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.

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!

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

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 new blue drawings and drawings on photos.  Once again, sorry about the quality of some of the images.  It’s hard to get a good shot of the photos.  Documentation-quality images will be up on my website sometime in September (hopefully).

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.