Category Archives: Gallery

Spacerex crashes my show

While I’m impressed that Will Dailyrest, my estranged ex-collaborator, seems to have gotten his old aerospace gear working and established a solid video feed from space and (supposedly) the future, I’m non-plussed that he removed or backgrounded all my artwork in the case and hot-glued the locks.

If the locksmith or police don’t get there to remove it before the opening this Friday, Feb 14th, please come anyway. He hasn’t messed with the stuff on the walls. Yet.

The show is in the hallway of the Hilton Garden Inn, 130 East Seneca St, Ithaca, NY 14886 until the End of February.

Will’s Artist Statement

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Paintings and prints

by Bryan Root

some of these pieces have been sold (see captions for prices)

click on images below for nifty slideshow

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Bob Potts Kinetic Sculpture

Bob Potts is a builder in Trumansburg, New York. He contacted me in 2009 to document kinetic sculptures he’d made and post them, along with an earlier film which had been shot by Peter Carroll. The layout and the format were to match that previous film and the same musician, Peter Dodge, was to do the soundtrack. So my job was to light, shoot, and edit, which I did. I also designed his YouTube Channel which has thousands of subscribers. 
Bob is soft-spoken, intense and multi-talented. He’s a poster child for what a good video can do for an artist. Since he posted his work on YouTube his art career has taken off with shows all over the world and a gallery in Switzerland. The films we made were also featured on the website Colossal.

The Ithaca Journal did a nice profile.

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Commissioned Art

After many years of computer and electronics-based art I got tired of having my creativity mediated by machines that demand updates, bug fixes, and a maddening and endless search for technical know-how. So I have started painting again, after a long hiatus–partly because someone I owe a lot of money to had a big empty wall in his waiting room and a tiny little painting to put on it. 

This post advertises the service.

Big empty wall
Big Wall, Tiny Painting

My first client agreed to consider a trade with the stipulation that he didn’t have to take my proposed large-scale painting if he didn’t like it. That seemed reasonable. Looking at his taste and with the direction of “abstract with texture, and pow colors,” I started with some photoshop mock-ups (below–clicking the image will advance the slideshow):

Through this process I established:

  1. That he didn’t like circles (though he came around eventually), or too much red.
  2.  That he wanted something bright.
  3.  That he kept coming back to a section of my second proposal (2 of 4) which, despairing of finding the right photoshop brush to do good paint splatter, I had pasted a Jackson Pollock painting into the mockup and threw some filters on it to make it match the floor.

So I decided on Jackson Pollock. It’s what I wanted to do anyway and the final result can be seen at the top of this page or the end of the slide show. The still image doesn’t do it justice. 

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An All-Inclusive Presence

Filmmaker/animator, Bryan Root, artist, Fernando Llosa, and musician, Peter Dodge, are working on a 45-minute animation. The title of the piece —An All-Inclusive Presence— was originally given by Fernando to a limited edition book containing an essay and a set of images selected from a large body of ink paintings made between 2004 and 2013.

There are two essential and intertwined observations at the heart of that work. One is that our long-standing identification with limited, contradictory, and extremely divisive forms of personal and tribal consciousness has alienated us from the mystery of life, the fundamental source of the human presence in the cosmos. The other is that, unless we somehow manage to overcome this alienation from our natural common ground, we will continue to live in increasingly worse forms of the same cultural fragmentation and interpersonal conflict we have already suffered for thousands of years.

Early in 2016, Peter accepted Fernando’s invitation to compose the original score that would accompany a video animation of a new selection of that same group of paintings. Peter had composed and performed music for  films Bryan had done for another artist and recommended him to Fernando.The fact that Fernando’s paintings had been made on glass with the express purpose of digitizing them for the production of large-scale prints, made that particular body of pictorial work ideal for the kind of detailed animation that Bryan likes to do. He agreed to participate. 

Below is an initial fundraising video done in 2016. 

Since then we completed two of three sections of the film, a five minute excerpt of which is shown here: 

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Some information about the three artists collaborating in this project

Bryan Root

Bryan studied painting and film at Tyler School of Art and graduated with a BFA in 1986. His post-graduate filmmaking got him into the directing program at The American Film Institute where he made 4 short films in two years, won a scholarship, and attained his MFA. He spent the next 15 years working in the Los Angeles film and television industry.

