Artist Ben Webster-Burr at JC Fab Lab

If you’re reading this, you’ve been here for the past 9 months. Pandemic world, coupled with social upheaval (finally), political chaos (finally easing… or so it seems). “How are you?” prompts a new typical answer: “I’m alive”, or “here I stand, and there I go.” But under COVID, where is here, what is there, when is anything happening,  and how is this all happening? is the common parlance and state of being. And in what is now a wholly (holy?) unknown landscape, artist Ben Webster-Burr does not have the answers, but he does have a smart approach to all of this oddness, self-delusion, and the order of it all (or, the lack thereof). The meaning of so much has changed, or, really, meaning itself has lost it’s meaning, Webster-Burr has gathered his thoughts and various artifacts, drawings, works-in-progress, and  even some product development ideation. These came to fruition finally at the end of the Summer of 2020, and, lucky you, we have a show in the halls of Mana Contemporary of a few of these art works.

He calls this new work “Herenothere”  a hyperX narrative. And we think that pretty much describes it. What we have on display at JC Fab Lab are some of the artifacts that have come from the creation of the story to date.

So, let’s be clear — Ben’s work is not just some sculptures and found assemblages. What he’s really creating is a hyperlinked labyrinth of a story, and it has just begun to unfold. One ‘chapter’ is now here at JC Fab Lab for the month of October. But definitely follow Ben on instagram. That’s where more of the magic stems from. Ben is a ‘story artist’. Aspects of this are story arcs on instagram, on his own journal, and some of them are dispersed throughout the world wide web. Ben has studied hypertext, film making, design, and he worked in a dairy milking cows & caring for baby cows (bottle feeding them by hand, twice daily) amongst other itinerant and more deeply studied areas like advertising, restaurant work, tinkering, product design, and a few other things we don’t really know much about.

More images coming soon…