R Bio

PERSONAL

Born: Cleveland, Ohio 1954

Hawken School, Cleveland, Ohio (H.S.)

St. Lawrence University, Canton, NY

Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio (MBA)

Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, Ohio (Cont.Ed.)

VIDEO

2003

pipes (1min:20sec)

brickroad (0:24)

Burn Meditation (4:37)

Still Life (1:41)

Today 4/9/03 (1:08)

Restoration Meditation (1:43)

Daisy Spin (2:54)

Spin Split (2:54)

Today 7/25/03 (4:02)

Stone Wave (5:25)

Weeping Holes (3:32)

Heart beat (2:22)

2004

Light (6:17)

waves (4:16)

steps (6:38)

outside Gagosian (2:29)

mountain landscape (1:46)

reflections (2:09)

ritz (3:19)

survey1 (4:28)

Breakfast Lunch Dinner (5:11)

travel (1:23)

5 O’Clock (4:01)

2005

2 + 2 (3:20)

Bell Toll (2:02)

apparition (3:00)

fountain (3:10)

Divine Geometry I (1:56)

takeoff (2:44)

race (1:44)

home (0:30)

OTHER PROJECTS

1998

Looking In – wood, marker, wire (23”x22”x28”)

1999

Connections – rubber hose, steel, wood (90”x50”x9”)

2000

Made in China – plastic construction material, thread, plastic, silk (24”x33”x7”)

Coat Bag – plastic construction material, thread, plastic, silk (24”x36”x7”)

2001

NOW Watch – silver and leather (1 3/8”x9”x1/8”)

2003

Toes – Polaroid transfer (25”x11”)

Face Cut – Polaroid transfer (16”x24”)

DISTINCTIONS

2004 - Chosen for Nesnadny + Schwartz Visiting Critics Program (MOCA Cleveland) studio visit by Dominic Molon, Associate Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

SHOWS

2004

ArtMart at SPACES Gallery, Member Show, Cleveland, Ohio

Gallery U, Buddha Project with Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio

1300 Gallery, Art Auction, Cleveland, Ohio

Gallery U, Cleveland, Ohio (one-person show)

2005

ReThinkPink, Gallery U, Cleveland, Ohio

ArtMart at SPACES Gallery, Member Show, Cleveland, Ohio

subdivision (one person show and participation), ARTcade, Cleveland, Ohio

the lab at b side, Cleveland Heights, Ohio

Playing with the Light Within (collaboration with Karen van de Vliet & Alexis Marie Savon), Gallery U, Cleveland, Ohio

2006

Artist Review Today Gallery, Cleveland, Ohio

“don’t look back: site-specific works”, Gallery Ü-Haul, Cleveland, Ohio

PUBLICATIONS

2005 – Artist Review Today, Nov/Dec Issue, Featured Artist

2006 – CoolCleveland.com, 3.15.06, Gallery Ü-Haul "don’t look back: site-specific works"

R Ferris

r*AT*r-ferris.com

Public Video Art!

The Mall Crawl Goes Avant-Garde

By JORI FINKEL

Published: April 9, 2006

Video art from the 1970's is known for being difficult, if not deliberately monotonous. It tends to dispense with the niceties of character, plot and narrative. It's the opposite of blockbuster entertainment. And it's the last thing you'd expect to see at your local mall.

Unless you are heading to One Colorado, an outdoor shopping center in downtown Pasadena, not far from Los Angeles. Encouraged by the popularity of their free summer film series, which featured James Bond movies one year and Marilyn Monroe pictures another, managers of the mall have begun screening classic video art in their courtyard.

In one piece, Bruce Nauman shuffles around a square, marked out in masking tape on the floor, stepping to the beat of a metronome. In another, John Baldessari writes out the sentence "I will not make any more boring art" again and again, until he fills up many notebook pages and 32 minutes of tape. The full sequence, featuring seven artists, runs twice every night, through June 25.

"Many museums have video art in their archives but rarely show it," said Robin Faulk, marketing director of One Colorado. "So we started thinking, Why don't we liberate this art form and make it more visible and accessible?"

