IOU GARDEN, IOU BANK of TRUST & TIME; Owens Valley Dry Lake Glass & Water Citizens Orchestr

THE TIN MAN - WORLD PREMIERE THIS WEEKEND!

2009-10-07T13:02:00.000-07:00

Greetings all Metabolic Orchestra players, Growers and Time Bankers!

Don't miss the world premiere screening of “The Tin Man”

at the Lone Pine Film History Museum on
Saturday October 10 from 2 – 2:30pm
and/or Sunday October 11 from 11 – 11:30 am.
Please come and invite friends and family!

The film includes the Metabolic Orchestra's full concert in the PPG silo on March 14 of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

We also invite you to march with us in the Sunday Main Street Costume Parade!
We will meet at Lone Pine High School at 12noon.

Parade begins at 1pm.
Please wear your Metabolic Orchestra black sweatshirts from March 14 and black pants and comfortable shoes and join us.

Parade with us! The more, the merrier! Dogs are allowed on leash!

Here is the info on the film screening:

The Tin Man
Lauren Bon and The Metabolic Studio, 2009
30 minutes

In 1900, L. Frank Baum published The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. In 1913, William Mulholland opened the Los Angeles Aqueduct with water brought in from Owens Valley.
In 2009, after 100 years of dust, the Owens Valley Glass and Water Citizens Metabolic Orchestra performed in the relic of the Pittsburg Plate Glass Factory.
This factory was used to mine the minerals left after the water was removed from the lake to allow the city of Los Angeles, 240 miles away to grow. After that industry ended, the factory became the laboratory of Dr. Selwyn McCabe, who used the space to develop a pediatric heart pump. The performance brought people from Los Angeles together with people from the Owens Valley as audience for the Metabolic Orchestra’s cover of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow”. The Tin Man regains his heart. This nostalgic piece reminds us that there can be no rainbow without water.

We look forward to seeing you all this weekend!

2009-09-21T22:26:00.000-07:00

Join the Metabolic Studio and the Owens Valley Growers

HARVEST DATES

PACK STATION DINNER: BYOP Bring Your Own Pack

Carroll Creek pack station, now De La Cour Ranch (elevation: 5,500 feet), has a long history. In the early 1860's, the pack station was established by early Owens Valley settlers. The pack station brought outdoor enthusiasts into the high country via the Hockett Trail. From Carroll Creek, mules carried goods and people up into the Cottonwood Lakes area, home of the Golden Trout, and over any of several passes (Army Pass, Cottonwood Pass, Mulkey Pass) and connected with what is now known as the Pacific Crest Trail. Under several different ownerships, the Carroll Creek pack station operated for over 100 years.

September 10, 2009 at 4:30-8:00pm

4:30 people meet at IOU Community Garden, 123 N Main Street, Lone Pine

and carpool to De La Cour Ranch

5-8pm De La Cour gathering

ALABAMA HILLS STONE SOUP

According to the story, some travelers come to a village, carrying nothing more than an empty pot. The travelers fill the pot with water, drop a large stone in it, and place it over a fire in the village square. One of the villagers becomes curious and asks what they are doing. The travelers answer that they are making "stone soup", which tastes wonderful, although it still needs a little bit of garnish to improve the flavor, which they are missing. The villager doesn't mind parting with just a little bit to help them out, so it gets added to the soup. Another villager walks by, inquiring about the pot, and the travelers again mention their stone soup which hasn't reached its full potential yet. The villager hands them a little bit of seasoning to help them out. More and more villagers walk by, each adding another ingredient. Finally, a delicious and nourishing pot of soup is enjoyed by all.

September 27, 2009 at 2-6pm in the Alabama Hills

at the Vander Wall and Prather homes.

During the week, the Owens Valley Growers will bring produce from their own gardens to the community garden. Beverly Vander Wall will combine all the locally grown ingredients into a pot of boiling water with a large stone from the Alabama Hills. Nancy and Mike Prather will be serving cherry and apple pies made from their fruit trees. Afternoon tea with local mint and honey will be served.

SPAGHETTI WESTERN during the Lone Pine Film Festival

The Alabama Hills have been a popular location for Hollywood television and movie productions since the 1920’s for Westerns set in an archetypical "rugged" environment.

Spaghetti Western, also known in some countries in mainland Europe as the Italo-Western, is a nickname for a broad sub-genre of Western Film that emerged in the mid-1960s, so named because most were produced and directed by Italians.

