A big thanks to guest blogger Mike HJ Chang for his enlightening series of posts on the state of contemporary art and performance in Singapore. We hope to check back in with him again soon. In the meantime, keep up with Mike’s latest projects and Singaporian adventures by visiting his website, here.

Next up is Chris Cuellar, a Los Angeles-based artist whose work encompasses writing, sound, performance, and digital media. Chris tells me that some of the issues he’s been tossing around as of late concern “the distribution of information online, telepresence, skeuomorphs, and plain old-fashioned concrete poetry.” Over the next two weeks, Chris’s guest blog will consist of a curated series of art “how-to’s,” which, he tells me, will “liberally expose secret recipes, source code and patents from a handful of solicited artists.” For those of you who live in or near Chicago, there will be a workshop and discussion hosted by Upgrade!Chicago on October 4th addressing the issues and ideas explored in Chris’ posts. He has also published numerous volumes on Lulu, including an early collection of spam poetry and the entire Facebook public directory circa Summer 2010 (an ongoing project). He has worked and performed for the Austin New Music Co-op in Austin, TX; the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Sullivan Galleries and Betty Rymer Gallery; the Hyde Park Art Center; the Red Rover Reading Series in Chicago; and Diapason Gallery in Brooklyn. Chris has also provided technical assistance for Project Cabrini Green and served as associate editor for the online literary journal Dear Navigator. To learn more, you can visit Chris’ website, follow him on Twitter and/or Key Party with him on Facebook.

Hiroshi Sugimoto. A selection from the "Lightning Fields" series, 2009. Photo courtesy the artist.

In this week’s roundup, Mel Chin commemorates 9-11, Hiroshi Sugimoto creates art with lightning, Mike Kelley delves into Superman, Oliver Herring throws art parties, Kiki Smith creates with paper, and much more.

• Mel Chin‘s 9-11/9-11, which premiered in New York and Santiago, Chile, on Sept. 11, 2007, is part of an exhibition at the Louisville Visual Art Association (Kentucky).  The film follows the family and intimate relationships of a small circle of people involved in the attacks in New York, as well as others touched on that same date in 1973, when a presidential coup led to the violent rule of dictator Augusto Pinochet.

• Hiroshi Sugimoto‘s selections from the Lightning Fields series are currently on view at the Edinburgh International Festival (Scotland).  Lightning Fields is a series of dramatic photographs produced through violent electrical discharges on photographic film. The images suggest a range of associations, from lightning flashes to strange forms of primordial life.  The show closes on September 25.

• Barry McGee participated in Art & About Sydney 2011, a project that aims to transform the Australian city into a canvas, or a living gallery.  As part of the Laneway Art program McGee joins a select group of artists and created an “evocative work that teeters between the free spirit of graffiti, the random energy of the urbane and the pure intent of controlled artistry.”  This work is on view from September 23 – January 31, 2012, and is free to the public.

• Art by Vija Celmins, Allan McCollum, Bruce Nauman, John Baldessari, and Eleanor Antin are part of the Getty Center’s online archive, Pacific Standard Time.  This collection provides materials about hipsters and happenings at venues in postwar Los Angeles, and documents where all the action took place through images and first-hand accounts from the artists.

• Pieces by Louise Bourgeois and Andrea Zittel are featured in Contemporary Works from the Permanent Collection at the Palm Springs Art Museum (California).  This exhibition includes Prototype for A-Z Cool Chamber by Zittel and Spider II by Bourgeois.  The show is ongoing.

• John Baldessari, Matthew Barney, Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Martin Puryear, Susan Rothenberg, Kiki Smith and more are occupying all three floors of the Fisher Landau Center for Art in Long Island City, NY.  The Center has extended LEGACY: Selections from Emily Fisher Landau’s Gift to the Whitney Museum of American Art, through Sunday, October 9, 2011.

• Kiki Smith is co-curating and has work represented in Papertails at NYU Steinhardt’s 80WSE Galleries (NYC).  The exhibition includes examples that range from printmaking and collage to photography, painting, and sculpture.  The show will open Sept. 14 for a special viewing from 6 to 8 p.m. and remains on view during regular gallery hours through November 5.

