Ryan Duggan, "Today, Tomorrow," 2011. Johalla Projects at NEXT.

Last weekend, as I wandered around 2011′s iteration of Art Chicago–now value-added with crunchy nuggets of NEXT!!–I came to the odd realization that I now feel more “of” Chicago’s visual art scene than outside of it, and as a result I am starting to lose what’s always been precious to me: my ability to call shit as I see it, regardless of who I might offend. I really want Art Chicago and NEXT to succeed because I want the galleries and artists who live in Chicago and who partake of the commercial system to thrive and to prosper. So let’s think of the forthcoming assessment of this year’s combined Art Chicago/NEXT fairs as the ‘If You Don’t Have Anything Nice To Say…’ report, because I feel like I have to emphasize the positive, in the face of what I personally experienced as mostly negative. I will say this: I sincerely hope that Karen Archey’s info on ArtInfo is accurate, and that Art Chicago/NEXT’s 2011′s participating exhibitors did indeed sell the shit out of their wares, because I saw not much other purpose to it all other than successfully doing just that. To be sure, commerce is what art fairs are all about, but it doesn’t hurt if you throw a little ‘shock of the new’ at people while you are selling the aforementioned crap out of it. In the two previous years of this fair that I have attended I saw a fair amount of interesting experimental projects and a slew of lively–and just as important, timely–public conversations thrown into the mix, along with some stupid stuff like Jell-o wrestling and teeny tiny DIY-comedy clubs–projects that felt amateurish and ad hoc and yet whose purpose, I realize now in retrospect, was to remind people, in a kind of ‘have another beer and you’ll see what I mean’ kind of way, that it was the art fair context itself that was truly ridiculous. That kind of silliness was mostly absent from NEXT this year, and I, for one, missed it.

This year’s fair merged NEXT’s presentations of galleries focused on emerging artists with the more established Art Chicago vendors, now shown side-by-side on the same floor. This was no doubt an economic decision, but it had a deadening effect overall, with NEXT’s galleries not surprisingly suffering the worst from it. Whereas in previous years NEXT (and its high-energy GOFFO sub-section) provided a breath of fresh air along with some genuinely good art, this year the NEXT booths were slotted into a section on Floor 12 and thus became pretty much indistinguishable from their coiffed and business-suited elder brethren. I barely felt the presence of GOFFO this year. Proximity to Art Chicago seemed to implicitly encourage all the NEXT booths to play it safe and be on their best behavior, and while this somewhat more formal atmosphere may have benefited larger commercial galleries like Kavi Gupta or Western Exhibitions it made the work in booths from smaller alternative spaces/projects like LVL3 or ACRE feel less adventurous than they might have otherwise. On the other hand, some of the best paintings I saw at NEXT were by a Canadian artist named Beth Stuart at the aforementioned LVL3 booth, and my ability to hone in on said paintings in relative quietude no doubt benefited from the fact that there wasn’t some crazy-ass parade marching up and down the aisles to distract me. So I guess that legitimacy thing works both ways.

ACRE booth at NEXT, view of Matt Nichols' sculpture Untitled, 2011 in foreground.

LVL3 Gallery at NEXT - 2011. Photo courtesy LVL3.

Beth Stuart, Scanty Shanty, 2010 | Oil on pastered linen on panel, 14″ x 17″, at LVL3 at NEXT 2011. Photo courtesy LVL3.

Overall I thought Art Chicago suffered even moreso from what it usually suffers from: ‘over the couch’ syndrome, i.e. too many mediocre paintings and photographs, all of reasonable size and ‘striking’ visual impact to hang as an appropriate ‘statement piece’ over the living room couch. Archey characterized a lot of the Art Chicago work as having a “sci-fi transhumanist” feel to it, and I’d have to agree. As I wandered about I started playing a little game with myself: what if someone took a digital image of every painting and photograph in both Art Chicago and NEXT and then layered them, Jason Salavon-style — what would this quintessential work of fair art look like? Pretty much like any number of the paintings that were already hanging on the walls, I concluded. There was also an odd, images-encased-in-glass, plexiglas, and/or resin trend running through the fair which greatly disturbed me. Two examples follow–the first is blood encased in glass, the second is drinking straws sculpted in the forms of lips and eyes and then encased in glass–although there were countless additional works of this type that I didn’t photograph:

Jordan Eagles, Lifeforce. At Patrajdas Contemporary Art Booth.

Works by Sang Sik Hong at Patrajdas Contemporary.

I think I’ll just sum up the rest of the fair–my personal take on it, anyway–Best/Worst style, as follows:

Best non-Chicago booth at NEXT: I’d give this to Charlie James Gallery, a commercial space located on Chung King Road in L.A. James seems to have brought his A-Game with this booth, and also showed a variety of artists–I especially liked Ala Ebtekar’s collage drawings and Libby Black’s built-to-charm, paper and hot-glue versions of roller skates and opera glasses. Nothing terribly deep here, but all the work looked sharp, sellable, and smart–everything that a good art fair showcase should be.

A for Effort Award: to Robert Berman Gallery, for making a good-looking, focused booth that (presumably) sold the shit out of Shepard Fairey’s album cover art. Obey, indeed.

Shepard Fairey album cover art at Robert Berman Booth, Art Chicago 2011.

Best Chicago booth at NEXT: I thought they all did a great job, but I’d say a tie between LVL3 and Post Family. LVL3 for its super-”on it” presentation of works–all were strong, and they all looked great together, and Post Family for showcasing the collective’s usual sense of flair in a visually engaging yet uncompromised manner. (Bad photo, sorry!).

Work most likely to be impulse-purchased at NEXT: Sandow Birk and Elyse Pignolet’s print duo, “A Conservative Map of the World,” 2011, and “A Liberal Map of the World,” 2011, both archival pigment prints that could be had for the set at $3900, courtesy of the above-mentioned Charlie James Gallery. A huge crowd-pleaser, and genuinely amusing.

Sandow Birk and Elyse Pignolet, A Conservative Map of the World, at Charlie James Gallery booth at NEXT 2011.

Sandow Birk and Elyse Pignolet, A Liberal Map of the World, at Charlie James Gallery booth at NEXT 2011.

