Friday, July 7
4:00 Workshop with Linda Weintraub
7:00 Dinner Catered by Mor Pipman
9:00 Talk hosted by Linda Weintraub

FIRE & ICE invites participants to examine the phenomenon of ‘very hot’ and ‘very cold’ that have coexisted on planet Earth since time immemorial. Temperature extremes account for the diversity of life forms that have evolved on Earth. However, global temperature now threatens many of these life forms. This is because humanity’s escalating consumption of fuel for energy combustion is affecting climate conditions globally.
The workshop addresses the ever-present relationship between humans and temperature, and utilizes two metaphors to manifest the global consequences of this relationship today.
An oversized match represents humanity’s current insatiability for fuel and mania for combustion.
An ice cube signifies endangered glaciers by manifesting the highly reactive nature of ice.

The activities conducted by the workshop participants amplify the control humans can assert upon fire (a process) and ice (an object). Relying exclusively upon the sensory, muscular, and analytic apparatuses that are standard equipment on every human organism (hands, breath, spit, etc.), participants strive to control the rate of combustion of the match and melting of the ice cube. In the first instance they explore how long they can sustain the flame on the match, thereby slowing fuel consumption. In the second, they devise strategies to delay the ice cube’s melting which requires them to seek the coolest environment possible.
Such intimate exchanges with flame and ice attest to humanity’s ability to moderate the rate of energy consumption and the degree of atmospheric warming. Through metaphor, the workshop participants activate humanity’s ability to replace the care-less material and energetic interactions that are norms in industrialized societies, with care-ful Earth stewardship.

LINDA WEINTRAUB’S BIO:
In addition to being an artist, Linda Weintraub is a curator, educator, and author of several popular books about contemporary art. After a brief career as a dancer, she earned an MFA degree from Rutgers University in ceramic sculpture. Her current art practice engages the plants, animals, soils, insects, and microbes she cultivates on her homestead in upstate New York. Her recent writings explore the vanguard intersection between art and environmentalism, including the series, Avant-Guardians: Textlets in Art and Ecology and TO LIFE! Eco Art In Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet (University of California Press), and the forthcoming book, WHAT’s NEXT? Eco Materialism and Contemporary Art. Weintraub established Artnow Publications in order to apply environmental responsibility to the book’s material production. She is also the author of In the Making: Creative Options for Contemporary Artists and Art on the Edge and Over: Searching for Art’s Meaning in Contemporary Society. Weintraub received her MFA degree from Rutgers University. She served as the Director of the Bard College museum where she curated over sixty exhibitions; was the Henry Luce Professor of Emerging arts at Oberlin College; is a visiting artist at the NOMAD9 MFA program at Hartford University’; and maintains a homestead on an eleven acre property in upstate New York where she actively applies the principles of Permaculture to food production, land management, and energy generation.

LINKS:
www.lindaweintraub.com
http://www.lindaweintraub.com/tolife
http://www.lindaweintraub.com/blog
http://hyperallergic.com/361108/the-fulfillment-of-crafting-a-home-like-art/
http://www.chronogram.com/hudsonvalley/the-arc-of-life/Content?oid=2373867

"Moving through sonic installation.
Song writing/ Composition begins with letting go.
My name is Luz Elena Mendoza and I'm a Mexican American and grew up in southern Oregon and now living in Portland for the last 10 years.
Since a child, music, art and I found each other.

It's one of those mysterious encounters that just happen, and no matter how much you try to explain it to someone it's not the same then the expierence itself.

I am inspired by the voice of energy and all the artists who move through that vessel.
Song writing/composition to me is like swimming in the abyss of the unknown
It's a open door to a home that is always there for me to release and reflect and pray.
Writing is a vulnerability that I enable to stretch, to share with all communities.
Music has kept my spirit awake and strong.
This knowledge defends itself, the knowledge of be being vulnerable.

I love the intention of Nina SImone, Frida Kahlo. Art is out teacher.
I am inspired by the patience of Andy Goldsworthy
Seeking the balance of exhaustion and creation.
It's a current keeps on moving.
it's important to be open to allow honest moments to speak For themselves."

THIS GROUP SONG WRITTING INSTALATION IS ABOUT WRITTING TO ANYTHING, THE SOUNDS AND BEATS OF OUR ENVIRONMENT.
LIFE IS A SONG, THERE ARE NO LIMITS TO EXCERSISE OUR ABILITIES IN HEARING MUSIC IN EVERYTHING.

THERE ARE NO BOUNDRIES IN WRITTING.
WRITE EVEN WHEN YOU THINK YOU HATE WHAT YOU ARE WRITTING
WRITE EVEN IF YOU FEEL LIKE THE FEAR IS TRYING TO SUFFOCATE WHAT YOU ARE WORKING TO RELEASE.
WE CANT EXCAPE THE CONSCIOUSNESS, WE BEFRIEND OUR MINDS, OUR EGOS, OUR WORRIES.
THE ART OF WORKING THROUGH THE DISCOMFORT IS THERE TO TEACH AND HEAL US,
WE JUST GOTTA KEEP BREATHING THROUGH IT AND LET THE PATIENCE TRANSFORM THAT ENERGY INTO ELECTRICITY.
I BELIEVE THERE IS A AWAKENING WITHIN OUR FINGERTIPS.
TO BE WOKE IS TO HEAR THAT CALLING THAT STARTS IN THE SHAKING OF OUR SPINES.

