Congratulations to all! “We know that grants to individual artists are an important means to help them advance their work, and this is particularly true during an economic recession when financial resources are so scarce,” said CCI President and CEO Cora Mirikitani. Round V of the Center for Cultural Innovation‘s  Investing in Artists grants program specifically provided support to working artists in the Visual Arts, Craft and Literary Arts in two categories: 1) for the acquisition of Artistic Equipment & Tools; and 2) for Artistic Innovation. In the Artistic Equipment & Tools category, fourteen (14) artists received Investing in Artists grants: · Susan Avila (Craft, Oakland) · Amy Balkin (Multidisciplinary, San Francisco) · Chris Bell (Multidisciplinary, San Mateo) · Cindy Bernard (Visual Arts, Los Angeles) · James Buckhouse (Multidisciplinary, Palo Alto) · Heather Bursch (Visual Arts, Los Angeles) · Joshua Churchill (Multidisciplinary, San Francisco) · Binh Danh (Photography, San Jose) · David Gurman (Multidisciplinary, San Francisco) · Taro Hattori (Visual Arts, Oakland) · Packard Jennings (Multidisciplinary, Oakland) · Larry Kline (Visual Arts, Escondido) · Blaine Merker (Multidisciplinary, San Francisco) · Kim Stringfellow (Multidisciplinary, Joshua Tree) In the Artistic Innovation category, twelve (12) artists received Investing in Artists grants: · Jeff Chang (Literary Arts, Berkeley) · Sara Daleiden (Multidisciplinary, Los Angeles) · Sergio de la Torre (Multidisciplinary, San Francisco) · Amy Franceschini (Visual Arts, San Francisco) · Guillermo Gomez-Pena (Multidisciplinary, San Francisco) · Desiree Holman (Multidisciplinary, Oakland) · Ali Liebegott (Literary Arts, San Francisco) · Kelly Nipper (Multidisciplinary, Los Angeles) · Scott Oliver (Visual Arts, Oakland) · Alison Pebworth (Visual Arts, San Francisco) · Jessica Rath (Visual Arts, Los Angeles) · Philip Ross (Multidisciplinary, San Francisco)

If you live in a city, or even if you don’t, you have likely heard of and/or utilized Craigslist.  From its humble beginnings, the website has grown to international proportions; used to place ads for jobs, housing, and those looking for human contact.  Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the site is its category Missed Connections (MCs).  Here, people post anything from one line to many paragraphs; seeking out those whose path they’ve crossed, people they’ve lost contact with, strangers they’ve seen in bars or cafes or streets that caught their attention.   These posts reflect a desire to try and make real contact, when so much of our lives are spent surrounded by strangers, hours at work, or online.  In the past year alone, these anonymous listings have inspired a book deal, blogs dedicated to the best of MCs, and artists’ work.  Baltimore-based artist Ingrid Burrington has created a piece utilizing Missed Connections that is at once tongue-in-cheek and an adept response to the culture in which we live. Using her “think tank initiative,” the Center For Missed Connections (CMC), Burrington examines MCs in five cities, charts their trends, and offers a work- booklet so that we might keep a log of our own missed connections as we go about our daily routine.  Were someone to stumble upon her findings, one might imagine these graphs and worksheets to be yet another new dating device aimed at an increasingly lonely urban population.  Rather, Burrington has created an untraditional piece of work that experiments with and questions our understanding of illusion and reality, blurring the two, while also offering an honest commentary on this phenomenon of communal loneliness and need for human connection in our country.  This “outreach initiative” provides a critique of the way in which we communicate, date, relate, and experience loneliness and one another:

“You are in the world, in a city, somewhere crowded and vibrant, full of people.  And you are alert with an awareness tempered by the wonderful, unspeakable loneliness of being among strangers… Missed Connections are the embodiment of one of the major lures of cities and urban centers: they are a temporary engagement with a total stranger in uncertain, finite intimacy.”

Burrington takes a humorous look at what constitutes a missed connection, its various forms, and how one may make their post most successful.  Various categories of what she deems the “gray area” include, “holla,” “bitches ain’t shit,” and “why doesn’t anyone want to date me.”  It’s this superficial cheekiness that cushions the subtext of her work.  Rather than beat her audience over the head with the kind of heavy-handedness one might find in some artists’ whose work deals with social commentary; Burrington’s take is comical, relatable, and an astute critique of the way in which our culture often chooses to interact with one another. Many of Burrington’s projects take things that are mundane- date books, puzzles, and rulers to name a few- and recontextualize them; endowing everyday objects with cultural substance and social critique.  Her work is often collaborative, and text appears in nearly every piece.  Some take the form of pamphlets and index cards, while others are protest signs or banners that demand “milk & cookies!” or “revolution can be avoided.”

what do we want? NOW! when do we want it? NOW! .     Ingrid Burrington and Matt Bettine  2008.

