“To Let” Exhibition and SPWS Twilight Talk, Ithaca NY

“To Let” Exhibition

Opening reception Friday, July 3rd from 4-6PM!
(Walking tours depart at 4:30pm and 5:30pm)
Bernie Milton Pavilion, Ithaca Commons, Ithaca NY

Followed by a Twilight Talk by SP Weather Station: ”Taxonomy of Taxonom(ies) of Clouds,” Ithaca Commons Amphitheater ~ 9 PM

“To Let” is a collaborative community project that invites landlords to temporarily donate the use of unrented retail spaces to the program and engages artists to create installations in storefront windows. (more info: http://toletartprogram.blogspot.com/)

Organized and curated by The Working Relationship, sponsored by the Downtown Ithaca Alliance, and supported by local landlords, ”To Let” features projects by local, regional and national artists. The first round of to Let presents works by SP Weather Station (Natalie Campbell, Heidi Neilson & Daniel Larson), Jessica Evett-Miller, Lindsey Glover, Roman Hrab, M. Michelle Illuminato, Paul M. Nicholson, Tom Oberg and others.   Projects include the “Weather Metabulator,” using real time weather data to create output using an adapted, vintage medical device; “A Plastic Garden” turning cast-off materials and donated plastic flowers into a growing diorama; “Night and Day” using sound and images of surveillance to investigate privacy in public spaces; and “Colonial Left” displaying objects of the Colonial style to question their meaning in our lives.

The SPWS Weather Metabulator is on view in the 208 E. State Street storefront.

2008 reports collated and ready for solstice

The portfolios of 2008 weather reports are complete! Out-of-town participants should recieve their set by mail in the next few days. Nearby participants, let’s arrange pickup.

Cosmic Rays May Forecast Weather!

Thanks to http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/08/01/cosmic-rays-may-forecast-weather/
and the March 1931 issue of Popular Science…

Sunday 4/26: Queens International 4 Closing Party!

The Queens International 4 closes Sunday, April 26th!

We would like to thank all of the collaborators* who participated in the SP Weather Station installation at the Queens Museum.

There is a full program of events for the closing day including SP Weather Station: Weather Sounds in the Panorama of the City of New York from 2-3 pm.  Please see the full schedule below, we hope to see you there!

Sunday, April 26th 12-6pm
Queens Museum of Art
Flushing Meadows Corona Park
for details/directions: www.queensmuseum.org/information/
(open to the public / museum admission is $5 suggested donation)

QI4 Closing Extravaganza
Headlined by Future Shock, an Indo-Caribbean crew with thumping sound system bikes, QMA and Transportation Alternatives invite bike gangs, art bikes, bike advocacy groups, modders, bike clubs and bike crews (including Lightwheels, Mexican Pride, Transalt, Bike NY, C.L.I.M.B., City Reliquary Bike Club and others) to close the Queens International 4 with a bang!
[If you are biking out and want company riding to QMA, you can do the museum to museum ride with the City Reliquary Bike Club, departing CR (370 Metropolitan Ave, Williamsburg) at 2pm.]

Schedule of events:
12-4pm: NYC DOT Helmet giveaway
1-3pm: Learn to Ride – Kids 5+ class with Bike NY
1-3pm: Take part in Derick Melander’s Into the Fold project in QMA galleries
2-3pm: SP Weather Station: Weather Sounds in the Panorama
2-3pm: Whitney ISP alum Ryan Humphrey talk in Large Theater
2:30-3:30: Future Shock leads a bike rally around the park
3-6: Tim Thyzel boat launch and discovery of The Undiscovered Atoll of Flushtopia with Anti-Fascist Culture Club (via trolley ride to Meadow Lake!)
3-6pm: happy hour in QMA cafe (while supplies last)
3-5pm: BMX pros ride Ryan Humphrey’s installation Fast Forward
3-6pm: Tabling in Tents Outside Museum: Lightwheels, Transalt, Bike NY, C.L.I.M.B.(Concerned Long Island Mountain Bicyclists), Green Map System, Mexican Pride, The Undiscovered Atoll of Flushtopia Tourist Bureau, Okamoto Studio ice carving, and Ixrael’s mobile printmaking workshop
4:30-6: Bands Play: Shining Mantis, Tough Slutting, Unstoppable Death Machines, Elextra, Karahatu (outside, by the Unisphere)
Ongoing: Chin Chih Yang Trash Sculpture3

*SP Weather Station’s participation in the Queens International 4 features contributions from: Leah Beeferman, Natalie Campbell, Susan Goethel Campbell, Carrie Dashow, Mike Estabrook, Neil Freeman, Richard Garrison, Michael Geminder, Isaac Gertman, Vandana Jain, Katarina Jerinic, Daniel Larson, Bridget Lewis, Lize Mogel, Heidi Neilson, Chris Petrone, Sarah Nicole Phillips, Andrea Polli, Chuck Varga, Jing Yu, Liz Zanis; lectures have featured Isaac Gertman, Kenneth Goldsmith, Nathalie Miebach, and Jane D. Marsching.  More info: http://spweatherstation.net/?page_id=120

‘Cloud Bar’ opens on beach in UK

Designed by artist Michael Trainor, the ‘Cloud Bar’ replaces a disused beach shelter on the Lincolnshire coastline. On the viewing platform are ‘Cloud Menus’ identifying the different formations, mirrors that can be swiveled to reflect different parts of the sky and specially designed cloud-viewing seats, on which visitors can recline and enjoy the view. See Cloud Appreciation Society and Bathing Beauties, a project to Re-imagine the British Beach Hut, for more information.

