Blog Topics: Bloggers

A Moment With Ivan Gaskell

On DAY TWO: I spent the morning at Music & Visual Culture: Assessing the State of the Field and the afternoon swamped in writing for the blog. Thankfully, I had just enough time to catch the Q&A portion of Objects, Objectives, Objections: The Goals and Limits of the New Materialisms in Art History.  

I am so glad I made it.  The room was packed. Everyone in the audience had eyes locked on the panelists; the papers must have been thrilling. I caught the end of Michael Schreyach‘s excellent paper, titled New Materialism’s Renunciation of Meaning.  As best I could tell, Schreyach’s essay critiques the methods used to locate meaning and to generate value. What bad luck to have missed the entire paper! (I have since bought the recording). As Schreyach finished, moderator Ben Tilghman opened the room to questions. The audience had many.

And one question struck right to the heart of the matter:

Q: Does any interest you may have in a thing as an artwork necessarily exhaust your interest in it?

The panel needed to hear it asked once more…

Q: Does any interest you may have in a thing as an artwork necessarily exhaust your interest in it?

Ivan Gaskell (Photo by Justin Ides, Courtesy Ivan Gaskell)

Ivan Gaskell (Photo by Justin Ides, Courtesy Ivan Gaskell)

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A Moment With Ivan Gaskell

On DAY TWO: I spent the morning at Music & Visual Culture: Assessing the State of the Field and the afternoon swamped in writing for the blog. Thankfully, I had just enough …

BA Art History '13 Meg Santisi, megsantisi@gmail.com
600 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60605

Letter Writing a Performance Art

Over and over and over and OVER again I have witnessed people shoving business cards down the throats of renown art historians, curators, artists, etc. Some of those individuals I too wanted to connect with. More importantly, I wanted to figure out a way to develop a memorable dialog with them. I immediately decided that I would follow-up with these renown individuals with a personal note to communicate my intentions.

These days, it’s so easy to dash off a quick e-mail or text message or make a cell- phone call while you’re on the run that you may rarely make time for letter writing. But letters are a intimate form of connection that simply cannot be equaled or replaced by faster methods of communication. I would even consider a handwritten note as a form of performance art.

Ironically, during a luncheon I shared my thoughts with another artists who introduced me to a Critical Writing Workshop at Gund Gallery at Kenyon College. The program is offered June 15-21, 2014 in Gambier, Ohio. Lead by Peter Plagens and Terry Barrett, workshop activities include: Cultivating clarity in art criticism (and avoiding jargon and clichés). • Writing a short exhibition or project review, based on one of the Gallery’s summer exhibitions. • Writing a longer exhibition review. • Exploring new formats such as blogs and other digital media.

Critical writing IS important, but I see letter writing as a performative experience. This is a seductive way of thinking. After all, if you don’t achieve what you want, what have you done? Business cards are great, but not hundreds of them roaming through your digestive tract.

Letter Writing a Performance Art

Over and over and over and OVER again I have witnessed people shoving business cards down the throats of renown art historians, curators, artists, etc. Some of those individuals I …

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

Compulsive Conference Hoarding

My name is Janelle and I am a compulsive conference hoarder (CCH). CCH is a condition characterized by difficulty discarding conference or workshop items that appear to most people to have little or no value. Often people with CCH also acquire too many items – either free or purchased.This leads to an accumulation of clutter such that living and workspaces cannot be used for their intended purposes. The clutter can result in opening numerous personal and professional opportunities.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:

What typically drives CCH?

  • Discarding valuable items that might be needed or useful someday
  • Ambition
  • Keen understanding that knowledge is power
  • The need to network and develop like minded connections

Typical behaviors seen in CCH  include:

  • Saving far more items than are needed or can be used.
  • Acquisition of more business cards that can be used.
  • Anxiously waiting for the next stimulating conference/workshop.
  • Avoidance of television.
Compulsive Conference Hoarding

My name is Janelle and I am a compulsive conference hoarder (CCH). CCH is a condition characterized by difficulty discarding conference or workshop items that appear to most people to have …

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

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

The M Words: Thoughts on Motherhood and Masculinity in CAA’s feminism

During the Feminist Art Project’s series of panels themed “The M Word: Motherhood and Representation,” panelists discussed issues of maternity, the maternal body, and motherhood in art and for practicing artists. Amidst the radical reclamation of arts and family life, lactative performance art, images of the devouring Mother popularized by Disney, etc., Miriam Schaer presented her work on the stigma of women without children. While this might seem inconsistent with the theme, Schaer mentions that these seemingly contrasting states of motherhood/childlessness are illusory distractions from the larger issues at hand including how women’s bodies understood/evaluated, issues of external validation, procreation, and what it means to be a child as well as a mother.