THE POINT IS TO KEEP IT MOVING TO KEEP THAT CHANNEL OPEN TO OPEN THAT CONVERSATION
THE INTENTION IS TO CREATE MOVEMENT WITHIN AND OUT SIDE OF YOURSELF WITH EVERYTHING ELSE AROUND YOU.
THERE ARE SO MANY WAYS AND LEVELS TO COMMUINCATION.
DONT BE SO ATTACHED TO WHAT IT SOUNDS OR LOOKS LIKE.
THE INTENTION OF ART IS TO CREATE MOVEMENT AND LET THAT CURRENT CONTINUE TO HEAL SO WE MAY EVOLVE INTO LIGHT BEINGS.

LA LUPE SONG VIDEO CLIP

https://youtu.be/3kRIV23LQyI

VIOLETA PARRA SONG VIDEO CLIP

https://vimeo.com/34301327

LUCHA VILLA/VINCENTE FERNANDEZ SONG VIDEO CLIP

https://youtu.be/w559Vrwza5A

https://vimeo.com/ 34301327hhttps://vimeo.com/ 34301327ttps://vimeo.com/ 34301327
WHATS KEY FOR ME TO HAVE A SAFE PLACE TO WRITE:

-GOOD FRIENDS

-COMPATIBLE COLLABORATERS

-COMFORTABLE TRUSTING ENVIRONMENTS

-HAVING WRITTING RECORDING SOFTWARE

-BEING VUNLNERABLE
“That, to me, is my duty. And at this crucial time in our lives, when everything is so desperate, when every day is a matter of survival, I don’t think you can help but be involved. Young people, black and white, know this. That’s why they’re so involved in politics. We will shape and mold this country or it will not be molded and shaped at all anymore. So, I don’t think you have a choice. How can you be an artist and not reflect the times?” – Nina Simone

-ANDY GOLDSWORTHY AND HIS MOVEMENT THROUGH ARTIST INSTALATION

-CREATING MOMENTS
-IMPROVISATION
-MIRROR TALK
-FREEDOM THROUGH DUENDE TO BE MOVED BY THE SPIRIT AND ENERGY OF CREATION AND HEALING ARTISTIC INTENTION

It’s easy to talk about an artist’s growth as a series of musical decisions: an expanding sonic palette, a change in mood or tempo, an escape from the trappings of genre. It’s harder to talk about an artist’s personal—or even spiritual—growth, because that kind of progress is hard to track. Until, that is, an album like Y La Bamba’s Ojos Del Sol comes along and screams of radical transformation on every level. The Portland act’s fourth offering is a sweeping, playful and vulnerable collection that’s ripe with both musical and personal discovery. From the intimate, contemplative verses of the Spanish-language title track to the revelations delivered over the loping beats of “Ostrich,” this is an album that’s painstakingly produced while remaining emotionally raw.

Throughout the collection, Y La Bamba frontwoman Luz Elena Mendoza returns to themes of searching and metamorphosis. On one level, this is born from the Y La Bamba frontwoman’s continuing exploration of her identity as Mexican woman. Both of Mendoza’s parents grew up in Mexico—Luz was born in San Francisco, then brought up in a strict Catholic household in Southern Oregon. She spent her childhood summers playing in the orchards of California's San Joaquin Valley with her cousins, and it was there that she soaked up the melodies and stories that were being told through traditional folk songs with three-part harmonies. These are sounds that remain a vital building block of the songs on Ojos Del Sol, an album which she says represents “a celebration of family and community.”

But on another level, Ojos Del Sol is about Luz’s search for shared humanity outside of her own community, and for a faith that is greater than just religion. These are themes that run throughout Y La Bamba’s body of work work—with roots in a 2003 journey to India, which found Mendoza falling ill and trading her Christianity for something broader—but there’s a maturity to Ojos Del Sol that speaks to true, lasting transformation. You can hear this on the lush “Kali,” where she sings—with wonderment rather than fear—that “to know yourself is to lose everything.” And you can hear it on the album’s epic closer, “Ulysses,” where Mendoza sings that her life is “written in sand and ash and stone.”

These are songs built to soundtrack coming to grips not just with one’s own mortality, but with the fragility of the world. This is heady, emotional fare, and “this record is about being a mother to these emotions,” Mendoza says.

Her clarity of voice is intimately tied to a renewed musical approach, which Luz attributes to a greater self-awareness that developed through recent collaborations with singer-songwriters Edna Vazquez and Lila Downs, as well as an exploration of mariachi, cumbia, and Latin pop with Calexico’s Sergio Mendoza—no relation—on a collaborative 2015 album released under the name Los Hijos De La Montaña.

Those collaborations helped Mendoza find her own voice as a more confident producer and songwriter on an album that is often a stripped-down affair. Mendoza plays guitar throughout Ojos Del Sol, and worked actively with composer Richie Greene to create a new sonic voice. Percussion from another regular Mendoza collaborator, Nick Delffs (Shaky Hands, Death Songs), is a welcome near-constant that adds depth and soul to the album. To that same end, Mendoza hand-cut stencil art pieces, which appear in Ojos Del Sol’s liner notes, to pair with each new song. All of this is presented as a cohesive offering, an entry in Y La Bamba’s ongoing musical conversation about community, about the self, and about survival.

“I am thankful for all of my hardships,” Mendoza says in the album’s liner notes. “They have guided me to find rest in my soul, time after time. Over and over again.”

ROSEKILL is the Hudson Valley seasonal home for The Grace Exhibition Space.
When the weather is warm, we move outdoors and 2 hours north