Sunday, October 30, 2011
Billie Mandle: Public lecture and class visit tomorrow!
Billie Mandle will be visiting our class tomorrow to do individual studio visits. Please try to go to her public lecture at 4:30pm in Beam so we can have a good discussion with her about her work.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011
Thursday, October 27th: Emmy Award Winner Richard Kahn Presents
‘An Arctic Wilderness Journey’
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| A lone caribou grazes on the Brooks Range in Northwestern Alaska. (Photo by Richard Kahn) |
Emmy award-winner and documentary filmmaker Richard Kahn offers “Travels by Canoe in Alaska’s Western Arctic,” a wilderness journey of words and photographs.
Schwartz Outdoor Leadership Center
Thursday, October 27th at 7:30 pm
Kahn has spent the last twelve summers paddling wilderness rivers in the Brooks Mountain Range and North Slope of Northwestern Alaska. He has traveled extensively in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, spending more than 300 days on the Colville River and its tributaries. Kahn’s photographs and journals record intense light, an ocean of unnamed mountains, crystal clear rivers, delicate wild flowers, and glimpses of the animals whose lives are woven into the fabric of the place.
His talk focuses on his time spent on these rivers, in an area with which few people are familiar. The inappropriately named National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A) is 23.5 million acres of wilderness. It is home to the Western and Central Caribou herds, wolves, bears, wolverines and a rich assortment of raptors, songbirds and waterfowl. You might even be able to see some of these birds in your backyard right now during the fall migration. In 2012, the Bureau of Land Management will review the land management plans for the Reserve and Americans have an opportunity to take part in this important process.
An independent filmmaker, Kahn has had his work presented on WGBH-TV, Discovery Channel, CBS, and WBZ-TV in Boston, as well as Vermont Public Television. Kahn’s credits also include NOVA, Frontline, and Bill Moyers Journal. The filmmaker received an Emmy in 1983 for “7 North,” a documentary on nurses in a neurological unit and in 1973 for “A New Beginning,” about four teenage patients in a spinal cord injury unit. In 2009, Richard shot beautiful footage for Alaska Wilderness League’s short film “The Reserve”.
His visit is sponsored by Alaska Wilderness League. The event is free and open to the public.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Recap: Recent visits from Carly Glovinski and Mark Lakeman
These past two weeks brought two visiting artists to class. Here are descriptions of their work and links to their websites.
Carly Glovinksi
"To labor over the mundane, drawing great attention to an unremarkable object calls into question what can be considered precious and worthy of investigation. I aim to evoke an entirely new response to the familiar, engaging the viewer in an active game of questioning perceptions and assumed hierarchies."
Mark Lakeman is the co-founder of the non-profit placemaking organization The City Repair Project, and principal of the community design firm Communitecture. Mr. Lakeman has taken on the role of creative urban place-maker and community design facilitator in his commitment to the emergence of a sustainable cultural landscape. He seeks to make every design project one which will further the development of a community vision, whether it involves urban design and placemaking, ecological building, encourages community interaction, or assists those who typically do not have access to design services. His leadership in the City Repair Project has benefited communities across the North American continent including cities such as Los Angeles, Seattle, and Ottawa where City Repair Projects are underway. Stories of Mr. Lakeman’s projects have been told widely, including in such publications as Dwell, Architecture Magazine, New Village Journal, Yes magazine, and The Utne Reader. With City Repair, in 2003 Mark was awarded the National Lewis Mumford Award by the international organization Architects & Planners for Social Responsibility for his work with Dignity Village, one of the United States’ first self-developed, permanent communities by and for previously homeless people.
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| Untitled (pool), by Carly Glovinski acrylic and paper, 2011 |
"To labor over the mundane, drawing great attention to an unremarkable object calls into question what can be considered precious and worthy of investigation. I aim to evoke an entirely new response to the familiar, engaging the viewer in an active game of questioning perceptions and assumed hierarchies."
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| The Rebuilding Center, by Mark Lakeman Portland, OR |
Tuesday, October 18, 2011
Blitz Crit Guests
Jeffrey Stockbridge, Alex Dacorte, Rob Lieber, Karen Gelardi and Lisa Bossi will be participating in our Blitz Crit tomorrow. Please see the blurbs below and visit their websites (by clicking on their names) to familiarize yourself with their work and experience.
Jeffrey Stockbridge is a photographer who documents the complexities of urban blight. Based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Stockbridge photographs the prevalence of drugs, prostitution, and abandoned homes in the city. The prevailing theme in Stockbridge’s work is his subjects will to survive a harsh urban landscape. His work has been exhibited at The National Portrait Gallery in London, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, The Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania and the Delaware Art Museum. Stockbridge was recently awarded 3rd Prize in the 2010 Taylor-Wessing Portrait Prize at the National Portrait Gallery in London. His work is represented by The Wapping Project, Bankside in London.