October 10, 2009

2:00pm Film short:TIN MAN from SILVER and WATER--a work in progress by Lauren Bon at the Lone Pine Film Museum

8-10pm Spaghetti Western

at the Espresso Parlor, 123 N Main Street

Pasta with homemade organic pesto and Italian meat sauce made with local Owens Valley ingredients.

9pm. Original composition of glass orchestra performance by Douglas Lee

for more info call Lou @ 310-880-3713

2009-09-09T13:47:00.000-07:00

Berlin meets Lone Pine and PPG

We welcome our newest Metabolic Studio Artist in Residence, Walter Asmus, to Owens Valley. He will be here through the weekend - you will find him wearing round spectacles, elegant, basic black and getting his morning cup at the Espresso Parlor! Please introduce yourself to him!

Having worked with Beckett for more than 15 years, Walter Asmus is described as “the world’s most definitive director of Beckett’s work.”

Walter Asmus is a well-known German theater director who worked with Beckett on many occasions for the stage and television, from the time they first met at the Schiller Theatre in Berlin in 1974. He became his assistant director on their famous production of Waiting for Godot, which toured internationally. He has directed all of Beckett's plays internationally including Waiting for Godot at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York in 1978 and the Gate Theatre in 1988. His television work includes Footfalls, Rockaby and Eh Joe with Billie Whitelaw, and a French version of Waiting for Godot with Roman Polanski as Lucky. Walter directed Waiting for Godot in 1991 for the Gate Theatre's Beckett Festival. It was subsequently shown in Chicago, Seville, New York, Melbourne, Toronto, London and on tour in the US in the year 2000. He was co-organizer and Artistic Director of the international festival, Beckett in Berlin 2000, which took place in September of that year. In 2000/2001 he directed the filming of Footfalls with Susan FitzGerald for the Beckett on Film project in Dublin. In 2004 he directed Waiting for Godot at 7 Stages and for the Rubicon Theatre in Ventura, CA. In 2005, he directed the first Chinese production of Endgame in Mandarin in Shanghai, China. This year he directed a stage adaptation of Beckett's Novella First Love for the Writer’s Festival in Sydney. Further, his Dublin production of Waiting for Godot opens in October in Washington DC and subsequently tours the United States. Walter was a friend of Beckett's until the writer’s death in 1989.

Samuel Beckett’s work is a true cornerstone of postmodernism. His influence has been inescapable in not only theatre (giving rise to playwrights like Pinter and Mamet), but in many aspects of culture, through its personification of a hopeless post-World War II worldview and pessimistic attitude pointed towards the lowest common denominator of human capability. In 1947, Beckett wrote his trilogy of novels: Molly, Malone Dies and The Unnamable. He also wrote the play Waiting for Godot at this time. Godot had its first production in 1953, and its success made the reclusive Beckett an international figure. Other Beckett plays include Endgame and Krapp’s Last Tape. Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969, but shunned the presentation ceremony. He later died in Paris on December 22, 1989.

Missing Lone Pine from Israel

2009-07-22T22:05:00.000-07:00

Hi folks, So I just arrived in Israel, my birthplace, and already I find myself talking to people about Lone Pine and all the adventures we are having there. Its hard to describe what we are doing and why we do it. It takes a bit of time to sink in and there are many questions but eventualy a look of understanding emerges. Here in Israel the issues of water and power run deep since both are so scarce. Solar hot water collectors are on every roof and conservation of fresh water is STRICT. As some of you may know, there have been many advancements made here in Israel in developing agricultural systems for desert climates. I hope to be able to see some while I'm here. Jaime tells me of the challenges we are facing in the PPG greenhouse and of some modifications he is making. There is so much to learn...
Guyver.

FOR SALE NOW

2009-07-22T16:02:00.000-07:00

Tokens of our creative process.
On Sale now at the Espresso Parlor
123 Main Street, Lone Pine
T shirts,water bottles,posters and patches from our
IOU series...

Tote bags and post cards coming soon.....

This Is Time Banking!

2009-07-21T16:39:00.000-07:00

Get involved! Find out how at http://winkietrusttimebank.blogspot.com/

SILVER & WATER: an art piece at Owens Lake by Chris Langley

2009-07-20T17:19:00.000-07:00

The following is a series of terrific articles and observations about the Metabolic Studio and its projects in the Owens Valley, written by project participant Chris Langley and published in the Territorial Review from January - May 2009. The posts below are from January and February 2009. More to follow!

