Empower
Growth
Swannatopia Presents:
Time Is Fake
Time Is Fake Dec 9 2023 - Jan 2 2024
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: MW, GlowspaceArts
Time is Fake: a Swan Pond Experience
Swannatopia’s Experimental Art club will host their second annual holiday light and sound extravaganza at Lamplight AVL in West Asheville this December. “Time is Fake: a Swan Pond Experience” will bring the people together again, to shimmer and shimmy among sights and sounds from the collective's many large scale installations staged over the past year. Featuring fresh cake works and fashions by Experimental Art Club, an AVL FM "time is fake" hotline radio show, a Sunset Surprise, New Psycho Actives Bug Mall Soundtrack music video premiere, a puppet show live scored by a 9 member orchestra, swan song sound bath, and black light dance party by DJ Madbog.
The opening celebration will be on December 9th at LamplightAVL’s Residency at 821 from 4-10pm and viewable from 821 Haywood Rd. and by appointment through December 31st, 2023.
The Oasis Of The Juicy Fruits
The Oasis Of The Juicy Fruits
9/21-10/14 2023 Center for Craft
For Center for Craft’s "Krafthouse: Forest Of The New Trees”, we were asked to imagine a “post-major event Appalachia”.
In response, we built an interactive "Post-Scarcity U-Pick Orchard" within a subterranean geodesic dome.
Through this highly collaborative multimedia experience,
The Oasis of the Juicy Fruits gave visitors a glimpse into a future of sweet abundance and care, and paid technicolor homage to our region’s cherished craft and folk traditions of gourd art, Appalachian quilt styles, limberjack puppets, square dancing techniques, shape note singing, basketry, fruit jam preservation, as well as William Bartram’s 1773 descriptions of pre-contact agricultural sites in the Georgia Piedmont. Woven into the fabric of the Oasis is an imaginative fusion of American psychedelia/ outsider art, agroforestry and futuristic fruit grafting that finds fertile ground at the crossroads of unconventional artistic expression and a yearning for the commons. In this harmony of tradition, innovation, and creative wonder, The Oasis of the Juicy Fruits beckons all to partake in the dance of life.
Participating Artists: MW, KD, KO, BB, john, miller, hanna, henry, alyssa, coco, chris, lily, jackson, kimmy, elaina, marcia, mike johnson
Call For Sculpture
Call For Sculpture
9/2/2023 Lamplight AVL
In conjunction with the exhibition BMC/MX : Black Mountain College and Mexico, “students and artists of all ages and all media” were invited to engage creatively with visual prompts offered by Mexican artist Abraham Cruzvillegas. Images of the resulting artworks were compiled into a limited edition interactive zine, which joined the museum library’s collection and was given to each participant, and selected works were on display at Lamplight AVL during the release event .
Participating Artists: Cameron Fernandez, Park Cy III, Ivan Melchor, Kimmy Tolbert, Sadie Bowen, Freddie Bell, Marcia Wofford, Yunjo Lee, Madalyn Wofford, Experimental Art Club, Byron Browne, Max Baynes, Liz McCarthy, Carson Whitmore, Bruce Weatherby, LeeAnn Peppers, Paula Runyon, Katrina Ohstrom
Kaleidico Concepts
Kaleidico Concepts
6/17/2023 Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center
The first in a series of performative and experiential actions presented in conjunction with the exhibition Black Mountain College and Mexico, we, of Swannatopia, built large-format kaleidoscopes and optics through which participants could view each other and the art on display.
KD, KO, MW
Fountain Of You
Fountain of You
4/8/2023 BMCM RE:happening11
Fountain of You is an interactive experience that explores the ways in which we orbit one another around the symbolism of a park fountain. This water ballet of sorts attracts and engages the viewer in a multi-tiered experience of choreographed parading, interactions with our life guards, and places for deep reflection looking into a holographic “fountain of you” featuring a kinetic fountain feeling, with ongoing performances and busking sets around the interactive wishing well.
Participating Artists: MW, KO, KD, BB, miller, alyssa, lex, daniel, carley, luke, will, emily, jasmine, em, tyler, miller, elaina, hanna, jackie, madeline, crow, mike johnson, corey, susie, shane, mikey, marcia
Bug Mall
Bug Mall
12/11-12/31 2022 Lamplight AVL/The Residency at 821
For our December artist residency, we transformed the storefront gallery space at Lamplight AVL into “Bug Mall”. Drawing inspiration from utopian experiments both attempted and imagined, cooperative and adaptive behaviors observed across life forms, holiday light shows and the shopping mall itself, Bug Mall explores the ways we relate to our built environment, each other, and ourselves through the lens of contemplative socioentomology. The multimedia installation included works from over 30 artists and spanned a butterfly experience, puppet show, live musical performances, monorail, movie theater, fountain, escalator, elevator, funeral parlor, vending machine, arcade, high school art show, seed bank, volcano, claw machine, Zig Zag’s Roller Disco, Swannatopia Department Store, Wormhole!, a wormhole, chapel, food court, claw machine, carousel, and more. An original Bug Mall soundtrack, composed by New Psycho Actives (Avey Tare and Geologist of Animal Collective) played throughout the installation, and at 5:17pm during the opening reception, a Sunset Surprise lightshow was activated.
Participating Artists: Freddie Bell, Abby Portner, Trevor Wilson, Madeline Sis, shane, Henry Day Dunlap,
lara, jessica, ty, jazmine, em, Hanna Zalesky, isa, haley plus friend, lucy, liam, elaina, AC Reynolds high school, New Psycho Actives, MW KO KD
Build a bugs- lottie, mikaela, oggie, sarah, emmett, hannah, richard, MW, BB, hanna
