This week was sort of weird. No one sent us much about opportunities – locally, nationally or otherwise. I did manage to catch a few things with highlights including Texas awesomeness, your daily ACRE reminder, performance –centric things and a prize opening at Gold Star Bar.

 

Calls for Entry

 

National:

 

New American Paintings

West deadline: April 30^th

Juror: Bill Arning, Director, Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston

New American Paintings is a juried exhibition-in-print. Each edition results from a highly competitive juried competition and presents the work of 40 painters. Working closely with renowned curators such as Lisa Philips of New Museum of Contemporary Art and James Rondeau of the Art Institute of Chicago, in order to select those artists whose work deserve to be seen by a wider audience. From post-modern pastiche to the landscape, recognized artists to recent M.F.A. graduates, New American Paintings does not discriminate against style or yield to art world trends.

http://www.newamericanpaintings.com/competitions.html

 

Chicago:

 

Synapse Arts – New Works open call for creators

Deadline: May 1

New Works is an annual program that supports emerging artists by providing the resources needed  to make an original piece.

For the first time, Synapse is offering one position to a new creator by way of application. This creator (choreographer, director, deviser, etc.) will be an independent artist who requires resources such as rehearsal space and performers in order to explore their work. The creator need not be entirely new to Synapse, but applicants who have not worked within the New Works program previously will be a priority.

The selected creator will receive:

-Paid performers (up to 4)

-Free rehearsal space

-Free weekly company class

-A costume budget

-A place on a fully-produced final concert (including public performance(s), tech time, lighting design, stage management, box office management, public relations, and marketing) in October, 2012.

See more about the company at www.synapsearts.com or contactlauren@synapsearts.com

 

Texas:

 

Auora Picture Show

Early deadline: 11:59PM April 16, 2012

Late deadline: 11:59PM May 1, 2012

Started in 1998, the Extremely Shorts Festival is a juried competition of adventurous three-minute or shorter films and videos from around the world. Each year a different juror (esteemed filmmaker, film programmer or arts curator) selects 20-25 mini-masterpieces to be shown at a two-day screening event in June. Audience Choice cash awards are given for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. The short format of the festival encourages innovative approaches to filmmaking in a range of genres including narrative, art, experimental, documentary and animation. Started in 1998, the Extremely Shorts Festival is a juried competition of adventurous three-minute or shorter films and videos from around the world. Each year a different juror (esteemed filmmaker, film programmer or arts curator) selects 20-25 mini-masterpieces to be shown at a two-day screening event in June. Audience Choice cash awards are given for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. The short format of the festival encourages innovative approaches to filmmaking in a range of genres including narrative, art, experimental, documentary and animation.

http://aurorapictureshow.org/pages/extremely_shorts_film_festival_154.asp

 

Residencies

 

Midwest:

ACRE Reminder!

Deadline is April 20^th

http://www.acreresidency.org/

 

Harold Arts & threewalls

SURVIVAL III: August 10th – 24^th

Survival is a three-year collaborative residency project between Harold Arts and threewalls. Held each summer at Harold Arts in Morgan County, Ohio near the town of Chesterhill, Survival is an ongoing discussion about the continuation of existence, in spite of obstacles or advantages in the landscape, economy or community, in public or private that hinder or facilitate endurance.

The project combines long-term relationships with commissioned projects and returning visiting artists, writers and curators with short-term residents and temporary visitors to create a collaborative program facilitated by its participants. Over the last two seasons residents have produced films, embarked on research projects and conducted workshops on themes relating to survival – whether physical, psychological or social. Past residents Sara Black and Conrad Freiberg are both working on new commissions for the Hub & Tack program, part of The Placemaker Foundation, our sister organization which seeks to invigorate Morgan County through arts and culture with a focus on site-specific works in architecture, earthworks, performance, sculpture and sound. We invite your proposals to cap off the third year of Survival with a special invitation to those who would like to conduct workshops or make presentations in conjunction with the theme. Of course, we still invite individual research and private exploration.

This session is open to musicians and artists working in performance, film/video, architecture and three-dimensions. This year, residencies at Harold Arts are awarded by invitation only. However, if you would like to invite yourself, we encourage you to submit a letter of inquiry to info@haroldarts.org

http://haroldarts.org/

 

New York:

 

Watermill Center Residency

Applications are due June 1, 2012

The Watermill Center Residency Program began in 2006, when the Center officially opened as a year-round facility. Over the course of the program, up to twenty collectives or individual artists take up residence at the Center to create collaborative works that critically investigate, challenge, and extend the existing norms of performance practice. By June of 2012, the Center will have hosted over 89 residency groups.

