I had a great opportunity to meet with ArtoMatic Artist Mishka Jaeger in her space (11th floor, back of the building) last Saturday evening.  I knew of her work through an interview she volunteered to do with me, and was happy to find we’d both be in the building at the same time (not always easy to engineer).

Suffice it to say, had I visited her space on my own I would have missed the depth of it….our meeting was an excellent lesson in slowing way down as you take in all that is ArtOMatic (And yes, you will then have to come back multiple times to see everything.  I still have not made it through all of the 11th floor after 4 visits!  But that’s because I concentrated on the lower floors first…I’m on the 2nd floor which explains that choice!).

Mishka’s story is wonderful!

Back in 2002, my musician/artists brother and I were wandering around the galleries of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, discussing what really defined the concept of art, when we ran across a canvas with little paper dots sewn onto it. I got a little emphatic and proclaimed that the piece was silly.  It was something I could easily do.  My brother says, ‘Ok, so why don’t you?’ and I responded. “Why would I want to sew little pieces of paper on a canvas?  There is no meaning in that to me.’  Of course it didn’t occur to me back then that it might have had meaning to the person who did it…Flash forward to 2008…All of a sudden, I remembered that ‘stupid’ canvass with the paper dots and it rearranged itself in my head, quite literally, into a score.”

Mishka has set up her space at ArtOMatic to resemble a performance venue.  “Since the pieces represent musical instruments, I wanted them to look a little like a bluegrass band performing or busking.”  The only reason there is no set list is that she ran out of time.

She has, however, covered a range of sensual experience:  the smell of her burlap walls, the texture of her pieces, the visual of the “song” lines and the aural.  Run your smart phone over each of the QR symbols below her pieces, and you get the music that goes along with that piece.

Taken all together, this makes for a stunning exhibit – one that could easily be missed if you didn’t take the time to browse through and chat with the artist!

To read artist  interviews and see more photographs from ArtOMatic 2012 and earlier ArtOMatics, go here.