A Storm King Companion by Amy Beecher
A part of Wanderings and Wonderings
Ongoing throughout August, 2015
Workshops for adults and kids on August 2 and August 29, 2015
Workshops free with admission, audio guide free online
Amy Beecher's A Storm King Companion acts as an alternative audio guide to the North Woods section of Storm King Art Center. Collected as a series of downloadable podcasts, each episode of A Storm King Companion corresponds to a different sculpture on the grounds. Subverting our expectations of a typical audio guide, (didactic, authoritative), Beecher's Companion offers a web of entangled narratives and observations, a mixture of fictitious storytelling and improvisation exploring themes of abjection, Woman vs. Nature, domestic spaces, and memory. The podcasts are narrated by Beecher, her mother, artist Mary Reid Kelly, and three of Beecher's middle school art students from the South Bronx.
On August 2 and 29 Beecher will hold creative writing workshops for teens and adults using the sculptures as inspiration. Writers will have the opportunity to record their story onsite with her.
Amy Beecher, a 2014 resident of Shandaken: Storm King, is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work combines digital imaging, installation, and recorded texts and interviews. Her work will be featured in an upcoming solo exhibition at PC Galleries at Providence College at the end of 2015. She has exhibited her work and completed projects in collaboration with 7 Dunham Place, Independent Curators International, Garden Party Arts, Primetime, The Philadelphia Photo Art Center, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, and Marlborough Gallery. She received her MFA from Yale in 2010 and has participated in residencies at the Vermont Studio Center and the Shandaken Project. Her book The Sublime Is Now Folks, is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art's library.
Shandaken Projects and Storm King Art Center collaborate on Wanderings and Wonderings programs presented in 2015. This public program invites poets, artists, scholars, and performers to engage Storm King's visitors, collection, and grounds through creative exploration. Wanderings and Wonderings is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
Download the podcast here.