been a huge mission for us—to get art out into the world and into a real setting,” she said. “I got told off once when I was in a gallery in Georgia when I pointed at a Georgia O’Keefe painting. I wasn’t going to touch it, but it’s that sense that if you interrupt or interact with the art too much you might be disrespectful.”
The gallery’s shows at Hodi’s are anything but reverent—though that’s not to say it’s OK if people run around screaming and ripping off their shirts. But by combining music, art, and a social environment conducive to discussion, the Wrights hope to make art a little more accessible.
Through Studio Gallery Wright, the Wrights have formed a lot of connections, both in the Fort Collins community and outside of it. A bond with Boulder’s Motion For Alliance, a group of musicians and artists has led to a happy mutual support system stretching down the Front Range and beyond. For the upcoming Foco Loco 2, MFA is bringing a recently constructed reacTable, a kind of virtual modular synthesizer made up of a large translucent table with several “tangibles,” or interface devices allowing users to alter the waveforms produced.
“One of the members of MFA has been working for about the last year building his own reacTable,” she said. “So he is that creative not only musically, but able to build something like that from scratch. We met (Motion For Alliance) when we brought Amon Tobin to town, who is a huge cult figure. His tour was like Geneva, London, New York, Los Angeles—and then Fort Collins. A lot of people commented on that. Through that we wanted to meet people who had that level of innovation, and MFA has been amazingly positive.”
Indeed, public response to MFA and especially the reacTable has been extremely positive. The group debuted its reacTable at a Labor Day show in Boulder, and according to Wright, the crowd response was overwhelming. Having electronically-based music that is responsive to the crowd itself, as well as more visually entertaining than a DJ standing behind a turntable listening to his headphones, is one reason for that.
“That’s one of the criticisms you hear about electronic music—that it’s not as dynamic as a live band,” she said. “There’s no guitar player or singer thrashing about. But what MFA will be doing here is have a live drum set, and then shift around between different instruments, with the reacTable going and visuals as well.”
For the Wrights, the underlying idea is to illustrate the connectedness between people in the community who are pursuing different artistic paths and those who are appreciative of that art, and also to show that music and visual art are not such strange bedfellows after all.
“Who doesn’t listen to music when they create art, and who doesn’t look at art when they create music?” she asked.
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TO GO
Foco Loco 2, presented by Studio Gallery Wright is at Hodi’s Half-Note, 167 N. College Ave., Saturday, Nov. 17. The art opening is from 8-10 p.m., with music from 10-close by Motion For Alliance, Johnny Voodoo, Alan Vasquez and A*Naut.
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