Weather (Book) Report: 6 shelves of wonder!

(note: we’ll have a feature soon on Jane Marsching’s Guest Lecture Saturday at the Queens Museum, but in the meantime…)

A quick visual survey of the circulating weather section at the NYPL Science, Industry and Business Library:

Interestingly, alarmist weather books are not at all limited to those centered on climate change.  It seems it could be an entire literary subgenre.

SPWS Guest Lecture 4/4/09: Jane D. Marsching

The final SPWS event at the Queens Museum!
In conjunction with the Queens International 4 at the Queens Museum of Art

SP Weather Station Guest Lecture series presents:

Jane D.  Marsching
Digital media artist speaking about her current project, “Arctic Listening Post,” and related work

Saturday, April 4th 2pm*
(open to the public / museum admission is $5 suggested donation)

Queens Museum of Art
Flushing Meadows Corona Park
for details/directions: www.queensmuseum.org/information/

*Followed from 3-6pm by 2 Queens International events related to The Undiscovered Atoll of Flushtopia by the The Anti-Fascist Culture Club and Tim Thyzel/ more info: http://antifascistcultureclub.org
(starting at the Flushing Meadows Corona Park Boathouse via free trolley ride from the Queens Museum)

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About Jane D. Marsching:

Jane D. Marsching’s current project, Arctic Listening Post, explores our past, present and future human impact on the Arctic environment through interdisciplinary and collaborative practices, including video installations, virtual landscapes, dynamic websites, and data visualizations.

Recent exhibitions include: the ICA Boston; MassMoCA; North Carolina Museum of Art; San Jose Museum of Art, CA; Photographic Resource Center, Boston, MA; and Sonoma Museum of Art, CA. She has received grants from Creative Capital, LEF Foundation, Artadia and Artists Resource Trust.

She is a cofounder and member of Platform2: Art and Activism, an experimental forum series about creative practices at the intersection of social issues. She is currently Assistant Professor at Massachusetts College of Art in Studio Foundation. She received her MFA in photography from The School of Visual Arts, New York City, in 1995.  www.janemarsching.com

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This is the final event in a series of lectures organized by SP Weather Station in conjunction with its participation in the Queens International 4.  The SPWS installation at QMA features contributions from: Leah Beeferman, Natalie Campbell, Susan Goethel Campbell, Carrie Dashow, Mike Estabrook, Neil Freeman, Richard Garrison, Michael Geminder, Isaac Gertman, Kenneth Goldsmith, Vandana Jain, Katarina Jerinic, Daniel Larson, Bridget Lewis, Jane Marsching, Nathalie Miebach, Lize Mogel, Heidi Neilson, Chris Petrone, Sarah Nicole Phillips, Andrea Polli, Chuck Varga, Jing Yu, Liz Zanis; lectures have featured Isaac Gertman, Kenneth Goldsmith, and Nathalie Miebach.

SPWS Guest Lecture 3/1/09: 3 Weather Talks in the Panorama!

In conjunction with the Queens International 4 at the Queens Museum of Art

SP Weather Station Guest Lecture series presents:

3 Weather Talks in the Panorama

Sunday, March 1st, 2:00 PM (repeats at 4:00*)
(open to the public / museum admission is $5 suggested donation)

Isaac Gertman
NYC Weather Apocalypse in Film

Kenneth Goldsmith
reads from his book “The Weather”

SP Weather Station
Clouds of New York Slideshow

Queens Museum of Art
Flushing Meadows Corona Park
for details/directions: www.queensmuseum.org/information/

(*4:00 PM program by Isaac Gertman & SP Weather Station only)

About Isaac Gertman: 
Isaac Gertman is a designer, educator, and occasional writer. He has written for STEP Magazine and the design blog SpeakUp. He has taught typography at the Rhode Island School of Design, and currently teaches environmental graphic design at Parsons the New School for Design. Isaac received a masters degree from the Rhode Island School of Design and a bachelors from Maryland Institute College of Art. His work will be featured in the book A Thousand Tips by a Hundred Graphic Designers, released by Spanish publisher Maomao  in 2009. He lives in Brooklyn, and has no plans to ever move to Manhattan. (http://www.isaacgertman.com/)

About Kenneth Goldsmith:
Kenneth Goldsmith’s writing has been called some of the most “exhaustive and beautiful collage work yet produced in poetry” by Publishers Weekly. The author of seven books of poetry, founding editor of the online archive UbuWeb (http://ubu.com), and the editor of I’ll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews, Goldsmith is also the host of a weekly radio show on New York City’s WFMU. He teaches writing at The University of Pennsylvania, where he is a senior editor of PennSound, an online poetry archive. More about Goldsmith can be found on his author’s page at the University of Buffalo’s Electronic Poetry Center:http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/goldsmith. 