The videos were chosen by the Armory Center for the Arts, and the space is a cinema-size screen mounted on a brick wall of a Crate & Barrel store, above the company logo. Also ringing the courtyard are a movie theater and the restaurants with patios.

So what do the merchants think of the avant-garde program? So far, the reviews are mixed at best. While William Wegman scores points for teaching a Weimaraner how to spell, the other videos have not been so happily received.

Employees of the Gordon Biersch brewpub have the best view of the screen, but they sound especially skeptical. "The whole thing is pretty tedious," said a host, Joel Harrison. "It's like a documentary of psychology experiments. People are wondering why they aren't showing a normal movie."

A server near him called the Nauman perimeter piece painful. "The metronome sound was torture," the waiter, Daniel Collister, said. "They had to turn down the volume."

A couple sitting in the courtyard on a recent Friday night also had a strong reaction to the Nauman work or, more precisely, the artist's technique. "His weight transfers from one leg to another weren't clean, and his back wasn't extended," said the husband, Craig Clark, a local psychologist. "As a ballroom dancer myself, I was annoyed, but I couldn't stop watching, either."

Apparently, the Baldessari was not as mesmerizing. By the time the artist finished inscribing his third, the couple were ready to leave. They walked across the courtyard to catch the 7:15 showing of "Capote."

R Ferris - Artist Statement

A limiting of the extraneous, a focusing into one aspect of everyday stimuli, informs the work to reveal transcendent material. The discipline of the camera lens and the editing of days into hours into minutes—the compression and manipulation of experience—to create and potentize the simulacra I create.

Informed by Buddhist experience and spiritual mysticism I navigate among the everyday routines, deadlines and responsibilities to capture momentary revelations. For example, the noticing of a thistle at the side of the road—its simplicity, beauty and ordinariness—reveals an opportunity for reflection and celebration.

By highlighting, focusing, distorting, isolating and juxtaposing moving images + audio I find release and expression of feelings. To labor with the sacrosanct, to scoop up the primordial and shape it, to play with the sacred, this is what I am interested in sharing.

Namaste.

R Ferris

440.256.2564

r*AT*r-ferris.com

Gallery U-Haul Review

CoolCleveland.com

3.15-3.22.06

Instant Karma
Quick reviews of recent events

Gallery Ü Haul in front of Inside Outside Gallery, Tremont, 3/10 I visited five galleries and one small film festival distributing call for entry flyers for the upcoming Hessler 2006 Poetry & Prose Annual on Friday night.

As I was driving south on W. 14th St. in Tremont past the Inside Outside Gallery there was a parked U-haul with the big door open to a video showing inside.

I parked and visited Inside Outside for a while. Per usual, Inside Outside was intriguing. I placed five flyers for the Hessler 2006 Poetry & Prose Invitational on the front desk and after I looked around I found only one flyer left. I put three more flyers down. There will be a story about this show by Douglas Max Utter in some local publication because he was taking notes about individual pieces during the opening.

Then I visited the U-haul truck outside. I was surprised to find Patsy Kline, owner of Gallery Ü in the Artcade Downtown presenting " Gallery Ü-Haul "don’t look back: site-specific works".

There were several pieces of ethereal sculptures and paintings along one wall of the well-lit cargo space. The main work was a video projected on the front wall of the cargo space in a way I was unable to determine at my passing glance. The video was a maniacal loop taken from the view out the windshield of an automobile traveling the loops of the I-271-Mayfield Road interchange in Mayfield Heights. Having gone through this interchange many times I readily recognized apartment buildings and signs as they whizzed by.

The video installation by R Ferris, oil paintings by Michael McNamara, and sculpture installation by Steven B. Smith.

Ms. Kline said that Gallery Ü in the Artcade has been replaced with a sports bar type place. I can imaging the fun Patsy will have taking art to people with Gallery Ü Haul this summer.
From Cool Cleveland contributor Lee Batdorff lbatdorff@adva.com

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