Reflecting on the work in Chris Doyle's exhibition You Should Lie Down Now andRemembertheForest and Chester Arnold's exhibition Tributaries, BOXBLUR invited Shinji Eshima to curate a special program that evokes the ideas in both visual art exhibitions through music. Eshima's program titled Remember the Forest features a work titled Logs (1966 by Paul Chihara) performed by Jon Lancelle, Michael Minor, Evan Hillis, Yuchen Liu, Carlos Valdez, Alexandria Kelley, Christopher Yick, Soren Davick, Steve D'Amico, and Shinji Eshima, a work titled August 6th (1995 by Shinji Eshima), performed by Ani Bukujian and Michael Minor, as well as the monks from the SF Zen Center, who will chant as part of the evening's performances.
Shinji Eshima has been a double-bassist in the San Francisco Opera since 1980. He has also served as Associate Principal Bass in the San Francisco Ballet Orchestra since 1982. He has taught classical bass at San Francisco State University, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Stanford University, San Francisco School of the Arts and the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Born in Berkeley, CA in 1956 to a Japanese American family, Mr. Eshima has written over 30 works including ballets, operas, hymns, choruses, solos, chamber pieces and soundtracks. An audio recording of his first work for San Francisco Ballet, RAkU, was released in 2012 and a documentary about the ballet, Fire and Ashes: Making the Ballet RAkU premiered in 2017. His most recent major commission is Zheng, a new opera about the late Chinese-born, American mezzo-soprano, Zheng Cao. His first full length ballet, Snow White, premiered with Carolina Ballet in March 2022.
Mr. Eshima graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Music from Stanford University and a Master of Music degree from the Juilliard School. He was the recipient of the Stanford Humanities Award and was honored by the city of Berkeley with a declaration on December 6, 2011 as "Shinji Eshima Day" for his contribution to the Arts.
More about the visual artwork:
Chester Arnold infuses depths of feeling in crashing waves, cavernous ravines, and 400-year-old oak trees. His expressive oil paintings and drawings often depict psychologically and emotionally rich landscapes, and he writes that his work "reflects a mind's natural and unrestrained adventures with friction and gravity at its core." The paintings in Tributaries- also on view in the Gallery - depict water in seemingly calmer states, with rivers and bays stretching and meandering through green banks. However, his landscapes suggest precariousness beneath the surface. Arnold created this body of work shortly after a loved one's illness. After an extended break, Arnold returned to the studio. His newest landscapes reflect on passage and connection: tributaries flow into one another; starlings amass in murmuration; old-growth trees stretch their roots and branches, inviting an onlooker to touch. Arnold writes: "The works in Tributariesare driven by a metaphorical instinct that guides everything in my life. Painting may not be science, but the gifts of its agency, in both practice and appreciation, have been both balm and elixir in a challenging time. The paintings that appear here flowered in an atmosphere of restoration and recovery."
Chris Doyle's work often meditates on regenerative life cycles and the tension between destruction and repair. The current exhibition -- You Should Lie Down Now and Remember the Forest- on view in Gallery - builds on Doyle's earlier work about landscape and memory. It evocatively depicts a forest transitioning through seasons and cycles of growth across three series of work. The work in the exhibition is a visual meditation on collective and personal loss and the potential for new life and beginnings-new growth.
Doyle began the watercolor series "The Newly Fallen" (2020 - present) after observing an unusually high number of uprooted trees at his home in Maine. He notes: "Every year, the forest where I live loses several old-growth trees to storms and high winds. In Spring 2020, at the height of the pandemic, I noticed more fallen trees than normal. As I mourned the loss of each tree, I also mourned the loss of my own elders who died during the pandemic from Covid-19." In response to this overwhelming loss, Doyle created large format drawings, rendered in monochrome watercolor and mounted to panel, depicting fallen trees in the forest. Each drawing serves as a memorial to a friend or mentor who passed during the pandemic. Doyle's drawings, both haunting and awe-inspiring in scale, create a contemplative space inviting us to consider life's precarity and beauty. Doyle hints at signs of life in each drawing, writing: "I found myself marveling at the new growth springing from these fallen trees. Each drawing, by extension, is both a memorial to a fallen elder and a tribute to the continued impact that their lives will inspire."
Doyle's exhibition draws its title from a poem by Susan Steward, which is reproduced below.
The Forest by Susan Steward
You should lie down now and remember the forest,
for it is disappearing-
no, the truth is it is gone now
and so what details you can bring back
might have a kind of life.
Not the one you had hoped for, but a life
-you should lie down now and remember the forest-
nonetheless, you might call it "in the forest,"
nothetruthis,itisgonenow,
starting somewhere near the beginning, that edge,
Or instead the first layer, the place you remember
(not the one you had hoped for, but a life)
as if it were firm, underfoot, for that place is a sea,
nonetheless, you might call it "in the forest,"
which we can never drift above, we were there
or we were not,
No surface, skimming. And blank in life, too,
or instead the first layer, the place you remember,
as layers fold in time, black humus there,
as if it were firm, underfoot, for that place is a sea,
like a light left hand descending, always on the same keys.
The flecked birds of the forest sing behind and before
no surface, skimming. And blank in life, too,
sing without a music where there cannot be an order,
as layers fold in time, black humus there,
where wide swatches of light slice between gray trunks,
Where the air has a texture of drying moss,
the flecked birds of the forest sing behind and before:
a musk from the mushrooms and scalloped molds.
They sing without a music where there cannot be an order,
though high in the dry leaves something does fall,
Nothing comes down to us here.
Where the air has a texture of drying moss,
(in that place where I was raised) the forest was tangled,
a musk from the mushrooms and scalloped molds,
tangled with brambles, soft-starred and moving, ferns
And the marred twines of cinquefoil, false strawberry, sumac-
nothing comes down to us here,
stained. A low branch swinging above a brook
in that place where I was raised, the forest was tangled,
and a cave just the width of shoulder blades.
You can understand what I am doing when I think of the entry-
and the marred twines of cinquefoil, false
strawberry, sumac-
as a kind of limit. Sometimes I imagine us walking there
(. . .pokeberry, stained. A low branch swinging above a brook)
in a place that is something like a forest.
But perhaps the other kind, where the ground is covered
(you can understand what I am doing when I think of the entry)
by pliant green needles, there below the piney fronds,
a kind of limit. Sometimes I imagine us walking there.
And quickening below lie the sharp brown blades,
The disfiguring blackness, then the bulbed
phosphorescence of the roots.
But perhaps the other kind, where the ground is covered,
so strangely alike and yet singular, too, below
the pliant green needles, the piney fronds.
Once we were lost in the forest, sostrangelyalikeand yet singular, too,
but the truth is, it is, lost to us now.
(From TheForest,copyright The University of Chicago Press, 1995. Used with permission of the author)
BOXBLUR Mission Statement:
BOXBLUR emerged from a history of performances at Catharine Clark Gallery. In 2016, this effort was formalized as BOXBLUR, a fiscally sponsored program of Dance Film SF.
Central to BOXBLUR is a fiscally sponsored project of Dance Film SF and central to its efforts is its partnership with the San Francisco Dance Film Festival.
BOXBLUR hosts and produces socially engaged performative projects that are often experimental and are realized in conversation with a visual artist's work. BOXBLUR often collaborates with other organizations that amplify communal values.
BOXBLUR's projects seek to expand the presentation and definition of performance in non-proscenium settings.
