'We're responding every step of the way to our environment. And to each other.'
What happens when six emerging artists from different backgrounds are given six weeks to create an installation in a 6000-square-foot space in the North Dam Mill? Apparently fist fights, millephants, and 20-minute shredding solos. (You'll have to ask them.) The Phoenix sat down with Rob Lieber, Brendan Ferri, Ian Paige, and Tessa O'Brien (we either ditched Christopher Keister and Tom Baldwin, or they ditched us) to discuss urban decay, re-imagining, and their collaborative process.
IAN PAIGE We talked a lot about some common themes trying to figure out how to honor the mill space formally as well as historically, but eventually someone just had to make the first move, and we started working off of that. There is a thread that we unintentionally found: hyper-reality. For me the first step was when Rob and Brendan took a formal pipe sculpture and painted it bright yellow, and the next day Chris Keister painted structural poles orange. Tessa started working off of the natural decay of the mill walls. I'd really wanted to use the powerful sound element of water rushing outside of the mill. You fade in and out of being aware of it when you're in the space. Thinking about the pipes that Rob and Brendan built, I made a sample of striking the pipe through three different pitches, broke it up in a computer program to get all the harmonic frequencies, stretching it out making it a low drone, more aleatoric. . . . It creates a soundscape for the landscape we created.
BRENDAN FERRI Rob and I had access to the basement and storage. We pulled all the materials we worked with from the basement . . . The room has poles running through the middle, which informed a lot of our decisions as far as placement and moving people through the space.
ROB LIEBER There is no denying that our piece is about power, but I think we found places where we can interject it, but also lighten it up. It has its own gesture that's not so symmetrical, but symmetrical at the same time. It's obviously a pyramid, a traditional sense of power. The waterfalls, the openness of the space, the canyon, my perception of stepping out the door and looking into the dam -- up and down the river is mill space; I feel like we're in a vortex. The space is a power center. We're responding every step of the way to our environment. And to each other. Would I have done a different piece if I were on my own? Absolutely. Would Brandon? Absolutely.
IP The pipes that Rob and Brendan were originally using had this beautiful decrepit industrial color to them, rust, like an old playground, but then they did something to it to pull it into an imagined world. And that's what I'm seeing with Tessa's walls, there is a reference to what's already there, but it's been oversaturated.
TESSA O'BRIEN It worked creatively for me to get out of Portland and leave all the distractions. To arrive at a space where I was only there to be creative felt very inspiring. The space is very fertile, and I could see myself getting a studio there. I really enjoyed being removed and having a sacred creative space.
