A Golden Bee for Picture Show

I just learned today that the PRC's 2007 Boston Cybearts offering was featured in the Boston Phoenix's 2007 Art in Review. I am proud as pie to report that the good art folks there counted Picture Show among the best of 2007! The Phoenix gave the first nod to the amazing "Joseph Cornell: Navigating the Imagination” at the Peabody Essex Museum. This was truly an outstanding exhibition -- a true visual and mental feast and a rare experience indeed -- and I am thrilled to have our exhibition share the same ink.

Here is the blurb on Picture Show:

Back to the future “Picture Show,” organized by Leslie K. Brown at Boston University’s Photographic Resource Center, went low-tech to mull motion pictures. The best stuff seemed teleported straight from some fabulous 19th-century inventor’s lab. Deb Todd Wheeler offered a magic picture wheel and hand-cranked light-up illusions. Steve Hollinger adapted old-time amusement hall flip-book animation technology to create visions of an atomic apocalypse. And a strange pedestal contraption by Hans Spinnerman of the terrific, hallucinatory Musée Patamécanique in Bristol, Rhode Island, somehow made a giant bumblebee appear to hover inside a bell jar.

I am particularly proud of this accolade because...

1.) It's the first time I curated a show with kinetic, interactive art and the first time I worked with this kind of new media meets old media (oh how nervous I was during the opening and throughout the whole show).

2.) I've always loved pre-cinematic and optical toys (and creating as much atmosphere in the gallery as I can).

3.) This is an idea I've had for some time.

4.) These artists were top notch and a joy to work with (and great senses o' humor too!).

5.) Perhaps it was because most of the work was constructed or assembled over several days right in the PRC, we developed a great sense of camaraderie. I count them among my friends. We took a particularly memorable trip to visit le Musée Patamechanique in Bristol, RI after the show ended its run. (Congrats on your recent grant!)
6-1000.) It was a joy to see how much fun visitors had with the show! You can browse pics of the light-sensitive, lens-based, and people-activated artwork here at this flickr set.

Thanks Steve, Olivia, Deb, Erica, Hans and Neil! And thanks Greg Cook!

ABOVE: Detail of Hans Spinnermen - The Dream of Timmy Bumble Bee. Installation at PRC, Photo by Jeremias Paul