ARTseen Chicago

Student Work Showcased in ShopColumbia Holiday Market

2010-11-30T15:23:00.005-06:00

ShopColumbia, the student-run, student-powered boutique, features one-of-a-kind holiday gifts that help students make extra cash while learning about the business of selling their art.

ShopColumbia, Columbia College Chicago’s year-round student art boutique located at 623 S. Wabash is showcasing unique holiday gifts on December 10 from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and December 11 from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. This year, ShopColumbia will feature over 40 student artist’s winter collections and present them in a ‘trunk show’ format 4-7 p.m. on December 10.

ShopColumbia features original designs that are created by Columbia College Chicago students. An extension of the classroom and a laboratory for experimentation, the store supports students by providing a professional environment to learn the process of marketing, presenting and selling work.

ShopColumbia has earned Columbia College students over $100,000 in their percentage of retail sales since the shop opened 2008. Total sales from ShopColumbia are divided between the artist, scholarships, operating budget, student staff salaries and shop upkeep.

For additional information, contact ShopColumbia at 312.369.8616 or shop@colum.edu. Visit the website at www.colum.edu/shopcolumbia.

Tomboy Exhibition at Columbia College's Glass Curtain Gallery

2010-11-17T16:00:00.002-06:00

Louise LeBourgeois on Studio, Partnership and Swimming

2010-09-10T13:48:00.018-05:00

FOR STUDIO CHICAGO BLOG

Louise LeBourgeois

Where is my studio? It is the physical place where I go to make my paintings, but it is also a psychic space containing memory, experience, and ideas. I bring these mental constructs with me when I walk into my studio. I take them with me when I leave. The studio is a place with walls. And it isn't.

Painting is an incredibly solitary activity. When I was a younger artist, I thought that painting full time, with very few distractions in my life, was a level of perfection I wanted to achieve. I now know that such isolation is not good for my state of mind, nor is it good for my ability to get work done.

Paradoxically, the community I create in my life outside of the studio, spending time doing things that seemingly have nothing to do with making art, allows me to become even more creative and productive as an artist. It’s like being a deep-sea diver. When you know there are people waiting for you in a boat on the surface of the water who can pull you back to a place where you can breathe, you become more willing to take risks, to dive deeper and further than you ever have before. The more closely connected I am to other people, the easier it is for me to put in long, solitary hours in my studio.

I think this is the single most important thing I have ever learned about being an artist.

The diving metaphor is apt for many reasons. I am a swimmer, and the older I get, the more interested I am in painting water and sky. It’s an image I started working with almost two decades ago when I was an M.F.A. student at Northwestern University and casting about for subject matter onto which I could pin all my aching and almost absurd hopes of becoming a successful artist.

I wanted to become a good painter. I thought if I were able to paint water, elusive and refractive as it is, in a convincing manner, then I would be able to paint anything. It really wasn’t any more complicated than that.

But like a dream whose layers of meaning are only revealed over time, the significance of this simple image, and simple intention, has evolved into something entirely different.

Lake, oil on panel, 5.5” x 7.5”, 1994

Here are some snapshots of the relationships, experiences and community that sustain me as a painter.

1.
For many years, I shared a studio at home with my husband Steven Carrelli www.stevencarrelli.com . We met in 1993 while we were both graduate students at Northwestern. We married in 1995. Our entire lives as working artists has been in partnership with each other.

It’s a funny thing living with another artist. It’s like hearing the repetitive running monologue of your own obsessive/creative mind come out of someone else’s mouth. Here is a video interview of Steve with Columbia College’s Elizabeth Burke-Dain that illustrates perfectly what I’m talking about:

This is exactly the kind of thing we listen to from each other almost every day, these random thoughts and doubts. It doesn’t make sense to try to turn it into conversation. That can have doomed consequences. We only critique each other's work when asked.

Steve and I bought our condominium in Rogers Park in 1998. Until this past January, we shared the 400 square foot living room as our studio.

This worked well for all the years we both made intimate, face-sized paintings. Then Steve began to work on much larger drawings and last year I was also struck by a need to work much bigger. I ordered two 46” x 46” panels.

I quickly realized I couldn’t work the way I was accustomed to in the studio I shared with Steve. It wasn’t practical for me to move bulky panels around in the same space where he had set up intricate still lives, and neither of us wanted to risk my spattering paint onto his carefully rendered drawings.

I found a new studio at the Greenleaf Art Center, a five-minute walk from our front door. Now that I paint elsewhere, it's changed our interaction with each other.

Many years ago, we worked on our first collaborative drawing. We did a few more over time. Now that we don't share the same studio, we both have more motivation to do these drawings together. One of us starts, and we pass it off to the other in turns until it’s done. These drawings are weirder, and the outcome less foreseen, than anything either of us would do on our own.

Untitled, graphite on paper, 16.5” x 10.5”, 2010

Untitled, graphite on paper, 15.75” x 9.5”, 2010

Untitled, graphite on paper, 14.5” x 11.5”, 2010, in progress

2.
I have a group of friends who swim at Promontory Point in Hyde Park at dawn in the summer and early fall. I am not naturally an early morning person, but it’s such a transformative experience, with such friendly people, for such a short window of time each year, that I make the effort to go two or three times a week.

It’s like swimming in one of my paintings. Or conversely, it is a visceral experience that keeps me in touch with what I need to know to make the paintings I make.

In late summer, it is still dark when my alarm goes off at 5am. Going out into the world before daybreak spooks me. Lake Michigan spooks me, for good reason. It’s a powerful body of water. Twice in my life I’ve been truly frightened by its tremendous force, and both times I hustled myself back onto land as quickly as I could.

When we get into the water around 6am in late August or early September, the sky is a dilute gray and the sun isn’t up yet. Sometimes the water is crazy cold, in the low to mid 50’s. Over the years, I’ve learned to tolerate cold water. Like any difficult skill, you can train yourself to do it if you are motivated enough.

It is true urban wilderness. The lake tells you how far and how long you can swim and it is in our interest to listen carefully. Our lives depend on it. My swimming friend Grace Tsiang wrote an article for the U.S. Masters Swimming website about one particularly challenging swim last summer.

Swimming out into the lake and watching the pink sun rise over the horizon is worth all the exertion of an early morning swim. It is as if you’re watching all that spookiness dissolve into benign reality.

3.
For two weeks in June this year, I participated in the BAU Institute’s artist residency program in Otranto, Italy. There were about twelve to fifteen artists while I was there, the numbers fluctuating as people arrived and left. We all had our studios on the top floor of Otranto’s 15th century castle, which has a vast terrace overlooking the Adriatic Sea towards Albania. I could step outside my studio door and actually see water and sky.

During a typical day I worked for six or seven hours with pencils, erasers and paper. The simplicity of drawing was perfect for this trip, particularly since the castle and our studios were closed from 1 to 3 in the afternoon. There was no need to clean up in the middle of the day or at the end.

I swam almost everyday, the warm salt water a pleasant change from my chilly swims in Lake Michigan. One day the water was extremely choppy. I treaded water and could see the quick instant of sharp pointed peaks at the top of each wave. I decided to make a drawing of that.

Water, Otranto #7, graphite on paper, 11” x 14”, 2010

I completed seven 11” x 14” graphite drawings of water and sky while I was there.

4.
I have vivid memories of painting when I was in nursery school. I would stand at the easel, load my brush with a bright color and slather it onto the paper. Then I’d dip the brush into another color and slide it into the first, noticing how the colors merged and blended. I’d bring home large pieces of paper that could barely support all the paint I’d layer onto it. My mother would listen to me as I gave elaborate explanations of what each painting meant. I don’t recall ever painting any thing, although I probably did. I do remember seeing what the other kids painted— people, flowers, fire trucks, the sun. I felt wistful about it, liking what I saw, but not wanting to do the same thing. I was much more interested in color and the physical sensation of messing around with paint.

Now that I am working on much larger panels, the way I paint now is beginning to feel very much like the way I painted when I was very young.

I have worked with water and sky imagery for many years now, inspired by Lake Michigan and the conundrum that the horizon line presents: a straight, visible line that actually describes the invisible curve of our planet. Although none of these thoughts are explicit in the drawings and paintings I produce, my fascination with the illusion of a sharp divide where none actually exists is what drives me to create such labor-intensive images of very simple compositions.

Water #420, Oil on Panel, 46” x 46”, 2010

Water #423, Oil on Panel, 46” x 46”, 2010

Water #430, Oil on Panel, 46” x 46”, 2010

Louise LeBourgeois swims in Lake Michigan (and other places) and teaches painting and drawing in the Art + Design Department at Columbia College Chicago. She is currently exhibiting her work in the “Imagine Everywhere” show at Columbia College’s A + D gallery.

She graduated with a B.S in Art from the University of Wisconsin/Madison, a B.F.A from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and an M.F.A from Northwestern University. She and her husband Steven Carrelli will both have one person shows at Packer Schopf Gallery in Chicago in November.

Stephen Eichhorn at Columbia College's A+D Gallery

2010-08-26T13:07:00.004-05:00

Stephen Eichhorn, botanical collage artist, did a six-week residency in the digital lab at Columbia College Chicago's Art + Design Department. During this residency, Eichhorn experimented with digital techniques which is quite a departure from his other works. Here is a video interview between Eichhorn and Elizabeth Burke-Dain.

G-Team Talk to Sugar Gamers

2010-08-10T11:22:00.010-05:00

The G-Team, a group of Columbia College Interactive Arts and Media students and a core team of six high school girls who are part of the 3G Summit: The Future of Girls, Gaming and Gender , recently got together with Sugar Gamers. Sugar Gamers is a grass roots organization that brings together girls who game both on and off line. Keisha Howard, the founder of Sugar Gamers talked to the G-Team about how she started Sugar Gamers. Over the hour, the conversation turned from gaming to 'geeks' to feminism.

To Have and To Hold

2010-08-05T09:56:00.001-05:00

Here is a video documentary trailer of the film that pays hommage to vinyl records. Check it out.

To Have & To Hold - Taster Tape from Jony Lyle on Vimeo.

Betsy Odom's Love/Hate Relationship with Softball and Other Curiosities

2010-08-02T16:33:00.003-05:00

Betsy Odom, adjunct faculty in the Art + Design department at Columbia College Chicago, sat down with me to discuss her work.

3G Girls Discuss Gaming

2010-07-16T16:38:00.005-05:00

Several of the high school girls who will be attending the 3G Summit: The Future of Girls, Gaming and Gender in August on the Columbia College campus got together recently to discuss their perspectives and experiences in online gaming. Columbia College's upcoming 3G Summit looks at the gap between genders and the widely-held claim that young men are more commonly interested and active in gaming over young women.

Fernando Jones' Blues Camp

2010-06-30T17:03:00.004-05:00

Blues musician Fernando Jones, a Columbia College adjunct music faculty member, talks about his work in promoting and preserving the Blues traditions with today’s youth and creating his first Blues Camp for students in grades 6-12 scheduled for July 4-9 in Chicago. With participants selected during open auditions this past spring, students will receive free instrumental, vocal, and music writing instruction in a hands-on environment. Held on the Columbia College campus, the camp will culminate with a public concert in Chicago’s nearby Grant Park.

3G Summit: The Future of Girls, Gaming and Gender

2010-06-17T11:40:00.005-05:00

2010-06-16T09:17:00.003-05:00

Carl Reiner Speaks to Columbia College Students

2010-04-28T16:26:00.001-05:00

Leilani Wertens - MFA in Photography at Columbia College Chicago

2010-04-21T13:28:00.007-05:00

Leilani Wertens is a graduate student in the photography department who will graduate in May. For her recent project, Forget-Me-Not, Wertens was accepted into the New Insight show exhibiting concurrently during Art Chicago and The Next Fair from April 30 - May 3 at the Merchandise Mart. Below is a video interview with Wertens discussing her project Forget-Me-Not.

Fashion Columbia Students Show Off Their Style

2010-04-16T11:35:00.003-05:00

Fashion Columbia College Students Brittany Shelton, Alyssa Rangel, Heather Ouellette and Jennifer Schiessle show off their final projects.

Eat books! Annual Edible Books Show

2010-04-01T11:53:00.001-05:00

Eat books! Annual Edible Books Show & Tea - April 1st Columbia College Chicago

Posted using ShareThis

Let There Be Geo Exhibition

2010-02-08T11:40:00.011-06:00

"LET THERE BE GEO" ART EXHIBITION AT COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO

Cody Hudson, 2009, Acid Tracks, mixed media installation

Let There Be Geo is an art exhibition at Columbia College Chicago’s Leviton A+D Gallery that surveys the art of contemporary artists who use geometric form in their work. While employing geometric form in art is not a new phenomenon, geo forms are appearing in some of the most aesthetically progressive work being made today. Twenty-first century responses to geometric form make use of a variety of styles and media, from painting and video to photography and sculpture. The works in Let There Be Geo examine today’s incarnation of geometric form.

"The persistence of artistic geometric forms hints at a continuum, or a legacy, or some coy deity made present in this world by his shadow, cast as a polygon, on the eyeball of the artist," writes Jason Foumberg in the exhibition's essay.

Participating artists include: Jesse Brown, Nick Butcher, Jeff Canham, Jacob Hashimoto, Maya Hayuk, Cody Hudson, Steven Husby, Barbara Kasten, Chad Kouri, Nadine Nakanishi, John Parot, Sam Prekop, Archer Prewitt, Geoffrey Todd Smith, Jason Urban and Vanesa Zendejas.

Let There Be Geo is curated by Elizabeth Burke-Dain.

WHEN: March 4 – April 24, 2010 March 4 from 5-9 p.m. Opening Reception

WHERE: Columbia College Chicago’s Leviton A+D Gallery 619 S. Wabash Gallery hours: Tues. – Sat, 11 a.m. – 5pm, Thurs, 11 a.m. – 8 p.m.

INFO: 312.369.8687 www.colum.edu/adgallery

CURTIS MANN IN WHITNEY BIENNIAL

2009-12-15T10:04:00.003-06:00

Columbia College Chicago is enormously proud to announce that Curtis Mann, a 2008 MFA graduate and faculty of Columbia’s photography department, has been accepted into the Whitney Biennial exhibition – a 77 year-old exhibition of American Art at the Whitney Museum of American Art on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. The Whitney exhibition is one of the foremost shows in the art world and has traditionally marked the leading trends in contemporary art. Out of the millions of artists living and working in America, only 55 were chosen. With the invitation to the Whitney Biennial, the experts of the art world have chosen Curtis’ work to be one of the shining examples of the most current and important art being made today. He is now in league with some of the America’s most revered artists.

"Curtis Mann discovered his own distinctive artistic voice very early in our graduate program," says Bob Thall, Chairperson of the photography department. "He then developed his work with great intelligence, energy, and ambition. We are very proud of Curtis Mann and delighted that his work will be finding an enormous new audience."

