OnTheCusp.org

Tweet

If you haven't already done so, register for the Design Symposium at the IMA that takes place next Friday and Saturday. My original post is here and the exhibition site is here. Hope to see you all next weekend.

Tweet

Tweet

First, could you tell us a little about yourself (background, interests, hobbies) and what your role is at the IMA?

I enjoy riding my bicycle, playing/watching soccer, and cooking. I love my wife, robots, ducks, clouds, dinosaurs and traveling. Honestly, I could travel non-stop.

My undergrad degree is in anthropology where my interests were in cultural/visual anthropology – photography, video and eventually museum exhibitions. I started my museum career at the Indiana State Museum working in education and technology. I’m now Director of New Media at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. I’ve been at the IMA just over 4 years. I’ve worked on countless video projects, audio guides, web content and museum exhibitions. I’m most proud of the work New Media has done with YouTube, Roman Art from the Louvre webisodes, Nature Holds My Camera: The Video Art of Sam Easterson, IMA’s Blog and now ArtBabble. New Media’s role at the IMA is to bring stories of art and artists alive – through the use of technology. We take IMA’s mission and apply it to the work that happens internally – from Curatorial, Education, Conservation, Horticulture and Exhibitions to produce digital stories that are accessed globally through our website, iTunes, Flickr and more. It’s a blast.

Tweet

IMHO, a post like this is when the IMA blog is at it's best. An interesting behind the scenes look at an aspect of museum operations we typically don't see.

Tweet

Ahhhhhhhhhhh

Tweet

There's little question where I'll be March 6th and 7th. In conjunction with the exhibition European Design Since 1985: Shaping the New Century, the IMA will host a two day design symposium with some of the biggest names in the business. Keynote speakers Michele De Lucchi and Jurgen Bey will anchor four different sessions examining four different aspects of the design field: Designing, Making, Judging and Marketing.

Each session is lead by a different moderator and has four speakers who look at design from two different perspectives; design as industry (Modernism) or design as art (Postmodernism). A full list of presenters is featured on the symposium's home page and from there you can download the full agenda.

Two day passes are available for $100 or you can purchase a one day ticket for $50. Students receive and 50% discount.

Student Bonus - There is a special "Student Strand" of the symposium which allows undergraduate and graduate students four additional sessions with the speakers in a more intimate setting for a more indepth look at the issues pertinent to them.

To brush up on some modernism/postmodernism topics and for some additional background before the symposium I might suggest attending the free iMOCA 201 which will be held the next four Wednesdays from 5:30 to 6:30.

Tweet

Ok, so many of you may not already be familiar with CCNOA (Center for Contemporary Non Objective Art) in Brussels, Belgium, but for those of you who are, they need our support. I have long been a fan of CCNOA for their unique niche and focused exhibitions. They have long been a champion for non-objective art, something I very much support. Well, now they are on the brink of having their funding cut which would force them to close.  Find out all about CCNOA here. 

Tweet

at Big Car Gallery


First Friday opening: Feb. 6, 6-9 p.m.

Outside/In: I.a.w.C.t.B.C.G.o.F.s. or Two States One Cup in Suite 4

Outside/In: Two States One Cup

Eight contemporary artists working in a variety of styles and mediums come to Indianapolis from Iowa City in the second of a series of collective exchange shows at Big Car Gallery. Two States One Cup is a search to discover the importance of travel and specific space. In conjunction with the Big Car Collective's project to visit other cities and towns and create shows about these places from an outside perspective, Public Space ONE Gallery, in Iowa City will host a group of Indianapolians to exhibit in May.

Music that night at 9:30 p.m. by Mandy Marie and the Cool Hand Lukes, Ayawasca and Sam Eakin and the Awkwards. Music will be in Suite 215.

Artists involved:

Christina McClelland uses printmaking, installation, and video to challenge and confront accepted notions in the domestic space and beyond, revealing struggles for power and control. She received her BFA in Printmaking from the University of Iowa in 2008 and now works for Project Art at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics. Her work has been shown in Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, and Nebraska, as well as in Croatia. Geographer Kevin Berg is a BS candidate at the University of Iowa in Geography. Their collaboration is guided by a combined interest in human interaction with and within spaces. See more here.

Jenn Myers is getting her MFA in Intermedia at the University of Iowa. She uses video, installation and drawing as an experimental playground that involves audience participation and collaboration. She is currently working on a series of circular video environments that appropriate narrative elements from various traditions. Learn more here.

Daniel Luchman was born in Iowa City, IA and is currently attending graduate school at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He pursues video and installation projects that humorously explore personal mythologies and the human desire to construct cultural meaning. View video work here.

Caleb Engstrom, an Iowa City, IA resident, received his BA in Studio Art from the University of Iowa in 2007. Currently, he is a carpet cleaner/water damage restorer, substitute teacher, and curator for Public Space ONE Gallery in Iowa City. Using everything from performance, drawing, video, and installation his work draws upon established ideas of labor and tests of will. For more information visit www.calebengstrom.org.

