A few more drawings and some screenprinting

Here's some more drawings and then there is some screen print on laser print as well. Also, some of these drawings are actually bleed through from my other drawings, but I think they are really nice. Might contribute to a different body of work. Enjoy!

More drawings of huntin stuff!

I thought as I was posting new pictures I should explain what is going on. I have thematically shifted to making art about the community/Upper Midwestern culture that I grew up with. I've become a little bored with the sheep for now, but I'm sure I will go back to them at some point in my career. I'll leave it at that for now and give you some more drawings and collages to look at.

New Drawings

I will update this post with an explanation in the next few days.

SAIC Studio

I've been getting settled in here at SAIC and thought I'd post a few pictures of my studio. I took a few different angles to get a sense of the size. I think the pictures make it look smaller than it is, but it's actually bigger than my room in the apartment! The table in there is pretty long. I've got some work going on and I have already had two of my TA classes and they have been really nice. It's really great working with the advanced students and not having to worry so much about teaching them technical stuff, although I have been able to help with that too. Anyway, here's the studio and I plan to post more pics of the rest of the ceramics department here.

Preview

Here's a preview of some new work.

Chicago Part One

My apologies for not posting these sooner. For some reason, my internet is not letting me upload my images... This is some of the art that I saw in Chicago. This first exhibition was at the Sullivan Gallery which is a gallery for SAIC. This is where they have their MFA exhibition (which this year will have 130 MFA candidates). So, I've included some images of the space itself to give a sense of how that many people would fit! It was truly an amazing space. It was huge and I probably spent over an hour looking through the exhibition. There were huge windows along the one wall which let in natural light and had a great view of the city below. The exhibition that was in there was titled "Touch and Go: Ray Yoshida and his Spheres of Influence."

Ray Yoshida was a Chicago artist and taught for almost 50 years at SAIC. He was an integral part of the Chicago Imagists and served as their mentor. This exhibition shows his own personal work and how it changed over the years, as well as work from his personal collection, students' work and the work of other artists who were influenced by him. It was really great work and interesting to see the change in his work over the span of his career. He worked with appropriating comic book imagery and collaging the different elements. He would isolate specific parts to create a dialogue.

These are a couple views of the space. I believe that is State Street out the window there. From what I could tell there was a whole extra half of this space that continued beyond the doors, it was a gigantic space.

These are two pieces from the 60s. The first is an acrylic painting done in 1968 that is Untitled. The second image is a collage of comic book clippings and most of his early work consisted of appropriating comic book imagery by using actual materials from comics. In his later work, he revisited this style as you will see in some of my other pictures.

This is work from a student, Jim Nutt, who is one of the Chicago Imagists. I also saw a Jim Nutt exhibition in the Museum of Contemporary Art and will post pictures from that. He also experimented with collaging comic book images, and most of his early work was a mix of different little elements.

This is a collaboration with two of his former students Christina Ramberg and Barbara Rossi. This was made using the Surrealist "exquisite corpse" process. This was called Wrapsodent and was from 1974.

This image shows how the next work fits into the whole comic book appropriation theme. He had all sorts of collections of clippings and sketches that he made while creating his work.

These two were also acrylic paintings done in the 70s. The second one was Untitled, 1975.

Ray Yoshida eventually returned to using comic book imagery directly in his later work. He worked in this style until his death in early 2009. They even had his last unfinished collage in the show. The first collage is from image is from 2000 and is titled Eh! and the second is titled EWWWWWW!AAAHHHH!AWOOOOOOO! and was from 2002-03 (I will upload this as soon as I can get the internet to work properly....). It was a really great show and there seemed to be a lot of shows that had this "celebration of Chicago Art" theme going. It was really great to see the work and I will continue to post as long as I can upload the images!

SAIC and Northern Illinois

Friday was a day of news for most of my grad school apps. Great news! I was accepted to the MFA program at SAIC through the ceramics department and I was also accepted to Northern Illinois for Printmaking. Still waiting on Tyler, but I think I am definitely leaning towards these two schools. I will be visiting Northern Illinois soon to get a feel for the program. Decisions, decisions...

Now, as promised, I will have some posts in the next few days about the work I saw in Chicago while I was there. First I will talk about my visit to SAIC. I was able to meet with the department chair Katherine Ross, and she gave me a tour of the Columbus Drive building which houses the Sculpture, Ceramics and Printmedia studios. I also had a chance to see what the current grads are working on and meet the other ceramics professor who usually works with grads, William O'Brien. Many of the grads are doing work that involves performance either with clay or in the creation of the clay objects. There is a good blend of different approaches to the medium. The facilities there are unbelievable! They are currently in the process of getting a ceramic decal printer, which if they are able to get would be great for me! They have a large room with workspace, ventilation, and all of the tools and materials needed for making plaster molds. They have casting slip available, plus multiple blungers you can use to make your own. And a great mold drainage system. They have a new Blauuw kiln, which is computer controlled and can be monitored and controlled remotely via laptop. She said that it is so efficient that it can pretty much be fired 3 times in the time it takes to do one firing with the other kilns. They also have an awesome sculpture shop with pretty much any tool or piece of equipment you could probably need. These are just a few of the highlights, as the building had even more than I have mentioned.

The program itself allows a great deal of freedom. There are biweekly meetings with your graduate project advisor, and critiques each semester with the fall being disciplinary and the winter being interdisciplinary. Aside from that, unless you are in art history class, there really aren't class meetings. I also wouldn't have to work with clay, although I would still be able to use all the materials and studio. My classes could be in print, sound, metal casting, etc., as long as I am creating my work. It would definitely be a great experience to be able to work so freely and be in the city with all of the great art and opportunities.

Stay tuned, I will post some images from exhibitions I saw (even some Jeff Koons for all you Edinboro people!)

Sheep!

I don't know if this will be taken off of youtube, but I saw this commercial and just had to share it! I wonder if the same could be said for art?

Grad School

Well, I have all of my grad school apps finished up so now I can wait for results. I have an interview scheduled for February 9th at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago Ceramics Department. It will be exciting to speak with the department chair and whoever else will be there! I will be traveling down to Chicago on the Monday before my interview and coming back the following Sunday. The plan is to check out some galleries as well as the museums and post some pictures on here of what I see (along with a critical assessment of course!) I'm definitely going to check out the Dubhe Carreno Gallery, which is a contemporary ceramics gallery

Well, I plan to post on here much more frequently and I hope to see some interesting work in the galleries in Chicago that I will share with you!