Her work offers a means of resistance to traditional artistic genres, as well as to our current culture and what is valued.  In “Tips for experiencing a missed connection,” Burrington advises her reader how to go about becoming an MC.  Among them, the artist suggests you: be attractive; identify which an adjective (cute, hot, sexy, etc) that best suits you and try to embody it; leave before any actual contact can be made; and start living.  How very apropos that in trying to really live, we abandon actual interaction and possibility in favor of an online fantasy.  It is here, and in other pieces, that Burrington subtly dismantles socially constituted norms and brings them into question. Burrington manages to avoid heavy handedness as she maps the world of MCs.  Rather than create a piece that mocks those who flock to Missed Connections in lieu of real human contact, the artist offers us a thoughtful, rather blithe take on the palpable loneliness that seems to proliferate so many of these posts.  Between Match.com, OkCupid, eHarmony, and myriad other dating sites, it’s no surprise that we (the collective we) have become disconnected. If such sites weren’t to exist, would we still feel the same lack of connectedness?  It seems that in attempting to quell the feeling of loneliness and isolation, dating sites may compound the feeling; allowing people to search for others at their leisure and in the comfort of their home.  Rather than step out into the world where rejection is a real possibility, those who date online only have to face a virtual one, and can quickly move on to the next profile.  CMC is a critical look at this delusional approach to interaction, and acknowledges the irony in our attempts to establish contact via Missed Connections with those we wish to engage in reality, but actively choose not to.

Taxonomy of Missed Connections, detail.  In the Center for Missed Connections Citizen’s Field Guide, Center for Missed Connections Information Initiative, 2010

In CMC, we are given statistics, pie charts, and insights into the workings of each city’s MCs.  It’s in this urban sea of strangers that we make a connection, and perhaps we find comfort in this collected loneliness.  In CMC and other pieces, the artist dares the viewer to ignore this current state of detachment in which we seem to exist.  As Burrington navigates the world of interreality through various non-traditional formats, she manages to create works of art that are simultaneously provocative, critical, and humorous; and through them we are given a glimpse at how our culture has dissociated, as well as our genuine desire to find a connection amidst this often self-imposed isolation. . . . Madeleine Zinn is a writer and erstwhile artist based in Oakland.  Her main interests include non-fiction, community arts, pop culture, and queer theory and identity politics.  She is currently pursuing a dual MFA/MA in Writing and Visual & Critical Studies at California College of the Arts.

We interviewed Ingrid Burrington on February 21, 2010.

The Center for Missed Connections Information Initiative is an edition of 100 booklet sets by artist Ingrid Burrington analyzing missed connections posts on craigslist.org.  It is the most recent project by Burrington’s pseudo-think tank – the CMC – which seeks not only to chart the loneliness of city life but to “encourage people to pay greater attention to those fleeting moments in cities that appear insignificant but linger in memory, producing a richer and more romantic and/or sleazy experience of the urban environment.”   The set contains a Citizen’s Field Guide, a Field Observation Workbook,  a fold-out “Taxonomy of Missed Connections,” as well as a full-color “Geographic Missed Connections Study: New York”. The Citizen’s Field Guide attempts to classify Missed Connections posts on a multitude of criterion such as demographic, degree (double take, actual conversation, hookup), reason for connection missed (in a hurry, not wanting to be “that guy”) and location (gym).  The fold-out Taxonomy of Missed Connections visualizes much of this research in an easy to digest format.  The field guide also presents the results from a short term comparative study of Missed Connection posts from the same 24 hour period in New York, Chicago, Austin, Boston, and San Francisco. The Field Observation Workbook encourages you to “Be Out and About!” and experience your own missed connections.  Put to work as part of the CMC data collectors, participants are afforded a means to take down details about particular missed connections and have a perfect record should they decide to try to engage that special person online. 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.

We are on a mission to find more ways to get money into artists hands.  Following the funding models that seem to work, models that seem to use what people are paying for anyway, we have decided to start hosing websites.  A website has almost become a business card these days.  So we wanted to create a platform that would not only help people create their own websites in an affordable way, but give them the opportunity to do something good with the money they would be spending anyway to host their sites. So host with us! At $84/year, it is comparable to most quality hosting sites out there.  Over a quarter of that payment goes directly into The Present Group granting fund.  Each granting period, we will choose a theme, accept nominations from within that theme, and allow all the hostees to vote on the winner. For the first grant, we are teaming up with the Collective Foundation to fund a travel grant for a Bay Area artist.  As Renny Pritikin has noted on the SFMOMA blog, the Bay Area sometimes has a hard time holding on to its notable artists.  Inspired by the way many other governments work, Joseph del Pesco‘s idea is that part of keeping artists here is to help them with the funds to travel away for opportunities and come back.

