Joan Harrison: Sea & Sky [204]

The artist, curator and writer Joan Harrison opens June with art and literature.  Joan Harrison curated the Ray Johnson and ABAD exhibition at CW Post College on Long Island in 2011. 

Joan’s pastels of the sea and the sky will be on view at the Glen Cove Yacht Clulb starting Saturday June 9.  Her book, Locust Valley, will also be available for sale.  See Joan’s web site here: http://joanharrison.com/

Joan Harrison: Tideline [134]

Joan Harrison, who co-curated the Ray Johnson & A Book About Death exhibition at CW Post, exhibits her immense Tideline collage piece at the Hillwood Art Museum, on Long Island, until December 16, 2010.

The piece, writes Joan, is 26 feet long.

See Joan Harrison's web site: http://www.joanharrison.com/

Ray Johnson & A Book About Death [128]

Ray Johnson/A Book About Death Opening from William Evertson on Vimeo.

Ray Johnson & A Book About Death Opening Night SAL Gallery CW Post [124]

The opening night of Ray Johnson & A Book About Death at CW Post was a sensational coming together of more than 1000 artist works and crowds that came, saw and performed. 

Curated by Joan Harrison, LuAnn Palazzo (photo, above), and Constance Sloggatt Wolf, the exhibition focused on Ray Johnson's original A Book About Death, and featured a dozen or so original photographs of Ray Johnson by Joan Harrison.

The NYC works, first exhibited at the Emily Harvey Foundation more than a year ago in September 2009, were shown along with almost 500 works mailed in from all over the world.  New posters were produced, as well as a full slate of performances.  (Photo below left; see full the program, here).

Artists dressed up, or in some cases, took off their clothes. A tableaux vivant of a mother and child (actually, a large adolescent) performed quietly within the exhibition space.  Outside, artist Honey Millmann protested ("Nothing!  I'm protesting nothing!" she said), and then switched to proposing something different with a sign that said "ABAD IDEA."  A man showed up with a used coffin (for sale: "Only used once."), while most came dressed like the living dead, the exhibition opening just days after Halloween.  "It's the Night Of The Living Fluxus," someone explained.  

Other artists wore photocopies of Ray Johnson works, like Mark Bloch (below right), while William Evertson produced a 15 minute shadow theater piece entitled "Seeking Kali." (See the video of the performance here).

There are many more photos of the exhibition on the dedicated site for the show, as well as a full catalog of the exhibition works and several press articles.  Click here to view.

Joan Harrison, Constance Sloggatt Wolf and LuAnn Palazzo, curators, offer this statement about the exhibition: 

Ray Johnson was all about creative connection. Today, 15 years after his death, the bonds of his creative legacy and the bonds of friendship here at C. W. Post are still strong and defined by a sense of shared creative history and purpose. The evidence is plain to see through this exhibition.

Many of the artists taking part in this exhibition knew Ray Johnson personally or were correspondents of his, while others are alumni, faculty and students of the university. Even more are part of a creative global network who have been inspired by Ray’s work and moved by the universal theme to answer the call to communicate.

We would like to thank Matthew Rose, the father of the original ABAD Project in 2009, and all those at the C.W. Post Campus of Long Island University who helped make this exhibition possible. Our special thanks go to Dean Benjamin Moore of the School of Visual and Performing Arts, who, when approached with the idea said simply, “Do it!” 

Most of all, we feel deeply grateful to our international roster of contributing artists for sharing their vision, their thoughts, their humor and their remembrances of loved ones lost. The outpouring of love and dedication to this project, and to this show in particular, has been quite literally overwhelming.

Art is a celebration of life lived to its fullest and to quote poet W. H Auden, “Art is our chief means of breaking bread with the dead.”

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Viv Maudlin Visits Ray Johnson And A Book About Death At CW Post [123]

The spectacular Viv Maudlin gives a video tour of the Ray Johnson And A Book About Death exhibition at CW Post.

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Ray Johnson & A Book About Death : Angela Ferrara Poster [100]

Angela Ferrara produced this beautiful poster for the Ray Johnson And A Book About Death exhibition at CW Post, Long Island University. Works are now being accepted.  Please see: RJAABAD.

Download the poster free here: Angela Ferrara Poster.

Please use the buttons below to blog about this exhibition and artist call.

LuAnn Palazzo Poster & Joan Harrison Invitation: Ray Johnson And A Book About Death At CW Post [92]

The series of exhibitions for A Book About Death has generated nearly two dozen posters, some plucked from the original postcard pieces to the New York City exhibition, and others created by talented artists specifically for subsequent shows.

