Writer-in-Residence

Between Barcelona’s Soft Shoulders and Its Hard Underbelly: A Conversation with Daniela Ortiz

by Dorota Biczel | Jan 25, 2011

Between Barcelona’s Soft Shoulders and Its Hard Underbelly: A Conversation with Daniela Ortiz

by Dorota Biczel | Jan 25, 2011

Several months ago, even before I set my foot on Catalan ground, I was captivated by a seemingly modest photograph: a chocolate candy in a golden wrapper set on a …

Dissecting the Social Self: A [Wo]Man, an Animal, and an Ambiguous “I.”

by Dorota Biczel | Jan 21, 2011

Dissecting the Social Self: A [Wo]Man, an Animal, and an Ambiguous “I.”

by Dorota Biczel | Jan 21, 2011

At the turn of December and January, the myriad summaries and best-of lists of the past year I browse through coincide with a more personal check-up. There is no better …

Visibility, Potency and Meaning: Making Sense of Art at the Crosshairs

by Dorota Biczel | Jan 18, 2011

Visibility, Potency and Meaning: Making Sense of Art at the Crosshairs

by Dorota Biczel | Jan 18, 2011

Since I made my first appearance on the Art21 blog about six weeks ago, commenting on the now-infamous censoring of David Wojnarowicz’s video A Fire in My Belly at the …

New guest blogger: Dorota Biczel

by Kelly Shindler | Jan 17, 2011

New guest blogger: Dorota Biczel

by Kelly Shindler | Jan 17, 2011

Thanks to Caroline Picard for a record number of fabulous interviews. Follow her work back on her site, Lantern Projects. Up next is Dorota Biczel. Dorota Biczel is a Polish-born …

How To Stretch an Arm Through a Gap : An Interview with Ellen Rothenberg

by Caroline Picard | Jan 17, 2011

How To Stretch an Arm Through a Gap : An Interview with Ellen Rothenberg

by Caroline Picard | Jan 17, 2011

While Ellen Rothenberg works in a range of scale and material, there is a tactile quality to her work–a directness that calls attention to the body. I always think of …

Fostering Pragmatism: An Interview with Nadine Nakanishi

by Caroline Picard | Jan 16, 2011

Fostering Pragmatism: An Interview with Nadine Nakanishi

by Caroline Picard | Jan 16, 2011

Nadine Nakanishi has been working with Nick Butcher in their collaborative independent print shop since 2005. Under the shared moniker, Sonnenzimmer, they’ve made posters for such notables as Beach House, …

Occupying Multiple Scales at Once: An Interview with Hiro Sakaguchi

by Caroline Picard | Jan 14, 2011

Occupying Multiple Scales at Once: An Interview with Hiro Sakaguchi

by Caroline Picard | Jan 14, 2011

I am fascinated by varying scales of reference, especially when one has to negotiate multiple scales over the course of a single day. Hiro Sakaguchi works as an art handler, …

Caution, You Are Being Watched: Deb Sokolow and You

by Caroline Picard | Jan 13, 2011

Caution, You Are Being Watched: Deb Sokolow and You

by Caroline Picard | Jan 13, 2011

Deb Sokolow invokes You, the audience. When engaging her work–wall drawings rife with text-narratives that revel in heist, hijinks and mystery, You are not a passive bystander. You are implicated …

Active Blur: An Interview with Tsherin Sherpa

by Caroline Picard | Jan 12, 2011

Active Blur: An Interview with Tsherin Sherpa

by Caroline Picard | Jan 12, 2011

Tsherin Sherpa has a unique background. Trained as a Tibetan thangka painter in Nepal, he was raised within a specific regime of mark-making, proportion, and subject. Embedded in that tradition …

At the Center: An Interview With Brandon Alvendia

by Caroline Picard | Jan 11, 2011

At the Center: An Interview With Brandon Alvendia

by Caroline Picard | Jan 11, 2011

While conversations continue (albeit tiredly) to predict the demise of physical book production, new publishers continue to produce books. There is a wealth of new, bright-eyed small presses all over …

Negotiating an Artistic Practice in a Capitalist Ecology: An Interview with Anne Elizabeth Moore

by Caroline Picard | Jan 10, 2011

Negotiating an Artistic Practice in a Capitalist Ecology: An Interview with Anne Elizabeth Moore

by Caroline Picard | Jan 10, 2011

This introduction is short. Anne Elizabeth Moore gave such thorough answers, it seemed more important to let those stand than offer an interpretation of her merit. Safe to say having …

