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  • Nina A. Isabelle / The Giant Weed Web at Rosekill Performance Art Farm

    Nina A. Isabelle is a multidisciplinary artist working with abstract painting, performance art, video, photography, sound, and sculpture. HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... THE GIANT WEED WEB IV SOLDIER'S F.A.G. (FEMINIST ART GROUP) at ROSEKILL SEPTEMBER 2016 Feminist Art Group founder IV Castellanos of IV Soldiers Gallery curates a group of artists at Rosekill Performance Farm in Rosendale , NY for a weekend of building and performance. Elizabeth Lamb, Kaia Gilje, Amanda Hunt, Lorene Bouboushian, Nina Isabelle, Quinn Dukes, Anya Liftig, IV Castellanos, Jill McDermid, Claribel Jolie Pichardo.

  • BANGKOK UNDERGROUND FILM FESTIVAL | nina-isabelle

    HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... BANGKOK UNDERGROUND CINEMA The Bangkok Underground Film Festival 2017 program consists of a series of events across multiple venues in Bangkok. Co-organised by Speedy Grandma , emesis , Bridge Art Space & Jam Caf é , with support from VS Service , Projectionist Asia , Panda Records and Museum Siam . MARCH 5-12, 2017

  • HiLo Catskill / Nina A. Isabelle

    HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... Nina Isabelle Opening at HiLo CATSKILL, NY MAY 2017 Nina Isabelle, with her signature gusto, will be presenting an evening of intrigue, education, and hullabaloo. Arm wrestling, The Overconfident Autodidact (performed by Erik Hokanson,) a tea party performance by Valerie Sharp, a public interview with the questioner another performance artist (Matthew Gioia,) and two documentary screenings- The Eucharist Machine and Time Travel Research Documentary.. Nina Isabelle's installation will be at HiLo from now until June 5. It can be viewed M-F 7am-2pm and Sat & Sun 9am - 4pm until May 3rd after which time the hours will be M-Tu 7-2, W-Th 7 -4, Fri 7am-12am, Sat 7-12am, Sun 9am - 10pm

  • SHIRT FACTORY CENTENIAL | nina-isabelle

    HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... THE SHIRT FACTORY CENTENNIAL KINGSTON, NY September 16, 2017, 2018 For The Shirt Factory Centennial Celebration I tied 100 flags together and looped them through the building.

  • JURNQUIST COLORING BOOK SHOW IN BERLIN | nina-isabelle

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  • Nina A. Isabelle // Multidisciplinary Artist // The Woodstock Library

    Nina A. Isabelle is a multidisciplinary artist working with abstract painting, performance art, video, photography, sound, and sculpture. HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... THE WOODSTOCK LIBRARY FLOATING BOUNCY CHAIR JUNE 2016 For the 85th Annual Woodstock Library Fair Hudson Valley artists were commissioned to repurpose a heap of old metal folding chairs for a silent auction to benefit the library. I made this floating bouncy chair using studio scraps and discount bungee cords from P&T Surplus in Kingston, NY. Fellow artist and Vice President of Friends of The Woodstock Library Michael Hunt says “It's the coolest motherfucking chair.”