Alex Dacorte, born in New Jersey, raised in Venezuela and living in Philadelphia, is an artist who describes his work as ‘visual mash-ups’. He recently completed his MFA at Yale University. Often incorporating found objects, Da Corte creates multimedia work that belies its material origins.
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| Jeffrey Stockbridge |
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| Alex Dacorte |
(read a feature about him in Interview Magazine here)
Robert Lieber has exhibited at the Portland Museum of Art, Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Whitney Works Gallery and The LC Bates Museum. He received his BFA at The University of Southern Maine and his MFA at Mills College in Oakland CA. He was awarded the Jay DeFao Prize in 1999 and the Zorach Scholarship to Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 1997. For the past 10 years he has been teaching art in the U Maine system and Maine College of Art.
Karen Gelardi lives and works in South Portland, Maine. She studied painting at Rhode Island School of Design and has been influenced by the design and manufacturing processes of her family’s plastics factory in Biddeford, Maine, and Asian brush painting. She has exhibited widely throughout Maine and recently had her first show in New York City at Coleman Burke Gallery. Karen is a “Smocker” in Andrea Zittel’s internationally exhibited Smockshop, and a “panelist” in Zittel’s newest artist enterprise Panelshop. Depicting urban and suburban plants with a handmade, cut and sew approach, Karen Gelardi’s fabric, ink, and papier maché drawings, and oil paintings explore ideas about resiliency, adaptation, and a re-invented nature.
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| Rob Lieber |
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| Karen Gelardi |
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| Lisa Bossi |
Lisa Bossi, along with Andrea Alban Gosline are the co-creators of inspirational books, greeting cards, and guided journals. Written with heart by Andrea, and transformed with a lush palette by Lisa, their creative works draws on a love of family and nature's wonders. They are also the author and illustrator of January's Child: A Birthday Month Book (Scholastic, January 2007), Ten Little Wishes (Harper, Spring 2007), and Celebrating Motherhood (Conari Press, 2002).
Midterm Reminders
We are officially half way through the semester, so I wanted to take this opportunity to remind you about a few things that will affect your grade in this class. I will give you your midterm grade along with a written evaluation next Wednesday, October 26th.
#1: Blog Posts
The syllabus asks you to post on your blog 1-3 times per week. Since this is week seven, you should have at least 5 posts by now (allowing for a slow start to the semester, and assuming those posts include in-depth descriptions of your thoughts, goals, and completed work). Please remember to include images of work that you've made so far (either in progress or completed), and images of work made by artists that inspire you. As I stated in class yesterday, I'd also like you to get in the habit of blogging about the meetings you have with your mentor. Those posts should be records of what your mentor has to say about your work, other artists they recommend you look at or books they suggest you read, and what you took away from the meeting. Which brings us to #2...
#2: Meetings with Your Mentor
I understand that some of you have had difficulty scheduling a meeting with your assigned mentor, but remember that it is your responsibility to contact that person and follow up with them. You are supposed to be meeting with them for approximately 20 minutes every other week. I will be emailing the VA faculty next week to see if that has been the case or not.
#3: Biweekly Goals
At this point you should have posted and completed (IE posted the results of) three rounds of Biweekly Goals. They should have been posted on September 12th, September 26th, and October 10th (I let this week slide so that you could prepare for tomorrow's Blitz Crit). The next round of goals should be posted next Monday, October 24th (and the subsequent post dates will be November 7th and 21st). I consider the Biweekly Goals to be the backbone of this class, giving the semester structure and providing me with a way of evaluating your progress and your use of time. Since there are no assignments from me, you should consider your goals the assignments. If you have neglected to post goals, you have neglected to complete an assignment (and, like any other class, you receive a zero for that assignment). SO, don't neglect this requirement!
Now is a good time to re-read the syllabus and give your progress in this class a personal evaluation. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
Monday, October 3, 2011
Final Cut Pro Demo scheduled for Monday, October 17th
Want to learn how to edit video using Final Cut Pro? Come to Andrew Currier's demo!
When: Monday, October 17th, from 9:30-10:30am
Where: 216 Maine St. Digital Lab
Sunday, October 2, 2011
"Four Propositions Concerning Art Blogging"
(this text has been copied and pasted from http://new-art.blogspot.com/)
My first proposition is: Blogging is about being stupid.