• Mike Kelley‘s Exploded Fortress of Solitude is currently on view at the Gagosian Gallery (London).  The Kandors series, which Kelley initiated in 1999, are sculptural depictions of Superman’s birthplace Kandor.  Selecting 20 examples from the myriad two-dimensional renderings of the famous fictional city, Kelley has created three-dimensional Kandors and variant works.  This exhibition closes on October 22.

• Oliver Herring is traveling the U.S. throwing parties involving a game called TASK, a straightforward activity with very few rules.  Its open-ended, participatory structure creates almost unlimited opportunities for a group of people to interact with one another and their environment.  Herring is throwing a new party on October 21 at Gallery 210 at the University of Missouri–St. Louis.

• Susan Rothenberg has new work on view at Sperone Westwater (NYC).  The exhibition features 13 paintings, including one of a raven perched on a tree branch and a large profile of a head outlined in grey and black. The artist mines the tactility of her medium to extract emotional truths about perception, memory and the human condition.  The show closes on October 29.

• Sally Mann‘s Proud Flesh is on view at Jackson Fine Art (Atlanta, GA). Using the human body as her main subject, Mann’s photography explores familial and spousal relationships.  This exhibition is on view until October 29.

• To mark her 100th birthday, the Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Switzerland is featuring an homage to Louise Bourgeois.  The exhibition represents a concentrated selection from the artist’s collection and addresses its key themes: an involvement with other artists, a concern with her own biography, and the translation of emotions into objects of art.  This exhibition is on view until August 1, 2012.

SUBSCRIBE TO EXCLUSIVE: RSS | ITUNES | YOUTUBE | ARTBABBLE

Episode #143: Commissioned by French Vogue to create a fashion editorial featuring clothes from the Spanish design house Balenciaga, artist Cindy Sherman discusses the first time she used a digital camera to make pictures, ultimately creating different versions of images for the magazine and for herself.

In self-reflexive photographs and films, Cindy Sherman invents myriad guises, metamorphosing from Hollywood starlet to clown to society matron. Often with the simplest of means—a camera, a wig, makeup, an outfit—Sherman fashions ambiguous but memorable characters that suggest complex lives lived out of frame. Shermans investigations have a compelling relationship to public images, from kitsch (film stills and centerfolds) to art history (Old Masters and Surrealism) to green-screen technology and the latest advances in digital photography.

Cindy Sherman is featured in the Season 5 (2009) episode Transformation of the Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS. Watch full episodes online for free via PBS Video or Hulu, as a paid download via iTunes (link opens application), or as part of a Netflix streaming subscription.

CREDITS | Producer: Ian Forster, Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Interview: Susan Sollins. Camera: Joel Shapiro. Sound: Roger Phenix. Editor: Joaquin Perez. Artwork Courtesy: Cindy Sherman. Video: © 2011, Art21, Inc. All rights reserved.

Installation view of Kai Lam's "Untitled (Wildlife)" at Substation, Singapore.

First, before I start, I would like to complain a bit: Singapore prides itself on being a city of electronic gadgets and connectivity-on-the-go. There are many people watching videos on their handheld devices on the bus, the subway, and in line at the post office.  Though not as dumb as Americans who text-and-drive, a lot of people here are staring at their little screens while walking.  As skilled as they are at walking and watching videos at the same time, it still very much annoys me.  So if you are one of those people, please stop watching crappy TV shows or crappy movies. Enjoy your bus ride. Enjoy your walk. Enjoy waiting in line at the post office!

Okay, back to art: I met Kai Lam about a year ago at a performance event at the now-defunct Post Museum. Kai has been a very active person in the art community over the last fifteen years, especially in performance circles.  In 2003, he co-founded Future of Imagination (FOI), an international performance event.  In 2009, Kai co-initiated Rooted In The Ephemeral Speak (R.I.T.E.S) which gives local and international artists a regular platform to showcase performance practices and time-based art.

This past June, Kai had his fourth solo show in Singapore. The show was called Untitled (Wildlife).  Inside the Substation gallery space, there was actually very little to see. There was a wooden container constructed out of scrap materials.  On the other side of the gallery there was a wooden ramp. On the adjacent wall there was a text that read “Banish Art Laws.”