SILVER AND WATER: an art piece at Owens Lake
January 2009

By Chris Langley

1.
We are traveling home on 395 after the fourth rehearsal of the Community Glass Orchestra at the Pittsburg Plate Glass site. There is a half moon burning with surprising reflected light on the snow splashed Sierra. The recent rains and snow had brought up quite a bit of alkali, which was growing in white crystal piles. All about us, as we talked about the rehearsal, the prospects and the themes of The Wizard Oz, the white powder glowed with a translucent green-white light that made it different from the light reflected off the snowy mountains.
We were talking about themes of going home, or returning home. This is an important theme of the Wizard. Dorothy can’t wait to get home and discovers she had the means all along. The Indians were marched off to near Fort Tejon after the end of the Owens Valley Indian Wars. Yet, when they returned, they discovered they were homeless, as the white settlers had laid claim to their ancestral lands. On the other hand, the Japanese internees were sent to Manzanar, stripped of their homes, land and most of their belongings. For them, the return to home would be, in most cases, away from here, although they had worked unceasingly to create a home away from home in the few years they were here. In many cases, when they returned home, their homes no longer were theirs.

2.
Members of the Metabolic Glass Orchestra, and others who joined the greater group, had been invited first by Project Manager Rochelle Fabb. Lauren Bon, the visionary artist who was creating the installation/performance piece she had named Silver and Water, suggested she wished us to collaborate in the creative process. As participating partners, we had been raised to respected artists and collaborators with the many young members of the Metabolic Studio to join in helping to create the final form and concept of the art piece.
I had met Rochelle a year and one half before as she introduced me to this artist collective’s hope to produce an art piece here in the Owens Valley, centered on the Owens Lake. She used the term “social sculpture,” an art form I had never heard of before. I have always thought of sculpture as solid, hard, frozen in time and space, even if originally its composition had been malleable. Iron, clay, marble, even ice were all materials that had been used. When I heard “social” I thought of piles of people shaped into various forms. I had known the dance group Pilobolus, and even reminded of those pyramids of young bodies with cheerleading enthusiasm. Chinese acrobats, anyone?
As we chatted I began to understand that art has left the canvas, the museum, the studio. Art now was much more participatory, process as much as product. I knew art had a conscience. It was provocative, often with political ambitions. This art form intended to have a positive social outcome. It meant to detoxify, educate, enlighten, and address famine or environmental degradation as much as aesthetics.

3.
Years ago I remember the M.I.T Media Lab had created an art installation in the Alabama Hills called Desert Sun, Desert Moon. The artists had used, solar power, computers, satellite position and other modern technologies for their work. I remember the wind harp that generated music from the desert zephyrs blowing though it. What I remember most vividly was the monumental effort of the artists to launch a group of helium balloons with organic shapes. When lit by the spotlights, they reminded me of prophylactics. The balloons lifted a cellist who later that night played music on her instrument as she floated somewhat tentatively over the rocks of Ruiz Hill. The painted Monkey Face (on a rock at Ruiz Hill) appeared quite mundane in comparison. This clearly had not been my mother’s concept of art.
Just a few years ago I had worked with Bill Viola, the accomplished video artist, as he worked on an installation for a German art museum. His work was mind blowing for me and his ideas like none from an artist I had heard before. His exhibit “The Passions” had just opened at the Getty and I had a chance to see it when working at the A.F.C.I. (Association of Film Commissioners International) Locations show. Viola spent several weeks picking the site he would use. He described his process, the needs of space and emptiness and light moving across the mountains that he wanted. His vision was shaped by Chinese landscape art and philosophy. His choice remained obscure to me in its subtlety. I was lucky enough to see up close his creative processes, the uses he put to landscape and the “talent” that walked for fifteen minutes towards the high definition camera. The working title was The Immortals and the inspiration was Taoist. I watched him critique the “dailies,” the twenty to thirty minute uninterrupted shots taken in high definition video that would eventually play side by side on twin plasma screens on the wall of the museum.