Best Chicago booth at Art Chicago: this is a tough one, but I’ll go with Carl Hammer Gallery. They gave a lovely presentation with terrific examples of works by gallery artists such as Joseph Yoakum and Roger Brown. The full package, elegantly presented.

Carl Hammer booth at Art Chicago 2011, work by Roger Brown in foreground.

The ‘Where the Heck Were They??’ Award: Shared by Rhona Hoffman and Tony Wight.

Worst Art-Making Trend: the above-mentioned bodies, body parts, and viscera-encased-in-glass works seen throughout the fair.

Best Attempt to Do Something Different: Team Art!’s ongoing auction/destruction performance, in which any work of art that didn’t sell during its auction slot was immediately hacked to bits. Maybe not the freshest idea in the world, but the participating artists felt genuine pain at the destruction of their works (which included a preponderance of sad-eyed kitty cats and doggies, natch), while my own refusal to save the life of a threatened work filled me with a real, albeit fleeting, sense of guilt. Like I said before, it was the kind of silliness that effectively pointed to the larger sense of silliness that surrounded us all.

Team Art! puts the art in its booth on the chopping block.

This work did not sell.

Cuteness not making the cut.

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My personal take on MDW was skewed by the fact that I was sitting at a booth and took only periodic spins around the other floors, often in search of food and/or coffee. For what it’s worth, Floor 2 seemed like the most convivial and fun place to be; Floor 1, which housed the indoor Sculpture Garden, was expansive and lofty and a tad empty-ish in feel but showcased a number of terrific sculptures and installations that really needed all that elbow room; and Floor 3 was a tad quiet, which was necessary given that the public talks were taking place there.  Floor 3 did have Steve Ruiz’s Chicago Art Review booth showcasing a really nice project by Philip Von Zweck. Von Zweck asked a number of artists to produce drawings that could be photocopied on demand and distributed for free – the result was a lovely little exhibition of the original drawings, each of which could also be “taken away” gratis, albeit in editioned, xeroxed form. Reminiscent of Stephanie Syjuco’s Copy Stand: An Autonomous Manufacturing Zone at 2009′s Freize Art Fair, Von Zweck’s project reversed many of the terms laid out by Syjuco’s endeavor (appropriately so, as the fair contexts in which each project was shown are polar opposite in nature). The results of Von Zweck’s collaboration were more homespun and less cynical in feel than Syjuco’s (though I love her concept equally, for different reasons).  I especially liked the anticipatory aspects of translating an original artwork to xerox multiple — the speculation of how well the drawing you chose would come out in pure black and white tones, seeing the results slide out of the machine….plus I am a sucker for this kind of freebie art giveaway. I like stuff, and since I could not afford a piece by Melissa Oresky otherwise, this’ll have to do me.

I only had time to attend the full duration of one panel discussion: the conversation on New Chicago Visual Arts Advocacy moderated by independent curator Britton Bertran. Panelists included Abraham Ritchie, Chicago editor of ArtSlant and Chicago Art Blog blogger; Elizabeth Chodos, Associate Director of Ox-Bow; Laura Fox, a marketing specialist and board member of Intuit; Steve Ruiz of the aforementioned Chicago Art Review; and Barbara Koenen, an artist and the Director of Chicago Artists Resource. The panel explored the types of visual arts advocacy that will be necessary — and feasible — under Rahm’s reign. Their discussion was certainly more raw than cooked, which is appropriate, given the advocacy group they are planning to build is still in its early stages. As all of the panelists stressed, any advocacy group’s ability to move forward depends upon obtaining a larger community consensus about the critical issues to push, and the panelists laid out a basic framework for a discussion of issues that would be ongoing. Some key issues on the table–but certainly not yet finalized– include advocating for more live/work and exhibition spaces in Chicago’s industrial areas through changes or adaptations to the city’s current zoning ordinances; the need to articulate the importance of street artists and street art to the creative revitalization of communities (and to distinguish their activities from those of taggers); and the overall need for visual artists to better articulate how their activities benefit the city/neighborhood communities as a whole–true dat on the last point, though shouldn’t it be obvious? The rest is still on the table and ripe for hashing-out; this is a group to watch, and to ally yourselves with now if you want to change the landscape of creative production in Chicago for the better.

Enough with the half-baked notes; the following are a few snapshots taken by a decidedly un-professional photographer over the course of the two-day event.

Bad at Sports at MDW Fair. Pictured: (Left) artist Oli Watt; (Right) Richard Holland, BAS co-founder.

BAS at MDW Fair, wall of ephemera from exhibition at Apex Art. Selection curated by Abraham Ritchie.

Duncan MacKenzie & Christian Kuras, "Institution," at ThreeWalls' booth.

Duncan MacKenzie & Christian Kuras, "Institution," at ThreeWalls' booth.

Chicago Art Review/Open Crit presents a project by Philip Von Zweck. (Pictured: Steve Ruiz, artist Dianna Frid).

Chicago Art Review; installation view of drawings included in Philip Von Zweck project.

Installation view of works at Side Car Gallery's booth.

Works by Tom Torluemke at Linda Warren Gallery.

Carson Fisk-Vittori, Lamp Design #2, 2011 at Roots and Culture.

Brenna Murphy installation at The Green Gallery booth.

Sculpture floor; view of Blue Meanies by Ben Stone in the Sculpture Garden.

Composite Still Life, Elements Removed, 2011, by Heather Mekkelson in the Sculpture Garden

Frosty Pink Lipstick Smeared All Over His Face, 2010, by Jesse Harrod in the Sculpture Garden

Frosty Pink Lipstick Smeared All Over His Face, 2010, detail; Jesse Harrod.

Works by Rachel Nifenegger at Western Exhibitions' booth.

Collages by Dutes Miller at Western Exhibitions.

Hot dog eatin' folks AKA Heather Dee Gentile and Ron Ewert at Tiki Bar setup / The Hills Esthetic Center.

Michael Rea at ebersmoore; detail.

What It Is booth; works by Sabina Ott in foreground.

Works by David Legett at 65 Grand's booth.

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Here’s what I want to know: if What It Is, a shoestring-budget domestic art space, can publish small catalogs in conjunction with many of its exhibitions — why the heck can’t the MCA do the same for its 12 x 12 series??

