Submitted by Darrell Roberts
How would you describe your paintings?
Other than big? or so everyone says to me. I don’t think they are. Someday I will make much larger ones. Anyway, I often struggle with this question, since the paintings are ‘handicapped’ by severe abstraction. I usually start with a word like surface, then something like ‘veiled’ layers, and I continue with visceral and peripheral. By this time, I can sense the person is getting bored, or have no idea what I’m talking about (or both), and I change the subject to Chinese food. However, I am glad to be talking with you, and on an initial level of discourse, these words do describe what I do, however ambiguously I may stumble through my paintings. I start with ambiguity and try to move to clumsy and hope they develop some elegance in the viewer’s eye. I strive to…
Submitted by Michelle Grabner
THE SUBURBAN PRESENTS:
Simon Ingram Au Plein Air
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Doug Melini
July 17 – August 10, 2011
Opening reception:
2 – 4 pm, July 17, 2011
The Suburban
125 N. Harvey Avenue
Oak Park, IL 60302
708 305 2657
mgrabn@saic.edu
www.thesuburban.org
Simon Ingram’s Radio Paintings “results from a sequence of material conversations of unseen and unheard information.” Ingram’s Abstract paintings are produced via a machine that scans the electromagnetic spectrum. Douglas Melini’s tightly pattern symmetrical abstractions will be juxtaposed with an audio component for his project at The Suburban.
Simon Ingram is an artist and Senior Lecturer at the ELAM School of Fine Arts at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He has exhibited internationally for over ten years including at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York and CCNOA Center for Contemporary Non-objective Art in Brussels.
This summer New York-based artist Melini is included in “Self Referral Non Object,” curated by Hudson at Feature Inc, NYC. He has exhibited at Minus Space, Brooklyn; Ursule Werz, Tubingen Germany; Rocket, London and Richard Heller, Santa Monica. He received his MFA from CalArts and has taught at RISD and VCU.
[caption id="attachment_631" align="alignleft" width="698" caption="Simon Ingram Ebino, (2011), Oil on Canvas, 1700x1700 mm"]
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THE POOR FARM
GREAT POOR FARM EXPERIMENT III
SUMMER 2011 / August 5, 6, 7, 2011
Guillaume Leblon (Paris, France), Chris Sperandio (Houston, TX) + Simon Grennan (UK), David Dunlap (Iowa City) + Bruce Tapola (St. Paul, MN), Yvette Brackman (Copenhagen, Denmark), Simon Ingram (Auckland, New Zealand), Duncan MacKenzie (Chicago, IL) + Christian Kuras (London, UK), Lily Cox-Richard (Ann Arbor, MI), Aaron Van Dyke (Minneapolis) + Summer School, Keil Borrman, Diego Leclery (Chicago), Richard Galling + John Reipenhoff (Milwaukee), Tyson Reeder + Scott Reeder (Chicago), Stephen Perkins (Green Bay), Aliza Nisenbaum (New York), Deirde O’Dwyer (New York), + Kelly Williams (Nashville) Peter Barrickman, Celeste Verhelst, Perre Kerch, Xav Leplae + friends (Milwaukee).
The Poor Farm
http://poorfarmexperiment.org/
E6325 County Highway BB
Manawa, WI 54949
Contact: Michelle Grabner
708-305-2657
mgrabner@saic.edu
PROJECTS…
William J. O’Brien’s solo exhibition at the Renaissance Society was one of the most thrilling free spirited exhibitions in a long time. Obsessed with color and texture, O’Brien worked from clay. He decided to create a body of work by taking a clay class at an amateur art center and not telling anyone he was an artist. By having the complete freedom to explore the medium of clay and not being an adherent to clay making dogma, he created some of the most fun, precarious sculptural forms, vessels, heads and abstract structures. Pieces covered in glaze, partly glazed, raw clay, broken pieces, nobs, layered in ooze show the artist freedom to express himself individually without worrying about preconceived concepts. The art of studio practice and making is just as important as the final outcome of his pieces in this exhibition. A few fiber sculpture pieces are thrown in there adding to the use of materials and just fuck it, make it attitude by using pieces of failed artworks and the carpeting and found scraps from the studio he moved into. A must follow artist making Chicago look good.
