Every Picture IS a Story!

All good things come to an end ):

by Susan M.

By the end of the week about half of us were staying on for a second week while the other half were packing up to go back home. We all cleared our stuff out of the school that had been our home for a week and moved our stuff over to the dorm/solarium/ a/k/a Shangri-La. There was a nice reception party our final night up in the solarium and we appreciated each other’s company on the final night for some of us. You’ll have to check out my podbean video blog to see the video as this site can’t handle the large video file: http://psarapas.podbean.com/2010/07/29/all-good-things-come-to-an-end/

charline von heyl

So the first, intense week was winding down. We were all working hard to finish up work for an afternoon critique. About half of us were leaving the next day and the other half were staying a second week for studio extension. Our visiting artist today was Charline Von Heyl, a New York painter.  Sad to say as the week wore on, my note-taking wore out. Oh well…but here’s a couple of quotes that I jotted down and a few scraps of memory.

“Painting is trying to get someone to look at it as long as possible.”

Charline von Heyl Bluntschli 2005 Friedrich Petzel Gallery

“Inspiration is what I call energy”

OK since posting this Marla S. has provided via a comment Charline’s quotes, better filled in, in other words thankfully she was taking better notes than I that day.

marla seibold
July 27th, 2010 on 9:28 am edit

Here are a few more things she said: “You always paint who you are, whatever stage in your life.” “Being German, cringe and desire are the same.” “How can you not give all of the information at once, how can a painting hold you.” “Approach your work like…what happens if?…what creates desire?””

When Charline spoke of her “personal cringe factor” I took it to mean those moments when we cringe looking at our own work…and she meant a lot more, beyond pushing out of one’s comfort zone. Having the full quote really helps the idea to sink in….

All of her work is wonderfully executed and I personally can see how anyone

now or else, 2009

could spend lots of time looking at her paintings. Charline described the process that she used in executing this painting below, an example of a piece that was done relatively quickly.

“Often, when we pose our gaze to an art image we have a fortright sensation of paradox.”

http://www.petzel.com/exhibitions/2010-03-18_charline-von-heyl/#

Sally A. speaking with Charline. (photo by A.S. Willsea)

After her talk Charline made the rounds in the studios, taking the time to speak with each of us about our works-in-progress, our students, and art in general. Here she is speaking with Sally about her multitude of paintings (a very productive week for Sally.) For myself, two memorable moments were Charline’s comment to me was to work my painting more like film, to think in visual impressions. And she invited me to bring a group of students to visit her studio when we go to New York City in the fall! All in all Charline is a fantastic artist and person, a very deep thinker and articulate speaker.  For a closing thought, here’s another one via Marlene: My favorite quote was her parting words, “Thank you all so much, I am leaving with so much more than I came with.

Okay so maybe this doesn’t sound like a huge deal but seriously it’s about the fact that all of the visiting artists who we met with have successful and busy careers and found it an honor to come and spend time with a bunch of high school art teachers. yaya.

MORE POSTS COMING! Group viewing and critique. The last day of week one.

A shelter that takes heat off a building vent

With all of the activity of our third day I neglected to give a little space over to Michael Rakowitz, an artist and architect who I’d say is truly connected to the people through his endeavors. During lunch Michael described his work as a student at M.I.T’s school of architecture where he designed and built inexpensive shelters for Boston homeless folk. His designs were made of plastic and hooked up to building warm air exhaust  vents to provide his clients with heated shelters. Pictured above is a shelter that he constructed in Queens, as he continued this work after moving to New York City.

The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist

This image is from The Invisible Enemy Should Not  Exist, a project that Michael worked on that dealt with the reconstruction of antiquities stolen from the pillaged National Museum of Iraq. This is a long and detailed story which is detailed on Michael’s website. “The invisible enemy should not exist unfolds as an intricate narrative about the artifacts stolen from the National Museum of Iraq, Baghdad, in the aftermath of the US invasion of April 2003; the current status of their whereabouts; and the series of events surrounding the invasion, the plundering and related protagonists. The centerpiece of the project is an ongoing series of sculptures that represent an attempt to reconstruct the looted archaeological artifacts.” see  http://michaelrakowitz.com/the-invisible-enemy-should-not-exist/

sword play

Michael also described an exhibit he put together in the U.K. that examined the use of Star Wars imagery and icons by the special forces of Saddam Hussein. All of his work goes very deep and uncovers all sorts of uncanny connections. The space I have here does not do any of his work justice, nor his talk with us for that matter. I’d just close with my humble opinion that Michael Rakowitz’s work has total integrity that shows how deeply connected he is to people. For an interview with Michael check out this youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCmtnhPs7TI

I would be remiss if I did not include some description of the talks that Andrew and Phil gave us most every morning.

