Matt Bua's recent work takes form in large–scale elements in architecture that are both functional and fantastical. These spaces are created out of found objects and other sustainable resources. Bua’s present project is the construction of small–scale examples of vernacular, experimental, and visionary architecture on a piece of land in Catskill NY. Each structure focuses on specific themes and usages that are integrated into the surrounding community. The land obtained for this project contains the peak of Vedder Mountain, which is named after Jessie Van Vechten Vedder, New York State’s first female historian, and author of the History of Greene County. A Vedder Mountain Summit house is in the works.
Bua earned a BFA at East Carolina University, NC. For the past 15 years, Matt Bua has worked collaboratively on public installations that actively engage the community in an elastic process that blurs the line between fact and fiction, intuitive and deductive, order and chaos. Past projects include a parasitic museum attached to the backside of the Brooklyn Museum; a PS1/MOMA sponsored East River rafting expedition that investigates some of Roosevelt Island’s anomalies; a purge of the jumbled memories from an old Colonel’s House on Governor's Island for Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; and raising sunken Scottish fishing boats from the dead for Grizdale Arts in the Lake District of England. Cribs to Cribbage, which opened Spring 2009 at Mass MOCA includes an oversized crib that has morphed its way out of the 2nd floor gallery window to the ground below and has formed an experimental structure that will introduce the game of Architectural Cribbage in which others can join.
"The first time it rained while I sat inside my Dresser fort, I remained dry. I knew it was a good thing."
(Matt Bua)
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| Matt Bua, "The Henry Hudson Mutiny Memorial Drive–thru Kiosk" |
Matt Bua’s places to come in out of the rain
Posted by Paul Smart
"Museo Catamount" de Matt Bua en el puente de la calle del oeste en Catskill.
Matt Bua – the Catskill creative force who built the two-story wooden cat alongside one of his adopted village’s main entrance roads, has a new book on imaginary architecture receiving kudos, and is organizing a 105th birthday celebration for the late boxing legend of a trainer, Cus D’Amato – says that when he was starting out as a collaborative visual/music/transmission artist in the 1990s, the term that he and his Williamsburg-based crowd used to describe their aesthetic was “crapsmanship.”
“New York was a great place to run around in with your head cut off,” he says, describing how his partner (and mother of his one-year-old child) always used to ask him to slow down while walking the streets of Brooklyn, Queens, lower Manhattan or wherever his next collaborative creative work was arising. “I had no interest in the gallery world; music was my number-one thing, and I’d be playing in seven bands at once… We were the second wave to hit Williamsburg, and we just plain kept busy coming up with stuff to do.”
Bua moved to Catskill about six years ago, after working on a project at Wave Farm, the free103point9 rural space that has since spawned the new WGXC-FM community radio project based in Catskill and Hudson – for which Bua serves as a council member and producer, and built the station’s wooden Catskill studio. He grew up in Wilmington, North Carolina, where David Lynch shot his films Blue Velvet and Firestarter. His Dad, a teacher, liked to paint, shoot wedding photographs and build things. His mother has since become a dance teacher.
“I was around 10 when I pulled an old dresser outside and put a piece of plywood over it and realized I had a place I could hang out in and stay dry when it rained,” he recalls, talking about the genesis of what has become his key artform: the building of crazy temporary structures on an improvised, no-budget basis. “I figured that was a great thing to have created…and later I envisioned a little house park, which I made a drawing of, which would be made up of every type of building one could imagine, made small and non-threatening.”
Bua says that 1996 drawing and idea came back 11 years later, when he picked up a copy of the Pennysaver while he was spending time at the Catskill Center’s Platte Clove residency, following his stint at Wave Farm building a sound sculpture out of an old trailer, and decided to put in a “ridiculously low bid” on a piece of property adjacent to power lines on the outskirts of Catskill. “There was a shack, some junk on the site,” he says, looking back. “I brought up all these materials I had accumulated building things in the City, and made myself a cabin I could live in over the winter.”
Bua, you should realize by now, is hypercreative, fast-thinking and acting, and one of a new type of artist whose key motivation comes from the thrill of improvisation. He moved up from North Carolina in 1996 with his eye on the downtown music world of the time, intent on collaborating with the likes of Fred Frith and Bill Laswell. With luck, he happened into a regular gig at the Knitting Factory – the hotbed for such music at the time – and had a song picked up by guitar wunderkind Marc Ribot. For money he worked as a bike messenger, until he found work as an art mover, which he did three days a week for years.
For fun, he started making crazy flyers for bands. Slightly psychedelic, awesomely complex and chimeric in design and wording (“dense and unreadable” is how Bua likes to describe them), they fostered a following of sorts. Meanwhile he was collecting stuff off the streets and building structures in his Brooklyn loft, including whole inner cave/villages made from packing crates.
“I started collaborating with Jesse Berkowitz, doing 12 projects a year in public spaces that included a museum space on Governor’s Island that was like some building which had spilled its guts out; or a whole history of Roosevelt Island,” he recalls. Later collaborations included a “parasitic museum” attached to the rear of the Brooklyn Museum; a stage construction for a Richard Foreman Ontological Theater production; a clubhouse made of junk at the Socrates Sculpture Park along the East River in Queens; a soundproof crate world and later “space station” moved out to Islip, Long Island; an observatory; and eventually a mass of construction alongside the massive MassMoCA factory buildings in North Adams, Massachusetts.