The Residency Program, which runs from September  to June, gives young artists the opportunity to utilize the Watermill Center as a home and a workshop to create and develop their own work.

http://watermillcenter.org/programs/residencies

 

On another note, an entire B@S email thread from was dedicated to how great this press release was…

 

In the early part of 2010, Mike Rea and I were drinking in a relatively empty Gold Star during a winter storm. As usual, we were a bit bored with each other so Susan, our favorite bartender, asked if we wanted some paper and markers to draw. It reminded me of drawing sharks from a book that my dad had while I was growing up so we started casually doodling some sharks. It quickly began spiraling out of control. Mike drew a shark sniffing cocaine alongside a fighter jet and I drew one with a dick and three balls attached. I believe the first night produced around ten drawings which Susan hung on the refrigerator. The next time we came in Susan said people loved them but unfortunately some were stolen off the refrigerator by people waiting in line to piss. She asked if we wanted to draw more.

 

For months we kept adding more filth trying to shock each other. We decided they should be made quickly with little attention to skill and great emphasis on vulgarity. Other patrons started coming in when we weren’t there and asked if they could draw them too. Susan kept collecting them, eventually accruing around 400 drawings in addition to all the ones people kept stealing. Many artists participated while Mike and I heckled them for being pussies. We met a lot of people we didn’t care to meet and a few whose company we really enjoyed. Most people asked, “Why sharks with dicks and drugs?” Mike just thinks it is a stupid question. I always answer by saying they are three things from our childhood that movies and media taught us to be afraid of.

 

One night Susan introduced us to her mother Maryann, who owns Gold Star and picks artists for the walls. She said she normally doesn’t like nudity or violence in the work they show but asked if we would like to show our sharks because she thought they were funny. We agreed but only if we could pick the best ones (our own drawings) and blow them up to large poster size. “Sharks, Dicks and Drugs” opens Saturday, April 14th at 6:00 p.m. at Gold Star Bar.

1. It’s Getting Hot in Here at Chicago Artists’ Coalition

Work by Sarah and Joseph Belknap.

Chicago Artists’ Coalition is located at 217 N. Carpenter St. Reception Friday, 6-9pm.

2. With Other People, With Other Sons at Heaven Gallery

Work by Ryan Chorbagian, Hao Ni, and Patrick McGuan.

Heaven Gallery is located at 1550 N. Milwaukee Ave. 2nd Fl. Reception Friday, 7-11pm.

3. Temporal Figuration at LVL3

Work by Andrew Holmquist, David Brandon Geeting, and Jade Walker.

LVL3 is located at 1542 N. Milwaukee Ave, 3rd Fl. Reception Saturday, 6-10pm.

4. limes and bricks suck pink you tasteless hunk or just limes and brick suck pink or tasteless hunk at Terrain Exhibitions

Work by Claire Ashley

Terrain Exhibitions is located at 704 Highland Ave. Oak Park. Reception Sunday 12-4pm.

5. Objet Petit Ahh…, and Benefit for Version Festival 12 at Co-Prosperity Sphere*

Curated by Dayton Castleman and Matthew Dupont, with work by John Airo, Kristen Althoff, Anna & Meredith, Nick Black, Lisa Brosig, Stephanie Burke and Jeriah Hildewine, Jessica Calek and Dan Streeting, Abby Christensen, Melissa Damasauskas, Kaleb Dean, Aaron Delehanty, Jim Duignan, Ben Fain, Karl Gesch, Aron Gent, Ricki Hill, Gabe Hoare, David Hooker, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Anais Maljan, John Medina, Thomas Moreno, Heather Mullins, Jake Myers, Catie Olson, Haynes Riley, Blake Russell, Chris Santiago, Rana Siegel, Charles Smith, Bert Stabler, Basia Toczydlowska, Emily Van Hoff, Johanna Wawro, and Jen Zito.

Co-Prosperity Sphere is located at 3219 S. Morgan St. Reception Saturday 6-11pm.

*The author has work in this exhibition

This week we are trying something new. Truth be told, we were planning on trying something new at the beginning of January but due to various mishaps we are two months late. The snappy-est title we could come up with “Great Stuff.” What that really is a subtitle for is “Great Stuff that was found in our offices regardless of how it got there.” So we begin “Great Stuff” with Kate Beaton’s “Hark! A Vagrant.”

Last fall Beaton’s new comic anthology “Hark! A Vagrant” was published by Drawn and Quarterly, and is truly delightful. it arrived our offices and quietly sat in a pile of things that needed to be read for several months, never really hinting at the ridiculous good times to be had within but one quiet afternoon I picked it up and could not put it down. Beaton’s a veteran cartoonist whose work has appeared in Harper’s Magazine, the National Post and the New Yorker. Beaton is a kind of spiritual kin to Bad at Sports. Her work draws heavily on her degree in history and her broad knowledge of literature, and then couples those intellectual impulses with an absurd sense of humor which would make Monty Python proud and had me laughing out loud over and  neglecting phone calls. In fact, I’ve come back to it and reread it twice since my first reading. If you are a fan of art, literature, Canada, history, and being an intellectual well making fun of intellectuals this shit will tear you up.

