Flashback Friday!
Four years ago today we started rehearsals for “EXODUS”, an interdisciplinary production that we took on tour to Denmark.
#flashbackfriday #operaanddance#nowid #nowidslc #figuraensemble#interdiciplinaryperformance#copenhagenoperafestival2016
Today’s generous contributor is Artist, Holly Addi, based in Salt Lake City, Utah. Holly is working on a new collection and had a few of her new pieces photographed in her home last week and she was generous enough to share them with us here. See more of Holly’s gorgeous work by going to her website:
https://www.hollyaddi.com
Holly:
This shoot was a documentation of being at home, where one truly portrays their authenticity, during a time of being quarantined and not having the outside distractions of the world.
What I discovered is that even through the heaviness I found it to be a magical time,
it was as if we all said to the hectic outside world - just a minute, as I did when my 3 girls were toddlers and I needed a second to just think.
As an artist, I wanted to create a new collection that was based around the spirit of this and something that I hope would inspire others to create their own place of solidarity and beauty where their home becomes their 'Basilica,' the name of my newest collection.
'Basilica,' in the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox churches, is a title of honour given to churchbuildings that are distinguished either by their antiquity or by their role as international centres of worship because of their association with a major saint, an important historical event, or, in the Orthodox Church, a national patriarch.
The symbolism for me is that our own homes should be our 'Basilica' to us that resonates not only externally but on an internal level. We are the saint to our homes.
Your home is where you reside, rest, nourish, and feed your body and soul. Creating rituals in your daily existence within your own temple (space) and surrounding yourself by beauty is an honor to the gift of life.
While I felt scared at times during this pandemic for this virus that has been plaguing our globe, the magic was to find the beauty in our simple daily lives in our place of dwelling that we call 'home,' or in other words, where our spirit resides~ our 'Basilica.'
Click on the link below to read more:
http://www.now-id.com/new-page-1
We took a moment to breathe outside last weekend in beautiful Squamish, British Columbia!
#socialdistancing #nature #therapy #landscape#nowid #nowidslc #canada #lowclouds#inspiration
A photo shoot in West Texas - two years ago!
Today’s contributor is designer Shannon Robert based in Clemson, South Carolina.
Shannon:
I am working from my studio which is a 5’ x 5’ area but it works.
I’m doing a service outreach project right now to teach paint classes to children online.
Today’s contributor is dancer Tara McArthur, who has performed with NOW-ID several times - she is one of our absolute favorites.
Tara is currently based in New York City.
Tara:
Here’s what I’ve been doing lately~
Watching things grow on my fire escape, laughing at myself learning to sew face masks for health care workers, cooking, and moving my body in slow and gentle ways, have all been grounding me in this uncertain time. I’ve been trying to create a little bit of beauty each day, however small and insignificant it may seem. Music always comforts and inspires me. I’ve been listening to a lot of Jessica Pratt and Fiona Apple’s new album, ‘Fetch the Bolt Cutters’. And coffee… coffee is helping me stay sane while in terrible need of a haircut.
Today’s contributor is Artist Adam Bateman, based in Utah.
Adam:
I'm spending most of my time at the ranch. I'm running the chainsaw, doing some hiking, and I've been making paintings and also launching a new project called the flat file--an online and eventually in person resource for buying Utah artists' works on paper. that's theflatfile.bigcartel.com. attached are a couple of the paintings.
Today’s contributor is creative coach and media alchemist, Chris Howard.
Chris:
Something that I've been doing to keep sane and optimistic is unplug from the news as much as possible -- it doesn't change things one way or another whether or not I'm up to date with everything that's happening, and it just causes more anxiety and sleeplessness, so I figure why not just turn it off. Instead, I'm catching up on good books and good music.
Currently I'm reading "The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible" by Charles Eisenstein (which has been like a soothing tonic compared to current events), and listening to this album, by our good mutual friend, Conor Provenzano:https://conorprovenzano.bandcamp.com/releases
And I'm also thinking about new projects I want to work on, and talking to potential collaborators, and generally trying to stay productive, but also trying to take things as easy as possible. It's definitely a strange time to be alive.
Today’s contributor is Dancer/Teacher/Nashville Ballet Academy Principal: Kate Crews Linsley, based in Nashville, Tennessee.
Kate:
I attached 4 photos.