Before the opening, Kai sent out email invitations which included a letter in which he described the night he spent on Pulau Ubin, a small island off the main Singapore Island. Here is an excerpt:

“For an unassuming while, I was humored by my own helplessness in such ‘wilderness,’ possessing a limited knowledge of the natural environment, and told myself to learn more about it when I got back to ‘civilization.’ I then picked up the fishing line-spool, [where] clipped onto the line is a note, written with waterproof ink:  “For all my wants, here are my unwants…. XXX,” and tied to the end of the fishing line is a rock-bait. I cast the line into the air, towards the sea, the trapping debris flew in a slow-motion movement, about twenty meters above the water surface just like the distance (I thought) of my close proximity to the wild boars, and predictably splashed into the steady-moving sea waves. I felt the rock-bait hit the bottom of the seabed and the sea’s underwater current, pulling on my rock-bait invisibly. The wait continues again.”

Those who know a bit about the geography of Singapore know that Pulau Ubin presents a contrast to the main Singapore Island. Most roads are still made of dirt, there are lots of stray dogs, and trees that are not planted. This place is as natural or wild as Singapore gets. I like the imagery Kai Lam sets up for the viewers, and their strong metaphorical content: away from the center (civilization, materialism, modern progress, etc.), the artist-figure awaits on the periphery with a fishing line. The fishing line is a double-sided one; once it hooks, it binds the debris to the artist, and the artist to the debris.

Installation view of "Untitled (Wildlife)" at Substation, Singapore.

I caught up with Kai Lam to ask him about his exhibition, as well as the state of performance art in Singapore.

Mike HJ Chang: I found the letter your wrote to be very romantic.  It provides the audience with an image of the artist as a contemplative figure.  Can you talk a little bit about the idea behind it, and how the letter relates to the exhibition?

Kai Lam: For me, the exhibition is about developing something outside of how I usually work.  I wanted to break out of my usual norm and process.  Therefore, the time spent waiting, contemplating, thinking, all these processes become more important than the exhibition itself.  That’s why the exhibition space is so empty to start with.  For me, the show is about a certain invisibility.  So in this aspect, the letter deals with my position as an artist at the moment.  My position, not just in Singapore, but overseas, in a general way. When I travel to Europe, I feel that when people find out that you are an artist, then they think that what you do is something very important.  But in Asia, overall there are different perceptions about artists.  A different outlook and mentality about what artists do, and what artists should do. Therefore the letter is a metaphor about being on the outside, away from the city, away from the mainstream core.  I have been thinking a lot about how we can position ourselves as artists in Asian society. Not by promoting our importance, but by promoting a way of thinking of the artist as a social commentator, a philosopher, and a thinker. Artists are an important part of the process for a nation maneuvering in this kind of climate. Singapore, like many post-colonial states, is still very young, still experiencing all kinds of newness, like democracy, institutional transparency, capitalism, etc.

Continue reading »

So long, farewell.... Film still from "The Sound of Music" (1965).

For me, September has always been the month I most associate with new beginnings. September is when schools traditionally launch their new year, it’s when museums and galleries open their big fall shows, and when the breeze begins to carry the first few whiffs of autumnal weather.  Today, however, I have an important farewell to share with Art21 blog’s readers. Art21′s longtime Director of Special Projects, Kelly Shindler, who founded this blog and who has served as Editor since its inception, has moved on to take a position as assistant curator of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM). It’s a wonderful opportunity, and I know Kelly views this “new beginning” with a tremendous amount of excitement. But she will be sorely missed here on the blog, and throughout the entire organization. As one of the regular contributors to the “Centerfield” column, I benefited first-hand from Kelly’s creativity, patience, and talented editorial stewardship. I know I am joined by all of the blog’s contributors, past and present, in bidding Kelly the warmest of goodbyes, and in wishing her great success in her future curatorial endeavors!

I’m also very pleased to be joining Art21 as the blog’s new editor. For several years, I’ve been a devoted reader of and contributor to the blog, and I am thrilled that I will now have the privilege of working directly with writers and columnists I have long admired from afar. I wish everyone a productive month, and the best of luck to any of you out there who may be launching “new beginnings” of your own!

Alison Kendall, "1/2 and 1/2 Grasshopper," 2006. Half ink wash, half colored pencil on paper. Courtesy the artist.