Michelle Welzen Collazo Anderson & Bernard Williams; exhibition December 2009

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The following is the entire text of the discussion which appeared in yesterday’s “Centerfield” column for art:21 blog.  The “Centerfield” post had been edited somewhat for brevity.

*********

Lately I have been thinking a lot about sustainability and sustenance. Not the environmental kind of sustainability–the personal and emotional kind.  Chicago’s art community is rich in relationships, but like so many other ‘art worlds’ out there, it can be a bit less bountiful when it comes to monetary compensation, feedback, and consistent forms of validation. So I asked four longtime Chicago-based cultural practitioners–independent curator and arts educator Britton Bertran, artist Duncan MacKenzie (co-founder of Bad at Sports),  Caroline Picard, an artist who runs the small but highly-regarded Green Lantern Gallery and Press, and Philip von Zweck, an artist whose work often involves project-based collaborations–a few questions about how they have sustained their own practices over time, and especially after a project has run its course. How do they stay sharp and engaged and committed over the long haul? How do they keep on keepin’ on when the going gets tough?  Read on to find out what this group had to say.

Claudine Ise:  Describe the work that you do. What forms has the work taken? When its form has changed, what were some of the reasons for the change?

Britton Bertran: My work is cyclical. I started my “career” here in Chicago working for a well-known and very progressive not-for-profit art education organization.  It was hard and fulfilling programmatic work placing ‘teaching artists’ in mostly underserved Chicago public schools.  It was also mentally exhausting, especially the part when we all sat around and planned the future of arts integration.  Around 2005 I decided to open my own commercial art gallery (called 40000). There were many reasons why I did this but one of the main points was jettisoning the funk of non-profit work off of me and diving in to the wild world of working with artists for profit (theirs and mine).  Three years later, and a month before the great economic collapse of 2008, I closed the gallery. There are a myriad of reasons why I closed the gallery.  To this day, I am simultaneously extremely relieved for shutting down but will also ultimately regret doing so.  After that I worked for a local philanthropic foundation doing a preliminary report investigating the feasibility of opening a contemporary art space in Chicago. Meanwhile, the aforementioned economic collapse waylaid the philanthropic element of the foundation and hence the feasibility of operating such a space.  Currently I am working for another Chicago-based art education not-for-profit with a more encompassing, less intense mission that is equally as challenging but not laden with the philosophical conundrum of solving the world’s problems.  It’s very satisfying and comes with a real live paycheck.

Interspersed with the jobs I have had in for the last 4 years or so, I have also had a secondary career as an independent curator and instructor in the Arts Administration department at The School of the Art Institute.  Curatorially, I put together two exhibitions a year – one at a more Institutional level and one at an artist-run or alternative gallery space.  As an instructor, my classes revolve around the art business, institutional contexts and the history of both.

Economics and the highs and lows of professional frustration seem to be running themes in my personal work history.  The one constant is education.  Its also important to point out I am not an artist.  I don’t make work as “product”, but one of the ongoing mantras of art education (specifically in secondary school, but really at all levels) is the sweet dance between product and process.  What is each of these things in the first place?  Can you have one without the other?  Where does the satisfaction of learning make itself known?  Retention of information or basking in the glow of acknowledgment: which should take precedence or how should they be intermingled for maximum effect? These are the questions I have been working with throughout my “career” and I believe it will be a long pursuit.

Duncan MacKenzie: The work that I do has taken, and takes, many forms. The way that I work now is collaboratively, sometimes that means working on the  “Bad at Sports” project and at other times that work is with an artist named Christian Kuras on an object and image-based practice. As a young artist, I was trained in several really active communal print shops, a series of film sets and a small graphic design firm. Those experiences left me with a real strong drive towards communal working and a need to share broadly both the authorship and the result. This is a very different way then the traditional “heroic artist” locked in their studio wrestling with a canvas. I don’t love spending my time all alone working through a series of problems and puzzles which I’ve situated for myself. I like and need the energy colleagues bring to projects.

Before these current collaborations, I had thought of myself and worked as a… I don’t know, for lack of a better term, postmodern pop artist, and developed a “style” which was reflective of pop culture, post-structuralism and of other “conceptual looking” art practices.  That started to change when I confronted the reality of being a “print specialist.” The worry that was taking root had to do with how constraining a traditional printmaking practice can become and how that can limit its producers and their participation in a broader art world. Printmaking is so seductive in its process and its materials that artists attracted to it tend to become very invested in virtuoso printing and work in the closed community of international printmakers. I started to bump up against this boundary and began looking for other strategies with which to access the ways that I was thinking. Initially, I begin by looking at video and animation work and situating a practice of appropriation and collage there. Then that reach was extended out towards electronics, model building, and photography. Through those processes I began to engage sculpture and found that most of the ideas that I wanted to follow-up on needed a discourse that was more, or maybe less, lonely. Then, at roughly the same time, I started to collaborate with Christian on making sculptures, and Richard Holland and I started talking about doing a podcast about art.

Caroline Picard: For the last six years I have been running a non-profit gallery and press called The Green Lantern. During that time I have continued to work independently as an artist and a writer. I think these projects inform one another–in many ways I’ve thought about the Gallery and the Press as being significant influences on my own work; particularly when the space was in my apartment, I came to think of it as a kind studio-research. During the first five years, that’s where everything took place– in my apartment–I’m very interested in creating intersections for different artistic mediums, so it was a great place to experiment curatorially. I was also very interested in thinking about the intersection of public and private space and how that context might affect a viewer’s experience of contemporary artwork, whether it was poetry, or a painting exhibit, a music show or a performance.

After five years the city shut down the project because (and as a result of zoning) I did not have, nor could I acquire a business license. Last September I opened a second storefront space which will close in January of this year. As part of this second plan, I was trying to put together a business model which would sustain the non-profit gallery via a for-profit cafe/bar/bookstore/performance space. I couldn’t find that space, and after a continued accrued cost had to close up shop. The Press will continue and I’ll continue as its primary editor. We also have a very cool on-line indie-lit bookstore, (in my on-going championship of pipe dreams, I have a vague hope that said bookstore will serve as my primary income).

