Kirsten Leenaars: Aesthetics and Social Practice

by Matt Robinson

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

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

Day One: Punk, Abstraction, Cake.

by Meg Santisi

Day One, A quick recap:

onthefloorjpeg

Taking Mad Notes

Taking mad amounts of notes at each session…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What a full day! For energy between sessions I opted for a $3.00 bag of pretzels (!) from the Hilton gift shop, made many trips to the third floor bathrooms for those complimentary hand-exfoliants, and took a brisk walk through Grant Park (cold).

The Hilton is packed full of us art types, as we carry our black tote bags between sessions, and scan the names on badges for friends and colleagues. It helped enormously to have game-planned in advance. Knowing a bit about the panelists, their papers, and artwork allowed me to bounce around more easily between sessions and even ask a few questions.

The sessions I spent the most time at: Visual Culture Caucus: On the Industrial Sublime and Articulating Abstraction. I also caught bits of Towards A Loser’s Art History: Artistic Failure in the Long Nineteenth Century and accidentally missed (dang!) On Sampled Time: Artist’s Videos and Popular Culture. I witnessed a fiery audience-to-panel argument at Sensitive Instruments (A Painting Discussion) and moved on to cocktails with my fellow bloggers and our Columbia College sponsors Amy Mooney and Duncan Mackenzie. At the end of all that I ate a giant slice of my birthday cake and fell fast asleep…

 Here’s (just a few) things from Day One:
@ Visual Culture Caucus: On The Industrial Sublime
Day One: Punk, Abstraction, Cake.

Day One, A quick recap:                 What a full day! For energy between sessions I opted for a $3.00 bag of pretzels (!) …

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

Shannon Stratton: On Feminism, Faith Wilding and CAA

by La Keisha Leek

Image Credit: Elsewhere

Image Credit: Elsewhere

I am always in constant thought on the interdisciplinary universe in which I am embedded. In addition to social practice, for me Chicago seems to be at the center of that place at the moment. Those closely connected to this are practicing artists-art administrators-educators-curators.

Before a short lunch break and attending the ARTspace session Services to Artists Committee Meta Mentors: The Deluge at 12:30pm today, I offer this interview with Shannon Stratton.

La Keisha Leek: Who is Shannon Stratton?

Shannon Stratton: The Executive Director (and founder) of Threewalls, a grass-roots arts organization for contemporary art founded in 2003.

LL: Tell me about your curatorial practice?

SS: It is probably accurate to say it is all over the place. I am interested in a lot of things, too much of the time, so I get to curate what comes together in time, with a venue, artists, funding etc. I don’t get to curate at Threewalls that often. The program is primarily curated by the arts community, through an advisory board made up of artists from emerging to established. I probably put a show together there once a year, sometimes not at all. I curate outside the gallery, but that can take a couple years to get an idea accepted by another organization, the funds raised and the project executed. But besides all that: I’m interested in curatorial constraints, I’m interested in space, I’m interested in finding ways of developing exhibitions with artists not around them. I was an artist once too, so curating keeps me involved in studio practice in a way that is very fulfilling because I get to be in so many studios, to develop projects with artists I love.

 LL: When did feminism enter the discourse for you and how has that continued to inform the ways in which you approach exhibition making and thinking about contemporary art?

SS: I was a Fiber graduate student, as well as studying it in undergrad. That discipline tends to be heavily informed by feminism, so I think my mentors really provided that backbone from an early age, both overtly and unintentionally. I also identified as a feminist as a teen and never wavered from that, never felt shy about it, so I think that identification must run deep in all that I do. At the same time, I can’t point to any professional undertakings and say: this has a feminist agenda, even though if one looks at Threewalls exhibition history as notices the high percentage of female and feminist artists in our exhibition archive. It’s interesting to me that that is the case, and frankly says more about the continued discrepancies in the visual arts. I have an artist advisory board of all genders, races and ages, making most of these decisions, and they are looking for the strongest work, that needs exposure, that is the most important work to support and see now. Its interesting that the results are predominantly women, at all career stages, whose work is still under-represented yet undeniably strong. But as far as Faith goes, this was a decision I made that felt important and close to me. Faith Wilding is an artist that I think most young artists, especially young feminist artists learn about and read. When I learned of her Women’s Art Caucus award I was sort of floored to realize she had never had a retrospective of her work, at 70! So that’s how that started.

