Thank you James. Thank you Theaster.

 

In 1963, James Baldwin published  The Negro Child – His Self-Image; originally published in The Saturday Review, December 21, 1963 and reprinted in The Price of the Ticket, Collected Non-Fiction 1948-1985, Saint Martins 1985. Baldwin wrote:

 

Black and White Photo Collage by Janelle Vaughn Dowell

Black and White Photo Collage by Janelle Vaughn Dowell (original T. Gates photo by Nahtan Keavy @ MCA Chicago

 

A society, in turn, depends on certain things which everyone within that society takes for granted.  Now the crucial paradox which confronts us here is that the whole process of education occurs within a social framework and is designed to perpetuate the aims of society…The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.  The purpose of education, finally, is to create in a person the ability to look at the world for himself, to make his own decisions, to say to himself this is black or this is white, to decide for himself whether there is a God in heaven or not.  To ask questions of the universe, and then learn to live with those questions, is the way he achieves his own identity.  But no society is really anxious to have that kind of person around.  What societies really, ideally, want is a citizenry which will simply obey the rules of society.  If a society succeeds in this, that society is about to perish.  The obligation of anyone who thinks of himself as responsible is to examine society and try to change it and to fight it – at no matter what risk.  This is the only hope society has.  This is the only way societies change.”          
Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet and social critic who explored palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, class and sexual distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th-century America. 
On Saturday, February 15, 2014, I enjoyed all of the presenters in the Creative Capital session: Nike Cave, Theaster Gates and Christine Tarkowski, but I felt the spirit of Baldwin permeating through Theaster Gates in the full Marquette room at the Hilton Hotel. Gates is a multidisciplinary artist, working with performance, sculpture, installation, and large-scale urban interventions. He received a degree in urban planning, but also studied ceramic. This combination of fields informs the multifaceted approach to his artistic practices. His works are not just objects. He manipulates, reconstructs, and activates them in order to breathe further life into the end result.
During the session, Gates presented a chilling picture of a crumbled photograph of Martin Luther King, Jr. inside of a locked glass case. The relic was left at one of the many closing schools in Chicago. Understanding the multifaceted meaning, Gates used the imagery as a provocative art installation and as a compelling symbol of educational inequality. Immediately I felt a reverberation of Baldwin’s position and thought about my responsibility as an artist. I, too, must observe our world and try to change it no matter the obstacle. 

Thank you James. Thank you Theaster. 

 

(Creative Capital has awarded $29 million to 530 groundbreaking artists nationwide through funding, counsel and career development services) 

 

Thank you James. Thank you Theaster.

  In 1963, James Baldwin published  The Negro Child – His Self-Image; originally published in The Saturday Review, December 21, 1963 and reprinted in The Price of the Ticket, Collected …

InterArts Janelle Dowell, janelle.dowell@loop.colum.edu
600 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60605

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” a review of ARTexchange

ARTexchange is an open and free forum that showcases working artist. Artists applied and were chosen in December to be part of the event, which hosts forty or so working artists. I went there last night and here are a few highlights.

Magdal

Magdalena Olszanowski

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“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” a review of ARTexchange

ARTexchange is an open and free forum that showcases working artist. Artists applied and were chosen in December to be part of the event, which hosts forty or so working …

Interdisciplinary Arts and Media First Year MFA Julynn Wilderson, wilderpedia@gmail.com
600 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60605

In the West Loop: Nick Albertson at Aspect Ratio Projects

On view at tonight’s West Loop Gallery Art Walk is an artist named Nick Albertson.
This is Albertson’s first solo exhibition, taking place at Aspect Ratio Projects.

Nick Albertson on the opening night of Single Use.

Nick Albertson on the opening night of Single Use.

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In the West Loop: Nick Albertson at Aspect Ratio Projects

On view at tonight’s West Loop Gallery Art Walk is an artist named Nick Albertson. This is Albertson’s first solo exhibition, taking place at Aspect Ratio Projects.

Arts Management/ Art History Matt Robinson, matthew.robinson1@loop.colum.edu
600 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60605

The future is so bright, we gotta design better shades for everyone

What is the role of artists, creative thinkers and innovators in navigating the rapidly approaching and sometimes dismal looking future? I chatted with Mat Rappaport who is co-chairing the panel “Designing a Better Future: A Participatory Platform for Exchange.”

Co-chair Mat Rappaport. Image Courtesy of Columbia College Chicago.

Co-chair Mat Rappaport. Image Courtesy of Columbia College Chicago.

