projections in berlin

Presently I am in a group show at Galerie Crystal Ball in Berlin.

Curated by Alena Williams and Manfred Kirschner,  In a Shadow Box consists of drawings by twenty-seven artists. We all received transparencies and glass slides in the mail, drew on them with ink, and then mailed them back to be projected on the walls of the gallery.

{Susanna Bluhm, Untitled (In a Shadow Box 2), ink drawing on glass slide, 2010}

Images in the show are fleeting, interrupted, and altered by what came before or after. While most drawing shows feature works materially attached to the wall, with accompanying title notes, the dark space of this show offers no grounding for the work or the viewers moving through the space. The drawings float together and create an ephemeral installation in the “empty” space. I imagine people are walking away with odd memories of lines and shapes layered on top of each other in a way that will be different from person to person, animating internal shadow boxes.

{Susanna Bluhm, Untitled (In a Shadow Box 1), projected drawing on transparency, installed in Galerie Crystal Ball Berlin, 2010}

demystification in the works

There’s something really interesting happening on Grey Gallery’s blog. The process of gathering artists for inclusion in a juried show has been made transparent.

5×5 will be a show of five local artists chosen by five non-local jurors. Grey Gallery chose the jurors (artists and curators from California, New York, Miami), and then put a call out for local emerging artists to submit images for review. All 88 of the entries are posted on Grey’s blog, for all to see.

Of all of the juried shows I’ve applied for (I applied for this one), I’ve never been made privy to the pool of applicants. I usually prepare my application and then send it off to be dealt with behind closed doors. Sometimes I get an acceptance letter, often a rejection letter, sometimes I never hear back at all. From start to finish, the process is a mystery with the artist left in the dark. I’ve learned to equate the act of mailing my application (with application fee) to lighting it on fire. Then if I get an acceptance letter, I can enjoy genuine surprise; “Oh, hey! I did apply for this, didn’t I!”

After twelve years of participating in this covert operation, I find Grey’s approach mighty refreshing. I’m enjoying looking at all the artists’ works, reading their bios and statements. It’s fascinating to see art worlds innocently butting up against each other in the format of a blog entry.

No. 69

Now Grey is asking everyone to join the conversation around this project by commenting on the blog. You can say which artists you would pick for the show! Here are some of my favorites:

No. 12

No. 55

No. 84

No. 27

No. 24

No. 42

I wonder if the gallery is going to make the jury’s decision-making process public on the blog as well. If they do, it will be an exciting and satisfying conclusion to this exercise in transparency.

We all need to read this (THIS IS OUR REAL JOB)

If you haven’t already, you need to read this. I recommend the printed version, which you can pick up for free at SOIL.  A single issue newspaper, ART WORK is a project of Temporary Services in Chicago. It is page-to-page text of artists talking about what it means to be an artist presently in the U.S.  Their considerations are wide-ranging and poignant; this is seminal reading at its most relevant.

“Universities continue to crank out masters of fine arts who have next to no possibility of getting gainful employment and little to no role in creating future employment outside the already tiny pool of highly coveted tenure track positions. If you are an educator, we challenge you to use your privilege and your security to improve things for your students and the rest of us. If you are an adjunct teacher, we encourage you to make it difficult for your university to continue exploiting you. Unionize. Walk out. At least make sure to milk every resource you can, preferably to enable and supplement educational models that happen outside of these institutions. Scan those rare and out of print library books and periodicals and put ‘em online. Check out A/V equipment and use it to put on free events for everyone. Get as many guest lecturers paid through your classes as you can. Bring the visiting out-of-town lecturers to an extra event space and encourage them to do a bonus talk for people who aren’t clued in to academic calendars around town. Sow dissent. Teach the brave truth of poverty rather than the sniveling, competitive lie of the Top 5%. Make everyone’s pay public knowledge – demand equity for all of us who create the next generations of artists and thinkers. It is time for some leveling and accountability, even for you progressives in the art schools.”

- Temporary Services

Daniel Carrillo’s Wet Plate Series

{Gala Bent}

Like everyone else, I’m completely taken with Daniel Carrillo’s photographs of Seattle artists using the Wet Plate Collodion process. I can’t stop looking at them. He’s captured a specific, intense quality of each of his subjects. Viewing the portraits of the people I know, I actually feel that I now know them better. I am used to seeing photographs of these friends and acquaintances on Facebook, but Daniel’s images are something else entirely. They’ve got the aura that supposedly died as mechanical reproduction was born. Would these portraits have been possible using a contemporary (digital) process?

{Troy Gua}

Generally, we relentless, digital-age, everyday photographers do a lot of self-editing. Facebook is flooded with head shots taken exactly one arm’s length away. Moving through the world with our cameras, we bask in the freedom to shoot hundreds of photos, trigger happy and swept up in the moment. So, with Daniel’s portraits, I’m struck by the way these subjects had no control over their resulting pictures. Their images were completely in the hands of the photographer, and in his ability to manipulate a complicated process. What results is an intricate vulnerability; an intimacy that you wouldn’t expect from a posed portrait shot over many seconds.

{Emily Pothast}

{Amanda Manitach}

{Emily Pothast and Amanda Manitach writing about their experiences as subjects.}

Nicholas Nyland at SOIL

{Nicholas Nyland, Garland, 2009, Acrylic on paper, grommets, rope, Dimensions variable}

I really love these weird creations of Nicholas Nyland‘s that are hanging/drooping/slouching in the back room of SOIL this month. I’m not sure if it’s Painting as an awkward teenager or Painting as a sometimes incontinent yet cheerful elderly person. Not really funny, but endearing and slightly embarrassing. One of the objects is like this big tongue perched on the wall– part painting, part sculpture. Another (Garland, above) might want to sway gracefully like a Calder mobile, but its parts get in the way.

How to get involved with the Art Lending Library!

The Art Lending Library is a system of lending and borrowing artwork to the public for free. It is a trust-based program where artists provide artwork to be checked out by any member of the public, and patrons allow artwork and artists into their homes; all in the spirit of sharing.

- Art Lending Library Mission Statement

The Art Lending Library (A.L.L.) (recently featured in City Arts Magazine) at Cooper in West Seattle has a call out to artists as well as an invitation to the general public to come check out art.

What’s left in Seattle when you take out Culture? (4Culture is slated to die in two years.)

4Culture –arguably the cultural aorta of Seattle (if not the region)– will lose its primary source of funding in 2012. If it doesn’t have funding, 4Culture will die. From 4Culture’s website: “4Culture provides funding for support of the visual and performing arts, heritage programs and historic preservation. Annual funding supports the activities of more than 250 arts and heritage organizations, hundreds of artists and heritage specialists, capital construction projects and equipment purchases, new arts and heritage projects, and cultural education in public schools.”

It’s frightening to imagine what this city (or any city) would look like without all of these things.

The employees of 4Culture have been doing everything they can to advocate for the change of the legislation that has their funding ending in 2012. They’ve driven to Olympia to stand in courtrooms, written letters, initiated advocacy forums, and waited anxiously for funding to be extended. It hasn’t worked, and time is running out.

If enough people act, it might be possible re-establish funding and effectively SAVE 4Culture.

How YOU can help:

blog: Advocate4Culture.blogspot.com

email:   Advocate4Culture@gmail.com

facebook: Advocate4Culture

twitter: advocate4cultur