Alison Kendall creates drawings and paintings in which viewers’ expectations are breached by dreamlike intruders. The San Francisco–based artist went to school for scientific illustration, learning to draw animals and plants for field guides and textbooks, to inspire understanding rather than wonder. While she continues to work part-time as an illustrator for scientific textbooks, in her own work she has consciously departed from the genre’s literal-mindedness.

Influenced by and derived from her background in scientific illustration, Kendall’s surreal tableaux are purposely incorrect; animals and objects are recognizable but appear in unlikely environments, as though misclassified. The artist skews linearity, leaning instead toward the possibilities of the unreal: butterfly wings protrude from men’s heads, while a beekeeper pulls frames not from a hive, but from a computer monitor.

Alison Kendall. "Beekeeper," 2007. Acrylic on panel. Courtesy the artist.

Kendall’s hybrid practice—consisting of both “technical” and “artistic” illustration—exposes the way disciplinary constructs influence our expectations of an image and can determine which qualities we choose to value in it. Her work, and the work of other crossover scientific illustrators before her, advocates for a gray area between science and art, a paradigm in which an image can be both didactic and beautiful. It is a place where accuracy and aesthetics are not at odds and a thing is no less miraculous for its being explained.

Victoria Gannon: It’s interesting how the dominant mode of interaction with nature is to classify it and approach it in a technical way. I’ve never felt that way.

Alison Kendall: I’ve always been a nature person, but I was never really technical-minded. If you consider taxonomy to be technical, I’m at that level of technicality, but not beyond that. I don’t want to work in a laboratory.

It’s weird that the work that I do in ecology research involves classifying. I started working on this project when I graduated college, and still participate on a contract basis. It’s this large-scale coastal monitoring project in which we take the inventory of everything in the tide pools from Alaska to Mexico. I would sit in the tide pools for six or seven hours a day, identifying everything. And all the names just went in my brain. I’m going to be an old lady, and I’m going to remember all those names, because I don’t remember other things the way I remember them.

Continue reading »

If you’re not familiar with Ambrose, well…. you should be. A few months ago on a trip to work with teachers at the Holland Area Arts Council in Michigan I was fortunate enough to meet Adam Weiler, the creative director of this atypical after school club, and immediately became interested in the work his high school artists were producing. The website for Ambrose perhaps says it best:

Ambrose is the greatest after school club in the world. Every month we feature a guest artist, develop a new tee, and complete a skill building collaborative project. Our goal is to grow citizens with strong capacities for creative problem solving, design thinking and entrepreneurship.

I became interested in Ambrose not just because they produce really cool t-shirts, but also because of the buzz that surrounded this group from the moment I landed in Grand Rapids. Many people, including teachers taking the weekend workshop with Art21, had nothing but positive things to say about the work Ambrose has done and the effect it has on kids who participate. Below is part one of an interview I conducted with Adam Weiler this summer:

Joe Fusaro: Tell me a little about how Ambrose is different from other “after school clubs” and how do you sustain participation in this kind of thing when so many projects like Ambrose start strong and then fade over time?

Adam Weiler: When we were first starting the program we surveyed both local business owners and creative professionals to see what they were looking for in potential employees. We found both sides wished they had a deeper understanding of the other- businesses wished they were more creative and creatives wished they had a better understanding of business. This focus on the business side of art and the art side of business sets us apart. Since we’re not associated with or funded by a school system we’ve been forced to take our own medicine and find a funding model that works in order to keep the program going. This year we launched a new line of shirts where our visiting artist of the month designs a shirt that we print with students. We’re constantly trying to find new workable ways for students to be involved in all aspects of the project such as planning, production, branding, etc…giving them more ownership and say in the direction of the workshops.

Regarding student participation – in a lot of ways Ambrose is like any other after school program. Every year students graduate and new students enter – group dynamics and energy are variables that constantly change. I think the personal attention of committed volunteers have helped retain students over the last three years. Professional adults in our community have been really excited about giving back in a way that connects with their passions. We have a solid group of weekly volunteers that are talented, genuinely like each other, and care about students’ development. It’s a trifecta, if you will, and I think it creates a culture that students want to be a part of.

JF: So how do you select artists to work with the group?

AW: The guest artists thus far have been friends of our community and friends of friends. It’s pretty grassroots. There are some really well organized creative networks in our region…and generous. When we’ve reached out to individuals they have been more than willing to help out, which is encouraging.