Philip von Zweck: From the early 90′s (as a student) until relatively recently most of my projects involved either producing a form for others to fill and/or making projects for a non art audience.  For 15 years I produced a weekly radio program of live performance and sound art recordings that were submitted for broadcast; I have an ongoing project called Temporary Allegiance which is a 25 ft flag pole that anyone can sign up to fly anything they want on for a week at a time; I ran a gallery in my living room for 3 years in which I presented solo shows by people I trusted with keys to my apartment; I’ve made books which are compilations of pages submitted by friends; for my show museum show a few years ago I made a chain letter and mailed it to the museum’s mailing list; I co-founded the radio art collective Blind Spot which produced 1-hour works live to air- the list goes on, but there was a set of politics I was really guided by, and adhering to them eventually caused me to feel distanced from my own practice. I got to a point where I just wasn’t as interested in doing those sorts of projects, or feeling like I had to do those sorts of projects anymore.  So recently, a few years ago, I begun showing paintings- I’ve always painted and drawn but didn’t show them because it didn’t fit in with the other projects and those took precedence.  I wouldn’t that I have abandoned the previous set of politics and I still really like a lot of those projects; it’s just that I’ve come to a different way of thinking about them and my role as an artist.

Philip von Zweck

CI: Can you describe one, or some, of the happiest and/or most satisfying period/s of production you’ve experienced thus far, and what made it so? In turn, can you talk about some of the “low points.” What brought you down? How did you pick yourself back up again afterwards and find the where-with-all to start fresh?

Britton Bertran: The opening night of the first exhibition I put together for 40000 was the happiest most satisfying 5 hours of my professional career.  A completely fulfilling experience that squashed a good six months of the most terrifying anxiety I’ve ever known.  Quitting my job to start my own business without any financial security or previous gallery operating know how was also one of the stupidest things I have ever done.  Looking back now – part of that happiness was pure obliviousness, but seeing 300 people come and pretty much stay that night had a profound affect on me.  The literal act of taking a space and preparing it for art looking is one thing, but preparing it for art socializing and art commerce is another.  I learned a lot that night (process?), through the literal and figurative haze, that I still employ today (product?).

My low point was realizing how screwed I was by the overall economic situation that happened not too long ago.  Either I was too arrogant to think I would never have work, or I thought I was just plain invincible, but that was the most incredibly depressing and scary 6 months of my life.  Part of my problem was the fact that I had convinced myself that I had paid my dues and that a job, in the art world please, should just come waltzing my way, take my hand and whisk me off to that thing called adulthood.  It was around this time (as I was selling my lovingly collected vinyl records in order to eat), that I realized I had built a solid network of individuals that could help me.  Pride swallowed I groveled, professionally, and just asked. Within two months I was working.

View of opening reception for "Artist Run Chicago" at the Hyde Park Art Center, curated by Britton Bertran and Allison Peters Quinn

Duncan MacKenzie: All of the most recent satisfying moments were times in which I felt very connected to our projects and felt like others were as connected to the result. One of the most amazing experiences, recently, was doing  “Don’t Piss on Me and Tell Me its Raining” at Apexart in NYC. What made it such a delight was to know and have tangible proof of what our project is meant to the hundreds of people who been involved in its production. It was amazing to feel so intimately connected to so many other artists.

The low points for me are almost always the same. They are the moments that I feel like the art world is either just like a clique-y, bitchy, catty high school popularity contest or like a fashion Mall and all the things we make are just as disposable as this week’s “Entertainment Weekly.” They are always the moments that make me feel like we are not a community but a bunch of humans who represent opportunities to each other and should just be used as opportunities. It seems so obvious that we should be advocates for each other and support an overall growth but the evidences suggests that despite working in “culture” we are hyper competitive creatures. So I guess they are moments when I feel disconnected and disregarded. Thankfully it is as easy to get out of picking up the phone and reaching out.  All it takes is a little reminder that we all feel alone, awkward, and like no one cares but everyone of us does this because we know how meaningful it has been to us and that we still share in it.

Caroline Picard: High points: I think my consistent favorite moment will always be the point an audience (of whatever sort) has settled into attendance–when the program has begun and the work is done–whether that’s the work of an administrator, or a producer. For me, those moments resolve the otherwise insatiable existential question (in my mind) of what art is for because art is precisely for that moment; at least that’s how it strikes me in that moment. That moment also demands a certain giving up–there is nothing left to do but allow the occasion to happen, and to try and be present for its happening. My other favorite moment is the deep concentration that happens when I am working on my own, whether writing a piece, or painting, or editing–this is my other favorite thing. That deep concentration–I don’t really know what else to call it, but it’s like everything else in the world gets quiet while I’m totally focused on exploring and developing a particular idea. That moment gives me a huge re-charge (you ask about this later). It’s maybe a little like meditation? I don’t know.

Low points include: Discovering typos in my writing, for instance–particularly if those typos point to some never-before-recognized ignorance–what are they called, lacuna? I think this space closing a second time is another one of those moments, despite my realizing that there was no specific failure involved–I am proud of what the last six months have brought, thrilled that I got to work with such great people and participate once more with the Chicago art community. Yet, I am conscious not fulfilling the larger, albeit abstract, vision I had undertaken. Why this, or realizing typos would inspire embarrassment, I don’t know–it must be some hangover of a waspy background, or a childhood fear of Scandinavian silence (my grandmother had a strategy called “deep freeze” that was remarkable). And then as far as how to get through that stuff–I don’t think there’s any trick beyond being patient and humble and adopting a sense of humor (I like to think of my consciousness like my grandmother–if it/she shames me I make a slew of jokes which, more often than not, work because they fail).

Audience attending a screening of "Now It's Dark" at Green Lantern

Philip von Zweck: The times when I am the most productive – and therefore happiest – artistically are generally times when everything else is going right; the times when I’m neither broke or pulled in a thousand directions (from taking on too many jobs or commitments), when I’m in good health, relationship, community, etc. When those things start going wrong it is really hard for me to make work, it becomes a feedback cycle- things not going well leads to being bummed out, which leads to not making work, which leads to being bummed out, which leads to…

Perhaps the lowest point came from doing a project in which I was treated poorly by the presenting organization. What should have been a great experience seriously made me never want to make work again. How did I pick myself up? I didn’t have a choice, I had already committed to do another project, and that one went swimmingly, actually way better than expected and that was enough- not that the previous experience has left my mind, but I’ve mostly moved on.

