Art, Teaching and Meditation

I wrote an essay for Chicago Artist’s Resource on the relationship of art, teaching and meditation in my life. You can read it on their site.

Open Crit @ Hyde Park Art Center

Last Thursday I was included in a new program at The Hyde Park Art Center: Open Crit. It was lead by photographer Daywoud Bey and curator Nathan Mason, both were so great. Three other artists were selected to present and the room was full of great people who contributed. I showed Orange Jelly and my ceramic fungi and received great observations and suggestions. The atmosphere was really great, all participants were motivated by being helpful and honest. I would recommend this program for anyone. I will be back as an audience member because I feel like I’m rusty in the art discourse.

Meditation Retreat

I recently attended my first ever week long meditation retreat at The Atlanta Shambhala Center. This week long retreat was an Art Weekthun. Weekthun is a week long program based on the traditional Tibetan month long retreat Dathun. The art part of this meditation retreat was not the reason I choose this Weekthun over the others being offered this summer, I choose this one because of scheduling between my husband and I and because we could drive there. However this program was really perfect for me in all my practices, meditation, teaching and making.

The Atlanta Shambhala Center which hosted this Art Weekthun was so much more beautiful, grand, comprehensive and impressive then I could have ever expected. Their center and facilities are so wonderful, they are now being called an Urban Land Center. In about the past seven years they bought wonderful land with two buildings on it, built a large and beautiful new meditation hall, and acquired a guest house. I could not recommend doing a program there enough. I had such a great time, they are so friendly and wonderful it was just great.

The Art Weekthun was an interesting program consisting mostly of sitting meditation, but also interlaced with different art practices meant to be executed as a continuation of meditation practice. This was my first exposure to Dharma Arts. I found the form and the approach to be a great way to remind me of how my own art practice is a type of meditation practice. Getting into the “zone” or “flow” is the basic joy of making. The Dharma Arts we practiced there are like a direct connect to that place.

The Dharma Arts approach, for me, was at first too simple, but as I stayed with it, rather then being a know-it-all in my mind, I realized that within this simple approach was some of what I’ve been missing in my teaching. I needed to see and do very simple exercises to realize how I could connect and engage my students more. This lead to a conversation with Lance Brunner about my interest in mindfulness or contemplative practice in higher education. More on this later....

Equally important was the sitting meditation. I really felt my practice deepen. I really began to see the gears of my mind, and my ego’s agenda. There were wonderful moments of understanding. I can’t wait to do another Weekthun, hopefully soon or maybe a Dathun.

This blog seems so short and inadequate compared to my experience there. I know that it will offer me more to learn as time passes.

art weekthun at atlanta shambhala center 2009

Fungi @ Atlanta Shambhala Center

Science, Buddhism and Art

On April 10, 11, and 12 I took a course at The Shambhala Meditation Center in Chicago titled Consciousness, Compassion, and Transcendence which was taught by Jeremy Hayward. I was inspired by his first talk on Friday night when he talked about the principles that Buddhism and Science have in common, I thought these principles also applied to art. This blog entry is structured based on his talk and his comments on science and Buddhism. I’ve added my thoughts on art to each of his points.

Science, Buddhism and Art are based in questioning. They are based in a longing which is fundamental in humanity. This longing seeks the truth, but these three disciplines look for the truth in different yet complimentary ways. They have the following in common:

Art, Science and Buddhism are:

based on experiment not faith.

In science the hypothesis and experiment are fundamental. In Buddhism the practitioner learns by trying and doing and is not expected to believe anything that he or she cannot experience. In both of these practices dogmatism is out of place, but it is unfortunately often present in science and occasionally Buddhism.

In the case of art, experiment and faith converge. The artist is like a scientist performing experiments without a hypothesis. The studio is like a crazy lab or strange and wonderful manifestation of these experiments. The artist also has faith in his or herself. Her ability to know without knowing, from an intuitive place, which of the experiments are a true expression is essential. Not all experiments should make it out of the studio. Only some of the experiments create their own momentum within the studio and begin to drive the sequential experiments. This making is genuine. This is making without knowing. Once the artist sees what the outcome will be, the rest of the process is labor, just work to complete the piece.

Dogma also has no place in art. The “what is and isn’t art” argument should by now have reached the end of its rope. On the other hand art is not nihilistic. Art is not anything, but anything can become art.

aware of a disharmony between appearance and reality.

Science and Buddhism are both seeking a truth that is obscured by our limited faculties. The scientist is looking for fundamental principles and building blocks of the universe. The meditation practitioner is using meditation to experience without the duality of self and other prevalent in our consciousness.

The artist is also confronted by and confronting this disharmony. It is apparent when a student is learning to draw from observation like in my class at Wright College. The mind obscures what we see with assumptions and language, which is an obstacle to true observation. I see teaching students to draw from observation as a task of unlearning and letting go.