The artists who have designed posters for the show include: Angela Ferrara, Louise Millmann, Robert Gilmer, April Gornick, Julia Hoffmann, Robert Mars, Cecil Touchon, Caterina Verde, Mark Bloch, Joan Harrison, Ben Elmer, Bibiana Maltos, David Rager, Matthew Rose, Rob White, Osiris Hertz, Keith Buchholz, Jean-Pierre Machain and Nadine Bouler.

Each poster is offered free as a downloadable PDF to any and all, and they serve as vivid and historical markers in the global rolling out of the project. 

Co-curator of the CW Post exhibition of Ray Johnson and A Book About Death, LuAnn Palazzo created the first poster for this fall exhibition.

The artist call for CW Post, well underway, is the first that directly involves Ray Johnson's name and refers to his elegant and simple "book" A Book About Death.  Here, a generous handful of Xerox copies made from drawings and texts, were sent through the mails in loose format.  Those pieces will be on view at The SAL Gallery, C. W. Post College, Brookville, New York.  October 31 - November 5, 2010.


Launched by Joan Harrison, artist and friend of Ray Johnson who made dozens of photographs of the late artist, the CW Post exhibition has already attracted enormous local attention.  Ray Johnson frequented the CW Post campus and was very well known to literally thousands of people on Long Island.  Joan Harrison designed the invitation to the exhibition, right, using her photographs of Ray Johnson taken over the years they were neighbors on Long Island. 

Down load LuAnn Palazzo's poster for Ray Johnson and A Book About Death.

RAY JOHNSON & A BOOK ABOUT DEATH: CW POST EXHIBITION [90]

 An Open Call to Artists to Contribute to RAY JOHNSON & A BOOK ABOUT DEATH (ABAD)
This new ABAD show will open in the SAL Art Gallery at the CW Post Campus of Long Island University in Brookville, NY, and run October 31 to November 4, 2010. Submit one 4"x 6" artwork in any media on the theme of death/life. 

Please include the words “A BOOK ABOUT DEATH” on the front and your name and your e-mail address/website URL on the back. The work may be sent in an envelope for protection or mailed as a postcard. All submitted work will become part of a permanent Ray Johnson ABAD Archive. It will not be returned.

You must submit both a physical work and a virtual one to be part of the project. Every submitted piece will be posted to theexhibition blog.

Submission Deadline: October 15, 2010

Mail 4" x 6" artwork/card to:
Prof. Joan Harrison
Art Department
C.W. Post Campus, LIU
720 Northern Boulevard
Brookville, NY 11548
United States of America

Submit a 4x6 jpg of the image with your name and e-mail and or web URL to: LuAnn Palazzo at DesignDivaNY@gmail.com

“A BOOK ABOUT DEATH” (ABAD) is an unbound, un-paginated book produced by artists worldwide. The original project was conceived by Matthew Rose who invited artists to contribute 500 identical postcards on any aspect of the theme of death. That show took place at the Emily Harvey Foundation Gallery in NYC in September 2009. The exhibition was a tremendous success, attracting hundreds of visitors to the Soho gallery.

Since then, the ABAD project has taken on a remarkable life. It continues to travel the world, appearing in museums and galleries across the US and in Brazil, Belgium, Croatia, Italy, Sarajevo, and the United Kingdom. A set of cards is also in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art in NYC, the MoMA Wales and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. 

The project includes work from artists as famous as Yoko Ono as well as lesser known talents. The pages are of every kind of design imaginable, from personal and metaphysical to conceptual and abstract. The ABAD project has forged many new friendships among artists across the globe and has even spawned a handmade artists' magazine named Abalcabal.

WHAT IS DIFFERENT ABOUT THIS SHOW?
“RAY JOHNSON AND A BOOK ABOUT DEATH” is a new exhibition that will, for the first time, feature a copy of the original 1955 ABAD project by American artist Ray Johnson (1927-1995)–the inspiration for this entire series of exhibitions. It will set the stage for all 480 cards from the original Emily Harvey Gallery exhibit together with new submissions created especially for this show.

Ray Johnson’s unbound book of the same title was mailed to his New York Correspondence School students and included pages in his idiosyncratic style that were funny, sad and ironic “one-page essays” on death.

WHY IS THIS EXHIBIT HAPPENING AT C.W. POST CAMPUS of LIU?
Ray Johnson lived nearby in Locust Valley and was a frequent visitor to Hillwood Art Museum. He was a good friend of many artists who teach and work here and did several performance works on campus.

Several art alumni of Long Island University were contributors to the original New York ABAD project and would like other artists to become part of the rich worldwide art community that has grown up around the project.

RAY JOHNSON & A BOOK ABOUT DEATH: CW POST EXHIBITION ARTIST CALL.