Reflecting on The Conference. CAA 2014 in Chicago.

With most having bid their adieu to CAA 2014 already it is important to remember the insights that may be gained through reflection. There was too much that happened for one blogger to recount along. Luckily, I was with an entire team.

We covered everything from coffee shops to pop up shops, art exhibitions and happenings far beyond the halls of the conference hotel.

I would just like to recount some of my favorite events, openings, and panels – also, it’s critical that I give shout outs to my fellow bloggers by pointing out some my favorite posts and interviews:

Conor Moynihan had one of the best and most elaborative early interviews; Given Conor’s studies of contemporary art from Iraq and Iran this was a very well-executed piece! The subject: Contemporary art from Islamic lands, and the panel “Restructuring the Fields: The ‘Modern’ in ‘Islamic’ and the ‘Islamic in ‘Modern’ Art and Architecture” which was moderated by Dr. Esra Akcan and Dr. Mary L. Roberts. By reading Conor’s interview, it felt as though I had been at the heart of the dialogue.

Esra Akcan

Mary Roberts

La Keisha Leek was no doubt one of the most prolific bloggers on the team. Throughout CAA I saw her numerous times. She often disappeared immediately without a trace. However, it was evident that there was barely anyone La Keisha did not engage with.
From interviews with Shannon Stratton, Jessica Cochran,and Samantha Hill to directing traffic to Chicago’s exhibition spaces, I have one things to say to La Keisha: #speechless

Meg Santisi was serving up her own unique breed of posts, interviews, and retrospectives. At one point, I asked Meg if she could juggle. She responded by juggling five hats and an elephant all at the same time – on day one. Kudos Meg. Read Meg’s interview, Fashion-As-Art, with Debra Parr here.

Daniel Scott-Parker. I have never seen more pictures one human being in one place in my entire life! Daniel is a curator in his own right.

I could not be more impressed with Julynn Wilderson‘s covering of one of the most interesting panels of the conference: The M Word. Also, I was captivated by her engaging questions for Mel Potter in the interview, Social Paper.

Mel Potter and Jessica Cochran, co-curators of Social Paper

Last, but not least is the ever-mysterious Sid Branca. During the conference, Sid revealed incredibly eclectic interests, a talent for organizing multiple events – i.e. The New Media Caucus, and that she is no amateur to blogging.

Special Thanks to Amy M. Mooney and Duncan MacKenzie OBE.

Reflecting on The Conference. CAA 2014 in Chicago.

With most having bid their adieu to CAA 2014 already it is important to remember the insights that may be gained through reflection. There was too much that happened for …

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

600 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60605

“I Saw You” at CAA Chicago

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

Christopher Wille at CAA 2014.

Your blogger ran into Christopher Wille, an artist and educator currently based in Normal, Illinois. Chris has taught at Illinois State University.

Is it a privilege to have a practitioner like Chris Wille at CAA? Yes.

Matthew Robinson: What brings you to the conference this year?

Christopher Wille: I had some interviews and conversations that went really well.

MR: You are a practicing artist yourself. What characterizes your practice?

CW: I am actually a trained jeweler, so I would say that in my practice I allow research to dictate the technical. I have expanded a lot in craft and research. For instance, I have taught myself basic to advanced coding, I have taught myself the language of Computer Numerical Control (CNC) and can use a 3-D printer.

MR: Very interesting. What panels were of interest to you at this conference?

CW: The New Media Caucus was something I was really looking forward to. I enjoyed that many of their events were free and open to the public. They also had a rapid fire artists’ showcase that I thought was a very inventive idea for showing work at the conference.

MR: Tell us where to find out more?

CW: You can visit my webpage to see more of my past and current projects. I am very interested in hybrid practices that blend traditional and digital media. I appreciate craft in the sense of aesthetics and even incorporate that idea in my coding projects.

Thanks Chris!

“I Saw You” at CAA Chicago

“I Saw You” gets candid with CAA conference go-ers, capturing the movers and ‘shapers’ of the conference in the act. Your blogger ran into Christopher Wille, an artist and educator …

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

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, http://julynnwilderson.virb.com wilderpedia@gmail.com

600 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60605

Interview: Curator Teresa Silva on ‘Soft Drugs’ at Dfb

Tonight.

Tonight: Soft Drugs! (IMG: Design by Buki Bodunrin)

SOFT DRUGS “looks at how artworks incorporate play as process or idea for understanding or perceiving the world. play in artistic practice has a way of opening up audiences to new possibilities and perspectives and, while this activity is often felt to be a game, it is a key and rigorous approach in each artist’s idiosyncratic form of production. play can also employ humor or quirk to offset weighty issues or generate new awareness of one’s surroundings. the exhibition showcases performances, moving images, and sculptures that examine issues or challenges of the body, distraction, attraction, the built environment, and the apocalypse as sets of phenomena that could be heavy though lightened through playful and artful tactics.

