When It All Comes Together

Christopher Reiger
"Brewer's blackbirds"
2013

I recently promised this blog's monthly email digest subscribers that I would begin sharing updates about BAASICS (Bay Area Art & Science Interdisciplinary Collaborative Sessions), the non-profit organization that I co-founded and co-direct. Indeed, most of April's Hungry Hyaena posts are synopses of conversations had with some of the artists and scientists participating in BAASICS.3: The Deep End, our upcoming program on neurodiversities, mental illness, and creativity. (Readers can expect more of these vignettes in advance of the Monday, May 6 event.)

I've come to regard BAASICS as an important arm of my creative endeavor; it's a long-term project that provides me with a platform to help make contemporary art and science relevant and exciting to a broad audience. In many respects, BAASICS is a descendant of Synoddity, the cross-disciplinary organization I co-founded with my friend Michael McDevitt during our undergraduate years at The College of William & Mary. Synoddity made a case for conversation and interaction across professional boundaries and was, like BAASICS, animated by curiosity and wonder, something both Michael and Selene Foster, my BAASICS collaborator and co-founder, have in spades. Working on a project you're passionate about is invariably a good thing, but it's a particular pleasure when you team up with fantastic people.

Platte Clove Residency: Coastal Differences

View of Devil's Path Trail; Catskills; NY; July 2012

Five years ago, while traveling in South America, I met a young woman from the West Coast of the United States. After the trip, we corresponded for a while, and she related news of her move from southern California to New England. An outdoorsy sort, she prioritized exploration of the parks in her new neck of the woods, but she wrote that the eastern forests unnerved her. During the summer months especially, they seemed dense and suffocating, a patchwork of green that closed in around her.

At the time, her observation amused me. Having grown up on the East Coast, I was at home in the mixed deciduous and pine forests of eastern North America. By contrast, the Endor-like redwood and sequoia forests of the Pacific coast and the mixed coniferous forests of the continental divide and the American Southwest, environments in which I'd had little or no experience but with which my friend was very familiar, seemed otherworldly to me.

Mid-March Update

I haven't been writing much this month and HH has been quiet. I've been happily preoccupied with BAASICS preparation, studio work, and other commitments. Next week, I'll travel to California State University, Long Beach to present a lecture on ethics and contemporary art-making, which should be a lot of fun.

Below, you'll find a recent drawing which was included in "In a Landscape Where Nothing Officially Exists," a group show/event that took place on Saturday, February 25, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. For the exhibition/event, eight artists and one biologist collaborated to create 35 art works representing 35 endangered species living in and around southern California. The works were installed as part of "Un-Space Ground," a site-specific, outdoor visual & performance art event curated and produced by Ed Woodham, founder & director of Art in Odd Places, and Deborah Oliver, a Los Angeles-based curator, as part of ARTspace's "Art in the Public Realm" Symposia at the College Art Association Annual Meeting.

Christopher Reiger
"then and then (San Bernardino Kangaroo Rat)"
2012
Gouache, watercolor, marker, and sumi ink on Arches paper
15 x 18 inches

Image credit: Christopher Reiger, 2012

Happy New Year!

Ampitheatre; Armstrong Redwoods State Reserve; Guerneville, CA; December 2011

Happy new year, HH readers! I hope that you all had joyous, healthy, and memorable holiday seasons and that 2012 will bring good things.

The photo-collage above is best viewed at a larger scale; click through to my Flickr account to enlarge it.

Image credit: Christopher Reiger, 2011

A California Hello and a New York Hyena

Robyn Winston's spotted hyena cake in progress
This past Thursday, Elizabeth and I safely completed our cross country drive, and with negligible damage to any of the art, furniture, books, tchotchkes, or other objects we loaded into the back of Cheryl, our Penske rental truck. Now that I'm a San Francisco resident, however, I must settle in, find a part-time job, and land happily on my art-making feet in a new and exciting environment. In other words, please understand if HH posts are irregular.

In the coming weeks, I hope to sort through the many drive-by snapshots Elizabeth took from the shotgun seat, including tremendous storms brewing over Kansas, vast wind farms in Colorado, and the stunning salt flats of Utah. In the meantime, I'm posting several photographs of the amazing spotted hyena cake that my friend and talented artist Robyn Winston made for my NYC send-off. I'm delighted to think that I may be one of a very few people who has been presented with a hyena shaped cake! Thank you, Robyn!


Robyn's finished cake

My happy mug with the hyena maw
Photo credits: Robyn Winston, 2010

Moving Notice

HH will be quiet for a couple of weeks. In a few days, Elizabeth and I begin the drive west; as of July, I'll be a Californian resident.

I haven't known so heightened a degree of nervous anticipation since I sat on my hands in the passenger seat of my dad's Ford F-150 and, wide-eyed and gape-mouthed, emerged from the Holland Tunnel into Manhattan.

That New York City birth occurred more than ten years ago, but I recalled it earlier this week, as I bounced a four-and-a-half month old baby on my lap. Whenever the two of us made eye contact, the baby would smile toothless at me and drool on the chest of his Snagglesaurus onesie. Each time, though, his eyes would soon drift away from mine, his smile would open into an imperfect "O," and he'd stare, head lolling, at some other object of wonder.

I've got thirty-two years on the little guy, but I don't believe that my appreciation of the world is altogether dissimilar. Certainly, I slip into self-conscious, myopic modes (say, when I'm packing for a major move!), but much of each day is spent squinty-eyed happy or struck dumb by wonder. I don't drool as much as I used to, but the stupidly sublime fact of being wows and humbles me no less than it did way back when.

Despite the long hours and the relative monotony of Interstate driving, I look forward to crossing this spectacular land. Along with books on tape and downloaded lectures, Elizabeth and I will have a road trip playlist to listen to. I added Liz Phair's "Go West" to the tracks last night.

"Safe on the interstate
New York is 3,000 miles away [...]
I've closed my eyes and my bank account
And gone west, young man

Take off the parking brake
Go coasting into a different state
And I'm not looking forward to missing you."

And I'm not looking forward to missing you New York, but life rolls on and I keep on smiling.

Image credit: State flag of California, ripped from Wikipedia