Faith Wilding, Fresno Feminist Art Program, 1971. credit: Isadora Duncan. Collaborative costume image, staging Nancy Youdelman Photography: Dori Atlantis

Faith Wilding, Fresno Feminist Art Program, 1971. Image credit: Isadora Duncan. Collaborative costume image, staging Nancy Youdelman Photography: Dori Atlantis

 LL: Faith Wilding’s first retrospective exhibition Faith Wilding: Fearful Symmetries Retrospective documenting the past forty years of her studio practice is currently up at Threewalls. How did this exhibition come to fruition at your space?

SS: To piggy back on the last question – really through the recognition that she hadn’t had this kind of exhibition before and it was time. It was time for Faith, but also it was time for art. Feminism is on people’s minds, as it should be – back with a vengeance perhaps? And so looking at the work we were going to show it was apparent that these images needed to be seen, some again, some for the 1st time. In part because some of this image making really resonates with drawing and painting practices that are emerging again, now, and in part to see what 40 years of being a feminist looks like, privately, in an art practice that has been consistent alongside all of Faith’s other activities of teaching, lecturing, collaborating and so on.

LL: The presence of Virginia Wolfe appears several times throughout the exhibition, as language and as portrait. The same is to be said for a few other themes. With such a vast body of work to pull, tell me about the honing in process and how certain forms and ideas came to be those that would speak to Wilding’s practice in this exhibition?

SS: What was amazing to me was how consistent the work was over 40 years, even if there were a few stylistic shifts. Across 4 decades the work maintained these themes about the body and emergence and recombination: cocoons, moths, mermaids and other hybrid creatures, wombs, leaves/pods, etc. They occur again and again. And they form an interesting trajectory away from Womb Room and Waiting, Faith’s iconic early work. Really, waiting, transforming and emerging are consistent throughout – whether that waiting is anticipating or resting, so it became very easy to make selections that highlighted different times in her practices without resulting in a tangled show. Also Faith’s material handling and use of color is quite consistent throughout her lifetime. She is a fabulous colorist.

LL: As a curator and arts administrator whose work extends far beyond an academic institution, how important do feel the role of arts education to be?

SS: I think arts education, for everyone, from grade school onwards is a necessity. The art encounter is where new understandings emerge – it doesn’t have to be pretty either, the art encounter can bring forth ugly stuff too. Arts education is valuable, not to teach people exactly what an art work means, but to get them comfortable with approaching art, with hanging out with it, with having complex feelings towards it. Beyond that – the cost of a BFA or an MFA at the vast number of schools that keep adding and expanding arts programs is problematic. It makes art look like an elite product. This imbalance has to be corrected.

 LL: In what ways does CAA’s annual conference assist in this effort for emerging art historians, curators and artists?

SS: I’m not sure of CAA’s value at this point. I think it’s an old model that needs some serious rethinking. The panels could be of great benefit to students, but its prohibitively expensive to attend. (Unless you go to just Artspace stuff)  And even those who work in the field are hard pressed to afford attendance unless their institutions pay for it. I could go on, but I’ll leave at that. Who is it for as a professional organization and is it really meeting those needs? And further to that, what ways are artists, critics, curators getting together to talk about work that are more accessible? More contemporary? There is a huge emphasis in institutions that their faculty or students join and attend CAA rather than an acknowledgement that artists are doing plenty of interesting things outside this model to support one another. Art historians of course, are welcome to feel differently. Maybe there are just too many ways people work in the arts these days to have one professional arts organization that can serve everyone.

LL: What exhibitions or programs going on during CAA are you looking forward to attending while in Chicago?

SS: I am looking forward to going to the Center Will Not Hold panel at SAIC on Thursday. Faith is reading from her memoirs on Friday, so of course I’m excited about that. Anthony Romero and Jillian Soto have organized an event The People in Dining Room 5 Wish to Have Your Attention at the Hilton that is parallel to the conference – a kind of intervention event, which I’m going to check out Saturday morning. And as always I look forward to seeing old friends and getting caught up in the hotel bar. You don’t have to register for that.

Shannon Stratton: On Feminism, Faith Wilding and CAA

I am always in constant thought on the interdisciplinary universe in which I am embedded. In addition to social practice, for me Chicago seems to be at the center of …

BA Art History '14 La Keisha Leek, La.Leek@loop.colum.edu
600 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60605

Artists’ Videos & Popular Culture, Popular Videos & Culture’s Artists

by Sid Branca

Today I attended the panel On Sampled Time: Artists’ Videos and Popular Culture, chaired by Margot M. K. Bouman and featuring papers by Sarah Smith, Isabella L. Wallace, Solveig Nelson, and Godfre Leung. Unfortunately due to illness and weather-related travel woes, the first two papers (Smith and Wallace’s) were presented in absentia and read by the panel chair. But while this meant a less lively Q&A discussion, all the talks were really quite interesting. There was some thorough analysis of a range or artistic works engaging with (sampling, appropriation, critique of) popular culture–especially popular cinema– in the context of video and projection-based art.

