January 2006

1.6.2006 | Fri

First Friday

5-8p, free, all ages

Kicking off the New Year, printmaker and musician Colleen Kinsella curates SPACE’s 3rd annual “Artists Curating Artists” series with The WORKNOT Vivification League, a collective congruency between Maine based artists and artists from across country. WORKNOT features 11 visual artists, 8 musical performances, a night of animation and film from locals and abroad, 6 evenings, and 4 performance artists in 2 months, all within the walls of SPACE Gallery. Tonight’s gala opening features paintings by Ohio native Sara Crall, poetry by Maine’s Rover Nomad, works by Rhode Island printmakers Jungil Hong and Erin Rosenthal, and piñata’s by Philly puppeteer Beth Nixon. We’ll also host unpredictable ramblings by Two Holes, the “Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. of performance art.”

1.7.2006 | Sat

Stop Animation Video Workshop

10a-4p, $30, high school

Dancing furniture and self-drawing pictures—it’s film-making for the ultimate control freak! Learn to shoot a stop-motion animated short, using household objects and home electronics. This class combines digital photography with animation software to make anything from a paper clip to a vintage pair of jeans move at your command. Workshop participants will work together to create a 60-second “commercial” for SPACE Gallery. You will draw storyboards, set up shots and camera movements, and experiment with lighting and effects as you film your creations. Materials and equipment will be provided, but feel free to bring old toys, office supplies, kitchen tools—anything you want to bring to life! Taught by artists Alex Endy and Tim Burns.

1.11.2006 | Wed

Worknot Artist Talk with Sara Crall, Rover Nomad and Beth Nixon

7p, Free, All ages

Rover Nomad is a poet and situationalist whose roots cannot be located. He merges his intangible poetry with dimensional painting. Sara Crall is a Maine resident and Ohio native who paints visceral & ephemeral environments. A sacred beauty among us, this is her gallery debut! Beth Nixon, Philly’s favorite puppeteer, creates human and beast piñata’s. Take A Swing!

1.12.2006 | Thurs

FACE on FIRE

8p, $5, All ages

Local clown Kelly Nesbitt and Philly Puppeteer Beth Nixon team up for an evening of wigs, warthogs, wheat paste, and socio-political commentary.... Will Nesbitt’s wing-nut, red-head relative “Ruby” charm snakes and bake cakes? Will Nixon’s suitcase theater transport you to a land of lobster lipstick? Find out! Audiences should prepare themselves for curious smells, participatory musical interludes, and glimpses of sequined leotards.

1.13.2006 | Fri

Slowfood Portland Presents: Maine Writer’s Evening

7p, $25 / 20 for Slowfood members, All ages

For more information, visit http://www.slowfoodusa.org

Come hear local and nationally known authors read their favorite food writings and sample the tastes from Maine’s soil and sea. Authors include: Michael Sanders, Michael Paterniti, Amy Sutherland, and Nancy Harmon Jenkins. Slow Food is a movement that integrates enjoyment of food with ecology, tradition and culture, and harmonious living.

1.14.2006 | Sat

Seekonk with Robert Stillman’s “Horses” and Flying

8:30p, $6, 18+

Seekonk plays a bewitching fusion of slowcore, dream pop, and post-rock, resulting in music that is “sad and warm and wise.” Robert Stillman’s “Horses” is a collection of songs which use an eclectic sonic palette that includes saxophones, clarinets, old pianos, pump organs, and drums. He creates short musical narratives that exist on their own, but also work together to create a vivid, self-contained world that echoes the composer’s interest in all things mysterious. Flying was born in the summer of 2004 when Sara Magenheimer (vocals, floor drums, bells and crashes), Eben Portnoy (guitar, vocals, glass) and Eliot Krimsky (vocals, Rhodes) began turning collages of stories, feelings, and symbols into songs. A love of out-jazz, pop songs, Stevie Wonder, fire-crackers, and earthquakes can be heard in their music.

1.16.2006 | Mon

Nobs and Dirt Coalition with jdwalker and Gabe FM

9pm, $5, 18+

Experimental Hip Hop artist Nobs started rhyming in his middle school cafeteria and recorded his first EP w/ an MPC 2000, a Roland 16 track board and a vocal booth in his closet. Eight years later Fingerprint Records released his second EP, starting a buzz which quickly spread across the globe. His latest album, “Workin,” on Last Anthem Records, earned him a spot on the Vans Warped Tour and has sold more than 10,000 CDs. Nobs cooks up sarcastic and observational lyrics that fit perfectly over his self produced instrumentals. Dirt Coalition is a crew of Producers, DJs, and MCs out of Portland Maine consisting of Boondocks, Rent, Pore, Misl, Mainlyne, Altruistic, Rank, Vexington Ellsworth ... and the list continues.

