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sometimes things are just determined to grow.

“Why go on? I believe in art and artist as perhaps society’s last free agents.  Artists and children augur change, and no one listens to children.”

from “Personal Economy #11” by Anonymous
included in “Art Work: A National Conversation about Art, Labor, and Economics“

NOMA GALLERY is proud to present its first solo show by TPG #3 artist Christine Kesler. “in a world where you are possible” features an installation where the artist intersects and collides paintings, drawings and sculptures as well as a new video piece.  TONIGHT there is a closing reception (though the show has been extended a week so you can still see it!) and it should be a good time.

An evening of Sounds and Words:

Drawing on the influence of poetry in Christine’s work the gallery put together an evening of readings and music. Kevin Killian will read from his new book ‘Impossible Princess’ (City Lights), Christine Choi will be reading portions from her work ‘Swollen Animals Dream: Fifteen Love Letters’ accompanied by projections and a hacked “lyre”, Christine Kesler will be reading some recent poetry and there will be a music performance by James Devane.

TPG #5 artist Davin Youngs shows a new collection of photos in Chicago in February.  Davin’s photos are wonderfully romantic, tactile, and beautiful. Should be a good show.

Photographs signify participation. They are visual representations of the ways in which space and relationships are navigated and/or participated in. WE is artist Davin Young’s expression of desire for thorough, deep and unique participation in the world and with those around him. This participation can span from isolation to intimacy.

Created without special lenses or digital editing, these images were achieved by somewhat simple (or complicated?) participation. Davin was close enough to capture and removed enough to observe. They are meant to share unique moments, but also serve as an invitation for you to participate, too. The hope is that together WE can collectively observe, enjoy and create.

DETAILS:
February 5 – February 27 2010
Opening Reception: February 5  7-11pm

Fill in the Blank Gallery
5038 N. Lincoln Ave.
Chicago, IL 60625
773.878.1750
info@fillintheblankgallery.com

I feel like the 2000′s were one big identity crisis.  No one even knew what to call these years.  Sure, we all settled into two thousand and .. but I think we’re going feel much better now that we’ve got 90 years of twenty-whatevers. It was all a bit of a roller coaster ride.  Bubble upon bubble were destined to pop, the towers fell, we felt waves of fear and unity and division, our country engaged in two wars, and even our (over)confidence in the planet was shaken.  Yet now somehow it seems like things are slowing down. I don’t doubt we’ll climb our way out of our current economy, but I think it’s going to be slow and steady.  We’ve just been biding our time, waiting for this sense of settling down.

My newphew on Christmas morning, patiently waiting for his one last present (a bike!) to be brought out.  I love the patience and pleasurable anticipation on his face.  That’s what the 2000′s sort of felt like to me.

Maybe it’s just personal. Oliver and I turn a decade older just before the turn of each decade.  We spent the 2000′s in our 20′s: finishing school, lots of different jobs, figuring out what we want to do with ourselves.  Turning thirty this year felt big.  But now we’ve at least got a sense of what we’re going to pursue.  We’re trying to become real adults and buy a house.  Last year nothing worked out on that front.  This year the first house we’ve put an offer on – it’s address is 2010! Good omen?  Maybe.  I’ll tell you in three days.

The Present Group in the 2000′s was young.  Though our idea was novel, we struggled to be noticed.  Now we’ve got three years of works behind us, we’ve met and worked with lots of really amazing people.  And we’re very happy to report that this past year, for the first time, we broke even.  We’ve had a steady rate of growth, though our subscriber numbers don’t fully show it.  We’ve also gotten better at running the business: creating projects we can afford without sacrificing integrity, creativity, or ingenuity.  So, our big goal for this year is to continue on the same trend that we’ve been on.  Because if we do, this year we’ll be in the black enough to give one of us a very small paycheck.  That means that this project might just work out in the end.  That’s what we’ve been waiting for.

I was listening to the Phases of the Moon interview and heard about your project about the value of art.  Although I don’t know anything about the nature of the project I didn’t want that to stop me from offering a few lines:

One of my favorite novels tells of a man who stopped believing in the world and disappeared.  Art is that vanishing.  A new space testifying to the unseen, and an invitation.

