News
What a thrilling evening! Thank you to the CJM and its incredible staff for such a thoughtful and lively opening night. I feel lucky to be able to share my work and to connect with so many people. Some installation shots below courtesy of The Contemporary Jewish Museum. Photos by Glen Cheriton.
The show will be up through October 20th, come check it out!
It’s been a little while since you’ve heard from me, as I have been focusing on raising my baby boy. This experience, though seemingly mundane, continues to be simultaneously humbling, rewarding, and challenging. I find myself thinking more about the gender roles around caregiving, invisible labor, and the difficult choices one makes daily between work, family, and self-care.
But as I slowly return to my studio work, I’m happy to announce that A Seat at the Table will be exhibited this summer at the Contemporary Jewish Museum here in San Francisco. It will be in good company, with work from 46 other talented artists. You can find more information about the show here.
Some highlights from the past year and a half include BYOB at Gray Area, in which I showed Hypnagogia, a 9-channel video compiled from clips of myself sleeping. These were made back in 2013 over a three month period in which I recorded my unconscious behavior.
Up through March at the Peninsula JCC in Foster City is a video I made as part of a group show with Asylum artists on the theme of Shmita. It’s a short video collage showing the passing of time in my studio space during my absence.
I spent November of 2021 getting to know the darkroom while in residence at Kala Art Institute. It was interesting to explore alternative processes painting with chemistry, making photograms, creating custom filters and coating my own paper. My watercolor experiments continue in the digital realm.
I’m excited to be included in Aggregate Space Gallery’s annual video festival ‘This Is Where We Are Right Now’ just across the water in Oakland. This will be the first installation of my augmented reality work, ‘White Noise’, made at the start of pandemic in 2020. All of the videos in the show address our new relationship with space, exploring a pandemic stricken world through familiar locales made unfamiliar. You can read more about it here. And come see the show at the gallery’s new space:
Fridays and Saturdays 1–5pm
1255 26th Street, Unit 101
Oakland, CA
94607
There will be an artist talk on June 12th for which I will present via zoom, as well as a closing reception on June 19th.
A big thank you to everyone who braved the Covid and came out to see the show. It was the most complete version of this work to date — with bone conduction working beautifully! I’m so glad to have had the chance to test it out, and glad to have met a slew of local talent.
I’m making preparations for the next viewing of ‘A Seat at the Table’ as part of the Local Love Spring Art Festival at Terra Gallery. I would love to see those of you able to make it out! A big thank you to Justin Young for organizing, facilitating, and promoting this event. Limited tickets are available for each day: https://locallove.io/AnnaLanda
I’ve been thinking about art, value, and scarcity. In response to the dearth of challenging, conceptual photographic work on display at the recent De Young Open, I began playing with the idea of my existing photographs as canvases for painting. Paintings regularly sell for more money than photographs, and it’s their perceived uniqueness, or the artist’s hand that cannot be exactly replicated, that adds value.
Scarcity plays a huge role in our value systems. In thinking about all of this, I began experimenting with watercolors, recreating some of my favorite photographs in painted form. I created unique brushes in photoshop and began digitally painting on top of my photographs, using only the photograph itself as the canvas.
The result, when printed on paper, has the effect of a real watercolor. Precious, and one of a kind. The difference between the original photograph and the new version is a meticulous series of strokes changing the opacity of a layer on top of the photograph. By my calculation, that layer encompasses the added value to my work (the scarcity value) — I can isolate it and see it directly.
Augmented reality is one tool that helps me to separate the effort (or the artist’s hand) from the original work. Here is a quick example of my photograph being transformed into a watercolor using an AR app:
I’m honored to have my photograph featured in One Twelve Publishing’s first online exhibition Internal Dialogue. I invite you to explore the rest of the work, the collection has a beautifully eerie, dreamlike quality.
I’m excited to announce a public art installation to start off the New Year. On view at Art Kiosk downtown Redwood City Ca from Dec 31 — Feb 21, A Seat at the Table incorporates sound and projection to evoke memories of dinners with friends and family, and celebrations of lives well lived.
The latest installation of The Fear is up now through November 10th, 2020 at Artists’ Television Access in San Francisco. If you miss this round, I’ll be showing an interactive version in January of 2021 in Redwood City, CA. Stay tuned!
And we’re live! Check out White Noise on Create Magazine, as well as the rest of the Festival Of The Impossible for some inspiring works using Augmented Reality.