  • ARTICULACTION | nina-isabelle

    HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... ARTiculAction Art Review // Special Issue Interview from December 2015 Published January 2016 By Dario Rutigliano and Josh Ryder https://issuu.com/articulaction/docs/articulaction_art_review_-_spiss Multidisciplinary artist Nina Isabelle's work ranges from Painting to Performance to explore the inability of communication which is used to visualize reality: her approach rejects any conventional classification and crosses the elusive boundary that defines the area of perception from the realm of imagination, to create a multilayered involvement with the viewers, who are urged to investigate the ubiquitous order that pervades the reality we inhabit. One of the most convincing aspect of Isabelle's practice is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of creating a deep and autonomous synergy between our limbic parameters and our rational categories: we are very pleased to introduce our readers to her multifaceted artistic production. A: Hello Nina and welcome to ARTiculAction: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You have a solid formal training and you hold a BA in Art from Westminster College: how did these experiences influence your evolution as an artist? And in particular, does your cultural substratum inform the way you relate yourself to the aesthetic problem? N: As a younger person I was part of a community of acrobat-like athletes who maintained an extreme bodycentric focus while engaging in high-risk physical activities. As my artistic process evolved it naturally embodied the physicality of movement in relation to mark making. Early on I began to inspect the nature of energy patterns as they emerged and flowed with the breath in relationship to physical movement. Connecting mark making to physical movement was a natural progression for me. When I was first introduced to gestural line during my foundational academic studies I felt an instant, fluid, kinesthetic understanding and I recognized a potential within the allowance of gestural mark-making for me to reconstruct communication and perception. At the same time I became involved with interpretive modern dance and was excited by the dialogue generated between action and art because what I had known of language up to that point had bothered me. During my formal training, college provided a duration of time and the physical space to practice art, but also fueled my aggravation as I recognized a chasm between academic art and my personal approach. Although I was a good a student, I felt displaced and misunderstood in the art department and after graduation I chose not to continue my studies inside of academia. Since then, I’ve developed multiple personal superstrata that allow me to span the divide between formal academic programming and personal process. By using physical process in combination with self-developed cryptographs I’m able to construct psychic spaces and explore the possibilities of metaphysical transformation as the result of art action and objects. In the past year I’ve arrived at a way of working that suits me, my work has begun to develop a coherent focus and I’ve begun to understand the benefits of my early struggles. While my athletic experience connected me to physical reality, my academic exposure opened up my awareness of mental and psychological concepts. I had also spent years as a rock climber living in a tent all around the west and traveling in the snowy backcountry of the Wasatch mountains, and these experiences definitely broadened my spiritual perceptions. Integrating my varied foundations has been a tenacious process and plays a big part in my approach to visual and other language. A: Your approach coherently encapsulates several techniques and - ranging from Painting to Performance - it reveals an incessant search of an organic symbiosis between a variety of viewpoints. The results convey together a coherent and consistent sense of harmony and unity. Before starting to elaborate about your production, we would suggest to our readers to visit http://www.ninaisabelle.com in order to get a synoptic view of your multifaceted artistic production: while walking our readers through your process, we would like to ask you if you have ever happened to realize that a symbiosis between different disciplines is the only way to express and convey the ideas you explore. N: Working as a multidisciplinary artist suits me because I have a natural tendency toward instinctive response that allows me to engage equally with whatever action or material I find in front of me. Part of any thorough process involves identifying and becoming familiar with all of the materials and variables. When I first began to do deeper studies of line, color, gesture, material, posture, and action it occurred to me that there was an amount of information beyond the apparent implications of these face-values. As I began to look to metaphor and archetypes for clues, my understanding and relationships to these elements began to open up and grow. I feel a level of success that you’ve used the word “incessant” in response to my work, that’s a sensitive and accurate word because I do feel captured by a relentless focus that keeps going round-and-round, spanning decades, creating a snarled web of thought-loops. Performance art has allowed me to physically express the anguish around being ensnarled in a mental struggle. In a way, it’s like having a wrestling match with dichotomy programming. If I’m able to smooth out connections, through painting or performance, I might be able to reconcile polarized thought forms. In that way, my process has resulted in a practical application as it translates directly to interpersonal relationships and extremism. A: For this special edition of ARTiculAction we have selected The Q: Entity, a recent Performance Art Project that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. What has at once caught our attention is the way it accomplishes the difficult task of establishing a channel of communication between the subconscious sphere and the conscious one, to unveil and challenge the manifold nature of human perceptual categories and to draw the viewers into a multilayered experience. So we would like to take this occasion to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indispensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience? N: Inside of physical reality it would be impossible for personal experience to be separate from creative process. Author Caroline Myss says in her book Anatomy Of The Spirit that “Every thought we have travels through our biological system and impacts our physiology. It is inescapable that your life history—the cumulative and synergistic blending of your feelings, experiences, and perceptions—has culminated in the body you are walking around in today.” From this perspective it would be crazy to imply that a physical body could be separate from its own art processes. However, inside of a lateral psychic reality unquantifiable possibilities exist. Phenomena of psychic imprint like dreams, deja-vu, and other mystical-seeming experiences are valid art process elements. In this way, physical connection can act as an interruptor between personal history and psychic process while creating possibilities for non-physical connections to dictate a re-scripted reality. Working with The Q: Entity, fellow artist Clara Diamond and I found that by facilitating intellectual disconnections between physical reality perceptions and process by employing techniques such as dowsing, divination, ritual, and other unsubstantiated methods The Q: Entity was able to build etheric connections of its own which transcended our physical manufacturing capabilities. In this way, channels of communication were able to connect the subconscious sphere with the human perception manifold. A: How do you see the relationship between public sphere and the role of art in public space? In particular, how much do you consider the immersive nature of the viewing experience? N: I’ve have had a couple of art viewing experiences that have lead me to realize the importance of public space as it relates to viewership. Around 2001 I happened to see a large piece by Robert Rauschenbuerg hung in the lobby of The Bellagio Resort in Las Vegas. I was so thrown off guard by it, at first I couldn’t understand why The Bellagio would have a knock-off Rauschenberg, I imagined it to be a passive maneuver by a Bellagio “set-designer,” but