JF: And when you say students “graduate”, do you mean from high school, or is there some kind of graduation from Ambrose? Do students have the option of working with Ambrose after they are out of high school?

AW: Graduate from high school. We’ve noticed a real need for creative community amongst students who have graduated from school but aren’t pursuing college degrees. Up until this year the program hasn’t had any hard boundaries so those students still stop in for the occasional workshop. Occasionally during college breaks we’ll have “alums” come back to share what they’ve been learning, what whey wish they knew, and validate the importance of foundational skills (drawing from life / observational skills). This year we’re doing things a little differently. There will still be an open door to alums coming back but we’re going to have a hard graduation that marks a student’s initiation into the next phase of development.

Continue reading »

Rosalind Krauss working on her dissertation in 1969. Makes it look *so* easy.

Despite finally having access to a car this summer and thus becoming one step closer to the delights of Fort Tilden beach, I remained a sickly white shade that I like to refer to as “extreme English Rose” but, in truth, is more akin to “library pale.” For the first half of my so-called vacation, I taught summer school in order to take the second half of the holidays “off” to prepare for what is known in the Graduate Center Art History PhD Program as the First Exam. It’s a contradictory title because if, like me, you arrive without having taken a Comprehensive Exam during your MA then it’s actually your second exam, required before you get past 45 of the 60 credits of class work needed to propose and complete your dissertation. A colleague of mine on the program dropped his voice to a wonderfully theatrical whisper in the library a month ago to tell a group of us that the exam was dreamed up in the days when Rosalind Krauss taught at the Graduate Center, “in order to weed people out before they get to the stage of failing their orals.” Whether or not that’s legend, it’s true that no other Art History program in the city seems to have this step, moving straight to Orals from the Comps. Thus, it was this comforting thought that accompanied my final four weeks of revision: if I fail, it’s because Rosalind Krauss thinks I’m an idiot who should advance no further in this field.

The First Exam contains different material depending on your proposed area of specialization, but whether you’re a medievalist or a modernist, the mechanics are pretty much the same. Fifteen hundred slides and twenty seminal essays in the field to memorize. Come exam time, twenty of those slides will pop up on the screen (yes, that’s roughly 1% of the total slides you’ve committed to memory) and it’s your job to identify them and then contextualize the work broadly before specifically describing the significance of the particular work itself. After a ten minute break comes the fun part – essays! You chose two possible questions to respond to, synthesizing five texts you have read in one question and five more in another, no summaries allowed. “Excite me!” said our examiner as we began to scribble furiously. I don’t think it was just me who wanted to cry at that point. After four hours we left with instant carpal tunnel syndrome and passed out after one glass of celebratory wine praying we had made the 83% pass mark. Fail once and you have to take it again in January. Fail twice and you’re toast.

Continue reading »

Installation view of "We Who Saw Sign" at ICA Gallery 1, Singapore.

Soon after writing my first post for this blog, I realized how unnecessary it was for me to point out that things are different between the States and Singapore.  Isn’t that a given? Even Peter in 5th grade would know things are different between Canada and Mexico. That pretty much goes without saying.  Also, I have little interest in playing games of “spot the difference” between two pictures. So, what is it about living in Singapore that made me, an American, feel really confused and disoriented? Hopefully at some point, my analogy will be The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), instead of The Man Who Knew Too Little (1997).  In both films, the protagonist is involved in an assassination attempt while “on vacation.”  I think the “guest” status applies here, as I consider my own position on this island.

On my way to visit a friend’s studio in Goodman Art Centre, a newly-converted art studio and gallery space, (really nice studios, funded by the National Arts Council, but I cannot apply since I am not a citizen–so I am bitter), I was thinking about funding for the arts here in Singapore.  Spaces like this, set up by government funding agencies, are rare in the States.  I have seen State government subsidized artist co-ops, but nothing like these large-scale studios for artists, offered at a pretty affordable rate.  This is one stark difference between the States and Singapore: Singapore’s government aggressively puts money into the development of art, but to me this seems to be more of an act of compensation to balance out the small private sector. (I myself have already been involved with three shows that are funded by the National Arts Council).  I wanted to learn more about how Singaporeans feel about working in this kind of environment; luckily, the friend I was visiting happened to be an artist and curator named Guo-Liang Tan, who recently guest-curated the exhibition We Who Saw Signs at ICAS (Institute of Contemporary Art Singapore).  That show featured many internationally-known artists including Ho Tzu Nyen and Adad Hannah.