Submitted by Jade Yumang
2084: A Vision of the Future
Cameo Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
Curated by Brendan Christopher McCarthy
May 30-31, 2011, 8p-2a
Well the Rapture has started, but not much has changed. In spite of this inevitable disappointment, the one-day show, 2084: A Vision of the Future, in Cameo Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, curated by Brendan Christopher McCarthy projects a post-apocalyptic future. Passing through a pub, then the rest rooms, and then through a red-lit corridor, the show is a mix of salon style gallery, music venue, bar, and dance floor. Alluding to Orwell’s 1984, the space is littered with works that deal with the future: some about the impending doom and others just confusing, but in a post-whatever-goes zeitgeist. I guess that is a good thing…
Submitted by Darrell Roberts
Where are you from and how did you end up in Cedar Falls, Iowa?
I grew up in north Alabama. After studying art at the University of Alabama and the University of Florida, I was offered a teaching job at the University of Northern Iowa. Typing that sentence makes it seem as if it happened really quickly and easily. It was all very unlikely. I was the first person from my family to go to college. We lived in a rural area with no connection to art. Well, there were artistic things…my mom and grandmother made quilts and my uncle had a bluegrass band…but I never saw a real painting until I was in college. I saw a show of Rauschenberg’s prints while in high school. I had a fantastic art teacher in high school. She was always sharing art with us through magazines. I also encountered a few key artists by sheer luck. Before the Internet, it was so much more difficult to find things…but somehow I found Laurie Anderson and Klaus Nomi. In north Alabama during the early 80s, this was practically a miracle…
Submitted by Darrell Roberts
Jeremiah, You recently completed your MFA in 2009 and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship.
What was your graduate school training like?
I went to the University of Illinois at Chicago. It was a small, intimate, intense program and the faculty/students were phenomenal. The crits had long teeth.
Where did you go for your Fulbright and what was your project? Did it turn out successfully?
I went to Sicily to study traditional boat building, teach art to underprivileged kids and stage a reenactment of Odysseus escaping the Cyclops Polyphemus on a floating sculpture made from Sicilian fruit boxes. The local fisherman were completely baffled when I exhibited my sculpture among their boats prior to my performance and began taking bets on how fast it would sink when it hit the Mediterranean. (It floated like a champion.) The project aimed to bridge two previously distinct elements in my practice- my studio work and my volunteer work with children and teens. I would say that it was a good beginning…
Submitted by Michelle Grabner
SOUTHFIRST: PRESENTS
WOMEN AND WEAVING
POLLY APFELBAUM, ARIEL DILL, MICHELLE GRABNER
Please join us for an opening reception Friday, June 24 6-8 PM
24 June – 24 July, 2011
www.southfirst.org
SOUTHFIRST, founded in 2000, is located at 60 N6th Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn between Wythe and Kent Avenues. Gallery hours are Saturday and Sunday from 1-6 PM and by appointment. Subway: L train to Bedford Avenue. For more information, please contact Maika Pollack at 718 599 4884 or info@southfirst.org.
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SOUTHFIRST
60 N6th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11211
www.southfirst.org
Submitted by Darrell Roberts
Can you tell us about your education background, where you lived and went to art school?
I received my BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and my MFA from the University of California at Los Angeles. Prior to that I’d taken lots of drawing and sculpture classes at San Antonio Community College, where I now teach…
What have residency experiences been like for you, both as an artist and visiting artist?
In 1981, at PS 1, in Long Island City was my earliest residency experience. Alanna Heiss was director, and I had a small studio in a converted bathroom space, right next to the Alan Saret piece on the third floor. I was living in Queens, and I never really had a studio before. It was a turning point. I met artists from all over the world, and I got to plan my first installation experience inside a small arched space in the huge auditorium, which included the hanging of a large painting I made in the studio.
In 1984, The studio museum in Harlem, was a real milestone experience because it included a stipend, a studio and a final exhibition. I met Kerry James Marshall, Allison Saar, Maren Hassinger, Charles Burwell, David Hammons, Charles Abramson among many others.
While at the Addison Gallery of American Art as a visiting artist in the 90’s, I met Sol LeWitt, who was visiting the gallery and preparing for a huge exhibit…