it turned out to be a real Rauschenburg. I was so outside of my element in Las Vegas, and my perception of the city was that it was very hollow and temporary, that everything was made to be like a Iow-budget theatre production. I couldn’t understand what was going on, or how the Rauschenburg painting could be in that space other than to recognize it as a fake, but it wasn’t. I went back to my tent, which I had pitched in the desert outside of Las Vegas, and tried to fathom it’s placement. Through recent inquiry I was able to identify the piece as “Overnight,” a vegetable dye transfer on polylaminate (107 x 93.5) commissioned by The Bellagio in 1999. Another time, while visiting The Palmer Museum of Art at Penn State University with my mother, I happened to see a large abstract painting (80.5 x 131.5) by Jules Olitski titled “Compelled” from 1966. I wasn’t expecting the surprise because the experience of visiting The Palmer Art Museum with my mother had been shrouded in a long, dark history. She took me there often as a child because we lived nearby, I alway tried to enjoy it but usually wound up feeling tortured by the visits. So when I saw the Olitski painting I was thrown off guard. I could instantly see the space created behind the painting, or next to it, I’m not sure what preposition to use or exactly where the space existed, but it was tangible and I was excited by it. This time, the experience was created by timing, space, and object combined. Both of these experiences caused me to rewrite a portion of my knowledge about the relationship between art, place, time, and viewer. I recognize that, on the viewers part, its best to have a combination of awareness, desire, hunting, and to be ready for a surprise. A: We have appreciated the way The Q: Entity, through an effective synergy between Art and Technology, condenses physical gestures and ethereal perspectives into a coherent unity. The impetuous way technology has came out on the top has dramatically revolutionized the idea of Art itself: in a certain sense, we are forced to rethink the intimate aspect of constructed realities and especially the materiality of an artwork itself, since just few years ago it was a tactile materialization of an idea. I'm sort of convinced that new media will definitely fill the apparent dichotomy between art and technology and seemingly Art and Technology are going to assimilate one to each other... what's your thought about this? N: I agree that technology will continue to have a larger role in art, especially considering the mystical-seeming implications of quantum research being done at CERN and other recent phenomenal findings regarding Einstein’s Spooky Theory. For instance, new research published in Nature Communications by Griffith University's Howard Wiseman and colleagues uses a single particle to show that wave functions collapse in a strange way. Their findings back up years of research into quantum entanglement in which particles are connected in a mysterious way even when separated, and that observing or manipulating one instantly affects the other. If you ask me, this uncovers tremendous possibilities for artists if we begin to recognize the human machine as a sensitive and powerful tool, or even a medium, when interacting with material. Working with The Q: Entity facilitated a tangible opportunity to interlace technology with memory as Clara and I began working with sound waves, specifically Hz. I had read about studies involving instrumental conditioning of sensorimotor rhythm using Hz to impact human memory and this led us to work with experimental musician, Christina Diamond. We designed a sound piece together using cryptography that incorporated specific rhythm, Hz, and musical notes reduced from astronomical dates to express the agenda of The Q: Entity. A: Now we would like to focus on your abstract painting production: your works capture non-sharpness with an universal kind of language, capable of bringing to a new level of significance the elusive but ubiquitous relationship between experience and memory, to create direct relations with the spectatorship: What is the role of memory in your process? We are particularly interested if you try to achieve a faithful translation of your previous experiences or if you rather use memory as starting point to create. N: Perceiving memory as part of a holographic paradigm, one who’s parts possess the information of the whole, has allowed me to understand it as a dynamic structure which can be reprogrammed through technology-infused mysticism. In this way, memories that once existed as linear narratives or psychological stories entangled within the memory structure can be re-scripted to form a type of non-linear download. In a biological and ephemeral way, memory imparts itself in my painting practice as a sort of past life experience that is Hell bent on continuing the historical work of midcentury abstract expressionists who have already addressed hypothetical concepts like synchronicity, quantum mechanics, action, and spirituality. Keeping this focus in spite of that implies that these studies are free of distinct beginnings or ends, unlike what art historians and theorists suggest. These concepts are holographically ongoing throughout eternity. General memory and individual memories don’t seem to ever possess starting points yet are inseparable from any endeavor involving the documentation machine of a brain inside of a body with working eyeballs. It’s as if our perception apparatus needs to be updated in order to interface with non-linear structures, maybe that’s one agenda of the art entity. A: We definitely love the way you question the abstract feature of images, unveiling the visual aspect of information you developed through an effective non linear narrative, establishing direct relations with the viewers: German multidisciplinary artist Thomas Demand once stated that "nowadays art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead.” What is your opinion about it? And in particular how do you conceive the narrative for your works? N: Abstraction is a technique for me to manage complexity between instinctive and programmed sensory input / action output processing systems. By establishing direct communication between the hidden collective input processing system and our personal awareness function, abstraction can generate non-linear communication dynamics, like downloadable psychic narratives, which can commingle in the secret space that exists behind the mask of visual input worn by the painting object. Thinking of written language as a medium, I perceive Thomas Dumond’s statement that “art can no longer rely so much on symbolic strategies and has to probe psychological, narrative elements within the medium instead” as a narrative itself describing Art as an entity that is being forced into new circumstances due to the false perception of progress attached to linear time. That’s a very relatable narrative because it speaks to a collective shared experience. At some point every person must move or die- birth for example. Narrative seems to exists in the psyche and surfaces as myth, emerging from a non-linear space shrouded from direct consciousness as concrete archetypes and stories. Understanding this dynamic plays a big part in allowing my work to be instinctive and to recognize it as a new personal mythology as it unfolds. A: While exhibiting a captivating vibrancy, your paintings seem to reject an explicit explanatory strategy: rather, you seem to offer the viewer a key to find personal interpretations to the feelings that you convey into your paintings... this quality marks out a considerable part of your production, that is in a certain sense representative of the conflictual relationship between content and form: how much does your own psychological make-up determine the nuances of tones you decide to use in a piece and in particular, how do you develop a painting’s texture? Moreover, any comments on your choice of "palette" and how it has changed over time? N: I try to avoid over explanation in order to honor the viewer’s opportunity to arrive at their own personal meaning. When people are able to come to their own conclusions they are able to integrate meaning on a more dynamic and practical way. For example, The Talmudic concept of the Evil Eye implies that “blessing (or understanding) only rests upon something that is concealed from the eye,” this comes from a parable deduced from a biblical myth found in Genesis where people were directed