An Inter-Media Collaboration By Kathryn Nobbe And Philip Blackburn

EXHIBITION WALKTHROUGH VR, 360GoPro, INTERACTIVE 3D
PRESS: https://www.mplsart.com/written/2021/12/hyperliminal-where-we-all-live-now

Form+Content Gallery is pleased to announce HyperLiminal: Exploring In-Betweenness. This exhibition is a multilayered, artistic dialogue between visual artist Kathryn Nobbe and sound-artist Philip Blackburn. The two collaborate to explore issues of human ecology under the lens of liminality, the barely perceptible intermediate state, phase, or condition that exists “In-between.”

Nobbe’s new mixed media artworks stylistically inhabit a liminal zone somewhere between representation and abstraction. Conceptually, the work explores metaphorical relationships of the human body as mother earth in transition, simultaneously vulnerable and resilient.

Created specifically for the exhibition, and played through his handcrafted illuminated birch bark speakers installed in the gallery, Blackburn’s soundscape, Skin + Breath, evokes earth/body resonances.

The artists encourage visitors to investigate the entire space, finding the in-between places and making their own interpretations from the multisensory elements that go beyond visual to include sound, spatial relationships, touch, and smell.

Kathryn Nobbe’s Artist Statement
My work has always been grounded in the history and process of drawing and painting. Over the past decades, I have incorporated a variety of media and artistic practices separately and simultaneously: sculpture, photography, digital imaging, video/film projection, sound, movement—in order to best articulate meaning and engage my viewers.

Exchange and dialogue with creatives working in disciplines other than my own has inspired my collaborations with musicians, performers, lighting designers, writers, academics, etc. I have also worked with community groups to produce site-specific public artworks, where the people, environment and history are of primary importance.

I am increasingly presenting my work within an installation-based practice, where artworks and other sensory media positioned in an environment are connected, integral parts of the larger whole. Like singers in a choir, versus autonomous, separate voices, the configuration of the environment itself and what is contained, is the artwork.

My process of re-working/re-drawing/re-sculpting is vital and perpetual, achieved by both hand and pixel, layer upon layer. Distorting, twisting, turning things inside out, reveals their making, essence, and liminal “in-between-ness”. These transitional, intermediate phases of discovery/creativity can often be disorienting and barely perceptible, like the liminal zone between sleep and wakefulness, life and death.

Philip Blackburn’s Artist Statement
From a tree limb hang several engraved birch bark cylinders – tree skins, sonic lanterns, marked with mysterious symbols. Beneath them, on the floor, are organic shards of their former life, dropped as though from their essential core. Sounds and smells are released. This tree grew and fell apart in a hyperforest – the same dimension we inhabit if only we took the time to notice.

Liminal: Threshold. The threshold is the barrier that defines where the threshed straw that covers the floor in traditional houses is prevented from drifting outside. You can step over this at any time, and know that you are inside or outside.

Skin and breath are mere illusions, not boundaries. In zazen meditation we observe breath, how exterior and interior are connected, and mutable. ‘Skin + Breath’ ponders barriers. A tree with interior life, external bark, and roots that communicate with each other; individuals or community? The silvery sounds and boundaries between senses—sight, smell, sound—have no clear edges; they shift and blur like the Northern Lights, wispy yet solid.

Kathryn Nobbe’s Artist Biography
Kathryn Nobbe earned her MFA in Studio Arts from the University of Minnesota and studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture with Connie Fox, Leon Golub, Jacob Lawrence, Judy Rifka, and Terry Winters.

Ms. Nobbe has created a number of public artworks including a large-scale outdoor mural for the Pillsbury House in Minneapolis, which involved a creative collaboration with the community it celebrated. Other projects include: a set design for the new music opera Mirabell’s Book of Numbers, by composer Marjorie Hess, Corn Palace Productions, and writer James Merrill; a "painting performance" created for composer Homer Lambrecht and the Ancia Quartet; and a series of 27 paintings for Eugene Garber's award-winning novel The Historian, commissioned and published by independent small press Milkweed Editions. Ms. Nobbe’s experimental video, recapitulation, was awarded and selected for broadcast on public television by a jury representing the Walker Art Center, International Filmmaker Project USA, TPT, and Intermedia Arts.

Over the past 40+ years of dedicating her life to making art, Ms. Nobbe has received numerous fellowships, awards and commissions from local and international organizations. Selections from this list include: Forecast Public Artworks; Jerome Foundation; McKnight Artist Fellowship (2001 winner and 2015, 2021 finalist); Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture; The Robert Rauschenberg’s Foundation; and Artists Fellowship. She has received two Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grants, the Capelli d’Angeli Foundation Grant and is a two-time recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Fellowship.

Ms. Nobbe’s work has been represented by Dolly Fiterman Fine Arts, and currently, Form+Content Gallery, both in Minneapolis. Her paintings and drawings are in numerous public and private collections in the United States and abroad.

Philip Blackburn’s Artist Biography Philip Blackburn is a composer, environmental sound-artist, filmmaker, writer, record producer, teacher, designer and a public artist specializing in sound. He has served as teaching artist for school residencies connected with the Flint Hills International Children’s Festival, creating multi-media performances using homemade instruments. He was born in Cambridge, England, and studied music there as a Choral Scholar at Clare College (BA, MA). He earned his Ph.D. in Composition from the University of Iowa where he studied with Kenneth Gaburo and began work on publishing the Harry Partch archives. Blackburn's book, Enclosure Three: Harry Partch, won an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award.

He composed the soundtrack for the Wild Music: Sounds and Songs of Life exhibition initiated by the Science Museum of Minnesota. His Car Horn Fanfare for 8 ArtCars opened the Northern Spark Festival, and his Duluth Harbor Serenade was heard by thousands of people during Duluth Superior Pride. His concert work, Sonata Homophobia, for Flute and Brainwave-Triggered Right Wing Hate Speech was also premiered in Duluth. Blackburn’s works have been heard in ships’ harbors, state fairs, forests, and coming out of storm sewers, as well as in galleries and on concert stages. He has incorporated brainwave sensors and dowsing rods in performance as well as balloon flutes, car horns, smart phones, and wind-powered harps.

Signal to Noise magazine called Blackburn “a startlingly original voice, one that encompasses all periods of music history in a uniquely engaging vision.” Blackburn has published articles on topics such as Vietnamese, Garifuna, and Cuban music, the social dynamics of orchestral performance, and the use of sound in public art. He received a 2003 Bush Artist Fellowship, a 2011 Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant, a 2015 Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, and has built Kumquat Cottage, an art-house in Belize.

Exhibition Dates: October 28 - December 04, 2021

Opening Reception
Saturday ,November 06, 6 - 9 PM

Exhibition Hours: Thursday, Friday, Saturday, 12:00 – 6:00 pm
Appointments are not required. If you wish to visit outside of gallery hours please email formandcontent@gmail to make an appointment.

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