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.

On Saturday, the five adventurers that climbed Mount Esja on Wednesday set out for another trip. We rented a little car (which we dubbed Sputnik 2) and set out for Hveragerði, which is a small town in the hills set atop thermal springs. Much of the town is run by the thermal water (which gets really hot- to the point of boiling). They have greenhouses, ovens for the bakeries and restaurants, heating, hot tubs, all powered by the thermal springs.

We went there to hike through the mountains to visit a special spot in a thermal river where hot and cold springs come together to make perfect bathing conditions.  The weather was crisp and clear and the water was warm- hot in some places.  Drying off on the bank of the river in the sun with the cool breeze blowing after having been in the hot water was a wonderful experience.

The hike into the river valley and out again was breathtaking, with vast expanses, gorgeous views, stream-side meanderings, picturesque, pastoral sheep  and river rock-hopping.  Behold:

See that mountain? That’s Mount Esja. We decided to climb it on Wednesday with our new Norwegian friends Torgier and Catrine and our Austrian friend Klaus. This is what it looks like from the studio window.

This is the view from the bus drop-off point. We climbed to the top.

Maybe you need to look a little closer…

Mark on the ascent surveying our foe.

A mountain stream with fresh cold water to drink.

Mark signing our names in the book at the top of the mountain.

At the summit.

Mark and I are in Iceland now!  We’ve been here a few days and love it so far.  I will try to post at least one photo per day from our amazing trip.

This is the graffiti wall at the end of our street.  To get to the downtown (about a five-minute walk) we hang a right at the wall and walk along the ocean.  This was on a crystal-clear day on our first day of exploring after we recovered from our phenomenal case of jet lag.  Today an ash cloud has descended over the city, so we can’t even see the horizon or the mountains, normally so clear from our studio window.  We’re having a fantastic time with a with a wonderful group of people from many different countries.  More to come…stay tuned!

…I’m on a bit of a blogging hiatus brought to you by

1) the beautiful spring weather

2) my new friend running (See why? This is the glory I see on my epic runs!)

3) the end of the school year (check out my independent study student Julie‘s excellent projects from her solo exhibition!)

4) gardening (look at our tomato plantses!) and planting/repotting and

5) A wee bit of traveling (isn’t Chicago pretty?  We also got to hug our friends’ new babies and see my folks)

5) other blogging I’m doing over at Irreverent Vegan.  Why don’t you stop over there and see what we’ve been up to?  Here’s a hint:

I’ll be sure to resume blogging in June when I arrive in Iceland in June for residency #1 for the summer (please think positive restful volcano thoughts).  That will be followed by residency #2 in August at the Philadelphia Art Hotel.  Then, I will be in the studio all fall working on a solo show to take place in Chicago in October.

I am fortunate to have been granted a Faculty Research Fellowship for the fall semester, which means I don’t have to teach or advise so that I can concentrate on my current body of work.  I will be at school periodically for committee meetings, but the majority of the fall is dedicated to preparing for that exhibition and applying for tenure.  Wish me luck!

a run on a georgeous spring day through Gallup Park

So this post is less about art, and more about running.  Running was very important to me throughout grad school. For me it is an experience that is wrapped up in the particulars of place and music; simultaneously it evokes solitude and engagement with the world around me.  DeKalb, Illinois, where I went to grad school, had a network of wonderful bike paths.  Some of my most compelling memories involve exploring that town on long, rambling runs.  Come to think of it, some of my most personal, cherished memories involve running or hiking in certain places: in the mountains in Cantagal, France, at mid-night circling the campus at Interlochen, on hot summer days at Chautauqua in western New York State, on my family’s land in the mountains in Georgia, on the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic in Newfoundland.

Sadly, I have always had problems with my right knee.  I have done some research and think I have an issue with my IT band.  I thought it would keep me from running distances ever again, but my friend Jason (who is also a marathoner and track coach, not to mention MAJOR inspiration) thinks I can do it!

new yellow shoes (Brooks Launch- a neutral trainer)

I have not run with any regularity for awhile, but with the help of new shoes, baby steps, and some coaching (via Facebook) from Jason, I am chugging away.  I have always had a hard time balancing regular artmaking and regular exercise.  That is my primary goal this summer.  With residencies in TWO cities that are new to me (Reykjavík and Philadelphia) that should provide for a lot of great exploration.

Two books are my friends through all of this: Haruki Murakami‘s What I Talk About When I Talk About Running is one of them.  He is one of my favorite authors of fiction, but this work of non-fiction, his autobiographical love affair with running, is incredibly compelling.  I read it in a day.

The other one is Christopher McDougall‘s Born to Run.  It is an epic, exciting, narrative surrounding an amazing footrace in the canyons of northern Mexico.  It’s fast-paced, and somehow also filled with riveting scientific studies on proper running form–a form that is natural to the human body and prevents injury.

Before I began my most recent foray into running (which I have been doing very regularly for about three weeks now) I was trying to think of a name for my solo show in the fall at the Fine Arts Center Gallery at Northeastern Illinois University in October.  I have been working with Amelia Earhart’s last words in my work (and last words in general).  The work is about life and death, so I am using part of her last words as the title–simply: We are running…

Here is a piece that was exhibited at Paint Creek in January.  Her last words included the phrase We are running north and south. Which is what is projected and fades out across the canvas of this painting.

In Lights, oil on vanvas with glass window blocks and gobo projection and theater light

In short, quite literally, I am running!

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.

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.