Yardmeter VI: Saturday Jan. 23, 7:00 pm







Yardmeter Editions presents

Saturday January 23rd:


artwork by Richard Kooyman,
screenings of short films
by Cat Tyc and Bernie Deschant,
a theatrical reading
by playwright Nina Morrison,
improvisation by Ed Illades
with Abby Sher,
and a cello performance
by James David Jacobs.


The wine will flow freely. Please join us!


About our presenters:


Bernie Dechant is a multi media artist currently working in Brooklyn. His work has appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, Adbusters, Graphis, Print, and Artillery. He exhibited in the Oscar Niemeyer Museum in Curitiba, Brasil. In addition to design and photography, he composes music, shoots video, and creates short films. Bernie is photographed below by Shelton Walsmith.



Ed Illades studied and performed improv at Improv Olympic and Annoyance Theatre in Chicago, as well as various bars and festivals here and there. He was an instructor and coach at Improv Olympic until he set sail to perform on a cruise ship with Second City in January of 2008. Ed has performed with the groups Johnny Roast Beef, Brad Renfro, The Gambino Crew, and Pudding-Thank-You, written and performed sketch comedy with Sketchcore, and directed the sketch show Sandy Takes A Break, which played at the NY Sketch Festival and at Comedy Central’s performance space in Los Angeles. He currently lives, teaches, and performs in New York.


Richard Kooyman is a painter and a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Grant and a Michigan Council for the Arts Grant. He was awarded the Michigan Governors Award in the Arts. About his work Kooyman says, “The writer James Joyce believed that the best art was that which 'grabs the viewer and arrests them and turns their focus outward from themselves.' I am interested in paintings that changes one’s focus on the world through the power and lusciousness of paint.” Richard Kooyman lives and works in Northern Michigan and New Mexico.


Nina Morrison's most recent play, Forest Maiden, performed in the 2009 New York International Fringe Festival. Nina was a 2008-2009 WORKSPACE Writer-in-Residence, a residency program of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She wrote and directed Supernatural Break Room, a piece created in collaboration with the performers. Nina wrote and directed Muffin Is Evil, which was presented at OfficeOps Performance Space. Nina was the co-writer of voiceover for Puzzlehead, a film directed by James Bai which world premiered at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival. She is photographed below by Shelton Walsmith.



Abby Sher is a writer, performer, and connoisseur of fine scrap heaps. She performed with Second City in Chicago for five years before coming to New York. Her first book was for teenage girls about falling in love with snowflakes and her newest book is called Amen, Amen, Amen: Memoir of a Girl who Couldn't Stop Praying which is for grown ups. Oprah gave it a nod and the Chicago Tribune and Elle named it in the Best of 2009. Plus it has pictures in it.


Cat Tyc is a poet/video artist/filmmaker whose work has shown at the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Camac d' Art in Paris, High Energy Constructs in Los Angeles and PDX Fest in Portland, OR. She currently lives in New York and occasionally writes for INCITE ! : Journal of Experimental Media & Radical Aesthetics. You can read more about her film, Umbrella, here and watch some of her films here.



James David Jacobs has spent the last thirty years as a professional musician, playing cello, recorder and double bass, teaching, conducting, writing, lecturing and hosting radio shows. While well versed in classical music, he’s also specialized in early music, folk, rock, and various forms of improvisation, and has frequently provided music for theater and dance productions. James has performed on A Prairie Home Companion and Saturday Night Live, written scores for HBO, PBS and The Living Theatre, and has worked with such artists as Maurice Sendak, Rinde Eckert and Stephin Merritt. For eight years he taught at Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, where he created an award-winning salon program, conducted the chorus and orchestra, and created educational radio and television programs for WNYE and WNYC. Last June he led an orchestra of sixty cellos for Make Music New York, and in November he went to Minneapolis to conduct a cello ensemble in a Pablo Casals tribute concert. James is currently on the faculty of Art House Astoria in Queens, New York. He is photographed below by Shelton Walsmith.