Matthew Cella, “Map 1024,”  48″ x 72″  UV print on brushed aluminum

Matt Cella fabricates multi-media works that are the product of digitally collaged .;::’til;ps and //??>s. Born in 1981, he received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, and currently lives and works in San Francisco.

I was warming my bum at our heater and I found myself staring at our bookshelf’s row of artist books.  Nestled in between was one of the first books I’ve ever made: The Painter. I think I was in 4th or 5th grade. Here’s the story, spelling intact: Once apon a time there was a little village inside a forest.  Inside the village everyone was always sad and dreary. One day a painter came into the village to paint.  When he started to paint the people, he realized that they always had frowns on their faces. The painter wanted to know why, so he would pick a dfferent spot each day, sit there, and watch the people. Pretty soon he saw that there were no families, romances or friends.  The painter wanted to end this, so he got to work. He painted beautiful pictures about love and some about friendship. Then the next week he picked a day and gave away all the paintings on one condition.  The condition was that all the villagers had to give their paintings to someone else on the day after next. He ran out of paintings that day, but that night he made some paintings.  Before the day that every one had to give their paintings, the painter made sure everyone in the village had a painting. On the day that everyone gave their paintings to someone else, everyone was happy.  From then on they did this every year, except only with cards, and this was the begining of Valentine’s Day. The End.

J. Carter Brown talking about his mentor Bernard Berenson:

According to Brown, the elder art historian “found, at the end of his life, that his great experiences came in his daily walk, which he did at the end of the day up behind I Tatti, where, he said, the fruits of a lifetime of looking at art objects allowed him to look at nature in a newly meaningful way.”

found in “Reciprocal Generosity” by Mary Jane Jacob in What we want is free, generosity and exchange in recent art edited by Ted Purves

TPG #11 artist Helena Keeffe has teamed up with Amber Cady to start Alula Editions, a new art subscription whose focus is to work with artists to create repeat patterns for textiles. They collaborate with individual artists and also organize participatory group drawing activities in order to create textiles that defy expectations and move beyond purely aesthetic considerations. They have an Open Call for Submissions with a deadline of April 28th, and artists receive a $500 stipend. Starting off with a bang, Alula Editions was a recipient of this year’s Southern Exposure Alternative Exposure Grant, will be collaborating with artists in Portland, Oregon to create the official tote bag for the Open Engagement Conference at Portland State University, and will be printing their first edition as part of a residency at the Headlands Center for the Arts. They haven’t figured out their pricing structure yet, so subscriptions are not yet on sale.  But you can get on a mailing list so you will be the first to know when they are.  The first work is projected to go out this summer. Welcome Alula!

Sometimes it seems trite to say that you just have to keep working, even if what you’re making isn’t so great.   But part of the creative process, and those that ultimately “succeed” in creative fields are those who have the faith and perseverance to make it through the time when the only thing that seems to make sense is to give up. Ira Glass gives us the faith and courage to keep going.

Last night we went to a screening and discussion of the film “Examined Life” as part of our Pickpocket Alamanack class.  The film is a philosophy discussion with thinkers across the country in an engaging and easy on the eyes format. In the followup discussion, Astra Taylor, the director/filmaker, talked a bit about how much fear people had towards the idea of a movie about philosophy, how even her well educated friends would recoil at the idea, considering themselves much too uneducated to even approach or engage the subject matter. I feel like I have been saying the same thing for years about art.  Where does this fear come from?  Why is our society so fearful of expressing their thoughts about a subject?  And why does so often this fear prevent us from experiencing or engaging at all? The YBCA has started a free series to address it. Looks fun.

Yesterday Oliver and I spoke at CCA for a little bit about The Present Group.  The class is a really neat investigation of different systems of exchange co-taught by TPG#5 critic Scott Oliver and Rachel Robinette. One of the underlying questions was whether our project, as commendable as it may be, is sustainable.  Can the desire to learn about art be a powerful enough tool in marketing?  Can people wrap their heads around collecting artwork for the sake of learning about it rather than it be an investment, or a chosen work to keep in your home? We’re still not sure.  We are still a small project, and we haven’t had as much success financially as some of our competitors.  But we believe that the system already exists for people to support artists whose work they know and like and collect their artwork in particular.   We know that we are asking a lot of people when we ask them to think that what they are supporting is the creation of art in general, not just the result that they receive. The funny thing to me is that it doesn’t seem foreign.    Museum memberships and Season Pass holders to theatres work under this same assumption, and for a similar price point.    The main difference is that they aren’t filling up their home with anything.   Perhaps what we need to focus on is a way for people to support us without having to keep the pieces once they’ve learned about them. Just some musings…

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.