Nancy Douthey: Nine Swimming Pools and An Interruption

Check out Surpik Angelini's article on Nancy's Nine Swimming Pools and An Interruption. Way to go Nancy! An excerpt from Angelini's article follows:

"Exploring the visual qualities of photography and video as well as the socially and politically expanded field of performance art, Douthey's recent work included in her Master's thesis exhibition, Nine Swimming Pools and an Interruption, combines both expressions successfully. The artist filmed her "jumps in the void" between October 2009 and February 2010, in nine videos shown simultaneously on a gridded screen. The unedited three- to twenty-two-minute video segments document repeated actions: descending from her car, approaching the pool, jumping in and getting out in wet clothes. At first, the cacophony of local sounds and the handheld camera's jittery images seem to be part of the natural chaos of an ordinary scene. A closer look reveals nine staged events in separate sites: one at the artist’s home, seven in her neighborhood, and another in a university campus.

Trespassing properties in her neighborhood, the artist sneaks into seven unoccupied houses for sale with pools. Douthey gains access to the backyards of the unsurveilled houses in between showings to film her pool jumps. At the university campus, the pool was unattended for a shorter period, so Douthey was caught in the act and reprimanded by authorities who saw her project as an inappropriate and inconsiderate act in relationship to the country’s current state of red alert. "What if someone had tried to jump in and save you?” they asked. Next to this loaded social and political commentary, Douthey curiously points out that the most accessible pool — her own — was the one she resisted most. Subverting the male gestures objectifying the female subject, the artist's feminist immersion and embodiment are the roots of her own Becoming."

Press in the Houston Chronicle

"The exuberant art they made in response combines performance, photography, video, writing and sculpture in a just-right mix of silly and smart."

Click on the third image to see Nancy as Michael Heizer at Sun Tunnels published in yesterday's edition of the newspaper.

On the road to Austin - One Swallow Doesn't Make a Summer

Our DVD will be screened in Austin the last week in May with a performance bypres Nancy Douthey on the closing weekend of the Art Week Austin festival (28th May). Press release follows.


Cook & Ruud announces One Swallow Doesn’t Make a Summer, an exhibition of new and site-specific work in four vacant commercial spaces and a park in downtown Austin. One swallow doesn’t make a summer

One Swallow Doesn't Make a Summer
April 20 – May 28, 2010
Installation locations: 210 Guadalupe, 416 W Cesar Chavez, 117 Lavaca, 233 W 2nd, Republic Square Park at 4th and Guadalupe

One Swallow Doesn’t Make a Summer, curated by Cook & Ruud, takes its title from a speech given by former Austin mayor Kirk Watson about the development of the 2nd Street District a decade ago as the project had barely begun to take flight. Watson asserted, “One swallow doesn’t make a summer, and not even a dozen [development] projects makes a Great Downtown.” Since then, aggressive development has transformed this neighborhood, once filled with empty warehouses and parking lots, into a new city center replete with wide, tree-lined sidewalks and well-manicured storefronts. An initial burst of economic hope filled these spaces with high-end design shops and restaurants. Although the imminent international economic crisis of 2008 did not leave all these businesses unaffected, ambitious development projects continue to reshape the neighborhood culturally and economically.

The recent history of this newly-minted neighborhood is both unique to Austin and relevant within a national context. Over the past two decades, countless U.S. cities have undertaken similar re-urbanization projects, and the recent economic crisis has left no city completely unchanged. Using vacant storefronts within Austin’s 2nd Street District as a platform, One swallow doesn’t make a summer brings together new and site-specific artworks to offer a variety of perspectives on the shifting cultural and economic landscape of this neighborhood and its relationship to a larger nation-wide experience.

Artists include Justin Boyd, Paul Druecke, Mads Lynnerup , Leslie Mutchler, Carlos Rosales-Silva, Barry Stone, and Jeff Williams, as well as the collaboratives Circulatory System , Nancy Douthey & Jacinda Russell, Michelle Marchesseault & Virginia Yount, and Skote.

Press from Glasstire

"Yes! Jacinda Russell is back in town and with her partner in crime Nancy Douthey, the duo presents their first collaborative exhibition at Texas Gallery. Two years in the making, 3 Weeks, 6 Earthworks, 1 Portable Studio, and ALL That Lies in Between is based on their road trip to the American West to visit 6 major earthworks. The exhibition includes photographs, sculptures, books, and video and be sure to take a look at the real time blog that recorded their adventure every mile of the way. We think this show deserves an extra loud shout out!"

Press from Paper City

"Girls Gone Wild: Our vote for fave guerilla show of FotoFest goes to the duo of Nancy Douthey and Jacinda Russell at Texas Gallery; the pair present stills from their Thelma & Louise–type adventure to the wilds of the American West, where they communed with earthworks by the big boys of American art, including Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (March 13 – April 17) ..."

Press Release from Texas Gallery

JACINDA RUSSELL & NANCY DOUTHEY
3 Weeks, 6 Earthworks, 1 Portable Studio, and ALL That Lies in Between

March 13 - April 17, 2010
Opening Saturday March 13, 2010 5 - 7 PM
2012 Peden
Houston, TX 77019
713.524.1593
info@texgal.com

Texas Gallery announces the first collaborative exhibition of the artists - Jacinda Russell and Nancy Douthey in Houston. The two artists worked for two years to develop, prepare and present 3 Weeks, 6 Earthworks, 1 Portable Studio, and ALL That Lies in Between. The exhibition will include photographs, sculptures, books, and video.

For three weeks in the summer of 2009 Russell and Douthey traveled in the American West visiting 6 major earthworks created by American artists in remote locations, as well as stopping at other more accessible sites of perhaps more popular cultural significance. Fantasizing about the artists who made the works they created a commentary on the locations of the works as well as the works themselves. With gentle humor, many splashes of pink, and fake moustaches, the artists both celebrated these works as significant wonders of the art world but also found them deserving of a gentle ribbing for the sheer ambition that fed their creation in the vast Western landscape. In the current political climate of arguments about the preservation of nature vs. its destruction, of small foot prints on the land vs. large, their quest became a questioning. A significant part of the exhibition is the real time blog that recorded the day by day activities of their journey and that is still available at www.earthworksnearyou.blogspot.com.

Nancy Douthey earned her MFA in Intermedia from University of Houston. Douthey lives and works in Houston. Jacinda Russell has an MFA in photography from University of Arizona. Russell lives and works in Muncie, Indiana where she teaches at Ball State.

The exhibition will be on view until April 17, 2010. The public opening is on Saturday, March 13 from 5 - 7 pm. For further information contact Lisa Godfrey at Texas Gallery, 2012 Peden, Houston, TX 77019, 713.524.1533; 713.524.0534 (fax), info@texgal.com and www.texgal.com.

I Love Lucy Meets Borat

Thanks for the shout-out, Bill. Never in our dreams did we think we would be compared to Lucille Ball and Sacha Baron Cohen. Couldn't be more honored.

Sincerely, Nancy & Jacinda

P.S. Just wait until Amarillo Ramp!