Pae White at the Art Institute of Chicago

I feel like I should be working for the tourism board of the City of Chicago. There are so many cool goings on in the city.
Last night I attended an event at the new Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago. I had never been to the restaurant, Terzo Piano, and the setting took my breath away. The terrace, with spectacular views of Millennium Park and Michigan Avenue, is encased with a site specific work by artist Pae White titled Restless Rainbow. She has wrapped the space with an abstracted rainbow. While planning for the installation, White wondered... what would happen if a rainbow fell from the sky?

You could go see for yourself.







While we are on the subject of rainbows, here is a stitched iphone photograph of a double rainbow.

© Alden Griffith


Who even knew they occurred in nature?

Chicago Theater ~ On Rothko and The Pitmen Painters

Everyone knows how fabulous Chicago Theater is. There is always something wonderful to see. I am passing along 2 suggestions for anyone reading this blog who resides in Chicago. The Pitmen Painters at Time Line Theater is about a group of men who work in the coal mines who hire a teacher so they can learn about art. When the teacher learns they know absolutely nothing about the history of art, he suggests they pick up a paintbrush and start creating their own art. What follows is an insightful and delightful discussion about art.

I jotted down these quotes to share...

"Art isn't about finding answers...it's about asking questions."
"Art is not about technical proficiency, it is about feelings."

A nice article about the book that the play was based on, The Pitman Painters: The Ashington Group 1934-1984 by William Feaver is HERE.


Last night I saw Red at the Goodman Theater which is by American writer John Logan about artist Mark Rothko. I was deeply moved by the play as it touched so many of the themes in my life. Happily, I bought a copy of the play in the lobby to more fully consider it's riches. One thing Rothko asks his assistant was if he had every read Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy. (I haven't but just downloaded it onto my kindle).



He goes on to discuss his concern for building up the luminosity of the painting, (something I am currently struggling with and am at the point of being discouraged but not defeated). "I do a lot of layers, one after another, like a glaze, slowly building the image, like pentimento, letting the luminescence emerge, until it's done."

The Rothko character also states, "These pictures deserve compassion and they live or die in the eye of the sensitive viewer, they quicken only if the empathetic viewer will let them. That is what they cry out for. That is why they were created. That is what they deserve."

For more information on the NYC production, there is an online interview with Charlie Rose HERE.

Thursday Morning Musings

"We shall not cease from our exploration
And at the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time." T. S. Eliot

I thought of this poem this morning as I was listening to the Grateful Dead. It was if I had never really heard the music before.
Amazing how we often gloss over things that we "think" are so familiar. I keep wondering how to keep my mind and heart open to the infinite world of possibilities.

This was a self portrait I did years ago in the darkroom by sandwiching negatives together....I look at it now and think "did I really do that?"

Gregory Crewdson

I have been aware of Gregroy Crewdson's work for some time now but just recently read on twitter that he will be teaching at Yale University in their photography department. It peaked my interest in him so I decided share some of his work.

Crewdson is best known for elaborately staged scenes of American homes and neighborhoods and often has up to 40 crew members helping him to create that perfect shot. There is an interview I found on you tube where he describes his process, which I am including at the bottom of this post. I am also including a few quotes from the interview which I found inspiring.

"What is important is trying to make this one moment as beautiful and mysterious as possible."


"In a lot of my pictures there is a preoccupation with what is beneath the surface of something."


"There is a tension between the ordinary and the strange that really attracts me."


"I like the twilight, the magic hour, but I think my pictures are very much about the moment between moments, between before and between after."

Here is the interview. What is amazing to me is the effort involved in creating the photograph. It is staggering.

Marwencol

If you ever wondered how art factors into mental health and healing, you have to check out this movie, Marwencol. It is the riveting story of how Mark Hogancamp overcame a vicious mugging that left him severely impaired with extensive brain damage. It is remarkable how the photographs he took of his work conveyed the deep emotion and drama of the scene. There is a fusion of what is real and what is imagined which gives the work an immediacy and extraordinary power. The filmmakers of this documentary were also masterful in how they told the story.

