What I thought I’d do for this blog post is give an overview of what works were primarily discussed, and then contribute a few recent examples of something I think is equally important: this process operating in the reverse direction, i.e. pop culture’s engagement with and sampling of the “art world”.

lady gaga artpop koons shoot

Lady Gaga being photographed by Jeff Koons. (I’ve tried to find a source to credit on this photo to no avail, sorry.)

Artists’ Videos & Popular Culture, Popular Videos & Culture’s Artists

Today I attended the panel On Sampled Time: Artists’ Videos and Popular Culture, chaired by Margot M. K. Bouman and featuring papers by Sarah Smith, Isabella L. Wallace, Solveig Nelson, and …

MFA Candidate, Interdisciplinary Arts & Media Sid Branca, sid@sidbranca.com
600 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60605

Jessica Cochran: On Curating, Feminism and Supporting Chicago-based Artists

by La Keisha Leek

Jessica_New Headshot

I first met Jessica Cochran when I organizing a conversation series this past summer with Rebuild Foundation on non-traditional archives. Although she has been in my own backyard working at Columbia College Chicago, our paths had never crossed before then. It was through what always seems to be a circular grapevine of mentors and friends here in Chicago- Amy Mooney and Tempestt Hazel– I was introduced to her practice.

Jessica’s exhibition Social Paper, co-curated with Melissa Potter opens this evening along with tons of other exhibitions at Columbia. Jessica will be presenting during Friday’s panel From Paper to Practice: Tactics and Publics in Socially Engaged Art and is the organizer of a panel within The Feminist Art Project’s day long presentations on Saturday titled  Motherhood and the Exhibitionary Platform: Considering the Implications of Maternity through the Curatorial Lens

La Keisha Leek: Who is Jessica Cochran?

Jessica Cochran: I am a curator and arts administrator, and I am currently the curator and acting Assistant Director at the Center for Book and Paper Arts. Besides that I teach courses in contemporary art and arts administration at local colleges, and do various freelance projects that range from writing catalog essays to art collection management.

LL: Tell me about your curatorial practice?

JC: Through my curatorial work at CBPA I have developed an interest in interdisciplinary artist publications, paper and craft, and the role of text and activity of reading in relation to contemporary art. In my broader curatorial practice, I am really interest in generative projects—those that facilitate the production of new work—and creating opportunities to show Chicago-based artists in relation to artists from elsewhere. That doesn’t happen enough in this city, and its important that curators are constantly creating new contexts for artists.

Jessica Cochran presenting artist books from the Center for Book and Paper Arts and Dorchester Projects. Summer 2013.

Jessica Cochran presenting artist books from the Center for Book and Paper Arts and Dorchester Projects. Summer 2013.

LL: When did feminism enter the discourse for you and how has that continued to inform the ways in which you approach exhibition making and thinking about contemporary art?

JC: For me feminism runs pretty deep. I didn’t really grow up in a place where concepts of feminism were articulated with sophisticated language, however the importance of gender equity was constantly reinforced by my mother and father.  As a child, I knew there was nothing I couldn’t do! Through college and into my career I have really developed in terms of my own approach to feminism—and I am both energized by the opportunities that exist for women today, but also a bit disappointed with the way that women are still fighting for equity in so many ways, while constantly dealing with a lot of problematic essentializing and stereotyping from the media and institutions.  Today I am so fortunate to work with a group of individuals—women and men—who are committed to serious conversations about feminism in the workplace and in the arts in general—you wouldn’t believe the conversations I get to have on a daily basis with artists Miriam SchaerMelissa Potter and  April Sheridan.

Feminism enters my curatorial practice in several ways. First, I try my best to make sure that my exhibitions are diverse and expansive, and that whatever the topic they represent myriad ways of looking at and being in the world. The gallery is a place to be unmoored from your own subjectivity—gently and sometimes not so gently. Truly, I find myself working with so many women in exhibitions, Chicago has some of the smartest most interesting women creating just totally remarkable work.