Reenacting a Many Possible Past: An Interview with Irina Botea

by Caroline Picard | Jan 7, 2011

Reenacting a Many Possible Past: An Interview with Irina Botea

by Caroline Picard | Jan 7, 2011

In college, I worked at a barn and my boss kept a special reenactment pony. The horse was prized above all others and regularly traveled the Southeast to reenact Civil …

In Flux Samples: An Interview with Young Joon Kwak

by Caroline Picard | Jan 6, 2011

In Flux Samples: An Interview with Young Joon Kwak

by Caroline Picard | Jan 6, 2011

Young Joon Kwak and I met a week before his solo-show, Eating Without A Face & Death Rites. The work was inspired by his time spent at the ACRE residency …

Memorial Photographs: An Interview with Jason Lazarus

by Caroline Picard | Jan 5, 2011

Memorial Photographs: An Interview with Jason Lazarus

by Caroline Picard | Jan 5, 2011

When Michael Jackson died, an impromptu dance party took place just outside my window. A young woman pulled up in a car wearing her best 80s outfit; she turned on …

Light and Desire: An Interview with Melanie Schiff

by Caroline Picard | Jan 4, 2011

Light and Desire: An Interview with Melanie Schiff

by Caroline Picard | Jan 4, 2011

While always being aware of her work, Melanie Schiff snapped into focus shortly after I first heard about Ox-bow, the School of the Art Insitute’s residency program in Saugatuck, Michigan. …

New guest blogger: Caroline Picard

by Kelly Shindler | Jan 4, 2011

New guest blogger: Caroline Picard

by Kelly Shindler | Jan 4, 2011

Happy New Year! Heading the 2011 guest blog is Caroline Picard, Editor of The Green Lantern Press. Her writing has been published in a handful of publications including Artiface, Pinch, …

Connecting – Part 6: Postscript and Postmortem

by Damien James | Dec 17, 2010

Connecting – Part 6: Postscript and Postmortem

by Damien James | Dec 17, 2010

After exhibiting at The Artist Project in 2008, Pamela Johnson’s American Still Life series began getting attention. Pepperdine University’s Weisman Museum of Art, Adler & Co. Gallery, and the San …

Connecting – Part 5: Effortless

by Damien James | Dec 15, 2010

Connecting – Part 5: Effortless

by Damien James | Dec 15, 2010

During the film My Kid Could Paint That (2007, Sony Pictures), New York Times chief art critic Michael Kimmelman said: I think the beauty of art is that it is …

Connecting – Part 4: All spin of one kind or another

by Damien James | Dec 13, 2010

Connecting – Part 4: All spin of one kind or another

by Damien James | Dec 13, 2010

Errol Morris said at a Chicago Humanities Festival Q&A in 2006, on the iconography of Abu Ghraib, that human stupidity is one of the only things he really believes in, …

Connecting – Part 3: Ceci n’est pas une Twinkie

by Damien James | Dec 10, 2010

Connecting – Part 3: Ceci n’est pas une Twinkie

by Damien James | Dec 10, 2010

I asked Pamela Johnson about other people who had encountered the massive Girl Scout cookies or cheese and cracker Handi Snacks™, eager to know how they were received and processed …

Connecting – Part 2: Useful Junk

by Damien James | Dec 8, 2010

Connecting – Part 2: Useful Junk

by Damien James | Dec 8, 2010

Sometime in September of 2006, I came across the paintings of Pamela Michelle Johnson, vaguely oppressive canvases dominated by clouds of slate and steel gray, foregrounds indistinguishable from back, and expanses …

Connecting – Part 1: Art as Transportation

by Damien James | Dec 6, 2010

Connecting – Part 1: Art as Transportation

by Damien James | Dec 6, 2010

There have been times in my short life when I’ve had the good fortune to witness something new and amazing, from births to deaths and the exhausting amount of possibilities …

New guest blogger: Damien James

by Kelly Shindler | Dec 6, 2010

New guest blogger: Damien James

by Kelly Shindler | Dec 6, 2010

Thanks to Victoria Gannon for her excellent posts and interviews chronicling California culture. Up next is Damien James. Damien  is a self-taught artist and writer based in Chicago. His art …

