Caroline Woolard

THIS BLOG IS THREE YEARS OLD

2011-04-01T11:38:00.002-04:00

PLEASE GO TO: CarolineWoolard.com FOR RECENT INFORMATION

Contact me from now on

2008-09-12T10:48:00.003-04:00

I am no longer posting projects.

I am training myself in being present, a rigorous experiment in habit.
My projects are lived and may eventually lose any connection to Art.

If you are interested in my projects, or my whereabouts, please introduce
yourself via email: CarolineWoolard (at) gmail (dot) com Many things
are happening, but you must discover them in real time. You can also just add yourself to my mailing list by putting "add me to the list" in the subject heading.

Table for One

2008-04-16T16:24:00.008-04:00

Here is my Table for One prototype. A new version is coming...

Where have I been? Stuck in the crisis of compromise. But, I am back: in the studio, the street, and the sky, working with independent rigor once more. The 6 Foot Collaboratory is over. It was not an equal partnership and I am enjoying my own rigor and self determination again.

update: Press and Residency

2008-03-27T21:01:00.004-04:00

My video 'Released to the Sky', is up at the Newport Art Museum. It got this review in the Providence Journal:

"Among the highlights... Caroline Woolard’s Released to the Sky, a strangely captivating video in which Woolard carefully cuts her hair, then sends it aloft tied to helium-filled balloons."

Also, I received a MacDowell Fellowship for the summer! I will be working in this gorgeous studio (tall enough for our souls to stand on our shoulders and not bump their heads).

Precarious Comfort

2008-01-31T16:04:00.000-05:00

Precarious Comfort from carolinewoolard on Vimeo.

A rough sketch for a video of what I'm calling "poetic functionalism," with kinetic sculptures as protagonists, emphasizing the values embodied in everyday objects and the mythic potential of utility combined with mood: precarious comfort, elastic hope, etc.

6 Foot Collaboratory

2007-11-23T10:55:00.001-05:00

We used the platform between us to celebrate an origami tea ritual taken from 16th cen. Dutch shipbuilders going blind, no longer able to build large scale.

These reliable structures, support systems, and platforms for connection were presented at Come and Sit With Us Because We Miss You last week, November 10th-12th, on the East River.

UnOccupied Spaces: show in Montreal

2007-11-04T08:32:00.000-05:00

Last weekend Chris Kennedy and I presented A Message from Below in Montreal for UnOccupied Spaces, a project put on by Artivistic. It was an experimental walk, a conversation with objects rather than words, and an attempt to access the space above us from street level. Our collaboration fused my mobile mountain (Lamre) of extendable poles with Chris' research about the appetite of mother earth (Despacho ceremonies). See more images here.

Hear me tomorrow at 7pm

2007-10-29T10:12:00.000-04:00

Solar One Lecture Series

This Week’s Green Renter: The Participatory and Environmental Art of Caroline Woolard

Potable Prototypes: Ingestion as Visceral Knowledge
Speaker: Caroline Woolard, Artist

Caronline Woolard, a graduate of Cooper Union and Fellow of the Oxbow Residency Program will share insights into environmental and participatory art, as well as examples of her own work. Ms. Woolard will conduct a discussion about such works and involve the audience in a dialogue about the future of her ongoing projects and everything in between.

Join us on Tuesday October 30th at 7pm

LINKS

2007-10-09T18:46:00.001-04:00

Flickr slideshow.

Public Seats 2007

2007-09-22T08:17:00.000-04:00

Slowly, the new seats arrive. For Conflux, they are mysterious. For a noPARK with the xDesign Clinic run by Natalie Jeremijenko, one moved from Roebling in Williamsburg to the East Village.

Summer Residency at Oxbow

2007-07-26T11:36:00.001-04:00

I've spent the past 2 months as a Fellow at Oxbow, a summer residency program run through the Art Institute of Chicago. I also did a project for CitySol with plastic bags supporting my body's weight.

Making Light Tangible

2007-07-05T10:15:00.001-04:00

Headroom on the Street

2007-05-01T00:48:00.000-04:00

Climbing my way towards levitation. Why do cars get all the headroom?
Street trees drop their leaves and bare the winter, forever waiting at the curb in picket fenced dreams.

