This last weekend Mark and our friend Beer and I set out for a trip along the ring road following the southeast coast in Iceland. We stayed in a little cabin set against a mountain and experienced three amazing days of frozen wonders. Here are some sights from day 1 (Friday) of the trip:
If you can believe it, Day 2 held even more amazing sights than Day 1…stay tuned!
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!
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 am comfortably set up at the Philadelphia Art Hotel, run by two fantastic people, artists Zak Starer and Krista Peel. Here’s a great article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about the residency. I also have become fast friends with my co-residents Danielle Rante and her dog Kanga.
After running around town for two days exploring the Kensington neighborhood in which the PAH is situated, getting groceries and visiting the Reading Terminal Market, dropping my work of at Pterodactyl for my upcoming show, and generally recovering from the 11- hour drive, I have gotten to make some work. Here are some scenes from my urban studio:
I’ll post some work soon. I need to get to more making first. Aaaand a parting shot of my new best friend who keeps me company in the studio while I work (that’s my chair, by the way).
Out of the Blue and into the Black 2.1, liquid gold leaf and ink on photographic digital print, 15″x20″, 2010
I sent this piece off to a group show in Budapest today. It is the first of a group of drawings on photographs. Although I know of plenty of other artists doing this, my friend Abbigail Knowlton Israelsen, for one (who does it quite well, I might add), it’s a new turn for me. I am going to work on them at my residency in Philly, for which I leave in the morning. Since its such a long drive, I am going to make a pit stop in Pittsburgh to eat at a veggie diner and see what’s on at the Mattress Factory.
that my friend Andrew Thompson was available and able to document my drawings. All of the so-so quality photos of my drawings from Budapest and Iceland posted on the blog are now presented much more professionally on my website. Thanks AndyT!
Here are some images from our group show, SKIPTI / SWAP at the end of the residency at SÍM. On Monday we installed the show, had the opening, followed by a picnic in the garden, and de-installed the show. Then I had to pack and say my goodbyes. What a day!
Also, in addition to the drawings I made at the residency, I worked on a couple of photo-based projects and along with many of the other artists, became quite the collector of maps, stamps, postcards (new and vintage) and objects from the land such as shells, stones, sea glass, lava rocks and the like.
On Sunday I did a photo shoot of one of the Amelia Earhart islands in the Icelandic landscape set against the sea. Here are a few images from that shoot. I wonder what they’ll become when they grow up?
I am, once again, so grateful for this phenomenal residency and the opportunity to see breathtaking sights in a remarkable country, make work unimpeded, and become friends with such a fantastic group of artists.
Not only are the landscape, city and people (the Icelanders and my fellow residents) amazing here, but my living situation is pretty top notch. I have this wonderful little room.
We’re eating a lot of dinners as a group. The ten of us residents share a kitchen and many nights someone or a pair of us will make a big dinner for everyone else. The communal atmosphere is great. Here Nina and Julie are fixing a fantastic meal for some of us. To see recipes from our fellow residents, visit my and Mark’s vegan blog.
I share a studio with Nina and Klaus. We get along very well and have been pretty productive. We are all on similar schedules, so the sharing is working out well. Mark took a photo of me in my studio set-up:
I am surprisingly getting some work done while Mark is here.
Iceland is creeping into my work. There is an eggshell from the uria lomvia bird (they’re harvested from the rocks and sold in markets for people to eat) and some herring from the fish festival this last weekend. And every so often I look up from my work and see view like this through the studio window:
I am so grateful for this completely fortifying experience.