Andrew & Phil like candy!

Felix Gonzalez-Torres source:http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://artscurriculum.guggenheim.org/

Promptly at 9 AM each morning, Phil or Andrew gave a prepared talk with images discussing art history and went to great lengths to contextualize contemporary and conceptual art. It’s a lot to wrap around and an inclusion of basic art history really helped. In addition to being exceptional painting teachers they both are quite knowledgeable art educators and adept artists. Each has a great sense of humor and simply very good guys, smart, and they paid lots of attention to every one of us. What I’ll attempt here is to pull a few quotes from either of them and toss in some links and images. Hope I get the gist right…

lightindustry.org/godot

“[The Artist] who has meaning is the one who has power based upon who has mediation…” Who has ownership over meaning? Is it BP or Halleburton? Today’s Artists build an “”awareness of their own mediation, either by mimicking or mocking corporate dissemination. While neither mimicking or mocking seems to be the case of the performance of  ”Waiting for Godot” that was produced by artist Paul Chan,Chan and company were very aware of art as mediation. Here the most emblematic play about waiting is set in New Orleans, where people there have been waiting for promised help that never comes. It’s putting existing art within an entirely new context. A video and website by the artist shows their sensitivity to going to New Orleans as outsiders and working with locals to produce the play. http://www.creativetime.org/programs/archive/2007/chan/welcome.html

The invention of photography cast painting aside as primarily a patron of the ruling class and freed it to become reinvented.

Charles Baudelaire

The push back against The Academy, in the 1860′s and onward was heavily influenced by Charles Baudelaire  ”whose powerful writing ushered in a era of symbolism” . The point here is that it’s not all that ‘new’ to look at life more interpretively and be freed up of realism. Is an artwork an object to look at or a window to look through? This talk ended with the citing of many artists, including Dmitri Kozyrev, Sara Morris, George Condo, Storm Tharp, Eileen Quinlan, and many others.

On Tuesdays the Museum of Contemporary Art is a free visit, so a group of us went up there to see the current Calder exhibit (which could not be photographed) and toured the galleries. Many interesting exhibits to see, one that struck me deeply was work by Alfredo Jaar, a Chilean Artist who uses light boxes to cast images in reflective barrels of water (among many other approaches.)

Alfredo Jaar, Geography = War, 1989. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, gift of the artist.

For more on Alfredo Jaar visit: http://www.alfredojaar.net/index1.html

We ended the day with dinner at 6:30 and looked at each other’s personal work and the work of our students.

We had lunch with Laurie Hogan who is “Best known for her allegorical paintings of mutant plants and animals in overgrown landscape settings or posed for classical still life or portraiture. [Her] work includes examining human impulses desires and needs…” Laurie spoke with us about her philosophy and approach to painting, as well as described her current work with nutritional education in schools. She’s a wonderfully down-to-earth person. After lunch Laurie stuck around and chatted with us as did each visiting artist.

What Ails Us- The 100 Most-Prescribed Pharmaceuticals in the Nation, 2008

For more on Laurie and her work check out http://littlejohncontemporary.com/Hogin/index.html

After a few more hours in the studio we went into an ice-cold room for dinner and a talk with Mark Booth, another visiting artist and faculty of the SAIC.

Mark Booth Lecture

Mark presented audio recordings, examples of his art, and spoke of his fascination with “diagrams and organic things”. One memorable quote among many: “The brain is a globby wet thing.” Mark’s talk was stimulating and interesting. He referenced the film “Powers of Ten” made in the 1970′s and still unsurpassed in how it approaches scale from the massive emptiness of the universe to the tiniest compaction of matter in an atom’s proton. You can see the film here: http://www.allthingsscience.com/video/42/Powers-of-Ten

For a bio on Mark Booth: http://www.saic.edu/people/Booth_Mark.html?color=ORANGE

Mark Booth exhibit
March 12 to April 11, 2009

Mark Booth is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist whose work is rooted in an exploration of language, auditory phenomena and thought. Booth exhibited a number of language-based works in text, audio, video and drawing that explore the themes of slowness, duration and the quotidian.
source: http://www.cod.edu/gallery/archiveLobby.htm