Genevieve Lawrence was born in Cedar Rapids, IA and is an MFA candidate in Painting and Drawing at the University of Iowa. She is currently co-director of Arts Iowa City. Her work is focused on acts of illusion and believability and can be viewed
here.

Jeremy Chen was formally educated on the mean streets of Iowa City from kindergarten on. He is currently an independent artist in Grinnell, Iowa working on an assortment of projects using print media, drawing, book forms, installation, and short videos. Chen is a co-founder of the collaborative artist collectives ICRAPT and The Moving Crew. Find out more here.

Lee Emma Running's work functions as an aesthetic intervention into public space. Her installations go up quickly, sometimes overnight, and elevate local botanical life to enormous proportions. She strives to capture the beauty and complexity witnessed in very close investigation of natural phenomena and hopes to create a sense of wonder in her viewer. Running received her MFA in sculpture from The University of Iowa in Iowa City in 2006. She is currently Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Grinnell College in Grinnell, IA. See her work here here.

Katherine Parker works with video, painting and drawing, and installation, often making work that exists outside traditional gallery settings that appeals to a viewer's sense of wonder through frame or context. She is interested in questions of accessibility, both physical and conceptual. Her work often rewards the observant and patient viewer and privileges stillness and calm over action and proliferation. Her day job is in video production. She is a member of the Moving Crew.Find out more here.

Also that night



On Feb. 6 in Suite 215, The Naptown Rollergirls will display plaster busts of the members of the team decorated by artists. These will be auctioned off for a good cause later in February. Here's what they have to say about the show:

"We have to get this off our chest. Big Car Gallery will feature sculptures of Rollergirls's busts. You'll miss out on a bunch of memorable mammaries if you don't join the Naptown Rollergirls and Mandy Marie and the Cool Hand Lukes at Big Car. Our cup runnith over with good times for February's First Friday. Bust a move to the gallery and see Mandy Marie and the Cool Hand Lukes and your Naptown Roller Girls!"

Tweet

Kinetic sculptor David Bowen's work can be seen in the Herron Gallery now through March 7 as part of a two-person show, a short movable wall away from the work of balloon sculptor Jason Hackenwerth. This is the first show in new Gallery Director Paula Katz' era at Herron, as the previous shows this year were planned before she arrived.

Bowen started out in steel fabrication and then segued into kinetic sculpture. He is fascinated with simple switches, motors, and other devices which he incorporates into his sculpture.

Much of his sculpture has a participatory element, a robotic element, and some kind of drawing as a relic of the interaction between human (or insect) and machine. His lecture featured videos of many of the pieces he has created in the past few years. One of the trademarks of Bowen's work is that he shows the guts of the machines he makes, and he loves to talk about the phototropic cells, microcontrollers, and other gizmos he uses to animate his pieces.

Bowen's work attempts to mimic the movement of humans and animals by mechanical means. In the last few years, Bowen has started working with houseflies, which he purchases in the pupa stage off of the internet.



"Swarm" (2008) is a robotic, three-wheeled sculpture contained in a roughly fifteen foot diameter black ring in the center of the gallery. The robot's movement is in response to the interaction of two hundred houseflies with a series of sensors.


On the wall is a mechanical arm which draws in charcoal on a roll of paper in response to the movements of people passing in front of the four sensors connected to the arm, "Infrared Drawing Device" (2003).



The effect is of a crazy little man scribbling frantically on the wall. Every twenty-four hours the paper scrolls over leaving one complete drawing for each day the piece is up.

Overall, the two sculptors work compliments each other well as they approach sculpture in two alternative, but very different ways. It's good to see some 3D contemporary work at Herron.

Tweet

iMOCA GOES POSTMODERN ON THE ART WORLD

Today the term "postmodernism" is applied to everything from architecture and baby boomer disillusionment to The Late Show with David Letterman. So it's understandable that you ask: What the heck is postmodernism?

iMOCA and Butler University professor Elizabeth Mix will answer that question in terms of art in our new, more in depth series - iMOCA 201. The series will take place from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m starting this Wednesday and will continue every Wednesday until March 4th.

This week's class: Intro to Postmodernism & Conceptual Art

How did the idea become more important than what art looks like or is made of? This session explores how postmodernism, and its sometimes bewildering branch called conceptual art, developed. Featured artists include Sol Lewitt, Joseph Kosuth, John Baldessari, Komar and Melamid, Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer and Kay Rosen.

Future talks in this series will be:

* Feb. 11, Happenings, Performance & Body Art. An artist's body as a canvas... the art "happenings" of the 1960s... performance art, and how it differs from theater. This session explores these developments by looking at the work of Allen Kaprow, Gilbert and George, Joseph Beuys, Chris Burden, Vito Acconci, Ana Mendieta, Orlan, Carolee Schneeman and Guillermo Gomez-Pena.

