I am my own commedia mask

In honor of International Commedia Dell'arte day, I took a series of self-portraits with my ibook camera that I am titling "I am My Own Commedia Mask"

Masks? I don't need no stinkin' masks! :o)


I've attached the slideshow here. But if you can't see them because you don't get flash, visit http://bit.ly/commedia_faces for the FLICKR page.

Up and CLOWN "Closing Party" Exhibit 5/31 5-8 pm

Jim Moore's exhibit Up and Clown (talked about here) will have a closing party on Sunday May 31 from 5-8 pm. Come check it out if you get the opportunity, and may I mention-- freeroll!

SB Digital Gallery
125 East 4th St.
212 979 7239
(1 block east from Kraine Theatre)

UP and cLOWN: (Jim Moore Clown Photographic exhibit) starts May 15 (NY)

UP and CLOWN: Photographic Cacophony of Eccentric Performers

For the last 30 years, Jim Moore has been photographing all kinds of clowns, mimes, and eccentric performers. On May 15 the SB Digital Gallery will be hosting an exhibit of Jim's photographs. The exhibit will feature over 300 shots, including shows of the NY Downtown Clown Revue, where Jim is the photographer in residence.

Mr. Moore was a mime street performer during the 70’s and 80’s, he is particularly adept at capturing precise and striking moments of revelry and performance, using his insider's eye. For the last 30 years Jim has been in, on and behind the scenes at venues such as The Big Apple Circus, Bottom Line, Dixon Place and The New York Downtown Clown Revue. His diverse range of photographs include magicians, clowns, puppeteers, mimes, ventriloquists, performance artists, sword swallowers, tightrope walkers, and high wire walkers, including Philip Petit, star of last year's documentary hit Man on Wire, in which many of Jim's photographs were used.

Some of the people featured in this current exhibit are: Eric Bogosian, Paul Zaloom, Marcel Marceau, world famous juggler Francis Brunn, world famous magician Slydini, world renown clown Joel Jeske, world renown clown Gardi Hutter, and sword swallower Joey Colon, along with many others.

The show opens on Friday May 15th at SB Digital Gallery 125 East 4th St., from 6 to 9pm. Refreshments will be served. There are 300 photographs being presented, and they will be projected onto four large high definition monitors and a digital projector.
You can call the gallery for more info at 212-979-7239

For more information about Jim's work, visit his website

http://www.moorepics.com

Some images of the upcoming exhibit are below.

	Ctibor Turba
	Ambrose Martel
	Joel Jeske
	McCormack & Parenti
	Paul Zaloom

Online Circus Art Museum from the Netherlands

Pat Cashin (the curator and mastermind behind http://www.clownalley.net) asked me about a source for European circus posters. Before I had clownlink, I had found this and emailed people about it, but apparently never thought to put it up online. This is an amazing resource of thousands of images from European circuses. And a lot of them are available for sale. Looks like prices range from 7 Euros to 105 Euros, and the purchasing engine is in Dutch only. But it looks pretty straightforward. http://www.circusmuseum.nl/eng/ Enjoy!

Clown, Jokers, Pranksters Art Show -Eastchester NY

This is right up my alley! Literally.

I won't be at the opening however, as I have a wedding to attend that night-- My Own!


The Claude Gallery in Eastchester, New York is proud to present their first theme art show:
Clowns, Jokers and Pranks Art Show, with a line up of over a dozen talented artists from across the United States. The curators of this show are RT Vegas and Jerry Todd. The opening festivities will commence on Saturday April 5th 2008 from 7 p.m until 1 a.m. Refreshments will include complimentary food and drink including wine, beer and tequila. A live musician jam session will coincide with art opening starting at 9 p.m. It will be held in the basement sound studio of the Claude Gallery and be hosted by gallery owner Artie Walker.

