Aldrich Box: Hilma's Ghost, Laura Ortman, Ali Kenner Brodsky

December 18, 2022 to June 30, 2024 |

Aldrich Box: Hilma's Ghost, Laura Ortman, Ali Kenner Brodsky

Inaugurated in 2021, the Aldrich Box is a year-long traveling exhibition unbound to a physical space. This year’s edition will focus on performance—underscoring the cooperative and interdisciplinary aspects of making art. A collaboration between the Museum’s Curatorial and Education departments, Director of Education Namulen Bayarsaihan and Chief Curator Amy Smith-Stewart have invited dancer and choreographer Ali Kenner Brodsky, musician, composer, and artist Laura Ortman, and the feminist artist collective Hilma’s Ghost (founded by artists and educators Dannielle Tegeder and Sharmistha Ray) to create work(s) contained inside individualized Aldrich Boxes and accompanied by a live performance to be presented inside the Museum. The Aldrich Boxes will be released on a rolling basis from December 18, 2022 through June 30, 2024, and the public will be invited to borrow one for up to a week. Laura Ortman and Hilma's Ghost's Aldrich Boxes will be available to check out through June 30, 2024. An Aldrich Box will be on view inside the Museum’s Leir Atrium throughout the project’s duration. There is no cost to borrow an Aldrich Box.

Reserve a Laura Ortman Aldrich Box

Reserve a Hilma's Ghost Aldrich Box

All efforts will be made to accommodate a pickup request outside of the reservation date; however your reservation will be canceled if no arrangements are made to pick up the box within one to two days.

Please keep in mind that the Aldrich Box may be scheduled for loan to another user and, therefore, is not available for extension.

Three boxes made of violins with musical score booklets positioned on blue velvet.

A wooden box with ceramic trays inside with movement prompts and a booklet.

Hilma's Ghost: Enchantments: Bottled Devotionals of Divine Feminine Spirits

Reserve Hilma's Ghost's Aldrich Box Here
Reservations available December 3, 2023 through June 30, 2024

For the Aldrich Box series Hilma’s Ghost created an apothecary box imbued with magick. The box contains 12 bottles. Within these bottles lie the eternal power of the divine feminine. Each bottle is designed as a spell jar and is dedicated to a deity, saint, or an artist and includes a collection of ephemera. Each of these items carry associations with the female personages they represent. When paired with the activations –an invocation, a ritual, and an incantation –the attributes associated with each start to manifest.

An instructional manual is included as a guide. Each of the 12 descriptions are accompanied by a list of attributes, ritual objects, brief historical information, and an incantation on offer to activate.

Learn more about Hilma's Ghost's Aldrich Box here.

En Español

Laura Ortman: Transonic Homes

On view in the Museum September 20, 2023 to June 30, 2024

Reserve Laura Ortman's Aldrich Box Here

The second edition of the 2023 Aldrich Box is created by musician, composer, and artist Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache).

Ortman’s Aldrich Box is comprised of a selection of violins from her personal collection. Transformed into vessels, each contain a customized book of her improvisations into written musical notation. The music in these books is transcribed from Ortman's vast discography of live performances of amplified violin.

In conjunction with the Aldrich Box: Transonic Homes, the Museum
presented a live solo performance by Ortman at The Aldrich on Saturday, September 23, 2023 at 6:30 pm.

En Español

Ali Kenner Brodsky: creating moments

Introduction

Video: Rich Ferri

Artist introduction, media, and more about creating moments here

Reserve Ali Kenner Brodsky's Aldrich Box

Ali Kenner Brodsky, moments

Two dancers embracing with one's arms outstretched to the sky

Dance Performance | Ali Kenner Brodsky: moments

Saturday, January 21 | 7 to 8 pm

moments is a multifaceted performance piece of dance, music, and art that has been in development for the past five years. An evening-length dance-theatre work, moments, explores memory, loss, and love. Unfolding through subtle gestural movement and emotionally evocative music moments evokes memories of past relationships, the longing for a closeness once felt, and the challenge of how to move forward through grief. Through a collection of embodied vignettes, moments breaks the stigma around grief by giving audiences a moment to be present to their individual experiences of loss.

Performed by Ali Kenner Brodsky, Scott McPheeters, Jenna Pollack, Jessi Stegall, and Ilya Vidrin with costume design by Hertling and fiber artist Alex Davis, live and recorded music by MorganEve Swain, graphics by Cyrus Highsmith, and set design by Keri King, moments surveys themes of devotion, remembrance, passing, and grief.

moments is the first live performance installment of the Aldrich Box, a year-long traveling exhibition.

The performance, moments, is presented in partnership with The Regina A. Quick Center for the Arts at Fairfield University.

Laura Ortman: Transonic Homes

Music Performance | Laura Ortman: Transonic Homes

Saturday, September 23 | 6:30 pm

Transonic Homes was a solo violin performance by musician, composer, and collaborator Laura Ortman (White Mountain Apache).

Ortman describes the performance, “from the rosined-out beast of tough stained violin emerges deranged crumpled wings twirling in starlight and oil slickness and shininess; bearing heavy use of amplification and effects, she also incorporates over-rosining to add smoke, dust, wind and slow-motion grittiness in her scored / improvised compositions for amplified violin, Apache violin, whistles, tree branches, slides, guitar picks, bells, field recordings, and tuning fork.”

Transonic Homes is the second live performance installment of the Aldrich Box, a year-long traveling exhibition.

Hilma's Ghost: Enchantments: Bottled Devotionals of Divine Feminine Spirits

A woman holding up a card to a class learning about witchcraft.

Workshop participants filling their spell jars

Close-up of workshop participants filling their spell jars

Feminist Salon with Hilma’s Ghost

Saturday, December 2 | 2 pm

The feminist artist collective, Hilma’s Ghost, hosted an afternoon workshop focused on Enchantments: Bottled Devotionals of Divine Feminine Spirits, an apothecary box containing 12 glass spell jars each dedicated to a deity, saint, or an artist made for the Aldrich Box 2023 series.

The first half of the salon focused both on the roots of the spiritual in art history and the making of the Hilma’s Ghost Aldrich Box, followed by an activation of the apothecary box by the Collective, unleashing its magical potential through the divine channeling of one of the deities, saints, or artists included inside.

A spell is a way to bring your thoughts and intentions into the physical realm using chosen objects and materials. The second half invited participants to create their own spell jar with Hilma’s Ghost.

Press Release - Ali Kenner Brodsky

Press

“The Aldrich Box was modeled after the Fluxus boxes and Duchamp’s ‘Box in a Valise,’ which were built to be performative, intended to be interactive, and emphasized accessibility,” Smith-Stewart said. “The idea to make performance and collaboration this edition’s theme underscores this dynamic interplay between art/artist(s) and public/private audience(s), creating personal and collective experiences within and outside the boundaries/confines of the museum/home.”
—Connecticut Post

“During the event, guests will get a chance to make their own spell jars. The release describes a spell as "a way to bring one’s thoughts and intentions into the physical realm using chosen objects and materials." This installment of the Aldrich Box program is an apothecary box. It holds 12 spell jars, with each one dedicated to a different spirit or deity, according to the release.”
—The News-Times

Top image: Photo: Gloria Perez

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

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