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!

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!

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.

Here are images from my show Our Improbable Existence at Pterodactyl in Philly.  Here is more info about the show.  The show was made possible by the support of the Philadelphia Art Hotel.  To see individual pieces, peruse recent blog posts or visit my website.  Off to the opening!

Here is the press release for my show at Pterodactyl sponsored by the Philadelphia Art Hotel.  Install Thursday, opening Friday.  I’m pasting the text below for better readability. Here’s hoping the five people I know in Philly and the rest of the city make it out to the opening!

The Philadelphia Art Hotel and Pterodactyl present an exhibition:

Amy Sacksteder – Our Improbable Existence

August 13th, 2010
8pm
3237 Amber St.
5th Floor North
Philadelphia, PA 19134

Amy Sacksteder attempts to reconcile vitality and mortality (and the accompanying celebrations and mournings that reality elicit), both her own and with that of others’. To quote Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, “we try as best we can to do justice to the tremendousness of our improbable existence.” She thus distills momentous experiences into and through her artwork, which in turn, becomes a place for mourning and celebration; a place to explore and engage the tension between vitality and mortality. Her work has been sited on contemporary art blogs such as my love for you is a stampede of horses, and has been published in New American Paintings. Amy Sacksteder exhibits regularly nationally and internationally. She has attended residencies through the Ragdale Foundation in Illinois, the Pouch Cove Foundation in Newfoundland, the Residential Art Centre of Cantagal in France, and the Hungarian Multicultural Center in Budapest.

Most recently, she attended a residency program through the Association of Icelandic Visual Artists (SÍM) in Reykjavík to prepare for a solo exhibition at Northeastern Illinois University in the fall. She will return to Iceland in November to continue the research and creative work she began there in June. Amy Sacksteder received her MFA from Northern Illinois University in 2004. She lives and works in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where she is an Assistant Professor of Art at Eastern Michigan University.

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.

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

Here are the drawings that were in the show in the order in which they were exhibited, from left to right.  Again, these are snapshots I have only futzed with slightly in Photoshop.  I will post better quality images to my site as soon as I get them scanned and color corrected.

Last Map: Vacancy

Last Map: Dig

Last Map: The Science of Air and Space

Last Map: Islands

Last Map: Align

and also Last Map: Osolith.