About SP Weather Station:
SP Weather Station is an artist-run weather station based on a studio rooftop in Long Island City, New York. Co-founded by Natalie Campbell and Heidi Neilson in 2007, SP Weather Station is an interdisciplinary project which collects weather data, hosts a Guest Lecture Series, and produces artist multiples. As an informal umbrella organization, SPWS invites participation from many other artists, groups, and weather enthusiasts. http://spweatherstation.net

In conjunction with its participation in the Queens International 4, SPWS is organizing a series of lectures at the Queens Museum of Art featuring Nathalie Miebach, Isaac Gertman, Kenneth Goldsmith, and Jane D. Marsching.

(poster by Natalie Campbell & Isaac Gertman)

Weather Suits for Cities

This past Saturday, Nathalie Miebach spoke at the Queens Museum of Art as part of the SPWS guest lecture series, and in conjunction with Queens International 4 Public Programs.

Nathalie described how she takes weather data and translates it by hand into amazing woven sculptures. Data for specific periods of time and place are represented by color, material or type of placement—parameters defined ahead of time—and then the sculpture emerges in the weave from the dictates of the data, the end result not known at the outset.

Taking direct atmospheric observations into account through recent art residencies in very different weather environments—the tides of Cape Cod and the tornados of Nebraska—she explores the role visual aesthetics and personal experience play in understanding scientific information.

The weather data in her sculptural forms can also be interpreted as music, where a new sort of musical score can be read directly, in a spiral, from the weave. She is currently collaborating with musicians to interpret these sculptures-as-music, and played 2 examples of remarkably different interpretations of the same sculpture, one by horn, one by piano.

For more information on Nathalie’s work, and where to see it in person at her upcoming shows,  visit www.nathaliemiebach.com. Thanks much to Nathalie for sharing your work with us!

SPWS Guest Lecture 2/7/09: Nathalie Miebach @ Queens Museum of Art

In conjunction with the Queens International 4 at the Queens Museum of Art

SP Weather Station Guest Lecture series presents:

Nathalie Miebach
Boston-based sculptor speaking about her evolving project “Weather Suits for Cities” and related work

Saturday, February 7th 2pm
(open to the public / museum admission is $5 suggested donation)

Queens Museum of Art
Flushing Meadows Corona Park
for details/directions: www.queensmuseum.org/information/

About Nathalie Miebach:
Working at the intersection of art and science, Nathalie Miebach is a Boston-based sculptor who translates weather data into woven sculptures.  Using basket weaving as her method of translation, her work explores the role visual aesthetics play in the translation and understanding of science information. By utilizing artistic processes and everyday materials, she is questioning and expanding boundaries of visual articulation traditionally associated with science, while at the same time provoking expectations of what kind of visual vocabulary is considered to be in the domain of ‘science’ or ‘art’.   Nathalie Miebach holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Oberlin College, OH, a Master of Art Education and a Master of Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA. She is currently a Residency Artist at Amherst College, MA.  www.nathaliemiebach.com

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About SP Weather Station:
SP Weather Station is an artist-run weather station based on a studio rooftop in Long Island City, New York. Co-founded by Natalie Campbell and Heidi Neilson in 2007, SP Weather Station is an interdisciplinary project which collects weather data, hosts a Guest Lecture Series, and produces artist multiples.  As an informal umbrella organization, SPWS invites participation from many other artists, groups, and weather enthusiasts.  www.spweatherstation.net

In conjunction with its participation in the Queens International 4, SPWS is organizing a series of lectures at the Queens Museum of Art.  Upcoming events include Sunday, March 1st: 3 Weather Talks in the Panorama with Isaac Gertman, Kenneth Goldsmith, and SPWS; Saturday, April 4th: Jane Marsching.

The SPWS installation at QMA features contributions from: Leah Beeferman, Natalie Campbell, Susan Goethel Campbell, Carrie Dashow, Mike Estabrook, Neil Freeman, Richard Garrison, Michael Geminder, Isaac Gertman, Kenneth Goldsmith, Vandana Jain, Katarina Jerinic, Daniel Larson, Bridget Lewis, Jane Marsching, Nathalie Miebach, Lize Mogel, Heidi Neilson, Chris Petrone, Sarah Nicole Phillips, Andrea Polli, Chuck Varga, Jing Yu, Liz Zanis