Exhibition and Performance
April 23 – June 5, 2023
Al Held Foundation
Boiceville, NY
Privet:
Choreography by Jodi Melnick in collaboration with Tara Lorenzen and Brandi Norton with music by Laura Ortman + Exhibition by Beka Goedde
CLICK HERE to view the performance images.
CLICK HERE to view the exhibition.
River Valley Arts Collective is pleased to present Privet, a multifaceted project that includes an exhibition of works on paper and sculpture by Beka Goedde in Al Held’s former drawing studio and choreography and performances by a women trio – Jodi Melnick, Tara Lorenzen and Brandi Norton – set to music by Laura Ortman. The performances occur on April 23 at 10 a.m. and 12 p.m. and May 13 at 10 a.m. and 12 p.m. activating Held's painting studio with dance for the first time. Privet is curated by Olga Dekalo and organized in collaboration with the Al Held Foundation in Boiceville, NY.
The title references the hedge often used to delineate property and geographical boundaries and invites consideration of interiority and private realms within the landscape. The notion of partitioning can also be viewed through the lens of modern and post-modern legacies of visual artists, choreographers and musicians who crossed disciplinary lines in the interest of collaboration. Distinct in their respective fields of dance, music, and visual art, the participating artists converge upon conceptual and formal qualities of their work as well as personal relationships that drive their practices. Holding both what is memorable and ephemeral, the performance includes a closely-packed climax, found lilac carpet, and borrowed, vibrant patterned garments by Rachel Comey, staged in front of a 44-foot long working painting Roberta's House (1985) by Al Held. The dance is accompanied by recordings of the musician Laura Ortman, who describes her compositions as sculpted sound built with texture, atmosphere, and emotion.
Goedde’s works on paper exemplify the artist’s remarkable skills as a printmaker. The series Familiar Bends (2021) was created with eleven aquatint and photoetched steel-faced copper plates and is based on the tubular clay forms she created as sculptural expressions of the physical interiority of the body. Goedde’s sculptures, exhibited alongside the prints, bridge the cyclical patterns she renders on paper with their three-dimensional origins constructed with cast aluminum, enamel and leafing. Expanding on those coiling and biomorphic forms, Know your bones (2021) is a series of intricately cut and hinged paper configurations executed with silverpoint and laser etching. The mulberry paper series, began at the onset of the pandemic, includes cut and collaged intaglio prints she calls drawings while the larger scale Fluid arrangement works (2019) utilize screenprinting, watercolor, and monotype. on gampi silk tissue paper mounted on Revere Bisque Suede paper.
About the artists:
Beka Goedde is a printmaker and sculptor based in Tivoli, New York. She has exhibited at American Academy of Arts and Letters (New York, NY), Galerie Rene Blouin (Montreal, Canada), Soloway (Brooklyn, NY), Sunday Takeout (Brooklyn, NY), Inside Out Art Museum (Beijing, China), Deborah Berke Partners (NY, NY), Peep Space (Tarrytown, NY) and Helen Day Art Center (Stowe, VT) among other venues. Goedde has had residencies at Interlude, Yaddo, Joshua Tree Highlands, Millay Colony, PS122, and Women’s Studio Workshop, and was the recipient of 2015 Brooklyn Arts Council Award to produce a large outdoor public work, Fictitious Force, 2015-16, in partnership with NYC Parks & Recreation. Goedde received an MFA in Sculpture from Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts, Bard College and holds a BA from Barnard College in Behavioral Neuroscience and Philosophy. Goedde is an Artist-in-Residence of the Studio Arts faculty at Bard College, teaching in printmaking and drawing.
Tara Lorenzen is Visiting Associate Professor of Dance, Dance Program Director and Associate Director of Gina Gibney Partnership at Bard College. Upon graduating from SUNY Purchase Conservatory of Dance, she became a member of the Repertory Understudy Group under Merce Cunningham where she created an original role in EyeSpace as well as reconstructed earlier works such as Rune and Summerspace. She joined Stephen Petronio Dance Company from 2008-2011. She has worked with Kimberly Bartosik, Christine Elmo, Shen Wei Dance Arts, Ashleigh Leite, Todd Williams, Christopher Williams, Rene Archibald, Anna Sperber, Beth Gill (Electric Midwife, Bessie award for Outstanding Production 2011), and Maria Hassabi (Plastic, Bessie award for Outstanding Production 2016). Since 2011, Tara has performed and taught master classes for the Trisha Brown Dance Company all over the world. She has recently assisted in the reconstruction of Trisha’s O zlozony/O composite for the Pennsylvania Ballet that was originally created for the Paris Opera Ballet.
