Waiting

We are waiting for the 20th ward Alderman to move and sand blast the planters. We are ready to paint. I am discouraged, and starting to thing about some plan-B's. The teens really want to paint. Above is the front and back designs for the planters and the colors we'll use. I'm starting to think about sidewalk sandwich boards, other types of signage or community markers. I really want to make something, and make something happen. I'm not getting paid enough not to make art.

Here is our practice one...

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.

Our Vacation Plans

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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.

Try Try Again

I am working on the last piece for my show this summer, White Moment.

My first idea for this was to have two casts of my head, made to look like the buddha heads, looking at each other. I want this piece to have a real self contemplation quality. Well after I asked two people to help me out by casting my head, and after I sat twice to have my face and head covered in plaster gauze, and I assembled them, I realized I didn't like them. They didn't really look like each other!

So then I thought I will use one of them, and have it looking into a mirror. But the problem with that is that the plaster cast doesn't have eyes.


Which reminds me the before I moved onto this step I bought and tried to install glass eyes into the plaster head because this piece is so much about looking, but they turned out SO freaky!

So now I am on the fourth try. I am literally sculpting my self portrait in clay. I must say its really not going well, but I've only worked on it for like 6 hours so far. I once made a really stunning life like portrait bust of a model, but working on myself is much more challenging. I am using the plaster cast heads for help, but for example, while working on the eyes, I need to take off my glasses and look in a mirror, but then I can't see so well.

So I'm hoping that even if this doesn't turn out very well technically and perfectly life like, that this process of looking and examination just to make the piece will come across conceptually. The sculpted head will be cast in white bees wax and be looking into a mirror.

Hyphenated-Time-Waster

Michael and I finally replaced our "dorm room" TV. You know the kind with the VCR in it. Well we bought this fancy pants flat screen TV in part because I could no longer read the subtitles on our old TV. Or at least that's why we finally made the move. I figured this new TV would be great for watching movies, but it is totally destroying my hiatus from TV.

First of all high definition is way better then I thought it would be. It not only looks awesome, but many of the standard channels offer addition channels via the new hyphenated channel system, which is weird but awesome. Our local public station, WTTW, offers three more channels, and two of them are in English! In addition to WTTW (11-2), there is WTTW Create (11-3), which shows tons of awesome cooking shows, This Old House, Ask This Old House and Bob Ross, and the best is WTTWD (11-1), the D stands for digital. To sum up this "new" PBS station its like, to exaggerate, every time I turn it on there is a scene of zooming through the Grand Canyon, or like an awesome scene of wild life in their habitat all in High Def! This channel alone is responsible for the loss of countless hours, which I've excused by saying that its educational.

This new TV also entertains our Little Kitty, who just started watching TV for the first time. You can guess she really likes WTTWD when the animals are on, but she'll watch people too. Its weird.

I can only hope that the end of this novelty in partnership with learning when the awesome nature shows are on in high def will help me return to my more disciplined use of the TV.