This week is Second Friday in Pilsen, and though I'll be a few hundred miles into a very long drive, I'll be there in spirit with some photographs at Black Cloud Gallery on Halsted. Part of my Now look what you've done series is up as part of Art Bazaar---local, affordable, organic, accessible, sustainable, cruelty-free pieces for only $200. Get over there. Or get over here: http://www.blackcloudsartbazaar.bigcartel.com/
In the spirit of experimentation that a residency is meant to support, artist pal Christina McClelland and I have embarked on a new collaborative practice. Site-specific beer coozies have been a big part of our stay at ACRE, and also happen to be a perfect fusion of our skills.
Enjoying the stars and the meals at ACRE in Wisconsin, making material breakthroughs, and generally picking up ideas wherever I'd left them. These are experimental free-floating glitter stencils for an upcoming show in Chicago.
And a few more...
I am thrilled to have been selected as one of this year's Fountainhead Fellows in VCU's Craft & Material Studies department! Starting this fall I'll be working and teaching at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, and while I'll miss Chicago a lot, I couldn't be happier to get to spend more time in VA.
Check out what artist Erica Scourti has to say about our month at the Vermont Studio Center in this post from LABKULTUR.TV: Artist in Residence: an inside view "Welcome to the parallel reality of the artists’ residency, a cross between art school, summer camp and (working) holiday resort for time-pressed artists and writers.
Here at Vermont Studio Centre, everything an artist needs for maximum creative output is catered for. Three home-cooked meals a day, spacious individual studios, workshops and equipment, a meditation hall, yoga studio and a well-stocked art store that- rather like a bar and just as dangerous- allows a running tab. ..."
reposted from: Rookie » Literally the Best Thing Ever: Glitter. (by Laia Garcia)
I really had to share this with you because I've spent the last year or so of my life throwing glitter around, trying to sweep glitter up, and finding glitter in all the wrong places. That was a whole lot of time to think about why it does what it does for me: the sparkle... the crispness... the shame... it's sometimes too beautiful to look at it, it hurts so good.
I've spent the last month at the Vermont Studio Center, an artist-run residency program, and it's been great. This was my first residency so I wasn't totally sure what to expect, but I shouldn't have worried: great food and facilities, beautiful scenery, and brilliant people both in residence and on staff. In some ways it was pretty much like a mini-intensive grad school without all the stress (also minus the CTA and Jewel-Osco), and I amazed myself by drawing. Yes. Also making lists that go nowhere, which I'm much more accustomed to, and other components of a healthy practice (soccer and karaoke).
VSC's facilities are divided more or less by dimension---making three-dimensional work I had a great studio, spacious and with access to a kiln and an amazing wood and metal shop. Though I wasn't working with metal exactly, I did take the opportunity to start making some of my own tools, real profesh (actually, having them very helpfully made for me---thanks Harlan and Nick!).
Which brings me, of course, to the most important part: my amazing friends, colleagues, and collaborators. The pop-up show KEGGER, which Guadalupe Martinez, Erica Scourti, and I put together was great, and I look forward to future collaborations with these two incredibly talented artists as well as many others. A few samples for you--work by, from left, Mathew Zefeldt, Layet Johnson, and Miho Tajima:
This program partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.
This program partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.
April 25th at the Vermont Studio Center, our group show will open at 5:30pm.
KEGGER: a show of brand-new work by a group of artists who aim to blast you out of your bourgeois posturing and so called ‘problems’ with a kick up the arse that you will end up thanking- and quite possibly paying- them for.
Wiping away the dead skin of contemporary art-babble and all its attendant pseudo-bollocks with a fresh new approach fostered in the cutting-edge studio practice of their VSC residency, the artists smear their lipstick all over the dead weight tomes of accepted aesthetic practice, re-invigorating our belief in the power of art to move, shake and amaze you.
Bringing a neo-punk post-feminist attitude to bear on the question of longing and belonging, KEGGER invites the viewer into the boudoir of contemporary desire and promises to stay up all night arguing until our voices are hoarse and none of it even matters anymore.
Therein lies the opening through which the viewer can insert himself or herself, completing the work and releasing themselves from their ideological chains.
Kate Hampel is an interdisciplinary artist currently based in Chicago. Her work investigates the structures of violence and desire implicit in our social contracts. www.katehampel.com
Erica Scourti is a London-based artist exploring value and systems of belief in contemporary net-worked culture. www.ericascourti.com
Guadalupe Martinez is an interdisciplinary artist based in Vancouver, Canada. Her work investigates the politics and poetics encountered at the borderland between Self and Other. www.guadalupemartinez.com
This program partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.
Two weeks in a new studio
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Cold and dreary weather
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No need to go outside
This program partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.