Back when we did the E|AB fair in New York, our next door table neighbors were Purgatory Pie Press. After the show was over, we traded a set of State of the Arts posters for a subscription to their postcards. They work with different artists and poets and letterpress an edition of postcards each month. We just received another in the mail yesterday, and it is one of my favorites. Here are the highlights:

Nice =New by Dikko Faust (one of the owners of PPP)

PORNTOUM by Marc Nasdor: the lastest installment.  Click on the image to see the whole card.

While working on this post, I started thinking about how postcards are a great little medium, especially for poets or artists who sortof work like poets.  Here are two examples of artists who send out postcards as part of their practice. You can sign up for free postcards on either site.

Andrew Venell sends out postcards irregularly.

Buck Downs has been sending out poems on postcards since 1993.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

 

 Interview with Whitney Lynn [25:30m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

“DIY Survival Kit” is an edition of 65 by artist Whitney Lynn designed to prepare you for the ultimate disaster.  Whether an earthquake, tornado, or chemical weapon attack, Lynn provides you with the essentials: a barterable good, a weapon, and a means to keep your mind off the bleakness of your situation.  Nothing in the kit, however, is complete.  She gives you the materials and the inspiration, but if you are going to survive – you are going to have to Do it Yourself.

Lynn’s Kit draws inspiration equally from survivalist subcultures and more left leaning do-it-yourself (DIY) movements. She writes:

I am interested in exploring the way survivalism stands at the extreme end of renewed interests in self-sufficiency and sustainability. I am also interested in looking at the role of aesthetics and branding in altering the way survivalism is viewed.

Survivalism is born out of creative acts, but is also symptomatic of a culture of fear and isolation. The question I’m interested in is where is the line between the Unabomber’s and Thoreau’s cabin; the urban homesteader or the survivalist?

Whitney Lynn is a multi-media artist who explores the messy intersections between political, military, and civilian cultures. Her work has been exhibited at venues such as Exit Art, New York; Southern Exposure, San Francisco; the Headlands Center for the Arts, Sausalito, CA; and the 1708 Gallery, Richmond, VA. She is the recipient of travel grants from the College Art Association and the Southeastern College Art Conference and her work has received critical attention from a number of publications including The New York Times, Daily Serving and Style Weekly. Born on an Air Force Base in Williams, AZ, she received her BFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University and her MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute.

Ingrid Burrington grew up in Northern California and currently lives in Baltimore, Maryland. She works in text, photography, performance, and print, and has produced projects both as a free agent and under the guise of semi-fictional think tanks, which have appeared throughout the mid-Atlantic and online. She received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in printmaking.

xoxoxooxoxoxooxoxooxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxo!

Sight School is a new project space run by Michelle Blade and (TPG #11 critic)  Matthew Rana. The space began from a desire to create dialogue around new modes of living and being in the world in order to reveal connections between art and life.  Thier first event is being held on this Friday, December 18th.

Sight School is pleased to host this one-night exhibition and public reading of Chicago-based collective Temporary Services’ newspaper titled, “Art Work: A National Conversation on Art, Labor and Economics.”

A handful of local artists, writers and curators including Sean Fletcher & Isabel Reichert, Lynne McCabe, Julian Meyers, Ted Purves, and Natasha Wheat will deliver public readings of texts directly from or related to the newspaper, while providing analysis and commentary in an informal reading-room environment. Readings will feature works by Chris Burden, Carolina Caycedo, Cooley Windsor & Futurefarmers, and the Guerilla Art Action Group (GAAG), among others. In addition, this event will serve as a distribution point for free printed copies of the newspaper. Participants will be encouraged contribute to the event and participate in discussion on how to build an economically viable arts community in the Bay Area.

This event will take place from 7-9pm on Wednesday December 16th.
Sight School, 5651 San Pablo Ave, Oakland CA

There are more examples of this every day. I know we live in the “free economy” but I just don’t understand where that ends. Sometimes it is good to trade free content for exposure – it can be the best advertising choice that one can make. The problem lies when there is no end, when no one who is creating content gets paid.

