Exploring art through a videographer's eye

Gwyneth Leech, known primarily as a New York painter, presented a cycle of 20 short videos exploring innocence, mood, perception, nature and the city which she shot and edited since her arrival in New York in 1999. The show, titled "Generation," with music written and performed by Martha Sullivan and percussionist, keyboard player and composer Ben Wittman, was presented in two time frames -- before and after September 11, 2001, the date when planes struck the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

"The most significant event in the city [the 9/11 tragedy] is not addressed at all," said Leech in an interview. "I never made any artwork about 9/11 at the time. I made no art at all for months," she said, describing a paralysis that affected not only her, but many of the city's artists at that time.

In reviewing the materials and selecting videos for the show, she said she was surprised to discover that they divide starkly into "before" and "after" the city's tragedy. "Part 1 [composed of nine videos shot before 9/11] is full of new life, play, bright sunshine and the enjoyment of a long languid summer in 2001. Part 2 is wary and complicated," Leech said. The play is still there but more than a little edged with anxiety and mistrust and a feeling that things are not what they seem."

Some of the early videos, most about three minutes in length, were shot through the eyes of her young daughter growing up -- in a playground, a sandbox, on the beach, hovering with the honey bees over flowers and at the Wonder Wheel at Coney Island. The later videos include a cold walk in winter in a frozen community garden, one creating anxiety caused by the jerky, nervous actions of an agitated young rider on the subway, another revealing a young girl's discovery the harsh realities and beauty of the New Mexico desert and a disturbing, experimental piece called Surd, with music composed and sung by Martha Sullivan.

"A surd is a consonant produced without sound from the vocal cords," said Sullivan whose voice on the video is transformed from song to surds, devoid of syllables. Viewers hear only the unvoiced hard consonants such as "p," "k" and "s."

Leech, who called it the "penultimate" piece on the program, said Surd is about losing a voice and then discovering the creative possibilities of a new, profoundly altered one. "It is a perfect metaphor for the larger realities of our time," she said.

Preceding the showing, Leech and Sullivan, both professional singers at St. Bartholomew's, were joined onstage by pianist, composer and recording artist Laila Biali, Wittman on percussion instruments, and Megan Wilson, Leech's 12-year-old daughter and choir member, for a musical prelude.

Other programs remaining this season in the "Great Music" series at St. Bartholomew's include Bachworks, a performance blending aspects of the Jewish Passover with the present struggles for freedom in Tibet on April 16; The Modern Mystics: Tavener, Part and Gorecki on April 23 and the Voice of St. Bart's members of the choirs, with soprano Michelle Repella on May 6. All performances begin at 7:30 p.m.

Samples of Gwyneth Leech's videos and her art can be seen here and at her You Tube channel here.