Featured Artists:
LEX
Irmal Cannavo
Mark Fox
Keemo
Stucky
Andrew Sloan
Biagio "Gino" Civale
Jesse Sanchez
JOS-L
Jerry Todd
Nicolas Caesar
Katie Simpson
Mike A.
RT Vegas
Nick Sheridan
Dutch Von Spooge

Clowns, Jokers and Pranks Art Show at the Claude Gallery
Runs from April 5th 2008 through May 2nd 2008.

The Claude Gallery
282 Main Street
Eastchester, New York 10707

Artie Walker, owner

For more information call (914) 779-8822 or email Artie at artjam73@gmail.com

HawHaw James-- Self-portraits and visual inventiveness

HawHawJames isn't a professional clown-- he's a painter, artist, and (according to his bio) a drag queen and born again Christian. All that's unimportant, though, because I think his latest project is delightful.

He's been doing some amazing trompe l'oeil's, using his face as a canvas, and then photographing the results. These self-portraits are witty, clever, and very well done.

I've posted a few of them below-- but you should check out his whole collection on Flickr. These are portraits of his own face, and he's got a whole bunch of other interesting ones.

In clown work, we talk a lot about visual inventiveness- here it is in spades!

FLICKR: HawHawJames Self Portraits

Cirque Photos from Chile

I used to belong to fotolog which was one of the original "Download your own photo" sites. Then Flickrcame along, and fotolog was having so many technical problems, and I jumped ship. I forgot all about fotolog, until I got an email telling me I had a comment on one of my old pages there. I checked out my old site at fotolog (which is still up) and noticed that there were a lot of comments on the site, and I started surfing, and ended up finding a very interesting photo site

It's a guy from Chile who works a lot of technical stuff for Cirque du Soleil when they are in Chile. He's got lots of great photos of clowns and Cirque du Soleil artists and him. The text is all in Spanish, so I can only guess what it says, but basically it's photos of Cirque artists. It's a great behind the scenes look at some of the performers/makeup/etc. (I've cobbled together four of the photos below)



To see more of these photos, visit the website listed below: You can also catch my OLD fotolog site (which is mostly NOT clown related) at the link listed below:

CATCH-SOLEIL: http://www.fotolog.com/catch_soleil

MY OLD SITE: http://www.fotolog.com/kafclown

Clowns Talk about Clowning- YouTube Videos

Jim Moore, the variety arts photographer who has probably photographed more clowns than anybody in the history of photography, has been doing something new-- he's been videotaping clowns.

If you check out his YouTube videos (URL below), he's putting up interviews with performers as they talk about their work, how they create their work, and even why they create their work.

Jim's got tons of archival stuff, so who knows what else he's got in his archives.

Recently he posted an interview with Keith Nelson of the Bindlestiff's, and he's also got David Engel and Hilary Chaplain talking about creating a new act for David's character El Magnifico.


HILARY CHAPLAIN & DAVID ENGEL VIDEO
I suggest subscribing to his YouTube feed on the page, or checking in there pretty often to see what rare and interesting material he surfaces. He'll also be interviewing somebody from the NY Downtown Clown Revue every month, where he remains the official staff photographer)

(And speaking of subscribing, thanks to the ever more efficient Pat Cashin of Clownalley.net for the link to Keith's interview. I knew Jim was putting these videos together, but didn't think to mention them until I saw Pat's post. He beats me to the punch a lot in posting stuff.) If you are not RSS'ing Clownalley.net, you should be!

Jim's Youtube page: http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=jm5star&p=r

Pat Cashin's Clown Alley: www.clownalley.net

Acme Clown Art Exhibit- 2001

In 2001, I became the Clown Laureate of Greenbelt Maryland. As part of my work there, I curated a clown art exhibit, that featured over 50 pieces of artwork. I' ve assembled some samples on a web page, and recently moved it to my own site:

http://www.acmeclown.com/clownartexhibit/

The piece to the left is "Dunk the Clown" by artist Frank Wu

Enjoy the artwork!

More about the Greenbelt residency:
http://www.acmeclown.com/greenbelt/

Who Put the B in Ballyhoo?