He made a web-based narrative farce, spacerex.com, which he set aside in 2003, to make “Dirty Habit,” a low budget feature he wrote, directed, and edited. He has made short films for musicians, artists, and scientists and worked freelance for National Geographic, The Smithsonian Network, PBS, and Action News.

His collaboration with kinetic artist, Bob Potts became a YouTube sensation and led to worldwide exhibitions and sales of Pott’s work. Bryan’s animation of paleo-artist John Gurche‘s busts of human ancestors went viral and received 32 million views in just 3 days, and has since permeated to the utmost backwaters of the web.

For more information, please visit Bryan website at this address: https://www.motherlode-pix.com/

Peter Dodge

Peter has been a professional musician for more than 50 years and a composer for 30. He graduated from Ithaca College in 1975 with an Applied Music degree (performance/trumpet).

He began performing his own music in the early 80’s, utilizing synthesizers and tape loops to create multi-layered soundscapes.

He has collaborated with choreographers (Nancy Gaspar, Lonna Wilkinson, Judy Brophy, Bernadette Fiocca, Jill Becker); performance/ritual artists (Cly Boehs, Dinosaur, Watchface, Leeny Sack); poet/storytellers  (Peter Fortunato, Katherine Blackbird, Regi Carpenter); filmmakers (Jay Craven, Gene Katz, Photosynthesis, Peter Carroll, Bryan Root); and music ensembles (Spirit Horses, Wonder Cabinet, Cloud Chamber Orchestra); on the internet, his music accompanies illustrations of the kinetic sculptures of Bob Potts filmed and edited by Bryan Root.

Peter’s work ranges from dense noise collages to high altitude salon music, and usually features some combination of piano (grand and toy) and various wind and string instruments. 

Fernando Llosa

Fernando is an artist, writer, and bookmaker who lives and works in Trumansburg with Kim Schrag, his accomplice in life and art. The possibility of a radical revolution in human consciousness is his central concern. You can find out more about him and his work here: https://unboundart.com/

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John Gurche

Bryan Root, Homo Naledi and John Gurche
John’s latest sculpture is so new and exciting that we can’t look directly at it. Very hard to photograph.

I was expecting to be buried deep in the credits of a film with lots of other cameramen when I got hired to shoot John Gurche at work in his studio on the reconstruction of the exciting new human ancestor, Homo Naledi, for National Geographic. Imagine my excitement yesterday, when I saw that they edited together my footage into a distinct film to itself! 

See the film on National Geographic’s Website.star

Below is National Geographic’s feature about the discovery of Homo Naledi, which features some of my camerawork as well:

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Rongovian Embassy Poster for February 2015

Rongo-150129Poster4
footer logo designed by Q Cassetti

I’ve been fascinated by the timeline of history on the wall of the Rongovian Embassy since the first time I went there in the early eighties and that became the concept.

Q Cassetti designed the footer for the poster, which gave a strong foundation, and  set the bar very high for whatever I had to come up with. The Rongo is the most famous landmark in Trumansburg (See Wikipedia) and the public house of my own community. It is a legendary destination dating back to my infancy. So there was no pressure whatsoever. _R2_3472Babel

I drew the Rongo building in the style of the tower of Babel–from whence, according to the Timeline of History, many of the bloodlines of humanity are traced.

TimelineOfHistoryHankRoberts

I felt the need to bring back a little of the clutter and patina of the old Rongo. The place needed (I just have to say it) a high colonic. And it got one. Which is good.  But I am very sentimental about nicotine stains, yellowed paper and other visible signs of human habitation.

I cast around for a few days for concept to hang a poster idea on. Of course this required putting some time into “getting the vibe” of the newly-renovated bar. I’m pleased to report that the Rongo is in very good hands. It’s a very very nice place to hang around in. The beer, mixed drinks and food are excellent and affordable.

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Make It Up To You

UniitJebSim

Uniit Carruyo sings her own song, "Make It Up To You," backed up by Jeb Puryear (guitar), Sim Redmond (bass), Hank Roberts (cello) and Mark Raudabaugh (drums), at the newly-reopened Rongovian Embassy in Trumansburg, New York November 29th. 2014.

A Motherlode Pictures production of a Bryan Root film, House sound by John Lloyd. Produced by Dan Paolangeli. Camera by Bryan Root, Dan Paolangeli, John Gurche and Jonas Puryear. Post-Production by Will Dailyrest.

Special thanks to Jessica Giles, Calf Audio, Luigi Llanos and Gregory McGrath.UniitRongoSweetLike0