The Feminist Art Project used the complicated issue of maternity to problematize how those who are parents, those who are not, and those in between can unite under a common but diverse feminist agenda. It revisits the crucial and continual question of how to challenge oppression in the face of a multitude of diverse and different realities. After all, arbitrary and reductive understandings of “womanhood” and “feminism” have only ever been exclusions and harmful to a vision of social justice.

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The M Words: Thoughts on Motherhood and Masculinity in CAA’s feminism

During the Feminist Art Project’s series of panels themed “The M Word: Motherhood and Representation,” panelists discussed issues of maternity, the maternal body, and motherhood in art and for practicing …

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

“I Saw You” (Again) at CAA in Chicago

“I Saw You” gets candid with CAA conference go-ers, capturing the movers and ‘shapers’ of the conference in the act. Will you be next?

Special Thanks to Michael D.

Special Thanks to Michael D.

Your blogger ran into Michael D, a Professor of Photography at Lycoming College in Pennsylvania. Are all the cool cats networking in the lobby? Yes.

Q: What brings you to the conference this year?

A: I am here for the panels, the dialogue; I’m here to learn and engage my colleagues.

Q: What are your interests personally?

A: Well, I am a Professor who is interested in  wide-range of panels and discussions. Also, I am very interested in mixing Art and Science.

Q: Have you seen the Museum of Contemporary Photography, and what’s your take on Archive State?

A: Yes, I have. I was very captivated by the STASI photos by Simon Menner. [On found photography] As artists we’re always used to looking and composing, and we all train ourselves toward our interests and toward aesthetic clarity. I can appreciate the craft in that respect.

Thanks Michael!

 

“I Saw You” (Again) at CAA in Chicago

“I Saw You” gets candid with CAA conference go-ers, capturing the movers and ‘shapers’ of the conference in the act. Will you be next? Your blogger ran into Michael D, a Professor …

Arts Management/ Art History Matt Robinson, matthew.robinson1@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

OPEN ACCESS OR BUST: A LIGHTNING POST

Ambassadors

 

For Day 2 of my CAA experience, I’m working at the Columbia College Graduate Admissions booth at the book fair. I’m stoked and totally prepared for questions like, “Are the kids in grad school cool?” “Do you learn a lot?” “Does grad school prepare you for the real world?” “Will you be rich, famous, or both after you finish?” But for the first hour, only two folks come by. “Can I have this pen?” a woman asks. The second is a tweed-vested middle-age dude with a goatee who walks up and is all, “let me fire this one at you.” (Okay.) “Is Columbia College Chicago related to Columbia University?” I look at him for a second. “I know two guys named Mike,” I tell him. “Do you think they’re related?” Well, I wish I’d actually thought of that, but I haven’t had my third cup of coffee yet. And also I have to say, they are pretty cool pens.

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OPEN ACCESS OR BUST: A LIGHTNING POST

  For Day 2 of my CAA experience, I’m working at the Columbia College Graduate Admissions booth at the book fair. I’m stoked and totally prepared for questions like, “Are …

Daniel Scott Parker MFA Poetry Daniel Scott Parker, danielsparker@gmail.com
600 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60605

“I Saw You” at CAA in Chicago

“I Saw You” gets candid with CAA conference go-ers, capturing the movers and ‘shapers’ of the conference in the act. Will you be next?

Special thanks to Nicole E

Special thanks to Nicole E

Your blogger ran into Nicole E, a current PHD candidate at the University of Missouri in Columbia, MO just before a panel at the prime lunch and social hour in the lobby.

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“I Saw You” at CAA in Chicago

“I Saw You” gets candid with CAA conference go-ers, capturing the movers and ‘shapers’ of the conference in the act. Will you be next? Your blogger ran into Nicole E, …

Arts Management/ Art History Matt Robinson, matthew.robinson1@loop.colum.edu
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