Curtis Mann creates new photography by physically erasing and manipulating found amateur snapshots. This tension between creation and destruction in his process expands the boundaries of photography, and forms unique works that are full of experimentation and beauty. In the attached video made by Alan Del Rio, Curtis walks us through some of his techniques and shares the insights he has formed while developing his art.

Curtis Mann // Photography from Alan Del Rio Ortiz on Vimeo.

CONGRATULATIONS CURTIS!!!

Faculty Show Closing at Leviton A+D Gallery

2009-09-13T10:35:00.002-05:00

I had a fantastic time last Thursday night attending the closing event. Closing receptions are always a bit strange because it is a time when you know that the show is coming down and that it has had its moment in the sun. I was excited though because I know that the piece I bought from Betsy Odom is soon going to go into my house. I'm not exactly sure where I'm going to put it. Where does one put a full-size leather-tooled life vest? In the kitchen? No. Maybe I'll just keep in the livingroom where my children won't be tempted to bring it to the beach with them.

LAYER CAKE: Tales of a Quinceañera - See the Video

2009-08-31T15:29:00.004-05:00

I sat down with Camille Morgan, curator of Layer Cake, and Judithe Hernandez, artist. Check out our conversation and enjoy the pics. Remember, the opening is Tuesday, September 15, 4-8pm at C33 Gallery, 33 East Congress. Come and enjoy some real Quince cake and Mexican food.

Steve Carrelli - Interview and Blooper Reel

2009-08-17T10:31:00.006-05:00

Steve Carrelli and I sat down last week and talked about his work and his process, but really we discussed art bloopers. Steve is on the faculty in the Art + Design Department here at Columbia College Chicago who will exhibiting in the {blank}Space exhibition in the Leviton A+D Gallery. Other exhibiting artists include Steven Carrelli, Anna Kunz, Betsy Odom and Michael K. Paxton. Organized by Jennifer Murray. I'm hoping to get interviews up of the other artists in the show, so be on the lookout. Thanks for watching.

Also...don't forget to go to the closing reception on September 10 (the information is below).

WHEN: August 13 – September 19, 2009

Closing Reception and Artwalk: September 10, 2009, 5-8pm

WHERE: Columbia College Chicago’s Leviton A+D Gallery

619 S. Wabash Avenue

COST: Free and Open to the Public.

INFO: Jennifer Murray, 312.369.8686

Website: www.colum.edu/adgallery

ArtseenChicago blog: http://www.artseenchicago.blogspot.com

to see videos of participating artists and additional images.

Columbia College Art + Design Faculty Show

2009-08-11T17:06:00.005-05:00

{blank} place
Third Annual Art + Design Faculty Exhibition
Organized by Jennifer Murray

August 13 - September 19, 2009
Closing Reception and Artwalk: September 10th, 5-8 pm

{blank}place is about times and spaces of revolution, and their effect on visual images. We use convention and tradition to recognize images, pictures and works of art, and because art images interpret our world, they impact how we understand changes in the experience of place, space and time. We only understand visual things in contexts that are historical, geographic and cultural. Artists respond to those factors, and {blank}place is an experimental exhibition of such responses.

The exhibition uses a notion of revolution to emphasize how changes in what, when, and where we see not only changes the character of visual images, but also tells us something about the tools we use to see the world. Exhibiting artists include Steven Carrelli (image credit), Anna Kunz, Betsy Odom (image credit), and Michael K. Paxton.

In a week, I will post short video interviews with the artists. Since Anna Kunz was on sabbatical, she made her own video. Come back when they're posted.

Steve Carrelli, Homecoming, 2008, graphite on paper

Steve Carrelli, Away and Back, 2008, graphite on paper

Michael Paxton, Fig Garden

Michael Paxton, Eruption

Betsy Odom, Tom Bigbee, mixed media

Betsy Odom, Space Suit, mixed media

Betsy Odom sporting her space suit

Anne Elizabeth Moore on Vocolo for show at Center for Book & Paper Arts at Columbia

2009-07-23T10:20:00.003-05:00

Anne Elizabeth Moore, media critic and writer is currently showing at the Columbia College Chicago's Center for Book & Paper Arts. Check out her interview on vololo.org .

Upcoming Faculty Show at Leviton A+D Gallery

2009-07-20T12:33:00.002-05:00

_place: Columbia College Art and Design Faculty Exhibition opens on August 13 at Leviton A+D Gallery

___place is about times and spaces of revolution, and their effect on visual images. We use convention and tradition to recognize images, pictures and works of art, and because art images interpret our world, they impact how we understand changes in the experience of place, space and time. We only understand visual things in contexts that are historical, geographic and cultural. Artists respond to those factors, and ___place is an experimental exhibition of such responses. The exhibition uses a notion of revolution to emphasize how changes in what, when, and where we see not only changes the character of visual images, but also tells us something about the tools we use to see the world. Exhibiting artists include Steven Carrelli, Anna Kunz, Betsy Odom, and Michael K. Paxton.

Over the next few week, I will be producing short video postcards about each of these artists. Today, I 'll be interivewing Betsy Odom whose current artwork address the issues of gender, sports and craft. Videos and information from the remaining artists will appear over the next few weeks.

Betsy Odom, Tom Bigbee, leather, elastic

Betsy Odom, Softball Bat, 2008, wood, leather, tape

WHEN: August 13 - September 19, 2009, opening reception Thursday, September 10, 5-8pm

WHERE: Leviton A+D Gallery, 619 S. Wabash Avenue

COST: Free and Open to the Public.

INFO: 312.369.8668 or www.colum.edu/adgallery

Yummy Edit Grain Feed

2009-07-18T11:03:00.004-05:00

I could not help but include this very cool post by Yummy Fresh Grain Edit. Enjoy. Subscribe to their blog. You'll love it.

Komboh Design & Illustration
Posted: 17 Jul 2009 11:41 AM PDT

Editorial Design for Issue One of Pendulum Magazine (2009)

Ah, the bustling city. This magazine cover by Canadian dynamic design duo, Komboh, has it all: high-rises, cars, trucks, and busy people. Juxtaposing the grime of the city is a thick, clean white coil, which adds a simple graphic element to the crowded urban streets. The design is straightforward, clean, unpretentious, and nice to look at.

In addition to design work, Hans Thiessen and Michael Mateyko at Komboh are also talented illustrators, creating delightfully whimsical works with bursts of color and controlled lines. Check out more of their work on their website, and be sure to visit their blog for more goodies.

————–

Anne Elizabeth Moore Video Here!

2009-07-07T16:59:00.000-05:00

Midwestern Blab Video Here Now!

2009-07-07T16:44:00.004-05:00

TimeOutChicago reviews Carl Hammer show Primal

2009-06-30T14:17:00.005-05:00

Until July 22, Columbia College's gallery, Leviton A+D Gallery, is exhibiting works from Midwestern contributors of BLAB! Magazine. One of those artists is C.J. Pyle. I am happy to present here a review by Lauren Weinberg, art critic at TimeOut, of the Carl Hammer show Primal that features C.J. Pyle. I will be putting up a video tour of the gallery and the show Midwestern BLAB! next week. Keep a look out for that.

Art review

“Primal”

By Lauren Weinberg

Carl Hammer Gallery, through Jul 3.

C.J. Pyle, Sugar, 2008.

Thanks to Carl Hammer Gallery’s emphasis on self-taught and visionary artists, several of the works in the sprawling “Primal: Drawing as the Mirror of Self” explore their makers’ psyches with panache—particularly Joseph Yoakum’s fantastic paintings of places he supposedly visited and devout Christian Stephen Palmer’s lovely, intricately patterned portraits of Mary and Jesus. Other pieces don’t fit the show’s introspective theme so neatly, such as Marc Dennis’s confrontational nudes and George Widener’s depiction of Megalopolis 2012, a bustling city dominated by birdlike airplanes. Still, Widener’s work, which the autistic artist has carefully organized and crammed with details, is fascinating.

The many superlative examples of drawing represent the show’s greatest strength: Three blue-penciled boards by Chris Ware offer insight into the comics artist’s process and poignant stories. In four drawings on album covers, C.J. Pyle calls forth miracles with a ballpoint pen, achieving exquisite shading and gradations of tone in weird, dreadlocked figures (pictured) whose faces appear inside-out, as though their musculature sits on the surface of their skin. Marilyn Murphy’s The Time Jumper and The Lost Glove, two pencil portraits of women shown only from the waist down, combine a luscious, photorealistic aesthetic with surreal hints of feminine anomie.

Yet one of our favorite pieces isn’t a drawing: Cow Girl, an unknown artist’s wood carving, depicts a redhead clad only in a hat, boots and suggestively placed holster. The artist knows exactly what he likes—and there’s something charming about his eagerness to immortalize it.

Layer Cake: Tales from a Quinceañera

2009-06-25T10:30:00.025-05:00

image: Life on the Block, Adriana Lopez Sanfeliu, 2009

For young Latino girls, the Quinceañera is one of the most important moments in their youth. Like the Debutante Ball, the Cotillion and the "coming out" rituals that many young girls around the world participate in, the Quinceañera is uniquely Latino. Opening at Columbia College Chicago's C33 Gallery on September 8, Layer Cake: Tales from a Quinceañera is an exploration of the tension, delight, embarrassment, desire, joy, pride, confusion and beauty inherent in the Quinceañera. The exhibition features five to seven compelling stories – real or imagined – that speak to some facet of the greater Quinceañera narrative.

Image: Mexican Quinceanera, Javier Ramirez, Limon

Dating back to the Aztec and Mayan Empires and Spanish colonialism in the Americas (mainly Central and South America), the event ceremonially marked the time when a young girl would leave her family home to marry and begin her own family – around the age of 15.

Image: Mexican Quinceanera, Javier Ramirez, Limon

If asked what the Quinceañera means, a celebrant will likely answer: “I’m going from being a girl to being a woman,” but in today’s America of mixed moral, spiritual and cultural messages, coming-of-age is as complicated as ever. And so it comes down to the birthday girl, left to reconcile her own expectations and promises of womanhood with those of her family and community at large - rejoicing and lamenting in her newfound status.

Curated by Camille Morgan, Layer Cake: Tales from a Quinceañera has gathered artists who can capture this fantastic confusion through personal engagement - artists who can make transparent the layers of the poufy dress, the many-tiered cake, and the pomp and circumstance to reveal the truths beneath. Viewers will be drawn in and realize that this is not only an Hispanic tradition but a human one.

Image: Mexican Quinceanera, Javier Ramirez, Limon

Media is open to artist interpretation and can include painting, sculpture, photography, site-specific installation, performance and new media.

image: Juana Alicia, Don't Be So Tough, 2008

The exhibition will coincide with Columbia College’s National Latino Heritage Month (FOCO) and Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) celebrations.

COMMUNITY PARTICIPATION

Interactive Exhibit Wall – Photo Collage
Throughout the course of the exhibit, students, the rest of the Columbia College community and the public will be invited to submit personal photos from quinceañeras they have attended, participated in, had, crashed, etc. This supports the exhibit’s focus – artist’s exploring the theme of the quince through personal engagement.

image: Road Kill Series, Adriana Carvalho, 2009

"I am hoping people will enjoy displaying their crazy, funny, poignant, ridiculous and beautiful photos, " says Camille Morgan, the show's curator. "I am sure everyone will love to view them too. The purpose is to make the exhibit feel like a party everyone is invited to...a place where their experience counts and is important to the celebration of Latina womanhood."

EDUCATIONAL RELEVANCE OF QUINCEANERA

WHEN: September 8 – October 28, 2009

Artwalk Reception: September 10, 2009, 5-8pm

Official Reception: September 15, 2009, 4-8pm (to feature a real quince cake and Mexican food)

WHERE: C33 Gallery

33 East Congress Pkway @ Wabash

Curator Talks (by appt) at 312.369.7663 or cmorgan@colum.edu

Shifting meaning of the quinceañera

The shifting definition of “tradition”

Religion and faith in terms of cultural ritual

Issues surrounding immigration and societal status

How colonialism affects “history”

Feminist issues in a patriarchal society

Image: Judithe Hernandez, 2009

WHEN: September 8 – October 28, 2009

Artwalk Reception: September 10, 2009, 5-8pm

Official Reception: September 15, 2009, 4-8pm (to feature a real quince cake and Mexican food)

PANEL DISCUSSION: Thursday, October 22, 3pm at Hokin Annex, 623 S. Wabash
Steve Caballero (Community Christian Church in Pilsen), Priscilla Mills (author of Quinceanera Connections) and Yolanda Nieves (Artistic Director of Vida Bella Ensemble).

WHERE: C33 Gallery, 33 East Congress Pkway @ Wabash

COST: Free and Open to the Public.

CONTACT: Camille Morgan at cmorgan@colum.edu or 312.369.7663

PRESS INQUIRIES: Elizabeth Burke-Dain at eburkedain@colum.edu or 312.369.8695

More Images from Midwestern BLAB! at A+D Gallery

2009-06-22T15:14:00.008-05:00

WHEN: June 18 – July 22, 2009

WHERE: Columbia College Chicago’s Leviton A+D Gallery

619 S. Wabash Avenue

Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 5pm, Thursday 11 am – 8 pm

COST: Free and Open to the Public

MORE

INFO: Gallery Coordinator, , 312.369.8686

Press Inquiries, 312.369.8695

Tim Long Talks About Burnham in the Phillipines

2009-06-16T16:09:00.008-05:00

Image: Tim Long, Daniel Burnham building in Manila (2008)

Tim Long, Chicago photographer, will present an exhibition of photographs that were taken in Manila in 2008. These photographs delve into the rift created by the United States' ambition to create a democratic state in a vastly distant and different culture. See ArtSeen's earlier post here. The name of Long's exhibition is ironically named, Daniel Burnham's Enduring Vision for the Phillipines and will be located at The City Gallery from September 4 - to mid December, 2009. Below is some insight into Long's approach to Burnham's work in the Phillipines.

Image: Tim Long, Manila, Phillipines (2008)

I stumbled across Burnham’s work in the Philippines while doing research for an ongoing photography project about the long shadow the U.S. casts over it’s smaller less powerful neighbors. The U.S. took possession of the Philippines, after the Spanish American War, as they did Cuba (temporarily), Puerto Rico, and Guam. Though I was familiar with some of our history with the Philippines during and after WWII (my father was based there during the war) I hadn’t realized how tangled our relations were from the start. More reading revealed a number of parallels between our efforts to establish a commercial foothold and a democracy in the Philippines and our trials and tribulations in Iraq.

When I went to Manila in 2007 I expected to find the buildings and streets built to Burnham’s plan to be obliterated by development or boarded up or simply in ruins. My simple intention was to somehow engage the futility and damage done by American imperialism in the pictures. What I found was both more complicated and more interesting.

