Fall is Falling

Fall is upon us, and I have some news! Once again, everything is reaching

criticalmass in a one week stretch.

1) My hilarious hottie of a girlfriend has been squirreling away with her computer, writing blog after blogof comic genius. And she is getting noticed for it! She is featured this week on DailyBrink.com. Included in the article are some pics I took, but more importantly, this is more exposure for her amazing writing. Beware: astute social commentary wrapped in an attractive package. Click on the image below to go right to the article:

And, bonus!!! The article was featured on AfterEllen.com's October 5th "Morning Brew".

2) This Thursday, as a part of the Nomadic Studio project, I am participating in a panel at the DePaul University Museum called:

Printmaker as Distributor, Collaborator, and Facilitator

DePaul University Museum, 2350 N Kenmore Ave.

October 7, 6-7:30pm

How does the history of print as a medium for the dissemination of information affect the role of contemporary printmakers? Does this draw more educators to the medium? How does the communal print studio affect the nature of artwork being created? Does the emphasis on technique, craft, and tools create an environment welcoming to new students or restricted?

Printmaker as Distributor, Collaborator, and Facilitator will explore the role of education within contemporary printmaking. Panelists will include Wrik Repasky, Coordinator of Printmaking at Harold Washington, Tom Lucas, Director of the Printmaking Department at Lill Street Art Center, and CJ Mace, MFA student through Columbia College Book and Paper program. The panel will be moderated by Angee Lennard, founder and director of Spudnik Press Cooperative.

This event is organized by the Stockyard Institute and Spudnik Press.

3) And, this Friday, an opening reception for the Chicago Printer's Guilds first show. I have a print installation created in collaboration with Sanya Glisic in the show:

Friday, October 8 · 6:00pm - 11:00pm

Chicago Urban Art Society

2229 S. Halsted Street

The first annual CPG show is taking place between October 8-17th! The Chicago Urban Art Society will be hosting over 40 Chicago-based printmakers, all part of the Chicago Printers Guild. The collection will include a wide variety of print-media including typeface, lithography and even some 3-D work. Please pass this on to all your friends and family and lets make the most of this exciting event!

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All in all, a little bit of something for everyone, whether you are in the Chicagoland area or not.

Wish you were here if you aren't!

Art on Track: Success!

All I have to say is, "Thanks Chicago for the wild ride!"....

Art on Track was a tremendous success. Spudnik's Press's group installation looked fabulous, moving with the movements of the train, as did the entire length of Train #8. The Spudnik Press end of the car included the work of Sanya Glisic, Liz Born, Michelle Mashon, and Nev Pilipovic-Wengler. Also in Train #8 was a local painter, Renee Robbins, and photographer Beth Mercer.

We raised a whole bunch of money for artist and commmunity access at Spudnik with the mini-print machines.

Angee Lennard, the Director of Spudnik, was busy printing woodcuts while the train was in motion.

Plus, there was a lot of coverage of the event, including documentation of the entire process by Six Inches from the Center, a local non-profit working to photograph and archive the emerging art scene here in Chicago.

We also got some mainstream media coverage, including a spot on the local ABC affiliate,

a piece on Chicago Public Radio's Eight Forty-Eight,

Eight Forty-Eight - Art Exhibition Circles the Loop

a little article on page 3 of the August 6th Chicago Tribune,

and an article in the Chicago Sun Times.

Thanks the few thousand people who were brave enough to try this unique art interaction!

One Year Down, Two More To Go: Open Studio Event at Columbia College, Chicago

Announcing a very special event to celebrate the end of my first year of graduate school. My peers and I will be showing off the work we have produced over the last two semesters at the:

Interdisciplinary Arts MFA

Open Studios

Columbia College-Chicago

Friday, May 14th, 2010

1pm-3pm

Media

916 South Wabash

Second Floor

Rooms 204 & 205

4pm-7pm

Book & Paper

1104 South Wabash

Second Floor

Papermaking Studio

Featuring the Work Of:

CJ Mace

Victoria Bradford

Jenny Garnett

Kaitlin Kostus

April Llewellyn

Daniel Lubniewski

Haley Nagy

Michael St. John

Daniel Mellis

As you can see by the announcement, there are two buildings of fun.

My print projections and animations, a new body of work for me, will be installed in the papermaking studio of the 1104 S. Wabash on the second floor. I would love to see you, have a conversation, and hear feedback about these new pieces.

Many of you do not live in good ol' Chicago, so if you cannot attend the event, please come back here to Studio High Horse to see pics. They will be posted shortly. The animations and projections will also be posted on my flickr page.

Hope to see you there!

Select Impressions @ Highpoint Center for Printmaking

Thanks to everyone who came out to the show in Minneapolis at my old studio, in its new gorgeous space. The show was stacked with good work by young, local printmakers:

Roberta Allen Todd Bridigum Sam Brown Alisha Campbell Pamela Carberry Laura Corcoran Jessica Driscoll Stella Ebner Ruthann Godollei Fred Hagstrom Brian Hartley Sago Morgan Hiscocks KimyiBo Donald Krumpo Jeremy Lundquist Jeanne McGee Jon Neuse Joshua Norton Drew Peterson Robert D. Peterson Jenny Schmid Jeremy Schock Patricia Scott Katherine Shannon Tonja Torgerson Anna Tsantir Brad Widness Johanna Winters

My piece was hung without glass and in an unusual way compared to other shows I've seen at Highpoint, making it more approachable, which is always a goal of mine. Twist is a screen print and woodcut that is meant to be a modular print, both editioned and flexible enough to be hung in almost any space. Over the course of an exhibition, it has the potential to grow and change over the length of an installation. Because the portfolio review for this show was last summer, the project has grown considerably and will have a different iteration in future shows.

With three new galleries in which to hang work, the bar has been raised at Highpoint to have a cycle of intriguing shows of both local and national artists, so I am excited to see how they respond to the challenge.

Thanks, too, to both the staff at Highpoint and the three curators who helped make the show a success:

Darsie Alexander, Chief Curator at the Walker Art Center

Dennis Jon, Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Diane Mullin, Associate Curator at the Weisman Art Museum

Jump right in!

So, this is it. This is my inaugural blog.  I am a printmaker and teacher living in Minneapolis.  I get bored easily, so my interests tend to fly all over the place.  And, let's face it.  There is a lot of boring art out there.  Now, don't be confused.  While I tend to be attracted to bright colors and flash, I also look for the quiet and the subtle.  But let us not confuse subtlety with tedium.  Art requires that we return to the same topics over and over again, rehashing ideas.  There are certain broad subjects we human beings obsess on: sex, death, violence, love, friendship, style, emptiness, loneliness, fulfillment. There is this myth of originality out there.  And sometimes, good work is just real nice to look at.

The goal of this blog is simply to get work out there that I like and to talk about my own practice.  Since the art world is nepatistic and I am not a journalist, some of this work will be by people I know and love at places where I have worked.  This is the caveat to all I write--I may be biased by these connections. In an underground economy, this is how we find shit out, especially when a lot of artists go quietly about their work without others knowing or are forced to have crappy day jobs to eat and support what they love.  If this limits the scope of my writing unnecessarily, let me know, and I will learn from your comments or tell you to kiss off.  Either way, I love to hear your thoughts.  And don't forget to check out my work because I really started this blog for completely selfish reasons.