4.
Understanding life is achieved through making connections and as Rochelle spoke about the sites and we scouted for locations, this new face of art began to make sense to me. In this case, landscape played an enormous part in the piece, and my thinking and reading was already focused on issues of landscape. Rochelle was very interested in historical issues dealing with our area, in all aspects. She said that the project was in that early stage already centered on the lake, on a glass orchestra, a musical and dramatic performance. We looked at various locations, and as we drove and walked across the landscape, the degradation and damage done to the lake and its environs was clear. I could tell from her reactions and what she said that this art piece would address in a positive way the effect of the environmental damage. It had been done historically, particularly by industrial uses that the lake shore had endured.
There were many return visits by Rochelle and various members of the project team. They met people all over the area, offered labor and materials to help with projects locally. They offered to replace a roof on a civic building in Keeler, they offered help on projects up at Cerro Gordo. They settled on the former PPG (Pittsburgh Plate Glass) Plant as the site and undertook cleaning the warehouse and surroundings in what must have been like Hercules’ task of cleaning the Augean stables.
They had wanted to establish an office/studio on Main Street, to have a presence and become part of the fabric of community life during the project. This never happened but instead they established a yurt in the warehouse at PPG, which became the place where we would rehearse our part in the project. I learned we would be playing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” under the instruction of Douglas Lee, a glass musician of note.
Rochelle was the Project Manager and she said that Lauren Bon, the visionary artist of the project, was creating the piece under the inspiration of The Wizard of Oz. This tickled me and opened my mind to wild speculations about exactly what was going on and what part would we play in the piece as it developed.

5.
When townspeople gathered for the first meeting and rehearsal, it was the most wonderful mix of people from our town. A video loop was being projected on one of the tin walls of the building. It showed the lake, the wind sweeping across the salt plains, lifting great clouds of dust and chemicals into the area. Then it cut to these mysterious figures gliding on the cement surfaces of the L.A. River. They had wings not unlike gargoyles. My associations with the flying monkeys from the film from first seeing it at age five were very negative. These creatures in the film seemed mysterious and chthonic as they flickered in rolling movements on the crude walls of the building.
Rochelle gathered us and we walked to the north silo and entered. What we found there, what sounds we heard, and the very surreal magic of the moment lifted my spirits and gave me great freedom of thought and openness to taking a risk.

6. FEBRUARY, 2009

It was cold and dark at the PPG plant as we made our way over to the north silo to hear Maestro Douglas Lee, dressed in a tuxedo, play on his glass music instrument. We were shepherded by the many young folks connected with the Metabolic Studio. There was a feeling of camaraderie for many of the locals knew each other and had known each other for years, even decades. The artists had a wonderful open and gentle manner which helped us overcome any anxiety of why we here in this dark industrial wasteland that had once produced mineral product even while ravaging some of the natural resources of the valley.

Stepping into the silo, where there were lights flooding the walls, was like entering a strange land on a planet far far way, in a time long long ago. I don’t know the size of the silo structure overhead, for in the light there was an optical stretching and bending of the dimension about us. Disorienting, uplifting, I felt we were in an amusement park ride that was about to start. We lined up about the circle, our backs to the curved wall that had been painted white. I learned later that it had been painted white a long time ago so that the present owner could practice golf. That must have been efficacious because she went on the profession golf circuit.

We looked across at each other as if in a moment the barrel ride would begin, centrifugal force holding us to the walls as the floor dropped away. Wrong. It stayed motionless, our feet solidly on the ground. As I looked up, however, instead of seeing straight walls up to the ceiling a hundred or more feet over our heads, the walls bent into a cone like shape. That was just in my mind, or my eye, or wherever this misperception is based. Later when I went out to check the walls of the building, they went strait up to the curved roof.

After we each introduced ourselves, Rochelle asked Douglas to demonstrate the sound of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” on the glasses. The sound of your finger rubbed on the edge of the glass is otherworldly to start. For me it is best compared to sounds produced electronically by a moog synthesizer. But it is a natural sound, produced by the human element of our squeaky clean fingers rubbed against the edge. The variations of pressure were the skill and the source of the artist’s element.

In the silo, the sound was echoed, reinforced and enhanced. It didn’t just sound in our ears, but subtly in our bones, or feet and our imaginations. It was sonorous, even stranger magnified and mysterious. It was most pleasant.

When Douglas finished, I knew that we had just had a very otherworldly experience in a very mundane, even industrially wasted, setting. Some were totally engaged, others made uncomfortable or left unimpressed. They would not continue to be part of the orchestra.

7.

