Nye Ffarrabas, a Brattleboro resident for the past four decades, is a conceptual visual artist, poet and writer who for eight decades, since early childhood. In the 60's, publisher and printer of The Black Thumb Press and a Fluxus artist. Growing out of the Happenings of the late 50s and early 60s, Fluxus is an international interdisciplinary community of artists, musicians, and poets, an ongoing laboratory of experimenting and exploring the boundaries of what is considered art, often performance-based, often text-based, intentionally defying definitions of itself, often playful, often contemplative and counter-intuitive drawing inspiration from the Zen Koan without specific contexts of religion. Now in her 90s, Nye is annotating her Friday Book of White Noise in print through CX Silver Gallery Press, the first time these seminal works are appearing in their entirety in public after only excerpts in John Cage's 'Notations' Anthology. You can find her work in The Museum of Modern Art, Walker Art Center and The Getty Research Center, among other venues. She shares poems 'Behind the Dream' and 'Be All' in this thoughtful audio segment narrated and produced by Adam Silver of C.X. Silver Gallery, on Western Avenue in Brattleboro, home to one-of-a-kind art from ancient and modern times, the best dim sum in Vermont, and, for the past several years, the work of Nye Ffarrabbas.
This episode of the Brattleboro Words Trail Podcast was written and edited by Adam Silver of CX silver gallery in Brattleboro. Executive Producer was Lissa Weinmann. Adam also interviewed Nye Ffarrabas and selected the pieces that she reads in this podcast. Musical excerpts are used by permission from Annea Lockwood's 1998 composition ‘Immersion’ performed by Rebecca Celebolsky and Peter Scholes, members of Auckland Chamber Orchestra originally recorded for ANZ concert.
This episode was timed to a new exhibition of Nye's work: Nye Ffarrabas: Truth IS A Verb, opening from March 22 to July 6, 2025 at the Brattleboro Museum & Art Center. Here's some text from the site for that: At 92, Nye Ffarrabas, formerly Bici Forbes Hendricks, occupies a significant place not only in the postmodern art world but also in our global cultural zeitgeist. During the early and mid-1960s, she (as Bici) was part of New York City’s Fluxus community, an experimental and creative laboratory that viewed life and art as inseparable and, in some respects, one and the same. This exhibition—Truth IS A Verb!—focuses on works published and distributed by The Black Thumb Press, which Ffarrabas founded in 1965, with contributions from her then husband Geoff Hendricks, also a Fluxus artist. Black Thumb’s goal was to expand visual and verbal stimuli, encourage exploration, and investigate new forms of “intermedia,” combining different media in unexpected ways. Truth IS A Verb! includes letters, postcards, and other text-based ephemera, such as a box of cards that provide instructions for different activities or how to achieve certain states of mind.... (read more at BMAC site above).
Thanks also to CX Silver Gallery.
Nye Ffarrabas: Fluxus and Then Some
Nye Ffarrabas: Fluxus and Then Some
Host: Welcome to the Brattleboro Words Trail Podcast
Ffarrabas (reading poem): Behind the Dream: How has the instant moment gone from egg to time to knife?/ how is the fragile moment gained by falling through to life?/ How does the vagrant shadow pass from here to near to seem? I still would sit and ponder it and see behind the dream.
Narrator Adam Silver: That was Nye Ffarrabas. She's been a poet, writer and conceptual artist for eight decades. She was known as Bici Forbes and Bici Hendrix before changing her name to nye faribas In the 1990s she's been a battleboro area resident for the past four decades.
Nye is active in Fluxus, an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, musicians and poets, an ongoing laboratory of experimenting and exploring the boundaries of what is considered art. Fluxus grew out of the groundbreaking New York based 'Happenings' of the late 50s and early 60s. Like Fluxus, Nye's work intentionally defies definitions of itself. It is often word-based and performative. It is often playful, often contemplative and counterintuitive, drawing inspiration from the Zen koan without attaching itself to specific religious contexts. In the 60s, Nye founded BlackThumb Press, which printed mail art from Yoko Ono and others. It also produced language box and the tongue in cheek Summer Institute of Human Relations, both of which can be found in the Museum of Modern Art and other museums. Now in her late 80s, Nye is still producing work, including annotating her Friday Book of White Noise published by CX Silver Gallery Press. This is the first time these seminal works are publicly appearing in their entirety after excerpts first appeared in John Cage's Notations Anthology. Here is Nye:
Ffarrabas: The things I did are about exploring the interfaces between art and life. Found objects are great fun, experimental laboratory of some kind, only that's life in the 60s, when I was becoming involved in all of those ‘Happenings’. They were rather large productions, more like putting on a play. And what I was more interested in was events, which were little vignettes, sometimes just a few words and sometimes a real instruction, something for you to go and do. A lot of the work was ironic. A lot of it was humorous. Humor doesn't mean trivial to me. Humor means surprise, surprise in our lives.
One thing that Adam (the narrator) and I are working on now is the Friday Book of White Noise, which is something that I started back in the 60s. I had returned to college. Fridays, we didn't have class, so I'd sit home in my Morris chair, think about things and write in a notebook, and the notebook became the Friday Book. And then Friday Book of what? Well, it wasn't a journal, it wasn't philosophy, it wasn't academic at all. It was just stuff that passed through my mind. And my then husband, Jeff, was intrigued with it also, and we started making it a collaborative effort, particularly because we would take long drives in the summer up to Cape Breton in Nova Scotia and take turns at the wheel, and whichever of us was having an idea, the other one would write it down. It was just a kind of springboard. Just make little notations about things that you might then turn into an artwork or not.
And I'm also working on something I call calligraphies, which title is tongue in cheek, because they're stencils. I'm having a lot of fun, not only with little things that I have said at times in my life, but also quotes from other people that I appreciate.
My connection with Vermont goes back to 1946 when I went to Putney School, and it changed my life forever in very good ways, started me opening up to things that I was seeing and learning with a much more open mind and much more questioning mind. I came back many years later, came back to these hills because I've always loved them, and they feel like home in a way that very few other places do, if any.
(Ffarrabas reads poem) 'Be All': Before what was created was created / before time was / beyond the where of where / a way outside of any here at all / before even there was creator or notion of creating, or anything or doing / before beginning stars or vastness / yes, before word or wordsmith / was the immensity of all / and because no thing, nothing / still as mouse in hidey hole where there is neither mouse nor hole, nor any act of hiding and no seeker / there is no then no shall be and no now / all Being, all no darkness and no light / no thinker and no thought / no ether and no oar, no roaring and no silence / Oh love /There is only love.
Host: This episode of the Brattleboro Words Trail Podcast was written and edited by Adam Silver of CX silver gallery in West Brattleboro. Adam also interviewed Nye Ffarrabas and selected the pieces that she reads in this podcast. Musical excerpts are used by permission from Anaya Lockwood's 1998 composition ‘Immersion’ performed by Rebecca Celebolsky and Peter Scholes, members of Auckland Chamber Orchestra originally recorded for ANZ concert. The executive producer was me, Lissa Weinmann. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next month on the Brattleboro Words Trail Podcast.