CI: All of you are engaged in practices that involve lots of other people (though I know that several of you maintain studio practices, too). I often think through my own personal quest for ‘sustenance’ in terms of introversion versus extroversion: sometimes, we recharge our energy by spending time with friends and collaborators, other times by being alone. So, how do you recharge — and how does it help you sustain those practices you most want to engage in?

Britton Bertran: The relationship between institutional and individual memories, as a conundrum, is fascinating to me – and worrisome.  In order to combat that, I have made a real effort to reflect on my personal and professional experiences (process) in order to better inform my future (product), especially when it comes to being a part of the immediate art world around me.  I also believe it has to be more than just taking pictures. The essential part that I concern myself with is finding ways to reflect, edit, and share those experiences.  As official memories, of the institutional kind, seem to be becoming more and more overwhelmed by the collective desire for the next memory, harnessing something that I would call “The Slow Memory Movement” might become more essential.  This Slow Memory Movement (akin to the Slow Food Movement) would emphasis the personal importance, or pleasure, of remembering and the sustainability of its impact on oneself.  (I also have been reading as much post-apocalyptic science fiction as I can get my hands on which, beyond the pure entertainment factor, does wonders for the reflective process).

Britton Bertran, Touching the Art at the Volo Auto Museum, Volo, IL. Photo: Bridgette Buckley.

Duncan MacKenzie: Recharge? I read crime novels in which wizards solve crimes, and comic books. It is the source of a small amount of shame, but a couple of years ago I felt like everything in my life was connected to art production and I needed to find something that I was not going to try and plug back into an art world.  Now it seems likes wizards are the order of the day and I am looking for novels about dinosaurs solving crimes.

Caroline Picard: Top 5 Ways to Recharge would include:

1) Deep and quiet thinking about a particular subject which is engaged through writing/visual work. The act of making something discrete–something very often totally “useless”–then makes me very happy.

2) Being with friends (of course), art-friends and non-art friends both.

3) Making Jokes, which I think I too easily forget. Making Jokes should probably be no. 1.

4)  I have to admit, though I will immediately disown this, I also recharge watching some sort of television-thing, preferably an episodic serial drama.

5) Making non-art things like food. Or dreams.

Philip von Zweck: I don’t ever consciously think “I need to recharge” but I spend a lot of time alone and- not that I ever set out to not work on art, but really- it is very hard for me to not work on stuff. Sometimes this can be recharging, working in the studio can be a good antidote to a day at the job. But I guess for me it would be spending time with friends. A lot of ideas and projects come out of just hanging out, I think this is why I’ve done so many collaborative and social projects, they are both rewarding and rejuvenating.

CI: Thank you all so much for sharing your experiences and ideas with me and with our readers at art:21 blog.

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Since The Polar Bear looms large in our house (my husband runs the endangered species program of a national environmental group) I thought, what the hell, I’ll bring my daughter and check it out. It couldn’t be any creepier than Santa Claus, could it? (Since we’re Jewish, my child has never had the terrifying privilege of being forced to sit on Santa’s lap whilst bored teens in elf costumes took her picture). But since I wasn’t sure what to expect, I kept it vague and told my daughter we were going to do “this polar bear thing” during the afternoon and left it at that. A part of me was worried that the project–whatever form it took–would feel cynical in some way, and though I’m all for overturning fake holiday cheer in appropriate contexts, I didn’t want my kid to be the butt of the joke. But this Polar Bear was nothing like that at all.

In fact this Polar Bear…I’m not (too) embarrassed to admit that this Polar Bear was truly magical. At least he was for my daughter. She couldn’t get enough of the huge, cuddly fellow and I literally had to drag her out of the room so that other kids (and adults) could have their turn sitting on his lap. She got in line to visit the Polar Bear three separate times.

“Is the Polar Bear a machine?” she kept asking me. “No,” I said – “he is a living creature. Can’t you tell by the way he was hugging you?”

“So it was alive?” she asked. “Yes,” I responded, “he was alive. I’m pretty sure it was a he anyway.”

“But how did a Polar Bear come all the way from the North Pole?”

“Well,” I said, thinking fast — because she already knows Santa isn’t real and I kinda wanted to give her something — “well, this is a special kind of Polar Bear. That’s why he’s here. He is different from other Polar Bears.”

“Yes, mama…he is sooo kind! If he was a different Polar Bear he would probably try to kill me.”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

For me, the Polar Bear brought a number of things to mind–from Temple Grandin’s “squeeze machine” to the culture of fear that the media has built around children and adults and physical expressions of affection, to the fact that environmental groups crafting media campaigns are forced to rely on a few highly photogenic “charismatic critters”–like the Polar Bear–in order to get the general public to care about environmental issues like species decimation and global warming.

But for my daughter, the Polar Bear wasn’t conceptual or referential. It was real, and it made her so happy. So thank you Polar Bear. That was a really sweet thing you did.

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Home Base: Michael Darling, Michelle Grabner, and Lane Relyea in Conversation
What does it mean to characterize an artist by where they live and work? And similarly, what does it mean for a collection to be of a place — to reflect a museum’s history and artistic community, to be shaped by the dynamics of a city, to be used by and be seen as part of the locale where it lives? The MCA’s new James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator Michael Darling, artist and writer Michelle Grabner, and critic Lane Relyea delve into these questions, looking at examples from the United States and internationally.

The MCA just made it available on their “MCA Interactive” page (where–I love this–they provide a helpful answer to the question ‘What is a Podcast’?). The talk is available in two forms – MP3 download and/or streaming media. Click here to access the download. There are a ton of other MCA talks and walk-thru type discussions on the download/streams page for you to peruse, as well.

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1) The Green Lantern Gallery–which has long been led by Caroline Picard, who is also BAS’ newest blogger–is winding down as an exhibition space (but lives on as a publishing venture); this and next week’s slate of events offer some of your last chances to visit the space and hang out. In addition to the group show Isolated Fictions (which opened last Friday and features works by Deb Sokolow, Carmen Price, Jason Dunda, Amanda Browder, Nadine Nakanishi, Rebecca Mir and Nick Butcher), a reading by Adam Levin, a performance evening centered around world-based art, a screening curated by Eric Fleischauer and Jesse McLean, and the third installment of the Now It’s Dark experimental film and music series are all on the agenda. Click here for full schedule details.

