Launch of the Journal of the Institute of Higher Nervous Activities

Description

Stop by the Jesup Memorial Library for the launch of the Journal of the Institute of Higher Nervous Activities with multidisciplinary artist Dru Colbert and artist and musician Nancy Andrews, on Friday, Jan. 24 at 7 p.m. The night will feature poetry readings by Colbert and music by the duo, Fruity, which features Andrews and Danielle Byrd. Colbert and Andrews are both professors at the College of the Atlantic.
 
Colbert will be reading from “Critters and Doodads” which is featured in the Journal, interspersed with the readings will be music from Fruity. The band features electric guitars playing “flamboyant, sad and happily odd songs” that they describe as having the flavor of ripe fruit. Andrews and Byrd are better known as visual artists and say, “playing music is an amateur pursuit that opens up space for failure, risk, anger and humor.”
 
This event is a celebration of the launch of the inaugural issue of the Journal of The Institute for Higher Nervous Activities, which is a duplex magazine, includes poems by Colbert alongside drawings by Andrews. Each subsequent issues of the Journal will pair artists, craftspeople, researchers, scientists, workers, writers or poets in this back-to-back format. Their work will be seen in context with one another, and create dialogue, ideas, visions, thoughts and dreams from the space between the works.
 
Andrews makes films, drawings, music, props and objects. Her work has been in multiple film festivals, six of her films are in the film collection of the Museum of Modern Art, and one is in the School of the Art Institute of Chicago Film Collection. She is currently on faculty at the College of the Atlantic where she teaches video making, animation, time-based arts and film studies.
 
Colbert teaches art at the College of the Atlantic. Her studio and performance installation work investigate the confluence of human and natural histories in the context of specific places, and calls into question cultural authorship and issues surrounding the visual display of culture and the natural world. She works regionally and nationally, for museums and not for profit organizations including the Smithsonian and the National Park Service, as an interpretive exhibition designer.
 
For more information on this event, contact the Jesup at 207-288-4245.