Manila, or Metro Manila, as the entire urban entity is now known, is a mega metropolis suffering tremendous pressures of scarcely controlled development, under-built infrastructure, massive over-population, and extraordinary poverty. In the midst of this deeply chaotic place, in old Manila, stand the park and the core of the street system that Burnham drew and a dozen or so buildings designed by DB’s architects in familiar Beaux Art and early Art Deco styles. Many of the buildings are in use (city hall, hospital, post office, etc) and Rizal Park is well maintained and well used. Rather than the intrusive presence that Burnham’s work must once have had, in today’s reality this thoughtfully designed area provides a much needed respite from an overwhelmed and overwhelming urban environment.

Accidental Mysteries Blog Writes About Fred Stonehouse

2009-06-09T15:48:00.005-05:00

Check out Accidental Mysteries where Fred Stonehouse's work is featured. Fred will be featured in Columbia College Chicago's Leviton A+D Gallery's Exhibition Midwestern BLAB! curated by BLAB!'s creator, Monte Beauchamp. Show opens on June 18! For more info on this show, go to my blog entry: here.

Re-Figure: A Contemporary Look at Figurative Representation in Art

2009-06-04T12:29:00.012-05:00

Media Contact: Elizabeth Burke-Dain, 312.369.8695

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

June 5, 2009

Images are Available.

Image: Amber Hawk Swanson, To Hold, Pinball, 2008, c-print

New technologies and innovative use of traditional media have changed the ways in which we view the body – from the Sims to Facebook to YouTube, our lives are inundated with new interpretations of, and uses for, figurative representation. The art exhibition RE:figure explores the common ground between new and old media representations of the human form, as well as the different uses of figurative representation. RE:figure features artists working in a diverse range of media, such as video game screen captures, photography, sculpture, collage and drawing. The works will show a range of body types, as well as explore different relationships between the artist and his or her subject. Betsy Schneider’s “Quotidian’ series of photographs, for example, document in large grids of drugstore photos the physical development of her small children while simultaneously giving the viewer insight into the power structure between parent and child. Don Doe’s mixed-media drawings, modern-day interpretations of the Madonna, give a much darker view of motherhood. Amber Hawk Swanson’s photographic series ‘To Have, To Hold and To Violate’ of her doppelganger Realdoll ™, a lifelike sex doll she had created in her own image, provides a disturbing look into the ways in which likenesses can be abused. Stacia Yeapanis’ ‘Glitches Are Signs’ gives a more lighthearted view of the same subject, through screen captures of her own Sims ™-likeness apparent physical disintegration.

Re-Figure was curated by Cole Robertson.

Confirmed Artists (more are anticipated)
Edna Dapo http://bit.ly/cu2Ny
Don Doe http://bit.ly/Izs3g
Robert Flynt http://bit.ly/FgmPA
Jason Salavon http://bit.ly/4OWYa
Betsy Schneider http://bit.ly/nm9fu
Amber Hawk Swanson http://bit.ly/nm9fu
Stacia Yeapanis http://bit.ly/6CKin

WHEN: September 8 – October 30, 2009
Opening Reception: Thursday, September 10, 5 – 8pm

WHERE: Columbia College Chicago’s Glass Curtain Gallery
1104 S. Wabash Avenue, 1st floor
Gallery Hours: Mon-Wed, Fri: 9:00am – 5:00pm, Thurs: 9:00am – 7:00pm,
Sat. by appointment

COST: Free and Open to the Public.

MORE INFO: Gallery Coordinator: Mark Porter, 312.369.6643 or mporter@colum.edu
Press Inquiries: Elizabeth Burke-Dain, 312.369.8695

Some images:

Sabrina Raaf, Blood, Rags and Da Bomb, photograph

Don Doe, New Mother, No. 142 (cover story), 2008, gouache, ink and pastel on prepared paper

Ashley Hope, Can Opener, 2005, oil on panel

Edna Dapo, Impermissible, acrylic on canvas

Robert Flynt, New Year Baby, 2008, collage

Su-en Wong, Mighty Hymn, 2007, graphite on paper

Dismantling the Corporate State, and Other Amusements

2009-05-28T10:30:00.008-05:00

Works by Anne Elizabeth Moore
June 19 – August 22, 2009

Dismantling the Corporate State, and Other Amusements is an exhibition of nine experimental works and activist projects of Anne Elizabeth Moore at Columbia College Chicago’s Center for Book & Paper Arts, 1104 S. Wabash, 2nd floor. One of the projects, Pie Off, will be presented at the opening reception on June 19 from 6-9pm. Another will be The Anne Elizabeth Moore Award for Excellence in Awesomeness which will occur at the closing event, Friday, August 21 at 6:30pm.

A staunch critic of consumerism and media activist Moore has been writing, publishing, and interceding in culture since the age of 15. The indomitable author of Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity, founding editor of the Best American Comics series, and former editor of now-defunct Punk Planet has seen her work exhibited in major museums, praised by the business press, and forcibly ejected from retail establishments. Dismantling the Corporate State, and Other Amusements includes a wide range of both personal projects and collaborations, from Chicago to Cambodia. A retrospective of sorts, this exhibition will be the first to present this work in one place.

This exhibition runs from June 19 – August 22, 2009. An artist’s talk with Anne Elizabeth Moore will take place on Friday, August 21 at 6:30 for the exhibition’s closing which will be followed by The Anne Elizabeth Moore Award for Excellence in Awesomeness.

EXHIBITION PROJECTS INCLUDE:

New Girl Law: 2008 (New Girl Law Audio Book is 2009)
New Girl Law is a letter-pressed, hand-bound book created in conjunction with the 32 young Cambodian women leaders in Phnom Penh. Over a two-week period at the Harpswell Foundation Dormitory and Leadership Center for University Women, the group collaborated a revision of the traditional text known as Girl Law which circumscribes proper roles for women in Cambodian culture. This version calls for basic human rights, gender equity, the eradication of corruption, and funding for cultural production. It is a re-envisioning of a potential future for the country. Co-written in Phnom Penh, and printed at AS220's Community Print Shop in Providence, Rhode Island, New Girl Law has been the subject of several international discussions of women's position in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including two among groups of economically disadvantaged creative young women in Providence and San Antonio.

Anne Zine
Produced between late 1993 and 2004, AnneZine was a quarterly publication devoted to the unique needs of people named Anne, Annie, Ann Marie, and the like, and consisted of 47 issues, although 38 of them were fake. Each issue was created in editions of between 12 (issue #1) and 300, with multiple reprints.

The Catalog of This Exhibition
The Catalog envisions an exhibition devoted to uncreated works of art, and attempts to establish a language for talking about potential through four essays that push the boundaries of art past the visual, past the experiential, and past the conceptual into the inconceivable and impossible. It is a piece of writing that exists mainly online, but was set into a hand-bound book with coffee-stained paper for physical exhibition. It exists in a physical edition of only one. (2007)

Radical Education Roadshow: How to Make This Very Zine
Radical Education Roadshow provides do-it-yourself instructions on how to make a zine in several languages. From 2004-2009, Anne Elizabeth Moore travelled the country making zines with young people using this tool, and this is a selection of their amazing, hilarious works.

Unlympics
From January to February 2009, the Unlympics were a series of competitive events that engaged Chicago residents in active dialogue about the 2016 Olympic bid. The Unlympics looked at highly organized, internationally recognized, massively marketed, thoroughly branded, and extremely expensive sporting events not from a pro or con standpoint, but from a questioning standpoint. The Unlympics included real sports, fake sports, and things that should be sports but aren’t yet, including Class-Conscious Kickball, Fashion, Karaoke, Live Action Role Play Family Dinner, The Solitary Isolation Game, and Spelling. Indoor and outdoor games were held throughout the city and open to the public. These events were sponsored by organizations with a stake in the 2016 Olympic bid (unlympics.wordpress.com). Summer Games are being planned now.

The Foundation for Freedom
The mission of the Foundation For Freedom was to bring the best and brightest former ad pros together once a year; inspire young people to leave the craft; focus the industry and public at large on the profoundly negative social and economic impacts of advertising; inspire problem-solving methods focused on the most important issues facing the real world; and shine a light on the influence that advertising, media, and marketing industries have on dwindling public space, atrophying human relationships, and the destruction of democracy. In collaboration with the Anti-Advertising Agency, the FFF created an award for one lucky ad pro, PR exec, or marketing rep dedicated to leaving their life of commercial creativity and onored them with a gala event and giant novelty check during Advertising week in New York City. (2008)

The Anne Elizabeth Moore Award for Excellence in Awesomeness (closing event)
Established in 2005 as an antidote to the several barriers that had been erected to prevent Anne Elizabeth Moore from winning other awards, the Anne Elizabeth Moore Award for Excellence in Awesomeness was created by Kevin Duneman and is juried annually by Anne Elizabeth Moore, who really only ever considers herself in the running for it. A major upset in the awards' history occurred in 2007 when dark horse candidate Sarah Fan appeared seemingly from nowhere to claim victory. The 2008 award goes to Anne Elizabeth Moore in Chicago Illinois, whose achievements had gone unrecognized for several consecutive months except for by her cat, and the occasional conspicuous consumption of pie, which, although delicious, is sometimes just not enough. The 2009 award will be the first to be judged by an open ballot. People besides Anne Elizabeth Moore will be considered for this year's award. This award will be presented at the closing event, Friday, August 21 at 6:30pm.

Operation: Pocket Full of Wishes
Operation: Pocket Full of Wishes was originally a series of eight cards that mimicked the shopping aides found in American Girl Place. The ‘wish’ cards include names, images and prices of items. Anne Elizabeth Moore’s cards bore items like “Domestic Partnership Benefits,” Safe and Effective Birth Control,” and “Free Tampons.” These were distributed inside the store to the doll consumers. Eventually, it became national news—and lead to Anne Elizabeth Moore getting banned from the store. (2004)

Pie Off
Pie Off is an Irregular Semi-Annual Competitive Pie-Baking Competition held in the United States of America, devoted to exploring the boundaries of not only good taste, but also the boundaries of what constitutes competition, how decisions are made in groups, and what the limits of consumption are for even those individuals who claim to love pie more than anything else in the world. Each competition is themed differently and was devoted to the exploration of a different judging rubric, including: popular vote, Survivor-style elimination, panel of experts, celebrity vote, US Election-style, and autocratic. Pie will be provided. Opening Reception: June 19, 2009, 6-9pm.

Anne Elizabeth Moore’s website: http://www.anneelizabethmoore.com/
Columbia College Chicago’s Center for Book & Paper Arts: http://bit.ly/5NY1R
Press Inquiries: Elizabeth Burke-Dain, 312.369.8695 or eburkedain at colum dot edu

Daniel Burnham’s Enduring Vision for the Philippines

2009-05-20T12:23:00.001-05:00

Daniel Burnham Exhibit at City Gallery
September 4, 2009 – December 2009

An exhibition of photographs, Daniel Burnham’s Enduring Vision for the Philippines, opens at City Gallery on September 4, 2009. Architectural and landscape photographer Tim Long started this project in 2007 and completed shooting in a month long stay in 2008. The photographs delve into the rift created by the United States ambition to create a democratic state in a vastly distant and different culture.

In 1904 the United States government sent Daniel Burnham, a prominent Chicago architect and city planner, to the Philippine Islands to modernize the capitol city and a second smaller city to be used as the summer capitol. Plans were drawn for Manila and Baguio and building began. And though shifting political and economic interests in the U.S. eventually disrupted the projects, Burnham’s plans continued to exert an influence on architects and city planners, even building codes, well into the 1940s.

The greatest concentration of Burnham’s legacy can still be found in the tumultuous landscape of Metro-Manila, an urban continuum of over 10 million people. Clustered around a large city park designed by Burnham in an old section of the city are several graceful Beaux Arts buildings designed by Burnham protégés. Street systems typical of Burnham’s “City Beautiful” plans used in Washington, DC and Chicago emanate outward from the park to eventually fade into the fabric of a remarkably chaotic urban landscape.

Burnham in the Philippines: The Philippine Republic is generally considered to be an abject failure in terms of their democratic institutions, a notion made vivid by the Marcos era. It struck me then to learn that the U.S. government hired Daniel Burnham in 1905 to draw plans for two cities in the Philippines and though never completed, the plans were partly built and are still standing. I wondered how these buildings and streetscapes would look a hundred plus years later in Metro Manila, a megalopolis of over 11 million. It was easy to imagine a tense interplay between history, our two cultures and the architectural forms that represent them.

EXHIBITING ARTIST: Tim Long

WHEN: September 4, 2009 – December 2009

WHERE: Columbia College Chicago’s City Gallery
806 N. Michigan Ave.

This project is funded in part by a grant from the Graham Foundation for the Fine Arts.

Pearl of the Snowlands: Buddhist Printing at the Derge Parkhang

2009-05-18T11:43:00.010-05:00

Image: A woodblock cutter meticulously cuts a block for a new publication of the Parkhang. The Derge Parkhang has an excellent reputation for the accuracy of its books based on careful cutting and several stages of proofreading and correction. P. Dowdey © 2009

In an age where the transfer of information is fast becoming digital and paperless, old printing techniques acquire new meaning. The Derge Parkhang is a repository for over 300,000 woodblocks and an active center for publication of sutras, commentaries and histories of Tibetan Traditional Buddhism. It is also home to a significant collection of woodblocks for printing thangka, prayer flags, mandala and other spiritual images. Founded in 1729, this printing temple is the only survivor of the three historic Tibetan printing temples and today produces sets of sutras for believers in Tibet and inner China as well as for international believers and institutions. Experts say that 70 percent of the Tibetan literary heritage is collected in woodblocks at Derge.

Image: The town of Derge with the Derge Parkhang in the center, downtown Derge on the left and the old Tibetan town on the hillsides to the right. Goenchen Temple lies to the far right. Derge town was the administrative seat of the Kings of Derge, independent Tibetan monarchs who traced their line back more than a millennium. P. Dowdey © 2009

The Derge Parkhang is one of the foremost cultural, social, religious, and historical institutions in Tibet. Derge-published sutras are valued for their accuracy, clarity, and for the tradition that they represent. As a Tibetan monk said, “Books from Derge are simply flawless; they represent unquestionable accuracy.”

Derge Parkhang books and prints represent the summit of the Tibetan woodcut tradition. Picture prints are based on the designs of well-known artists and are cut masterfully Monks, lay pilgrims and now tourists all buy prints. They are inexpensive. . Printing at Derge is someplace between the hand work of craft printing and the mass production of commercial printing. The large prints represent an artistic and technical accomplishment rooted in the Buddhist sense of compassion. I asked one of the managers of the Parkhang how he felt when he saw someone leaving with books or a print and he told me, “I feel we have provided a service.”