I made an augmented reality video for the Festival Of The Impossible! The final piece comes out July 13th, so check back for a link to the work. For the time being, I’ve got some behind-the-scenes clips of my process after the jump (pun intended, see below).
As part of the theme on Identity and the meaning of Home, I turned my apartment into a makeshift studio. It’s a good thing I’m a hoarder by trade, plenty of things on hand to liven the set.
I had such a good time creating my cast of characters, come take a vacation inside my mind.
Thank you to Garet Zook for producing such a beautiful show. My work was in very good company!
I have several pieces up at the Cal Poly art gallery tonight with fellow friends and alumni — if you’re in the SLO area, come on by.
I’m hosting an intimate first viewing of my project Blindsight on Dec. 19th from 7–9:30PM at The Growlery in San Francisco. It’s been a pleasure working on the score with sound engineer David Mesiha, and I’m looking forward to your first impressions!
I spent last week at Asylum’s Jewish Artist Retreat with a fantastic group of artists. It was an unexpectedly moving experience, and I’m glad to have been a part of it.
From the archives, an unfinished series on the loss of identity experienced in the process of immigration. I photographed immigrants posing in American Regionalist landscapes. Here they are side by side with the originals.
Around this time last year, I had the pleasure of working with artist Katie Chin to create a performance in the Sutro Baths tunnel. Thank you to the amazing friends who helped me lug my wind harp down many steep steps, it was a magical afternoon.
For those of you wondering about the video collage on the main page of my site, I recorded myself sleeping every night for a period of several months back in 2013. This is the closest I can come to observing my own subconscious, and I was curious to gain insight into my behavior.
Recently I made an accidental breakthrough in my attempts at lucid dreaming. I listened to artist Jenny Odell talk to Ezra Klein about her lucid dreaming adventures, in particular checking the accuracy of her recreated environment, and found it very fascinating. And I discovered that listening to a podcast while falling asleep allows me to keep one foot in reality while sleeping. The podcast plays in the background akin to the voice of God and reminds me that I am in fact asleep! At this point I am free to create my environment and explore at will, it’s the most amazing experience!
2018 was a busy year, and there’s plenty of content to add. One work that I’ve retired from the website is a video from Third Eye, a contraption I made that creates a realtime moving kaleidoscope. I had the opportunity to show it at The California Academy Of Sciences last fall, and I loved the result (The Cure doesn’t hurt either). And another of my favorites from the series below.
In overhauling my website, I’ve moved my ‘News’ page over to Medium. Archiving past posts and starting fresh!
Here’s a video clip of me talking about my piece Sight Unseen from the 4th floor of the mill at Wassaic. Eve Biddle kindly introduces and asks a few questions about the work. Also a blooper reel of me fixing the work as the hand of God.
Thanks to everyone who came out to support us at the Festival of the Impossible, we had an incredible turnout. Three days just wasn’t enough, and we’re looking forward to installing Swingscape elsewhere in the Bay Area. Please reach out if you’d like to work with us to install the swing at your location.
Up next I’m showing my kinetic piece Third Eye at Nightlife Live on July 12th. It’s always a good time at the Academy of Sciences and I hope to see you there!
Sight Unseen is officially installed on the fourth floor at the Maxon Mill in Wassaic. Despite the many challenges of creating work from found materials, I think this version came out looking great! Check it out in person Aug. 4th at the festival.
I’m delighted to share several upcoming shows with you. The Fear has been converted into a waiting room in Root Division’s group show Simmer. Come sit on my couch and feel the pulse of mortality. The reception is on Saturday, April 14 from 7–10PM and you can see the show through April 24th.
I’m also heading to NY in May to install Shoreline from my Sight Unseen projects for the Wassaic summer exhibition. For those unfamiliar, the show is held in a gorgeous former Mill turned gallery and installation space. It opens May 12th and runs through September 22 with a multi-day festival celebrating art, music, and performance on August 4th.
Lastly, artist Joel Ogden and I are creating a very experimental and very exciting VR installation at Minnesota Street Projects in San Francisco for the three day ‘Festival of the Impossible’ in June. Stay tuned for more details, as it will certainly be unforgettable.
Excited to announce that I’m participating in Spring Open Studios at Yosemite Place! I’ll be showing new work alongside a stand-alone, updated version of ‘Sight Unseen’ thanks to the very generous support of Jean Chadbourne and The Growlery. Looking forward to sharing my process and a peek into where it all happens.
