Island Projects (Amy Sacksteder and Nicole Pietrantoni) is official! We now have a few more shows lined up and a brand new website. Check out our Exhibitions page for info on the shows, including one in New York next month to coincide with the College Art Association Conference, February 9-12.
Last Map: Mirror, Last Map: Beacon, Last Map: Crosslit, each gouache and ink on paper, 11.5″ x 8.25″, 2010
I completed 3 more Last Map drawings in Iceland to total 30, which has been my goal for some time now. These latest drawings reflect my icy surroundings at the time I made them. Hopefully I can exhibit all 30 together in the near future.
Although I prefer to display them all simply taped to the wall, the wear and tear isn’t good for the drawings, so I need to get them framed. I have some ideas for framing them that should provide for some interesting installation opportunities.
In other news:
-I am pleased to have been mentioned in the 12.17.10 Chicago Tribune article about the best Chicago area art of 2010. Apparently there is an image of Bring in the Light in the print version, though I haven’t yet seen it myself.
-Also, Nicole Pietrantoni (who I met and collaborated with in Iceland) and I plan to be working together again soon under the name Island Projects. We hope to have a website up and running in the near future.
-Some of Amelia Earhart’s bones may have been found on Nikumaroro Island in the Pacific Ocean. Here’s the full article.
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.
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!
People keep asking me about my trip, so I thought I would post some photos. I mean, it’s hard to describe chicken pants…it’s something you just have to see for yourself.
a typical beutiful day in Budapest, gorgeous statuary and all...
strangely, wearing chicken pants and being hoisted in the air was very soothing to these little gals
a sweet courtyard in an atists' complex
the courtyard has some pretty wonderful murals on the walls
Mitsy the Hungarian forest cat, friend to human and chickens alike
Nannette in our "office"
Nem nem... what???
chickens are inside the castle walls! (when I give Nannette my jump drive to transfer video stuff, it comes back with some extra little gifts- like this photo)
the courtyard at David's studio
Happy Gum
my little studio corner with David's mini statue park
a close-up of the statue park
opening night
I didn’t really want to write any details about my and Nannette’s exhibition until all was said and done in case we didn’t pull it off in the way that we wanted. But now that a successful opening has come and gone, I am happy to tell our tale. I went to Budapest with only the goal to finish a video project Nannette and I began last summer, do a couple of drawings, and see a few museums…maybe hit the spring baths. In short, I was going to take a break over break–treat it like a mini residency. Instead, pretty much as soon as I arrived, we started hatching major plans. We planned to both make work for the entire week and put a show together in addition to the video (which quickly transpired into an installation). We had hints of possible venue spaces at the beginning of the week, but it wasn’t until Monday (or Tuesday?) that we secured the venue (for a Thursday night opening…). Nothing like cutting it close, right?
Nannette’s background is in photography and video, but she is a closet draw-er and makes these gorgeous ink drawings on crayon resist with faint, meticulous etching which she never shows to anyone. I was flattered that she showed them to me and excited she was considering exhibiting them. So she got down to work on a larger-scale series of those drawings and a photography project based on rivers. Meanwhile we were going to the office every day and working on the video together, and I was furiously drawing in the mornings and evenings- (into the mornings again). It turns out that the venue, Chinese Characters, has the perfect back space for video projection, and was the perfect width to create a reflecting pool for the video (which contributes enormously to the content of the piece). We we aided immensely by David, who did a lot of the heavy-lifting during the installation, including making the structure for the pool. Working collaboratively all week was wonderful, as even our 2D work influenced each other’s to a strong degree. We brainstormed titles for awhile and came up with fekete leves (where the sky used to be). Fekete leves literally means “black soup” in Hungarian (Magyar). When used as slang, it implies a sense of foreboding or bad things to come. Where the sky used to be is the name of the video project, upon which the rest of the show hinged.
Here are some snapshots from the show. Sorry about the quality of these images. I only had my aged point-and-shoot, but Nannette got some great install shots with her camera, so as soon as I get those images, I’ll update this post. Thanks to everyone who came out to the opening! For those who didn’t make it, the orb-looking images on black are C-prints by Nannette, and she also has the black ink drawings (installation) on resist with scratching. We each made one of the white “north” drawings and collaborated on the video and installation. Mine are the small gouache and ink drawings on blue paper.
front right corner
entrance from Vittula into the gallery space with two of Nannette's C-prints flanking two of my drawings
a C-print and my other four drawings- along the left wall
her drawing installation
the near and far left walls of the space
view from the entrance (the video installation is through the black curtains)
North 1 and North 2 (Nannette-left, me-right)
Where the Sky Used to Be- video installation with reflecting pond
Thank you to Nannette and David for putting me up (and putting up with me) all week, to Tim of Chinese Characters/Klub Vittula for providing the space, libations and an open mind, and to Fabian for DJ-ing and acting as impromptu photographer. Next I’ll post images of the six drawings I made while there and maybe a couple of shots from the opening.
Here’s a new one that will be in the show…
Fekete Leves (where the sky used to be) is a two-person installation that engages aspects of disorientation and loss of control by Budapest-based artist Nannette Vinson and Detroit-area artist Amy Sacksteder. Sacksteder is exploring mortality by channeling the last moments in Amelia Earhart’s life through mostly drawings, paintings and installations. Through her ink drawings, Vinson is revisiting the turbulence that accompanies loss of innocence. Her visual art background is primarily in photography and video art; Sacksteder’s is in 2D media. Through this collaboration, each artist is working in an as-yet “foreign” medium to her, thus each is experiencing her own lack of control. This is their first collaborative endeavor.
Chinese Characters Contemporary Art Space
1073 Budapest – Kertész u. 4
Thursday, March 4, 6 – 10 p.m.
David and Nannette were kind enough to loan me a space in their flat to use as a drawing studio while I’m here. So far, we’re spending a lot of time editing video and making work–with some feasts here and there for good measure. Tomorrow we’re off to the hardware store to get installation materials. Then we’re headed to the Glenn Brown exhibition at the Ludwig Museum.