Universes
2003, 2010, 2011

2011 "Musical Tea House Doorway to the Universe" Tea House and Sound Universe, interactive installation 'Sequence of Waves' 
St. Cecelia's Convent, Brooklyn, NY. Jan 29

2010 "Everyone Wins and You Light Up my Life (Contact Us)" solo show. Two-handed paintings, video, and Universe installation.
Trailer Park, Brooklyn, NY. Nov 18- Dec 2

2003 "3 Rooms" solo exhibition. Paintings and Universe installation.
Nature Gallery, Charlottesville, VA. March - April

3 Rooms
Charlottesville, VA 2003

The Crying Universe
After watching the towers hit by planes September 11, hearing that sound, the deep groan of explosion, implosion, crashing down, crumbling on fire, hundreds of people jumping out of windows one by one, two by two on live radio....

In the following months, I continued to work in the east village just north of the toxic site, saving up to leave my favorite city. 
One day, I wrote names of other cities on pieces of paper, put them in a hat, picked Louisville Kentucky and with a paper map highlighted by the AAA lady, I drove off to live somewhere new.

Leaving NYC my social energy turned inward became manic as I alternately sculpted, painted, and practiced piano fervently for all hours of the day and night in a spacious rented house I shared with a friend. I sculpted over 400 heads out of brightly colored sculpy clay by the time I eventually moved to Charlottesville Virginia, where I exhibited an over the top 3-roomed show of 200 watercolors, 8 giant oil paintings and the first Universe Installation. The little heads, unique expressions, floating in the Universe Installation, each gazing in wonder and and awe in the dark womb space. I created the heads as my response to witnessing the towers go down, as faces of my city. Even with out the origin story a magnitude was felt. Integrated within the dim dark womb constellation the Universe became deeply existential, like the energies and animated spirits all around us floating and watching in liminal space.

I presented the first Universe as part of '3 Rooms', an exhibition at Nature Gallery in Charlottesville Virginia in 2003. It became the Crying Universe.

The way it became the Crying Universe is that after instal was complete, I crawled inside as a new visitor might. The quiet and darkness moved me. Eyes adjusted to the dimness inside. If you were a visitor to the first Universe, this is what you would see..

You crawl through a small door into a little room that at first appears dark. Once your eyes adjust to the dim light, you see that you are surrounded by hundreds of little floating colors. Then you see that each of these colors is an individual face, unique from each other. The face moves very slightly (suspended by invisible string) becoming gently animated. It feels as though someone has slowed down time in a psychedelic experience. Time slows and you are able to just stop and look at each molecule, and each molecule becomes a being of its own. The space holds you like a womb, or a secret room under the stairs when yr a kid, but at the same time, makes you feel like you were in an infinitely vast place that went on forever.

Layers of black fabric and lights created outer space. And something about this space, it made people cry. I cried so deeply when i first went in there too, and somehow wept again while visiting the gallery while the show was up. I watched strangers take off their shoes and go inside, sometimes they would stay there for a long while, to emerge with red eyes and wet faces.

Everyone Wins and You Light Up My Life (Contact Us)
Brooklyn, NY 2010
 

7 years later I created the second Universe as part of another over the top multi-roomed show. The ‘Everyone Wins and You Light Up My Life (Contact Us)’ installation was at an artist warehouse called the 'Trailer Park' in Bushwick, Brooklyn, NY. 

This Universe was accessed crawling through a little door located within the 'Tea House' whose walls were entirely made of 2-handed paintings on wood. I paint and draw with my left and right hand at the same time -still today many of my paintings are painted this way. There were also several other installation rooms in this giant warehouse; a film, murals, screen prints, floor paintings.

This Universe at the Trailer Park I would later refer to as the Laughing Universe. People felt so free and happy and wild in this Universe. The space was darker black, with no hanging multicolored molecular faces like before. Coming in from the cold streets of Brooklyn, the space felt like stargazing with friends on a golf course at night, yet embraced in a womb at the same time.

The Laughing Universe brought joy, relief and release. ..and a little mischief.

In each of the 3 Universes there was a constellation above using dim lights creating a starry sky space for navigation through the blackness.

Musical Tea House Doorway to the Universe
Brooklyn, NY 2011
 

The Musical Tea House Doorway to the Universe used sound.

Guests would take off their shoes and crawl through a tunnel. Inside, they could choose to go to the end on the left to arrive at the Musical Tea House. Or you could head to the dark doorway to the right you, the Sound Universe.

You would probably follow the light and sounds to the Musical Tea House party where you would find yourself in a heavenly room of white fabric draping from the walls and windows. You see 3 Microphones consensually placed on a cornucopia table of tea, snacks and instruments. Chit chat, songs and sounds abound in the Musical Tea House.

These sounds are transposed into the lightless Sound Universe, across the hall.

