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.

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.

Experiments with postcards from the show.  I am starting to love multiples. The materiality of them is very satisfying in person.

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!

More time in the studio = another finished painting. Now I need to figure out how to wrangle these three (and the rest of my schtufz) into the van for the drive to Philly.  I head out Sunday and hope to stop in Pittsburgh to see some museums en route.

I have been painting a lot lately and it feels great.  I used to be a painter exclusively and have come around to working in a variety of approaches and media depending upon what I want the outcome to be.  But painting  my first love and when I engage in it, it just feels right and it pretty much consumes me.  I like the work I am making and am rather curious about it, as each piece is feeling like a discovery.

I have found that reading about painting and art in general gets me psyched up to be in the studio.  I recently read Lives of the Artists by Calvin Tomkins,  Inside the Painter’s Studio by Joe Fig and am currently reading The Daily Practice of Painting by Gerhard Richter and Mirror-Travels: Robert Smithson and History by Jennifer L. Roberts.

I am reinstalled in my Ypsi studio for the time being until August when I head to Philly for another residency.  After working small in Iceland, it feels great to be working large again!  I love having the sea glass and ceramic in the studio and keep arranging it in different ways.  Now to keep from melting…

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.

I updated my website, and that’s no mean feat, considering how behind I was.  Head on over there and check it out, won’t you?