2) Artist Damien James, who writes for New City and occasionally for this blog, is the latest Guest Blogger on art:21. His first post is up–in it, the Redmoon Theater’s production of The Cabinet, a puppetry-driven performance based on The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, becomes a springboard for musings on art’s ability to transport us back to the past and deep into our own consciousness.  Several more essays by Mr. James will follow in the coming days and weeks, so be sure and check them out!

Adam Levin reads at The Green Lantern Gallery

from Redmoon Theater's puppet production of 'The Cabinet'

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This morning I was musing about the different forms of engagement that a studio visit versus an art review or some other type of written assessment represent. For me, not for the artist. I can’t speak for the artist. Which is why I think that studio visits are such charged experiences for me. I have to warm up for them – not by reading up on the artist’s work or anything (although I guess that would be nice, huh?)—but by getting into a certain kind of flexible brain state of mind. I have to start stripping away at some self-protecting and thus extremely comfy walls around myself, and that takes work.

Studio visits require me to be even more open and in-the-moment and attuned to the kinds of all-body awareness that every instance of looking at art requires, but since I’m also being watched by someone else and engaging in a conversation with them, I need to be equally open to the experience of radical vulnerability. When I write, I’m alone, and I can compose and then revise my opinions until I think they’re ready, or ready enough, for public viewing. When I’m in the studio, face to face with an artist, I don’t have the luxury of crafting my words. Since I almost always have no idea what I’m going to see when I get there, a studio visit means I’m going to have to think on my feet. But since I don’t really believe that an artwork has an essential “meaning”, only meanings (and, old-fashioned though it now may be, I retain much suspicion about the whole authorial intent thing too), I also have to be willing to say lots of things that, were I writing about this work instead of talking about it, I would have eventually come to erase or re-word or recalibrate.

The most intimidating thing about studio visits for me is that sometimes, the artist seems to be expecting me to respond to something on the spot. It takes me days to write an art review, days of slapping little black symbols onto white space (because that’s how most of us write now—I don’t inscribe my thoughts with pens and paper, it feels more like conjuring: I think, my brain makes my fingers jiggle and jerk, tiny words appear on the big, blindingly white screen before me, I look at those words and sit back and try to figure out if they work. If they do the work they are supposed to do. And if one or more of those words doesn’t, if it’s being stubborn or recalcitrant, I need to sit back somehow and figure out why not, why isn’t that word saying what it’s supposed to, god dammit, is it because it’s really supposed to be this, not that, or maybe it’s more like that, not this?

From that place, for me, meaning arrives. If I’m lucky. Sometimes, pretty rarely now but still sometimes, I am not so lucky, and everything falls apart.

Things are always falling apart in the studio, though, and that’s what I find so exciting and energizing about engaging with artists and their work in that space. Conversations can flow between the artist and myself as if we were old friends, even though we’re not; they can also be halting or spurting or circuitous and even more meaningful because of that. Sometimes there’s that panicky feeling you get when it sounds like you’re engaging in a conversation, one where we think that we understand what the other person is saying, and vice-versa, but then you start to realize that perhaps this is not at all what is happening, that you’re actually speaking two different languages that sound alike but are, in fact, nothing alike.

In the artist’s studio, I have to be willing to grope for words and say the wrong thing and/or be misinterpreted and just generally come off as totally stupid – and hey, let’s face it, not just to look stupid, but to actually reveal myself as the stupid human being that I am. This is easy to do but hard to accept. I take a certain amount of pride in the fact that I have managed to be stupid successfully, over and over, actually pretty much every time I have visited an artist’s studio. I think that’s something. Maybe it’s everything. Right?

Dana DeGiulio, 2010. *Stolen from the artist's website.

Karl Haendel. Double Scribble #5, 2008. Pencil on paper.

Martin Creed. Work No. 340. 2004.

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Caitlin Arnold. From the 'girls' series.

I have a longstanding interest in what I think of as (for lack of a better term) “girl culture,” so Caitlin Arnold‘s work is pretty much right up my alley. Not because she makes pictures of teen-aged girls per se, but because of the way she makes those pictures. Arnold’s images of adolescent and pre-adolescent girls feel unusually raw and direct without ever crossing that line into sensationalistic or creepy territory. They ask you to look, and look twice, and look again. On the surface, her images bear some of the hallmarks of so-called “amateur” snapshots and family photographs. They’re set in mundane places: bedrooms, school hallways, porches and backyards. The girls all have on casual clothing. For some reason a lot of the girls wear heavy black eyeliner. But Arnold doesn’t ask the girls to ‘smile for the camera!,’ and so most of them don’t. Smiles are a kind of armor, and Arnold is more interested in the beauty–and the strength–that’s revealed through vulnerability.

Arnold’s current show at Tom Burtonwood and Holly Holmes’ What It Is in Oak Park plays up the ordinary/extraordinary dynamic in her photographs in a number of compelling ways. The entire show has been installed in Tom and Holly’s enclosed front porch. The photographs have been printed small-scale, the largest around 8 x 10 inches, and have been framed in cheap plastic or wood frames – the same sort of frames we use in our own homes, unless we can afford to buy the expensive Pottery Barn kind. Some of Arnold’s pictures are grouped together within a single frame; others have been placed on a side table. Installing the photographs inside someone’s home doesn’t just shift the context from that of, say, the internet (which is where I first viewed Arnold’s images), or a proper “white cube” style art gallery, where the images would have been printed at around 30 x 40 inches; it also redraws certain boundaries around the images themselves. We have to pick them up, or stand really close to the ones hanging on the walls, in order to apprehend the entire photograph. We have to get into the faces of these girls, so to speak, in order to see them.

I asked Caitlin about this and other issues during a recent exchange over email. I’m very grateful to her for taking the time and care to answer all of my questions so thoughtfully. Caitlin’s show is up for one more week at What It Is – if you’re local, click on over to the website to make an appointment with the gallery to see the show before it comes down.