It is accepting that I do not know what I should know before starting to write. But wait! "Should know"? Let me rephrase that: blogging is accepting that there is no required knowledge to write. In part, it is accepting Beuys' affirmation that everyone is an artist. Everyone is an art-writer. Everyone is a potential member of the art milieu. And this everyone also means different aspects of me. Suddenly, the quickness of the form, it's simplicity, encourages me to move forward. To take risks. To dare write something I am not sure of. One could say this is the continuation of the beautiful tradition of Montaigne's Essays (which translates into Attempts). Yet here, the very way it is created and shared encourages the risk, encourages theattempting to see where the thoughts, the words, took me, take me, might take me. But that is just the first step. Because the consequences are quite far-going.
My second proposition is: Thanks to the internet, writing about art can become closer to making art.
The problem with writing is what is usually considered it's greatest advantage: it stays. Letters form words which form sentences which are a pest - they do not let go. So anything you write can and will be used against you, be it literally or metaphorically, by someone, or by yourself, reading what you wrote many years ago.
Writing, then, must become serious. You have to weigh your words. You become responsible. Meaning, what you write needs to pass the test of an imaginary future reading.
The internet may not seem different, because here things also stay (you can find all the internet publications from the past at archives.org). However, there is so much happening, and what you publish has so little apparent weight (you don't feel it, hold it in your hand, share it physically), that even the concept of a "virtual" world seems logical. And yet the beauty is that "virtual", here, is quite real. The letters still turn into meaning - and practically instantly, they turn into social meaning.
But maybe because of the lack of weight, as opposed to other circumstances, when writing the blog, I don't feel obliged to anything. My distance to what I write about can change. I can be a distant observer, and then suddenly move close, challenge the work, ask it questions, see where it takes my thinking. This limit of private/public allows me to think to myself, but in a way that creates a new type of space, a new type of relation. Am I still writing about the work, or am I writing myself into the work? After all, I have no obligation to be a critic. Because I define what the blog is, I do not need to correspond to any criteria - and so the writing can become more personal, more experiential - sharing the experience I am living. And, as my experience is often related to creating new works, the limit becomes blurred - the work I write "about" (or "from" or "out of") is working its way into the one I am (sometimes unconsciously) thinking about or preparing.
My third proposition is: The models of participation in art change because of the internet.
This new type of sharing has other consequences. As opposed to most art writing, it becomes difficult to define what exactly is my position in the (traditional) world of art. Am I reviewing, creating, alluding? It is up to the reader to define what role my text plays in his experience of the art/world.
But also on the scale of the art milieu, the situation becomes more fun.
Am I a big, important fish, or an insignificant lost fish? Reading the blog it is hard to say. And that is, because it really is hard to say. The art market tries to establish market rules - artists have values that either go up or down, and if the art businesspeople had it their way, art would really be an extension of the art market. But this model is greatly inadequate for art, and I am the proof. After a few years writing the blog, I had more and more people contact me. One of them was a curator at the Warsaw Centre for Contemporary Art. He wanted to link to me on the Centre's online (and sometimes offline) review called Obieg. Suddenly, people from the milieunow considered me as an insider. Several people asked me "How did you manage to convince them?". Apparently, they were not used to a model which goes beyond traditional, linear processes. Of course, these new models are far more complex, which can be quite exciting: I can participate in a review and be written about, my work can be the subject of my own analysis picked up by someone from another site, the blog could potentially be published in a paper edition, it becomes a sort of a one-man-show that keeps evolving. Galleries start considering the blog as a serious partner, they become interested in the person, other artists contact me, first as a publisher, then as a person, new unexpected projects come up... All this has been happening. And every time it does, it seems the definition of what I do shifts.
My fourth and last proposition is: Blogging about art can be an exercise in moving.
The great and crazy composer Cornelius Cardew once wrote: "Notation is a way of making people move. If you lack others, like aggression or persuasion. The notation should do it. This is the most rewarding aspect of work in a notation. Trouble is: just as you find your sounds are too alien, intended for a 'different culture', you make the same discovery about your beautiful notation: no one is willing to understand it. No one moves."
A similar thing happens with writing my art blog. This is one way of changing the conditions of living, or appreciating, art. When it works, you feel how it takes you elsewhere. "You" meaning me, but also you, the potential reader. And yet, every once in a while, you, no, I discover that the reading remains on a level I am not satisfied with. It becomes a reading ofanother text, and so, once again, I have written a different text to the one I was writing. This happens, of course, with every creation. However, the blog, the internet, has this wonderful capacity of allowing for the exercise to be constantly exercised. I go back, I rewrite, I answer myself. I enter dialogues. Exercise. Yes, that is what blogging is for me - an exercise in moving.
The above text first appeared (in a Russian translation) in the Korydor online magazine, as part of the Kyiv Offline project.
My first proposition is: Blogging is about being stupid.
