New guest blogger: Marc Herbst, Journal of Aesthetics and Protest
Many thanks to Monika Navarro in Boston for her timely turn on the guest blog. Up next is Marc Herbst, an artist and member of the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest editorial collective (www.joaap.org), along with current editors Robby Herbst and Christina Ulke. Their print and web magazine has been around since 2001 and they just released the sixth print issue this month. Marc, who lives in Los Angeles, has begun or been involved in various media and culture projects including The CalArts Student Newspaper, the Los Angeles Independent Media Center, Killradio.org, several pirate radio stations and activist projects concerning globalization, gentrification, police brutality and environmental issues. As an individual and in collaboratives, his recent projects have been displayed at the 2008 California Biennial and the South London Gallery. Currently he is working through the practical ways that individuals activate their relationships within their cities and actually move towards affecting change.
An-My Lê on Michael Heizer tonight at Dia
As part of Dia’s Artists on Artists lecture series, Season 4 artist An-My Lê will lecture on Michael Heizer tonight at 6:30. Trap Rock, Lê’s 2006-2007 series of color photographs, was on view at Dia:Beacon through September 2008.
The lecture takes place at Dia’s New York City space, 535 West 22nd Street, 5th floor. Admission is $6; $3 for members, students, and seniors. Tickets are available at the lecture only. Reservations are suggested, call 212-293-5583.
“New York Times” video on Maya Lin’s “Wave Field”
The New York Times just published a video on Maya Lin’s Wave Field at Storm King Art Center in upstate New York. Click here to watch it. Wave Field can be accessed by the public in Spring 2009.
New guest blogger: Monika Navarro
Many thanks to Catherine Wagley for her thorough and perceptive coverage of the L.A. art scene. Up next is independent filmmaker Monika Navarro. Monika is currently in post-production on her debut documentary Animas Perdidas (Lost Souls), to be aired on PBS in 2009. The film is a portrait of Monika’s Mexican-American family following the deportation of her uncles, who were green card holders and served in the U.S. military. The film was produced in association with ITVS and WGBH in Boston. Last year Monika produced Animas Perdidas as a Filmmaker-in-Residence at WGBH. She was selected to screen the film in the Spotlight on Documentaries Works-in-Progress at the 2006 IFP Market, where she was nominated for an Emerging Latino Filmmaker Award. Monika was also a visiting artist at the Barefoot Workshops in Clarksdale, Mississippi.
Monika received her BFA in Studio Art from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and Tufts University. In 2001 she was awarded a scholarship from the Mexico Solidarity Network to participate in a delegation with the Chiapas Media Project. In 2005, Monika was the festival coordinator for the award-winning Cambridge, MA-based “Do It Your Damn Self!!” National Youth Video and Film Festival, a youth-curated film festival.
New guest blogger: Catherine Wagley
Many thanks for Rachel Gagnon for her terrific, in-depth coverage of the St. Louis art scene. You can follow her musings regularly back on the blog she helped start, 2 Buildings 1 Blog, a joint effort between the Pulitzer Foundation and the Contemporary Museum St. Louis.
For the next two weeks, we welcome Catherine Wagley to the guest blog. Catherine is a Los Angeles-based arts and culture writer who has studied art and literature at DePaul University, Grinnell College and Claremont Graduate University. She currently covers the LA art scene for Artslant and Daily Serving and regularly contributes to a number of other print and web publications, including Swindle Magazine and D/visible Magazine. Most of her writing and research focuses on contemporary visual art, pop music, and the exciting arts-related critical work that’s going on right now (she’s currently enthusiastic about Camille de Toledo’s Coming of Age at the End of History). She’s also recently become a blog culture aficionado, though she’s not sure where that interest will take her.
Special report: Mel Chin’s “SAFEHOUSE”
Following is an exclusive update from Mel Chin’s FUNDRED/PAYDIRT team on their latest New Orleans-based project, SAFEHOUSE. Written by Mary Rubin and Amanda Wiles, with photos by FUNDRED, Elliot Coon, and Arthur Simons.
News Flash - A sculptural intervention transforming an entire house in the St. Roch neighborhood of New Orleans is scheduled to be unsealed during a national press conference on October 31, 2008 at 12:30pm. The level of security pertaining to the contents of the SAFEHOUSE is high, as it represents a sizable creative investment from the local community. The value of what is within this sculptural vault can only be estimated. While Mel Chin hesitates to reveal too much other than the release of this digital rendering, it is rumored to be part of a larger effort, $300 million in the making.
There was much going on in New Orleans last week as Mel Chin and his team worked to alter the fragile façade of 2461 North Villere Street (between Music and Art streets) into an operable safe door. The crew began staging the sculptural alteration of the house in September. Initial plans to introduce the project to the local community were interrupted when Hurricane Gustav appeared on the scene. When mandatory evacuation of the city was imposed, the community event was postponed and the crew was evacuated with the rest of the city’s population.
