This past weekend saw the opening of one of the most impressive displays of art Albany has ever seen, HEAVY.

The event lived up to its name, completely transforming St. Joseph’s (and the surrounding neighborhood, even!) into an art playground.

Pal Sébastien Barré covered all kinds of bases with this blog post and photo set from HEAVY.

Here are a few images from the weekend that don’t necessarily overlap with some of the other images I’ve seen; including a few from the Dwell/OneUnit “Fireflies and Night Skies” room (that you had to look to find…) and a few outside shots.

As far as music goes, I feel lucky to have been able to perform a sixty minute improvisation featuring looped samples, vocals and affected mandolin. There were two moments during that time where I felt terribly connected to the space, despite being completely insular and uncommunicative with beings in the room.

If you had to miss the opening weekend; well, you’re in luck! It was announced yesterday that HEAVY will once again be open starting this Friday (7/30) at 5PM (again on Saturday as well) with no less than 10 new installations/artists collaborating on more work!

I’m happy to announce that I’ll be performing a similar set of drone/improvisation on Friday along with Sean Rowe and Pete Edwards. Much more music to be added…

The lovely folks at The Hidden City have an amazing set of photos from last night’s heARTS aligned event in Cohoes, N.Y. The above image is the card designed by Jason Antonelli that represented the song “Forest & Dive“.

Thanks to Matt Durfee for putting on such a rad event!

Luckily, I was able to call on some friends a mere three hours north of here. Tick Tick is a group of artists and musicians/music lovers from the Burlington, Vermont area that have banded together to make their own world sparkle, shine and… tick. Throughout the last two years, Tick Tick has put on over 100 shows and events in their area, and often created screened posters and t-shirts to promote these happenings. Read Burlington alt-weekly 7Days’ recent excellent feature on the group.

With the recent re-launch of the Tick Tick website, one can witness upcoming events, past parties, purchase limited edition signed posters, t-shirts and much more. The idea to use Tick Tick for the Horse Feathers posters came when the “printing” section of their site had prices for flatstock poster printing AND they happened to be bringing Horse Feathers up to Burlington for a very special Halloween show. (I’ve since been asked to join that bill — amazing!) A quick email last week to former co-worker and current Tick Tick business manager (and damned fine artist / musician in his own right) Graham Keegan proved that the idea to make a diptych poster series for the 10/29 and 10/31 shows was an excellent and doable idea. Five days later (including overnight shipping yesterday) and I have fifty gorgeous prints in my hands.

The image above slightly represents the image in this two screen print, but seeing it live in-person reveals much more detail and subtlety especially in the spooky buildings and bird head. You’ll have to see it yourself (ahem, tickets are available now)!

I am extremely pleased with Tick Tick’s expedient, efficient and excellent work. Please note that they will silk-screen any design, not only their own designs.

Stay tuned for the 10/31 half of the diptych as it is revealed…

The Parallelaverse situation is a series of fifty-five paintings that Scott turned out on to canvas in January and February of this year. In order to fund the amount of time it would take for him to coax the work in his head into the physical world, he held a “Scribblethon” where he drew for 24 hours straight at different coffeeshops, bars and restaurants in the Northampton, MA area. Read posts from MassLive about it here and here. Pledged per hour donations were accepted in advance and for those folks who supported, he offered first cracks at purchasing the “Parallelaverse” paintings.

In perusing the Parallelaverse Picasa Gallery, one can note that many of the paintings are sold already. Although there is barely a descriptor or explanation about the story behind these heroes and villains one can only guess the adventures and hijinx that will occur when the storytelling begins. Some guesses include a love or perhaps familial bond between “Yearling” and “Hayseed” which were required to be bought together and have a curious gaze side-by-side, along with the rivalry between “Monument” and arch-nemesis “Darkitekt“.

If that isn’t enough, a Café Press site was recently launched featuring drawings from the Scribblethon on many different kinds of items such as wall clocks, steins, thongs, and much much more. Visit the Throw Thermal Pod for adults and the Throw Thermal Kid for children.

Mercat will bring their folk/noir/blues/circus music to the Amrose & Sable Gallery tomorrow night (Thursday, 6/11). Sharing the night with whiz-pop auteurs Scientific Maps, Mercat are on a brief tour that will circle them ’round to Ohio and back through the weekend.

Of note within the tangled mass of accordions, jingles, breathy vocals, fiddles, and trouble is the strong arm of cellist Karen Codd, who Albany old-schoolers will remember as former member of knotworking and The Kamikaze Hearts. Since leaving Albany for NYC a few years back, she has firmly ensconced herself in the art and music world, playing in no less than three bands at one time and handling stints at the Guggenheim and currently at Capricious Magazine. I am looking forward to hearing what these ladies have cooked up, piqued by the three songs from their new album “Companion Animal” that are posted on their MySpace page.

( Bonus: check out this video posted by the folks at the Capitol District Federation of Ideas of Scientific Maps playing a song called “Construction Begins”. Scroll forward to the one minute mark for the song to witness some excellent harmonizing by Sci Mappers Donna Baird and Aaron Smith. Rad! The song will be featured on “Brontosaurus : Human” a benefit compliation CD for CDFI released by The Rev Records. Excellent!)

We Are Architects – Building One – Blanket Fort City from We Are Architects on Vimeo.