Caught Cloud

2007-04-07T10:04:00.001-04:00

youtube

Catching Clouds

2007-04-06T21:16:00.000-04:00

Swing EVERYWHERE

2007-03-04T17:29:00.000-05:00

................Flying lessons...... Gravitation is a phenomenon through which all objects attract each other. Flight is the process by which an object achieves sustained movement through the air by aerodynamically generating lift, aerostatically using buoyancy, or in movement beyond earth’s atmosphere, in the case of spaceflight........................... The quest for the horizon is a bed, an unreachable, horizontal dreamland of vacation islands where water and sky touch freely. Only sailors and sunset interrupt this line of blue against blue with myth and poetry. The vertical reach of cities, like the upright character of waking life, slaps neighborhoods awake in construction's eternal quest for clouds: vacancies appear only upwards, above and on top. Lonely horizons are levitating bodies in beds, beds filled mostly by ones not twos. City buildings stand in crowds barred by streets, with so many not-slanted, flat roofs collecting and evaporating because where would the water go? The anonymous intimacy of subway mornings with sleeping fists gathered, gripping, piled on totem-pole-of-hands railings. I want to make eye contact.

Swimming and Flying are the only ways to lessen the force of gravity...

2007-02-19T00:37:00.000-05:00

Seats have a life of their own...

2007-02-17T17:53:00.000-05:00

Block Magazine discovered "What those Weird Blue Seats Are" on 2/13/07
read it at: http://www.blockmagazine.com/block_stock_barrel.php

PRESS: Espace Sculpture 78

2006-12-26T16:23:00.000-05:00

http://www.espace-sculpture.com/en/en.html
pg. 10-23
Sculpter les mots, le langage, les mettre en espace
Sculpt Words and Language, Place Words in Space
by Serge FISETTE translated by Janet Logan

PRESS: Brooklyn Papers, NY1 News

2006-12-10T18:02:00.000-05:00

http://www.brooklynpapers.com/html/issues/_vol29/29_48/29_48benches.html See it on page 13of the December 9th issue: "Here’s the deal with Billyburg benches." “I don’t think she has to worry,” said police officer Rodney Larges. “I just used it to tie my shoe.”

NY1 News interviewed me on December 11th "Benches Let Walkers Take A Break In Williamsburg" http://www.ny1.com/ny1/content/index.jsp?&aid=64979&search_result=1&stid=1

my Cooper Union show closed Saturday 10/9

2006-12-07T12:03:00.000-05:00

Drawing a 130 foot line

2006-11-10T11:16:00.000-05:00

Before the Hewitt building on East 7th St and 3rd Ave is demolished, the 130-foot tin can telephone (connecting the Hewitt to the Foundation building) had to be de-installed. The clear line of monofilament became a visible orange ribbon, drawing a 130-foot line across the intersection as the tin can was reeled into the Foundation building and traffic flowed below. Balloons carried the orange line out of the Hewitt building forever as it was drawn back inside the Foundation building.

Time Out NY this week

2006-11-10T11:09:00.000-05:00

http://www.timeoutny.com/newyork/Details.do?page=1&xyurl=xyl://TONYWebArticles1/580/out_there/taking_it_to_the_seats.xml

Tin Can Telephone

2006-10-11T16:22:00.000-04:00

I made a tin can telephone (spanning 130 feet across the intersection of 3rd Ave and East 7th Street) to connect the Foundation Building with the soon-to-be-demolished Hewitt Building of Cooper Union. Until the Hewitt turns to rubble on November 7th, the conversation between studios and disciplines in the two buildings will be vital.

Nicole Krauss writes about telephones beautifully in The History of Love: A Novel (2005) on page 111:

“So many words get lost. They leave the mouth and lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they are swept into the gutter like dead leaves. On rainy days you can hear their chorus rushing past: IwasabeautifulgirlPleasedon'tgoItoobelievemybodyismadeofglassI'veneverlovedanyoneIthinkofmyselfasfunnyForgiveme….

