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California-Alentejo: game, jogo; game, pronto

 

Projection and 26 pastel drawings in two travel journals 

 

A project for "Andamentos," dedicated to young artists/performances, curated by Inês Barreiros within the context of Escrita na Paisagem (Written in the Landscape), festival of performance art in Évora, Portugal

 

 

              

Projections of California-Alentejo on the courtyard wall of the Convent of Carmo, University of Évora; Évora, Portugal

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Produced with the support of the Embaixada dos Estados Unidos da América.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inspired by a road trip that I took with Inês Barreiros in 2004 through the Alentejo landscape, the project California - Alentejo was created within the context of Escrita na Paisagem 2007 (Written in the Landscape), a festival of performance art in Alentejo, Portugal.

 

As curator, Inês included and helped produce California - Alentejo. Please see her curatorial essay in regard to this project below, in both Portuguese and English.

 

Inspired by the theme of the festival, "Games, Travel, and Hospitality", I transformed the landscapes of my home in California and Évora into "game boards" along which to travel, draw, and compare the two locales. 

 

I began by asking my grandparents to remember the old road that they used to take to San Francisco before super-highways skipped over small towns. I designated this road as a transect along which to gather data in the form of drawings. Switching miles for kilometers, I found a similar road in Alentejo, Portugal, that also ran east to west and followed a river delta to a ferry landing. 

 

In order to randomly determine where to draw along the road, I played a game of cribbage with my grandfather and used the points gained in each hand as distance intervals between which to stop and draw along each road. With this method, I was able to take an "objective" sampling of drawings from the two regions. Recorded in two travel journals, 13 drawings in California correspond to 13 in Alentejo, Portugal.   

 

 

           

Landscape around Brentwood, CA. Photo: John Casey, my father.                                          Alentejo, Portugal, reminded me of Brentwood, CA, where my family is from.



           Roland Dell'Immagine, my grandfather (1920-2012) playing Cribbage in his kitchen in Oakley, CA
    

             

My grandfather, Bearl Casey tracing the old Hwy 4 to San Francisco                                          Locating a delta road that runs east to west in Portugal                            



               

 

"Também de subjectividades e afectos nos fala o projecto de Alyssa Casey. Com uma licenciatura mista em Belas-Artes, Biologia e Geografia, na Universidade de Berkeley, gosta de encontrar no seu trabalho ligações conceptuais entre fontes não relacionadas, mas semelhantes entre si, combinando frequentemente formas arquétipas com registos de memórias. Através deste processo como força criativa chave, o trabalho de Alyssa identifica-se com os preceitos da poesia visual, ao mesmo tempo que mantém uma ênfase nas prioridades formais do desenho. O projecto que concebemos para o Festival vai nesta esteira e contextualiza-se a partir de uma viagem pelo Alentejo, no Verão de 2004. Inês Barreiros, convencida de que levava Alyssa Casey por uma paisagem única, confronta-se com o seguinte comentário: “Evoca-me fortemente a Califórnia”. Será que o Alentejo, em vez de um ‘deserto’, poderá ser uma (californiana) ‘terra prometida’?

Desta forma, "Califórnia-Alentejo" constitui-se como um exame às semelhanças e/ou discrepâncias emotivas e físicas entre as paisagens do Alentejo, lugar do Festival, e as da costa central da Califórnia, lugar de origem de Alyssa, através das memórias íntimas da sua história familiar (de emigrantes na Califórnia). Seguindo o tema do Festival, “jogo, viagem e hospitalidade”, o projecto transforma as duas paisagens em “quadros de jogo”, através dos quais Alyssa já viajou na Califórnia e viajará em Portugal, documentando a sua passagem por meio de desenhos e registos escritos de encontros com pessoas e memórias locais e familiares. Na esteira da melhor tradição “paisagista” americana, em artistas como Hans Hofmann (sobretudo os seus trabalhos em papel) e, mais recentemente, Wolf Khan (seu discípulo), cujas obras estão entre as mais populares da imagética americana, os desenhos-registo de Alyssa são actos de preservação da memória, que se constituem como testemunhos despretensiosos e que darão origem a dois livros de edição única."