1.19.2006 | Thurs

An Evening with Susan Orlean

7p, $10 / $8 members and students, All ages

Visit Susan's website:

http://www.susanorlean.com

Susan Orlean is currently writing a series of American popular culture columns, called Popular Chronicles, for The New Yorker where she has been a staff writer since 1992. Prior to joining The New Yorker, Orlean was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and at Vogue, where she wrote on numerous figures in both the music and fashion industries. In addition to her magazine work, she is the author of several books, including, “My Kind of Place: Travel Stories from a Woman Who’s Been Everywhere” and “The Bullfighter Checks Her Makeup: My Encounters with Ordinary People.” In 1999, she published “The Orchid Thief,” (1999) a best-selling narrative about orchid poachers in Florida; this book was made into the movie “Adaptation,” written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Spike Jonze.

A portion of the proceeds will fund The Telling Room, a new nonprofit dedicated to helping young writers develop. Presented with Longfellow Books.

1.20.2006 | Fri

WORKNOT Presents: Tarpigh, Micah Blue Smaldone, Our Poor Neighbors

8pm, $5, All ages

The January portion of Worknot closes with Tarpigh, Maine’s own trio of original avant garde Middle Eastern music; Micah Blue Smaldone, countrified and Kentucky-fried, this finger-pickin’ minstrel takes us South for the evening; and Our Poor Neighbors, shrouding our senses in a mystical collage of sound and song.

1.21.2006 | Sat

FUNkHOUSE

9p, $5, 21+

Kris Clark’s first dance party since ‘04 promises to be a full-on orgy of house and funk. Featuring Portland’s best dance floor, surround sound, cosmic digital visuals, and that incomparably groovy SPACE vibe. Starring vinyl wizards Jason Keith, Popgirl 23 and Chris Ramos, don't miss this unapologetic celebration of turntablism. It will tire your feet, but free your soul.

1.23.2006 | Mon

Capillary Action with Purse

8:30p, $5, 18+

The music is hard to describe in simple terms: on Capillary Action’s 2004 debut Fragments (Pangaea Recordings), Pfeffer dabbled in melodic death metal rave-ups, fractured no wave-inspired crescendos, Latin rhythms, video game music, lounge jazz, new wave synths, and mathy melodies-- sometimes all within the same song! Picture a Naked City without the bar-band leanings, a more eclectic version of Hella, or Fugazi, Boredoms, At The Gates, James Chance, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and Godspeed You Black Emperor engaged in a vicious argument over a parking space and you might begin to scratch the surface of the sound being relayed on Fragments. Purse: A fusion of dark mining blues, loud classic rock, strange configurations and dancey noise..A two piece from the ashes of portland's FUMARE. Haunting, dynamic female vocals, loud, textured baritone guitar and booming drums.

1.25.2006 | Wed

The Fantastical Beat Circus Musical Group

8:30p, $6, 18+

The Beat Circus has often been described as Dark Carnival Music -- a fiction of the past at the intersection of Federico Fellini and Todd Browning...carnival and saloon songs sung through pipes and bullhorns, circus waltzes, funeral dirges, bawdy burlesque grinds, and experimental music all jump-cut, braked, and accelerated to form a completely original sound and approach. Led by multi-instrumentalist Brian Carpenter, The Beat Circus formed in Boston in 2002 and brought together musicians of strong personalities whose backgrounds encompass Eastern European music, jazz, klezmer, classical, and rock. Providence musician Alec K. Redfern opens; he has made music for film, theater and dance performances, and his work has a definite theatrical flair. During his songs, which are as much stage-set as free-standing compositions, you can picture people dancing, people in costumes, and people acting out obscure rituals.

1.26.2006 | Thurs

Documentray Film: CODE 33

7:30pm $5

official site:
http://www.code33thefilm.com/

While making a documentary about renowned Miami-Dade Police forensic artist Samantha Steinberg, the filmmakers of CODE 33 find themselves witness to the Miami Police Department's largest serial rape case. Frustrated by cold leads and fueled by Cuban coffee, detectives scour the streets, convinced the rapist is poised to strike again. Using unprecedented access, the filmmakers detail the process by which Steinberg creates the life-like sketches and trace the street investigation and the hi-tech forensic analysis. CODE 33 reveals those extraordinary moments in an investigation when a clue is uncovered, a theory is realized and a match is made.

1.28.2006 | Sat

MENSK Fundraiser: A Brush with Love

9 p, 21+
$10 adv or if in costume
$15 @ door without a costume

This non-formal, all-creative masquerade ball supports MENSK, one of Portland’s newest and liveliest nonprofit organizations. MENSK brings us the downtown Earth Day celebration, the Rooftop Film Series, and the Haul U mobile art project. Tonight’s ball features live latin dance music from Grupo Esperanza, records spun by DJ Dereloid, dance and movement choreographed by Jessica Jane Means, and live video mixing with Skeleton Krew and Special Blendz. Guests are encouraged to come in masquerade.