Just popping in again to point you to Caroline Picard’s interview with Chicago-based artist Deb Sokolow on art:21 blog! (We’ve also interviewed Deb on Episode 201 of the podcast). Caroline asks Deb a bunch of really insightful questions – don’t miss this! A brief excerpt follows; please go on over to art:21 and read it in full.

Deb Sokolow, "Dear Trusted Associate" (detail), 2008-2009. Graphite, charcoal, ink, acrylic on paper and on wall, approx. 40 feet long. Installed at the Van Abbemuseum in 2008 and at the Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, 2009-2010.

Deb Sokolow invokes You, the audience. When engaging her work–wall drawings rife with text-narratives that revel in heist, hijinks and mystery, You are not a passive bystander. You are implicated as a character in her web, because she always writes in the second person. I spent some time talking to Deb about that second person device. It strikes me as particularly interesting because of its self-reflexiveness. Rather than sharing the artist’s gaze, looking through the lens of a camera say, the audience suddenly identifies with the model. You/We are in the drawing. You/We are being watched. Deb Sokolow is looking at us. Like an unnerving Welcome mat, Sokolow gives you a platform on which to stand.

Caroline Picard: How would you describe your development as an artist? Do you feel like there are different stages of Deb Sokolow work?

Deb Sokolow: Good question, maybe it’s a question I’d be able to answer better 10 or 20 years down the road. I’ve only been working in this current vein since 2003. That year, I was smack-dab in the middle of grad school, and it was the year that I had an art crisis; I realized I didn’t know what the heck I was doing or wanted to do as an artist. I had no personal investment in anything going on in the studio, so I stopped making work. I went home. I watched movies and ate Chinese take-out. “This is so much better than making art,” I told myself. But then when I started asking myself what was so compelling about watching movies, I realized that it was the stories, the narrative form that I loved, that I could get lost in. This was an A-ha! moment for me, because prior to this, I was making these blobby shapes out of glue and arranging them on table tops. It was boring. So boring! So I moved into working with the narrative form, making large, diagrammatic drawings on paper or multiple papers, always narrated by an anonymous, unreliable protagonist who’s only ever referred to as “you” and that’s what I’ve been doing for the last couple of years up until a couple of months ago where I decided to make a break with this, keep using the “you” but develop a new framework for the narrative and a new way of presenting it. So, in answer to your question, I guess I could say that I’ve recently entered dynasty #2, which is actually a pretty exciting place to be. Read more.

I am about halfway through a two-week period of guest blogging on the Art21 site. It’s been fantastic. Suddenly I had an opportunity to engage 11 artists in conversation, asking them questions I’ve always wondered about. I began to see the possibility of an arc in the interviews. On the one hand each interview is independent, on the other there is a thread of interest that flows through each post­. I thought I could think through the progression here.

For the last couple years I’ve had a growing interest in celebrity culture. Not simply for its own sake, but rather as a particular reflection of the social structure in which we live, (i.e. post-industrial, capitalist America). Within that culture, celebrity provides a kind of apex or pinnacle of success. At one point, Young Joon Kwak equated them with the Greek Gods—as though Marylyn Monroe serves a parallel, cultural purpose in America as Hera did in Greece. At the very least celebrity provides a model for success and recognition, a model that translates into other fields, particularly in the arts, where tokens of legitimacy are rather slippery to grasp. As people working in a field with no direct use-value, the translated monetary/cultural value of a given object is highly subjective—something steeped in the momentum of the contemporary art dialectic. One way, then, to attain a sense of success is to become the famous Picasso, to be inducted into the Western Art canon. Or, the more immediate rock star artist option like, say, a Dash Snow type. Or, the shorter-lived 5 minutes of fame…”Even if you’re a flash-in-the-pan artist,” I remember a professor telling a class, “even if you just get famous for 5 seconds, at least you were famous. At least that one [painting] mattered. It’s better than nothing.” It’s the “nothing” that I’m interested in: the undefined, highly personal (and maybe less legitimate?) way of recognizing value in one’s work. Because I can’t define that “nothing” alternative, I’ve spent some time thinking through it’s dominant reflection: this whole Famous thing.

In lieu of those thoughts, I asked a series of artists to talk to me about their practices. I began with photographers Melanie Schiff and Jason Lazarus, asking about the gaze of the camera and how photographs memorialize events, or create opportunities to personalize mainstream culture. I then spoke to Young Joon Kwak, about his strategies of assemblage as a means to avoid commodification (oddly enough, he was also a finalist in the infamous SJP artist-reality-TV show), and Irina Botea about reenactment, revolution and film. That first segment of my guest-blogging was about the camera, in some way, or about our relationship to the camera.