to emulate fish when it came to multiplying because fish do so under the water where it’s impossible to view the process because it occurs in a place that is shielded from view. This hiddenness acts as a type of protection against the Evil Eye, so in one way, obscuring information creates greater possibility of understanding, especially when the information is non-linear or comes from a non-visible realm in the first place. Just like history and memory, personal psychological nuances must be inseparable from action and process. For instance, I’m personally reactive to cultural implications that attempt to dictate what I should or shouldn’t do. In that way, I’m like a child and that is an obvious visual aspect of my painting. Defiance pathology is part of what allows me to maintain my true focus, insulates me from the pressure to conform, and keeps me impervious to art fads and lingo. Psychology isn’t black and white, either. Although I choose my palette based somewhat on theory, I also allow myself space to follow my hunches and to make instinctive color choices. I definitely wrestle with the pathology of conflict between understanding how formal training should dictate my color choices and choosing to ignore and even challenge that training. This conflict plays out visually as extreme or unlikely color choices as well as through the challenge of laying down color as a metaphor for form. A: The recurrent reference to the emotional sphere but at the same time to universal imagery removes any historic reference from the reality you refer to, and I daresay that this aspect allows you to go beyond any dichotomy between Tradition and Contemporariness, and that establishes a stimulating dialogue between references from contingent era and an absolute approach to Art: do you recognize any contrast between Tradition and Contemporariness? N: Perceiving tradition and contemporariness as dichotomies creates contrast and my work might deal with this by referencing a larger grey area. Then vs. now doesn’t fit into my perception of time so maybe that’s what you’re picking up on. Because I’m deploying abstract painting, an old fashioned and traditional language to begin with, as my superficial framework I’m referencing history in a general way. Being aware of the objectives and findings of abstract painters throughout history in conjunction with the notion that because somethings been done before doesn’t deter me. I’m sort of like a scientist with an outdated lab. I like paint and I feel drawn to work with it inside of the framework of abstract painting, there’s still a hefty amount of information to sort through. I don’t believe that its possible for abstract painting to have an end or be killed, it’s a living tool used to deal with information, and it’s useful to me. However, its being pushed to extremes by both technology and academia, which I think will force it to change and grow, but not be killed. Abstract painting has been fed a steady diet of brains for decades, and if we apply the cliche “You are what you eat,” Zombie Formalism makes sense. Instead of stabbing it in the head and pronouncing it dead, maybe we could feed it some heart and guts to revitalize it as a hero / savior, instead of fueling the zombie by feeding it more brains. Collectively, if we focus intention on reviving abstract painting through a more inclusive, receptive, and feminine approach, and if art can be liberated from academia I think that would be helpful. It seems like things are shifting as more and more art students are struggling to be baristas with huge student loans. A: It's no doubt that interdisciplinary collaborations as the ones you have established with experimental musician Christina Diamond and performance artist Clara Diamond for The Q: Entity are today ever growing forces in Contemporary Art and that the most exciting things happen when creative minds from different fields of practice meet and collaborate on a project... could you tell us something about this effective synergy? By the way, Peter Tabor once stated that "collaboration is working together with another to create something as a synthesis of two practices, that alone one could not": what's your point about this? Can you explain how your work demonstrates communication between two artists? N: Collaborating with Clara Diamond on The Q: Entity has been a profound experience in that our way of working together generated an enormous amount of information. We spent almost nine months conceptualizing and building The Q: Entity and along the way were confronted with numerous opportunities to evaluate output as valid or not valid. At one point, a sequential pattern of numbers emerged which we initially mistook for zip codes suggesting physical locations. Through Clara’s methodical way of processing information we were able to recognize that the sequences actually desired to be expressed as musical notes and this led us to work with her partner, experimental musician Christina Diamond. Having the ability to check in with each other, and to easily respect each other’s perceptions, helped refine our focus and resulted in a literal voice for The Q: Entity. Another dynamic between Clara and I exists in that we are both mothers and have each experienced the birthing process, so we were able to understood the conception and gestation of The Q: Entity as very literal. Drawing parallels to the birth of our children facilitated our reverence for The Q: Entity and this resulted in a tangible sense of growth, personality, and and recognition of a miracle. The final performance paralleled the physical birthing process in that together we each entered a similar introverted primal trance state and were able to give over personal control to the powerful instinctive force accessible to woman during childbirth. A: Over your career you have exhibited around the United States, showcasing your work in several occasions, including two solos. One of the hallmarks of your practice is the capability to create a direct involvement with the viewers, who are urged to evolve from a condition of mere spectatorship. So before leaving this conversation we would like to pose a question about the nature of the relationship of your art with your audience. Do you consider the issue of audience reception as being a crucial component of your decision-making process, in terms of what type of language is used in a particular context? N: Keeping a clear focus on my process and an authenticity to my intention means that I don’t direct much energy into involving myself with how my work might be received by viewers. By holding the belief that viewership is best dictated by the viewer, a more powerful and integrative experience can happen for viewers as this allows them to remain in control of their own experience. For now, I maintain a dedication to my instinctive nature and to be exempt from considering audience in my decision-making process. I feel good about entrusting viewership to a cosmic power. A: Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Nina. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? N: My way of working is very prolific, in 2015 I completed over 50 large scale paintings and I’m continuing to produce work at that pace. I spend a lot of time in the studio and always take exhibition opportunities seriously. My studio is located north of New York City in the city of Kingston, NY. As artists are having a rougher financial time in the city they are relocating here, and I hope this will lead to new opportunities to connect my work with a larger community. Recently, Jill McDermid and Erik Hokanson, founders of Brooklyn’s Grace Exhibition Space, began a performance art residency program and exhibition space here in Kingston called The Linda Mary Montano Art / Life Institute and it’s been really awesome to see national and internationally recognized artists working in their space and to be able to perform there. My future plans include expanding my studio and I’m looking into buying a building here in Kingston. I’m learning about the realities of balancing art with finances and would like to connect with business and marketing people who can generate money so that I can keep working in my studio. I’m fervently motivated to continue my deep, authentic, and thorough studies of painting and performance, to generate relatable material, and to exhibit and perform as opportunities arise. Thank you, ARTiculAction for engaging with my work and for offering me the opportunity to articulate my art and action!