The high points for me include jokes about the “Great Gatsby,” the Brontë sisters, St. Francis, and Canadian stereotypes. the back covers cartoon is a special treat for those of us who’ve devoted our lives to things that are often difficult to empathize with.

You can find more delight with Kate Beaton here.

And Drawn and Quarterly here.

There is a fox in the museum. It is the only thing that moves in the whole space: is this why the fox’s presence is so striking? Because it alone is unpredictable within the camera frame? Because it might do something to the paintings? No one else is present. Nighttime is inferred. The title of this work The Nightwatch suggests some kind of threat. Perhaps we are witnessing footage from an apocalypse. More likely, the museum is just closed. The stillness of the room adds to the potency of our fox. It passes like a shadow through the National Portait Gallery — the only representative of flesh and blood. It doesn’t notice the fine work hung on its bounding walls. And why should it? It has no relation to these figures, or at least it didn’t before it entered the museum. It stops and pokes its head through what might be a fireplace. Looking for a way outside? When one discovers a mouse in a high rise apartment, one imagines an unknown, or secret, exit. One, perhaps, not built to the human scale. In the case of our fox, the artist is the entrance and the exit. This is the fox of Francis Alÿs — the man who ties magnets to his feet and walks around Mexico City collecting metal. He has similarly pushed a giant block of ice around until it melted to a nub the size of a stone. There must have been a crook in his back by then. He also chases tornadoes and has lead a flock of sheep around a city square like a Pied Piper. The Nightwatch  was one of seven works commissioned by London-based Artangel, wherein Alÿs was asked to make work in response to the city. I saw a striking video at PS1 last summer that was part of this same series, in which Alÿs videoed the English guard marching, at first alone, though the deserted city, and then slowly finding one another, growing every more comfortable as their number grew. The sound of their feet grew louder and louder, echoing through the empty corridors. Yet, I am most interested in his fox at the moment.

The fox articulates a non-human space within the cultural architecture of humanity. It is not simply that the museum was built by human enterprise, but that it functions as a temple of sorts, a house for historical works. The museum is a proper place, full of oil paintings and serious faces, poised with solemn and practiced grace. These works have survived the test of time. In that respect their presence is partly due to chance, for it is likely some have travelled great distances, across the sea for instance, barring wreckage, flooding, fires and sunlight. They hang now, like static vampires in gold frames, very much preserved. They are representatives of posterity: examples one might find inspiration in. The fox disrupts their solemnity, destabilizing whatever authority they might possess. The animal is so dynamic by comparison, trotting around with speed and self-possession. What is that statistic? In a matter of weeks the jungle would encroach upon New York City if human kind were not present to fend it off. It would take so little time to be gobbled up by trash, vines and rats — and then the larger beasts would come to sniff through our bodegas.

Joseph Beuys brought a coyote into a gallery in 1974. The interaction between Beuys and the coyote became a work of art, the performance of a developing relationship. It illustrated the process of equilibreum as it was discovered between a four-legged beast and a human being. Between two cultures, one wild, the other civilized. The coyote, of course, is endemic to American mythology — a trickster, a mirror, a scavenger. Alÿs’ fox, on the other hand, is closer to English lore. There are any number of pubs named after it. For Sunday sport, English gentry used to set out on horseback to hunt it. But foxes are also tricksters, though these (apparently) can sometimes climb trees. In Nightwatch, the artist is absent. Instead the fox interacts with the object of art-space; that physical space becomes a conduit for history, not, as in the case with Beuys, the artist and his props.

Alÿs began his project with the idea of using CCTV footage from surveillance cameras all over London. While it is legal for any member of the public to watch the footage, it is illegal to use it for some other purpose. Alÿs adjusted his plan and focused instead on the National Portrait Gallery as a site. They have state of the art surveillance cameras. To test this, to engage our interest in the strangeness of animals, he set a fox called Bandit loose in the museum at night. What is it that we are looking for when we watch this fox? Go here to watch an excerpt from this piece.

It is time once again for another edition of Fielding Practice, Bad at Sports’ Chicago-focused podcast produced for the Art21 Blog! In this month’s edition, we switch up formats and focus on a single topic: The Essential New Art Examiner (Northern Illinois University Press), edited by Kathryn Born, Janet Koplos and Terri Griffith, an anthology of writings from Chicago’s only major art periodical. Duncan MacKenzie, Dan Gunn and I sit down with Terri Griffith to get a behind-the-scenes look at the making of this anthology and learn why the NAE still inspires impassioned discussion today, a decade after it folded. And as always, we have our monthly picks for events and exhibitions taking place in the Chicagoland area and beyond. Click on over to the Art21 Blog to listen to the podcast and see our picks, and as always, thank you so much for listening!