Ice Above, Fire Below | color transparencies, thread, cyanotypes and lithographs | dimensions variable  (this installation approximately 96″ wide) | 2010, in collaboration with Nicole Pietrantoni, SÍM House, Reykjavík, Iceland.

Friday night was the opening of the residents’ exhibition, dubbed  The Supreme Council of Higher Beings.  There was some great work in the show and Mark was involved in an exciting collaboration/interactive music and sound-based performance with our friends Jan and Beer.  It turned the opening into a party.  A lot of people showed up and the residents received great feedback about all of the work, including an interactive Venn diagram connecting artists and related people in Iceland by Rebecca Key.

One of the best outcomes of this November residency has been meeting and and beginning  a collaborative partnership with American artist Nicole Pietrantoni.  She is in Iceland for a year on a Fulbright fellowship and a Leifur Eiriksson Foundation grant. This installation was our first collaborative endeavor.

When I arrived in Iceland, it was my plan to make some gouache paintings of small, contained worlds, like the glassy images in these two pieces: Last Map: Osolith and Last Map: Divisadero on white or blue paper.  However, on my first day in my studio, I found a collage of images from the Icelandic landscape left by a previous resident.  As it depicts a self-contained world, I decided to copy it in gouache, as a sort of collaboration with this unknown artist.  These are just studio snapshots.  I will add more professionally documented images of the piece to my website when I get home.

Thursday, I’m hopping aboard the Wolverine from Ann Arbor to Chicago to see and stay with some good friends. Friday,  I’m giving a lecture on my work (details below) at Northeastern Illinois University.  It’s also the last day the show will be up, so come out if you can!

That afternoon, I board a plane to Toronto to meet Mark and Chris and Mary for Halloween weekend, Canada style.

Then Mark and I get on another couple of planes to head to Iceland again for the month of November.  It will be a whirlwind, but needless to say, we’re a little excited.  I’ll work on some ideas I have had bouncing around in my head and Mark will get his own studio to work on some music projects.  Speaking of which, he has a new album out.  Everything about it is AMAZING.  Here is a link to his new website. Have a look and listen.

Talk details:

Friday, October 29

11 a.m.

Northeastern Illinois University, Fine Arts Center, FA 252

Directions to the talk.

Also, here is a Chicago Tribune review of the show.

Bon voyage!

We traveled with our friends Chris and Mary to Chicago this last weekend to attend my opening at Northeastern Illinois University, see our friend Julie, and see some art.  I also had the opportunity to take more unobstructed installation images of my show.

Here are some images from my solo exhibition We are running… at Northeastern Illinois University’s Fine Arts Center Gallery.  Much of this work appeared in my recent exhibition in at Pterodactyl in Philadelphia, but the postcard installation with the bottle of ash is new.  The postcards are manipulated exhibition announcements from both solo exhibitions, mounted on Scrabble tile trays.  The bottle contains sea glass and volcanic ash from the base of  the Eyjafjallajökull volcano that erupted in Iceland this year.  Exhibition details follow the images.

Amy Sacksteder: We are running…

October 4th-October 29th

The work included in this project is derived from the last moments of Amelia Earhart’s life and is used as a springboard to examine and confront mortality. The title is an excerpt of Earhart’s last words. The work is also influenced by the artists’s June 2010 residency in Iceland.

Artist Talk: Friday October 29th, 11am
Reception: Friday October 15th, 6-9pm

The Fine Arts Center Gallery
Northeastern Illinois University
5500 N St. Louis Ave
Chicago, IL 60625

The Gallery is located on the NEIU campus inside the Salme Harju Steinberg Fine Arts Center. Park in the lot the west side of campus via the entrances Foster or Bryn Mawr Avenues.

Directions here.

To see invividual images of pieces in the show, visit this page on my website.

In addition to my solo show, We are running… (just installed…phew!) at Northeastern Illinois University’s Fine Arts Center Gallery (more on that soon), I currently have work featured in some other group shows:

1) Sub Terrain at Work Gallery in Ann Arbor.  Here’s more info, and a great review of the show, highlighting the works of friends Amanda Thatch and Ryan Molloy.

2) Interrupted Landscapes at Champion Contemporary in Austin.  My pieces are in the wonderful company of work by Scott Hocking, Lori Nix and a host of other fantastic artists.  This is  the gallery’s debut exhibition and the space looks great.  Check out the installation images from the show.  My work, the Object Lesson panels are to the far right in the installation image below.

3) With/Drawn, an international contemporary drawing exhibition, hosted by The Drawing Room in Budapest.  That’s my piece way back there over David’s right shoulder (he’s the fellow holding the paper).  In Hungary, it’s practice to have the curator or another prominent person read a prepared statement about the exhibition.

I got to go to the opening of Sub Terrain, and I’m happy to  hear the other openings were successful too!

Krista Peel is at it again, making another themed calendar with her great photography.  I’m a participating artist once more, and this time the directions involve: the theme “Mystery Mansion,” providing her with some supplies and instructions, and her constructing the rooms around those instructions and objects.

She just sent out glimpses of the rooms constructed so far, and I spotted mine, evident by the objects I sent her: buckthorn roots, smoky quartz crystals and dark agate slices.  I can’t wait to see the real thing!

I have some work in an upcoming show curated by Andrew Thompson (drawings and an installation). Here’s a sneak peak of a new installation in the show, with exhibition info to follow.

Museum, Monument (where we can go to save ourselves), transparency collage, sand, painted plaster and foam islands maquette, transparencies on projector, 2009-10

Sub Terrain

What lies below the surface of the physical, the perceptible, and the quantifiable? Invisible forces of the subconscious simmer until they come to a head in subtle circumstances of serendipity or in violent disruption, sparring with the perceived logic of life.

Sub Terrain is an all-media exhibition that invites artists to give vision to the invisible and explore the landscape of the immaterial and its convergence with the physical realm.

Artists:
Debra Broz, Mira Burack, Ginger Chase, Susan Evans, Rachel Frank, Matt Frieburghaus, Lauren Harlowe, Megan Heeres, Melissa Jones, Julie Lambert, Amanda Lechner, Ryan Molloy, Barbara Neri, Manisha Patel, Judy Rushin, Audrey Russell, Amy Sacksteder, Madeline Stillwell, Cedric Tai, Sally Schluter-Tardella, Amanda Thatch, Christopher Ulivo, B.J. Vogt, Scotty Wagner and Morgan Morel, Graem Whyte, Audra Wolowiec.

Work: Ann Arbor, 306 State Street, Ann Arbor, MI

Exhibition runs September 10th – October 5th
Opening Reception: September 10th 6-9 pm

Come out to the opening if you can!

Experiments with postcards from the show.  I am starting to love multiples. The materiality of them is very satisfying in person.

Here are a few more shots from the show and last night’s opening.  I really like the way the space was lit.  Cheers to the good folks at Pterodactyl for pulling together the new side gallery (in which my show is situated) in under a week and for putting on a lovely opening.