Brood 13 Final Performances and Exhibit
On August 10 and 11, 2007, Brood 13 collaborated with visiting artist Rio Robbins to create a final performative gesture of release for the visions we had been embodying for the last 7 weeks. Now that we had completed performances for all 83 of the intentions that McHenry County community members had created for the year 2024, we wanted to create a performance that would be a gift back to the community whose visions helped us create our work. We also wanted to formally let go of all of our attachments and expectations regarding those visions. Our work is finished; the rest is up to the universe.
First we emptied and cleaned 15 dozen eggs (with help from other Blue Sky participants!) We knew we would be doing the performance twice, and we needed one egg for every vision we had collected at the beginning of the summer.
Erin Garceau read aloud all of the year 2024 visions that youth, parents, and artists had written at the beginning of the summer. While each vision was shared, the rest of the performers silently filled empty eggshells with a mixture of flour, rice, and crushed pastel. The color-filled eggs were then raised up to a 3rd floor window looking out onto the loading dock. Another performer collected the eggs at the top, and then slowly dropped them, one by one, onto a concrete platform below.
As the eggs dropped and broke, powdered color floated in little clouds in the air. The platform below became a collage of color, eggshell, and rice. When all of the eggs had been filled and dropped, the performer on the 3rd floor released handfulls of white flower petals onto the broken eggs below.
We performed the work outside on the loading dock at Starline Gallery in Harvard, IL. The loading dock backs up onto the Metra train tracks near the Harvard train station, the end of the Northwest line. Trains moving in and out provided part of the soundtrack to the performance.
Inside Starline Gallery Brood 13 exhibited color laser prints of our photographic and written documentation of each day's performances. We also exhibited the original cards on which community members had envisioned the year 2024. In addition, Brood 13 youth displayed a large photo collage created in the last week of the program.
All photos here by Rio Robbins.
