All photos by Adam Dyda
With Phish set to open a three-show run tonight at Dick’s, here’s a piece originally slated to appear in our Curveball newspaper.
Look around you. Art is EVERYWHERE! It’s not just on the stage, but found in the lights, the trees, the art installations and among the fans too. At every Phish festival since Clifford Ball, artists have worked alongside the band and production team to bring the festival grounds to life in a way that accents the musical experience. Some of these art installations stand out in the lore of Phish festivals:the Sunken City at IT, the Porto-Pagoda at The Lemonwheel, the Ice Pyramid in The Delta at Big Cypress, giant marshmallows on sticks at Camp Oswego, the Burble at Fest 8, the wooden art of festival namesake Clifford A. Ball at The Clifford Ball, the Storage Units at Superball, the Observatory at Magnaball, and of course the giant match that lit the collective art project at The Great Went, just to name a few.
This year at Curveball, Phish brought back some of the artists who brought us various art installations and experiences at past festivals. The team, led by Russ Bennett and working with longtime collaborator Lars Fisk, were given varying degrees of direction from the band and production team, culminating in the variety of art you see before you on the field – and some you might miss..
Abigail Manock has designed “Lucky Inside,” an interactive art experience where each day fans will help to fill pinatas, and a lucky few will be selected to try to break them open. Manock has created three 6-foot tall pinatas and invites fans to donate an item to a ‘time capsule,’ perhaps something of personal significance, and in return, place their phone number on a ping pong ball. Each day, before showtime, five ping pong balls will be selected and fans contacted to take a swing and smash the hoisted pinata. All the contributed items over the course of the festival will be archived on Instagram (@luckyinsideproject) where you can learn more about the item(s) you may get from the defeated pinata. A Burlington native living in Brooklyn, Abigail first worked at IT on three acorn heads with wingnuts, and also developed Mammoth Mart at Coventry, both of which are critiques on consumerism.
In the location where The Observatory was at Magnaball is “Curvature,” designed by Randy Gaetano of York, ME. Gaetano’s past Phish festival experience involved developing the Ice Pyramid at Big Cypress, the New Do Barber Shop, as well as 2-dimensional garden ornaments found in the Wagon Train at Coventry, and at Magnaball where he grew crystals for a month to develop a Crystal Tree that continued to grow during the festival. For Curvature, Randy uses a combination of Native American basket weaving methods and quarter inch thick wooden strips that he burned with symmetrical totem drawings (all done on site earlier this week) that are intertwined in a curvilinear fashion. From above, the structure resembles a three dimensional crescent moon, using curved wood intertwined inside the Curvature. The self-supporting structure is sanctuary-esque and a truly unique spatial experience, with light from the inside illuminating the 100 foot long, 30 foot deep structure.
This weekend, “The Cloud” is not the place to store your photos and music, but an installation by Torin Porter from Glover, VT. His seventh fest, Torin made chainsaw carvings at Camp Oswego from trees to create abstract dogs and chairs, while at Big Cypress, he dressed up as a character at an archeological site and encouraged curious fans to dig up and bury things. Most recently at Magnaball, Torin created the giant ears on stems that you could talk into, and stopped by with giant ear cleaners throughout the weekend to clean them out. Having seen how Phish fans interact with the art at festivals, he admires the celebration of everyone getting together and creates visual art that allows fans to have more stories that people can share. “The art just adds another layer to the experience everyone is celebrating together.” Here at Curveball, “The Cloud” is a 7 foot high, 12 foot long and 8 foot wide structure of painted fiberglass on a steel frame that is raised 10 feet off the ground, and has spiral curves going in and out of the cloud. Rain can be found coming out of the bottom of the cloud via blue poles, but also provides room for shade, playing to the dual purpose of clouds, with the overall structure an example of something that is physical, vaporous and ever changing.
Levi Bedall is contributing to his first Phish festival out of Providence, RI, having worked at Boston Calling earlier this summer. He brings with him three installations, ‘Handles,’ and two that he calls ‘Pneumatic Masonry,’ the former of which incorporates inflatables that are ‘sculptural blobs’ and ‘undulating experiments’ as Bedall puts it, allowing the inflatables to be what they want to be, instead of a natural spherical shape. There are six ‘Handles’ located in the festival grounds, which are white during the day but light up with LEDs at night. ‘Pneumatic Masonry’ will incorporate airtight inflatables – 3 foot wide beach balls in particular – and a net that holds them in place. Hexagonal cells will form a dome, while a 70 foot long/6 foot wide structure of these balls provides a unique but unintentional riff on the festival’s name. You can see more of Levi’s work at Pneu.haus.
And of course, what would a Phish festival be without Jim Pollock creating a poster for the event? For this year’s poster, Jim has an off the beaten track carnival feel that comes together as ‘Ride the Curveball,’ where he works with an intense color scheme that reminds him of Candy Crush colors. Jim also has three cardboard cutouts of fish playing baseball that are double-sided with holes at the top for hanging them up (they’re very kid-friendly). These die-cut figures are named Finnius, Ignatius and Shamus and can be purchased at the Waterwheel Foundation table (while supplies last!).
Jim will be printing on site this weekend and has his book-binding press, the same he had at The Great Went, on hand for demonstrations and signings. A taste of Jim’s previous festival work will also be on display, which has been featured at every Phish festival (except IT) and shines a light on the extensive work he has done over the course of the band’s career.
All these artists and many more work with Lars Fisk, Russ Bennett, Christy Gerhart and Phish’s production team to bring a deeper experience to the fans, combining the music of the festival with visual, spatial and performance art that makes the Phish festival experience unique for 22 years and counting.
