GOING TO CALIFORNIA WITH AN ACHING IN MY HEART Riding down I-5 with Yann Novak.
  • Steven Miller
  • GOING TO CALIFORNIA WITH AN ACHING IN MY HEART Riding down I-5 with Yann Novak.

The last time sound-and-sight artist Yann Novak had a solo show in Seattle, it was mesmerizing—subtle and abstract, but you knew just what it meant for you. It happened at Lawrimore Project, on the occasion of Novak's moving to Los Angeles after eight years in Seattle. I wrote,

But Relocation, as the show is called, tells a larger story, too, about all kinds of movings on, from any position of relative comfort into a newness, and the way the process itself changes the terms you thought you understood about each location when you made the decision. The place you decided to leave is better than ever; along the way, you keep reading the landscape for clues that won't matter anyway; and arriving is not arriving but starting something from a weird and awkward distance away from where you'll eventually locate yourself. (Do you ever have this experience, where your mind roams back to the way you saw your apartment for the first time? That'll be your last view, too.)

Now Novak has a new show, also made of recorded sounds and images, this time captured at dusk at Joshua Tree National Park. It's called Blue.Hour, it's at Jack Straw, and it opens tonight at 7.