LL: Having a curatorial practice that began outside of and continues to extends beyond your role at Columbia why do you feel it was important to work within arts education?

JS: I cannot even begin to articulate how incredible it is working in an academic gallery. The Center for Book and Paper Arts is embedded in an interdisciplinary arts department—meaning I get to work with and create programming for students and faculty interested in artists’ books, paper, media, performance, etc—and it is totally fantastic. The number one best part of my job is the relationships I build with students as they work by my side in the gallery and center. Through course opportunities in the gallery, student employment and their thesis exhibitions, I get to help students learn about the “white cube” from the point of view of an exhibition-maker and as an artist. From designing exhibitions to writing wall text to marketing, our students are part of it all. And of course, I learn as much from them as they do from me!

LL: What exhibition or program going on during CAA would you recommend to conference attendees?

JS: I have to promote Social Paper, an exhibition I co-curated with Melissa Potter. We look at hand papermaking in relation to socially engaged art. We have worked so hard on this how and want everyone to see it!

Jessica Cochran: On Curating, Feminism and Supporting Chicago-based Artists

I first met Jessica Cochran when I organizing a conversation series this past summer with Rebuild Foundation on non-traditional archives. Although she has been in my own backyard working at Columbia …

BA Art History '14 La Keisha Leek, La.Leek@loop.colum.edu
600 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60605

IF IT HAD BEEN A SHARK, IT WOULD HAVE BITTEN YOU

by Daniel Scott Parker

Shark

 

With CAA going on, there is what my 7th grade science teacher, Mrs. Walden, would’ve called a “cognitive overload.” (Mrs. Walden also reprimanded me several times for having in-class conversations with the person behind me. I sat in the last row. Let that sink in for a moment.) Maybe it’s me; maybe it’s her. The point is, there’s a lot of pies to dig your hands into. But in the mix of trying to wrangle all these goodies in, it’s easy to lose sight of some of the most local, relevant, and overlooked art spaces.

IF IT HAD BEEN A SHARK, IT WOULD HAVE BITTEN YOU

  With CAA going on, there is what my 7th grade science teacher, Mrs. Walden, would’ve called a “cognitive overload.” (Mrs. Walden also reprimanded me several times for having in-class …

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

Look What I Had for Breakfast This Morning

by Janelle Dowell

I’ve never been a morning person. But, I love my job as CAA blogger, and it requires waking up REALLY early with a sense of humor along with a camera and pen in hand. I’ve come to embrace an early wake-up as a key to success. I didn’t eat breakfast before heading to the Chicago Hilton before my first session which was Contemporary Black Art and the Problem of Racial Fetishism.

Jillian Hernandez was the first presenter who addressed Racial Fetish as Racial Pleasure? Reading Race-Positive Counter Pornographies in Wangechi Mutu’s The Ark Collection. Mutu’s practice involves the collaging of the gorgeous and the grotesque, distorted beauty ideals and sexual fantasies.

Represented in presentation by Jillian Hernandez

This image was presented during a presentation by Jillian Hernandez

Mutu speaks about her work in an interview on her “You Call This Civilization” exhibition:

Either the super-traditional African woman with the big earrings or scarification…or this other woman which kind of is a pin-up, a very vile erotic sexualized pinup. These two objectifications are placed together and there’s this kind of dialogue going on between them … They’re very interesting to look at but ultimately I remove the most titillating parts. The central part of the shot is removed and what you have is this synergy between the two. And I think it’s a fantastic kind of harmony that happens and it makes people reflect on both things without replicating the objectification of either one of them.

Hernandez’s transdisciplinary scholarship synthesizes methods from anthropology, art history, and cultural studies, drawn from her experiences as a girls’ educator and curator of contemporary art. Her research investigates questions regarding processes of racialization, sexualities, embodiment, girlhood, and the politics of cultural production ranging from underground and mainstream hip hop to visual and performance art.

Objectification of black women’s bodies, what an intense morning discourse. My stomach loudly communicated that I needed to leave to go get some breakfast, but each presenter offered a rousing perspective that I didn’t want to miss. Tomorrow I think I’ll have breakfast before I get to the Hilton.