I was really impressed by the presentation quality at Aggregate Space gallery where I’m showing my video “In The Wake Of” as part of their video open call. The show was very thoughtfully curated, and I can’t recommend it more as a worthwhile stop on a First Fridays gallery walk. The next one is February 3rd, hope some of you can make it out. Here’s a shot of the artist roundtable photographed by Willis, with my 25 foot video in the background.
The ‘Art of Dying’ was a great success! I enjoyed the introduction into the VR world as well as the many like-minded individuals who spoke to me about ‘The Fear’. Here’s a quick video of the installation. Thanks to Subpac for the added vibration and to everyone who shared their two cents. And I finally have a moving version of the light-well installation from the Soft Opening mid-month. Looking forward to recreating the display at a future showing.
Here’s an installation shot from the soft opening this past Wednesday at The Growlery. I’m in the process of compiling a video of the light-well projection. Also excited to announce my participation in ‘The Art of Dying’, an augmented reality experience opening October 28th at The Laundry. I’ll be showing a new iteration of ‘The Fear’. Follow the links for more information.
I’m taking off for a week-long stint at the Growlery by the sea! While I’m busy scanning negatives 24 hours a day with no internet access, I leave you with the new installation I made for the SF Art Show, and an in-progress shot with my hardest working first assistant. Thanks for all the positive feedback on this one.
A few more from ‘The Fear’ peep hole installation at Savernack Street Gallery.
Thank you to those who braved the cold at ‘The Fear’ reception and to OneStudio for collaborating on a beautiful show. Some highlights from both receptions below. My Growlery residency is ending, but I’m going out with a bang and showing The Facinator at California Academy of Sciences Nightlife Live on May 19th.
A couple new shows in the works: the first opens April 2nd at Savernack Street Gallery, and a group show April 16th at The Growlery. Come by on the 2nd for another version of ‘The Fear’ and a tarot card reading by one who knows.
Savernack Street
Some installation shots from the Artifacts show for those who missed it. I was overwhelmed and pleased by the response to the work, thank you for coming.
Excited to be doing a talk on my work and process at Harvey Milk Photo Center this month. Awesome that city programs like this still exist.
March 16th 6:30PM — 8:00PM
Lecture Series
Upcoming exhibit at The Growlery. Look forward to seeing some familiar faces!
Some of my NYC photos up at The Growlery while I prepare to install new work for an opening at the end of the month. Come stop by and say hello!
NYC
All eyes on you: a new gadget with mirrors carefully angled to create a stereoscopic effect. Gazing at any one of them shows a combination of your left and right eye staring right back.
Here is a peek at the viewer I built for my project ‘Blind Spot’ (it resembles a camera, but it isn’t).
The photos below are taken through the lens of the viewer, intended to reflect a single image of the raw information captured by the eye before the brain compiles it into a seamless image.
A new rendition of ‘The Fear’ as an interactive sculpture at the Academy of Sciences, in which the audio is converted to vibration with tactile transducers. Another really fun Nightlife event! Check out the video to see it in action.
Excited to have my installation of “The Fear” part of Nightlife Live at the Academy of Sciences September 10th. Click the image below to buy tickets to this awesome event. And thank you to Codame for working with me! They blur the line between art and technology, see more of their events here:
From a roll of film shot in Paris, 2010.
Wassaic, NY in May.
Tokyo dreams.
Looking through portals.
Summer things.
A peek into my studio at the Wassaic summer residency.
Take a walk around my neighborhood.
Sunday came early for me this week. One from the archives: Brooklyn 2010.
Tokyo at night.
Tokyo.
New addition.
Containing my knives.
Artifacts got an update. Click below to take a look.
Sunday.
Here’s a preview of some new work — it’s all coming together.
Some exciting new things on the way — stand by for a preview of my work in progress. In the meantime, check out some smaller limited edition pieces for sale at SaatchiArt.
A show in which my 3D work is featured. Opens this Feb!
A few images from ‘Omit’ in panorama form.
Check out the work at this year’s CCNY Auction. It’s a great organization to support and is showing some beautiful prints. One of my ‘Strata’ artist proofs will be available.
A new image from summer in NY (more coming soon).
A couple shots from opening night at Christopher Henry, and a great turn out!