There was a time when it wasn't uncommon to use a piece of string to guide words that otherwise might falter on the way to their destinations. Shy people carried a bundle of string in their pockets, but people considered loudmouths had no less need for it, since those used to being overheard by everyone were often at a loss for how to make themselves heard by someone. The physical distance between two people using a string was often small; sometimes the smaller the distance, the greater the need for string.

The practice of attaching cups to the ends of string came much later. Some say it is related to the irrepressible urge to press shells to our ears, to hear the still-surviving echo of the world's first expression. Others say it was started by a man who held the end of a string that was unraveled across the ocean by a girl who left for America.

Swing on the Subway

2006-10-05T17:07:00.000-04:00

see it on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUaK4vA4srM

Here is my swing for the subway, disguised as a bag. With 1000 mesh "L-train grey" cordura, webbing, sliders, hooks, velcro, and snaps, I constructed a bag using industrial sewing machines (with help from Greg Thompson). The bag transforms from a backpack, handbag, or book bag of 11x4x12 to a swing of 11x24x2 with adjustable (25" to 50"max) straps that hook around the handrail of the subway. If you want one, I am accepting commissions.

What is the relationship between play and revolution? Creating fissures in reality opens up the possibility for change: change in the everyday/monotonous routine, change in assumptions about 'facts', change in the world in general. The act of "making strange" allows a new perspective for reassessment and critique. Nothing is fixed and anyone can make the environment around them better. I hope that the innocent amusement of swinging on the subway eclipses the atmosphere of suspicion and insulation that random searches (and the motto "if you see something say something") produces.

People are sitting...

2006-09-25T14:22:00.000-04:00

seen on South 5th and Bedford

Have a Seat

2006-09-18T17:41:00.000-04:00

see the video on you tube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdIHXXVGG2c

the SEATS are installed

2006-09-12T13:42:00.000-04:00

see these seats in Williamsburg...
- South 5th and Bedford (SE side)
- Grand and Bedford (SE side)
- Grand and Bedford (W side)
- Metropolitan and Bedford (SE side)
- North 3rd/4th and Bedford (SE sdie)
- North 4th/5th and Bedford (E side)
- North 6th and Berry (NE side)
- North 7th and Driggs (NW side)
- North 7th and Roebling (NW side)
- Metropolitan and Roebling (SW and SE sides)

Have a Seat!

2006-08-29T13:04:00.000-04:00

Have a Seat: Caroline Woolard’s Project at ConFlux: the annual NYC festival for contemporary psychogeography where international artists, technologists, urban adventurers and the public put investigations of everyday city life into practice on the streets. In Brooklyn, NY from September 14-17, 2006.

Have a Seat is Caroline Woolard’s gesture towards reclaiming public space. It is a platform for a new vantage point on the street. As seating bolted to no parking signs in New York, Have a Seat offers rest and contemplation in transitional spaces. Installed for ConFlux in Brooklyn from September 14-17, these temporary seats are the culmination of three years of prototypes in New York and Rhode Island.

In the city, the street should be a destination in itself. Many people use the street to get from one place to another, but it is an invaluable arena for immediate interaction. Instead of walking to a park or other zone calculated for relaxation, Have a Seat serves those people who want to pause amidst action for a direct perspective on the momentum of the city. The seat is a signal at the scale of the human body in a city of buildings that consume space and light at the expense of pedestrians who are swept forward by wind tunnels in the shadow of skyscrapers. Unlike monuments that overpower people in scale and pretension, these wooden chairs wait to be used by a single body on the street.

Have a Seat makes everyday environments strange, pushing for a moment to reevaluate the monotony of consistent routine. Robert Musil writes, in The Man Without Qualities:
“Everything we feel and do is somehow oriented “lifeward,” and the least deviation away from this direction toward something beyond is difficult or alarming. This is true even of the simple act of walking: one lifts one’s center of gravity, pushes it forward, and lets it drop again- and the slightest change, the merest hint of shrinking from this letting-oneself0drop-into-the-future, or even of stopping to wonder at it- and one can no longer stand upright! Stopping to think is dangerous.”