1. First the photo of Jason, Sammie and I. This is everything. This is my anchor, my purpose and my heart. We stay at home now so we can protect each other.
2. There is a screen shot of my students at Nashville Ballet. I am teaching them everyday on every virtual platform. We are in a constant state of reinvention of this art form through a virtual lens.
3. My yoga books! I am reading, teaching and practicing again. This has been such a gift in this isolation. Like visiting an old friend.
4. Our back yard. It is lush and green and jungle like this time of year with all the rain in Nashville. An oasis. We hike, we play, we relax. Blessed to have this little slice of nature.
Today’s contribution comes from Opera singer, Jakob Bloch Jespersen, based in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Jakob Bloch Jespersen:
We had this little beauty ten days ago. Our third child. Very uplifting indeed!
Today’s generous contributors are two Canadians:
Architect, Brian Wakelin and Financial advisor and NOW-ID Board member, Heidi Westfall.
Brian Wakelin: We just came back from NZ on Saturday and are in a two week quarantine period – we can’t leave the house for anything. Sooo, at this particular moment we are working at the kitchen table. Caroline has ducked upstairs for a zoom meeting. For me the view from the kitchen table is vital as it’s our real connection to public life. All grocery deliveries (thank you aunt Shelley) and visits happen with the glass in between. The other image is the kids doing exercises in the living room. We are certainly building (and testing!) the family bonds – one of the bright sides in this dark time.
Heidi Westfall: I really am taking this as a sabbath to be present, grateful, creative and clean up all the piles of projects I have been avoiding.
Today’s contributors are Poet Joanna Lee, based in Richmond, Virginia and Artist Portia Snow, based in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Joanna Lee: It is National Poetry Month! So I am part of a couple cohorts doing a poem every day in April. (It's something I attempt every year but rarely make it through due to everything else going on... so this is actually a plus side to the slow-down for me.) I really believe in writing as a tool to sublimate some of the trauma we are all feeling these days. Here's a haiku from a prompt a couple days ago:
planted years ago,
why do the white irises
first bloom in this fear?
...true story, as the iris bulbs from a friend I planted 3 years ago do have blooms for the first time. :)
As far as inspirational settings, it's all about the growing things! These are morning-coffee shots of the 2-year-old lemon trees I grew from seeds, and one of my cat, Max, helping me with poems at night!
Portia Snow: I have been in my studio working with a new medium. I was prompted by Liza Lou and her #aparttogether_art project. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/arts/design/liza-lou.html
I have been patching together parts of my daughters old clothing in order to make a quilt. She is off to college in the fall. The process has been quite extraordinary. First, the experience of going through all of her baby clothes (all the feels), then choosing the pieces to use. Second, patching them together to form a comfort blanket sounds simple in theory if you are at all familiar with sewing or quilt-making, which I am not. Or, was not. I just began stitching things together and it seems to be working. It’s coming along. It has been a very cool project, very much about connection, about comfort and about moving past my idea that I don’t have the skills to create something like this. I have gone in and out of moments of wanting to completely light everything on fire to being really thrilled about the outcome. So goes the making of art.
Today’s contributors are both based in Salt Lake City, Utah: film artist and photographer, Jan Andrews and Principal dancer with Ballet West (and NOW-ID), Katherine Lawrence.
Jan Andrews: I spend some time every day getting exercise by hiking through the cemetery with camera in hand. Perfect place for social distancing as most of the residence are 6ft under.
Katherine Lawrence: Picture 1: We've begun daily family walks and the cemetery is not only a great place to social distance, but also full of beauty, life, and peace amid the uncertainty and chaos. Picture 2: My boys fill my days and remind me how fortunate I am.
Today’s contributor is the wonderful artist, performer, designer and magic maker - Gary Vlasic from Salt Lake City, Utah.
We are excited to feature and celebrate his art today, on his Birthday!
Happy Birthday beautiful friend!
Gary: In our new reclusive lives I have buried into the studio. A refuge. This is a time a reflection, art making and re-strategizing our lives.
I am sharing new works and works in process. I have been doing a series of 22” x 30” mixed media 'visual poems’, as well as my bossy 8' mylar pieces.
During this time of distance, I felt it could be helpful to share entries from collaborators from all over the world, to help our readers out of their personal space and into someone else's. I created this series because I have been looking for inspiration and connection and know I am not alone.
