Summer Work

This summer I am working on this incredible community based public art project in Woodlawn.

I was hired through a not-for-profit group that facilitates community art projects, gardens, and other community space, archi-treasures as the artist for this project. I am working with 15 very bright teens. They challenge me in every way, everyday. I am learning so much about myself, and my teaching practice through them. I am also learning about them and their community.

I've been enjoying my commute to Woodlawn once I get on south Lake Shore Drive. It is really beautiful. I pass by The Republic everyday. She is wonderful.

Our project is very complex, and has many moving parts, and I would not be able to keep up with all of them with out the help of Dorothy Pytel, who is the "instigator" of this whole project, and is very organized. And also Sherry Shannon, who helps with the day to day order.

Our task is to move, decorate, and plant up to 30 large concrete planters. That sounds simple, but its not. The most challenging part is that the planters must be "adopted" by a community group or business to ensure the continued up keep of the planter. Once this project is completed the planters will serve as community markers, and will unify active members of the community together.

We are moving along and finally making much head way this week. We designed the Woodlawn logo which will be stenciled on all the planters.


We are also making much needed head way in community out reach and in designing the planters. This project has a blog: http://woodlawnyouth.blogspot.com/ Please follow along.

Everyday at work I feel totally overwhelmed, and when I get home I am exhausted, but optimistic. The biggest lesson, that I haven't learned yet is how to deal with not pleasing everybody. Every small dissatisfaction of one of the teens, or someone else feels like big failure on my part.

White Moment Opens Friday

Dear Friends,

My installation White Moment opens today, but the opening reception is on Friday from 6-9pm. On Wednesday I will be giving a gallery talk at 11am.

I am really excited about this exhibit, and I hope you can make it to the opening reception but if you can't, I hope you will go and see it while its up from June 9th-August 1, hours: 11-6 M-Th, 12-4 F.

The exhibit seems to express a culmination of investigations I've been pursuing in my studio on and off for more then six years. It features sculpture, video, site specific installation, archival digital prints, and a catalogue with an essay by Mary Ann Wincorkowski.

Read a review of the show in Yoga Chicago

Hope to see you there.









Please use this map to park at NEIU and find the gallery. The address of the university is 5500 N. St. Louis Ave, Chicago IL 60625. If you drive there, enter on Bryn Mawr, just west of Kimball and follow the access road south to Lot F. Park any where in Lot F during the night of the opening, or at the meters any other time. Enter the building from the north-east corner of the lot and find the gallery on your right.

Walking

Today turned out great. I walked to my studio in what was unexpectedly a hot and humid afternoon for a studio visit with the director of minidutch. Lucia Fabio is really awesome, and I am looking forward to working with her for this future show there. I will be pursuing a new method of working and using up all the old supplies in my studio. Old meets new, its gonna be great, and great fun.

After we ate at The Grind, I went back to my studio to continue to work on the self portrait for the show at Northeastern, and I think its coming along great.

I am starting to believe that I may actually get my idea across. I want this piece to be about self examination. But also I want it to be about the imperfect. Some how I want the viewer to appreciate that creating something like a portrait bust comes from destroying concepts and really seeing. That even in the making process, there is a constant ebb and flow building up and tearing down: correcting. I love making this thing. I love having my mind so completely engrossed and yet so open and free. Some how I am really excited. I love that this very old fashioned discipline, the discipline I abandoned in undergrad is now really an exciting punch line to this project. I am so excited that I think I might be using a traditional craft conceptually. I just need the right title.After I worked to this point, I quit and walked home through the cool and rainy evening.

Sentient, Studio, Press

Today was a fun day in the studio. Above is the new configuration of Sentient for the exhibit at Northeastern. Anna Poplawska will be writing about the work in Yoga Chicago. She writes about spirituality and art and has a monthly column in Yoga Chicago. She came to my studio today and I am pretty excited.

Reality Check

Art Advice is a helpful website I just started looking at.

Priced to Sell

I've been experimenting some with marketable work to accompany my installations. I attribute this to coming to my senses as well as honestly trying to meet some of the enthusiasm my work generates in viewers, with a take it home option. The few items I've made and priced, I've priced reasonably in an effort to facilitate collecting from some people who might not think they can. This article from Art Newspaper may have me further second guessing this egalitarian approach. Sorry.

Why we like art less when its price goes down

Tucson Exhibits

Here are some pictures from my opening in Tucson.

I was in a juried encaustic show at Conrad Wilde Gallery, which is a really nice contemporary gallery, which mainly features encaustic work.
The opening was really well attended, there was about 200 people.
My mom, had an opening the same night. She makes encaustic work too!
Her triptych sold!