My friend Lauren pointed this article on the problems with Craft Publishing out on her blog, and it has spurred an interesting conversation over on Make + Meaning.    On the other hand, today another editor extolls the virtues of free.  I think it’s so interesting to see how this discussion develops – I feel like our generation will figure out the different ways it can work for years to come. Or not – we’ll just have to see.

Congratulations to all the awardees!  I hope all the projects conceived or energized by applying to this grant continue to follow through.  It always irks me that Southern Exposure doesn’t link to the projects right away so I did a bit of googling.  If anyone has any insight on unlinked projects, let me know!

The 2009 Alternative Exposure grant recipients are:

Adobe Books Backroom Gallery
Alula Editions (a project by TPG#11 artist Helena Keeffe and Amber Cady)
Art Practical
ArtXX Magazine
Average
Chris Fitzpatrick & Post Brothers
Critter
Destructibles.org
Happenstand
iiiahh
Pueblo Nuevo Gallery
Ribbons
SMITHS
Stop & Go Rides Again
THE THING Quarterly
The Upper Left Ethnography Project
VOLUMESou

In the spirit of the Holidays, we’ve decided to take part in Plaid Friday, an independent business alternative to the big box store “Black Friday.”   For this celebration of all things independent – we are offering a $15 dollar discount on this ONE DAY. So get your Holiday shopping done early or resubscribe for another year – but the time to buy is November 27th.  You can access this discount through our special page:

www.thepresentgroup.com/plaid

Organized by Blankspace Gallery and The Compound Gallery, Plaid Friday is designed to help raise awareness about shopping local and supporting the local economy. While Black Friday encourages monoculture, Plaid Friday celebrates the diversity and creativity of Bay Area independent businesses.  There are many East Bay Businesses taking part in this celebration, so to explore all the discounts and festivities, go here:

www.plaidfriday.com

Happy Shopping!  Support Independent Businesses this Holiday Season.

Julia Bryan-Wilson, director of the Ph.D. program in visual studies at the University of California, Irvine, investigates in her new book the movement to create a new recognition of artists as workers and laborers in the 60′s and 70′s.   Their efforts created some change within the museum structure, yet it continues to be a struggle today, as seen with efforts of W.A.G.E. and our “State of the Arts” project led by Joseph del Pesco.

Julia Bryan-Wilson on Artforum.com:

THE MORE INTERESTED I became in the legacies of the Art Workers’ Coalition and the New York Art Strike, the more I became concerned with how artistic labor registers––or doesn’t––within a wider field. It was both inspiring and somewhat vexing to consider how artists and critics attempted to organize as workers and label themselves as such, particularly during the Vietnam War, when debates about the value of artistic production were raging within culture and within protest politics. How does art work? This question challenged me and pushed the project forward.

…read more on Artforum.com

Her book has been published by University of California Press and there will be a release party at Printed Matter in NYC on November 7th.

Know what I have been a little delinquent in doing?  Charting the growth of art subscriptions.  I’ve been doing it in my head, but now I’d like to finally share with you just what has been happening in the world of art via subscriptions.

1. Papirmasse

#5 May 2009 by Kirsten McCrea

“Papirmasse is a magazine, original art, and social experiment rolled into one.”  Papirmasse is a monthly edition that gets delivered quarterly.  It is a poster-sized double sided print folded to fit in a 9 x 12 envelope.  For the most part, one side is an image and the other is mostly black and white text.  The limited edition prints are numbered at 1000 and are signed by the artist.  It is a project created by Canadian artist and illustrator Kirsten McCrea.  She seems to create much of the content, though there are certainly many other artists involved. Somewhere between an edition and a periodical, this subscription only costs $60 per year which is pretty sweet.  As she puts it, Papirmase rallies under the slogan, “Art is for Everyone!”

2. Art in a Box

This monthly subscription run by Compound Gallery in Oakland is unique in a few ways.  First, it only uses local artists from the Bay Area – mostly from Oakland and San Francisco.  Second, the art that you get is original pieces, not editions.  I’m not sure exactly how it works, but the large group of artists that they use all produce a few pieces each month and then the whole lot gets divvied up, so each subscriber gets something different and unique each month.  Third, because not everyone is getting similar stuff, subscribers have the ability to state their preferred medium of artwork.   And lastly, one does not have to sign up for a full year at a time, they only require 3 month increments.  It is a higher pricepoint, however: $50 per month unless you want to pick it up at the gallery (then $30 per month).

