Betsey Biggs                                                         sound image freedom noise                                                         news about work thoughts

First Street Gallery Residency, Trinidad, Colorado In July 2006 I headed to Trinidad, Colorado to do an art residency at the First Street Gallery. For two weeks I gave a workshop to several fifth- and sixth-grade students in the mornings, and prepared a large solo exhibition in the afternoons. I must thank gallery director Joe Reorda, who did a wonderful job balancing preparations for my show with a large educational program for local children. The teaching went well; the kids enjoyed listening to the sounds around them, shooting pictures, and finally shooting movies. We recorded sounds on the Olympus DS-1, and took pictures and movies on Kodak Easyshare digital cameras. A generous loan of two Apple iMacs from Trinidad Junior State College enabled us to edit in Garageband and iMovie. The show was large - almost a retrospective of my work up to this point. I debuted three interactive works: Burble, Inside Out, and The Tipping Point, as well as a participatory work, What's Your Favorite Sound? in which visitors were provided with chalk to draw their favorite sound on a gallery wall. I also showed several single-channel video works, including I Dream of Baby, Untitled (Neon #1), Path 1, The dark has its own light, and my collaboration with Amy Harrison, Monument. Finally, the kids and I exhibited our audiovisual self-portraits in an installation.