Brandi Norton (Iñupiaq, Kotzebue Alaska) is Curator of Public Programs at the Center for Indigenous Studies at Bard College. She is working to bring dedicated Indigenous arts and curriculum enrichment programming to the Bard community and public-facing events. Prior to Bard, Norton was an early childhood educator in New York City, before becoming the Director of Development and Education at Kaatsbaan Cultural Park. Norton is a former Trisha Brown Dance Company member, where she danced for nine years and originated eight roles. She assisted Brown at documenta 12 in setting Accumulation on more than 40 dancers. Norton was also the founder and director of dance company OtherShore, where choreographers were commissioned to create original dance works. Norton attended the Juilliard School and Bank Street Graduate School.
Jodi Melnick is a NYC based choreographer, dancer, and teacher. She graduated from SUNY Purchase with a BFA in Dance. Melnick is part of the first group of Doris Duke Impact Award recipients, a 2012 Guggenheim Fellow, the recipient of the Jerome Robbins New Essential Works Grant (2010-2011) and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant (2011), and has been honored with two Bessie Awards for sustained achievement in dance (2001 and 2008). Melnick's work has been presented both nationally and internationally at BAM's Fisher theater as part of the Next Wave Festival,City Center’s Fall for Dance, The Joyce Theater, New York Live Arts (NYLA), The Kitchen, La Mama, Jacob’s Pillow, American Dance Festival, OtherShore Dance Company, Barnard College, Sarah Lawrence College, George Washington University, Taryn Griggs (2014 Mcknight awardee), DanceBox in Kansai, Japan, the Dublin Dance Festival, Belfast, Ireland, St. Petersburg and Moscow, Russia, and Tallinn, Estonia. Melnick has collaborated with Trisha Brown, John Jasperse and Becky Hilton, David Neumann, and Jon Kinzel and Vicky Shick. Melnick has worked with choreographers and dance artists including, Twyla Tharp (1990-1994, 2009) and Mikhail Baryshnikov (2005-2008), Tere O’connor, Donna Uchizono, Yoshiko Chuma, Liz Roche, Irene Hultman, Dennis O’Connor, Lance Gries, Yves Musard, Patricia Hoffbauer and Russell Dumas. In 2004 she worked with choreographer Joachim Schloemer, composer Olga Neuwirth, and nobel-prize winning playwright and novelist Elfriede Jenilek to create her role singing mezzo soprano in David Lynch’s opera based on his film Lost Highway. She continues to perform and collaborate with Sara Rudner, Vicky Shick, Susan Rethorst, John Jasperse, Jon Kinzel and Kyle Bukhari. Melnick is an adjunct professor of dance at Barnard College at Columbia University, New York University in the Experimental Theater Wing, and The Trevor Day School.
A soloist musician, composer and vibrant collaborator, Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache) creates across multiple platforms, including recorded albums, live performances, and filmic and artistic soundtracks. She has collaborated with artists such as Tony Conrad, Jock Soto, Raven Chacon, Nanobah Becker, Okkyung Lee, Martin Bisi, Jeffrey Gibson, Caroline Monnet, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Demian DinéYazhi, New Red Order, and In Defense of Memory. An inquisitive and exquisite violinist, Ortman is versed in Apache violin, piano, electric guitar, keyboards, and amplified violin, often sings through a megaphone, and is a producer of capacious field recordings. She has performed at The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Guggenheim, and The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, Artists Space, Venice Biennale, The Stone residency, The New Museum, imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival, The Toronto Biennial, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris, among countless established and DIY venues in the US, Canada, and Europe. In 2008 Ortman founded the Coast Orchestra, an all-Native American orchestral ensemble that performed a live soundtrack to Edward Curtis’s film In the Land of the Head Hunters (1914), the first silent feature film to star an all-Native American cast. Ortman is the recipient of the 2023 Institute of American Indian Arts Artist-In-Residence, 2022 Forge Project Fellowship, 2022 United States Artists Fellowship, 2022 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists, 2020 Jerome@Camargo Residency in Cassis, France, 2017 Jerome Foundation Composer and Sound Artist Fellowship, 2016 Art Matters Grant, 2016 Native Arts and Culture Foundation Fellowship, 2015 IAIA’s Museum of Contemporary Native Arts Social Engagement Residency, 2014-15 Rauschenberg Residency, and 2010 Artist-in-Residence at Issue Project Room. She was also a participating artist in the 2019 Whitney Biennial. Ortman lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Since 2020, River Valley Arts Collective has been proud to partner with the Al Held Foundation on a series of exhibitions presented in Al Held’s former drawing studio as well as outdoor installations on the foundation's grounds.
The Al Held Foundation is charged with the stewardship of Al Held’s art and creative legacy. Based in Boiceville, NY at Held's former home and studio, the Foundation’s mission is to foster the appreciation and advancement of the principles of modern art and the public’s understanding of Held’s contribution to art of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. In the last decade the Foundation has facilitated the organization of exhibitions, lent works of art, promoted scholarly research, and conducted educational programs in the United States and abroad. The Foundation is represented by White Cube.
For more information, please contact info@RVACollective.org