I feel like I am in a race against time!  I cannot believe that I am a month into my final semester.   Whenever Monday pops up, I feel seriously confused.  Where did my weekend go?!   I feel like Webster should change the spelling of weekend to wEAkend.  It just feels so weak, I need more of it.

You can find Brent Houston's Untitled Cube at Hinge Gallery. Picture obtained at hingegallery.com

On Sunday morning, I headed to Hinge Gallery to volunteer for the day.  Holly Sabin, a recent graduate of the AEMM graduate program, has opened her own gallery in Ukrainian Village.  The mission of Hinge Gallery is to support emerging contemporary artists of the highest quality from Chicago, as well as around the world.  Hinge Gallery is a commercial exhibition space featuring painting, mixed media, prints, sound, video, sculpture, and installation.

It is located at the corner of Damen and Chicago Avenues.  It is located right next door to Bobo’s Market.  They serve sandwiches, dessert, coffee, and tea.  I stopped in and had a cup of joe along with this amazing sweet potato ravioli– you have to try it!  Delicious and affordable.

Holly has been gracious enough to provide her gallery as a space for a Rock For Kids fundraising event that will be taking place Friday, April 6.  This event is showcasing some of AEMM’s finest and other professional artists.  I will be blogging about this is the near future, so stay tuned.

After spending most of the day at Hinge, I had to hurry home and get ready for a Grammy’s viewing party at Lincoln Hall, which was hosted by The Recording Academy Chicago Chapter.  The event featured a live pre-telecast gig by a Chicago band, Break.  Unfortunately, I was not able to catch their performance, but I heard good things.

Picture obtained by The Recording Academy - Chicago Chapter's Facebook page.

I got to meet up with one of my favorite pals, Kyle Curry, Associate Director at Rock For Kids.  We enjoyed free chocolates, champagne, and beer.  We watched LL Cool J do his thang hosting, the tributes to Whitney, Katy Perry’s blue crimped hair, Nicki Minaj’s “The Exorcism Of Roman”, Chris Brown going on stage, Adele cleaning house, the Foo Fighters performing twice, and Lady Gaga not winning.  All-in-all it was a decent viewing.

The next day, the Internet chatter seemed to be centered around: who is this Bon Iver dude?  This is very reminiscent of last year’s chatter about Arcade Fire.  I think that many indie music lovers, myself included, were happy about Bon Iver’s win.  However, I also wasn’t exactly sure why he was in the category of new artists since he has been around for a while.  So I did some research and found out the guidelines for the Best New Artist Award, which are as follows: “for a new artist who releases, during the Eligibility Year, the first recording which establishes the public identity of that artist.”

If you haven’t already, go check out Bon Iver (AKA Justin Vernon).  I would recommend listening to his first album, which was released in 2008 entitled, For Emma, Forever Ago and also his more recent album Bon Iver, Bon Iver.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWcyIpul8OE[/youtube]

Bon Iver’s Official Music Video of Holocene off his self-titled album.