This exhibition and catalog are part of an innovative project to document the social context for production of Tibetan art, to bring together different perspectives on the Derge Parkhang and its position as a living institution of Tibetan culture. What came out strongly was the local people’s rich sense of participation in the Parkhang. These were Derge people and Derge people had built and equally importantly, had preserved the Parkhang.

WHEN: opens September 11, 2009 with a reception from 5 to 8 p.m.

WHERE: Columbia College Chicago’s Center for Book and Paper Arts
1104 S. Wabash, second floor
10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Saturday

MORE INFORMATION: Steve Woodall at (312) 369-6636 or swoodall@colum.edu

RELATED PROGRAM: Derge Parkhang is one of the many programs in conjunction with Focus: China

Check for updated information closer to September!

Image: The upstairs main printing room at the Derge Parkhang during the lunch break. Ten teams of workers print the Derge edition of the Buddhist sutra here from woodblocks in almost the same way they did in the eighteenth century. P. Dowdey © 2009

Colleen Plumb on Jen Bekman News

2009-05-13T09:11:00.005-05:00

I was really happy to see Colleen Plumb's work being featured on Flavorwire. Colleen is a Columbia College alum and has gone on to have a enviable career as an art photographer. She recently had a show at City Gallery, a photo gallery that Columbia curates. Thanks Jen and thanks Colleen.

Jen Bekman Photographer of the Month: Colleen Plumb
12:51 pm Monday May 11, 2009
by Caroline Stanley

Image credit: Circus by Colleen Plumb

Twice a month, Sara Distin from Jen Bekman Projects, Inc. contributes a post to Flavorwire about an artist or photographer. Jen Bekman Projects, Inc. includes Jen Bekman Gallery, 20×200 and Hey, Hot Shot!.

I haven’t been able to touch bacon since Michael Pollan revealed what happens to pigs and their corkscrew tails on CAFOs. I should have known better and become a vegetarian before I became a foodie, but I didn’t. Now I suffer irrepressible guilt for even craving salty, fatty slivers of swine. Colleen Plumb’s photograph, Pigs, makes me feel even worse.

Her series Animals Are Outside Today brings you this close to animals stuffed, strung, fenced, flying, rotting, leaping, and barely breathing, affirming our perverse relationship to other living things; when animals and humans meet, it’s usually to the detriment of the former. We are mostly oblivious and uncaring to that fact.

It might be because, as Plumb points out, we are disconnected from the natural world in general — isolated in urban environments, stifling instinct with intellectualism. Plumb’s photographs are alternately soft and dreamy, crisp and cold, engaging both the heart and the brain, and mimicking the natural cycle of attachment and detachment we have with our two- and four-legged friends. Funny and tragic, they acknowledge that these encounters are increasingly rare and diluted in spite of best intentions.

Over the last few months, we’ve spent a lot of time looking at Colleen’s work at JBP HQ. She was a Hot Shot last year; and we’ve featured several of her works on 20×200 — her editions have been eagerly collected. Plumb’s works will be on view at Denver’s van Straaten Gallery starting Thursday, May 14. If you’re not in Denver, I have a perfect pairing of Plumb and Whitman for you instead, courtesy of Ms. Jen B.

- Sara Distin

BLAB Comics Anthology Gets Midwestern

2009-05-06T10:09:00.008-05:00

Monte Beauchamp's annual darling of the graphic design and illustration world is a spectacular collection of cutting-edge comics, illustration, and graphic design. Blab!'s list of contributors past and present reads like a Who's Who of the contemporary visual art world including Mark Ryden, Chris Ware, Gary Panter, Joe Coleman and many more.

This exhibition will focus on the work of 4 artists from the Midwest who have been featured in the pages of BLAB! Edited by Monte Beauchamp BLAB! is an annual anthology that collects the freshest and most unique in cutting-edge comics, illustration, and graphic design. Its contributors come together from all corners of the contemporary art world to push the boundaries of visual culture. This exhibition will showcase the work of Don Colley, Tom Huck, Teresa James, and Fred Stonehouse who share more than simple geography. Their work taps into a dark narrative, that is both savage and beautiful, to present a magical vision of a gothic Midwest. This exhibition is co-curated by Monte Beauchamp and Anchor Graphics @ Columbia College Chicago. It will be on display in the Averill and Bernard Leviton A+D Gallery, 619 S. Wabash Ave. in Chicago.

“Though BLAB!’s scope is international,” writes Bill North, Senior Curator of the Marianna Kistler Beach Museum of Art at Kansas State University, in the exhibition’s catalog essay. “The underpinning of its cornucopian visual feast is resolutely Midwestern. BLAB!, a product of the Midwest, boldly affirms the positive view of Midwestern culture. And, in the face of BLAB!, claims of the region’s cultural inferiority ring hollow.”

EXHIBITING ARTISTS: Don Colley, Tom Huck, Teresa James, CJ Pyle, and Fred Stonehouse

WHEN: June 18 – July 22, 2009

Opening Reception: Thursday, June 18, from 5-8pm

Fred Stonehouse Lecture: Wednesday, June 17, 6:30 - 7:30 pm

WHERE: Columbia College Chicago’s Leviton A+D Gallery

619 S. Wabash Avenue

Gallery hours: Tuesday – Saturday 11am – 5pm, Thursday 11 am – 8 pm

COST: Free and Open to the Public

INFO: Gallery Coordinator, 312.369.8686

Press Inquiries, 312.369.8695

Manifest Manifest Manifest

2009-04-27T16:00:00.004-05:00

Wow. It has felt like forever since I last posted to this blog. I've been doing the public relations work for Manifest, Columbia's annual art fest for graduating seniors and community members. That has taken up a lion's share of my time and consequently I have left my poor blog alone. Take a look at the manifest website to get the full flavor of Manifest. It is tasty, tart and delicious. Bring the whole family. www.colum.edu/manifest.

What I love most about Manifest is looking at the art work. Since I have a pretty nice art collection at home, I am always looking to find artists whose work I'd want to have in my collection. I can only spend about $500 tops. Absolutely tops. Last year I really wanted to buy a piece from Curtis Mann, but it was way out of my price range. It was better than what his work fetches now, but I just don't have that kind of cash. Actually, I bought a piece by Cody Hudson at his show at Andrew Rafacz Gallery and there lying on the window ledge was a piece by Curtis. It was beautiful. I grew wistful. I really love the Cody painting. I did pay more than $500, but this was an extremely rare occurrence for me.

Look on the Manifest website for new and interesting updates. Check out the music line up. It's going to floor you.

FRIEZE MAGAZINE REVIEWS LOADED

2009-04-09T16:36:00.005-05:00

Loaded: Hunting Culture in America is currently on view at Columbia College Chicago's Glass Curtain Gallery.

Frieze.com published this article on April 8,2009. It was written by Jason Foumberg, a most excellent writer and reviewer for New City in Chicago.

Erika Larsen, Wedding Ring (2005)

In the April 2009 issue of hunting magazine Outdoor Life, a hunter tells an anecdote about coming across a rare ‘transgendered deer’ (with male polished antlers and female genitalia); of course, he shot and killed it. On the magazine’s facing page is an ad for an erectile dysfunction pill. In a quest to understand modern hunting culture, it was satisfying to smirk at these and other mentions of complicated sexuality in the context of killing animals, since hunting is often defended as tradition. More telling, though, was the insertion of such urban concepts as ‘transgendered’ and Viagra within an age-old activity, revealing how bloodsports have been modernized and commercialized. This, too, is the intention of ‘Loaded: Hunting Culture in America’, a thematic exhibition that combines documentary photography, contemporary art, hunting-chic décor and hunting paraphernalia.

Hunting magazines comprise two main types of imagery: a photo-op of the proudly smiling hunter holding his (dead) catch, and wildlife (alive) in its natural habitat, looking pretty for the shoot. The exhibition, too, picks up on these standard poses. Erika Larsen’s series of colour photographs, ‘Young Blood’ (2007), documents the lives of various families that hunt together. Especially difficult to view are portraits of children and young adults posing with rifles, bloodied squirrels and turkeys in hand. Similarly, Brian Lesterberg’s photograph Hoof Track with Blood (2003) shows a depression on a plane of white snow, dappled with blood drippings from a fresh kill recently carted off. Each photograph could act as a condemnation of the bloodsport, though these are insiders’ views: Larsen contributes photographs to Field & Stream, a popular hunting magazine in the US, while Lesterberg is a hunter himself.

Mathieu Lévesque, John-Paul (2006). Enamel, oil and carving on brass

But what do the art establishment, and even urban or suburban dwellers, know about the seemingly backwoods hunting community? Lots, apparently. Like punk rock or S&M, the gear and gadgets from hunting subculture have trickled through to the mainstream. Sure, the brew gets watered-down and the bite is softened as contemporary artists and designers pick it up, but curators Audrey Michelle Mast and Ann Wiens don’t seem interested in expressing exactly what it feels like to track and kill an animal; rather, it’s the look, the fashion and the stuff - the culture - of the hunt that is on display here.

There are a handful of ‘real’ objects and scenes from hunting culture - not only Lesterberg’s and Larsen’s documentary footage but also duck decoys from the collection of an award-winning decoy sculptor. The life-like painted wooden ducks are both functioning tools and sculptural objects (though not necessarily ‘sculpture’ as we’re comfortable with the term).

Diana Guerrero-Macia, Kill Shots (2007). Wool, leather, vinyl and cotton

The step from the duck decoys, popular in some faux-rustic dens, to ironic kitsch is easy to make, and the curators follow through by exhibiting a cardboard trophy buck head, made to adorn, presumably, college dorm rooms. The difference between the wooden decoys and the cardboard head is the seriousness with which the decoy maker works and the smugness of the cardboard joke. The contrast is similarly played-out with a taxidermied and mounted jackalope (the folkloric antlered bunny), and designer salt and pepper shakers in the shape of stag heads. Whereas the jackalope was a junk-shop prize find and is a token lowbrow curio, the spice shakers are made of stainless steel and sell for US$43. Elsewhere in the exhibition, you can play Nintendo’s popular Duck Hunt (1985). A trajectory takes shape, detailing the progression of the hunting subculture’s step-by-step manoeuvre into middle-class life.

As for the contemporary art on view, there are similar reversals and transpositions of high and low taste. Jenn Wilson’s lush oil painting of a bear recalls a hunter’s morbid love affair with nature and the sport’s curious self-justification of environmental conservationism. Bear (2008) could hang just as easily in a lodge as it does in the Glass Curtain Gallery. Kimberly Hart’s Hunting Stand with Unicorn Bait (2007) is an installation that updates the Metropolitan Museum’s famous ‘The Hunt of the Unicorn’ (1495–1505) tapestries, using hobby-shop materials such as plastic beads and pastel pom-poms. On the side of sentimentality are Josh Winegar’s altered photographs of hunters parading their trophy kills, in which the artist has whitewashed the proud hunters with paint until they’re almost completely faded out, though leaving the animals intact. In Mtn. Lion (2007), a large, limp feline is given a painted bandage in a sweetly futile gesture of redemption.

Hunting culture is so ripe with artistic metaphors - decoys and doubles, the quietude of a collection and the violence of ownership - yet the curators don’t deviate from the historical slice they aim to present (except, perhaps, the inclusion of Diana Guerrero-Maciá’s stitched ransom note, which reads, ‘Designed to deliver kill shots’, and may be aimed at viewers). By balancing pictures of carcasses and guns alongside cultural relics, hunting is shown to be a disturbingly assimilated pastime.

Jason Foumberg

Loaded: The Hunting Show

2009-04-01T13:45:00.005-05:00

A wonderful article written by Alicia Eler appeared in New City. I include it here.

Eye Exam: A Loaded Question

image: Erika Larsen, Wedding Ring, 2005

By Alicia Eler

Taxidermy is big business—and high art. A March 6 New York Times article reported taxidermy sightings at this year’s Armory Art Fair, including Carolyn Salas and Adam Parker Smith’s buckhead whose abnormally huge antlers twist into the air like overgrown tree branches. This month’s Modern Painters devotes its cover to taxidermy: A blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman wearing an ironically conspicuous cross around her neck lies on an animal-print cloth next to a dead, sleeping taxidermied baby fox, suggesting that death is once again en vogue.

Curators Ann Wiens and Audrey Michelle Mast take this trend into deeper territory, exploring the literal meat of it all. Their show, “Loaded: Hunting Culture in America,” looks at the influence of hunting on the art world, pop culture, design, photography and video games. Juxtaposed against a hunting-culture backdrop, the trend begins feeling like less of an oddity and more like a culturally relevant pattern.Mast foregrounds the hunting-culture trend in her curatorial essay, mentioning designer Philippe Starck’s 2000 “hunting lodge gone mod” as a harbinger. Wiens and Mast avoid turning the show into a dichotomous, moralistic attack on what many rural communities view as a cherished, time-honored tradition. Uninterested in work that could walk the line with propaganda, they instead focus on open-ended pieces that are best unpacked by the viewer. “Loaded”’s subject matter could have easily meandered into a condemnation of the killing sport or fetishized its easy kitsch, but it instead succeeds in peeking beyond our urban, non-hunting experience.

image: Kimberley Hart, Hunting Stand with Unicorn Bait, 2007. Courtesy of Mixed Greens, NY

The show inadvertently discusses gender, particularly in the work of Brooklyn-based artist Kimberley Hart. Her alter ego of an ultra girlie-girl—”the quintessential sweet girl, all frills and petal pink…the doe-eyed, sentimental icon with dolly in tow and teacup in hand,” explains Hart in a NY Arts Magazine article—sprung from her own preteen tomboy tendencies. Through her persona, Hart explores an imaginary, magical world devoid of gender expectations where her alter ego hunts unicorns that, when killed, may incite disaster. To lure in and later kill the innocent unicorn, she crafts “Hunting Stand with Unicorn Bait” (2005). A light pink ladder leads up to a kitschy, seventies-looking pastel-colored box decorated in fabrics and yarn, with circular mesh windows, frills, sequins and hanging fuzzy balls. (Hunters use similar stands to help spot deer on paths in the woods.) A lick of golden salt—unicorn bait—hangs from a string on the stand. Picturing a pixie-looking girl mischievously killing a magical unicorn defies real-world expectations of her alter ego’s gender expectations and takes one into a magical fantasy world reminiscent of the movie “The Neverending Story.”

Straddling the hunting and fine art contexts, Erika Larsen’s photographs document rural families on the hunt. A regular photographer for “Field and Stream,” a hunting magazine with a readership of ten-million-plus, Larsen also shows her work, which takes an unbiased approach to hunting, in art galleries. In “Wedding Ring,” Larsen captures a moment after the kill. She shoots a close-up portion of a woman’s sweater and forest-green hunting gear, focusing her lens on the woman’s bloody fingers as they rest on her hip. A diamond wedding ring sits snugly on her index finger, becoming the focal point of the photo. These contextually flexible works are the show’s most compelling, presenting a candid, non-voyeuristic peek into real hunting cultures where men, women and children see hunting as far more than sport.

