I'm keeping this blog to share my design work and process for the Fall Production of Into the Woods at The Park School where I teach in the Visual Art Department.
Act Two is very much like Act One- however the woods get deeper, and more menacing, and our charecters get into much more trouble. In other ways much is still the same. We begin with three houses (although they have more stuff) and then see the woods which changes according to the time of day.
The Woods Late Afternoon
In order to make them feel a little deeper the second act will feature hanging vines and be slightly darker. Having met with John, Peter, Eli, and Josh earlier today this seems possible. As does the shadow puppetry.
The Woods, Midnight with fallen giant.
Those aren't dark purple hills behind the trees- that's the fallen giant and tower at the end of the show. We're going to need a puppeteer!
Alrighty. Just looked through all my notes from my last meeting with Peter and Pam. School starts in just over a week and I'm back in the saddle. I better be I meet tomorrow with Eli and Josh and will hopefully get to chat with John Trout.
When I wrote about my last meeting I mentioned how great it was to brainstorm as a group. Peter has a good sense of this world coming together in the set and he had some great ideas about how to deal with all the animals in the play (Milky White, a horse, birds, and a hen). If you've been following the tumbler of inspiration you'll see a bunch of origami animals- Peter had this great idea about transforming the flatness of the set into origami creatures. Probably nothing but the birds will actually be true origami but I think that constructing the cow horse and hen could be really fun for a group of students (set design or maybe even my sculpture class now that I've seen my class list!)
While Mr Tillman and I were on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia we had the chance to stop by a park that featured some old growth forest. Absolutely amazing AND shockingly like my drawings for the set.
It's hard to see in this image but you have to look up to see the tops of the trees. From here they're just big verticals.
Nurse log (in the forest- not the sculpture garden!) Most trees had this beautiful green moss covering many of their branches. This is the feel that I want for ACT Two. See all that growth around the base of the tree? That's what I'm thinking about for the foam bases of the trees.
Just got back from a much needed vacation in the Pacific Northwest. My enthusiasm for all places (anyone who's heard me talk about both Baltimore and Iowa can attest to that one) is strong for Washington and British Columbia. I have all kinds of stories to tell (ask me about the alpaca farm!) but I didn't expect my vacation to also be re-energizing for my work on the set.
While in Seattle I had the chance to go to the Olympic Sculpture Park. Most sculpture gardens leave me feeling a little underwhelmed (the BMA for sure) Seattle's new (or new ish I guess) park does it right showcasing all kinds of work from Richard Serra, to Alexander Calder (one of Garry Cerrone's favorites) to living artists working today like Teresita Fernandez and Mark Dion as well as a half dozen temporary ones by local artists up for just the summer.
Neukom Vivarium is a custom built greenhouse built to display a nurse log from a forest in the Pacific Northwest. A nurse log is a fallen tree that hosts new life on the forest floor as it decomposes. The old tree lives on as a rich habitat for ferns, new trees, fungi, and a whole host of little critters.
Mark Dion uses the constructs of a natural history museum and naturalists as his visual vocabulary. The Vivarium includes custom made critter tiles, displays of books, tools, glass jars filled with samples, and a docent wearing outdoor gear to answer your art and science questions.
The greenhouse itself is shielded with transparent green panels to mimic the shade of the forest. These shadows this cast on the floor were extra beautiful.
The Vivarium has a second room filled with drawers and cabinets filled with books and drawings that you can sift through. I was particularly into this drawing of a cross section of a log.
Here's a short little video of Mark Dion speaking about the piece on site.
This Roxy Paine tree is right next to the Vivarium.
This piece by Mungo Thompson was great surprise. Thompson is a sound artist from LA and his piece b/w is playing outside the pavilion and in the parking garage. It features recordings of birds slowed down so they sound like humpback whales and the sound of whales sped up so they sound like birds. Super smart. I was also a fan of the streamlined dual turntable display.
