Helen Oliver Adelson (HOA) “The Lunar Landing”

Participant Inc.

poster for Helen Oliver Adelson (HOA) “The Lunar Landing”

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PARTICIPANT INC presents The Lunar Landing, a site-specific installation of wall paintings, incorporating sculptural elements and discreet paintings by Helen Oliver Adelson (HOA). For The Lunar Landing, HOA transforms PARTICIPANT into a huge dollhouse, painting expansive interiors and adjacent scenery adorned by approximately thirty works in painting and sculpture—many of cats, landscapes, architecture. Well-known as a portrait painter and set designer integral to art and theater of the ‘80s East Village/Lower East Side, The Lunar Landing reflects that experience, and is the first time HOA will create an installation in which the spectator becomes a character in an unfolding theatrical set.

Edgar Oliver, a playwright, poet, and performer who has lived and worked in New York City for the past thirty-five years will perform monologues on two evenings, Sundays, September 22 and 29, 2013. Edgar Oliver’s recent spoken memoir, Helen and Edgar, staged at Theater 80 on St. Mark’s Place last fall, described a childhood geography inhabited by Helen, Edgar, and their mother Louise in 1960s Savannah. As Ben Brantley described it in The New York Times, “You might say they lived in their own private Transylvania, a place that has nothing to do with the real country and everything to do with a state of mind in which shadows always threaten to claim you.”This is a place evoked in HOA’s paintings and set pieces, many often made for Edgar’s productions. He notes in Helen and Edgar, “Never were there three more lost children than Mother, Helen and me.” Eventually, HOA and Edgar would run away to New York, where they went on to found Pompeii together. Edgar has noted of his sister’s work, “You enter a world where distance is pulling you away in many directions into the
unknown.”

Helen Oliver Adelson (HOA) has a thirty-year history of portrait and stage set painting—in galleries and on stage—in New York, Paris, and Lucerne. Her stage work for Motel Blue 19, The Seven Year Vacation and Hands in Wartimefor her brother Edgar Oliver’s plays is legendary. She has also made installations for Jason Bauer’s renegade production ofTiny Alice, Kestutis Nakas’When Lithuania Ruled the World, Part II, Lee Ellickson’sThe Children’s Crusadeat the Carlton Arms Hotel, (where HOA had two room installations), and George Demas’ MacBethat Tribeca Labs. Going further back, HOA apprenticed and worked with Brian Damage at the Jane West Hotel, the Pyramid, and Danceteria. She was a founder of Pompeii Gallery on 10th Street, later Forsythe Street, NYC. HOA was the first Population Welfare Program (PWP) employee of ABC No Rio, sent to the interview on Rivington Street because she could type ten words a minute. She was hired anyway and premiered The Haunted Circus in 1983.Her oversized portraits include East Village artists Brian Damage, Mark Phredd, Anne Marie Vallee, Larry Shox, Penny Arcade, Mary Lou Wittmer, Kembra Pfahler, Linda the Jinx, Stephanie and Lenny Kaye, Brother Flip Crowley, Jason Bauer, Alexina Shufeldt, Samoa, and, of course, Edgar Oliver.

“Raised in Savannah Georgia, HOA’s work hangs like kudzu on the Magnolia tree.”

Media

Schedule

from September 08, 2013 to October 13, 2013
Edgar Oliver Performing monologues Sundays, September 22 and 29, 7pm.

Opening Reception on 2013-09-08 from 19:00 to 21:00

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