My subsequent conversation with Anne Elizabeth Moore functions like a bridge—her interest in branding, for instance, crosses various mediums, even resisting the traditional “artist” label. She is a publisher, she is an educator and she also happens to make objects. All of her work is about self-empowerment in a context where that empowerment is difficult (if not, some might argue, impossible). Following Anne, I spoke with Brandon Alvendia who, like Moore, investigates self-publishing strategies. That is only one arm of his practice, however and working in different mediums, he locates “the art” primarily in himself. With Deb Sokolow, I asked about the characteristic second person pronoun throughout her work—here I feel like the interview-gaze shifts from Alvendia’s “I” to Sokolow’s, perhaps more aggressive “You.” (Agressive in so far as the audience becomes complicit with her work by reading/engaging in it.) At this point, the interviews start to shift towards an investigation of structure. Tsherin Sherpa talks about his relationship to the history and rigor of Tibetan religious painting, and what it means to step outside of that. He offers interesting reflection on the self, how he negotiates it. Here too, in some way I was surprised that the conversation became about the “self.” That theme is predominant in these interviews, and though I hadn’t anticipated it, it makes sense. After speaking to him, I interviewed Hiro Sakaguchi, Nadine Nakanishi and Ellen Rothenberg—artists working in very different ways, I was nonetheless especially interested in talking to them about the structure of their work and the places they work within. Hiro works in a museum, paints and teaches, occupying many different scales at once. Nadine boast a pragmatic optimism, running a print shop, participating in a printer’s guild and making her own work. Ellen takes advantage of overlooked portions of structure, in order to co-opt them for her own use. In all instances, the structure is both advantageous (in so far as it creates a context within which to work) and somewhat overbearing, insofar as it establishes standards and taboos. Ultimately I realized my thoughts about celebrity are really questions about structure.

Celebrity is a standard that reflects a structure, or style of thinking. The nothing, is the uncharted wilderness around that structure. Yet, that uncharted “wilderness” is actually more real and more vibrant. It is a more familiar context, and in taking time to better consider it, I realize that the fairy tale “fame” is actually the curious mistake. Because this whole gamut isn’t really about fame, it’s actually about doing good work, and thinking about the world with critical openness.

1. The Night Parade at FireCat Projects -

Inaugural exhibition at FireCat Projects (formerly Fitzpatrick’s working studio), featuring new works by Tony Fitzpatrick.

FireCat Projects is located at 2124 N. Damen Ave. Reception is Friday from 7-10pm.

2. Time Switch at Kasia Kay Gallery -

Photographs by David A. Parker.

Kasia Kay Gallery is located at 215 N. Aberdeen St. Reception is Friday from 6-8pm

3. Deb Sokolow at Western Exhibitions –

A solo exhibition of new works by the artist.

Western Exhibitions is located at 119 N. Peoria St. Reception is Friday from 5-8pm.

4. Access at Pentagon Gallery –

Work by Hiba Ali, Natalie Brilmeyer, Woori Cho, Meg Dancy, Justus Harris, Walter Latimer, Kira Mardikes, Tilly Pelczar, Marie Socha and Vincent Uribe.

Note the new location: Pentagon is now located at 2655 W Homer St. Reception is Friday from 7-11pm.

5. Goodbye Turquoise at LVL3 –

Work by Samantha Bittman, James Cooper, Racer Levan, Montgomery Perry Smith and Leslie Supnet.

LVL3 is located at 1452 N Milwaukee Ave, 3. Reception is Saturday from 6-10pm.

Deb Sokolow, "Secrets and Lies and More Lies (Winchester House)," 2006, detail.

Make sure and check out the Chicago Tribune today for an article about Deb Sokolow’s current residency project with Daniel Boone Elementary School, which is part of Chicago Public School’s “Crossroads” program. Sokolow is helping 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade students create a wall mural that will become a permanent part of the school’s hallways. As is typical for Sokolow, the wall mural will contain a combination of text and images that tell the story of the school’s 80 year history in an idiosyncratic and detour-laden fashion, including, for example, an account of the 1932 murder of Mabel Chenoweth, a woman who owned a candy shop a block away from the school. Read more

Bob Dylan, "Train Tracks," 2009, from the "Drawn Blank" series.

Here’s our midweek summary of this n’ that and other chit-chat happening in the world of art and beyond.

*Keith Olbermann gives Christopher Knight “Best Person in the World” status for pointing out potentially communist imagery in right-wing Tea Party poster art.

*Was overzealous corporate art collecting partly to blame for Lehmann Bros. fall? Former Lehman trader Lawrence McDonald speculates that indeed, it was, in his new book about the investment behemoth. Artnet fleshes out the issue in its latest report.

*Bill Viola rejects Vatican’s invitation to a summit “aimed at bridging the gap that has developed between spirituality and artistic expression over the last century or so,” reportedly because Viola disagrees with many of the Catholic Church’s policies. No word yet on whether artist Robert Gober was invited, and if so, whether or not he’ll attend.

*If you haven’t already been following this issue, this L.A. Times article provides an excellent one-stop summary of the current controversy arising from the Obama administration’s alleged attempts to “politically manipulate” the NEA and, by extension, the arts communities it serves.

*Tyler Green writes in defense of blockbusters, following Holland Cotter’s article in last weekend’s NYT calling on museums to “rethink the blockbuster phenomena.”

*Wanna know what the Art Institute is deaccessioning this Fall? Read Green’s roundup of what they’re hoping to sell, here.

*Four Andy Warhol prints of famous sports stars stolen from Richard Weisman’s L.A. Collection.

*Annie Leibovitz finally reaches an agreement with her creditors.

*C-Monster elegantly takes the piss out of Bruce Nauman’s “LEAVE THE LAND ALONE” skywriting installation.

*Bob Dylan to exhibit nearly 100 of his paintings in a 2010 solo exhibition at the National Gallery of Denmark in Copenhagen. An example of Dylan’s work heads this post. How will they stack up to Joni’s, I wonder?

*Ghosts and their media.

*Chicago artist and BaS fave Deb Sokolow interviewed in Beautiful/Decay magazine.

*How to disappear.