********

Claudine Ise: Many of your photographs fall within the category of portraiture. Can you tell me a bit about what interests you about photographing human subjects? And what is it about adolescent girls in particular that have drawn you to photograph them in your series “girls”?

Caitlin Arnold: There are so many little qualities I find in the people I photograph that I’m attracted to or interested in bringing out of them. Everyone has a “camera face” whether they know it or not, and breaking the person out of it is usually my goal.

Adolescence is weird and terrible at the same time. When I started this body of work, a lot of my cousins were entering or already in adolescence and seeing them during holidays made me realize that it was something I wanted to look back on. I found that when photographing younger people, they don’t have the “camera face” yet or they’re just starting to develop the look they want the world to know them as. There were so many things that made me want to start photographing younger girls but it wasn’t until I made the first picture that I really knew something was there.

Caitlin Arnold, from the series 'girls.'

CI: How do you find your subjects?

CA: I started the girls series when I was still attending Columbia College. I worked in the digital imaging lab and my boss at the time, Jennifer Keats, was my main source for subjects. She grew up in Evanston and a lot of friends from high school still lived there and luckily had little girls. Otherwise, I just bugged my friends and my family if they knew anyone between the ages of 7-18. I drove all around Chicago-land area and even further into farmland a couple of times. The most interesting part of finding subjects was that most of the time, I had no clue what they looked like and that was really exciting. It was almost like walking down the street and asking a random person if I could photograph them, but there was a level of trust already built in by whomever referred me.

CI: You studied with Dawoud Bey, correct? Can you tell me a bit about what you learned from working with him, particularly as it pertains to portraiture and the photographer’s relationship to the subject?

CA: I did study with Dawoud…I took his portrait class while I was attending Columbia College for my undergrad. It’s hard or funny to think about what exactly I learned from him because I feel like a lot of it was intuitive once we were in the middle of the semester. I just remember him telling me to simplify the pictures I was making and not over think the gesture. He always talked about studying people, watching them for while, observing the natural gestures that come out and then to bring it back. For example he would say something like, “Oh remember when your elbow was on the arm of the chair and you had your head in your hand, try that again, okay now tilt your head a little okay perfect.” This sort of language or direction makes it easier for the subject to fit into the placement more comfortably. I’ve learned so much from him during my time at Columbia and even afterward. He’s been a huge influence of mine and also a major support system after graduating.

Caitlin Arnold, from the series 'girls.'

CI: The body of the adolescent girl is such a heavy locus of anxiety in American culture – not just for girls themselves, but for the culture that surrounds them. Girls’ bodies are always being scrutinized and measured in one way or another, whether it’s through fashion, or even sports (i.e. gymnastics, ballet or ice skating and other types of sports where weight and cultural stereotypes of “beauty” are big issues). So girls learn how to look at their own body with a similar level of harsh scrupulousness. In your own pictures, how do you negotiate between this kind of dominating/domineering cultural gaze that is always sort of invisibly there, and the gaze of your own camera lens? What are some of the strategies you employ?

CA: From the beginning it was how the girls positioned themselves in front of my lens that interested me. I found myself looking at the pictures and realizing that these young girls are so heavily influenced by pop culture. I started to poke around their houses more when I was there, to see where their body language was coming from (ie magazine, movies etc). A lot times there would be copies of Cosmo or Vogue laying around the house, and some of these girls were only 8 or 9, trying to find out who they are and how they can identify with these older women. I don’t if it’s a good or bad thing, I know that when I was at that age, I never read magazines for older women…my parents would only allow me to have teen-oriented materials, but the doesn’t mean I wasn’t aware of what was going on. Girls have always been over-sexualized in my opinion. If you look at Sally Mann’s book At Twelve, which was photographed in the 80s, we see young girls who are very aware of their bodies and what they’re capable of.

Caitlin Arnold. From the series 'girls.'

CI: Could you take me through one of your photo shoots? Tell me a bit about how you work with your subjects. How do you choose the “props”, the setting, the girls’ poses – does the composition come from a period of observation of that particular subject, do you discuss different possibilities with your subject, etc.?

CA: Usually the first time I’d go to someone’s home, I would get the “best” photographs because both her and I are getting comfortable with each other and I am not yet aware of all her idiosyncratic tendencies. I’d catch them doing something totally different than another girl. The lack of control within the environment is for some reason a really interesting way for me to work. I like being on my toes and having to make due with the space. But normally, I’d get there..hang out with their mom and dad and talk, show them some photographs I’d already been making. Then get a tour of the house, normally we’d start in their rooms since it’s usually the most comfortable place for them. I’d get an idea of who they are from the things in their rooms. A lot of times they’d ask if I wanted them to change clothes or if there was some specific to wear, but honestly I just wanted them to be as comfortable as possible because then they are “focused” and in a place where I could have all their attention…and they’re not thinking about how the shirt doesn’t fit right or their shoes are hurting them, things like that.

Each shoot was always a little different. Sometimes I’d be there for two hours hanging out, talking about music or sports or friends or boys, it really depended on who I was photographing. And once I got to know them, maybe on the second or third time coming back to photograph, it was just “business”. I knew the kind of photograph I wanted to make and just went for it. When I was photographing my cousin, who is the girl smoking with the peace sign tshirt on, I spent at least a day or two hanging out with her and her friends during spring break, no parents around and no one to distract us or interrupt the shoot.

Caitlin Arnold, from the series 'girls.'

CI: To what extent are your images “directed”? Certainly, the pictures all appear to be “posed” or positioned to some extent, but I’m curious about how those poses come about. Like the cheerleader, can you talk about that photograph and why you chose that context – the school hallway, and to have the girl wear her cheering uniform, etc.

CA: As much as I wanted them to look as natural as possible, there was still direction. One of the things I talked about earlier was how I had a lack of control over the environment, which was a good thing but then had to gain control over how they were positioned. The cheerleader, that’s an interesting story. A good friend of mine photographs the sports teams in his hometown, which is really small. He offered the opportunity to photograph as many junior high cheerleaders as I wanted if I helped him set up his lights for the group shots. So I did it. That hall way had the best light and was really one of the only places I could take the girls without leaving the area.

CI: Tell me about the picture of the girl in the tie-die tee shirt holding a lit cigarette in her bedroom.