  • ACTIVATING PERCEPTION | nina-isabelle

    HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... ACTIVATING PERCEPTION - NINA A. ISABELLE MIDTOWN ARTS DISTRICT by Debra Bresnan May 10, 2017 https://madkingston.org/2017/05/09/nina-a-isabelle/ When did you first know you were an artist? Growing up people referred to me as an artist and so I became one – an experience that made me aware of the power of language, perception, belief, and social programming, all themes in my current work. It’s possible that if I had grown up in a different environment I might have been an engineer because as an artist I’m always working with how things like concepts of memory and phenomena articulate with visual and spatial perception, language, materials, and meaning and how to build generative dialogue between these factors. Where an engineer might work with materials, data, or electricity, as an artist I use a similar approach but with different variables. Favorite medium(s) you use to make art? My favorite art medium is probably the phenomena of perception and how language builds reality. Right now my focus is on working to manipulate and bend notions surrounding the value and usefulness of art away from commodity and towards structures that represent essential and social value. Inside of this, working with painting I can still have an intention to study gesture, motion, and look for new languages that might emerge from this action and mark making or find new information in whatever emerges. I like to get my hands on chunks of materials like vats of clay, lumber, bolts of fabric, or discarded machine parts and sort of grapple with the stuff until it gives in to another form. Sometimes I might start out with an intention or give myself an assignment, but other times I let myself generate information by engaging with materials and paying close attention as I go. Since I work pretty equally with photography, video, design, performance, installation, and painting, nothing is really off limits to me. I grew up at a summer camp for kids where we had an arts and crafts department with a ceramics studio, photo lab, leather tools, batik, enamels, silk screens, and fabric dye, among others. Nine months out of the year these departments were vacant and I really made the best of it – I learned to use the kiln and glazes by haphazardly blowing up and melting a lot of stuff, mixing chemistry by taste, a lot of other experimental and dangerous learning-by-doing that has carried over to my current approach. I never read instructions as a younger person because I couldn’t really read until I went to college. I’m rarely intimidated by new things, and I think that’s one of my favorite things about my development and approach. What are the most interesting new trends in your field? Is your work changing as a result? One of the most exciting things I notice right now is a shift toward recognizing the social value of art as a tool to reframe reality through community building, open sourcing ideas and data, and through things like artist collectives and working together with other artists and community members. In the art world, there are always these superficial fads like geometric shapes or graffiti, or some new trendy material, or something everyone is doing like such-and-such, but my work doesn’t usually wind up aligning itself with those sorts of cultural flows. I don’t usually find myself in trendy circles — something that has made it difficult to find a community but also has led me to the point where I am now. I recognize that, all along, my running mission has been to challenge outmoded institutional and economic systems that have grown regulated and insular and to work to build systems to replace these. Artists are always pressing hard against hierarchal structures like gender, race, and social class: It seems like the discord generated by our new political administration is influencing a lot of art thinking these days. Talk about your creative process – where/when do you get most of your ideas and how do you know a piece is ‘finished’? My creative process is rooted pretty firmly in letting myself respond instinctively. One thing I often find myself doing is trying to destroy rosy notions that abound around creativity being “beautiful.” Being a person who has given birth to babies I recognize the mess, blood, and pain that goes along with creativity. I have a lot of ideas and mostly I choose to go with the ones that make me laugh about myself or our collective idiocy. I also like to work with themes that irk me such as fake systems of legitimization we use to determine success, such as university degrees, financial values and the gender and power imbalances that seem to perpetually skew the art world. Making art objects like paintings and sculptures, and grappling with material and concepts together, I’ve questioned the point of it beyond decoration or commodity and have come to understand my process as a personal tool that lets me understand reality in a way that I can integrate. Working with materials and visual information puts me in touch with deeper threads of meaning, and nuances of life that fortify the tapestry. I’m drawn toward this way of working and thinking because there seems to be something I can’t quite say in writing or speaking, something linear language can’t quite get at. I don’t know what it is yet and that’s what keeps me engaged. As far as recognizing when something is finished, I think it’s just a matter of paying attention to a subtle feeling of “doneness,” or arriving at a comfortable stopping point or a feeling of resolve – like I’ve figured something out or said what I meant to say. Sometimes a stopping point might never come because maybe I’ve gone down on a dead-end path. I have a lot of projects in limbo because they’ve become overwhelming or I’ve lost interest, things I can always get back to at any point. And, in a quantum way, things can never be finished because time isn’t linear and there’s no such thing as an end point. Do you also teach or are you strictly a creative artist? Who was your most influential mentor and why? How do you see the role of being a mentor? and why? In the past, I’ve taught art classes like photography, modern dance, and painting or movement workshops. There is always a technical entry point where students spend time learning about say, the camera machine, visual mechanics, basic movement patterns, or just becoming familiar with materials, and this can be a fun and engaging way for people to come together. But I always want to move further into dialogue about how the usefulness of these art tools and practices can be more than a fun pastime or therapeutic hobby. Art offers invaluable ways to shift perception and find new vantage points. As an artist, I collaborate with others in several capacities that seem more like mutual mentorship, where we share and build upon each other’s momentum and concepts. I’m not sure that I’ve ever fit the part of strictly a mentor to another, but I do recognize people who’ve inspired me. I had a couple high school teachers who helped me to evade attendance, something that in a typical case might not sound helpful, but I really recognize and value people who have taken risks in order to do the right thing morally. School is not a good place for all children. I can’t say that I’ve ever had a strong relationship with an individual mentor, but something that intrigued me early on was finding and building obscure relationships between seemingly unrelated artists and their work. I remember wondering about Käthe Kollwitz’s Woman With Dead Child in relationship to Henry Moore’s sculptures and sheep sketchbook, and Jim Dine’s Robes. Somehow the similar volume expressed in these works was curious to me, possibly as a subconscious desire to connect the physical form of my body to their work because I’ve always been athletic. I was also intrigued by industrial design and how humans interact with tools and objects, especially mid-century chairs like the Eames Lounger and Bertoia’s designs as a framework for simultaneously supporting physical and thought forms together. So in a way, I’ve let this sense of wonder guide me. What are you working on now? For the past year, I’ve been working on a project called The Superfund Re-Visioning Project . It’s an experimental framework that aims to transform contaminated industrial sites recognized by The United States Government as Superfund Sites. In New York State there are 117 of these sites. I’m developing a project that aims to create a platform for artists and community members who might otherwise be marginalized by political and financial systems that typically deal with these sorts of remediation. I’m also involved with an artist collective developed by IV Castellanos called The Feminist Art Group (F.A.G.) from Brooklyn, and plan to invite them to Kingston this summer for one of The Shirt Factory Open Studio events. Currently, I have a show at the new HiLo gallery space in Catskill and like to participate in local shows at The Old Glenford Church Studio . I think it’s great when things like The UNITY show curated by Sarah Carlson and Lisa Barnard Kelley between the artists at The Shirt Factory and The Lace Mill come together to fortify community connectedness. Upcoming, I have work being featured by The Unstitute in Catalunya, Spain and plan to do something fun at Paul McMahon’s Mothership Gallery this fall. Recently my focus is moving into sound and auditory perception. I’ve become interested in digitally degraded sound snippets and obscuring auditory input to the point of noise in a way to find out what’s behind and within the experience of sound. For more information about my work and listings of recent/current exhibitions, projects and collaborations, please visit www.ninaisabelle.com/cv . How has being in Kingston enhanced/inspired your work? What do you like best about living in Kingston/being involved with MAD? How long have you been here? Kingston has a lot to offer artists and community members and is building momentum as an arts-branded district. Recently we’ve seen several exciting places pop up like David Schell’s Green Kill , Rilley Johndonnell’s Optimism concept, Broadway Arts , The Art/Life Institute on Abeel Street , and Kingston High School Art teacher Lara Giordano, who is exhibiting student work at PUGG on Broadway. The surrounding landscape is diverse and inspiring conceptually because of the Hudson River waterways, The Catskill Mountains, The Ashokan Reservoir, and the surrounding forests, hiking, and rail trails. The Mid-Hudson Library system is phenomenal, and it’s easy to travel back and forth to New York City from Kingston. It’s great to have artist studio spaces like The Shirt Factory and The Lace Mill which offer affordable living spaces for artists, and especially new organizations like MAD that are forming to support this new movement.

