BERKELEY, Calif., June 15, 2013 … Art patrons will have the opportunity to literally step into the subconscious mind of Berkeley artist Karen Weil when she unveils her “Dream Tube” project, which debuts at the Kala Artist Project Space located in Berkeley on October 17, 2013, and runs through November 12, 2013.
Weil spent a year recording her dreams in drawings and words, then created a dream-like environment for showcasing the 365 pictorial stories: a 25-foot long, 10-foot diameter black fabric tube. Visitors will be invited to step into the linear, cylindrical chamber for close-up views of Weil’s dreams, which will line the tube in chronological order. Evocative music will amplify the immersion experience, as will a nighttime sky artfully hand printed on the ceiling of the tube. Practitioners of meditation and other spiritual arts will be invited to host sessions in the unique, darkened Dream Tube, which Weil herself engineered and constructed out of PVC pipe, Velcro and fabric.
Touching on the 58-year-old artist’s family, friends and experiences, the dreams are laced with everything from mundane chores to incredible feats, impending danger to delightful fantasy, bathroom frustration to religious experiences, art, inventions, sex, and mystery. A number of the dreams allude to Weil’s love-hate relationship with Fantasia Bakery, the legendary San Francisco establishment founded by
Weil’s father, the late Ernest Weil, a Holocaust refugee who made his way to California from Germany. Others bring in her three sisters, her two children, her husband of 34 years, and her wide circle of friends. Celebrities make guest appearances in the dreams, as do spirits and total strangers, complete with names. References to her assimilated Jewish upbringing and the hidden traumas of growing up as a child of Holocaust survivors also infuse the micro works, which each measures six inches square. While those few square inches are packed with details and meaning, visitors will be invited to get the full story behind each dream via a series of folders stationed strategically along the tube.
Karen Weil’s Dream Tube, on display at the June 2012 meeting of the International Association for the Study of Dreams, drew the viewer into the darkly evocative world of dreams. Using dreams of her own, transcribed into words and hand-drawn images, she enabled the exploring viewer to glimpse a compact space-time universe of dreaming. Like the many dreams in Sigmund Freud’s masterwork, The Interpretation of Dreams, Karen’s dreams help us see more deeply into our own.
Charles P. Fisher, M.D., Psychoanalyst and Collector of Dreams