Transformation

Since the New Year, I have been making many positive changes to my life. But I think the source of all this change actually came not from my free will, but because I had to stop drinking to take Accutane. Its not as though drinking were some kind of issue, but when it was absent I noticed how much a filler it can be, much like the other things I've phased out

Reductions:

• Not Drinking
  
• Quiting TV
• phasing out myspace
• checking email less

Additions:

• Revamping my studio
• Working on exciting ideas for my new show
• reading more
• going to see more art, going to museums
• collaborating with friends
  
• Volunteering and taking classes at Shambhala
  
• Re-committing to my daily meditation practice and trying to work with lojong
  
• Keeping this blog and my accutane blog
  

Without the time filler activities, I've been able to add in so many more positive activities. One down side is that the Accutane makes me feel like a lethargic arthritic old lady, so I haven't been exercising at all, and it is driving me crazy. I am looking forward to May, when my skin transformation is complete, the accutane is over, and I can maintain my new life style, but with energy.

Students Drawing Today at Wright

Redundantly American in Free Februrary

We went to see the Hopper exhibit Saturday at The Art Institute, during free February.

The Hopper exhibit was predictably lovely. His work reproduces very well, so there is not much more revealed in viewing the paintings in person. The canvas are not unexpectedly big, but the colors can be quite vibrant. I really prefer his work focusing on urban and prairie scenes which include much visible and psychological space. There were some very cool early etchings, including two depicting the first "El" car. which I've been in at The Chicago History Museum. I find his work incredibly American, and it is not secret, that I am an idealist American, and I love being an American. His work captures American scenes and psychological space. After seeing his body of work, I felt like I knew him. I really feel like he was always right there with his subjects. That he wasn't an estranged visitor to the scenes and characters, but that he too dined with locals late at night, or sat lonely in a hotel room, or chatted with bathers on the east coast. I felt that he was right there with capturing what was current, because he was doing it. In the 50's towards the end of his career, he began painting western-route 60-esque travel and motel scenes. Just as America was embracing the car and newly paved and connecting roads. He seems redundantly American- being as he appears in photos, "Joe American", he seems to live the American life of the time, and then he cinematicly captures it in paint.

The last painting was the best and truly a culmination of his life's pursuit.


Saturday during free February was not the best time to see art, but is was a refreshingly casual and boisterous day at the museum, where everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. And the museum was packed with a sea of visitors, really the way it always should be.

Don't miss "Girls On the Verge" in the basement. Its delightfully uncomfortable, sensitive, humorous and shocking.

Gordon Matta-Clark

This past weekend, Michael and I went to see the Gordon Matta-Clark exhibit at the MCA. I was so happy to finally see the MCA hosting (almost) contemporary art, and an artist that I've admired for a long time. The exhibit is great, but since Matta-Clark's career was so short, there wasn't much there that I hadn't already seen or read about. I was really inspired by the table of books that was source material for and documentation of Matta-Clark's work. I took notes.

A quick thought on a new idea I am forming: The Mythology of Contemporary Art

I think the separation of contemporary art from everyday life has been as detrimental to art. The idea that contemporary art is now different, and making a difference, in a way that traditional and historical arts have not, or in a way that other creative acts have failed, is indeed sad. There is an increasingly exclusive religion growing around the obscure and specific actions of people deemed qualified if not anointed to single handily represent the culture without participating in the culture.

Art separated from life may not be art.

Collective Chicago

Whats going on with "underground art" in Chicago?

I wanted to be in a collective. I felt that a collective was a great opportunity to learn about other artists' practices, collaborate, try new things, be part of change. But the few art collective exhibits I've been to (both underground collectives and mainstream) look just like gallery exhibits. It seems like the collectives are just mimicking the gallery system they seem to say they rebel against. Why exhibit gallery art in an alternative space?

Maybe these are separate issues, but where is the performance art? Were is the site specific installation. Where are the revolutionaries? Who is planning the next deviation? Who wants to? Is there an avante guarde in Chicago?

On the plus side, I went to an apartment gallery (only once) that shows great promise. Mini Dutch exhibited two interesting pieces this winter. One was an interactive sculpture, and the other was a site specific installation in their "installation room." Not only was the work good, the presentation great, and the gallery director professional, but I didn't feel like I walked into a clique gathering that was accidentally listed in The Reader. Although it was in their home, it had a professional feel, and the party aspect was down played compared to the art.

Studio Search

Last year I began renting a studio in the basement of a two flat, directly behind our old apartment. It is really basic, low ceilings, shedding brick walls, humid in the summer cold in the winter... I rent about 200 square feet, for pretty cheap. Its still in a great location for me, even since we moved, but it seems so unprofessional to have curators to visit. I have been looking to upgrade, but it has been a sad search, so far. Big cheap spaces, in very bad neighborhoods, with sketchy management. I seek a studio that I like to hang out in, like to read books in, have fun organizing, would like to have people over to...