We had talked a lot about all sorts of things: community things, historic things, and music things. When I left that night I wanted to focus my attention on more details about Farmlab, Metabolic Studio, Lauren Bon and Rochelle Fabb. I wanted to know where they had been, what they had done and about their vision of art, our world and the interaction between the two. I wanted context and there was lot of that on the Internet and from handouts they provided.

8.

My search to understand “social sculpture” quickly led me to a German artist who came to real prominence in the 1960’s. I had lived through the Sixties as a socially flexible even briefly revolutionary time. I remembered the Sixties and as the saying went, “If you remember the Sixties, you weren’t there.” I was in the Peace Corps after graduating from college in 1966 and for the next two years lived in Iran and traveled in Asia. By the time I got back to the U.S., it was a different country and I had been changed by being immersed in an Islamic culture and society. I had missed living through two rather tumultuous years back home in my country.

While many of my ideas had been changed from my original middle class upbringing, my life arc was in the opposite direction to family man, husband, father, and wage earner.

At the time, Joseph Beuys was challenging the very foundations of what art was and the role of the artist. His life (1921-1986) was on a very different track and I am sure I would have been antagonized by his work had I confronted it. On the Internet I read “Indebted to Romantic writers such as Novalis and Schiller, Beuys was motivated by a utopian belief in the power of universal human creativity and was confident in the potential of art to bring about revolutionary change. This translated into Beuys’s formulation of the concept of Social Sculpture; in which society as a whole was to be regarded as one great work of art (the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk) to which each person can contribute creatively (perhaps Beuys’s most famous phrase, borrowed from Novalis is “Everyone is an artist.’”)

This particular quote from Beuys connected my experience with art theory and with history. “Only on condition of a radical widening of definitions will it be possible for art and activities related to art [to] provide evidence that art is now the only evolutionary-revolutionary power. Only art is capable of dismantling the repressive effects of a senile social system that continues to totter along the deathline: to dismantle in order to build ‘A SOCIAL ORGANISM AS A WORK OF ART’…EVERY HUMAN BEING IS AN ARTIST who…from his state of freedom---the position of freedom that he experiences as first hand---learns to determine the other positions of the TOTAL WORK OF THE FUTURE SOCIAL ORDER.”

When Beuys came to American with startling art installation/performances at the Guggenheim in New York City, American critiques were often vitriolic with one writer calling his ideas “simple-minded utopian drivel.”

9.

Much more can be explored with Beuys life and artistic career but already I was experiencing my ideas about art being radically expanded. Fast forward through several decades to understand how Lauren Bon, Farmlab and the Metabolic Studio fit into this.

In one of the brochures that we were welcome to pick up at our rehearsals, some more of the work was described and the roots of Farmlab explained.

“Farmlab, a project by artist Lauren Bon that is ‘committed to the preservation and perpetuity of living things,’ was born out of a pair of now-gone large scale urban Los Angeles ecologies: Not A Cornfield and the South Central Farm (SCF).”

“Not A Cornfield (2005-2006) was an action by Bon that took place on 32 acres of land between Chinatown and Lincoln Heights. The work—among many others-redeemed the lost fertility of the earth and transformed what was left from the industrial era into a renewed space for public gathering.”

“The SCF (1992-2006) was a 23 acre community garden, a rare verdant swatch in South Los Angeles. The site’s landowner, and representatives of the 330 family farmers who had cultivated the land were long at odds about the future of the acreage.”

The process of dealing with the future of the SCF led Bon to gather a multi-disciplinarian team of artists, writers, designers, agriculturists, planners, and laborers to work with her.

10.

Even as our group continued to meet to form a cohesive social unit at the PPG plant, I knew I needed to visit Farmlab and the Metabolic Studio to see this ongoing process in action. Rochelle Fabb and many of this team were very open and excited to show me their work and their place. ---CHRIS LANGLEY

Owens Valley Harvest Images and Info

2009-07-18T10:52:00.000-07:00

This Week In The Garden

2009-07-17T12:14:00.000-07:00

As this week's Metabolic Studio Gardener In Residence, I've been spending many hours at the IOU Garden, watching greens grow, listening to bees buzz and talking with an array of interesting visitors from near and far.

Swiss chard and basil are ready for picking so stop by and help yourself to some for dinner tonight!

FREE FILM SAT @ 8pm - HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW?

