"We Dance to Pray"

We Dance to Pray, 2013, acrylic on drywall, approx. 9 x 13 feet

(photo: Karen Mauch Photography)

I'm just getting around to posting a good, full image of We Dance to Pray, my painting installation that is part of my current exhibition at the Bridgette Mayer Gallery, "Presence", and here it is. This is certainly one of my favorite pieces to have worked on, so far. To have the freedom to paint what I wanted directly on the wall at the gallery was a very liberating thing. I did a similar piece back in 2009-"This Moment" (a small partial image can be seen on the right hand sidebar of this blog),  but WDTP goes beyond the previous one in man aspects, but I just feel that it's a better painting.

Below is my statement for We Dance to Pray:

The studio is rarely silent when I’m working. Music fills the space from the moment I walk in and doesn’t end until I leave for the day. I listen a wide range of music, but the genre of House (and various sub-genres) dominate my studio listening most of the time.  When I was preparing a list of materials for this painting installation, the first thing on it was “iPod dock”-not brushes, not paints, but the music. It’s that important.

During the second day of working on “We Dance to Pray”, Bridgette asked me if I had a title for the piece and I said that I didn’t. I almost never choose titles before I complete a piece. However, the question did trigger the naming process and before I was finished, the painting had a title. “We Dance to Pray” is a lyric from a house tune that I don’t remember the name of, but it stuck with me as I navigated the layers of this piece and remained strong even as I completed the painting.

“We Dance to Pray” isn’t a direct interpretation of music. However, the overall sense of the painting feels musical. The underlying structures form a basic beat that is changed and multiplied in the three sections of the top layer. We Dance to Pray as a title suggests the ecstatic, near-religious experiences that some forms of dancing can enhance, and is particularly resonant in much of house music, especially in soulful, vocal house. Vocal house links directly to the musical traditions of the black church with its joyful exuberance, uplifting tempos and positive outlook. House is like the secular version of religious music, only more outwardly sensual in its embrace of life. Instead of a church, house brings us to the dance floor, where we dance to release the demons of a stressful life, let ourselves go and offer up thanks the release. We dance to pray.

Tim McFarlane

August 2013

Blue ribbon bland

I like murals, well...ok, some murals. Living in Philadelphia, you kind of get used to seeing one on almost every other side of a building, thanks to the city's mural arts program. The murals are good and not-so-good but, overall, I think they tend to bring another level of life to an old city.

A few weeks ago, I was out on an errand. Walking past Fleishman's Fabrics (pictured above) I noticed the outlines for a mural on the side of the building at 5th and Monroe."Nice", I thought, "something other than the black walls to look at..." A couple of days later, I saw the mural taking shape with two guys painting the walls and colors starting come through. About a week in, the wall was finished.

I didn't know what to expect, but I definitely didn't like what wound up there. As you can see, it's basically an ad for Pabst Blue Ribbon beer using the art of Pabst art contest winners. It seems Pabst has an art contest where the works have to feature the beer prominently. The winners, apparently fans of the beer, get a monetary prize, spots in a traveling exhibition, AND they get to have thier works reproduced in murals. Great, now I get to look at mediocre images of a mediocre beer every time I pass this corner, which is at least four days a week.

This movement of so-called 'viral marketing' has got to be the most cynical and tired efforts by corporations to gain new consumers. Not that it hasn't worked, but most of these campaigns, especially those targeting the 18-25 demographic, come off as heavy-handed and usually missing the mark. I'm reminded of some ads for a PSP video-game console that mimicked street artists by using grafitti-inspired characters and wheat-pasting. That campaign was basically laughed off the walls, and faced the wrath of business owner who didn't want the ads on their businesses. In fact, there were some prominently displayed on the walls of a business directly across the street from the one I'm complaining about.

I'm guessing Fleishman's were offered some money to have the murals put up. That's the only way I could imagine them agreeing to have it up. Maybe, they really like Pabst and wanted to show that love to the world. But what do I know? I know that if they really wanted something artistic, eye-catching and original on the walls, they have a school-full of creative, energetic grade-school kids right around the corner who, with some guidance, could probably have put something up that was amazing. Not to mention that there are thousands of LOCAL artists and would-be artists who would have been happy to help spruce up this dark corner. Instead we passers-by get a bland, corporate logo to brighten our day.

Yay.

A related item is here