I was lucky enough to catch up with SOFT DRUGS curator Teresa Silva, and ask her a few questions about her concept for this exhibit…

MS: What was your inspiration for mounting Soft Drugs? And what about the exhibit’s title?

TS: I was invited to guest curate the exhibition by the University of Michigan’s STAMPS School. I had in mind the notions of play and humor, either as process or practice, as a way to come to grips with material, the built environment or weighty issues with witty irreverence. I’d been researching the Situationists and located a meditation by the Lettrist International about play as a rigorous approach to shifting perspective and possibilities. The writing was titled (tongue-in-cheek) soft drugs.

MS: The exhibit is described as presenting “play as an artistic practice,” As curator were you on the lookout for pieces that were innately playful?

TS: I went about it various ways. I looked for artists who play with or tinker as a way of art-making or I identified works that are rooted in the artist’s own sense of humor. Mostly, I talked closely with the artists about the show’s premise, and they developed new work.

I Just Work Here Episode 2: The Commute, Sarah Berkeley documentation of performance, 2013 (IMG: courtesy Teresa Silva)

I Just Work Here Episode 2: The Commute, Sarah Berkeley; documentation of performance, 2013 (IMG: Courtesy of the artist)

MS: You worked at the Hull House for some time – were you at all inspired by Viola Spolin and her improvised, play-based theatre games?

TS: In preparation for an exhibition at the Hull-House Museum, I did archival research on Viola Spolin’s teaching. The exhibition was about art education and showed her influence on today’s theatre pedagogy. My curatorial work usually comes from a point in history and connects to the contemporary moment.

MS: Were there challenges in curating objects alongside performance?

TS: Yes and no. The artists are fantastic and driven, so through ongoing dialogue, I figured out that the performative works would be best in the electrodes at Defibrillator Gallery. Those spaces are good for creating spectacle.

Don't Sleep There's A War Going On, Mothergirl, Performance Still, 2013 (IMG: Courtesy Teresa Silva)

Don’t Sleep There’s A War Going On, Mothergirl, Performance Still, 2013 (IMG: Courtesy of the artist)

MS: How do these inform each other within the exhibit?

TS: I feel like Mothergirl’s performance Moments Together pairs nicely with Sabina Ott’s to perceive the invisible inside you. Both are subtly provocative and intoxicating. Meg Duguid’s interactive performance and Nicole Marroquin’s sculpture Orenda are fragmentary works that use color playfully.

MS: Any other exhibits/events/fun-stuff you are excited to visit during the conference?

TS: There’s so much happening that it makes my head spin. Honestly, I’ve been so occupied with different projects that I haven’t been able to see and do what I want. I look forward to William Pope.L’s interview today at CAA. I attended openings last night for Strange Bedfellows, RISK, and Social Paper at Columbia College. Smartly done shows.

Interview: Curator Teresa Silva on ‘Soft Drugs’ at Dfb

Tonight. SOFT DRUGS “looks at how artworks incorporate play as process or idea for understanding or perceiving the world. play in artistic practice has a way of opening up audiences …

BA Art History '13 Meg Santisi, http://megsantisi.virb.com megsantisi@gmail.com

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.

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

Interdisciplinary Arts and Media First Year MFA Julynn Wilderson, http://julynnwilderson.virb.com wilderpedia@gmail.com

600 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60605

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 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.

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.

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.

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

Social Paper: An Interview with Mel Potter

What is the conversation between socially engaged community craft and gallery art? How can we understand these two seemingly conflicting forms in our current social and cultural landscapes? These are some of the questions that I am talking about with Mel Potter, co-curator of Social Paper and panelist for Friday’s “From Paper to Practice: Tactics and Publics in Socially Engaged Art”.

Mel Potter and Jessica Cochran, co-curators of Social Paper

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Social Paper: An Interview with Mel Potter

Interdisciplinary Arts and Media First Year MFA Julynn Wilderson, http://julynnwilderson.virb.com wilderpedia@gmail.com

600 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60605

Columbia
at CAA

Blog Topics: Uncategorized

Reflecting on The Conference. CAA 2014 in Chicago.

“I Saw You” at CAA Chicago

Compulsive Conference Hoarding

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:

Thank you James. Thank you Theaster.

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

Interview: Curator Teresa Silva on ‘Soft Drugs’ at Dfb

Forget Chocolates and Roses, I Want Artist Books

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