  • Nina A. Isabelle // The Pain Project

    Nina A. Isabelle is a multidisciplinary artist working with abstract painting, performance art, video, photography, sound, and sculpture. HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... THE PAIN PROJECT MARCH 2015 The Pain Project revisits eight physical injuries and is meant as an exploration of where pain is held in the physical body and how it changes with time. Each piece was made by applying paint to paper using the affected body parts. 3rd Metacarpal of Left Hand , 44x36, tempera paint on paper Broken 3rd Metacarpal of Lett Hand: When I was in 3rd grade I broke the 3rd metacarpal on my left hand doing a back-handspring on the trampoline at The Nittany Gymnastics School in State College, PA. Initially I thought that I had just cracked my knuckle in a painful way but later that day when I was asked by my instructor to do a glide kip on the bars I noticed that there was a sharp pain in my hand. My instructor assumed that I was lying in order to get out of class. I felt conflicted by her accusation, so I tried to swing from the bars again but it was still painful. Was I imagining it? Maybe I just hated doing gymnastics? I began to question my perception of pain within my physical body, I couldn’t tell if I was hurt. That night I told my Mom that I thought I had hurt my hand. She said she would take me to have an x-ray in the morning, but my Dad told her it was not broken, there wasn’t enough swelling, to leave me alone and it would be fine. They fought about it but she took me anyway and it turned out to be broken. They wrapped it up with a plaster cast. Frontalis Bone , 44x36, tempera paint on paper Multiple Concussions: Due to skateboarding and snowboarding I have been knocked unconscious several times. Once I hung up and fell to my head on a mini-ramp and was knocked out for several seconds. When I opened my eyes a man who was there said “Don’t move, I’m going to get your Dad.” I didn’t move. When the man came back he said, “Your Dad says to get up, that you’ll be fine.” The first time I dropped in on a vert ramp everyone told me, “Make sure you lean forward!” I dove from the top of the 12 foot ramp to the bottom, landing head first. I felt dizzy and was giddy but thought it would be a good idea if I tried again. Everyone was yelling “just sit down, don’t get up!” I tried again. On the way home I felt nauseous, my friend had to drive, I threw up on the side of the road. The worst time was when I dropped in on an 7 foot quarter pipe that went onto an asphalt street course. My wheel ran into a piece of gravel and it caused my board to stop rolling, I fell right onto the front of my head. Right in my hairline, directly above my right eye, a large lump instantly grew straight out of my skull, like when cartoon characters get hit with a bat. I had a lump that was as tall as a spool of thread sticking straight out of my head, like a horn! I couldn’t stop laughing, time was distorted, I was delirious. The person I was with took me to the E.R. I had a concussion, they said to wake me up every two hours. The lump turned to dark colors, and then eventually drained into both my eye sockets. I had two black eyes, like a raccoon. I was in Art school at the time, my painting teacher took me aside and asked if I was experiencing domestic violence, he was convinced that my boyfriend was beating me, I couldn’t stop laughing. My skull is indented in that spot. To this day If I touch it with my finger my heart starts racing and my throat clenches shut and it becomes hard to breath. Right Hip , 44x36, tempera paint on paper Multiple contusions on right thigh, inferior lateral aspect of the greater trochanter of femur : At age 14 I was doing a balance beam trick called a Gainer Layout Step, where you sort of fling yourself up in the air and do a no-handed flip and land on one foot. I missed my landing foot and landed on the lateral aspect of my thigh resulting in a giant black and blue mark. Shortly after that I was required to have a physical for school, the nurses saw my bruises and asked if I “had a happy home life.” They sent me to the school counselor who asked me if I drank or used drugs or if I had been exposed to domestic violence. She didn’t believe my answer, that I had “fallen off a balance beam.” Many years later, I was doing a 50/50 grind around a bowl corner on my skateboard, and when I went to go back in my back trucks hung up on the coping, causing me to slam into the bottom of the 5 foot deep bowl with full force, directly onto my right hip. It swelled up instantly, looking like an enormous raspberry scone stuck to my thigh. Blood and yellow fluid began to push out of my pores and flow down my leg. I’d wake up with the bed sheets stuck to my thigh each night, eventually there was a scab the size of my entire hand. My thigh was swollen fat and wiggly like it was full of jello. I couldn’t put on pants and had to wear skirts for weeks, I had an unbelievably huge and disgusting scabby, black-and-blue thigh. To this day, over 20 years later, I still have a lump of scar tissue the size of a small lemon inside my lateral thigh. It is still surprisingly painful to touch. I call it my “perma-bruise.” Lateral Malleolus of Right Fibula , 44x36, tempera paint on paper Undiscovered Broken Lateral Malleolus of the Right Fibula : I had sprained my right ankle several times doing gymnastics, it usually took 3-4 week to feel completely better. The usual protocol involved sticking my foot in a bucket of ice water several times a day, continuing to try to walk on it so that I wouldn’t loose mobility, and wrapping it tightly with athletic tape so that I could get back to training as soon as possible. I had been through this injury several times. When I was 15 I took up skateboarding instead of gymnastics. One time I dropped in off of a ledge that went to a bank and my front right foot rolled under. I wound up landing on top of my crumpled foot with all of my weight from several feet in the air. It was so painful, I was frozen and unable to make a sound or move. Nobody in the crowded building recognized that I was injured. I slowly and quietly moved myself across the concrete floor toward the exit and crawled on one knee with my ankle in the air, very delicately and smoothly, down the hill to where the athletic trainers were. They looked at my ankle and said I would need to get an x-ray, then I was given a ride home. I called my Dad, who said “No, you don’t need an x-ray, it’s probably just a bad sprain, just ice it.” 4 weeks had gone by and I was still not able to put much weight on my foot. I kept trying to walk normally, and just wrapped it up tightly with athletic tape. It was over 2 months before I could walk without pain. My boss and other people implied that I was faking an injury for special attention, so I made a point to conceal my pain. When I was 36 I sprained my ankle again while bouldering. I had it x-rayed and they said, “It’s not broken now, but we can see where it has been broken previously in several places.” My ankle has never recovered from this, it is extremely sensitive and I can’t allow anything to touch it, the lightest tap makes me yelp. Dragging it across the paper for this project was excruciating, I almost cried. This injury is 18 years old and has not left my body yet. Occipital Bone , 44x36, tempera paint on paper Bad Neck Injury: I’m not sure what happened to my neck. I over-rotated a double back flip on the trampoline and was about to land on the back of my head. My friend dove toward me to stop my rotation before I landed but his fist wound up right in the back of my neck when I landed with my feet crumpling over the top of my body. My entire head and neck were tingling and making crackling sounds, it felt like fluid had been blasted up my nose. I crawled off the trampoline and took myself home. I took some Advil, put a bag of frozen peas on my neck and tried to sleep. I couldn't move for days, the phone had been ringing but I couldn't get to it. I finally crawled to the kitchen 2 days later to eat, but wound up on the floor in pain. I made an appointment with a chiropractor but he needed to see an x-ray. I didn't have insurance so I just waited for it to get better. I have a lump the size of a walnut at base of my occipital bone on my right side. It hasn’t gone away yet, sometimes I have sharp, shooting pains if I turn my head a certain way. Contusions on Lungs , 44x36, tempera paint on paper Contusions on Lungs, Cracked Tooth: When I was 16 I was snowboarding on an icy slope with my friend. Something happened and I wound up in the air face-first and landed on my chest and face. I knocked the wind out of myself and banged the front of my face and head onto the ice. I started laughing really hard, blood gurgled up from my throat and sprayed onto the snow, then I spat a tooth into my mitten, I couldn’t stop laughing. My friend asked if I was okay and I couldn’t stop laughing, I said that I was okay, but he took me to the hospital. They x-rayed my lungs because of the blood coming out of my throat, it had a contusion. The next day I went to the dentist and he made me a new tooth out of putty, I still have it. Lateral Deltoid 44x36, tempera paint on paper Separated Right Shoulder: When I was 16 I was skateboarding on a 5 foot mini ramp inside of a metal building near my home. My back trucks hung up on the coping and I fell to the flat bottom landing on my shoulder. I tried to leave the building but couldn't open the door because I needed to hold my right arm onto my body with my left arm. I tried for a while to open the door with my foot, or to unlatch and slide the barn doors open with my legs. Eventually I managed to open the door and walked home. My parents were upset with me for being late for dinner. My Dad gave me a sling for my arm, and we tied my arm to my torso for several days until it tightened back onto my body. Sacrum / Coccyx , 44x36, tempera paint on paper Possible broken or subluxed coccyx or sacrum: My skateboard slid out from under me and I landed on my tail bone on a metal pipe. I was able to get home and go to bed. In the morning I was in so much pain, I couldn't stand upright. I walked slowly, bent over all the way, to the bathroom, then back to my bed. My parents didn’t know I was hurt. They kept yelling for me to “Make sure you don’t miss dinner at camp, we don’t have any food at the house!” I couldn’t get out of bed, I was so hungry. I never saw a doctor.