Seeing photographs of the hunt may be more satisfying than eating the meat of dead animals, or seeing taxidermy that comes neatly packaged after the fact. It’s the adrenaline rush, the connection to nature and, ultimately, man’s ability to conquer nature. To supplement such ideas, Wiens and Mast include the 1984 Nintendo game Duck Hunt, a video game that is exactly what it sounds like. Viewers are welcome to play. “Bucky,” an assemble-it-yourself cardboard buckhead available from cardboardsafari.com, takes the trophy significance out of the object, imbuing it with a sense of poppy, mass-produced playfulness.

Wiens and Mast also include artifacts from hunting culture, borrowing duck decoys from a man named Bob Lantz who lives in Palos Heights, Illinois. Lantz carves and collects the decoys, and has won numerous awards for his craftsmanship, including a 1981 world title in the intermediate World Wildlife Carving Championship held in Ocean City, Maryland. A 1981 duck stamp, which functions as both a permit for hunting waterfowl and a hunter’s collector item, suggests one of hunting culture’s many facets.

But a hunting show wouldn’t be complete without taxidermy. Various animals find their way into the show, like the jackalope, a make-believe rabbit with antlers. The curators, however, treat any taxidermy in this show as an artifact from the culture—not an art object. Skinning and stuffing dead animals may be a part of both art and hunting cultures, but it’s by no means the focus.

Through April 29 at The Glass Curtain Gallery, Columbia College, 1104 S. Wabash Ave.

Typography Ahoy!

2009-03-06T11:29:00.006-06:00

Maira Kalman did a blogpost on the New York Times site last week. It was all about Abraham Lincoln and how she redescovered her respect for him after going to the Lincoln Memorial. I have always been a huge fan of Maira's. I love the way she hand writes. It is a thing of beauty. Look at the entire entry at The New York Times Blog.

I found these fonts today on one of my favorite sites...Grain edit. Steve Mehallo is the designer of this font and has entitled it Jeanno Moderno It consists of nine faces, and bridges over two centuries of type history. Just stunning.

Thank You Sarah McKemie!

2009-02-27T11:05:00.005-06:00

Sarah McKemie, who graduated from Columbia College last year, photographed my daughter last summer and yesterday gave me a life-sized print of the picture. I don't know anybody else who could have captured a facet of my daughter's character like Sarah can capture people in her photography. This picture is especially dear to me because in one year my daughter has become a young woman and less of a little girl. I will always cherish this image and Claire will have it to give to her own children.

Thanks Sarah. I wish you the best as you start your career and your life outside of college.

Don't Burn Ray Bradbury's Books...Eat Them! April 1, 2009

2009-02-25T10:21:00.018-06:00

Rosemary and Tom Zimmerman, Italian Pizelle Book, winner for Most Book-like

Non-fiction tends to be slightly more difficult to digest,
but poetry is an impossible degustatory quest.
So here is a word to the wise,
if you are hell-bent on eating prose,
your attendance at an April event is mandatory, I suppose.
Attend the Edible Books Show and Tea
where licorice whip binding is the key
and deli ham pages are turned with glee.
Whether books be eaten by the Ezra Pound
or with a sprinkling of Joyce Carol Oats,
you might just Wanda Gag.
So don't secretly nibble pages in the stacks,
eat your books in public. Get the facts!
Delectable words will jump off the page.
Eating books is all the rage.
EAT BOOKS!

Erica Snell, The Very Hungry Caterpiller

Join us at Edible Books Annual Show and Tea.
Make a book of your own and get in free.
If eating books is all you crave,
Pay at the door and try to behave.
If your fingers wander and probe
into the jellied aspic Book of Job
We might have to cook you at Farenheit 451
as Mr. Bradbury would have done.

Edible Books Show and Tea
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
6pm to 8pm
Viewing and Voting: 6-7pm
Devouring Books: 7-8pm
Winner will be announced by 7:15pm

Columbia College Library
624 S. Michigan Avenue, 3rd Floor
Chicago, Il
312.369.6630 for more information.

K.V. and Jan Chindlund, The Velveeta Rabbit, winner for Best in Show

PRIZE CATEGORIES
Most likely to be burned
Most likely to be devoured
Most out of this world
Most likely to be make into a Truffaut film
Most Magic

Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons - I Am Not a Photographer

2009-02-23T09:55:00.008-06:00

A few weeks ago, in an earlier blogpost, I wrote about Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, the Cuban artist who is currently exhibiting at Columbia College's Glass Curtain Gallery.
Below is a video of a lecture and performance that she did here at Columbia College. Enjoy.

Reverence Renewed - DePaul's Museum Presents Early Religious Images from Peru

2009-02-19T09:46:00.021-06:00

Unidentified artist, Our Lady of Cayma, Peru, c. 1771-1782, oil on canvas

Having grown up in a religious Catholic household, I was familiar with the religious icons of Western Europe. While the images were beautiful and often frightening, they were very European in style. The exhibition Reverence Renewed at the Depaul University Museum displays religious icons from the 1700s in Peru and South America. The beauty of these images is darker and depict a mysteriousness that is a profound look into the Peruvian temperment of the late Baroque and beginning of the Rococo period. They attempt to copy the style of the European painting of the time, but the emotional content of the work is very uniquely South American. Reverence Renewed is an amazing interpretation of religious painting in a land far away from Rome, at a time when the Roman Catholic church was the dominant political and religious force in the world. This is a fantastic show.

Unidentified workshop St. Michael Archangel Peru, Cuzco, late 17th-early 18th century Oil on canvas

The invasion of the Incan Empire by Spanish forces in the 1530s marked a defining moment in Andean history and art. Visual culture in the newly-established Viceroyalty of Peru (present-day Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and more) was modeled to some degree on the art and architecture of Italy, Spain, and Flanders. Yet South American artworks were products of their colonial environment, indeed often made by indigenous and mestizo (mixed-blooded) artists and informed by their own cultural circumstances and the demands of their local patrons.

Unidentified Workshop, Ship of Patience, Peru, Cozco 18th century, oil on canvas

This exhibition focuses on three distinctive characteristics of painting in the Andean region: the popularity of the Virgin Mary as icon and image; the artists and their stylistic inspirations, particularly in the artistic center of Cuzco; and the emergence of a distinctive representational repertoire drawn from European tradition but elaborated in fresh and unpredictable ways. Works from this fluid environment include historical narratives of Spanish power, secular portraits, extraordinary silverwork, and above all, Catholic imagery-renewed in its Andean environment.

Animals Are Here Today, Colleen Plumb at City Gallery

2009-02-16T16:09:00.012-06:00

Colleen Plumb, Birdhat

Photographs from Colleen Plumb’s series, Animals are Outside Today, examine the relationship that people in an urban environment have with the natural world. This series looks at the increasing disconnection that exists between humans and nature while also connecting the viewer with notions of endurance and the reality of loss.

Plumb began this series while looking at replicated models of nature and wondered what these replacements of actual nature can satisfy in people.

“Looking deeper,” says Plumb “I began photographing real animals and how they can be a link for us to a world far from the reality and pace of contemporary life."

Colleen Plumb, Audubon Swam, 2005

Colleen Plumb, Racoon 2004

WHEN: February 12 – April 26, 2009

Opening Reception: Thursday, February 12, 5-7pm

WHERE: Columbia College’s City Gallery at The Historic Water Tower Place

806 N. Michigan Avenue

Gallery Hours: Mon-Sat 10am – 6:30pm, Sun 10am – 5pm

Colleen Plumb, Mouse with Fly, 2005

I Love Matthew Rich

2009-02-15T10:53:00.011-06:00

This is work by the Chicago artist Matthew Rich. I didn't know anything about him until I saw Dan Devening's show of Matthew's work at Devening Projects. I'm curating a show in March/April '10 that deals with geometric forms in contemporary art. Take a look at this work. It is so charming and sophisticated.

Is the Sky Falling? - Criteria at Leviton A+D Gallery

2009-02-10T12:40:00.034-06:00

Jason Middlebrook, APL (American Pipeline): detail, 2003, drawing installation

Emiliano Godoy and Jimena Acosta, the curators of the exhibition Criteria, want us to embrace the system. They want us to reject individualism. What is going on here?

The group exhibition Criteria at Columbia College Chicago's Leviton A+D Gallery is about the urgency of reevaluating how we live in the world. Sustainability can no longer be a clever idea that we wait for our civic leaders to enforce in our communities. Godoy and Acosta are giving the clarion call for us all to stop, rethink and start being aware of our own actions as if our lives depended on it.

“We are part of a natural system and it is important for people to be aware that you cannot live as if you are separate from this system,” says Jimena Acosta. “We have been taught that individualism and competition is good. These things will make us better in the world, but not for the world.”

Aylin Kayser & Cristian Metzner, Ikarus, 2007, wax and stainless steel
(This lamp melted away and after two weeks finally fell onto the floor)

The big question I had for the curators was what do we make of those people who think that global warming is a liberal conspiracy? Why are there people who still think that they can brush the issue of sustainability aside?

Godoy, owner of the design firm GodoyLab in Mexico City, is unshakably certain that we are moving toward an unsustainable world on every level; air quality, temperature, economic health, population growth.

image: Maximo Gonzales, Torres de petroleo, 2006, out-of-circulation bills, 200x300

“The change is so large that it goes beyond the uncertainty of the data,” says Godoy about the ongoing sustainability studies conducted by economists and scientists. “You can argue about parts per billion and global warming. You can look at data from decades ago. You can look at the problems from other generations, but when you see the changes in the large scale and you see the enormous difference between how the world is today and how it was in the 1800s, the difference is so large that the uncertainty of the data doesn’t really matter. Its just such a changing scale that if you have 10% or 20% error in the data, it doesn’t matter. The direction things are going in is so clear. If you get caught up in the argument that the data scientists have recorded even over the last five years is somehow suspiciously skewed, you are missing the point completely.”

Ricochet Studio, Best Before, 2008, Bone china

Godoy goes on to explain that in the 1800s there were only a few million people in the world. Now there are almost seven billion people. To serve this vast number of people, we have had to take from our resources and the clear direction in which we are moving spells disaster. If you just take the fish population, for example. According to scientists who have been measuring fish populations, we have eaten 90% of the tuna and the overall large fish populations. It doesn’t matter if the numbers are 70% or even 50%, it is such an unthinkably vast amount of fish. These numbers cannot be replaced in our lifetimes because the demand continues to grow as the population grows.

Edward Burtynsky, Oxford Tire Pile No. 5, Westley, California, 1999

Scientific facts aside, Godoy and Acosta want to show us that if we do stop caring and the human species can no longer tolerate the biological conditions of global warming, it would be very sad. There have been previous global cataclysms over the millions or billions of years that the earth has been around. Countless species have become extinct. The earth has frozen, broken apart and warmed before.

Craig Zucker, Tap'd NY, 2008, NYC Municipal Water (and plastic bottle)

“The dinosaurs were unable to do anything about their situation,” says Godoy. “Global cataclysms are not that bad in planetary terms. It’s a cyclical process, but it is evident that unlike the dinosaurs, humans can actually intellectually bring order and take preventative measures to fix the problems of saving ourselves and other species. Yes, if we don’t take control of the situation, there will be suffering and we will have wars about water and access, but the real drama is that if we don’t try to change, we won’t be here to reflect and take joy in the world.”

Ariel Rojo, Cerdo ahorrador (Piggy Bank),

Thoughout history there have been people who have told us that the sky is falling, but they never had any hard evidence to back it up. Godoy and Acosta, unfortunately, have done their homework. While the news isn’t great, they believe that the tide can turn.

“We must go beyond thinking of ourselves as one person, one state, one country,” says Acosta. “In all of our actions, we must think of others and how it effects people in Sau Paulo, Paris, Mogadishu, Mexico City…everywhere.”

In the final analysis, Godoy and Acosta might be challenging us, with science on their side, to love our neighbor as ourselves. I think that is a good place to start, but they also say that the corporate world had better start investing in energy…and fast.

Installation shot of Leviton A+D Gallery

Also, view the Ted Talks of Hans Rosling, a doctor and researcher, who has greatly influenced Godoy and Acosta: Debunking Third World Myths with the Best Stats You've Ever Seen.
Plus: I will have a virtual tour of the gallery up in a day or two.

The Southern Graphics Conference is Chicago Bound

2009-02-06T14:54:00.007-06:00

The Southern Graphics Conference is being hosted by Anchor Graphics at Columbia College Chicago on March 25 - 29. If you like printmaking, buying prints or just want to be around one thousand printmaking artists from around the country, come to this thing. You can buy prints, make prints and see demonstrations. See this video from last year's conference to give you an idea of how absolutely cool this is going to be. Come on Down.
See you there. Elizabeth
Watch this video and click here.
Southern Graphics Conference Video '08.

Maria Magda Campos-Pons is Making Art Right Now

2009-02-03T14:55:00.020-06:00

image: Painting Lesson

With her swinging braids, statuesque physique and exotic Cuban accent, Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons is the first person seen in a crowded room. Her artwork is a testament to her magnanimous physical presence and character which is why she is the subject of her own art. All of her artwork reflects and explores her own experiences. It is a process of self-discovery. She is both object and subject of her life in art. Campos-Pons has also navigated her art career onto an international stage. She is in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art and many other important art collections around the world. She is currently exhibiting at Columbia College's Glass Curtain Gallery.

Born in Cuba, Campos-Pons has known her whole life that her great grandmother was a Chinese woman who came to work the fields of Cuba. This has been the subject of a number of the pieces in this current exhibition. At the turn-of-the-century many Chinese migrated to Cuba to find work. There is a large photograph on the main wall of exhibition space entitled, Painting Lesson, that shows Magda dressed as a Chinese woman in a red dress. All around her are small paintings made in the Chinese style. A few years ago Magda had an exhibition in China. It struck her as strange that many Cubans had migrated to China to work as unskilled labor while China has experienced it's current economic growth.

"We have come full circle," she said. "The Chinese went to Cuba to work the land and now Cubans are going to China. In the United States many Chinese came to assist the African labor force. Now the Chinese have established an economic force in Africa."

Magda was unable to vote in the last election. While she is a permanent resident, she is not a citizen. On election day, Magda went to her studio and made a series of photographs entitled, Prayer for Obama. Even though she was unable to vote for Obama, she made it her mission to get others out to vote. She arranged car service for many senior citizens who would not have gone to the polls.

image: Prayer for Obama

“I was frustrated that I could not vote,” says Campos-Pons. "I couldn't just sit there."