Friends are sharing an image of themselves… the space that they occupy most these days or a moment, landscape, piece, book, view, thing, dream or simply something keeping them inspired, optimistic and sane.
Charlotte
Today’s generous contributor is: architect/educator Chris Taylor - based in Lubbock, Texas.
Chris shared images from his life and the preface to William Carlos Williams book length poem Paterson.
Preface "Rigor of beauty is the quest. But how will you find beauty when it is locked in the mind past all remonstrance?" To make a start, put of particulars and make them general, rolling up the sum, by defective means — Sniffing the trees, just another dog among a lot of dogs. What else is there? And to do? The .rest-have run out — after the rabbits. Only the lame stands— on three legs. Scratch front and back. Deceive and eat. Dig a musty bone - For the beginning is assuredly the end — since we know nothing, pure and simple, beyond our own complexities. Yet there is no return: rolling up out of chaos, a nine months' wonder, the city the man, an identity — it can't be otherwise — an interpenetration, both ways. Rolling 3 up! obverse, reverse; the drunk the sober; the illustrious the gross; one. In ignorance a certain knowledge and knowledge, undispersed, its own undoing. (The multiple seed, packed tight with detail, soured, is lost in the flux and the mind, distracted, floats off in the same scum) Rolling up, rolling up heavy with numbers. It is the ignorant sun rising in the slot of hollow suns risen, so that never in this world will a man live well in his body save dying — and not know himself dying; yet that is the design. Renews himself thereby, in addition and subtraction, walking up and down. and the craft, subverted by thought, rolling up, let him beware lest he turn to no more than the writing of stale poems . . . Minds like beds always made up, (more stony than a shore) unwilling or unable. Rolling in, top up, under, thrust and recoil, a great clatter: lifted as air, boated, multicolored, a wash of seas — from mathematics to particulars- divided as the dew, floating mists, to be rained down and regathered into a river that flows and encircles: shells and animalcules generally and so to man, to Paterson.
During this time of distance, I felt it could be helpful to share entries from collaborators from all over the world, to help our readers out of their personal space and into someone else's. I created this series because I have been looking for inspiration and connection and know I am not alone.
Friends are sharing an image of themselves… the space that they occupy most these days or a moment, landscape, piece, book, view, thing, dream or simply something keeping them inspired, optimistic and sane.
Charlotte
Today’s generous contributors are:
choreographer/dancer/educator, Anne Van Gelder - based in Virginia and designer/artist/educator, Mallory Prucha - currently based in Arizona.
Anne Van Gelder took the below photo on a walk with her sister, last week before state parks were closed in Virginia.
High Bridge State Park, near Farmville, VA.
Mallory Prucha: These days, the color of spring blooms serves as a reminder of renewal (even amongst the spines) is a compelling source of inspiration...here are a few sights from a Sunday walk near the Salt River, in Arizona...
During this time of distance, I felt it could be helpful to share entries from collaborators from all over the world, to help our readers out of their personal space and into someone else's. I created this series because I have been looking for inspiration and connection and know I am not alone.
Friends are sharing an image of themselves… the space that they occupy most these days or a moment, landscape, piece, book, view, thing, dream or simply something keeping them inspired, optimistic and sane.
Charlotte
Our second couple of contributors are:
Artist and Educator, Susan Beck - based in Salt Lake City, Utah and Opera singer, Nana Bugge Rasmussen - based in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Susan Beck is working on a series of images at the moment, titled the following:
Down but not out (featured below).
Nana Bugge Rasmussen says the following: I go to my scores for inspiration, the music is always full and rich, totally independent of what’s happening IRL.
Problem is, I have a terrible lack of discipline these days, so it takes me only too long to actually get there, but when I do, it’s worthwhile (Photo taken from and of her living room and rehearsal space).
Welcome to a new blog series!
During this time of distance, I felt it could be helpful to share entries from collaborators from all over the world, to help our readers out of their personal space and into someone else's. I created this series because I have been looking for inspiration and connection and know I am not alone.
Friends are sharing an image of themselves… the space that they occupy most these days or a moment, landscape, piece, book, view, thing, dream or simply something keeping them inspired, optimistic and sane.
The first two below have been generously shared by Theatre Director, Rolf Heim based in Denmark and Deaf poet/performer, Walter Kadiki based in Australia.
Charlotte
Rolf Heim: Greetings from the time where you wander and only meet your shadow.
Walter Kadiki: Working on a piece during the day.
