Caffeine IV opened last night at Murphy Hill Gallery, work by 47 artists with the Artists' Breakfast Group. Good turn out, good conversations. Lots of excellent art.

I spent the week-end questioning my direction, principally as always its ephemeral essence, and the reality that I don't always succeed at achieving the impression I am after. There's probably a way to fabricate the same visual effect and balance between drawing and scupture that I am after, out of more durable materials, some sort of plastic to sculpt (without melting)? But conceptually, I would lose the prior identity of the material as a thing to push away from yet retain.

Saw a workable display option at McDonald's of all places -- an acrylic light box type display they had placed in front of the cash registers to advertise their new drinks. This looks like what they used, except they must have lowered the price by buying in bulk.

Artprize 2010: Variations and Lessons

I spent four days working on my Artprize installation, the first time I migrated Materia Incarnation to the outdoors. The original intended location of the work in trees/bushes, coming over concrete barriers by the trees/bushes at the site (based on photos of the site), did not work out: the trees and bushes I could get to were not strong enough to support the bottles, which when amassed end up being heavier than I had thought. So, I had to adapt. I ended up pretty far from my own aesthetic, which in itself, is something for me to think about as I look back on the experience now and later.

I had to attach the bottles to a fixed object -- or they would fly away in the first breeze. I used a light pole and brought the bottles up and around the poll. I did not have enough to go up the whole pole, or a good way to attach the bottles with gaps between them (which would be more in keeping with their intended installation), and I had to use too much wire to make the bottles secure from the weather; the form morphed with the weather -- a storm took away some bottles. Several people who saw me installing really wanted the bottles to go on every light pole -- that would have looked so much better and integrated the site more completely. I did not have enough bottles or time.

I learned so much. At first, I thought I'd never try working outdoors again; now, with a little time passing after the installation, I'll take what I learned and put it to good use for the next outdoor installation. Some parts of the piece work really well and just as I envisioned -- the bottles catch sunlight and project colored shadows when the sun comes out; adapting the work to the site produced conceptual direction -- the bottles circle a pole as a fixed center, like a sundial -- that was not present in my original conception for this migration of the Materia elements.

Working on ArtPrize 2010

Art Open

I have an installation, Materia Incarnation IV, at the Chicago Art Open at River East Art Center for the next few weeks. It previews tomorrow night.

Upcoming Installation and Exhibition

Installing at the Palette & Chisel tomorrow night --

Hub: Converging Divergence opens on Saturday, Oct. 17, 2009 from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. at the Palette & Chisel in Chicago.

• Opening Reception - Vernisage ...
  Palette & Chisel - 1012 North Dearborn, Chicago, IL...
  Saturday, October 17 at 5:30pm
• Presentation/ Panel
  Palette and Chisel
  Thursday, October 22 at 6:30pm
• Closing Event
  Palette and Chisel
  Saturday, October 24 at 5:30pm

Location:

1012 North Dearborn

Chicago, IL, 60610

Phone:

312-642-4149

Mon - Thurs:

10:00 am - 6:00 pm

Fri:

10:00 am - 5:00 pm

Sun:

12:00 pm - 3:00 pm

To Locate Again: Some Installation Images

To Locate Again: to establish or lay out in a new place

Finished installing my installation, To Locate Again: to establish or lay out in a new place, today.  It's a great site to install.  The gallery has full windows on two sides and is visible straight off the elevator.  The elevator is human operated like days long gone by!  The landmark building detail is quite a contrast to my brightly colored forms, which seem to inhabit more than the space as they reflect everywhere through the windows.

The installation responds to a theme that curators Glenn and Deborah Doerring have been highlighting this year:  "Integration =Form + Concept: Context".

Form:  Finestra as museum display case.  The artist redeploys artifact based drawings by relocating elements to other physical contexts.

Concept: Numbers accompanying the elements set an expectation of meaningful classification, which disordering the numbers tends to upend.

Context:  The artist questions our relationship to museum display and to interpretation by containing the viewers who breach the space as well as the redeployed element, challenging us to engage how context and objects integrate into interpretations presented to viewers.

Where/When:  Finestra Art Space, 410 S. Michigan Ave, #516, Chicago, Il.  Open Fri/Sat from 2 to 6 pm.  (to enter the gallery).  Finestra Art Space is in the Fine Arts Building, and the installation can be seen during building hours.   The reception is on Second Fridays at the Fine Arts Building -- August 14, 2009, from 5 to 9 pm.

Installation: Ritual

Installation shots and a detail shot from the installation I installed this week at Peter Jones Gallery, 1806 W. Cuyler, Chicago, IL, up through May 17 (closing reception from 3 to 6 pm on Sunday, May 17.