It is accepting that I do not know what I should know before starting to write. But wait! "Should know"? Let me rephrase that: blogging is accepting that there is no required knowledge to write. In part, it is accepting Beuys' affirmation that everyone is an artist. Everyone is an art-writer. Everyone is a potential member of the art milieu. And this everyone also means different aspects of me. Suddenly, the quickness of the form, it's simplicity, encourages me to move forward. To take risks. To dare write something I am not sure of. One could say this is the continuation of the beautiful tradition of Montaigne's Essays (which translates into Attempts). Yet here, the very way it is created and shared encourages the risk, encourages theattempting to see where the thoughts, the words, took me, take me, might take me. But that is just the first step. Because the consequences are quite far-going.
My second proposition is: Thanks to the internet, writing about art can become closer to making art.
The problem with writing is what is usually considered it's greatest advantage: it stays. Letters form words which form sentences which are a pest - they do not let go. So anything you write can and will be used against you, be it literally or metaphorically, by someone, or by yourself, reading what you wrote many years ago.
Writing, then, must become serious. You have to weigh your words. You become responsible. Meaning, what you write needs to pass the test of an imaginary future reading.
The internet may not seem different, because here things also stay (you can find all the internet publications from the past at archives.org). However, there is so much happening, and what you publish has so little apparent weight (you don't feel it, hold it in your hand, share it physically), that even the concept of a "virtual" world seems logical. And yet the beauty is that "virtual", here, is quite real. The letters still turn into meaning - and practically instantly, they turn into social meaning.
But maybe because of the lack of weight, as opposed to other circumstances, when writing the blog, I don't feel obliged to anything. My distance to what I write about can change. I can be a distant observer, and then suddenly move close, challenge the work, ask it questions, see where it takes my thinking. This limit of private/public allows me to think to myself, but in a way that creates a new type of space, a new type of relation. Am I still writing about the work, or am I writing myself into the work? After all, I have no obligation to be a critic. Because I define what the blog is, I do not need to correspond to any criteria - and so the writing can become more personal, more experiential - sharing the experience I am living. And, as my experience is often related to creating new works, the limit becomes blurred - the work I write "about" (or "from" or "out of") is working its way into the one I am (sometimes unconsciously) thinking about or preparing.
My third proposition is: The models of participation in art change because of the internet.
This new type of sharing has other consequences. As opposed to most art writing, it becomes difficult to define what exactly is my position in the (traditional) world of art. Am I reviewing, creating, alluding? It is up to the reader to define what role my text plays in his experience of the art/world.
But also on the scale of the art milieu, the situation becomes more fun.
Am I a big, important fish, or an insignificant lost fish? Reading the blog it is hard to say. And that is, because it really is hard to say. The art market tries to establish market rules - artists have values that either go up or down, and if the art businesspeople had it their way, art would really be an extension of the art market. But this model is greatly inadequate for art, and I am the proof. After a few years writing the blog, I had more and more people contact me. One of them was a curator at the Warsaw Centre for Contemporary Art. He wanted to link to me on the Centre's online (and sometimes offline) review called Obieg. Suddenly, people from the milieunow considered me as an insider. Several people asked me "How did you manage to convince them?". Apparently, they were not used to a model which goes beyond traditional, linear processes. Of course, these new models are far more complex, which can be quite exciting: I can participate in a review and be written about, my work can be the subject of my own analysis picked up by someone from another site, the blog could potentially be published in a paper edition, it becomes a sort of a one-man-show that keeps evolving. Galleries start considering the blog as a serious partner, they become interested in the person, other artists contact me, first as a publisher, then as a person, new unexpected projects come up... All this has been happening. And every time it does, it seems the definition of what I do shifts.
My fourth and last proposition is: Blogging about art can be an exercise in moving.
The great and crazy composer Cornelius Cardew once wrote: "Notation is a way of making people move. If you lack others, like aggression or persuasion. The notation should do it. This is the most rewarding aspect of work in a notation. Trouble is: just as you find your sounds are too alien, intended for a 'different culture', you make the same discovery about your beautiful notation: no one is willing to understand it. No one moves."
A similar thing happens with writing my art blog. This is one way of changing the conditions of living, or appreciating, art. When it works, you feel how it takes you elsewhere. "You" meaning me, but also you, the potential reader. And yet, every once in a while, you, no, I discover that the reading remains on a level I am not satisfied with. It becomes a reading ofanother text, and so, once again, I have written a different text to the one I was writing. This happens, of course, with every creation. However, the blog, the internet, has this wonderful capacity of allowing for the exercise to be constantly exercised. I go back, I rewrite, I answer myself. I enter dialogues. Exercise. Yes, that is what blogging is for me - an exercise in moving.
The above text first appeared (in a Russian translation) in the Korydor online magazine, as part of the Kyiv Offline project.
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