WORDS / KODY FORD

Craig Colorusso makes music in a different way.  A musician and multi-media artist, Craig is the brain behind SUN BOXES, a multimedia exhibit at Artosphere, the two-month festival of art, music and nature in northwest Arkansas presented by the Walton Arts Center. Craig’s work has been chronicled in a documentary entitled INSTALL.  The film, directed by Boston-based filmmaker Kevin Belli, will play after a exhibition of SUNBOXES at Walton Arts Center on June 20.

INSTALL enters Craig’s world as an installation artist who is transforming the environment through sculpture, light and sound. A series of audio interviews with the artist accompany a wide breadth of footage that traverses the New England landscape to capture three installations: MB 89, CUBEMUSIC, and SUN BOXES. Craig candidly recalls the salient moments that have helped shape both the world he is creating and the life he is living.

Craig is a former touring musician, who decided to evolve his love of sound into art installations. His artist statement reads:

“I have always been fascinated by the way light and sound alter the way we perceive time and space. We organize all experiences in these terms. The motivation behind my musical compositions and installations over the past several years has been the exploration of the conventions that determine the way we experience time and space, and thereby our world. Through my work I’ve come to appreciate light as much as sound. Most of my pieces explore this connection. Theses pieces seek to expose such conventions by giving the listener the chance to become familiar with unfamiliar tonalities and rhythms, as well as to register the divorce of space and sound made possible by contemporary audio technology. And they sound and look good.”

Craig has long used music as a release, but found traditional song structure to be constricting so he decided to push his limits.

“The world makes more sense to me when I have my hands on a guitar,” he says. “The parameters of music in general were getting more confined. The day I started to think of music outside of songs was a good one. The world seemed like a bigger place.”

Sun Boxes premiered in June 2009 as part of the exhibition “Off the Grid” at the Goldwell Museum in Rhyolite NV. Last year, Craig’s wife informed him of the Artosphere Festival and he applied and was accepted. He’s been pleased with the reception that SUNBOXES has received at the festival.

“So far the response has been overwhelming,” he says. “People are coming out specifically to see Sun Boxes. Artosphere has definitely gotten the word out. The Walton Arts Center has been extremely supportive of Sun Boxes.”

For his next project, Craig wants to do a permanent installation somewhere.  He says, “What I Love about Sun Boxes is that it’s a system that interacts with Mother Nature.  My next series of pieces will take this idea to the next level.”

VISIT: INSTALLFILM.COM.

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