Sep 17

Sep 17 Of Practice and Performance

Written by Derek Opperman | Photos by Niki Ford

Tara Jane on guitar, Elaine Carey on moog and saw, and Jmy dancing

It's 7:30 pm, and the little stretch of sidewalk on Ojai Avenue in front of the basic premise gallery has been temporarily transformed into the site of something resembling an occult ritual.

Slack-jawed onlookers couldn't help but join those purposefully in attendance as Elaine Carey, Gabie Strong, Pauline Lay, and Tara Jane O'Neil summoned the inexplicable through a cacophony of psychedelic noise played on electric guitar, electric bass, Moog synthesizer, violin, and electronically-treated handsaw. Jmy James Kidd answered the music's call by writhing her body into unreal shapes and dynamic whirls while contributing to the sonic maelstrom with sounds from her voice and feet.

A middle-aged man in a tie-dye shirt, who had previously been tossing back beers at the Ojai Pub next door, sat down in a camping chair next to me and shouted, "What is this? What do you call this!?" Performance art, I told him. "Does it always have the same music like this? My sister'd love this!"

JMY JAMES KIDD PERFORMING, photo courtesy the artist

This evening was just one happening of many that have occurred this month as a part of Tara Jane O'Neil and Jmy James Kidd's ongoing artist residency and performance program at the basic premise, an art gallery at 918 E Ojai Avenue For the entirety of September, the duo, who beyond being creative partners are married as well, will use the gallery as a place to make work, show work, and host performances for the public.

Both creatives of many disciplines, O'Neil is a visual artist and multi-instrumentalist with a prolific discography as a singer-songwriter and a background as a member of early Louisville post-rock outfit Rodan. Kidd is a visual artist, choreographer, costume designer, and classically trained dancer who danced with many NYC downtown dance scene luminaries and then founded the Pieter Performance Space in Los Angeles.

"One of the things I realized, because we've both been performing and making things for so long, is that we allow people to see into the creative process," says Kidd. "I think both of us don't put the most value on the finished product. It's really continuous for us. We're on display in kind of a messy way. We don't have things figured out. We're trying things out."

TARA JANE O’NEIL IN HER LA STUDIO, PHOTO COURTESY THE ARTIST

During the day, they use the gallery to make art objects; Kidd makes textiles using FeltLoom, and O'Neil transmutes private mantras into watercolor paintings. The public is invited to visit them and see their works in process at the basic premise on Thursdays and Sundays from 11 am to 1 pm. The result will be on display in a forthcoming exhibition that will begin on September 29.

On certain predetermined nights, they transform the gallery into a venue with mind-warping audiovisual performances by O'Neil and Kidd alongside a selection of friends and collaborators. Standout sets have included the aforementioned psychedelic quartet, a hypnotic digitally-treated harp performance by Shelley Burgon, and works by experimental bassoonist Archie Carey and avant-garde vocalist Odeya Nini.

In many respects, this residency is something of an announcement of arrival for O'Neil and Kidd. Their path to becoming full-time Ojai residents has not been without its challenges; after two years of consideration, they bought a home in Upper Ojai only to have the Thomas Fire burn it down just two weeks after they signed the deed.

Discouraged, they stayed in Los Angeles, their adopted home, where they lived near Kidd's Pieter Performance Space. Kidd explains that Pieter was her attempt at creating an exploratory community space for dancers who did not want to work in the rigid and stressful world of so-called mainstream modern dance.

But holding space can be exhausting, and Kidd admits that she was getting burnt out and even had an unhealthy relationship with dance in general, "I was codependent–trying to fix a broken system of dance. Tara Jane watched me get really burnt out." At the same time, the COVID-19 crisis upended their life in LA. With performance gone, Kidd closed the physical space of Pieter (the community continues performances and classes online with a new director).

"It was a big part of our life and practice. Then COVID came, the studio went away, and there were no shows anywhere. A year-and-a-half interruption is pretty significant. The momentum just got wrecked," says O'Neil.

They left Los Angeles and split their time between Louisville, where O'Neil grew up, and a cabin in the Mojave Desert. But now they are back in Ojai, and they are in the process of rebuilding their home. These new beginnings extend equally to the residency in that it marks the first time they've shared a studio.

"COVID has been a time period that really changed a lot of things," says Kidd. "We fled Los Angeles for the desert. And so now, coming to performance again and sharing a studio for the first time, we're working in new ways, and I'm focusing on making work that's not trying to fix anything, but is instead just about creating beautiful things."

One gets the sense that the duo's residency is an attempt at fostering a community space in the spirit of Kidd's studio in Los Angeles. Or like creating a bridge from that place to this one. The performers are O'Neil and Kidd's friends, and like O'Neil and Kidd, many of them have had their performance schedules heavily impacted by the pandemic. They are using this space to experiment and perform work that had been put on hold. The performance schedule opened with the debut of Kidd's 'The Believers,' a complicated dance performance with musical accompaniment by O'Neil that was created as a response to living through COVID.

"Neither of us could not perform or not make stuff," says Kidd. "We've been doing it for so long. I think a lot of the people we've programmed are in that same boat. I hadn't performed in a long time, and I realized how much I needed to do this kind of work. I needed to go through this experience and see and connect with people through etheric expressiveness."

Tara Jane O'Neil and Jmy James Kidd's residency at the basic premise runs from Saturday, September 4 through Wednesday, September 29. The full schedule is available on the basic premise's Instagram page. For performances, a $10 donation is suggested but not required. The next show is Saturday, September 18, and it will feature performances by Tara Jane O'Neil, Skills Example (Katy Davidson of Portland indie-rock outfit Dear Nora), and Caye Castagnetto (whose fantastically freaky debut LP, 'Leap Second,' was released earlier this year on The Ohsees' Castle Face Records). Jmy James Kidd will teach a Felt Loom workshop on Saturday, September 25. More details are available on her Instagram page.

O'Neil and Kidd's visual work produced during the duration of the residency will be on display in the gallery as a visitable exhibition. Visit the VORTEX Fall Arts Round-Up for more info, Coming October 1.