2009-07-17T12:05:00.000-07:00

HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW?
An evening of films and discussion about cultivating gardens and communities hosted by the Metabolic Studio in collaboration with the Espresso Parlor

WHEN: SATURDAY, JULY 18, 2009
TIME: 8 PM
PLACE: THE IOU GARDEN, 123 MAIN STREET, LONE PINE, CA (right next door to the Espresso Parlor)
PROGRAM:
TRANSITION TOWN TOTNES ANNUAL SUMMER GARDEN CRAWL (40 minutes, 2009, The Metabolic Studio)
A Transition Initiative is a community working together to look Peak Oil and Climate Change squarely in the eye and address this big question: "for all those aspects of life that this community needs to sustain itself and thrive, how do we significantly increase resilience (to mitigate the effects of Peak Oil) and drastically reduce carbon emissions (to mitigate the effects of Climate Change)?" Learn more about Transition Initiatives and get a first hand look at a variety of gardens in Totnes, UK, during the town's second annual Summer Garden Crawl.

RUTH STOUT'S GARDEN (23 minutes, 1976, Arthur Mokin)
Ruth Stout's Garden is a lively film journey into the life of a woman who, from a perspective of more than ninety years, has a great deal to offer young and old. Filmed in her tenth decade, Ruth continued to write books, contribute to periodicals, lecture to garden clubs and receive thousands of visitors interested in her garden. Those who have read her books will be excited to see her famous "no dig/no work" method of gardening in action.

FREE EVENT! EVERYONE WELCOME!

2009-07-08T16:57:00.000-07:00

Totnes Transition Town

2009-07-08T07:19:00.000-07:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGHrWPtCvg0

check this out!

7:15 am

2009-07-08T07:15:00.000-07:00

I'm so looking forward to my next trip to Lone Pine. It's been three weeks and I'm really missing seeing the plants grow and the progress first hand. Lisa visited Totnes, a transition town in the UK while we were recently there. By coincidence they had a garden tour too. What makes there town a transition town and what we are doing in Lone Pine has similarities. For them the bottom line is freedom from fossil fuels. Check out you tube and search by time bank Totnes. I was thinking about water scarcity and transition towns.

TAKE ONE, LEAVE ONE - EXCHANGE TABLE

2009-07-07T11:42:00.000-07:00

Please visit the EXCHANGE TABLE for fresh produce and other local Lone Pine goodies, located in the WINKIE GARDEN or under the shade in the Espresso Parlor courtyard. Give and Take!

Winkie Garden in full swing! The plants are gorgeous and growing, come on by to take a look (between the Espresso Parlor and Lloyds)!

2009-07-06T11:20:00.000-07:00

What is a WINKIE?

2009-07-03T16:35:00.000-07:00

a citizen who lives in the land under Mt. WInkie, the highest summit in the contiguous United States, and the source of water for LA LA land.

WINKIE TRUST TIMEBANK quiz

2009-07-03T16:33:00.000-07:00

WE WANT YOU FOR THE WINKIE TRUST TIMEBANK!

'Metabolic Studio Brings Food, Fuel and Film Dreams to the Owens Valley,' Headlines Lone Pine Newspaper

2009-06-19T08:48:00.000-07:00

In the June/July 2009 issue of Territorial Review, the Lone Pine, California newspaper of record, writer Chris Langley has a full-page story with photo about the ongoing and in-process collaboration between Owens Valley residents and the mostly Los Angeles-based Metabolic Studio team members.

The article begins with a quote from a book critic and Langley's words, "Certainly the promise of major change is in the air."

The piece continues:

"It is the visionary artist's calling to point the way. Locally, Lauren Bon and the Metabolic Studio are doing just that. While they continue their work on the filming of "Silver and Water," their opus on the history of Inyo and Los Angeles, they have taken up Film, Fuel and food. This is a new kind of artistic process, one with an environmental and social conscience."

This blog hasn't been able to locate the full article online.

2009-04-30T14:05:00.000-07:00

2009-04-13T16:20:00.000-07:00

re: POTLUCK FEAST March 30 @ PPG

2009-03-19T16:56:00.000-07:00

We at the Metabolic Studio would like to invite you the Metabolic Orchestra to a
POT LUCK DINNER (FEAST!)
Monday, March 30 at 6pm at PPG.

We will celebrate the success of the March 14 Open Rehearsal
and also be discussing the next steps in our project at
PPG and in the Owens Valley for the coming months.

