COLLABORATIVE PROJECTS // FIBERS // PERFORMANCE // WRITING
Things That Survived The Winter
In Development
“Things That Survived The Winter” is a multi-stage, multi-disciplinary art piece that draws together the work of both “abled” and “disabled” artists with emphasis on obstacles like mental illness, visible and invisible disability. The work is being developed as individual pieces which will be assembled into a full length show targeted toward a universal audience, but more specifically identifying in-need audiences as individuals and families suffering from the effects of medical crises and chronic pain.
The project was seeded in 2013 with my personal biography (a book called “Spring Freeze”), whose structure was stripped of its details and became a poetic prompt. From here, I invited artists of other disciplines to work on a fluid storyline connecting their personal stories into a meta theme. Visually this piece moves between floor and air, using contemporary dance modes and aerial acrobatics including rope, fabric, and pole. Four musicians will play music live while cueing video components, a blend of sculptural animation and film. The wall-sized projection will interact with tensile fabric sculpture, becoming a “continuous deforming landscape” and set of interior and exterior relationships to show mental, physical, and emotional nuances of pain and transformation. It is with a surrealist lens that we can knit the mundane details of life into fantastic and dynamic interactions with time and space.
Watch works-in-progress video "Continuous Deforming Landscape"
In Development
“Things That Survived The Winter” is a multi-stage, multi-disciplinary art piece that draws together the work of both “abled” and “disabled” artists with emphasis on obstacles like mental illness, visible and invisible disability. The work is being developed as individual pieces which will be assembled into a full length show targeted toward a universal audience, but more specifically identifying in-need audiences as individuals and families suffering from the effects of medical crises and chronic pain.
The project was seeded in 2013 with my personal biography (a book called “Spring Freeze”), whose structure was stripped of its details and became a poetic prompt. From here, I invited artists of other disciplines to work on a fluid storyline connecting their personal stories into a meta theme. Visually this piece moves between floor and air, using contemporary dance modes and aerial acrobatics including rope, fabric, and pole. Four musicians will play music live while cueing video components, a blend of sculptural animation and film. The wall-sized projection will interact with tensile fabric sculpture, becoming a “continuous deforming landscape” and set of interior and exterior relationships to show mental, physical, and emotional nuances of pain and transformation. It is with a surrealist lens that we can knit the mundane details of life into fantastic and dynamic interactions with time and space.
Watch works-in-progress video "Continuous Deforming Landscape"
Things That Survived The Winter is a project sponsored by Fractured Atlas. Fractured Atlas is a 501(c)(3) public charity. Contributions for the purposes of Things That Survived The Winter are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
CLICK HERE TO GIVE A TAX DEDUCTIBLE DONATION THROUGH FRACTURED ATLAS
A House for Birds
2014- Ongoing
A unique storytelling experience uniting performance art, text, and environment, "A House for Birds" is built wherever the branches connect. Using original writing by myself, and quoted text from authors Herman Hesse, Shakespeare, and the Tao to frame a performance art happening, this solo performance piece bridges genres and poses questions to progressive permaculture enthusiasts. How do we claim ownership of "home", and how are our hearts tied to natural resources?
Built for and staged at the opening of Beacon Food Forest and other environmental/ social projects, "A House For Birds" features an Intermission Act commissioning series that was test- piloted in 2014 in Seattle and Philadelphia. Local artists are chosen to split the show and perform mid-way through. The work was developed during an artist residency at Peñasco Theatre (NM). It will be re-performed at the opening of Fairmount Food Forest in Philadelphia (in development).
2014- Ongoing
A unique storytelling experience uniting performance art, text, and environment, "A House for Birds" is built wherever the branches connect. Using original writing by myself, and quoted text from authors Herman Hesse, Shakespeare, and the Tao to frame a performance art happening, this solo performance piece bridges genres and poses questions to progressive permaculture enthusiasts. How do we claim ownership of "home", and how are our hearts tied to natural resources?
Built for and staged at the opening of Beacon Food Forest and other environmental/ social projects, "A House For Birds" features an Intermission Act commissioning series that was test- piloted in 2014 in Seattle and Philadelphia. Local artists are chosen to split the show and perform mid-way through. The work was developed during an artist residency at Peñasco Theatre (NM). It will be re-performed at the opening of Fairmount Food Forest in Philadelphia (in development).