In the Sound Universe, it feels as if the people in the Musical Tea House were inside of you. In You. Echoing through your being and consciousness. The combined visual element of the minds own rainbow colors tripping out in a state of light deprivation, added to the intensity. The nuance and power of realizations that occurred in this scenario is hard to put into words because it is a taste of the infinite.

When visitors from the Musical Tea House explored the Sound Universe they realized that for the beings in a far away galaxy across the hall, they were all powerful masters of reality.

In the Sound Universe, in the deep darkness, every hello and good-bye, every story, cough, sigh, song, expression and breath from the Musical Tea House was magnified to people in a most sensitive place of infinite blackness. The sounds of people in a far off tea house, sipping tea, talking, screaming, giggling, whispering, singing was absorbed with heightened awareness of perception and existence creating a lesson in vulnerability: The Universe could not control, it could just witness. A deep sense of helplessness, liberation and loss of body occurred. Bliss, sadness, chaos and reverence were magnified. It was like witnessing life as a ghost spirit: deeply affected by every move of mortals, and without body vessel, helpless as a fruit fly.

Letter to the Universe
2011

Here is a letter from a visitor who went to the trouble of finding my email after the show, reflecting on the Musical Tea House Doorway to the Universe.

It begins:

I just wanted to shoot you a quick email, because I was truly moved by your installation at the convent in Brooklyn.  the Universe was so awesome when I was in there.  We sang the best songs, and it was a peaceful denoument to that whole installation project (because it was the last room that I visited).  I was in a weird place emotionally, because my Grandma died a couple weeks prior to the exhibit, so perhaps this influenced my perception of the whole house.  After leaving the talk-show-tea-time-sing-song section of the Universe, I crawled across the hall to the dark side of the universe and it seemed that your installation came full circle for me.  I realized as I crawled in to the pitch black room of unknown dimensions, and heard the echoes of laughter wafting in from far away, I thought to myself, "this is what the universe is really like, it's dark and empty and expansive and cold and lonely".  And I sat there and took it in for a while by myself before two more people entered and we struck up a rather deep conversation.  The conversation was even more interesting because I couldn't see the faces of the people I was speaking to.  But I remember this woman with an indistinct accent talking about the house as if it were the after life, and saying that maybe when you die you just wander from room to room in a house with infinite dimensions.  Each room contains a different self contained reality.  Perhaps these would be memories that your brain plays back for you or else maybe your soul travels to new places across time and space, or time melts away.
      I had the distinct feeling of being outside of time while I was in the universe with you and all of the other guests, singing and merry making.  I sort of felt like I could have been dead, and maybe this was some memory I had decided to take refuge in (a peaceful memory).  I felt as though it were some kind of interplanetary weigh station where I was stopping to recharge before wandering on through vast emptiness.
If we don't have souls or any form of afterlife, it only emphasizes to me how incredible it is to be alive as we are right now on earth.  This thought reminds me, Don't be sad and appreciate that we have the ability to experience life in all its chaos, this may be our only chance.

Thankyou A. (Sunny)
Keep doing what you are doing.

Sincerely,
_____ ____


More words on the Sound Universe 

Each visitor became the alchemy that became the experience.
Musical Tea House and Sound Universe helped us realize the delicate importance and gravity of our expressions. Every single thing we do affects the beings around us. Even as the creator, when I stepped out of the Sound Universe during the show, I was just so glad to be able to make a choice within this Earth world, to create and choose this very moment. -instead of feeling like a floating gas without consciousness or choice to create.  
   
It was interesting to observe, as people came and went during the 24 hour show, the variety of ways people chose to celebrate or abuse the power they had in the Musical Tea House. Sometimes I became deeply sad across the hall in the Sound Universe. When you are in there, you are absorbed, almost swimming in magnified human emotion and expression. So when some folks expressed careless aggression or violence -someone even broke my teapots getting wild!- it was at times hard to bear. Some folks seemed to have a lack of empathy or good will toward others. Even a small insult or slight towards another was felt in agonizing magnitude by others who were helpless, consumed by what was happening in the Musical Tea House. This energy would dominate the space for a while... till a wave of gentler souls would arrive and change the shape of these feelings. Then the pendulum would swing the other way. I was amazed by the light, life and magic that others brought into the space with music, conscious kindness and other gifts to the Universe. When this would happen, the beauty of souls colliding, magnified, reflected in the Sound Universe would cause me, and others, to weep with gratitude.

Both ways were so interesting.
hmmm...Interesting is like saying nothing but sounding like your saying something.... I will say the experience was terribly terrible or wonderfully wonderous, depending on the alchemy of the humans.  
   
Something happened to me after hours of hosting the tea party in the Musical Tea House and Sound Universe. I experienced people as movers of energy, in possession of or out of touch with their personalities and the waves they are making.