Aren Skalman in demand

by Patricia Frischer

This seems to be Aren Skalman's winter. He is conducting workshops at Horton Plaza for SDAI. He has a display at the Athenaeum and he has been selected as an emerging artists for the 2016 SD Art Prize and will be included in a group show at City College Gallery in June.

Aren Skalman: Singing Machines at Joseph Clay Gallery at the Athenaeum
January 9-February 13, 2016

"Much of the work is interactive, so I invite you to approach it, manipulate it, move and spin elements (so long as the wiring is not abused), in order to investigate the workings, and the relationships between sound, substance, and image." Aren Skalman

We loved the way the circle on the left was hung off the side of the wall so that the piercing changed color and you moved.

These circle constructions all can be turned manually and they make different sounds. You can almost imagine that a group of friends could play a melody.

As you come close the motor comes on and the center disk moves and created sounds that are regulated by your body movements.

Coolest ever guitar coffee table.

Margaret Noble: Incorporeal Things to Control in the Rotunda Gallery was a bonus show of  work by Margaret Noble a previous nominated emerging artist for 2014 New Contemporaries VII. It was not possible to take adequate images from this show  but imagine a room full of bullet that protrude from of the walls as if shot from the inside out and a central collection of small bells suspended from the center of the room like a chandelier. .

The San Diego Art Institute (SDAI) presented Aren Skalman’s Open Studio and Workshops at our Horton Plaza Project Space. In preparation for SDAI curator-in-residence Amanda Cachia’s exhibition, “Sweet Gongs Vibrating,” SDAI  opened the Horton Plaza Project Space to artist Aren Skalman to use as an open studio/laboratory and weekly workshop space. These experimental workshops encourage artists and non-artists; members of the Blind Community Center of San Diego; and mall window shoppers to create multi-media, multisensory artworks. These works will evoke the myriad experiences of navigating Horton Plaza through the combined use of aural, tactile, and visual forms. Work created over the course of these sessions will be exhibited in “Sweet Gongs Vibrating,” which opens Saturday, March 26. To register for any or all of the workshops, please email cgold@sandiego-art.org with your name and whether or not you would like information regarding sighted guides.