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Wind at my Back
2012 This 50-minute original performance installation tells a surreal story of critical moments and biographic reflection. Conceptually seeded, co-written, facilitated, and produced by myself, this open-structured collaborative piece seamed together original work by over 30 artists and artisans. It began with a community prompt to collect childhood memories of home and place, which were incorporated into the life history of the main character, Hollis. Out of these precious and poetic moments, we crafted a collective human experience that was both real and universal, with poetic overlays built through original music, aerial choreography, storytelling, and visual art. Equipment and rigging provided by the Philadelphia School of Circus Arts and Give and Take Jugglers. Music by Gemini Wolf. Tensile Fabric set design/ installation by Broken Arrow Workshop. Performers and choreographers: Rose Bonjo, Niff Nichols (lead), Jackie Zalewski, Meg Skill, Peter Smith. Visual Artists Emily Davidson, Jovana Sarver, Lindsay Wallace. Co-writers Dan Schein, Leslie Friedman, Yolanda Ho, Jovana Sarver. Photography by Jason M Photographics. <<Read about WAMB in "Sarah Muehlbauer Takes Plasticity and Memory Up in the Air" by Nicholas Gilewicz for Philadelphia Fringe>> |
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Circus Bomb The Southwest
Photos from our fun, indie recreational tour of the beautiful Southwest, with Jess Flying Yogi and family. Read Blog Post
Photos from our fun, indie recreational tour of the beautiful Southwest, with Jess Flying Yogi and family. Read Blog Post
Specter Animalia
2010
Graduate Thesis
I spent much of my second year at Tyler School of Art investigating dyed and sewn plastics in performance---with the material as a metaphor for human desire to transform nature and to go beyond it's "limited" organic form. Humans are messy and dark and full of love and pain, and often we wish to transcend our "less desirable" aspects and our limitations. However we must always ask, "By what means, and at what cost?" Inspired by Roland Barthes "Mythologies" and his eloquent writing on plasticity, I explored this concept with fierce dance collaborator and artist Colleen Hooper through sculpture and video. By installing cut, sewn, dyed, and constructed "natural forms" using plastic, juxtaposed with the human body, we wrote a performative and mediated installation and video project. The gallery audioscape was dictated by the sound of a sleep/ noise machine. Meanwhile, a short video combining dance, sculpture, and a recorded narrative entered a reflection on car and desk culture, and distance from the wild. These themes seem just as vital today as ever, as humans increasingly realize the weight that plastic bears on the fate of our planet and the lives of all living beings.
2010
Graduate Thesis
I spent much of my second year at Tyler School of Art investigating dyed and sewn plastics in performance---with the material as a metaphor for human desire to transform nature and to go beyond it's "limited" organic form. Humans are messy and dark and full of love and pain, and often we wish to transcend our "less desirable" aspects and our limitations. However we must always ask, "By what means, and at what cost?" Inspired by Roland Barthes "Mythologies" and his eloquent writing on plasticity, I explored this concept with fierce dance collaborator and artist Colleen Hooper through sculpture and video. By installing cut, sewn, dyed, and constructed "natural forms" using plastic, juxtaposed with the human body, we wrote a performative and mediated installation and video project. The gallery audioscape was dictated by the sound of a sleep/ noise machine. Meanwhile, a short video combining dance, sculpture, and a recorded narrative entered a reflection on car and desk culture, and distance from the wild. These themes seem just as vital today as ever, as humans increasingly realize the weight that plastic bears on the fate of our planet and the lives of all living beings.
The Walnut Lane Bridge Project
2009-2010
A 3-part series of site-specific video collaborations between myself and dancer/choreographers Nikki Roberts & Briel Driscoll with sound designer Cory Neale ("Forces of Friction"), as well as dancer/ choreographers Beau Hancock & Colleen Hooper ("Arches"), and my own solo performance ("Para"). This project was built out of the framework of the Walnut Lane Bridge (Germantown neighborhood, Philadelphia) and was filmed in the year of its centennial anniversary. The bridge itself was the world's largest poured-concrete structure at the time. This mark of human accomplishment contains the impure history of the tragic death of multiple workers during its construction, that occurred during the move of the falsework to pour the second arch. In our modern interpretation, we read our history and responded more viscerally to the site as it presented itself to us. This collection was highly improvisational in nature.
2009-2010
A 3-part series of site-specific video collaborations between myself and dancer/choreographers Nikki Roberts & Briel Driscoll with sound designer Cory Neale ("Forces of Friction"), as well as dancer/ choreographers Beau Hancock & Colleen Hooper ("Arches"), and my own solo performance ("Para"). This project was built out of the framework of the Walnut Lane Bridge (Germantown neighborhood, Philadelphia) and was filmed in the year of its centennial anniversary. The bridge itself was the world's largest poured-concrete structure at the time. This mark of human accomplishment contains the impure history of the tragic death of multiple workers during its construction, that occurred during the move of the falsework to pour the second arch. In our modern interpretation, we read our history and responded more viscerally to the site as it presented itself to us. This collection was highly improvisational in nature.