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The future is so bright, we gotta design better shades for everyone

What is the role of artists, creative thinkers and innovators in navigating the rapidly approaching and sometimes dismal looking future? I chatted with Mat Rappaport who is co-chairing the panel “Designing …

Interdisciplinary Arts and Media First Year MFA Julynn Wilderson, wilderpedia@gmail.com
600 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60605

Forget Chocolates and Roses, I Want Artist Books

CAA Book and Trade Fair Exhibitors

I spent hours inside the CAA Book and Trade Fair which hosts more than 120 publishers, art materials manufacturers, and services in the arts. I explored their wares and projects. I perused through brilliantly orchestrated artist books. An illuminating and transformative experience, collecting artist books create an intimate opportunity to connect with cherished artists, writers, musicians, and thinkers. It is in itself a gift to all who discover the classic wisdom found in its pages. Since tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, I decided to give a very special person in my life the following treasures.

1.

Betye Saar, born in Los Angeles in 1926, emerged in the 1960s as a powerful figure in the redefinition of African American art. Over the past forty years, she has injected African American visual histories into mainstream visual culture by blending spiritual, political, and cultural iconography to create complex works with universal impact. This beautifully illustrated book accompanies an exhibition of Saar's work, showcasing the extraordinary depth and breadth of her achievement. It provides multiple vantage points from which to gain a richer understanding of Saar's career, American art of the 1960s, feminism, contemporary art, and California culture and politics.  Copub: University of Michigan Museum of Art

Betye Saar, born in Los Angeles in 1926, emerged in the 1960s as a powerful figure in the redefinition of African American art. Over the past forty years, she has injected African American visual histories into mainstream visual culture by blending spiritual, political, and cultural iconography to create complex works with universal impact. This beautifully illustrated book accompanies an exhibition of Saar’s work, showcasing the extraordinary depth and breadth of her achievement. It provides multiple vantage points from which to gain a richer understanding of Saar’s career, American art of the 1960s, feminism, contemporary art, and California culture and politics.

2.

Description Featuring over 200 color illustrations, the catalogue Archibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist accompanies the first full-scale survey of the work of Archibald Motley, on view at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University from January 30, 2014, through May 11, 2014. Archibald John Motley, Jr. was an American painter, master colorist, and radical interpreter of urban culture. Among twentieth-century American artists, Motley is surely one of the most important and, paradoxically, also one of the most enigmatic. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1891, Motley spent the first half of the twentieth century living and working in a predominately white neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, just blocks away from the city’s burgeoning black community. During his formative years, Chicago’s African American population increased dramatically, and he was both a witness to and a visual chronicler of that expansion. In 1929 he won a Guggenheim Fellowship, which funded a critical year of study in France, where he painted Blues and other memorable pictures of Paris. In the 1950s, Motley made several lengthy visits to Mexico, where his nephew, the well-known novelist Willard F. Motley, lived. While there, Motley created vivid depictions of Mexican life and landscapes. He died in Chicago in 1981. Motley’s brilliant yet idiosyncratic paintings – simultaneously expressionist and social realist – have captured worldwide attention with their rainbow-hued, syncopated compositions. The exhibition includes the artist’s depictions of African American life in early-twentieth-century Chicago, as well as his portraits and archetypes, portrayals of African American life in Jazz Age Paris, and renderings of 1950s Mexico. The catalogue includes an essay by Richard J. Powell, organizer and curator of Archibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist, as well as contributions from other scholars examining the life, work, and legacy of one of twentieth-century America's most significant artists.  Contributors. Davarian L. Baldwin, David C. Driskell, Oliver Meslay, Amy M. Mooney, Richard J. Powell, Ishmael Reed. Publication of the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University About The Author(s) Richard J. Powell is the John Spencer Bassett Professor of Art and Art History at Duke University. He teaches courses in American art, the arts of the African Diaspora, and contemporary visual studies, and writes extensively on topics ranging from primitivism to postmodernism. His books include African American Art: Harlem Renaissance, the Civil Rights Movement, and Beyond (with Virginia Mecklenburg), Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture, and Black Art: A Cultural History. He was Editor-in-Chief of The Art Bulletin from 2007 until 2010.

Featuring over 200 color illustrations, the catalogue Archibald Motley: Jazz Age Modernist accompanies the first full-scale survey of the work of Archibald Motley, on view at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University from January 30, 2014, through May 11, 2014. Archibald John Motley, Jr. was an American painter, master colorist, and radical interpreter of urban culture. Among twentieth-century American artists, Motley is surely one of the most important and, paradoxically, also one of the most enigmatic.