Going to California: Nightmare City, Part 2

by Victoria Gannon | Dec 5, 2010

Going to California: Nightmare City, Part 2

by Victoria Gannon | Dec 5, 2010

“It is hard to find California now, unsettling to wonder how much of it was merely imagined or improvised; melancholy to realize how much of anyone’s memory is no true …

Going to California: Nightmare City

by Victoria Gannon | Dec 3, 2010

Going to California: Nightmare City

by Victoria Gannon | Dec 3, 2010

Every few decades, people decide it’s a good idea to move to California. First, it was for the gold. Then aerospace technology, then Los Angeles. In the 1960s, it happened …

Going to California: Gina Tuzzi, Part 2

by Victoria Gannon | Dec 2, 2010

Going to California: Gina Tuzzi, Part 2

by Victoria Gannon | Dec 2, 2010

Nostalgia is the longing for a home that never was; its subject is an idealized place where the troubles of today hold no sway. In paintings, drawings, and sculptures, Northern …
Neil Young. "Neil Young," (Reprise Records, 1968). From the writer's collection.

Going to California: Gina Tuzzi

by Victoria Gannon | Nov 29, 2010

Going to California: Gina Tuzzi

by Victoria Gannon | Nov 29, 2010

It was the United States of America in the cold late spring of 1967, and … all that seemed clear was that at some point we had aborted ourselves and …

Going to California: David Wilson, Part 2

by Victoria Gannon | Nov 26, 2010

Going to California: David Wilson, Part 2

by Victoria Gannon | Nov 26, 2010

Albert Bierstadt bathed the Sierra Nevada in heavenly light while Ansel Adams photographed Half Dome as though it were on the moon. Many artists depict California’s natural features as mythic …

Going to California: David Wilson

by Victoria Gannon | Nov 24, 2010

Going to California: David Wilson

by Victoria Gannon | Nov 24, 2010

My hometown of Lafayette, California, encompasses a 925-acre nature area, the boundaries of which press up against the town’s suburban roads and cul-de-sacs like a face against glass. When I …

Going to California

by Victoria Gannon | Nov 22, 2010

Going to California

by Victoria Gannon | Nov 22, 2010

Many people in the East … have been to Los Angeles or to San Francisco, have driven through a giant redwood and have seen the Pacific glazed by the afternoon …

New guest blogger: Victoria Gannon

by Kelly Shindler | Nov 22, 2010

New guest blogger: Victoria Gannon

by Kelly Shindler | Nov 22, 2010

Thanks to Sarah Stephenson for her terrific posts. We’re pleased she put her current art criticism education in practice on this site. Up next is Victoria Gannon. Victoria was born …

Bruce High Quality Foundation University

by Sarah Stephenson | Nov 21, 2010

Bruce High Quality Foundation University

by Sarah Stephenson | Nov 21, 2010

The popularity of fine art university training over the past few decades (thanks to various factors such as the G.I. Bill and the promise of success through an inflated art …

“You Don’t Know” — Matt Connors at Canada Gallery

by Sarah Stephenson | Nov 18, 2010

“You Don’t Know” — Matt Connors at Canada Gallery

by Sarah Stephenson | Nov 18, 2010

Striped bathroom wallpaper, Cy Twombly, Imi Knoebel, and scribbles resembling Pop-like lineaments or cave markings are all evoked by Matt Connors work in his current exhibition at Canada Gallery. Red …

Gedi Sibony at Greene Naftali

by Sarah Stephenson | Nov 12, 2010

Gedi Sibony at Greene Naftali

by Sarah Stephenson | Nov 12, 2010

The invitation for Gedi Sibony’s solo show at Greene Naftali consists of a large grid of uneven lines with the exhibition details run along the edges. The work in the …

NY Print Fair 2010

by Sarah Stephenson | Nov 11, 2010

NY Print Fair 2010

by Sarah Stephenson | Nov 11, 2010

An air of refinement hung fairly heavily throughout the old Armory building this weekend with a weighty reminder of the long history of printmaking at the IFPDA Print Fair. Many …

NY Art Book Fair 2010

by Sarah Stephenson | Nov 9, 2010

NY Art Book Fair 2010

by Sarah Stephenson | Nov 9, 2010

This year’s NY Art Book Fair marks the departure of AA Bronson, one of the fair’s original organizers. Bronson resigned from Printed Matter only a few weeks ago, intending to …