During the election while others were voting, Campos-Pons photographed herself while praying for the election’s outcome. She dressed in simple black and white and carries a bouquet of flowers. The photograph is a series of seven Polaroid prints. In three of the photos she is holding a small clay model of Obama in her palms.

“This was the first time that I made something this directly political,” she said. “Usually, I try to stay away from overtly political subjects, but I felt that this was my way of participating in his election. Obama makes us want to participate.”

It makes sense that Campos-Pons turned this election into something worthy of her artistic attention. The exhibition at Glass Curtain is entitled, Life Has Not Even Begun." When it does begin, I'm sure that she will find a way to show us how to live. Her exhibition will be up until March 6, 2009.

Beth Amphetamine vs. Malice in Chains - A Night of Cleavage and Cleats

2009-02-02T09:38:00.008-06:00

I realize that going to see an all-female roller derby is not an art exhibition, but I couldn't not tell you about it. It was so cool. The girls were totally out for blood. The costumes were haute raunch-ay. On Saturday night I went to the UIC Pavillion to see the Windy City Rollers. I have heard about female roller derbies, but never thought I'd see one. I took a gazillion photos so that my readers could get a taste of what this thing was like. I loved the fishnets on Ruth in Asia (pictured above). The names of the skaters are almost better than the competition itself: Megan Formor, Sonya Mouthshut, Ava Sectomy, Eva Dead... I'm trying to come up with my own roller derby name. I thought of a few, but they are way too raunchy. See The Windy City Rollers website. There are many more pictures there. Below are some of mine.

Emanuel Aguilar Rises Up Out of the Ashes

2009-01-29T13:17:00.010-06:00

Emanuel Aguilar is a senior at Columbia College Chicago. He will graduate with an undergraduate degree in fine art and a minor in Marketing and Communications at the end of this year. Emanuel met Kevin Brown during Semester in Florence, one of Columbia College’s study abroad programs, who told him about a project that needed an artist to create something using ashtrays. Kevin didn’t have many details, but Emanuel was intrigued and said, “Sure, I’ll do it.” A month passed before he heard from Kevin again. He showed Emanuel the materials: boxes and boxes of ashtrays, some clean, some not. The project was a celebration of the one-year anniversary of the smoking ban in Chicago with the Respiratory Health Association who asked Larry Minsky, faculty in Columbia’s Marketing and Communications Department, to find a student who would want to make something beautiful from the ashtrays. Larry Minsky has worked on a number of exciting student collaborations with the Respiratory Health Association over the years.

Right after the ban on smoking, the Respiratory Health Association put out a call for ashtrays. There were some press hits that said “What do you do with ashtrays? You create art.” This idea interested the association and they decided to turn this into an idea for local artists.

“I remember looking at the ashtrays and thinking that there was nothing I could do that wasn’t going to be kitchsy,” says Emanuel. “Every choice seemed too obvious: stack the ashtrays, glue them together. I had to think about what would I do to just eliminate their original purpose…and that was to crush them. So we crushed them. All of them.”

Some of them were crushed down to sand and powder. The creative team, Emanuel, Vincent Finazzo and Eric Siegel, had buckets and buckets of smashed ashtrays to work with. There were two amber shades and a clear glass. At this point in the process there were no longer any ashtrays, just glass. The color of the glass was alluring and they decided to light it and make a display that would emphasize the shards. They decided on a minimal look in order to refrain from referencing the ashtrays and smoking as much as possible. They wanted people to have an open-ended experience.

"We wanted people to look at the shards as if the glass was part of some lost civilization, like artifacts from an archeological dig," said Emanuel. "We called the piece, 'The Phoenix.' We liked the fact that we came up with a mythological name to represent all that rises up out of the ashes as a symbol of hope."

The finished piece is now on display at The Thompson Center in downtown Chicago. Emanuel has a blog and an upcoming online magzine called jettisonquarterly.com. His blog is emanaguilar.blogspot.com.

The Creativity Don - Sir Ken Robinson

2008-12-12T15:19:00.007-06:00

Image: Sir Ken Robinson (left) with Dr. Warwick Carter, President of Columbia College Chicago

Sir Ken Robinson is an internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity, in innovation, education, and human resources. He has worked with national governments in Europe and Asia, with international agencies, Fortune 500 companies, not-for-profit corporations, and some of the world’s leading cultural organizations. For 10 years he was Professor of Education at the University of Warwick in England and is now Professor Emeritus.

Sir Robinson was invited to Columbia College to speak for their Founders Lectures on Tuesday, December 2, 2008. Here is my interview with him shortly before going on stage.

Elizabeth: Please talk about the traditional definition of success in higher education and how creativity is often overlooked in pursuit of traditional educational values.

Sir Ken Robinson: If you look at the dominant culture of education and had to ask what does one have to be good at in that culture in order to succeed you’d have to conclude that the whole process of public education is intended to produce university professors. I don’t think it is intentionally that way. The intellectual culture of education is predicated on a certain type of academic ability of the sort that people who teach in universities especially enjoy. If you ask the typical student what they do in school they say that they spend a lot of time writing essays and doing critiques and doing certain sorts of mathematics. There is a greater emphasis on a certain type of critical thinking. People talk about the ‘core’ academics. The whole thing is about academic ability and my point is that academic ability has become a synonym for intelligence and educational achievement. It’s a typical type of intellectual process.

E: Is this success model accidental by virtue of the fact that professors look for the same kind of intellectual process that they themselves possess?

SKR: I don’t think it’s accidental. I think it’s a story. It’s rooted in the formation of the educational system of the 18th and 19th centuries and is shaped much by the culture of the Enlightenment. Quite early on in the process, the universities sought to exert influence on the culture of education. I think of it as more ideological than accidental.

E: One of the examples you use to illustrate the creative mind is a young girl who had been a disruptive force in the classroom. The young girl went on to become a very famous choreographer as an adult. The parents and the school sought the expertise of a psychologist because the girl was not progressing in the classroom environment. During a meeting with the family, the psychologist asked the parents to leave the office with him while the little girl stayed behind in the office. Before the psychologist left with the parents, he turned on the radio to a music station. Outside the office door, the psychologist asked the parents to look through the small window on his door and tell him what the little girl was doing.
“She’s dancing,” they said.
“Do you know why she’s dancing?” he asked.
“She’s always dancing,” they replied.
“She’s dancing because she is a dancer,” the psychologist returned.

SKR: The school thought she had a learning disability because she couldn’t sit still or pay attention. The psychologist that the mother took her to see was fantastically insightful. It was he who said, she isn’t sick, she’s a dancer. Take her to dance school. He was exemplifying that there are other ways of being intelligent. Julian Lyne (the now famous choreographer) said to me that she has to move to think. My wife is like that. She hates going to the theater because she has to sit there for two hours. It drives her mad. Education for the most part is designed for people who like to sit still.

E: In business, I think there is an increasing respect for creative people, but I still see that these people are siloed by upper management. The people who make the big bucks, the corner office crowd, are not the out-of-the-box thinkers. Do you think there is an impenetrable wall between creative people and those who have the bigger jobs and make more money?

SKR: Firstly, it’s difficult to talk about business in general. You look at companies like Pixar or Google or Apple or you look at some of the leading design and architectural companies. They have extraordinary cultures, but so do Proctor & Gamble and GE. Some of their CEOs are fantastically creative people. It takes a lot to run a multi-billion dollar company and to keep it moving upwards. I think that part of the problem is that we tend to caricature creativity and associate it with certain types of activity. Companies do that all the time. They think that creativity is primarily about advertising, marketing or design. What much of my work has been about is to redefine and recalibrate the idea of creativity and the creative mind. People think creativity is about special things or special people, which they are, but there are so many ways in which one can be creative. If you look at some of the great companies like Apple or Google, they’ve been very creative in producing products. Walmart is a much bigger company and they haven’t produced any products at all. Their real creative skill has been in systems in supply chain management. Then you have other companies like Starbucks who didn’t invent coffee, but invented a kind of culture to go with it. They are all examples of very different creative approaches and innovation. But I think that there are some companies who tend to ghettoize the people who are thought of as the ‘creatives’. Sometimes these people make their way to top management, but I think it has to do with them very often. It often happens that people who are in the creative sector, the arts, design, etc.; they don’t all want to be running organizations. The don’t have the mind or the facility for that. That’s part of my argument; in order to run any great organization whether it’s a business, a school or a family there has to be diversity. One of my objections to education is the tendency to want to homogenize everything. It’s why kids who may well be brilliant are being anesthetized with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) drugs. It’s all about conformity and some children don’t fit the mold. I’m very skeptical about the prevalence of ADHD. I don’t mean that there is no such thing. Clearly there are some children who have real problems, but I’m not a doctor and therefore not qualified to say that there is or isn’t such a thing. I do think it’s out of control. I think all kinds of people are being medicated because they just think differently. I’m publishing a book in January entitled, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything. The whole book is filled with stories of people who have achieved enormous things creatively. Not all are well-known, but most of them are. I think a number of these people we would never have heard of if they had taken Aderol or Ritalin in the 70s and 80s. Many of them were bucking the system. It really outrages me. I will say that some children have real clinical issues, but from all the people whom I have talked to about this, even doctors, have said that the tendency to medicate children because they’re being mildly disruptive or not paying attention or are bored or distracted or generally are not getting with the program is spreading like wildfire. In the 80s there were half a million kids with ADHD, but right now in 2008 the numbers have reach 8 million. It’s a three billion dollar drug industry. It’s like depression. The drug companies are not trying to cure depression. Once this condition is out there, you see it everywhere. I don’t believe it. I think an awful lot of kids are expressing a kind of vibrant creative energy that is not being channeled. I do know many people who would not be achieving now if they had been medicated as children.

One of these people is Mick Fleetwood. He would have undoubtedly been put on Aderol because he was constantly beating out rhythms on everything. He hated school. Later on in his life it turned out that he was dyslexic. He was angry and frustrated and he begged his parents to let him leave school at the age of sixteen and they let him. The only thing he ever wanted to do was to play the drums. His father had the common sense to buy him a set of drums and at sixteen he set off to London to live with his sister and set his drum kit up in a garage. His father, who was a poet, wrote a poem about him. The last line of the poem was: “He set off to conquer the world with two sticks and a drum.” He’s twice been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Fleetwood Mac has sold millions of albums. They are one of the most successful bands in history. At sixteen he had his first gig with a blues band. What I’m trying to say is that if those drugs had been available, doctors would have given them to him

E: I think Columbia has a lot of kids that also fit this category. They want to pursue creative careers, but they may not have done well in the hard academic core subjects.

SKR: We subject kids to all kinds of academic disciplines regardless of whether they have any interest or aptitude for them. It doesn’t mean that they should not be exposed to these disciplines, but I resist the idea that there are ‘hard’ subjects and ‘soft’ ones. People achieve at the highest levels whether it’s in the arts or the sciences. I don’t think there is such a thing as an academic subject. There are just academic processes.

From Cab Fare to Book Fair - Steve Woodall at Center for Book and Paper Arts

2008-11-21T14:32:00.008-06:00

If you ever hailed a cab in San Francisco and saw that your driver had a dog-eared copy of Ezra Pound’s Cantos on the passenger side, you may have gotten a ride from Steve Woodall. Woodall won’t be driving cabs again. Many of us, especially those of us who have reached a certain age, wish that we could take the narrative line of our own life story and arc it in the way Woodall has.

Now 60, Steve Woodall joined Columbia College Chicago’s Center for Book & Paper Arts (CBPA) as the Director in early November. Prior to this leg of his professional journey, he was the Education Director and then the Artistic Director of the San Francisco Center for the Book (SFCB) at the age of 48. Not bad work if you can get it. Before that he was driving a cab in San Francisco for over twenty years.

“A lot of artists in San Francisco drive cabs,” says Woodall. “But it is often a trap that they can’t get free of. While driving a cab, I perfected the bohemian, slacker lifestyle, but it never felt like an authentic life choice for me.”

As Education Director, Woodall was instrumental in building the SFCB from a community center that offered twelve classes in 1996 to a major arts center that offers over 300 classes and boasts a 2008 mailing list of 18,000.

“I started the job in 1996,” says Woodall. “And in one year I was married, had a child and became a workaholic.”

Woodall’s love of the book arts began as a poetry student at San Francisco State. In an effort to read all the great poets, he read Ezra Pound. Pound’s genius caused Woodall to give up trying his hand at poetry.

“If I was going to write, that was what I wanted to write and there was no way I was ever going to write like that.”

Instead of writing poetry, Woodall decided to create handmade photocopied books that included the words of Pound and other poets. Woodall continued to make and improve upon these books with the use of found text, collage and the words of poets he admired. Little did he know that these photocopied publications were part of an art form that was emerging out of the contemporary art movement of the 1970s.

“Right around that time I happened upon a book by the book artist, Joan Lyons and said, “Oh, this is what I’ve been making.”

His photocopy press was called SameAsDat Press which was a word play on the title, Samizdat, a 1960s term for clandestine black market publishing in the Soviet bloc.

Woodall does not make art as much as he used to since turning a fledgling art group into a major player in San Francisco’s art scene in just twelve years. Founded in 1996 by book artists Mary Austin and Kathleen Burch, the SFCB is now a nationally recognized arts center due in great part to Woodall’s efforts. Woodall worked tirelessly to attract book arts enthusiasts to the Center and to educate the public about the history and relevancy of the book arts. SFCB now has a loyal and national following with graphic designers and artists who want to learn letterpress, bookbinding, artists’ books and printmaking.

“Creative people are hungry to use their hands in an age when computers do most of the work for us,” says Woodall. “When students come into the Center and set metal type it’s very exciting for them. Using our hands activates parts of our brains that don’t get used with the computer.”

Woodall thinks that the book arts is one of the most exciting contemporary genres coming out of the art world today. While he maintains that the book arts often get lumped in with craft-identified works like fiber and ceramics, he believes that book arts requires more conceptual thought, time, skill and in some cases, more expensive materials than other art forms like painting and photography.

“Sometimes it takes a break-out artist for people to change their minds about certain art forms,” says Woodall. “Alfred Steiglitz paved the way for generations of photographers to enter the art canon and recently, Dale Chihuly, though I am not a fan, I do admit that he has paved the way for glass artists to be taken more seriously and to get higher prices for their work.”

Woodall claims that as a cab driver he was a self-declared “cabdriver socialite.” He knew many people across many social and economic demographics in San Francisco. He counts himself very fortunate to have found a dedicated group of people who also had a passion for the book arts. Kathy Walkup, the program director at Mills College, called him one of the most important people in creating community around the book arts in the Bay Area.