Artists are free to explore and manipulate the disharmony between appearance and reality. Artists include interpretive, emotional, and chaotic elements in their work to express a personal reality often clouded by disharmony. The disharmony between appearance and reality can be used a life long muse for artists inspiring works that are personally expressive and yet collectively appreciated.

recognizing the problem of the observer.

Scientists know that they as the experimenter are effecting the experiment and try to eliminate themselves from the experiment. Buddhists experiment on themselves, and know that the human mind is non-dualistic in nature, but that it expresses itself as dualistic in most situations, which creates an observer experience.

Artists are constantly working with and against the observer. I my own practice I’ve struggled with and have now come to rest in a confident place with the observer. In the past varied contrived observers would manifest in my mind like a multiple personality disorder and judge my work as I created it in my studio. “What would my mom think of this? My grandpa? My old professor? What would my peers say about it in a critique? Will galleries like it? Will someone want to buy this? Why do people buy art?....” I think the voices have both quieted and unified into a steady confidence. This took a while to happen and grad school helped this process. I took risks in grad school and was rewarded by the outcome of each one. I also think my meditation practice has helped. Its not that the observers have gone away, they remain an important team in my making. The more I realize that my art and my making are not about me, the easier it has been to work with the observer. Without the pressure of the self and a mandate of self expression the observer and the observed can merge.

concerned with cause and effect.

Science sees cause and effect as a linear progression because science has a concept of time. Buddhists see cause and effect as a network if interrelationships (karma).

On this topic the young artist unfortunately shares more with the scientist. I remember talking to a freshman at Alfred at the end of his freshman year about his next endeavors. He was very swept up with idea of creating a “body of work,” and was setting about this task as though he was writing a history book. I recommended that he make what he want without regard for a “body of work” and let some art historian or critic figure it out and “make sense of it all.” This approach to making saddens me when the artist is not aware of what he or she is participating in. This linear approach to making is structured not for the artist but for the marketplace and collector. It makes buying this artist’s work seem like they are buying into a greater plan, something that has already happened which mimics the post-mortum sale of an artist’s work. This also helps the galleries sell the work because it mimics selling a brand, not something messy and unpredictable like art. I think this type of making and buying is not genuine and is based on a construct that is not only out dated, but probably was never beneficial to either party. This linear construct of making and selling work implies that the artist is too wild and should be corralled and that collector is unable to buy what he or she likes.

Making should be open. The work of an artist will inevitably create some kind of body of work which will be deeper and more enriched without the addition of a linear construct. During my graduate studies I had to present my work in a one hour slide talk. Preparing for this talk was the first time I ever saw all my work together on a large light box. As I moved the work around I realized I had to begin my talk with work I did during high school because it was still relevant conceptually to the work I was pursuing in grad school, and is even still relevant now. This was a wonderful discovery, not a plan. The work should always be about discovery both for the maker and the viewer.

improving the human condition.

Buddhism is really driven by this. First you start with improving yourself, but your motivation is to get it together so you can help others. Science helps humanity, but only incidentally, its main focus is on phenomena, and if this results in atomic bombs or revolutionary medicine, the motivation was the same.

Talking about art improving the human condition is complex for me. Art as it is now, sequestered to its museums and galleries is hard to see has helping humanity. I say this as a “fine artist” working within the system of galleries and museums. This sequestered world is my world, for better or worse. However, I suggest that art does improve the human condition. The experience of the viewer, unaltered the dogma of history or criticism can be a genuine in the moment experience. Many viewers are separated from this experience because of the museum or gallery experience. They don’t feel they have the authority to view and experience the art on their own terms, but when they can be reunited with their own curiosity the viewing experience can be wonderful.

Fluxliminal Closing Reception-Friday, March 20th, 5:30-7:30PM

Winter is over! Please join us for the closing reception of our show investingating transitional states using photography and sculpture, on the spring equinox, this Friday, March 20th, 5:30-7:30PM at Loyola University's Crown Center Gallery.

fluxliminal

Vesna Jovanovic and Renee Prisble Una present new work
investigating the changing world between states of being.

Feburary 27- March 20, 2009
Closing Reception: March 20, 5:30-7:30

Crown Center Gallery • 1001 West Loyola Avenue • Chicago, IL 60626 • 773-508-7510
Gallery Hours: 10am-7pm M-F, 12-4pm Sat & Sun and by appointment

Beautiful Decay

New work created at Loyola from the past semester. All pieces are glazed stoneware. These are installed in my studio. I now need to find a place exhibit them. They can be installed easily with screws into any wall. They are the beginning of work I'll be exploring, which is purchasable installation art. The work can be bought and installed by the consumer, transferring some of the art experience to the consumer.