This project celebrates individuals actively shaping shared space and the interactions in it. It encourages pedestrians to stop and think. Although disembodied conversations (Blackberry, cell phone, etc) and narrative accompaniment (iPods) inevitably insulate individuals from this reality, I hope that a symbol of rest amidst action allows some people to create immediate connection with the street.

My hair is found on Sable Island!

2006-08-24T10:13:00.000-04:00

One braid was found on by a lone surveyor on Sable Island, 180 miles (290km) from where I released my hair in Halifax.

"Hi there my name is Susan Hamilton and i live in Dartmouth nova Scotia and i found your ribbon on the shore lines of sable Island i was there doing research for BIO(Bedford Instatute of oceanography and i was suprised to see a balloon so i checked it out and thought i would e-mail you and let you know someone has found it ....good luck "

Sable Island cannot be visited and is notorious for shipwrecks and wild horses. This mythical place is a protected island with 250 days of fog, white sand, and 150-400 wild horses. It is visited only by scientists and a preservation society and lifesaving establishment founded in 1801 to “reduce the suffering and loss of life and cargo that resulted from the frequent shipwrecks” and perhaps limit plundering. There have been over 350 recorded shipwrecks since 1583. Today, giant weather balloons are used daily to alert ships at sea like a lighthouse.

This post is related to: Five years of hair released to the sky three days before August.

Haircut

2006-08-18T16:14:00.000-04:00

see my post called "Released to the sky" to see where it went

It's on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLGIV_8o0y0

New Cards

2006-08-18T16:12:00.000-04:00

See the metal type used to set this below...

Business Card

2006-08-15T19:54:00.000-04:00

My metal type on the platen press at NSCAD.
Printed card coming soon...

Released to the Sky

2006-08-12T08:36:00.000-04:00

Collapsing Cardboard Chair

2006-08-12T08:33:00.000-04:00

Experiments with the laser cutter and cardboard from 2005.
The container quotes DeChirco...

Light moulded to my face

2006-08-12T08:24:00.000-04:00

Handblown glass at RISD in 2004.

Boundary

2006-08-12T08:21:00.000-04:00

The edges define my body and the two blues I swim between.

The space between us

2006-08-12T08:14:00.000-04:00

The hinge chair makes the interaction obvious: the mutual decision for private or public space. 2003

For Mom

2006-08-12T08:13:00.000-04:00

Light made tangible with molten beeswax, 2006.

A house balanced between two stories

2006-08-12T08:00:00.000-04:00

"In their youth, life lay ahead of them like an inexhaustible morning, full of possibilities and emptiness on all sides, but already by noon something is suddenly there that may claim to be their own life yet whose appearing is as surprising, all in all, as if a person had suddenly materialized with whom one had been corresponding for some twenty years without meeting and whom one had imagined quite differently. What is even more peculiar is that most people do not even notice it; they adopt the man who has come to them, whose life has merged with their own, whose experiences now seem to be the expression of their own qualities, and whose fate is their own reward or misfortune. Something has done to them what flypaper does to a fly, catching it now by a tiny hair, now hampering a movement, gradually enveloping it until it is covered by a thick coating that only remotely suggests its original shape.
Robert Musil
The Man Without Qualities

With the salt of my tears...

2006-08-12T07:52:00.000-04:00

In the Spring of 2006, I collected the salt of my tears.
Cedar at Lite Brite Neon blew the container I designed.

New ways to occupy the daily routine

2006-08-12T07:48:00.000-04:00

My subway seating from 2003.

Released to the Sky

2006-08-12T07:09:00.000-04:00

Five years of hair released to the sky three days before August and please tell me how you found it: ParBalloon@yahoo.com.
VIDEO COMING SOON!

Have A Seat

2006-08-12T06:59:00.000-04:00

My public seats will be installed for Conflux, Septmeber 14 to 17, near McCaig-Welles Gallery in Williamsburg (Brooklyn, NY).
http://www.confluxfestival.org/

The seats are still in use after going up for ProvFlux, June 1 to 4, in Providence, RI.
http://www.pipsworks.com/provflux2006/provflux2006.html