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Collaboration and Connection:
A Performance

Follow this Link For 5 Minute Video Clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQDNWsJLnkA

The nature and essence of collaboration -- 'joining' 'uniting'- are the subjects of new performance works created and presented by percussion sound artist Toshi Makihara and sculptor James Fuhrman.

The spirit of their art lies in the directly expressed sense of connection between the sculptor (as embodied by the sculpture) and the percussion performance artist.

Where Music is often considered as a dichotomy (Instrument/ Performer) (Subject/Object), this performance creates a coexistence, a unity, with the sound instrument and the performer; the performance elicits a unity, a oneness, and sense of connection from the viewer.

The underlying spirit of Fuhrman's sculpture is this sense of connection…to the earth…to deep geologic time…to the process of making. Makihara feels that he is the conduit for the ideas within the sculpture. Toshi gets inside the skin of the work and expresses the artist's… usually unspoken and unseen…creation of the work. He measures and expresses the internal structure and process of building the work

The performance extends the sculpture beyond the physical being adding a new sensory dimension to the experience of the piece….a sense of time via the audible. This dance recalls Fuhrman's study of Martha Graham dance technique which underlies his work.

Makihara's percussion performance is a dance: he uses his body, hands, arms and elbows as well as found-implements from whisks to super-ball mallets to create a series of non-regular, open-spaced sounds echoing Fuhrman's process of constructing the sculpture. "The sculpture tells its own story. I felt that it was moving …shifting weight."

Fuhrman: "In Toshi's 'performance' he becomes one with the sculpture, almost melting into it. The sculpture talks to me all through its process. Toshi made it sing to me." His 'sound piece' embodied much of the concepts of ma space --open, interval-- extended time-- that I am trying to create with these sculpture installations."

Both artists' works are completely satisfying, stimulating and challenging on their own; together add yet a new dimension a new challenge and a new opportunity.