* Feb. 18, Earth Art & Process Art. In the 1960s artists became fascinated with the idea of decay and began placing their works outside. This session examines why, as well as how this approach has changed over the ensuing years. Featured artists include Robert Smithson, Walter DeMaria, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Andy Goldsworthy, Robert Morris, Rachel Whiteread, Damien Hirst, Marc Quinn and Vik Muniz.

* Feb. 25, Site & Installation Art. Designing art for specific locations, as well as temporary placement, has transformed museum collections and the way artists approach artwork. Find out why as the session discusses Richard Serra, Edward Kienholz, Bruce Nauman, Judy Pfaff, Ilya Kabakov, James Turrell, Kara Walker, Anish Kapoor and Ann Hamilton.

* March 4, Video Art. Do not adjust your set. Television and video technology has made possible the use of video as an artistic medium. Featured artists include Paul McCarthy, Joan Jonas, Bill Viola, Nam June Paik, Dara Birnbaum, Matthew Barney, Krzyrztof Wodiczko, Tony Oursler and Pipilotti Rist.

iMOCA 201 is FREE but space is limited so please RSVP to info@indymoca.org.




Opening this Friday - 6 to 9 pm, FREE

das my i$H

New Paintings and Installations by Ismael Muhammad Nieves

"Das my i$H is a post-graffiti exhibition. It's a reflection of my 25 year activity as a graffiti writer. The fun part of graffiti writing has always been getting your name up, busting a character on the wall, and taking some flicks.

As a child in Lower East Side Manhattan during the late 70's and early 80's, my environment was flooded with graffiti, street art, gang culture, and hip hop. It was a language that my generation learned at birth and taught the world."

- Ish (Ismael Muhammad Nieves)

Check out the installation in progress and invite your friends on Facebook!

Tweet

To start, Ed Winkleman has taken the time to "consolidate the various threads we've hashed out over the years geared toward offering advice to artists seeking gallery representation and working with one." Considering this is an important topic, I thought I would link you to it here.

For an abundant number of artist interviews and several posts giving advice to artists, I recommend reading Myartspace Blog. You can easily spend days here reading the interviews alone...

Finally, in case some of you happen to be unfamiliar with it, I suggest checking out Coagula Art Journal. Coagula has this to say about itself,

The Print edition of Coagula Art Journal was founded in 1992 as an antidote to the theory-addled and fashion-driven forces in the world of contemporary art. Coagula is clarity amidst the ambiguty of contemporary art and the neutered, star-struck art world; we don't fuck around here.

Recently Coagula's Matt Gleason has been posting advice to artists via brief videos (check them out below). Another post of I thought may be worth checking out is 'Art Opening Protocol 101'. If you like what you see, you can now download Coagula Art Journal for free here.

Tweet

It was refreshing to see that Jason Hackenwerth, who uses balloons to make large and colorful sculptures, saves the hot air for his artwork.

During his lecture on Jan. 30 at Herron, Hackenwerth gave a good-sized 4 p.m. audience the quick and entertaining story of his recent rise to art fame. We learned how he got his humble start making balloon animals for his mom who worked as a clown when they lived in a mobile home. Later, when struggling as an artist using traditional approaches, he continued twisting dogs and swords to sell on the street as a way to get by. Then he began doing covert installations in subway stations before moving on to make the kind of bold, sea-creature looking sculptures you can see hanging at Herron now. Along the way, Hackenwerth also made wearable sculptures -- some of them hilariously sexual in nature -- and went around the world entertaining/bugging people in them. He has videos of this on his website.

Hackenwerth was down-to-earth and engaging during the lecture, refraining from intellectualizing his work much at all. Basically, he told the audience, he makes his creatures because they don't exist in the world and he wishes they did. He makes them because he likes how they look. For him, it's not about the idea behind the work, it's about visual excitement and fun. He said he doesn't like how artists spend so much energy talking about or writing about their work and not really making anything. That, he said is talking or writing, not art making. This is welcome approach in a post post-modernist time when art is often only about ideas, offering little that's pleasing on a physical level and often leaving the audience out of the loop.

Still, Hackenwerth's work is conceptually interesting because he uses balloons -- a material that isn't traditional, precious or durable. While he can preserve the work in photographs, the real thing wrinkles, deflates and is gone. Sort of like the rest of us.

Hackenwerth is sharing the gallery space with Herron grad David Bowen. I'm sure we'll write about Bowen's excellent kinetic work here at some point before or following his lecture at noon on Tuesday, February 3 at Herron. The show is up until March 7. Details are here.

Tweet

Urbanophile has a nice post up concerning the Indianapolis Convention and Visitors Association's annual meeting and the branding of the city. While the entire post is very much worth the read and quite relevant to the arts in Indy, of particular note for the readers of OtC are Max Anderson's statements at the meeting. Rather than do a poor job or rehashing Urbanophile's post be sure to hop on over and read it here.