You can stream the movie thru Netflix. Also, Marwencol is the name of his imaginary town. You can learn more about the entire project HERE.

Happy Friday!

The Dorchester Project ~ Theaster Gates

I don't know if you have seen the movie the Interrupters, but if you did, it may have left you wondering what you could do. The arts have always been a vehicle for healing. I just read this article in the University of Chicago Magazine and instead of trying to paraphrase it, I thought I would just share it. The project is truly inspired and reminds me of how some artists have transformed Detroit neighborhoods.

Culture Wares
BY JEFF CARROLL | PRINT EDITION—SEPT–OCT/2011

Theaster Gates hopes to transform a neighborhood through art.

It's as if he wants to get this part out of the way first: Theaster Gates knows that the South Side of Chicago has long been burdened with a bad reputation—and that the reputation is at least partially merited. "We know there's violence, and we know there's gang activity," Gates says. "We know there's not a strong economic core."

What Gates most wants to talk about, however, is the potential that gets lost in the discussions of the problems. "What we don't consider enough is the rich cultural legacy," Gates says, "the kind of cultural curiosity, the alternative histories. ... There is a deep intellectual reservoir that has never been fully tapped. And if it has, its voice has never been amplified loudly enough."

© Lloyd Degrane

Gates, a University resident artist, visual-arts lecturer, and director of arts-program development, has dedicated himself to amplifying that voice.

His Dorchester Project is the most ambitious example of his goal to find run-down spaces in struggling black neighborhoods and transform them through art and culture. Although the South Side's Grand Crossing neighborhood serves as the locus of his movement, Gates's art has been the subject of exhibitions in other cities, including St. Louis and Seattle. He has purchased property in St. Louis with the idea of transforming blighted spaces there, as well.

Gates, a West Side native who has arts, religion, and urban planning degrees from Iowa State University, has accumulated an eclectic body of work from pottery to music—his Black Monks of Mississippi ensemble includes musician Leroy Bach, formerly of the alt-rock band Wilco. The ongoing project in Grand Crossing, however, promises to be his magnum opus.

The Dorchester Project's centerpiece is a once-abandoned two-story house at 6916 South Dorchester. To create what he hopes will become a South Side cultural hub, where artists and other visitors can congregate both informally and for planned events, Gates went on a bargain spending spree. He purchased the property for $16,000. Then he bought 8,000 vinyl albums from a Hyde Park record store, Dr. Wax, which was closing. He added to the mix approximately 14,000 used books and thousands of photographic slides that the University of Chicago was planning to discard. Every item serves a double purpose—arrayed throughout the home, each one becomes part of the overall decor while also providing cultural material for artists and other visitors, a conversation piece unto itself.

The house is the first of many spaces on the block that Gates, who has also purchased two vacated foreclosures nearby, plans to transform. For stigmatized neighborhoods, he says, art can be the springboard to renaissance. "There's dignity everywhere," Gates says. "It's easy to overlook because the people who write about culture in the city live north. The people who have the capacity to create new cultural opportunities usually create them in a place that seems economically viable, where you can bank on a certain kind of person going to a certain kind of thing."

For Gates, who joined the University in 2007, his job is an opportunity to bridge the gap between the campus arts culture and the surrounding neighborhoods. He intends to connect the two even more, developing a role with the University under the working title, "Director of Arts and Public Life."

"I'm having this conversation with my friends at the University of Chicago," says Gates. "How can our students become more cultured? How do we get our students more embedded in the cultural life of the city? How do we ensure that our students have a voice and are engaged in the community? ... How do we make sure the community has access to the cultural life of the University? ... Is there a way I can help contribute to that?"
With his Dorchester Project, Gates is leading the discussion.

The link to the article is HERE.