…so from Mel’s studio in North Carolina, the sculptural parts of SAFEHOUSE were fabricated. The crew arrived back in New Orleans on Tuesday, September 30 to begin the installation. By Thursday, the hinges were on and the façade was reinforced to accommodate the 10-foot diameter door. As the work progressed through the week, the neighborhood watched with curiosity.
ST. ROCH Love Where You Live – St. Roch Community Preview Event
By the morning of October 4, the crew had accomplished enough of the installation for the vault door to swing open that evening for a big event. This FUNDRED/PAYDIRT sponsored event was planned as a special St. Roch neighborhood preview of SAFEHOUSE in advance of the Prospect.1 Biennial.
At noon the street was closed for the party, which included a “Paradise” slippy slide (complete with palm trees and rainbows) and a table set for the community dinner planned for 100. Local chefs, Ms. Pat and Ms. Carol, renowned for their talent in the kitchen, cooked up a special menu that included redfish, fried chicken, jambalaya, greens, red beans, dirty rice, and a mean bread pudding.
With the SAFEHOUSE “done enough,” neighborhood favorite DJ Baby Boy set the scene performing at top volume and Mel started the dancing.
Just before sunset Mel led a group of excited youth to the steps of the house and cracked open the vault door to start a FUNDRED making fury. As some of us helped the kids with their FUNDRED artworks, the first of the anticipated 6000 FUNDREDS needed to entirely cover the walls were nailed on with gold tacks.
…the dancing, celebrating, and FUNDRED making continued ’til late in the evening and a good time was had by all!
Want to learn more about FUNDRED and PAYDIRT? Watch the videos.
More to come on the FUNDRED/PAYDIRT National Press Conference soon. Follow the project at www.fundred.org.
New Lydia Fong Video
The fine folks at San Francisco’s KQED just released a brand-new film and interview with Art21 artist Lydia Fong, on the occasion of her current show at Ratio 3 Gallery.
New guest blogger: Rachel Gagnon
Thanks to Hrag Vartanian for a record number of fantastic posts. You can follow his post-Art21 adventures back on his own site, www.hragvartanian.com. For the next two weeks, Rachel Gagnon will be blogging with us. Rachel graduated from the University of Missouri-Columbia and has worked at the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts in St. Louis ever since. As the Public Relations Coordinator, she helped establish the PR and marketing structure for the institution. Three years ago, she co-founded a shared blog with the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis–2buildings1blog–which was one of the first museo-blogs on the scene. With the addition of Website Coordinator to her title, she helped overhaul the Pulitzer’s website, leading it from a static source of information to the dynamic site it is today. This site, along with online exhibition catalogues, have won numerous awards from local AIGA to Webby Honoree, in addition to a recent Communication Arts web pick of the day.
New guest blogger: Hrag Vartanian
Thanks to Erin Riley-Lopez over at the Bronx Museum for highlighting some very intriguing exhibitions. Up next is Hrag Vartanian, a New York-based writer and critic. Born to Armenian parents in Aleppo, Syria and raised in Toronto, Canada, Hrag remembers finding a copy of Susan Sontag’s On Photography on a bench and was inspired to study art history and theory. In 1997, he received his MA in Art History from the University of Toronto and after graduation, he moved to Beirut to work with Lebanese college students. He eventually moved to New York where he has been working in the non-profit field.
He writes regularly for a number of publications, including art criticism for ArtCal and The Brooklyn Rail. He is a passionate champion of the arts and serves on the board of a number of arts organizations, including the Triangle Arts Workshop.
His personal blog, hragvartanian.com, is part of the Culture Pundits blogging network and it combines his passion for art, literature, human rights, photography, pop culture and adventurous ideas. This summer, he began a column about New York’s vibrant street art scene for ArtCal titled “Re:Public.” He is also working on a crime novel.
New Maya Lin film on Spark
Our friends at KQED’s Spark have just released a brand-new film on renowned Art21 artist and architect, Maya Lin. The film follows her as she plans, constructs, and installs her sculptural work for the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. The site-specific piece is a topographical imagining of the San Francisco Bay. It is placed on the western facade of the new building designed by Renzo Piano, which is set to open to the public in September 2008.
In Lin’s recent artwork, she has explored new ways of looking at the landscape, utilizing topographical maps, sonar imaging, and other scientific data. It was this interest in the natural sciences, as well as a life-long passion for environmental conservation, that prompted Lin to respond to the call for proposals issued by the San Francisco Arts Commission and the California Academy of Sciences in 2006. This public art installation for the CAS will be the first permanent work by New York-based Lin in the City of San Francisco. Read more about the project on Lin’s Spark page here.
Watch a clip from Art:21 in which Maya Lin talks about the duality of being both an architect and an artist:
Find more information about Lin, as well as additional video clips and images on Art21’s PBS website at http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/lin/index.html