In preparing a dish for the potluck we ask you to consider
“what is your take on a dish inspired by a feast?”

"There was great rejoicing among the yellow Winkies, for they had been made to work hard during many years for the Wicked Witch,
who had always treated them with great cruetly. They kept this day as a holiday, then and e’er after, and spent the time in feasting and dancing."
-Frank Baum, Chapter 13, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

Please RSVP if you can make it!

Looking forward to breaking bread with you all!

Rochelle Fabb and The Metabolic Studio

2009-03-18T16:41:00.000-07:00

2009-03-18T16:37:00.000-07:00

Congrats to all Metabolic Orchestra players!

2009-03-18T16:15:00.000-07:00

Reviews are in and The March 14 Open Rehearsal was a rousing success!

Here are some recent comments we received about your playing in the silo:

"Awesome!" - Mojave resident

"sublime" - La La lander

"moving"- Lone Pine resident

"tearful" - La La lander

"almost sacred" - Lone Pine resident

"Congrats to Mike Patterson" - Lone Pine resident

"amazing and surreal" - La La lander

I have posted some candid photos from the day - please feel free to add your own recollections and pics!

New Glass Orchestra photos from Robin Prather from rehearsal #1!

2009-01-20T17:02:00.000-08:00

REHEARSALS: Glass Orchestra at PPG Jan, Feb, March

2009-01-20T16:51:00.000-08:00

NOTE: There have been some adjustments to our upcoming rehearsal dates to put on your calendars:

Monday Jan 26 at 6pm

Monday Feb 10 at 6pm

Monday Feb 16 - OFF for HOLIDAY

Monday Feb 23 at 6pm

Monday March 2 or Monday March 9 - date TO BE CONFIRMED - tech/dress rehearsal

PERFORMANCE - date to be confirmed

**Newcomers are always welcome to come and watch a rehearsal or join in on a glass at the above dates and times :)**

PPG orchestra rehearsal #1 Nov 24

2008-12-10T17:48:00.001-08:00

Here are some photos from our first rehearsal at the PPG plant on November 24.

OV Glass Orchestra featured in Inyo County Register

2008-12-01T20:39:00.001-08:00

Not sure if you all had seen this article on our project:

Somewhere over the rainbow, they’re playing wine glasses
Friday, 21 November 2008
Register Staff
11-20-2008

A unique opportunity to become a part of an exhilirating music/film project is being extended to the local community beginning next week.
The creative team behind Farmlab/Metabolic Studio is welcoming residents to join its glass orchestra in preparation for a film and theater project entitled “Silver and Water.”
A rehearsal will be held Monday, Nov. 24 from 6-8:30 p.m. at the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Factory in Bartlett, 800 North Highway 395, south of Lone Pine.
According to Project Manager Rochelle Fabb, residents attending the rehearsal – and subsequent practice dates twice a month through February – will be taught how to play “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” on wine glasses.

Special guest Douglas Lee, a critically acclaimed glass harp player most recently featured on NBC’s “America’s Got Talent,” will be leading the group rehearsal for the first meeting.
Refreshments will be provided.
Farmlab/Metabolic Studio plans a performance of the community glass orchestra in February or March followed by a filming and live performance inspired by the “Wizard of Oz” and set in Owens Valley and Los Angeles, in the late spring of 2009.
Farmlab/Metabolic Studio is a collective of artists, agriculturalists, environmentalists and filmmakers under the direction of Artistic Director Lauren Bon from Los Angeles.
“We are a think tank, art production studio, and performance venue devoted to the preservation and perpetuation of all living things,” Fabb said.
Those attending Monday’s rehearsal are asked to park in the upper parking lot and follow the lighted path to the right of the building.

Welcome to the OV Glass Blog

2008-12-01T16:47:00.000-08:00

Greetings all!

Welcome to our OVGO (Owens Valley Glass Orchestra) Blog - a way to share info and ideas about rehearsals and plans for the Glass Orchestra at PPG.

Thank you for attending the first meeting/rehearsal of the Owens Valley Glass Orchestra on November 24 with the Metabolic Studio team and our instructor/maestro Douglas Lee.

Our next rehearsals will be on December 8 & 15 from 6pm - 8pm followed by sweets and a hot drink. Please feel free to extend this invitation to friends that would be interested in joining our orchestra over the next few months and have them rsvp to rfabb@metabolicstudio.org or 323-226-1158. See you on December 8!