Off Center’s dear old friend Paul Schmelzer wrote a series of posts on his own blog, eyeteeth, about The Miss Rockaway Armada back in 2006. Paul hung out with the collective when the group of artists, performers, and adventurers were congregating in Minneapolis to begin their journey down the Mississippi river on homemade rafts. A traveling community, the artists perform, give workshops, and create spectacles along the journey.

In April, MASS MoCA opened an installation and interactive exhibition by the collective: Being Here Is Better Than Wishing We'd Stayed. There are bunches more images of the installation on the Armada’s blog, including the one below.

From the river: Miss Armada flickr pool

And here’s a clip of the ferris wheel in action (pictured at top, photo via Flickr user tchandler.)

Darger compiled his work into phone books, and often created two sided pieces that exceeded 10′ in length. One of these large-scale works was featured in the exhibition Body Politics.

The new show at the Folk Art Museum positions Darger’s work next to 11 contemporary artists, one of them being Amy Cutler. I first encountered Cutler’s work in the exhibition Dialogues: Amy Cutler/David Rathman and quickly fell in love with her whimsical, yet sour drawings. Light-bulbs went a’flashing off in my head as I looked at Cutler’s young girls with their 20′ braided pony-tails next to Darger’s unsettling intersexed child-battalion.

By the way, there’s a cute band called The Vivian Girls and they’re playing in Minneapolis on June 10 at Future Pasture. I mean, they’re no Best Friends Forever (but who is, really?).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_aIa3JyddbQ

Performances of Trisha Brown’s Planes happen on the half-hour between 11 am to 2 pm Saturday and 6 to 9 pm Thursday, in the Walker’s Medtronic Gallery, through the run of the exhibition of Brown’s drawings, So That the Audience Does Not Know Whether I Have Stopped Dancing. Here, three dancers perform at May’s Free First Saturday (about a dozen are on rotation in this trio) and, afterward, discuss the work.

The Museum of Modern Art won a Webby in the Art category for its illuminating site detailing Richard Serra’s 2007 retrospective. Throughout, you’ll find captivating video, vivid photography and revealing interviews with Serra, who opens his intensive process and gives a detailed tour of his work on video.

No other American arts institution earned a nomination in the Art and Best Cultural Institution categories.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqfdIeUl_r4

The Walker unrolled its first Jewelry Artists Mart, in the Skyline Room, at Free First Saturday.