CA: The girl smoking in her bedroom is my younger cousin. When I first started making this work I knew since I have a lot of younger cousins, I’d be able to meet high school girls very easily, which I did. I asked to come hang out with her and her friends during basketball games and sleepovers,etc. That photograph was made during her spring break, she had invited a friend to sleep over the night before and I got to her house around 9am. I spent the entire day with them, bought them pizza and soda. We watched movies and talked about boys and what sort of things they do. I think that spending time out there with them was more like research than actually making photographs, though I did come out with four or five solid pictures from that shoot.

Caitlin Arnold, from the series 'girls.'

CI: I love the image of the girl with the snake – there is a 9 year old girl on my block who owns a corn snake, and she walks around with it wrapped around her shoulders sometimes. I love how that kid a) isn’t afraid of snakes and b) likes how the guys in her class are afraid of her snake.

CA: The girl with the snake is Zoe…her and her sister Bailey have many many little critters in their home and they all scare me. I was never allowed to have pets, especially snakes or frogs or mice, so when I met Zoe and Bailey, and found out they were obsessed with these little critters and not afraid of them, I was really intrigued. I tried to make that photograph of Zoe holding a snake or any critter, many many many times. I probably have pictures from three to five different visits of her holding something and finally I got it right. It’s such a striking image with really intense lighting, I’m glad I finally got it to work.

Caitlin Arnold, from the series "girls."

CI: You’ve made a photograph of a little, i.e. pre-adolescent girl that just kills me every time I look at it. She’s tipped her head back to the sky and her neck is exposed. I have a young daughter and this image makes me feel many of the same things I feel when I look at my daughter’s body. Something about her skin and its softness and vulnerability is so moving to me.

CA: I go back and forth with that photograph. A lot of times when I’m out photographing, I’m just spending time with the girls, playing with them in their yards or games in their room. This was one of those moments that almost passed me by. We were looking up at the sky and I saw her do that – squint her eyes because the sun was so bright. I asked her to keep doing that and took a few shots. The most amazing thing about photographing young people is that they are totally unaware of what they’re doing most of the time. They don’t really know how to look at a camera or aren’t sure what their bodies are going to look like in the end. So even the simplest gesture like that comes across as so much more.

CI: The little girl on roller skates with the pool cues – that image in particular stands out for me because in many ways it’s the least subtle of all of the works in this series – the one that to me feels like, if you enlarged and sold it, it would sell really well. Whereas the rest of your images of girls feel defiantly non-commercial in a way that Helen Van Meene‘s images certainly do not (despite their own particular weirdness), or Rineke Dijkstra’s images do not.  I wonder if that’s also part of the reason why you photograph girls you haven’t met or even seen before – to ensure you don’t fall into a trap of subconsciously preferring (and I’ll just come out and say it here) certain body types over others? Because let’s face it: Van Meene’s subjects tend to be thin, Dijkstra’s subjects are thin…despite the various idiosyncracies of the subjects they choose to photograph, each of these photographers is still replicating and reinforcing many of those unspoken codes about what constitutes the type of (specifically female) body the cultural “We” wants to look at.  What I love about your photographs is their refusal to do that. One girl even has (what I think are) warts on her fingers and visible dirt under her toenails. Amazing.

CA: No one has ever said that about the girls I’ve photographed. It’s really interesting when you think about the certain type of person photographers normally photograph like Van Meene and Dijkstra and even Lauren Greenfield is photographing stereotypical beautiful girls. I like not knowing what I’m going to get, it’s very much like editorial photography, you’re thrown into this situation where you have no control and a time constraint and you have to make the best of it. But sometimes there’s a little bit of digging around… I went to my old high school to make a couple photographs and when I was there, I scouted.

The girl with the pool cue was the photograph I took that led me to this project. I was hanging out with a friends family at a roller rink and photographing. When I saw this image, I lost it; it was perfect and made me realize what I needed to start working on.

Installation view of Caitlin Arnold's exhibition at What It Is, Oak Park, Il.

CI: I saw your images online before I saw the photographs at What It Is, so the way that you had chosen to install and frame the works there had a pretty big impact on me. For me, this particular installation brought up questions as to the difference between your images and those of the so-called “average” family snapshot or other types of casual portraiture we would usually see in frames like these, and in a domestic context like this one. And I kept coming back to this really quite subtle difference: that the girls in your images are just not ‘giving it up,’ as it were, in the same way that they would be if these were family snapshots or even pictures taken by their own friends. They seem not to be fronting. Not that they’re necessarily more vulnerable or anything – they’re just not putting up a facade, or at least the facade we’ve come to expect from this type of picture-making. For the most part, the girls are not smiling – and if they are, it isn’t that kind of huge fake grin i.e.  “We’re having SUCH a good time! Everything is okay here!” that is typical of snapshots. In your pictures there’s an ever-so-slight whiff of, “everything may *not* be okay here, but the rest is not your business.” All of this is really just a lengthy way of asking: how do you know when you’ve made a good photograph, or a photographic image that you are satisfied with?

CA: I think a lot of times I make my mind up about an image when I’m taking it. I play the “this is it” game in my mind even before the film has been processed and it’s a 50/50 chance that I’m right. I’m not quite sure what specific qualities within the photograph make me decide that’s the right one, it usually just feels right. And of course there are the five or so people I always show my work to and opinions I trust.

The thing I love and depend on when making portraits is that the subject is going to give something up but just enough to make people want to stop and look and figure out what they’re hiding or trying to “say.”  And that’s the difference between printing small; normally I make my portraits around 30″x40″ because you can really get in there. At that point, you and the photograph are about the same size and that’s extremely challenging for the viewer, in my opinion. When they’re small, the girls aren’t letting you in as much…you have to really look to see the subtleties and nuances.

It’s also really funny you say they’re not “giving it up” because in the language I use when talking about my work, I feel like they’re giving me everything. But that could be just what I think because I’ve been living with these images for much longer than your average patron who looks at them for a couple minutes. When someone is stripped of their signature smile and preferred angle to be photographed, all they have left is what’s true about them; the mole they try and hide or the way their ears stick out from their head. It’s those details that really make a picture sometimes and that’s what I want to show – “flaws” are extremely beautiful.

Caitlin Arnold, from the series 'girls.'

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