Look What I Had for Breakfast This Morning

I’ve never been a morning person. But, I love my job as CAA blogger, and it requires waking up REALLY early with a sense of humor along with a camera and pen in …

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

Center for Black Music Research Open House

by Janelle Dowell

Center for Black Music Research invite College Art Association conference attendees, Columbia College faculty, staff, and students, and the public to a CBMR open house at 618 South Michigan Avenue, 6th floor, 5:30-8:30pm. CBMR/Columbia College Faculty Fellow Fo Wilson will exhibit works-in-progress

Photograph and Video installation  by Janelle Vaughn Dowell

Photograph and Video installation by Janelle Vaughn Dowell

by Janelle Vaughn Dowell (shameless plug),  Sarah Colbert, Robert Gulas, Jaquay McNeal, Andrea Mikeska, and Cristabel Tapia who are in her CBMR Research Studio class.

Wilson has been named the 2013-2014 CBMR Faculty Fellow. Wilson graduated with a MFA from the Rhode Island’s School of Design’s Furniture Program in 2005 with a concentration in Art History, Theory and Criticism. Prior to her graduate studies, she founded and ran Studio W, Inc., a design consultancy with offices in New York and the San Francisco Bay area. She writes and lectures about art, craft and design to international audiences. Her furniture-based work is exhibited nationally, and her design work is included in the collection of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

Founded at Columbia College Chicago in 1983, The Center for Black Music Research is the only organization of its kind. It exists to illuminate the significant role that black music plays in world culture by serving as a nexus for all who value black music, by promoting scholarly thought and knowledge about black music, and by providing a safe haven for the materials and information that document the black music experience across Africa and the diaspora.
Center for Black Music Research Open House

Center for Black Music Research invite College Art Association conference attendees, Columbia College faculty, staff, and students, and the public to a CBMR open house at 618 South Michigan Avenue, …

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

Check Out These Pictures!!

by Courtney Crawford

I am a photographer so I am a little biased, but if you are looking to see some good work around town there are several photography exhibits opening during CAA.  So, while you’re in Chicago, check out these pictures!!

February 13, 2014

 

 

archive
© Thomas Sauvin

What: Archive State 
Where: Museum of Contemporary Photography, 600 S. Michigan
When: Jan. 21-Apr 6.
            Opening Reception Feb. 13, 5 pm- 8 pm

LiuZheng_OperaActor_525px
                                                          © Liu Zheng

What:  Inspired by the Opera: Contemporary Chinese Photography and Video
Where: SMART Museum, 5550 S Greenwood Ave
When: Feb. 13-June 15
            Opening Reception Feb. 13, 5 pm-7 pm

ccc_library_shay
                                                        © Art Shay

What: My Florence
Where: Columbia College Chicago Library, 624 South Michigan Avenue, 2nd Floor
When: Jan. 27-May 24
Opening Reception Feb. 13, 5 pm-7 pm

February 15, 2014

 

postcard_front
Image courtesy Nicole White

What: Capture Effect
Where: 34333433 North Kedvale Avenue
When: Feb 15-March 9
Opening Reception Feb. 15,  6 pm-9 pm

Check Out These Pictures!!

I am a photographer so I am a little biased, but if you are looking to see some good work around town there are several photography exhibits opening during CAA. …

MFA Photography Courtney Crawford, crawford.courtney1@gmail.com
600 S. Michigan Ave. Chicago, IL 60605

“I Saw You” at CAA 2014 Chicago

by Matt Robinson

Robert Blanford and Neysa Page-Lieberman at the College Art Association Conference

Robert Blanford and Neysa Page-Lieberman at the College Art Association Conference

Your blogger ran into Professor Robert Blandford and Neysa Page-Lieberman during the first full day of CAA 2014. They had both chaired a morning discussion panel entitled: Curatorial and Exhibition Studies: Bridging Theory and Practice.  Needless to say the panelists at this year’s conference are both well-versed and well-dressed.

Bob and Neysa briefly provided me some advice on a popular concept and essential ‘to-do’ at conferences like CAA. Networking. Networking has become an essential trade of academics, cultural workers, and artists alike; a trend that has parallels with the growing and sometimes disparate skill sets of the contemporary work force in a variety of industries. Exhibitions and opening receptions will draw the attention of conference go-ers within the next several days. These events are the perfect opportunities to contact, confront, and investigate both your favorite panelist and that cutey with the elbow-patched blazer.

Neysa Page-Lieberman is curator of the upcoming exhibition RISK: Empathy, Art, and Social Practice whose opening reception is tomorrow, February 13th from 5:30 pm to 8:30 pm.

 

 

“I Saw You” at CAA 2014 Chicago

Your blogger ran into Professor Robert Blandford and Neysa Page-Lieberman during the first full day of CAA 2014. They had both chaired a morning discussion panel entitled: Curatorial and Exhibition Studies: …

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