Spiral Body is a multimedia art collective by Japanese poet and multimedia artist Mami Takahashi, American sound/installation artist Adrian McBride, Filipino-American visual/performance artist, Palmarin Merges, and American sound artist, Brian Lee.
Focusing on sound as a format of art, Spiral Body explores the meaning of presence, place, and time through a multidisciplinary approach.
Adrian McBride
Adrian McBride (St. Louis, MO) is a musician and sound artist currently based in Portland, Oregon USA. McBride received BFA in Integrated Arts and Creative Writing from Bard College, and has been performed in the U.S and internationally, including at the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland Oregon, U.S.A.; Monkey Town, Brooklyn NY, U.S.A; Flux Factory: Queens NY, U.S.A; Gallery gelegenheiten and Zvi HECKER, Berlin, Germany; Jardins Synthétiques Festival, Toulouse, France.
Palmarin Merges
Palmarin Merges is a Filipina American artist whose work draws from the desire to become more sustainable by re-using materials close at hand and by adapting restriction as a generative force for creation. Trained as a Printmaker, she now works primarily in mixed media, especially household waste - plastic, cardboard, etc. These common materials taken from the fabric of her daily life are processed and then transformed into pattern, collage and concrete poetry.
Raised in Hawaii and California, she left Oregon in Dec. 2019 with her husband to return to Japan, this time to Tokyo. Her adventures now include exploring a variety of traditional crafts and wandering the areas in and around the Yamanote Line.
Palmarin Merges holds an MFA Printmaking from the San Francisco Art Institute and has exhibited in Japan, the Philippines, San Francisco, and Portland, Oregon. She has previously taught Relief, Screenprint and drawing at Pacific Northwest College of Art, Marylhurst University and Pacific University.
For more details, please visit Palmarin’s WEBSITE.
Mami Takahashi
Mami Takahashi is a multidisciplinary artist from Tokyo, currently resident in Portland, Oregon. Using poetry, performance, visual art formats, and urban intervention, her practice explores the complexities of being an Asian woman living in the US.
Previous exhibitions and performances have taken place at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Portland, OR; San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco; DANK Haus, Chicago, IL; The International Museum of Art, El Paso, TX; Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Canada; Gwangju Folk Art Museum, Korea; Instituto Municipal del Arte la Cultura, Mexico and Toriizaka Art Gallery, Tokyo, among other venues. She holds an MFA from Portland State University and a BFA from the Joshibi University of Art in Japan. Takahashi is a recipient of the Ford Family Award for the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art residency.
For more information, please visit Mami’s WEBSITE.
Brian Lee
Brian is American sound artist, and collaborating long time with Adrian McBride on their sound art.
More info will be coming soon.