 

- Inês Barreiros  (excerpt from the text, Andamentos, her curatorial contribution to Escrita na Paisagem 2007)  


"Alyssa Casey's project also speaks to us in regard to subjectivity and affect. With a degree in Fine Art, Biology and Geography from the University of California at Berkeley, Alyssa likes to find conceptual links between unrelated but analogous sources, frequently combining traces of memory with archetypal forms. Through this creative approach, the work of Alyssa identifies with the conceptual framework of visual poetry, while at the same time, maintains an emphasis on the formal priorities of drawing. The project that we conceived for the Festival is cut from this same cloth and was born by a road trip through Alentejo in the summer of 2004. Inês Barreiros, convinced that she had brought Alyssa to a truly singular landscape, was confronted by the following comment: "This really reminds me of California." Could it be that Alentejo, rather than a desert, could be a (californian) "promised land"?

 



In this way, "California-Alentejo" constitutes an examination of the emotive and physical similarities and/or differences between the landscapes of Alentejo, location of the festival, and the central coast of California, the home of Alyssa, through the lens of the intimate memories of her familial history (of immigrants to California). Following the theme of the festival, "games, travel, and hospitality", the project transforms the two landscapes into "game boards", through which Alyssa already traveled in California and will travel in Portugal, documenting her trip through drawings and written registers of real-time encounters with people as well as local and familial memories. Following the best tradition of American landscape painting, with artists such as Hans Hofman (especially his work on paper) and, more recently, Wolf Khan (Hofman's student), whose works are amongst the most popular of American imagery, the drawings/register by Alyssa are acts of memory preservation constituted by modest testimonies recorded in two unique books."

 


                #1. 1 point - Mile 1: gas station                                                                                     #1. 1 point - Kilometer 1: rice field

                                                

               #2. 2 points - Mile 3: Brownstone Ave. with Highway 4, view of church                             #2. 2 points - Kilometer 3: olive grove

 

              #3. 1 point - Mile 4: house                                                                                           #3. 1 point - Kilometer 4: house

 

              #4. 3 points - Mile 7: Deadman’s curve                                                                         #4. 3 points - Kilometer 7: Bridge

 

                #5. 7 points - Mile 14: steel mill                                                                                    #5. 7 points - Kilometer 14: pine grove 

 

              #6. 2 points - Mile 16: chemical plant parking lot                                                            #6. 2 points - Kilometer 16: turn in the road

 

               #7. 8 points - Mile 24: Mt. Diablo                                                                                   #7. 8 points - Kilometer 24: cork oak

 

               #8. 1 point - Mile 25: two oak trees                                                                                #8. 1 point - Kilometer 25: church

    

                #9. 1 point - Mile 26: apartment building                                                                         #9. 1 point - Kilometer 26: house in Monte

 

                #10. 20
 points
 - Mile 50: view of San Francisco                                                              #10. 20
 points
 - Kilometer 50:
 abandoned construction materials 



                #11. 4 points - Mile 50: community garden                                                                     #11. 4 points - Kilometer 50: abandoned golf course parking lot

                                              

               #12. 1 point - Mile 51: abandoned café                                                                         #12. 1 point - Kilometer 51: view of construction in Troia

 

               #13. 1 point - Mile 52: view of San Francisco from former ferry landing                             #13. 1 point - Kilometer 52: view of Setúbal from ferry landing 

 

 

Shown as a handmade paper installation at Soft Box, Queens:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wall piece (graphite, watercolor and collage on handmade cotton and abaca paper), video footage of road trip with my grandparent's, 2 travel journals with 13 drawings each.

Part of the exhibition Spring Space at Softbox. Curated by Valeria Federici. 

A contribution to Anna Lise Jensen's series: A lot of Possibilities - Coalition of Domestic, Seasonal Artists' Spaces

Photos by Marion Misilim and Paulo Rojas

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                          

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



lysacasey@gmail.com