  • Nina A. Isabelle // Multidisciplinary Artist // Windmill Weapon

    Nina A. Isabelle is a multidisciplinary artist working with abstract painting, performance art, video, photography, sound, and sculpture. HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... THE WINDMILL WEAPON MATRON MAY 2016 The Windmill Weapon Matron was built on May 12, 2016 and exhibited on June 3, 2016 as part of The New School's Social Justice exhibition with The Bushwick Collective. Materials include s awhorse, l umber, co nstruction m aterials, s pray p aint, h ouse p aint, a fghans, w eapons, b icycle p arts, y arn, p laster, t erra c otta, c hain. She is 90h x 53w x 45d. She is a dangerous female machine expressing an active stance and aggressive posture. She no longer identifies as passive and has most recently emerged as an international threat. Based on a jumbled compilation of afghans, defunct bicycle parts, weapons, lumber, and chain her biographical narrative has been holographically reconfigured into a destructive biological machine made of woman’s time. While The Windmill Weapon Matron acknowledges her destructive approach as a natural response to her capacity for childbirth, she hesitates to dichotomize the two simply saying “Come, let me destroy you.” Utilizing a process of defiance The Windmill Weapon Matron has successfully developed a system capable of transforming eye-rolling, financial aid application trauma, stuffed animal over population, and hair pulling as well as other sensory input bull shit into a clean, renewable, and sustainable energy source for mothers. Nobody will lend her a chainsaw It is safe to breed with her She makes a mockery of science Her system is nervous Her face is spinning When she was a virgin politicians killed and ate her She is secular Her system has calcified She loves The Antichrist She birthed a female bastard She wan’t trained up the way she should go The system tries to destroy her She has nothing to depart from Rabbits fear her She has been relieved of advantage Her system is unkillable

  • Nina A. Isabelle // Multidisciplinary Artist // Kingston, NY

    Nina A. Isabelle is a multidisciplinary artist working with abstract painting, performance art, video, photography, sound, and sculpture. HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... HYPERACTIVE INSTALLATION JUNE 4 2017

  • LIVE STREAM | nina-isabelle

    HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... LIVESTREAM NINA ISABELLE & ADRIANA MAGAÑA PERFORM DURING UPSTATE ART WEEKEND AT JENNIFER ZACKIN'S STUDIO IN WOODSTOCK, NY JULY 2022 Photo by Jennifer Zackin

  • PIANO PORTRAITS | nina-isabelle

    HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... PIANO PORTRAITS ​ By Linda Mary Montano with Nina Isabelle, & Jennifer Zackin HiLo Catskill, NY February 11, 2018 ​ During these dangerous / confusing / armageddonned times, we are all looking for connection, understanding and warmth. The three of us are committed to providing public art medicine. ART=LIFE=ART. For our PIANO PORTRAITS event at HiLo, we invite audience member-collaborators to sit in a chair on stage to receive a public art healing. Linda Mary Montano will improvise your piano portrait, Nina Isabelle will interpret you through action / movement, and Jennifer Zackin will macrame. Using knots and rope, sunglasses, costumes, blindfolds, action, movement, and sound, we will publicly heal ourselves and you. ART HEALS! ​ Photos by Adolfo Ibanez Ayerve and Carrie Dashow ​ Piano Portraits at HiLo Piano Portraits at HiLo with Linda Mary Montano, Nina Isabelle, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Adolfo Ibanez Ayerve Piano Portraits at HiLo Piano Portraits at HiLo with Linda Mary Montano, Nina Isabelle, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Adolfo Ibanez Ayerve Piano Portraits at HiLo Piano Portraits at HiLo with Linda Mary Montano, Nina Isabelle, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Adolfo Ibanez Ayerve Piano Portraits at HiLo Piano Portraits at HiLo with Linda Mary Montano, Nina Isabelle, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Adolfo Ibanez Ayerve Piano Portraits at HiLo Piano Portraits at HiLo with Linda Mary Montano, Nina Isabelle, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Adolfo Ibanez Ayerve Piano Portraits at HiLoa_3 Piano Portraits at HiLo with Linda Mary Montano, Nina Isabelle, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Adolfo Ibanez Ayerve Piano Portraits at HiLo Piano Portraits at HiLo with Linda Mary Montano, Nina Isabelle, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Adolfo Ibanez Ayerve Piano Portraits at HiLo Piano Portraits at HiLo with Linda Mary Montano, Nina Isabelle, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Adolfo Ibanez Ayerve Piano Portraits at HiLo Piano Portraits at HiLo with Linda Mary Montano, Nina Isabelle, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Adolfo Ibanez Ayerve Piano Portraits at HiLo Piano Portraits at HiLo with Linda Mary Montano, Nina Isabelle, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Adolfo Ibanez Ayerve LINDA MARY MONTANO is a seminal figure in contemporary feminist performance art and her work since the mid 1960s has been critical in the development of video by, for, and about women. Attempting to dissolve the boundaries between art and life, Montano continues to actively explore her art/life through shared experience, role adoption, and intricate life altering ceremonies, some of which last for seven or more years. Her artwork is starkly autobiographical and often concerned with personal and spiritual transformation. Montano’s influence is wide ranging – she has been featured at museums including The New Museum in New York, MOCA San Francisco and the ICA in London. www.lindamontano.com NINA ISABELLE is a process-based multidisciplinary artist working with action and perception. She works to deconstruct sensory input to the extent that meaning becomes shifted and interpretations become a phenomena of psychic imprint. By incorporating physical movement, modified technology, art and non-art objects, her work builds systems of action designed to intuit site-specific information- tethering the collective, personal, and regional relative narratives that drive the performance space machine toward trajectories of new perception, belief, and possibilities. Referencing the inability of communication which is used to visualize reality, the failure of dialogue, the dissonance between form and content, as well as the shortcomings of literal language, Isabelle pushes material and information past the point of recognition in a way that forces a shift in meaning, revealing new information that can transform and challenge the limits of material, perception, and belief. Her work has been exhibited at The San Diego Art Institute, The Bangkok Underground Film Festival, HiLo Catskill, the CICA Museum in South Korea, and most recently, The Mothership in Woodstock, NY. www.ninaisabelle.com JENNIFER ZACKIN has been integrating public art, sculpture, installation, performance, collaboration, ceremony, photography, video, collage and drawing into acts of reverence and reciprocity for the past 14 years. Whether wrapping trees in patterns of brightly colored rope, growing medicinal herbs in a public garden for public use, offering large masses of rose petals to oceans and lakes, creating absorbent tentacles ("hair booms") out of salvaged materials to aid in the clean-up efforts of toxic spills, Zackin seeks to engage and create community in her process, bringing art and ritual into everyday life. Every act is an exploration of exchange, communion, performance, skill-sharing and mark-making. Writing in a cataloque essay about her work Lori Waxman states; “Jennifer Zackin has worked with Rose Petals, Little Plastic Cowboys, pre-Columbian symbols, bright handmade pom-poms, cheap mass-produced posters, coca leaves, and her grandfathers old Super-8 home movies. How she weaves them into rhythmic, often meditative forms depends in great part on the underlying pattern that she is able to detect and orchestrate among her diverse materials.” Her work has been exhibited in national and international museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art NY, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art CT, Spertus Museum - Chicago IL, Rose Museum MA, the Wexner Center for the Arts OH, Contemporary Art Museum - Houston TX, The Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden - Norway, Institute of Contemporary Art - Boston MA and the Zacheta National Art Gallery - Warsaw, Poland. Commissions include Governors Island NYC with LMCC, Katonah Art Museum NY, Socrates Sculpture Park LIC - Queens NY and the Berkshire Botanical Gardens - Stockbridge, MA. She is the recipient of fellowships and residencies, including Factory Direct at Pinchbeck Rose Farm, Art Omi, Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture. www.jenniferzackin.com Event photo: Carrie Dashow

