MASS MoCA is the North Pole of the Rural Intelligence region, and you never know what the elves in North Adams will produce next. On Saturday December 12, in the football-field sized gallery known as Building 5, the museum unveiled an installation called Gravity Is A Force To Be Reckoned With (left) by Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, which is an upside down version of a glass house by Mies van der Rohe . "Emotion and science are simultaneously inverted and logic therefore challenged," says curator Denise Markonish of the modernist house with furniture hanging from the ceiling. On the same evening, everything was hanging right side up in Pittsfield, where the Storefront Artist Project had its version of a Secret Santa party—12x12 on 12/12—where every $25 ticket you bought (and smart folks bought more than one) entitled you to choose a 12 x 12 inch work of art by a local artist as your ticket number was pulled out of a hat. "This is the best party—and best deal—of the year," said writer/real-estate agent Gladys Montgomery.
Artist Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, who created Gravity Is A Force To Be Reckoned With for MASS MoCA, with his son Gabriel; furniture designer Brian Lee with MASS MoCA junior graphic designer Liz Plahn.
Artist Pasha Radetzki and MASS MoCA curator Denise Markonish
Jennifer Trainer Thompson and Dante Burch, MASS MoCA's production manager for visual arts, on crutches after being injured during the installation of Gravity Is A Force To Be Reckoned With; Maria Siskind, Danielle Steinmann, Natasha Becker.
Williams College art professor Ed Epping with MASS MoCA director Joe Thompson.
Red Lion owner and MASS MoCA trustee Nancy Fitzpatrick with Seth & Mary Nash of BlueQ; Denise Markonish and MASS MoCA's Katherine Myers.
MASS MoCA intern Maggie Church and Ann Clarke, dean of the Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts; blogger Sarah Buttenwieser, Pittsfield gallery owner Leslie Ferrin and artist Tom Patti.
Photographer Timothy Nazzaro and MASS MoCA's Jason Wilcox who fabricated Gravity Is A Force To Be Reckoned With.
At the 12 x 12 sale, Catharine Deely hid behind her registration form; one wall of the art for sale at the Storefront Artist Project.
Real estate brokers Gladys Montogmery and Karl Volkman; artist Michael Boroniec and Berkshire Museum executive director Stuart Chase.
Photographer Jay Elling with artist Rebecca Weinmann; Pittsfield's director of cultural development Megan Whilden and Igor Greenwald
Written by
Matteline deVries-Dilling, founder of Lite Brite Neon, one of the evening's honoree of this year's Upstate Benefit adresses the gala from the Caboose's caboose.
- Karen Pearson. Courtesy Art Omi.
Olana senior vice president and landscape curatorMark Prezorski, president Sean Sawyer, The evenings honoree Kristin Gamble and New York State Assemblymember Didi Barrett.
- Oxygen House Photo