3.

inda Haverty Rugg explores how nondocumentary narrative art films create alternative forms of collaborative self-representation and selfhood. Lively and accessible, Self-Projection sheds new light on the films of iconic directors and on art cinema in general, ultimately showing how film can transform not only the autobiographical act, but what it means to have a self.

Linda Haverty Rugg explores how nondocumentary narrative art films create alternative forms of collaborative self-representation and selfhood. Lively and accessible, Self-Projection sheds new light on the films of iconic directors and on art cinema in general, ultimately showing how film can transform not only the autobiographical act, but what it means to have a self.

I know that I will love them!

 

 

 

Forget Chocolates and Roses, I Want Artist Books

I spent hours inside the CAA Book and Trade Fair which hosts more than 120 publishers, art materials manufacturers, and services in the arts. I explored their wares and projects. I …

InterArts Janelle Dowell, janelle.dowell@loop.colum.edu
600 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60605

Kirsten Leenaars: Aesthetics and Social Practice

I had the pleasure of conversing with artist Kirsten Leenaars. We talked social practice, aesthetic, people, the post office, and what’s next for Leenars. As one of the artists involved in the exhibition RISK: Empathy, Art, and Social Practice – which is open Feb 10th – April, 26th, at Glass Curtain Gallery – I thought it appropriate to get her take on the complicated practice of a socially engaged artist. Leenaars will exhibit in the RISK, the exhibition featuring contemporary artists whose work “invites the outside in,” blurring “the lines between public and private space.” Click Read more for the full interview.

Kirsteen Leenars (left) and Lise Baggesen in Boulevard Dreamers

Kirsten Leenaars (left) and Lise Baggesen in Boulevard Dreamers

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Kirsten Leenaars: Aesthetics and Social Practice

I had the pleasure of conversing with artist Kirsten Leenaars. We talked social practice, aesthetic, people, the post office, and what’s next for Leenars. As one of the artists involved in the …

Arts Management/ Art History Matt Robinson, matthew.robinson1@loop.colum.edu
600 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60605

What’s in your wallet? Advice for the thrifty

Trying to navigate CAA can feel like being lost in the supermarket but instead of towers of canned beans and cereal, you are surrounded by some of the most innovative and most ground breaking academics and artists in the world.

In light of this, it can be intimidating to decide which panels and events to go to.

My name is Julynn, I’m MFA student at Columbia, and I am one of your many indispensible internet guides to the gourmet selection of this conference. In order to get us started, I thought I might introduce some absolutely FREE events going on during CAA this year. When the CAA conference was still just a whisper in my department, my initial reaction was that it sounded really, super-duper expensive. But good news for past-me and anyone else with a thin wallet! Even though there are some great opportunities that you have to pay for, CAA has a lot of free programming that kicks ass.

The Humanities And Technology Camp (THAT Camp) is kicking off the free CAA programming this Monday and Tuesday with a pre-conference forum on digital art history. This unconference is an open discussion for anyone interested in technological or humanistic inquiry into digital art history, but make sure to come early because space is first-come-first-serve!

For the duration of the conference, CAA’s Services to Artist Committee co-ordinates ARTspace which offers a variety of activities and panels catered specifically to practicing artists. This includes Media Lounge, a live stream of videos and workshops featuring Jenny Marketou’s Uncommon/Commons.

Also, don’t miss the Feminist Art Project, whose theme this year is: “The M Word: Motherhood and Representation.” The Feminist Art Project is going to be hosting a day of panels all day Saturday, and features the work of some phenomenal presenters as well as an emphasis on open conversation.

Finally, right at the intersection of my commitment to thrift and love of my educational institution, I’m really stoked about the CAA Evening at Columbia which will feature a number of gallery openings you don’t want to overlook, such as Social Paper, C33 Unmakers, and RISK: Empathy Art and Social Practice.

If you have time, pop over to The Fountains Foundation  for the opening of a mini retrospective of work by Annette Barbier or to the Shop Columbia Open House, which will feature the art and craft of Columbia College students.

 

 

 

What’s in your wallet? Advice for the thrifty

Trying to navigate CAA can feel like being lost in the supermarket but instead of towers of canned beans and cereal, you are surrounded by some of the most innovative …

Interdisciplinary Arts and Media First Year MFA Julynn Wilderson, wilderpedia@gmail.com
600 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60605