Beautiful Decay looks at the beautiful and transformative quality of death and decay and reminds us of the cycle of destruction and creation.

New Business Card Design

What a long day of computering...My eyes are tired

Artxposium this weekend!

Hey Everybody! Its time for Artxposium, carnival like, festive, art exhibit in West Chicago. Its worth the drive! I am showing the second incarnation of The Prayer Wheel Project. Hope you can make it.

artXposium 2008

On its second edition this year, artXposium is a 3-day multimedia art experience with more than 80 participating artists. Local, national and international talent will come together from September 19th to the 21st to display a variety of art work ranging from traditional painting, sculpture, and photography to interactive, multimedia, and sound installations. This years event also include the inaugural month long international artist-in-residence program featuring Danish artist Gudrun Hasle at the West Chicago City Museum.

Showing and Selling at Mini Dutch

Thank you to everyone who came to the Mini Dutch show this past Saturday. I had such a great experience. It was really my first experience selling my work and I loved it. Not nearly so much for the money, which was nominal (prices from $1-$50), but because I saw my art making people happy and going to good homes! I learned so much from this show, lessons that will take years to manifest.

If you haven't seen it yet head on over, and no not ALL the good stuff is gone, but about 1/2 is.

Mini Dutch Gallery
3111 w. diversey first floor
chicago il, 60647
773.235.5687

open Sundays 11am-3pm or call/email for appointment

minidutchgallery [at] gmail [dot] com

Fungus & Ceramics

So, I haven't written yet about my new, and most likely temporary teaching position teaching hand building in ceramics at Loyola! Its going really well, even though I was given such short notice (three days). I owe much of my success to Vesna, who has helped me out tremendously!

One of the great things about teaching this class is not only the added experience I'll be gaining, the great students, and the money, but I will be making some ceramic art for the first time in a while.

I've been fooling around with some old ideas, but have been unhappy with them, feeling like an imitation of myself. But this weekend on the El platform there was a new idea- fungus. This orange folded delicate organism, peeking out from between the boards.
This new idea will hopefully continue another piece I made a while ago, but sold this weekend at the mini dutch show. "Mountain Stickers" are latex casts of small mountain ranges, each about one to two inches long, painted white, with double sided tape on the back. A woman bought all of them, and was so excited about them! I asked her what she would do with them and she started drawing in the air and explaining how she would make a mountain range somewhere in her apartment. I became so excited about this. She was going to go home and have a creative experience with the art she bought. I love this idea. Hopefully these new ceramic fungus pieces will work in the same way, but probably not at the same price point.

"Leftovers" show opening at MiniDutch Sept. 13th

Dear Friends,

I am excited to present this new show of old stuff:

Leftovers
Opening Reception: September 13th, 7-10pm

MiniDutch another apartment gallery
3111 W. Diversey
Chicago, IL 60647
773.235.5687
http://www.minidutchgallery.org/

In this show I've made work from the materials that have been in my studio, in some cases for over 10 years. I've been carting these leftover and never used materials around think that someday I would make art with them. The materials vary from found objects, felt, latex, fake eyes, orange powders....

I returned to the source of art making practice for this exhibit. The curious, adventurous, anything goes making from my youth created these many delightful, often curious objects. This making process was fun and immediate, creating new pieces rapidly and severing what had become an emotional tie to the promises of all these materials.

To further sever the tie, the work is for sale, and very affordable prices range from $1 to $50. Some work is available for cash and carry.

The show closes October 12th with a materials exchange. Artists and makers are invited bring leftover materials to swap and socialize.

I hope you can make it to this show and the opening event!

-Renee

more for mini dutch

More work for the mini dutch show! For this show, which opens September 13th, I making work only with left over materials in my studio. In fact the show is called "Leftovers". My making process has been fun, impulsive, confident and cathartic. This process in a return to the joy of working with my hands, working directly, and the wonder of discoveries.

At this show all the work will be for sale. The price points of mostly $5-$40 makes the work accessable to my peers- other artists.

Second Batch for mini dutch

rusted colony (sideways)



screw ball



daydreaming (ode to gormely)



latex hoops



masking tape painting 1



mirror galaxy

First mini dutch pieces

Mirror Galaxy
etched mirror

Mirror Galaxy
etched mirror

Shipping Label Piece #2
shipping labels, hot glue
Shipping Label Piece #1
shipping labels, hot glue

I finally went my studio today and cranked out a few pieces for my show at mini dutch opening September 13th. The show is called "Leftovers" and I will be making new work from left over materials in my studio. The work is very impulsive, immediate, and fun. Here are the first four to preview.

Also, my new bike rocks! It took me painlessly all over town today. Love it!

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...