Installation: Ordered Groupings

Here are some images from my recent installation, Ordered Groupings. The horses play off an artifactual image, and the numbered pins play off of classifications and museum display of artifacts.

Shows

I have been on hiatus for a couple months...

My latest installation is up on a group show at Peter Jones Gallery through April 26, 2009. Gallery hours are from 3 to 6 pm on Sat. and Sun. with a closing reception on April 26 from 3 to 6 pm. The group is the Artists Breakfast Group, and the show is Caffeine III.

I'll also be demonstrating my work at Macy's on State Street in Chicago, as part of their Dream in Color event, this Friday, April 10, 2009 from 12 to 2 pm. (lower level).

Catch Up

Wow, it has been months since I've written! Words have not been there for me in the midst of considering a transition that would have moved me across the country. I also went for over a month without creating any art (not even a drawing). The hiatus was a frustrating thing, but in the end, breaks can be fruitful. One is always thinking even when one is not making work.

In the last couple weeks, I finally made a spate of pieces. What I am working on:

- See-through cave like mini-installations -- drawing in acrylic boxes -- playing with spatial and historic timelines.
- A series of digitally degraded photographs verging on painting.

Some events coming up:

October 3 (evening) is the opening of Inspiration in Andersonville, and the exhibition at the Swedish American Musuem. Several artists, including me, created pieces inspired by items in the museum's collection. I picked two items: a well-aged sled that looked used and cared for and two delicate Dahl horse earrings that were personally connected to one individual (a very interesting fellow who built his own working viking ship). The simultaneous personal and iconic nature of the items drew me to them.

The museum hosts a panel discussion with the artists on October 5. We'll talk about our inspirations.

And:

I stopped by Ossia Fine Arts Space to check out the Five Artists Project and talk about the exhibition with Amy Rudberg, who organized the show and is writing a blog as part of exhibition. I recommend the stopping by the show. September 12 is 2nd Fridays at the building, and a performance will take place in the gallery. You can read my thoughts about the show on Amy's blog installation: http://happyfaceschicago.blogspot.com/

Updated Images On myartspace.com and artreview.com

Another one of my pieces, What Comes of This, was selected for the front page viewer on myartspace.

I've loaded new images there, and also to my artreview.com page.

Now Showing: Chicago Looks

Chicago Looks launched today on Chicago's Riverwalk between State and LaSalle. 40 portraits by Chicago Artists about Chicago, it's people and it's built environment. Presented by the Chicago Department of Transportation and the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, Public Art Program.

My portrait, shown above, is Daniel Burnham: Vision and Legacy. We are incredibly fortunate to have accessible lakefront to enjoy.

Other artist friends participating in this exhibition include James Mesple and Vanessa Shinmoto.

Deterioration In Art

I've been thinking quite a bit about deterioration in art. It's natural, especially with when the art process involves a great deal of experimentation and envelope pushing.

Pollack's paintings supposedly shed chips (the paint was household paint, so made to fall apart really). I find the shedding of the work interesting.

The paint has come off classical statuary -- to the point that we view classical as white and unadorned.

Da Vinci's Last Supper is more myth/legend (not sure the proper term, really) than painting, since it started to deteriorate rather quickly and has been in-painted, etc.; yet the myth/legend is strong.

Cave paintings survived for thousands of years precisely because they were hidden from view; now, discovered and exposed, they are deteriorating.

Great buildings fall to time, weather, war, and new construction.

Some deterioration is ironic: fairly quick crackling in Mondrian's work undermines his utopian ideals.

Yet, old master paintings are valued in part because they managed to survive hundreds of years (some level of care taking by some set of people valuing the works enough to preserve them).

The art I showed at The Artist Project was based on scavenged images and materials, included decades old paper and yarn found in my childhood home after my mother's recent passing. Here are some stills from the video I took of my installation at The Artist Project:

What Comes of This





Nomad/Herd



Discards



Snuggles



The venue wasn't the best venue for my work, which is conceptual and tends toward the ephemeral. Live and learn.

Your Studio Winner

Alix Rule, Saatchi Online Magazine’s regular Berlin correspondent, picked my image, "Guardian," as the winner of this month's Your Studio, commenting ‘If Max Beckmann had had a mouse he would definitely have clenched it and whacked out a sinister, reverberating enigma such as this.’

The Saatchi Gallery now will donate £500 to Children's Memorial Hospital here in Chicago. Fantastic! Every month, a critic selects an image, and Saatchi Gallery makes a donation to a hospital selected by the artist.

MyArtSpace.com Featured Artist

I am honored to be selected as a Featured Artist this month on myartspace.com A nice, unexpected start to the new year.