Carlyn Beccia is an illustrator and artist who is inspired by the world of the circus and clowns. She has been painting and performing various acts of circus baboonery since she was a wee young girl. She first tested her own creativity in the human cannonball act by projecting her sister across the room. Her sister had to have stitches, but Carlyn knew she was destined for circus stardom.

Carlyn attended the University of Massachusetts on a 4-year art scholarship and graduated in 1995. She has been awarded a number of awards from the Society of Children's Writers & Illustrators. She lives in Lynnfield, MA with two ferocious cats and her famous Strongman husband.

Last year she wrote a fantastically illustrated book called "Who Put the B in Ballyhoo", which is an ABC book that features the circus and the sideshow. Each of the illustrations is beautifully well done, and is clever and witty. They run the gamut from tigers to acrobats to , yes, a flea circus!


This is definitely a book worth having.

Carlyn has a website for the book http://www.whoballyhoo.com which features interactive games, a make your own circus poster game, and info about author visits.

She has a couple of other sites that are also circus oriented (listed below) In addition to being an illustrator, she is a crack web designer.

If you'd like to purchase the book, get it at Amazon.com



To find out about more about Carlyn's work, visit the websites listed below:

http://www.carlynbeccia.com
http://www.circusballyhoo.blogspot.com/
http://www.circusco.com

Portrait of a Clown as a Young Man (okay, not so young)

I sat for a portrait with Bill Wadman, a photographer working on a 365 day project. Each day he takes a portrait of a different person, and posts it. It might be a book or a calendar, or a something one day. I'm 11/02. (and the rest of the photos are even more amazing!) He's been doing this project for a whole year!

It was a lot of fun to be photographed for this purpose. I generally love getting my photo taken, and like most clowns, have been photographed thousands of times (and am probably on refrigerators and flickr accounts all over the country)

Bill was really great to work with, and he has a great eye. So much of being a good photographer is catching someone in the act of being themselves. (and hopefully fabulous)
So here's the photo that he ended up choosing of me. And then a gallery of 11 others that he took that were possibles. (our photo shoot ended up with over 100 shots-- but to get eleven that were print inclusive worthy is amazing.)

What can I say, I give good photo!

If you like the photo, please click the image to see Bill's page, and comment on it there!

	All photos by Bill Wadman for his project 365 portraits

Festival Photos-- Clown Parade & Pie Fight

Searching flickr is fun! I found this set of photographs from the opening day of Clown Festival festivities (can you have festival festivities? Or is that redundant? Aren't all festival activities, by their definition, both festive, and festivities?)

Anyway, these photographs are from the opening day, and include the Clown Parade and the Pie Fight. All these photos are by Allegra Mynatt, and I highly recommend viewing her flickr site.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

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Festival Photos-- Clown Olympics

I was trying to find some photos of the Clown Festival on Flickr, and I found this amazing set of photographs by a photographer named Kurt Dietrich.

They are of the Clown Olympics, and although I wasn't able to be there, they give a pretty good feeling of some of the great and crazy wackiness that must have gone on.


If you like these photos, you should check out his flickr page. He's a really great photographer, and not just about clown stuff. He's got a bunch of great sets of photographs. Highly recommended.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.


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Art and Fear: an object lesson

A friend of mine sent me this quote from this book, and I thought it was so fabulous I wanted to make sure to share it.

As I'm teaching clowning this semester, this is particularly a propos. A lot of students will ask me if they are getting an exercise right or not, if they are doing it properly. With clowning, as with most forms of artwork, there is no one right answer-- there are only better answers. And there are always better answers. Your work could always be better, stronger, more grounded, more focused. The merry-go-round doesn't stop.

In the arts, there's much more to be gained from trying something out than to theorize about something.

"The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the "quantity" group: fifty pounds of pots rated an "A", forty pounds a "B", and so on. Those being graded on "quality", however, needed to produce only one pot--albeit a perfect one--to get an "A".