  • LANDLINES AT CX SILVER GALLERY | nina-isabelle

    HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... LANDLINES Performance by Nina Isabelle & Jennifer Zackin at CX Silver Gallery in Brattleboro, VT. August 26, 2018 An interactive type of immersion-therapy, Landlines invites viewers & participants to make their own meaning out of actions and gestures happening within a sea of dissonance. How do we cultivate the cultural phenomena of communication while agendas of power and dominance try to hijack our semiotic proclivity with fake news and ad campaigns designed to entrench us in divisive notions of entitlement and correctness? When lines of communication become connected to fear, anger, and resentment, how do we clear and reground them to empathy and grace? ​

  • LISTENING MEDIUMS | nina-isabelle

    LISTENING MEDIUMS OCTOBER 2022 HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More...

  • 650 ml. OF LUNG PUSS | nina-isabelle

    HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... 650 ML. OF LUNG PUSS A seventeen-day artlife performance at Westchester Medical Center's Maria Fareri Children's Hospital in Valhalla, NY December 18, 2019 - January 3, 2020 650 ml. of Lung Puss was a seventeen-day performance initiated by a dire circumstance that ultimately demonstrated a quantum aspect of artlife processes. Influenced by my friend and artlife colleague Linda Mary Montano, the performance inspired a deeper understanding of a performance process that summons elemental energies from a nonlocational power source. These energies exist in a state of quantum superposition and can be programmed using intention, determination, focus, and sacrifice, to transmute pain, suffering, and trauma into tolerance, endurance, resilience, self awareness, control, forgiveness, grace, and gratitude. The performance began on December 18th when I carried my near lifeless and blue 94lb. daughter across a large, dark, silent, windy, and cold parking lot into the hospital's emergency room. The energies that fueled this difficult task were conjured from a deeply derived performative physical power cultivated by all mothers collectively throughout eternal time combined with the tension building from a deadlocked schism between my intuition and the medical authorities. In the past two days, we had been sent home from the emergency room and a pediatrician's office. Meanwhile, my daughter had developed sepsis from Scarlett Fever, Pneumonia, and a pleural effusion in her left lung. Our hospital performance engaged members of our close community, artlife collaborators and colleagues, friends and family, and the larger medical community of ambulance drivers, EMTs, emergency room attendants, nurses,doctors, phlebotomists, surgeons, lab and x-ray technicians, infectious disease specialists, sanitation specialists, medical administrators, and so on. Together, we collectively transformed into an unintentional ensemble performing actions together as our best selves in order to save a child's life. We embodied multiple and often simultaneous roles and embraced the fluctuating spaces between these modes. We performed as mothers, organizers, brothers, partners, distractors, whisperers of encouragement, visitors, tear swallowers, fear fighters, candle lighters, gift givers, keepers of tempers, story book readers, temperature takers, practitioners of patience, hand holders, phone callers, researchers, organizers, group texters, medicine givers, vomit bucket holders, comforters, food providers, errand runners, and healers. On the final day of our hospital performance, Linda texted "rest art!!!" to our group. We were finally able to go home, perform rest, and RESTART. This performance demonstrated that art and life function as entangled dimensions through subtle quantum artlife processes. We learned that approaches effective in art and performance dimensions are also effective in dimensions of life and other realities, and that intentions and actions occurring within one dimension simultaneously reflect, impact, and are made evident in multiple ways throughout multiple dimensions. Engaging with life circumstances through performative art mechanisms allows us to translate the diverse array of creative skills derived from our disciplined artlife practices, (our responsive, intuitive, reflexive, mindful, and conceptual abilities,) into cognitive modes of awareness that inform the new life patterns necessary to thrive as artists in life. Through this post-conceptualizing processes, we gain the ability to sidestep linear chronologies and reframe the concepts of our engagements post-performatively as a way to articulate with the personal mechanisms of awareness and control necessary to make meanings and choices that fortify our collective artlives in new and beneficial ways. List of Performers: Paul DeVincent, Ernest Goodmaw, Sylvia Hallibelle, Chris Hallman, Erik Hokanson, Eric Hurliman, Ulysses Hurliman, Bg Isabelle, Ed Isabelle, Kate Isabelle, Lou Isabelle, Louie Isabelle-DeVincent, Margie Isabelle, Nina Isabelle, Brian McCorkle, Jill McDermid, Paul McMahon, Linda Mary Montano, Ever Peacock, Mor Pipman, Valerie Sharp, Maureen Sharp, Luke Stence, Jennifer Zackin, and Havarah Zawaluk, many anonymous medical professionals, hospital workers, elementary school teachers, school nurses, community mothers and children.

N I N A  A. I S A B E L L E 

Institutional art is like when a down blanket explodes in the dryer.

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