I’m excited to announce that ICEHOUSE Project Space will celebrate the winter festival of Yule with Psychedelic Solstice, a group project. Four long-time friends and collaborators will present work appropriate to this pagan fest which, on the shortest day and longest night of the year, merrily embraces rebirth, transformation and creativity and the turning point that takes us from darkness into light.

With its 17th project, ICEHOUSE Project Space is embracing this otherworldly duality through a group project of collaborative ceramics by Michael Ballou, Katia Santibanez and James Siena and window lightboxes by me.

As Christoph Grunenberg points out in Summer of Love: Art of the Psychedelic Era (2007), “Psychedelic art … is a visionary art….It opens doors to new universes, captures the flights of the imagination and often has a deeply mystical, and religious quality.” Psychedelic Solstice is intended to explore this path:

Michael Ballou: On the sidewalk one night I saw all these dented plastic jugs, alone and naked, waiting to be picked up in the morning. I took a few to the studio. I began to cover them in mud (clay), staying very much as close to the undershape as possible. As the dressing (covering) continued the more the jugs began to reveal. Which reminded me of a haiku I once heard: Dormant energy, Reawakens in the dark, To release again.

Katia Santibanez: I have been exploring the spiral since 2012. Over the years, its shape became more and more distorted. When Mike showed me his jugs, I thought: well, someone else is thinking about distortion too! Our collaboration combines our twisted worlds.

James Siena: A couple of years ago Mike called me to propose trading work. He was making these distorted jugs based on detergent bottles, and when I saw a picture of one, I responded by proposing that I paint two and keep one and send him the other. Our trade would include both of us in each work. That’s how it started. Now he’s a ceramicist, Katia is mastering glazes, and I plod along slowly. All three of us are into warping space!

KK Kozik: During my stint hosting artist projects at ICEHOUSE Project Space one project in particular, Ryan Frank’s Dead Sea has inspired me to create my own version. My window light boxes will transform the icehouse into a super-scale lantern entitled “Ribbon in the Sky” and will be constructed of backlit drawings on plexi.

Come revel with us on the 16th, but dress warmly — we will be inside the icehouse and outside under the winter sky, drinking Glühwein, warming our hands by the fire and listening to a playlist of psychedelia compiled by Peter Zaremba, frontman for The Fleshtones and aka the Psychedelic Count, a DJ on Sirius Satellite Radio. After the opening, the project will be open by appointment through January 16. Reach out here or text me at 917-488-8740 to set something up.

ICEHOUSE Project Space
34 Upper Main St.
Sharon, CT 06069