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work--and learning from their mistakes--the "quality" group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay."

-from Art & Fear: Observations On The Perils (And Rewards) of Artmaking,
by David Bayles & Ted Orland

Jim Moore Photo Exhibition of the Twin Towers Tightrope Walk

In 1974, mime and photographer Jim Moore became the right-hand-man for aerialist Philippe Petit during the secret preparations and daring guerilla tightrope walk between the two World Trade Center Towers.

Thirty three years later, Jim is presenting his photographs of the event in oversized 50" x 35" Iris prints, including shots titled On the edge of the abyss, A Helicopter's View, 110 floors, and more. The shots reveal the inner workings of the audacious preparations, including climbing and rigging of the World Trade Towers, all done in complete secrecy.

The exhibit will run October 16- November 4 at the Jalopy Theatre and School of Music, 315 Columbia St, Red Hook, Brooklyn. An opening reception is planned for Wednesday October 17 from 6-9 pm.

There is no word yet if there will be a commemorative tightrope walk at the reception.

For more information about the tightrope walk, visit the wikipedia article on the subject: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Petit

Cindy Sherman's Clown Portraits

At the end of the 1990's, a prominent art magazine chose photographer Cindy Sherman as one of the twenty-five most influential artists of the twentieth century.
Cindy has photographed a number of subjects, using a "Role portrait" approach to astonish and amaze her audiences.

Starting somewhere in 2002, she started photographing the subject of this blog: clowns. 'I came to clowns,' she says, 'to show the complex emotional abysses of a painted smile.'


Sherman seems to be going for extremes, either very sad, very happy, or a little scary. Nevertheless, these clown portraits (with digitally manipulated backgrounds) have become "fine art" and have been exhibited at galleries around the world.


I don't recognize any of the clowns, and am not sure if she used models or actual clowns to do her work. Probably Pat Cashin will come by (or somebody else) and identify anybody that they know.

Metro Pictures Gallery has an excellent online exhibition of the photos. To view more of the photos, visit their website listed below:

METRO PICTURES ONLINE EXHIBITION: Cindy Sherman's Clowns

AN ARTICLE ABOUT THE EXHIBIT: Courtesy of findarticles.com

The Clown In Jazz by Henri Matisse

One of Matisse's best known works, Jazz was a book created by Henri Matisse when he was recovering from a serious operation. The theme of the book is circus, and many of the images (Cut outs that are brightly colored and then re-printed) are from the circus.

A beautiful print of The Clown in Jazz is available through ArtInAClick. See the image blelow.

The Clown from Jazz by Henri Matisse "Framed Size: 31in. x 39in. Frame Description: 1.5in. Matte black finish - Keywords: Color, curvilinear, figures, clowns, Figure, Geometric, art, prints, posters"

Adam Gertsacov/ Acme Clown Company

THE ACME CLOWN COMPANY Uses Popular Theatrical Traditions To Amaze, Educate, And Entertain Audiences Of All Ages.

Specialities include puppetry, clowning, commedia dell'arte, circus skills, magic, melodrama, masks, and method acting.

They perform shows, teach workshops and residencies, and coach and direct physical comedy and clown routines.

The boss clown of the Acme Clown Company is Adam Gertsacov (the author of this blog).

Adam is the most educated clown in America (barring certain elected officials.) He wears many hats, including those of a professional clown, an author and publisher, a P.T. Barnum impersonator, a flea circus impresario,and the esteemed hat of the Clown Laureate of Greenbelt, Maryland. Adam is the Festival Director for Bright Night Providence.

If you'd like to find out more about Adam's work, please visit his websites listed below:

Clown Shows and Classes http://www.acmeclown.com
An Authentic Victorian Flea Circus http://www.trainedfleas.com
P.T. Barnum Impersonation Show http://www.ptbarnum.org
House Renovation Blog About Yonkers http://www.yonked.com
Bright Night Providence http://www.brightnight.org