tamara albaitis currently the work video info press  

Artist Residency Awarded at Recology : June 2012 - September 2012

A 4-month artist residency based around the act/art of recycling.

recology logoThe Artist in Residence Program at Recology San Francisco is a unique art and education program that provides Bay Area artists with access to discarded materials, a stipend, and a large studio space at the Recology Solid Waste Transfer and Recycling Center. By supporting artists who work with recycled materials, Recology hopes to encourage people to conserve natural resources and promote new ways of thinking about art and the environment.

Since 1990, over eighty-five professional artists and twenty student artists have completed residencies at this one-of-a-kind program and have made art from discarded materials. The studio is located at the San Francisco Solid Waste Transfer and Recycling Center (Recology San Francisco), a 47-acre facility that includes the garbage transfer station (where garbage goes before being sent to landfill), the Household Hazardous Waste Facility, the Organics Annex, the Public Disposal and Recycling Area ("The Dump"), and other recycling areas. The facility, which is located west of Highway 101 near Candlestick Park, also is home to a three-acre sculpture garden containing work by former artists-in-residence.

During their residencies, artists have scavenging privileges and 24-hour access to the company's well-equipped art studio. Artists speak to elementary school classes and adult tour groups about the experience of working with recycled materials. At the conclusion of their residency, Recology hosts a two-day public exhibition and reception for the artists featuring the artwork made during their residency. When the residency ends, artists contribute artwork to the program's permanent collection and these pieces continue to be shown in off-site exhibitions that promote recycling and reuse.



picture of the Clark Center at Stanford University

23,964 piles of rice - 7 piles of pollen - 2,520 pounds of rice used laid out over 8,757 square feet

Wolfgang Laib Installation

'Unlimited Ocean' Sullivan Gallery, Chicago, IL

Tamara Albaitis, along with 13 other artists were selected to assist world-renoun installation artist Wolfgang Laib in installing one of his most ambitious works to date.

Click here for more information.

Tamara Albaitis installing Unlimited Ocean by Wolfgang Laib


Tamara Albaitis - Wins Eureka Fellowship
for Visual Art
2011 - 2013 grant cycle

Press Release: January 7th, 2010

Twelve Bay Area artists will receive a Eureka Fellowship, the largest cash prize for individual artists in the Bay Area, sponsored by the Fleishhacker Foundation. Designed to help artists continue making work by supporting more uninterrupted creative time, these prestigious $25,000 awards, based solely on artistic merit evidenced by previous work, are not restricted to specific projects.

This round's Fellowship recipients include Los Altos artist Linda Gass, Oakland artist Monica Canilao, San Francisco artists Tamara Albaitis, Mauricio Ancalmo, David Gurman, Taraneh Hemami, Lynn Hershman Leesom, Colter Jacobsen, Yoon Lee, Jennifer Locke, and Sean McFarland, and San Jose artist Ema Harris-Sintamarian (see attached bios). This award cycle covers three years, with awards given to four of the twelve artists per year in 2011, 2012, and 2013. The prize stipulates that the artists remain in the Bay Area during the year of their award.

One hundred and thirty-seven artists applied for the Fellowships from a candidate pool created by fifty-three local nonprofit visual arts organizations that submitted nominations. The nominated artists represent a wide range of the region's artistic talent, with work reflecting a broad cultural and stylistic variety. Nominees were limited to working artists, 25 years or older, who reside in one of eight Bay Area counties (San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Marin, and Sonoma).


5-minute work sample that won her the award

The Eureka Fellowships have recognized artistic excellence since 1986. In addition to providing cash support, the artists' works have been exhibited at the San Jose Museum of Art, Berkeley Art Museum, and the San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art.

A panel of three nationally known arts professionals judged the artists' works, including Doryun Chong, Associate Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Elyse Gonzales, Curator of Exhibitions at the University Art Museum, UC Santa Barbara, and Abina Manning, Executive Director of the Video Data Bank, Chicago. The panel reviewed the sample work without information as to the artists' identity or professional history. The panel met in November 2010 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.



picture of the Clark Center at Stanford University

- Clark Center at Stanford University, California -

 

screen shot of ForeverCloud

- 140 X 140 forevercloud by Peter Shaw -

"Abstract Parallels and Beyond the App"
Art + Science + Technology Performance
The unveiling of 'forevercloud'

Presentation: Tuesday, May 24, 2011 – 6pm
Reception afterwards from 6:45pm - 7:45pm

A collaboration with visual artist Peter Shaw, sound artist Tamara Albaitis and the prestigious Pande Labs at Stanford University.

To learn more about the Pande Labs, protein folding and what you can do to support this ground-breaking work, please click here.

" ..."forevercloud" 2010 is a New Media Art work that is an Art and Technology and Science collaboration supporting a "distributed cloud computing program that performs computations for cures of cancer, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's disease. This New Media Abstraction work is the premiere medium of "1000 California Cloud" created by Peter Shaw, a "shared global experience", and changes infinitely. This Art installation "visually impacts with cool beauty that is evanescent, soothing and meditative in its engagement", and concurrently drives a computational program in the cutting edge science of protein folding for curing these diseases. The Art work is created as an "absolute aesthetic point of view" from the established traditions of Art in the History of Art." - Peter Shaw

The sound for “forevercloud” begins with scientifically proven evidence that the deliberate use of certain sounds evokes healing responses within the body. Through the use of Tibetan Singing Bowls, Tuning Forks and other audio/musicial devices she has composed healing 'soundings' that are paired up with Peter Shaw's imagery. The audio and visual collaboration is now the facade for the work being done at the Pande Labs pertaining to Protein Folding. This facade will be accessable to anyone who participates with the "cloud" application through the folding@home website. Participants will get the benefits of visual relaxation, sonic healing while their computer's 'brain power' is utilized to heal major diseases within our time.

Tamara has composed sonic arrangements with specific reparative focus to the body and mind. She says: “They're working on many different levels... encouraging mind/body equilibrium... many healing vibrations within them are inaudible to our normal hearing. They are however, very audible to our subtle bodies and to the core fabric of our cells...” “...the timbres between the focused areas within the body can be very close in nature - since everything is interconnected...”


Sonic Animal:
a collaboration with Karl Cronin

Performing interconnectivity -
Click HERE to see and hear more of Sonic Animal.

Sonic Animal explores speciation in the age of technology. Fifteen wearable sound sculptures will be activated in live installations at venues including corporate, educational, contemporary art and industrial spaces. The sculptures will be adapted across the series in response to the behaviors exhibited by the performers wearing them. Each performer’s journey, expressing their tasks in relationship to their acoustic environment, highlights questions about our own relationship to maintaining balance in a technology-saturated world. Taken as either a metaphor for an augmented form of evolution or an analysis of a simple factory product’s development, we are juxtaposing organic development and manufactured development in order to challenge audiences to define for themselves where they draw the line between organic and inorganic. Sonic Animal is grounded in a modern day reality of body meeting technology, sparking subjective questioning of one’s own personal identity and social evolution.


Footage provided by Filmfool Studios, San Francisco
Click here for more information about Sonic Animal.