“Steve was a community building genius in the Bay area,” says Clif Meador, Department Chair for Columbia College’s Book & Paper Arts. “He curated a lot of important shows that brought together disparate communities there, and built SFCB into a national-level institution. He was active in many of the organizations on the west coast that promoted the book arts. One of the things that characterizes Steve’s work is his ability to bring people together, to bridge different audiences with new understanding of their common interests, usually in the book arts. I hope that he will bring some of his audience-development magic to the center.”

It didn’t take much convincing for Woodall to accept the position of Director from Michelle Citron, Chairperson for Interdisciplinary Arts. Woodall plans to increase the publishing efforts here and he would also like to tap into the cultural community in Chicago and to engage new and increased participation with the book arts which was his bailiwick at the SFCB.

“I think Columbia College’s Center for Book & Paper Arts is an already formidable institution with tremendous potential,” says Woodall. “I am honored to be here.”

Photo by Sara McKemie

Mr. Illustrious - Ivan Brunetti

2008-11-12T10:07:00.010-06:00

Here is a photo of Ivan Brunetti. Normally, I would do an interview much as I have done with other past and future interviewees, but Ivan beat me to the punch. He sent me a cartoon interview (see below). My interview, fascinating though it may be, can be supplemented by this interview with Ivan on youtube.

Ivan worked in my department, Marketing and Communications, as the webmaster for a number of months (previously he had the same job, but in a different department, for many years) and is now a full-time faculty member in the Art + Design Department at Columbia College. Clearly this demotion must have been devastating for Ivan. I'm sure that the loss of the word 'master' in his title took some getting used to. At staff meetings he was very quiet. I mean to the point that we hardly noticed he was there kind of quiet. If truth be told, he did make a very good coatrack. After his first volume of Anthology of Graphic Fiction, we congratulated him on this amazing accomplishment and then began to browbeat him which gave us all a sense of purpose. When I saw a review of this same book in the Sunday book section of the New York Times I was drinking soup which started coming out of my nose. This was due to my shock, surprise and delight, mind you, and not the seething jealousy that I felt rising up from my loins. Thank God I wasn't eating when I saw one of his cartoons on the cover of The New Yorker because I wouldn't have wanted to ruin a perfectly good magazine. After tearing the cover image with my teeth, I sat down for a good read all of a Sunday afternoon.

When I first met Ivan he was in an office on the fifth floor of the 600 S. Michigan Avenue building in an office that was no larger than a closet with smeary windows that looked out onto a fire escape. Since natural light couldn't possibly penetrate the blur of soot and grime that covered the window, the florescent lighting flickered above his head revealing tobacco-steeped walls and ceiling tiles from a time when employees used to type with cigarettes hanging between their lips. The decrepitude of this bygone era would have served Ivan well or it could have catapulted him out of the greasy window and onto the alley rats below.

Once again...congratulations Ivan from all of us chickens back in Marketing Communications. We think you're the ginchiest.

This is the cover of Ivan's new anthology of graphic fiction. You can purchase it on amazon.

The Migrant Artist - Interview with Arti Sandhu

2008-10-27T10:39:00.019-05:00

Arti Sandhu has been in Chicago for one year where she teaches Fashion at Columbia College Chicago. She moved to Chicago from New Zealand where she had been for five and a half years. She grew up in India. I sat down and spoke with Arti last week. Note: click on the images in order to see them up close and in finer detail.

Arti: I am not from anywhere in particular in India because my father was in the army and we moved from place to place. I left India at the age of twenty-one when I finished my degree and I moved to England to complete my masters degree. I considered moving back to India, but decided not to. My mother says that when you are in the army you get a three and four year itch when you think that you want to move again. This two to three year itch phenomenon did drive me to move to New Zealand and then here, but I still think of India as home because I lived there the longest. My parents still live in Dehli and I return there about twice a year.

Elizabeth: Do you think of yourself as an Indian artist?

Arti: I’d like to think of myself as a migrant artist. You have a vernacular identity as an migrant because you don’t have a place of your own, but you’re always thinking about places you want to be. I did some writing about how people dress in this ‘migrant’ mode as well. You can have an identity that doesn’t belong to either one place or another. I know that here people think I am from New Zealand and in New Zealand people thought I was from England and in England people thought I was from India. I don’t know if I’m an Indian artist, per se. There seems to be a very spiritual vein to Indian art that I don’t associate with at all.

Elizabeth: But looking at your artwork, there is something ‘Indian’ about your work…the color, the intricate detail is reminiscent of Indian miniature paintings that depict Hindu deities.

Arti: I don’t see how it could be that I don’t carry some ethnic or ancestral seeds that make these things come out in my work. It is about India, but its also about not being in India. If I was there, I would not be making this kind of work. When I am in India I am photographing constantly. I take pictures of things that I would never have noticed when I was growing up or when I was living there. When I go back to visit, people ask, “Why are you taking a photography of that? It’s just a sign or it’s just a car or it’s just a cow?”
In my first series work, entitled, The Alphabet Series, I looked at things in India like rickshaws and other urban things. I showed these images to a lot of Indian friends and they couldn’t understand why I took pictures of things that are often taken for granted.

Elizabeth: Was the alphabet Roman or Hindi?

Arti: It was the Hindi alphabet. You know how there are children’s books that say “A for Apple” and “B for Ball?” That’s when I started making things again. I had this big gap between when I was making clothing and then all of a sudden life changed. I was in India in 2004 with my fiancé, who is not Indian, and we experienced a culture gap. I was trying to explain things to him. He was really intrigued with things that we all took for granted when we were growing up. The culture shock that he was experiencing focused on very simple things like traffic or the language of signs. We went through a process where I was trying to teach him words. We had a joke and he asked me why I didn’t do a little alphabet book that would teach words. I made a number of these alphabet cards. One was of a toilet because people think India is the world’s toilet. I took pictures of everyday things which I don’t think a lot of people could understand because there is an expectation that when you take a photo you have to photograph something special whereas I was taking images that were quite mundane.

Elizabeth: I notice that some of your drawings/photographs include paisley shapes and paisley is also a very ubiquitous or mundane decorative motif as well. You have one here that is full of traffic lights and traffic cones.

Arti: There are traffic lights everywhere in India, but the idea of having one that says, “Relax,” instead of “Stop!” is really intriguing.

Elizabeth: Why would it say, “Relax?”

Arti: Traffic lights in India are not like they are here. The whole point of stopping and waiting seems sort of futile for some people. We went through a phase in Delhi where traffic was terrible so they promoted the idea that the red light say, ‘relax’ as opposed to ‘stop.” They wanted to let people know that stopping was like a little break you could take and that you didn’t have to rush along. This is very Indian.

Someone once told me that I take photographs like a textile designer. I didn’t quite understand what that meant, but I am always trying to find a pattern within things and to try to create repetition out of seemingly random visual stimulus. If you take something really ugly like a truck or a car or a traffic light and you try to repeat it in a textile manner it becomes decorative. I particularly like the traffic cones and how they can be repeated to form a pattern. The paisley pattern is the most pedestrian pattern I could think of because it’s so recognizable and pervasive. One rarely thinks of a paisley pattern anymore. It sinks into the background. It is so visible that it is almost invisible. That is why I use it.

Elizabeth: I really liked your work for this reason. Everything is about the double-take. You see a paisley pattern and so your brain makes this easy association, but upon closer inspection, you realize that the pattern is made up of traffic cones, stacks of low cost housing, traffic lights and other things that the brain processes automatically. You put these things into another context and it is kind of delightful. The images take on a whole other layer of meaning about the nature of design and repetition. How do these concepts enter into your fashion work?

Arti: I struggle with the idea of fashion now. I was trained in fashion in a very un-critical manner which I think is very characteristic of fashion designer’s discipline in general. At this point I don’t see myself practicing in fashion though I am still very interested in textiles. In my other life, I’m very interested in writing about fashion. Many people write about costume, but I’m more interested in how people make those everyday choices; how they try to express themselves through a mis-matched aesthetic. The fashion side of art has become more about a commentary on contemporary culture. As a migrant designer, my interest is not in the fashion I see in the place where I am living. I’m still interested in how fashion is being performed in other parts of the world. The creative process and the process of critical thinking are very much a part of my teaching style. The students are not just making clothes, they are also thinking about the idea of clothes from many perspectives. Fashion is the most immediate message board that a person has. People respond to fashion individually, but it is also a collective response. In the classroom, when I was in school, I was never made to reflect on fashion in that way. Students designed things as a product that could be around for a little while and then was replaced by something new. I try to impress upon students that clothing is an important canvas. There is a great deal of thought that can go into a garment.

Elizabeth: Is there a fashion designer that reflects your ideas, your aesthetic?

Arti: I’ve always been drawn to the Japanese especially Rei Kawa-Kuba’s work. She founded the company Commes des Garcons. I like that the label is Commes des Garcons, which means ‘like the boys.” She does work that can at first come across as deeply ugly, but very, very current. She looks at the meaning of clothing and how we engage with our bodies. It is, however, difficult to express this to students who are 18 or 19 years old who only want to make really pretty prom dresses with the sweetheart neckline. Trying to find a way in which I can express my agenda to them and then they can get what they want to get out of it.

Elizabeth: Are you currently constructing clothing yourself?

Arti: No. I’m putting a lot of effort into designing textiles. These could be made into clothing, of course, but the textile I make is really just about the textile itself. Whether it is made into clothing is something entirely different. It doesn’t fit into fashion design really, but it does fit into what I’m writing about. I’m trying to write about everyday life and clothing and the aesthetic that comes about subconsciously with the choices that people make when they decide what to buy or what to wear. If I try to clump together all of these ideas there is a mis-match there as well. I think my work is sort of indulgent to who I am.

Elizabeth: In fashion there are choices that can be made to either stand out or fade into the background. I see you having the tendency to want to fade into the background, but with aesthetic intention. Again, there is that veneer of the mundane, but it’s a kind of joke on the mundane or a celebration of the banal which is quite funny especially if you’re creating fashion.

Arti: I don’t like things that are overstated. At first glance, you see one thing, but when you see if again you see something else which is what clothing does. When you look at Commes des Garcons designs you don’t immediately think that they are beautifully made. Maybe it’s a design thing, but I am editing or turning the volume down in a way that they don’t jump out at you. It’s a hard place to be. I don’t get the fame and fortune. I make great connections with the people who connect with my work. They are the ones who are really looking. They are not interested in the loudest thing, but in things that go beyond the veneer. In my Alphabet Series there were people who made a cultural connection even if they were not from India. Many people think that if I am from India I should be making big orange canvasses with elephants praying on them, people with their legs crossed or silk fabrics tasseled in gold. I guess if I had done that I would be in a very different place, but I don’t think I’d be myself at all. Even though I’m not show-stopper, I have appreciated the people with whom I have made connections and I think that is more important.

The Experienced Gatherer - Arti Sandhu

2008-10-24T15:20:00.006-05:00

Arti Sandhu, artist, traveler, self-proclaimed migrant and gatherer of images, is a faculty member in Columbia College Chicago's Art and Design Department where she teaches fashion design. I sat down with Arti last week and we talked about her love of traffic cones, peeling paint, her favorite designer and her love of collecting images that most people would never notice. I will be posting our wonderful interview next week. I am also including a link to one of her favorite blogsites, masalachai. Check it out and I'll see you next week.

COLLABORATING MERMAIDS

2008-10-13T13:27:00.012-05:00

I sat down last week with two Columbia College photography alums, Sarah McKemie and Terttu Uibopuu, and talked to them about their collaboration. I often wonder how it is that two artists can put their own ego aside in the name of making something together. I hope this interview informs you on what it takes to do an artistic collaboration.

Elizabeth Burke-Dain: What is it about your work that lends itself well to collaboration with each other?

Terttu: A lot of people have asked us why we collaborated. It has much to do with our personalities and our coming together as friends. We wanted to do this collaboration because we like each other’s work. I like Sarah’s approach to photographing people. Her work is portraiture like my own. Sarah is not so predictable and she gives her pictures her own twist. I think she takes some very interesting risks in her work.

Sarah: I like the way Terttu can mix still lifes and portraiture. Her way of representing women and the way she is able to hone in on quiet moments that create a sense of intimacy is something you feel in her work. The viewer can definitely see what she saw in the moment she took the photograph. Terttu well represents the people she chooses to photograph. They are beautiful, but slightly off. She finds something beautiful in the women in her photographs even though you might not notice them if you saw them on the street. She questions them in her photographs by how she depicts them.

Elizabeth: Do you feel like the collaboration completed something about your own work through working with each other?

Terttu: When we started, we were just started to learn what we liked taking pictures of. Up until the point of this collaboration, we had just taken the beginning photo classes here at Columbia. We didn’t really know what we liked doing as individual artists . Doing this work together and by being playful, I have learned a lot from Sarah. We are different, but there are so many things I admire about her. I still learn from her. I have a strictly German approach to things. I like perfection, but Sarah is free and more playful. I like that. It has influenced my work.

Sarah: Both approaches came together, the formal and the improvisational, in this collaboration. We feed each other. The work in this project is something we couldn’t have produced on our own. We needed each other to complete this work. We admired each others ideas. There is no one else I would have done with this. We appreciate enough of the same things, but we also bring something different to the table.

Terttu: In working on and off for two years, our individual work has grown, but it doesn’t look like our collaborative work. I couldn’t carry the same ideas on my own because the work was about the two of us, about our relationship.

Sarah: The photos were about our relationship at the beginning and that’s what they stayed about throughout the project. The narrative of the relationship in the photos changed.

Elizabeth: Some of the photos looked like you were trying to go back to childhood by creating scenes from a remembered idea of childhood. In the photos, you seem to be in this transitional place between being young and entering adulthood.

Sarah: I definitely think that transition is a heavy theme in our work: teen to young adult, young adult to more adult. Even being together in a friendship and an artistic collaboration, we are in a transitional place. In some ways these images are less about having to grow up and more about the process of growing apart.

Elizabeth: What did you learn about your own work through this collaboration? Did it help you more clearly define your own work?

Terttu: I learned about risk taking, but that is directly from Sarah’s approach. One example is the picture of the mermaid on the shower door. There are no people in this photo, just the mermaid. I liked it, but I didn’t think we could take a picture of the mermaid for technical reasons. I would have walked away and not taken the picture for purely technical reasons. Sarah got excited about the idea of the mermaid in order to create a metaphor about our relationship. I framed the photo, but we were struggling with it. From this experience, I learned to not walk away if something doesn’t seem right or perfect. I never would have taken that photo, but now it’s my favorite picture.

Elizabeth to Sarah: Do you think Terttu is more technical?

Sarah: No. The tables are always going back and forth with ideas and other issues. It all becomes one thing. One of us has the will and the other resists, but we end up pushing each other. I would never have gone to the house where we took the photos if Terttu hadn’t suggested it. We made it work together. The initial challenge was like working on a math problem together. It’s hard, but it was satisfying to have figured it out.