This model could be a quick platform for artists to get a little exposure and probably get somewhere between $10- $20 (I’m guessing) per piece.  This may not be much, but it does encourage artists to have deadlines, try out new ideas and still get a little pocket change for it.  From the gallery’s perspective there is much less organizing, as they aren’t the one producing the projects.  Because it is very locally focused, I also like that they have “Pickup Parties” where people can get together, get their art, and probably meet the artists from time to time.  The art subscription model can be adapted to fit so many styles and configurations.  Some might classify the art that comes out of this subscription as verging on  “Dude/tte art”.

3. The Thing

I don’t know why it’s taken me so long to write about these guys.  We even traded subscriptions with them.  Ah well: THE THING Quarterly is a periodical in the form of an object. Each year, four artists, writers, musicians or filmmakers are invited by the editors (Jonn Herschend and Will Rogan) to create an everyday object that somehow incorporates text.  They also sporadically produce other projects, some of which they send out to the subscribers as a bonus, and some of which they sell or give out to other people.

I really like how they invite a wide variety of creators to contribute projects, but my only criticism would be that the pieces come so out of context, that sometimes it is hard to figure out how they fit into the artists’ work as a whole.  Because one of the joys of art can be the connection with an artist’s ideas and perspective it would be great to get a little more insight into the creator’s general practice and trajectory of their work.  The limited scope of the project, everyday objects that somehow incorporate text, is an interesting parameter.  When we first started The Present Group, we would explain the project and get a lot of confused looks and bewilderment in general.  Now, we run across that much less often and I contribute a lot of that to The Thing.  Their success in the media has definitely helped to spread the idea of an art subscription and they have gotten a lot of people to start collecting and supporting artwork.

We’re going to be part of this Fair from November 6th through 8th.  It’s free and will be neat and fun so come and see us.  There will be lots of great exhibitors and there will be editions made on site and sold from Dim-Sum style rolling carts. Hurrah!

Our next review date for TPG13 is NOVEMBER 9th, 2009.

The Present Group, a quarterly art subscription service, seeks proposals from artists for projects that are reproducible in intent. We are looking for projects that will result in a limited edition, artist multiples, or a single work that consists of multiple parts. Every year TPG subscribers receive limited edition works from 4 different contemporary artists. A $500 honorarium is awarded to each season’s artist. Artists must submit a proposal to submit[at]thepresentgroup.com or via USPS: The Present Group Attn: Submission 593 8^th St. #3 Oakland, CA 94607.

For more information please visit: www.thepresentgroup.com/?tpg=artists

To download full submission guidelines: http://www.thepresentgroup.com/TPG-submissions.pdf

It started with Pear Ginger Muffins and Julia Child’s Omeletts (we ate them too fast to take a picture)

Yes. That is a pad of butter on my steaming muffin.  Layer your pleasures people.

Here’s the recipe, adapted from Nigella’s Pear Ginger Muffin recipe:

-Preheat oven to 400.
-In a large bowl, mix 1 cup white flour, 3/4 cup white whole wheat flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 3/4 cup sugar, 1/2 cup brown sugar, and 1 tsp ground ginger, 1/8 tsp of salt.
-In another bowl, mix 2/3 cup sour cream, 1/2 cup vegetable oil, 1 tbs honey (warm), and 2 large eggs. Fold into the dry ingredients.
-Fold in 1.5 cups peeled pears cut into 1/4 inch dice, 1/2 cup ground walnuts, 3 T minced crystallized ginger.
-Divide batter among 12 muffin cups. Sprinkle 2 tbs total brown sugar over tops of muffins and bake for 20 minutes.

*only comments would be that they still weren’t gingery enough for me – but that may be because my ground ginger was a little old, and I might try replacing the oil with something else – I don’t like the smell of oil in baked goods.

Then we used one of our Extended Freedom Days from City Car Share and drove to Point Reyes.

It always amazes us how rejuvenating hiking can be.  We get so stressed and cooped up right around the release of a piece and we could just feel that *junk* releasing as we walked and breathed actual fresh air.

This picture captures the calm.

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