Time Lapse

Edge of Taos Desert: An Escape to Reality published in 1937 by New York socialite Mabel Dodge Luhan exemplifies a late modernist disillusionment with "civilized" culture and class. Luhan, who had set up salons of notable writers, artists and authors in Florence, Greenwich Village, and later Taos New Mexico, gave up her prior fictions to re-claim life on the edge.While the image of desert can mean many things to many people, it has been said that easterners in particular conjure primativist notions of an exotic nature and its rural inhabitants.

Such was the case with Mabel Luhan. Yet, her utopian vision did lure D.H. Lawrence and Georgia O'Keeffe to the desert and win her the respect of photographer friend Ansel Adams. The video project "Escape to Reality: 24hrs @ 24fps" borrows narrative elements from Mabel Dodge Luhan's memoirs combining them with the poetry of Palm Desert resident Ruth Nolan, images from Eadweard Muybridge's 1870s Palo Alto motion studies, post-modern music, tourist travelogues taken in New York, California, and Pearl Harbor in 1930s, along with the images of photographers who roamed Joshua Tree National Park for a 24-hour period in May 2008.

Escape to Reality montages time periods and styles marking the transition between East and West, day and night, sophisticated urbanity and isolated desert, class comfort and new realities, war to peace, still camera to cinematic, from analog film to digital device. Join us for a reception and screening, November 6th, 6:00pm www.artsblock.ucr.edu digitalstudioinfo@ucr.edu rsvp at: 951.827-4796

Riverside Here and Now

As part of A Sense of Place: Remembering Riverside's Chinatowns Sweeney Art Gallery hosted an incredible dance performance and presentation at Bre Dance Studios. The space is located on 9th Street & Orange in downtown Riverside, the former site of the 1880s Chinese Quarter. The audience was treated to choreographed hip-hop dance and Chinese traditional dance put together by Clifford Breland and Szu-Ching Chang respectively. Storyteller and singer Karen Wilson followed with a moving narrative tying together the diasporic journeys in America of both Chinese and African immigrants. Afterward, there was a buffet Chinese dinner and street music. On the political front, a Riverside City Council meeting on 10/07/08 will determine the fate of Riverside's second Chinatown site on Tequesquite and Brockton Avenues. Grassroots activists hope to have the land saved for further excavation and a memorial park.


The co-chair of the Riverside Chinatown Cultural Preservation Committee (RCCPC), Dr. Deborah Wong professor of music at UCR talked with Ching-In Chen about the history of Chinese immigrants in Riverside and the on-going controversy surrounding development on the Chinatown site. Check out the podcast interview on KCET.org as part of ARTSblock Live! available throughout the month of October. KCET, also Asian American Riverside.


The next ARTSblock Live! podcast slated for November will feature "desert noir" author Ruth Nolan who is currently leading a series of workshops for the Inlandia Institute focusing on desert region writers. Ruth is also developing narration for an upcoming experimental video on Joshua Tree National Park with images taken as part of the annual Photographic Excursions project sponsored by UCR/CMP. The video is scheduled to premiere during 1st Thursday ARTSwalk on 11/06/08 at 7:00pm. Check out Inlandia!

Auf Wiedersehen

Riversiders took part in “Project Runway" (IE style) through a portrait studio set up by local photographer Michael J. Elderman at UCR California Museum of Photography on 10/05/08. Elderman dug out his old Hasselblad 2 1/4 camera along with a digital SLR to capture the runway action. This 1st Sunday arts event aimed to highlight the 10/25 opening of Leicas and Hasselblads curated by Jonathan Green at UCR/CMP, featuring cameras from the David J. Hearst Foundation Collection. Over 100 fashion backward folks showed for the mod 60s and 70s theme shoot, styled by upcoming designer Michele Woolery. Participants received a free CD of their shoot afterwards. Michael J. Elderman has been a freelance commercial photographer and a photographic artist since the mid-1970’s exhibiting his work throughout the United States and Canada. His assistant during the shoot was Michael Papavero of Redlands.


The next 1st Sunday event will take place on 11/02/08. Day of the Dead (El Dia de Los Muertos) is a Mexican celebration that pays homage to loved ones who have died, yet are still remembered. The celebration is sponsored by the Riverside Cultural Consortium and organized by Division 9 director Cosme Cordova. As a run up to the event, local photographer Carlos Puma will hold a digi-photo workshop at UCR/CMP on Thursday evening 10/23 for those interested in working the Museum's Dead Portrait studio located among the festivities on Mission Inn Avenue. Selected images from the Day of the Dead photo shoots will be featured in the Digital Studio Gallery during 1st Thursday ARTSwalk 11/6 between 6-9pm. For more info, contact the UCR ARTSblock Ed office at: digitalstudioinfo@ucr.edu or call (951) 827-4796. www.artsblock.ucr.edu