Noah Travis Phillips
Boulder Creek Overpass Triptych Rehearsal
Version 2 (HDTxJCxNTP)
 two versions sm.png "Boulder Creek Underpass Triptych Rehearsal 2")
2-1
2-2
Boulder Creek Underpass Rehearsal 2 (HDTxJCxNTP) is a pair of triptychs, installed in an underpass along the Boulder Creek in Boulder, Colorado. The imagery is sampled from marginalia drawings by Henry David Thoreau, most of which was obtained from John Cage’s “Empty Words” (a performance that demilitarizes language by introducing space). The imagery is repurposed and composed to suggest a landscape, and gestures to things one might experience along the Creek path, and in the landscape/wilderness of the Front Range. The imagery takes on different tempos and rhythms depending on the audience direction and speed of travel – noticing different things and things differently. The compositions become musical.
This project taps into lineage: Noah Travis Phillips works in dialogue with an immediate influence (John Cage) to cultivate a dialogue with a kind of grandparent (Henry David Thoreau). It highlights the potentials that exist for Phillps’ practice to engage with a more singular archive. Phillips’ use of this imagery, expands the relevance of its sources, and the articulation of their own practice. Boulder Creek Underpass Rehearsal 2 (HDTxJCxNTP) continues to deepen the ecological and posthuman/anthropocene within their praxis.
Version 1
Boulder Creek Overpass Triptych Rehearsal
Boulder, Colorado
Summer 2022
Photomechanical Reproduction (and wheatpaste)
Boulder Creek Overpass Triptych Rehearsal is a trio of panels installed in an underpass along the Boulder Creek [link to Boulder Creek info] in Boulder, Colorado. The constellations of imagery are grown from group(ing)s and folios of images that had accumulated in the artist's studio throughout and up to this point in the Summer 2022. Along the creek viewers can flow with or against the water, and in either direction through this imagery, quickly or slowly, experiencing the tempo and depth of Phillips' imagery from a multitude of perspectives – noticing different things from each other and something else each time.
Some of the material included here is what could be considered complete artworks by the artist, (ex. High Tide 2 (w/ Pat Steir) and Paradise (according Jean Rhys - Sleep It off Lady), anniversary joyful journey full moon solstice fire); concentrated on the right panel, or the Medusa Duet Pair Sharing Wordless Poetry, Yellow GAN 2 (take 2) on the left panel. Other materials are well-established groups (ex. the group orbiting the 'godless universe' in right side of right panel, or the Sisyphus self-portrait and proginoskes on the left side of the right panel), as well as various collages in the left panel. Still other areas are made of elements that were floating around the studio at this time, "free radicals", as the artist often refers to them, some of these images have been in the artist's archive for nearly a quarter-century (re)used and recycled in various ways and contexts. The imagery symbolically and esoterically reflects on the artist's life in Boulder; a place of magic, nature, romance, wildness, dharma, caring, radicalism,white supremacy, gentrification, unaffordable housing, and any of the other joys and tragedies of a Millennial artist living through the 21st-century.
________________________________________________
Noah Travis Phillips is an artist, educator, and scholar; BA, Naropa University, Fine Art and Environmental Studies; MFA, University of Denver, Emergent Digital Practices. They create adaptable and multicentered artworks that cultivate an anthropocene and posthuman world that is both mythic and personal by activating appropriation and digital/analog remix and collage strategies. Their artworks incorporate 2D / 3D digital fabrication, videos, publications, performance, and the internet. Phillips is Assistant Professor & FabLab Coordinator at Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design, and they have exhibited extensively locally, nationally, internationally, and virtually. They live and work in Boulder, Colorado and can be found online at th3n04h.com.
________________________________________________
*