Elizabeth: Did you figure out anything about your own aesthetic after this experience?

Sarah: I think I have started taking more risks and pushing boundaries. I’m not afraid to show an ugly or weird awkward side. Just take the photo and worry about it later. Push the moment as much as you can.

Terttu: We have always compared this collaboration to being in a marriage. We have to make decisions together. We surrender things in the name of the project.

Sarah: We choose our battles wisely.

Elizabeth: Did this collaboration help you to think of what you want to do next?

Terttu: We started the collaboration to get away from heavy thinking. Being in school you are forced to think about a series and larger conceptual ideas. For us, the collaboration was an escape, but as we worked on it, the things we learned in school started to make sense. We had to come up with bigger ideas and really think about what is was we were doing.

Elizabeth: What was the bigger idea?

Sarah: About being friends and what that means. It sounds elementary and sweet, but that is at its core. Maintaining strong relationships have a push and pull affect. Whether it’s your lover or your friend, you want to be with them, but you also want to maintain and uphold your own identity.

Elizabeth: Was there any attraction to Terttu because she is from Estonia and is not American?

Sarah: Maybe it did and I didn’t even know it. I like things that are different than me. I’m sure subconsciously, I was probably like, wow, I want to know about Estonia.

Terttu: Sarah seemed like she was from another place. I’ve never met anybody like her. She is not a typical American. I can remember the first picture I saw of hers. I was very attracted to her work. She is mysterious and her work has a lot of mystery that comes across. I’ve gotten to know her better over the years, but she and her work are still very interesting to me. In the future, I am exploring the idea of doing documentary work. I still question what the documentary is and how much words can add to images.

Sarah: I’m listening to our answers and thinking that maybe we are very different. I want to explore music and Terttu wants to explore documentary work. Maybe one of us is more formal and one of us is more loose. We need these opposites. Our answers reinforce that we are different, but those differences are wonderful. We have different things to bring to the table.

Thanks Sarah and Terttu. Please leave comments about this interview. Thanks everybody.

ARE WE THERE YET? - Hyde Park Art Center

2008-08-19T10:59:00.021-05:00

I really like going to art exhibitions that have a question in the title. As a viewer standing before the works in the exhibition, Are We There Yet? at The Hyde Park Art Center, I ask myself how these artists have answered this question. Why was this artist chosen to participate in this show? All of the artists in this exhibition have made journeys either across the world, across the state line or have created a place through the medium of photography. All of them have made mental and emotional journeys that are mirrored by geographical movement of one kind or the other.

image: Howard Henry Chen, Fernando and Sylvie reading The Lonely Planet at The War Remnants Museum (formerly The Museum of American War Crimes, but the People's Committee of Ho Chi Minh City changed the name sometime after Hanoi and Washington normalized relations) Ho Chi Minh City, 2005

The artist and Columbia College Chicago alum Howard Henry Chen left Vietnam at the age of three. Armed with only this knowledge and the subject matter of his photographs, the question Are We There Yet? draws us into a uniquely American experience. The journey from the Vietnamese refugee camps to the United States in the mid-seventies might be entirely forgotten by the generation with whom Chen shares. The thirty-somethings. But to the families who made that journey, it has shaped and defined them. As a child, I remember seeing the horrific images of dead Vietnamese children on the news. Or of hearing my parents talk about the war around the dinner table. After the bombing of Cambodia by our own government, my family sponsored a Cambodian family. The Choerks. While not Vietnamese, they travelled here to escape the same ravages of the same war. I remember going with my family to pick them up at O'Hare Airport in the middle of winter. Most of them were not wearing shoes. Two of the girls were pregnant. They had just weeks before witnessed the beating death of their own father. At this time, I'm sure the question, Are we there yet?, was fraught with terror and exhaustion. I remember the mother, Mak Chourk, wearing a white jersey that bore the logo of two tennis rackets crossing. The absurdity of a country club tennis shirt being worn by this bent and near-starving woman was not lost on me or my other family members. The adults went to work at a paper bag factory near our house. When we went to visit them in their tiny apartment they would all be squatting on the floor, but when we arrived they quickly got to their feet and sat around the table as if they had done something wrong. Today, the young children who once begged for food on the streets of Phnom Penh are not unlike Howard Henry Chen. They have college educations, homes in middle-class neighborhoods and children who don't speak the language of their native homeland.

image: Howard Henry Chen, Welcome to Miss Saigon (Cameron Mackintosh has apparently moved to 160 Pasteur Street, Ho Chi Minh City), 2005

I don't know the circumstances of Howard Henry Chen's family as they made that passage from Vietnam to the United States, but his work is steeped in that reckoning between what was and what is now. In the photograph, Fernando and Sylvie (complete title above), we see a beautiful courtyard with a lovely western couple reading together near a battle-scarred American fighter jet. In modern Vietnam, the war and the American's role in it has not disappeared, but rather the marketing has changed. What was once a 'war crime' is now merely a 'remnant'. But which version is true? This is the question being asked in Chen's work. Is the tragedy of the past something to be memorialized or do we just need a better public relations strategy? In the photograph, Welcome to Miss Saigon (Cameron Mackintosh has apparently moved to 160 Pasteur Street, Ho Chi Minh City), 2005, Chen chooses an image that features the famous broadway musical, Miss Saigon, that brought to the world the story of the Vietnamese conflict, but a small note is attached to the door, the forwarding address of one Cameron Mackintosh; an unknown person with a western name. For me, the meaning of this photograph is about displacement. Real experiences and people are displaced and replaced by a controlled version of those experiences and people. Lastly, the photograph, Entrance Gate to the Tropical Fruit Festival most directly summons up the satire in Chen's vision. A huge plaster tree with enormous plastic native fruit forms a gate that is clearly Chen nudging us to enter into the lie... just don't eat the fruit, it could kill you.

image: Howard Henry Chen, Entrance Gate to the Tropical Fruit Festival

Alinea Restaurant - Food As Art

2008-07-23T09:25:00.011-05:00

My husband recently lost his job, so where did we go for dinner? Alinea Restaurant! Woo Hoo! For that 'let's blow it all' feeling, Alinea can't be beat. The reason I am posting my review on ARTseen Chicago is because my experience at Alinea was not just culinary, but also artistic. Grant Achatz, the celebrated chef and molecular gastronomie visionary, is definitely the Marcel Duchamp of the food world. It was the weirdest food I have ever eaten. This is not to say it was bad, but when you eat a rectangular lump of chocolate pudding larded with marinated pork and you know it's costing you about 35 bills, you lean in to see if you can detect a hint of horse shit. Gladly, I was happy to discover that there were only three missteps throughout the twelve courses. My palette is adventuresome. If a chef claims that they are going to blow my mind with weirdness and deliciousness, I am all over it. I say, 'bring it on' and I'll eat just about anything. I've eaten live baby crabs, fish eyes and baby snails that I picked out of their shells with a toothpick without blinking. But, had I found the baby snails on the wet pavement, I probably would have let them live a long and prosperous life. It's all context. Alinea is focused primarily on the visual transformation of food and the creation of a multisensory experience that not only pleases the eye, but also the palette. This is a very difficult thing to do. The second dish that came out was an homage to the tomato. There were several small jellied orbs of tomato essense that were surprising in their tomato-iness. They had great 'mouth feel', but the actual taste was everything that you love about the tomato. Then there was a freeze-dried tomato thing (lump, spoonful?) that had, again, the essential tomato experience without the tomato. I imagine that this was probably what Stanley Kubrick was going for in 2001 Space Odyssey. Over the top of the tomato treats was a frozen cloud of mozarella foam. It looked good, but it was very cold and tasted more like ice than cheese. All was forgiven because it did look really cool. Since there were twelve courses, it was fun to anticipate the next dish as if I were waiting for the next act in a good play. All in all Alinea can only be described as John Cage and Julia Child's love child. But, don't be fooled. This is food for rich people who are looking for the newest food trend and have the money to try it. I'm not saying it wasn't worth it, but I probably should have paid my daughter's school fees and lunches for the year. No, make that two years. Oh well. Burp.

Everybody Loves Busted Amp

2008-06-25T13:47:00.010-05:00

Image by John Solimine, Halloween

See the review of Busted Amp in TimeOutChicago by Kiedra Chaney. Also, The Post Family has featured Busted Amp on their blog today. Thanks Posts!

Busted Amp info: Columbia College Chicago's A+D Gallery

Nick Butcher of Sonnenzimmer

Busted Amp in the News plus gallery images

2008-06-24T09:44:00.005-05:00

Busted Amp at Columbia College Chicago's Averill and Bernard Leviton A+D Gallery. Opens June 26 and runs through July 23. Opening Reception on June 26 from 5-8pm. A+D Gallery is located at 619 S. Wabash Ave. 312.344.8668.

Listen to curator, James Iannacone of Columbia College's Anchor Graphics interviewed by Blair Chavis of Chicago Public Radio on the 848 show. Click this link to listen. (Note: The interview starts at the 25 minute mark and is about 6 minutes long.)
http://audio.wbez.org/848/2008/06/848_20080623.mp3
Also check Busted Amp out on the Sun-Times Website:
http://www.suntimes.com/entertainment/weekend/1014972,WKP-News-out20dWest.article
Print Magazine's July 08 issue will include a piece about Busted Amp written by Anne Elizabeth Moore who wrote the book Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity.

Here are a few gallery shots of Busted Amp.

Write a review or comment in the 'comments' section. Thanks!

All of the artists screen-printed their own images on the walls.

It looks very cool. The actual art works will appear above these screen-prints.

Close-ups.

5th International Book & Paper Triennial

2008-06-20T15:03:00.005-05:00

Image: Elizabeth Munger, Passerines
Suite of five prints, letterpress
7” x 9” each
2008

Image: Shawn Sheehy, Beyond the Sixth Extinction: A Fifth Millennium Bestiary
Handmade paper, letterpress, collage
8” x 15” x 10.25” (open)
2007

Image: Peggy Johnston, Urchin, antique book, linen thread

5th International Book & Paper Arts Triennial
At Columbia College Chicago’s Center for Book & Paper Arts
June 25 - September 12, 2008

Fifty-nine art works from the papermaking and artists’ book genre will be on view during the 5th International Book & Paper Arts Triennial at Columbia College Chicago’s Center for Book & Paper Arts located at 1104 S. Wabash Avenue on the second floor. A closing reception will be held on Friday, September 12 from 5:30 – 7:30pm This juried exhibition features fine and letterpress printed and bound books, broadsides, artists’ books, book objects, sculptural paper, pulp painting and altered books that have been selected from an international base of some of the most recognized artists working in this medium today. Art works range in size from paper vessels that dangle from ceiling to floor down to sculpture that is 2” tall.

Challenging the traditional definition of the book, the 5th Trienniel features a book that is “written” in broken glass and another that contains the mnemonic bird calls of Midwest songbirds. Also included are etchings of Paris gardens, a taxonomy of urban fowl, illustrated poems, corn stalks made of paper, a photo journey through a car wash and many more wonderful and curious book and paper objects that comprise this triennial exhibition.

The Center for Book & Paper’s gallery hours are Monday through Friday from 10am to 6pm. This exhibition is free and open to the public. For more information, please call 312.344.6630 or go to their website at http://www.bookandpaper.org/. A catalog of the exhibition will be available for purchase during the closing reception on Friday, September 12.

Mapping: Cartographies of Learning

2008-06-20T13:42:00.001-05:00

MAPPING: CARTOGRAPHIES OF LEARNING
at Columbia College Chicago's C33 Gallery
June 26 - August 8, 2008

As part of the City of Chicago’s Festival of Maps, Mapping: Cartographies of Learning showcases multi-media arts installations from Columbia College Chicago’s Center for Community Arts Partnerships (CCAP) Project AIM, and the Chicago Arts Partnerships in Education (CAPE). This free exhibition is on view at Columbia College Chicago’s C33 Gallery at 33 East Congress. Mapping is a culmination of curricular and conceptual explorations of mapmaking from students in nine Chicago Public Schools (kindergarten through high school). The installations, directed by professional artists and teachers, feature compelling social and cultural histories as well as visionary images of students’ sense of place in their neighborhoods and the world. An opening reception at the gallery will be held on Thursday, June 25 from 5 – 7pm. For more information, please contact Betsy Odom, [C]Spaces Exhibition Coordinator at 312.344.8177. Gallery hours are Monday – Friday, 9am to 7pm, Friday, 9am to 5pm and Saturdays by appointment.

Participating Schools
A.C.T. Charter School, Crown Community Academy, Hawthorne Scholastic Academy, Edward Jenner Academy of the Arts, John B. Murphy Elementary School, Northside College Prep High School, South Shore High School, and Telpochcalli Elementary School.

Participating Artists and Teachers
Luke Albrecht, Meg Arbeiter, Charles Barbera, Lindsey Caplice, Phillip Cotton, Peter DeLaurentis, Guillermo Delgado, William Estrada, David Jordan, Rebecca Leverenz, Amanda Leigh Lichtenstein, Jorge Lucero, Colby Mecher, Olivia Mulcahy, Walter Ornelas, Mathais “Spider” Schergen, Wendee Shavocky, Eric Silverberg, Margy Stover, Jamie Lou Thome, Joel Wanek, Megan Williamson, and Mirtes Zwierzynski.

Curated by Scott Sikkema and Cynthia Weiss, with Mark Diaz and Shawn Renee Lent.

BUSTED AMP at A+D Gallery - opens June 26

2008-06-19T09:55:00.000-05:00

Image: Diana Sudyka, Night Image: Jay Ryan, Sound Opinions

BUSTED AMP
Chicago’s Rock Poster Artists Get a Gallery Gig
June 26 – July 23, 2008

Just in time for the Pitchfork Music Festival, James Iannacone of Anchor Graphics at Columbia College Chicago has brought together a dozen of Chicago’s most sought-after screen printers who work in the music poster, t-shirt and album cover genre for an exhibition of their personal work at Columbia’s Averill and Bernard Leviton A+D Gallery. This free exhibition will have its opening reception on June 26 from 5 to 8pm.

Fine art prints by some of the leading screen printers associated with Chicago music are Jay Ryan’s Bird Machine, Nadine Nakanishi and Nick Butcher’s Sonnenzimmer, Steve Walter’s Screwball Press, just to name a few. These rock mementos are coveted by fans and are highly collectable.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS: Nick Butcher (Sonnenzimmer),Nadine Nakanishi (Sonnenzimmer), Jay Ryan (the Bird Machine), Mat Daly, Dan Grzeca (Artisan Dan), Steve Walters, Billy Baumann (Delicious Design), Jason Teegarden-Downs (Delicious Design), Diana Sudyka, Kathleen Judge, Dan MacAdam, Rob Doran, John Solimine and Keith Herzik

Please note that a virtual gallery tour video is on its way.

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