“I just kept making things you could hide out in and not get wet in when it rained,” Bua summarizes. “We’d get given studio spaces, build in them and then have to take out every screw we’d put in and move it on somewhere. We were constantly getting invited and uninvited, working with places that would let us do things on our own without interfering…”
Was it easy for Bua to move his worlds upstate? “It’s cool for a while to destroy what you’re making,” he replies, “but then you want to take longer building them, do a bit more. I needed some place to keep my materials, my stuff.”
We are sitting in the WGXC studio that Bua has built, complete with cardboard mixing boards and doodle reproductions of great album covers, when a new project arises: some calls about the upcoming D’Amato event (see page 14 of this week’s Almanac for more information). Bua explains that it’s part of his emphasis on community-building in his new town, which has allowed him to build local fun spots (and take them down). There’s also his home, now expanded to at least two dozen structures (and always growing), including a central rocket stove, stream refrigeration and one of the best spots for mingling with the most interesting musicians and artists one can meet anywhere in the region, East Coast, nation or world when the weather’s welcoming.
“My ideas are endless,” he says after we take a glance at his book collaboration with Hudson-based artist Maximilian Goldfarb, a collection of fantastically fabulist no-boundaries spatial idealism, Architectural Inventions: Visionary Drawings, which stems from, and also feeds, their online archive at www.drawingbuilding.org. “I like things to be fun” – as they always are around Matt Bua.
For more on Bua and his building, visit http://bhomepark.blogspot.com – or just come to Catskill. He’ll be there.
Fuente: http://www.hudsonvalleyalmanacweekly.com/2013/01/20/matt-buas-places-to-come-in-out-of-the-rain/
Interview With Matt Bua
DC: What you do?
MB: Construct small outdoor structures (under 12×12 ft) that are designed for the public’s use. Small Museums, Sheds, Roadside attractions.
DC: Was there a childhood experience that you believe influenced you later or led you in a particular direction regarding craft or making?
MB: The first time it rained while I sat inside my Dresser fort, I remained dry. I knew it was a good thing.
DC: What was the biggest obstacle you had to overcome to gain proficiency with a material or set of skills? Did you have a ‘breakthrough’ moment?
MB: The constant act of building has been the jumping of many obstacles along the way. When I switched from temporary installations to Permanent out-door structures and a friend said,
“Matt , you know you can’t use dry wall screws for exterior building”
I didn’t, and I haven’t since.
DC: Do you have any superstitions connected with making?
MB: I get lots of warnings as I build that tell me to slow down…
I try hard to listen to every one of them.
DC: What comes first when you are making – formal constraints, functional parameters, a gesture, etc.?
MB: Simple gestures, one-liner jokes and concepts come first.
Other wise it’s a specific site or material that just says “USE ME”
DC: What attracts you to a certain handmade thing?
MB: That it’s possible, when you disregard the rigid rules and regulations written by the overlords of building.
DC: Do you have a favorite thing?
MB: As we were digging into the side of the hill for the sauna foundation, we uncovered this big rock (around 4x4x5ft) which became the base for the woodstove. Up close it looks like a prehistoric platypus type creature’s skull.
DC: Do you have a favorite tool? Why?
MB: Rope, the trees seem to like it best, very versatile too.
DC: What is the favorite thing you’ve ever made? Why?
MB: Each new structure
“the reward of the thing well done is to have done it” Ralph Waldo Emerson
DC: When making something where is your concentration- on the present activity or on its desired result, or something else altogether?
MB: It’s nice if it’s all three… open to the possibilities, reacting to the situations and keeping your eye on the prize….hold on
DC: Is there any material, tool or technique that really intrigues you that you’ve never gotten around to learning? What’s interesting to you about this?
MB: Those drawings in the “How to Install a Well” with the two folks holding on to the well drilling tool that you rent. It looks easy, but in Upstate NY’s rocky ground, I doubt it. So I just dig. I’m interested in knowing the source of my drinking water.
DC: Where do you find inspiration? How does this come out in the work?
MB: It’s obvious to me when builders love to build with the materials they choose, All that funk-i-tecture slaps the square houses in the face in a fun loving way. Free building can be free if you keep your eyes peeled for the piles on the side of the road that says “free”
DC: Where do you see yourself in relation to the current trends towards sustainability, DIY, craft, etc.? How has your relationship to these things changed over time?
MB: They’ve always been there for me, but as things move forward they come into focus. It’s a natural common sense progression. You can either lug a bunch of concrete down a hill or stack some stones up and dig up some clay on the site
DC: Where do you place yourself in relation to a craft tradition or heritage? Could you talk a bit about your primary influences related to craft?
MB: I’ve never thought about this, but sometimes I’ll do something and stand back and say “that’s crafty”
I do appreciate it when the old neighbor sticks his head over the fence and says “ ya know, If I were you I’d really think about….”
DC: What advice would you give to someone just starting out in craft/making?
MB: Do what you love and then there is no questions whether it’s worth it.
To view more of Matt’s work in uptsate New York, please click here or here.
Fuente: http://www.deepcraft.org/deep/archives/298
Matt Bua. Title and date: Wild in the streets, where the occu-pods have no names (Waste Into Place) (2011)
Material: Ink on graph paper
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