The work I have on their site now includes images from the Open Studio residency, images from Unform, Inform, Deform, Reform (Chicago Artist Month -- Andersonville), Ponder and some of its derivative patterns, drawings on surfaces, and a transformation sequence shifting from physical to virtual. I hope to be posting from the Snuggles work a bit later in the month, if that work develops to finished artwork.

Happy New Year

Another fresh year begins.

At the tail end of last year, The Drawing Center Viewing Program, which includes an online artist registry, selected me to participate. A high level of many variations on drawing can be viewed in their registry: perusal there is well rewarded. I am honored to be included.

I also finished my stint at the City of Chicago Open Studio, managing to videotape and photograph my installation. I think the experimentation with paper construction will prove significant as I move forward. It was very immediate, yet still meditative, as a process. It's a simple enough step to move to doing this experimentation with more archival papers and varied types of papers. Caution at the other end -- avoid redundancy. I am less certain about the integration of the graphite imagery on newspaper; I like the result, but the process lacked predictability in how the newspaper took the graphite. Ink may well be a better option there. I loaded images of the Open Studio project onto www.myartspace.com -- I'll post the link when I sign back into blogger in using Firefox -- their site has a quick flash program that shows the images in a moving slide show.

I am working on picking up knitting and crocheting. I see utility for expanding the weaving concept in my work, and I see room for using these techniques to expand my drawing. Plus, as an aside, I feel like making cute critters. I have my mother's knitting and crocheting needles, plus some of her patterns, and I found general instructions on the web. I am working more or less free form on my own version of what is beginning to resemble an elephant at the moment as I get the hang of the different crochet stitches.

Here's hoping for a great and productive year!

Open Studio

Here's are close-up shots of a couple of the figurative elements for The Open Studio Project, Vessels with Souls, and an installation shot. The project has been extended by the city into December. I am now working on other constructions with the newspaper, without consideration for graphite or pigment surface imagery.

The graphite pulled the repeated Vessel figurative shapes together and engaged the dynamic I was after: at a distance, each shape appears dark and singular, but on closer inspection, both the newspaper layers and the graphite imagery layer reveal themselves. As my thinking progressed with each shape, I became more interested in using the woven paper to add quasi three dimensionality to the pieces; at the same time, I also became more interested in using the graphite to obscure as well as to accent when integrating the graphite imagery into the newspaper elements.

The butterfly was a bit of a surprise, beginning as a meditative exercise in interlocking pieces and growing organically into a form. At one point, I could see it as a shroud growing to fill the the expanse of the room, and yet, since Vessels has representational content, I felt a deep need to maintain a representational aspect to the developing form; hence, the form felt complete when it reached this stage. It can go on the wall and be suspended from the ceiling, as well as lay across the floor or other forms, taking on the shape from whatever supports it is given. I see many dimensional possibilities, which I am beginning to explore. How form possibilities engage a concept remains crucial. I plan to engage the expansive room shroud idea in some manner, letting it run its course without the confines of the larger installation concept, at a later date.

City of Chicago Open Studio

I am the Artist in Residence at the City of Chicago's Open Studio this month. The Open Studio gives the public the opportunity to watch an artist at work. I am working on the elements for an installation using woven newspaper figures as the surfaces for my imagery. My primary days will be M, W and Th from 9 to 6, and intermittent hours other days. The studio is beneath the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington -- access via elevator in the Cultural Center or through the pedway.

Two days into this, I don't yet have much up in the way of art. I sit behind a table, cutting and interweaving newspaper strips (after I read the paper, of course). Lots of cutting. Lots of interweaving. Staring at the wall/space and at some of my larger, imperfect scraps -- I do alot of staring -- gave me a idea for laying out a separate wall installation moving around a corner, related in general shapes/forms to the main work. Art is fluid that way. I'll be seeing what comes of the idea at the same time that those who stop in.

So far, most people that stop by have hovered outside the windows; a few have dared to enter and talk for a while, some about art and some about general events.

Barewalls

Participated in SAIC's fundraiser, Barewalls, yesterday evening. Not a bad way to spend the afternoon and early evening. Less artists painted live this year (they offered finished works this year to give artists a different way to participate), which meant more room but less room energy overall during the afternoon. It perked up with the arrival of viewers -- a good turnout I think; at least, it felt crowded.

Unlike last year, I was still working when people came in to watch us paint; I had about an hour's worth left to do. My camera battery died at the end, but it turned out the last picture I had taken was very close to the finished piece (just missing my signature and a few darkened spots). Another artist was kind enough to take a couple pictures of the final piece for me. I titled the piece "Upturned Vessel".