First, I asked Guo-Liang about his experience writing on art in Singapore, where there is a lack of regular art periodicals.  He points out a periodical called  Focas: Forum On Contemporary Art & Society, edited by artist Lucy Davis, which had a good run for a year but ultimately met its demise due to lack of funding.  He jokingly said that the only people who need art publications are artists.  I thought that was humorous but true.  In a small country such as this, the small population of artists simply cannot fuel publications centered on art.  And it is not a coincidence that the newspaper Strait Times’ art coverage falls under the “Life” section, together with articles on home decoration and holiday travel.  Guo-Liang points out that there aren’t enough art writers here, though some, like Lee Weng Choy, June Yap, and T.K. Sabapathy, have been very influential in developing the local art scene.  Guo-Liang notes that, given the lack of art periodicals in Singapore, much of the art writing now takes place within exhibition catalogs. This means that artists who are not exhibiting their work publicly are left out of the contemporary discourse. In earlier days, Singapore’s art writers had followed a select group of artists and supported those artists’ practices by explaining them to the public. In contrast, much art writing today seems more impersonal.

Continue reading »

Terike Haapoja.

Terike Haapoja is a Finnish visual artist based in Helsinki. She has a Master’s degree from the Theater Academy of Finland (Department of Performance Art and Theory) and from the Academy of Fine Arts in Finland (Department of Time- and Space-based Arts). Haapoja’s work explores the connections between new technology in contemporary art, natural scientific worldviews, and environmental ethics. She has a background in activism, and takes part in the discourse concerning art’s relationship to sustainability and environmental issues. Haapoja is a member of the Finnish Bioart Society, and has founded the Ecology, Ethics and Art program at the Academy of Fine Arts in Finland.

Haapoja’s work consists of videos, installations and stage projects that are characterized by an innovative use of new media and new technology. She also works extensively with professionals from the natural sciences and from different fields of art. Her work has been exhibited widely in solo and group exhibitions and festivals both nationally and internationally. Haapoja has also received numerous grants, prizes and awards. She was honored with the Finnish Art Association’s Dukaatti prize in 2008, the Finland Festivals’ Young Artist of  the Year prize in 2007, and received a SÄDE prize for best visual design in theater in 2010.  In 2011, Haapoja was nominated for the Ars Fennica Award. She has received numerous project and working grants form the Finnish State Art Fund and private foundations, and her articles and essays have been published in art journals in Finland as well as internationally.

Haapoja’s latest installation opened August 19 at the Amos Anderson Art Museum in Helsinki. Titled Edge of the World, it is a work that tests and challenges the limitations of our world as we know and accept it. Haapoja is represented by Gallery Kalhama & Piippo Contemporary in Helsinki, Finland.

For this interview, I met with Terike just around the corner from the Amos Museum, where she was installing her work, accompanied by her beloved dog Lieska.

Terike Haapoja. "Eden," 2007. Courtesy the artist and Kluuvi Gallery, Helsinki.

Georgia Kotretsos: You’re currently working on an artistic research PhD at the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki.  The umbrella research title for both your studio and theoretical work is Technologies of Encounter. What exactly is put under the microscope here, and how does this inquiry manifest in your studio work as well as your writing?

Terike Haapoja: I started to work on the PhD because I have always liked to write about art and to think about the theoretical and philosophical context of the work. I have published in Finnish and international art journals, mostly essays and also more academic texts. I think that the PhD program is a good way to be connected to the discussions happening in art and also outside of my own field of practice.

My research question comes from my way of working with new technology and scientific technologies. While working on art projects, I have thought of the ways in which media shapes our attitudes towards the object of our investigation. As the subject or the “motif” of my work is often related to nature, and as I often use scientific technologies, I look at this question of “mediatization” especially in terms of human/nature relationships. The approach is eco-criticism, so I try to see how the ideologies of domination or control over nature are embedded in artistic practices, as well as in my own practices.

I am now focusing on my art, but I will concentrate on the writing part for the next few years and hope to get the PhD completed by 2014.

Continue reading »