Color and Heart

If you see our show this year, you’ll hear an introductory narration by various voices.  Those voices are the members and staff of The Creek, explaining the dedication of the show to people we know or have known who have influenced us in positive ways.  It is the crux of the show, the foundation of why we chose to create this project in this way.  The voices come back toward the end with specific dedications to family members and friends of the members’ choosing.

Reprinted here are those opening words.  We hope that they bring to mind someone you know.  Whether we know those people or not, this show is for them as well.

This is for those who love you, those who encourage you and who support you. This is for someone you have known and lost, or for someone you have met today and will know forever.

This is for our friend John. Color and Heart.

Art by Kenn Goodall

Check out this great video of MWM’s murals coming to life on the streets of France.

Fantastic.

You may have heard the birds at the beginning of our show. We wanted to enter the performance with calm and disarming sounds that set the mood of positivity, hope, and celebration. It is a mix of five birds that we specifically created for the perfect sound and underlying symbolism.

The bird songs are mix of sparrows (Song Sparrow, Sage Sparrow, and Lark Sparrow) with a Nightingale and Mourning Dove.

The sparrows symbolize hope, community, and humility. Nightingales symbolize inspiration and creativity. Mourning doves symbolize peace and their call gives them their ‘mourning’ name. All of these things are thoughts that either represent how we want to approach our show or how we want to memorialize the memory of John.

Listen to it here:

Birdsong

We’re excited about our uniform design this year. Here is an action shot at their debut:

Bright highlights on a largely neutral uniform to stand out against a bright floor.  The backs are all white for a contrast front to back.  Each member has a randomized pattern of colored stripes, so every uniform is ‘individualized’ and has only a couple just like it.  And here are a couple process images as we designed the finished product:

Great, colorful art by Maya Hayuk. More here.

Art from Christopher David Ryan. More here.

Art by Clark Goolsby.

Our favorite equation is x^2+(y-(x^2)^(1/3))^2 = 1
Get out your graphing calculators.

To see the plot, click here.

2011′s The Creek ensemble.

2010′s Timber Creek Ind. ensemble. Pictured with John, April 16th, in Dayton, Ohio.

Our main visual influence and designer of the art for our floor is an insanely talented artist, illustrator, muralist, and designer Matt W. Moore (MWM).  He was gracious enough to work with us for our floor design for Color and Heart.  I have been a fan of his work for a long time, but the biggest inspiration was his series “Crystals & Lasers” which exhibited in Paris, France in February 2010.  Here is a link to the work, you MUST check it out.

With the generous cooperation of MWM, we re-worked one of the pieces from that series.  Here is the original:

When vectorized, flipped, color adjusted, and minorly edited, this was the result:

We could not be happier with the boldness of our floor tarp.  That is a lot of color for 4,000 square feet!

Here is a picture of our practice floor, as we waited for the real thing to arrive.  We had painted on the lines and colors.

And here are pictures of when we unrolled the floor for the first time:

And lastly, a screen shot of the entire floor in action at a show:

Thanks again to MWM. And check out all of his incredible work here.

Art by Simon Page. More here.

Happy Valentines Day. Love the work by Lisa Congdon. More here.

From the W5 region in the constellation Cassiopeia.

Check out this blog with more color and art projects than you can handle, the Let’s Colour Project.

Lots of inspirational photos and projects:

Click here.

Here is a small sample of images and art pieces that influenced the visual design of Color and Heart back in Summer/Fall 2010.

Sebastian Vallejo

Maya Hayuk

Shannon Elliott

Greg Lamarche

Unknown

Art by Joe Van Wetering. More here.

Album cover from Feist’s “The Reminder.” Has great similarities to The Creek’s uniforms this year.  Similar neutral greys with stripes of color.  Great album, too.

A large portion of our 2011 show, especially the second half, revolves around the key of C.  This is another subtle nod to our friend John, whose last name Seay is pronounced like the letter “C.”  When you hear the resolution after the pit feature and end of the show, it is, of course, a C.

There is a famous aleatoric piece of music titled “In C” by Terry Riley.  While not part of the source music for our production, this video contains a performance of the piece that is interesting in its instrumentation, and visually reminiscent of Sufjan Stevens’ art-doc The Brooklyn Queens Expressway – from which we took most of our source material.

Color flower by Chris Harrison using names of colors to draw the lines.  More detail here.

I know the meaning and context of the song don’t really apply, but this song reminds me of my friend John Seay.

This is the write-up we did to describe our show to fans on WGI’s website.  Gives a little more insight on the creative direction of the program.

From the team that brought to life “Videotape” and “Censored,” The Creek will explore more emotional territory with their 2011 production “Color and Heart”. The show is inspired by and dedicated to John Seay, their staff member who passed away in April from a sudden heart condition.

The music, from Sufjan Stevens’ albums “The BQE” and “Illinoise,” joined by original work from Omar Carmenates, provides the opportunity to explore different styles and feelings that celebrate the people who color our lives.

Illustrator Patrick Hruby. More here.

Art by M. Bill, 1938