**update**

This studio transformation was recently featured on Design*Sponge. I wrote a follow-up post answering some of the questions that arose in the comments and also posted a few more images here.

With the help of Mark, I spent the entire last month in major house studio overhaul mode. I had five year’s worth of paperstuffs, random art supplies and countless odds and ends to sort and either discard or organize. It all started with my desire for a flat file, since all of my flatwork and papers were sloppily vertically stored against the wall behind a closet door.

The organization project evolved into ditching my drafting table and our old kitchen table I was using as a desk in favor of clean, white tables easily made out of doors and painted white. Mark built me wall shelves for storing small, framed work and we got them installed yesterday. Now the studio feels so much better, I want to be in here all the time. Just to show you how far it’s come, at one point, it had devolved into this:

Here are some overview shots of the new setup:

…and some detail shots:

Now to start making a mess again.

Net 1
ink, gouache, blue tape and collage on paper
18″ x 24″
2005 and 2011

Mark & I gave my website a pretty substantial face lift, courtesy of his amazing new artist website software, Schmolio. He needs beta testers (it’s free right now! and really cheap after that) so head on over there if you’re interested in switching or starting an artist’s (or musician’s) site.

In other news, I just finished installing work at Butter Projects for their upcoming four-person exhibition Non Native.  Details are below.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:
Feb 15, 2011
BUTTER PROJECTS
Alison Wong Kelly Frank Jacklyn Brickman Elizabeth Boyd Hartmann butter.projects@gmail.com www.butterprojects.info

WELCOME TO MICHIGAN, STAY A WHILE….
Royal Oak, Michigan.

BUTTER projects presents the first exhibition of our 2011 season titled NON-NATIVE. The exhibit runs from March 5 – April 1, 2011 with an opening reception on March 5, 2011 from 7-10pm. Free and open to the public.

NON-NATIVE brings together a group of four Non-Michiganders who are currently living and working in the Metro-Detroit area. The exhibition highlights the role community and sense of place plays in work that addresses varying cultures, techniques, traditions and methods. Featuring works in fiber, painting, photography and sculpture.

Participating artists include Kyohei Abe (Anjo-shi, Aichi, Japan/Ferndale), Chido Johnson (Mutare, Zimbabwe / Detroit), Katie Phillips (Louisville, KY / Bloomfield Hills) and Amy Sacksteder (Augusta, GA / Ypsilanti).

In conjunction with the exhibit, a panel discussion with the artists of NON-NATIVE will be held on March 20 at 2pm. Guest moderators Vince Carducci and renee c. hoogland will lead the discussion regarding the unique framework of Metro-Detroit; what draws artists here, where does our location fit in the contemporary art world and how it’s played a role in the panelists work.

About Butter Projects

BUTTER projects is a studio and exhibition space founded in October of 2009. Housed in a storefront built in 1915, the space was conceived to be flexible and open to a multitude of creative endeavors. Our mission is to engage with the community and participate in the promotion of the arts in the Metro-Detroit area by providing a place to make, discuss and exhibit artwork. Butter Projects is run and operated by Alison Wong, Kelly Frank, Jacklyn Brickman and Elizabeth Boyd Hartmann.

Butter is located at 814 West Eleven Mile Road, in Royal Oak, Michigan. Parking is available behind the building. For more information visit www.butterprojects.info or contact butter.projects@gmail.com
Hours are by appointment only with the exception of special events and receptions. ###

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.

Mark and I are all set-up at the residency in Iceland.  We’re getting time to make work, get out and about in Reykjavík, read, do yoga, and rest.  We have a great set-up this time, with our own little apartment inside the larger shared residency apartment. Here are some images from my studio:

And there’s the same amazing view, this time with snow and with different light:

It makes a big difference to have a good camera this time.  I was able to get decent shots out the windows with my point-and-shoot in June, but now I have a better digital camera with a much more accurate zoom lens.  Behold:

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!

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.

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!

It’s been a busy couple of art months recently.  The latest is an installation called Ghost Town for the Annual Art Faculty Exhibition in the University Gallery at EMU.  What you don’t see is one of the best aspects of the piece: there’s a song.  Mark wrote the most amazing song recently that I dubbed Ghost Town and I knew it had to be part of this piece.  He rigged speakers in the rafters above the installation that plays the song subtly, so that you only really hear it when enveloped in the gold cut paper.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

To get an interwebby version of the effect, listen to the mp3 while scrolling through the images.

I made the components of this piece at different times.  The gold paper cut-outs and small oil painted panels were all made for my solo exhibition Still at Paint Creek Center for the Arts in April 2009.  The skull pieces (gouache and gold leaf) were made in Budapest this last summer.  They are essentially portraits of the skulls in the artist/stylist/designers’ homes featured on The Selby.  I plan to make more of these and am excited to see where I can go with this piece in the future.

The opening is Tuesday night February 2 from 4 – 7 p.m. in the University Gallery in the Student Center at EMU.    There’s a lot of great work by all of my colleagues.  Come see the show!