Upcoming: Ox-Bow lithography, Grow No Moss (new book), and more!

Eleanor Coen. Ox-Bow Lagoon, 1940s. Watercolor on paper. Courtesy Corbett vs. Dempsey Gallery.

So many thrilling things are happening in the next few months! Starting on Sunday, I'm off to Ox-Bow for a week (thanks in part to an Ox-Bow scholarship and to a Community Arts Assistance Program grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency). I'll be taking my first lithography course (with one of my favorite people, Mark Pascale), hanging out with some pretty awesome people, and unwinding in cabins and on the lake in Saugatuck, Michigan. I've never had the Ox-Bow experience, and I'm so excited to finally see what it's all about (and also taste some of Eric May's cooking - yum!).

Miyoko Ito. My Room at Ox-Bow, 1949, lithograph on paper. Courtesy Corbett vs. Dempsey Gallery.

Part of the reason for going to Ox-Bow is to make a lithograph that will become the cover for a chapbook of poetry I'm releasing in mid-August (also partially CAAP-funded). Over the last year and a half I've been working on this group of poems, honing ways to express myself as a writer that I was never able to do before. My writing has evolved, and with the help of some very kind editors (and your readership), I've had the courage and the inspiration to want to make a book: Grow No Moss. The always generous Chad Kouri is helping with the design of the book, and it will be printed on the new offset press at Spudnik Press, with the help of Angee Lennard and Aaron Smith. Salsedo Press (where the offset Ork Posters are printed in Chicago) has offered to do the binding and trimming.

The turnaround for the book has got to be quick (and precise!), because ten days after I arrive back in Chicago, I'm going to be releasing Grow No Moss at my first-ever poetry reading. Save the date, kids! On the afternoon of Saturday, August 25th, come find me at Andrew Rafacz Gallery (835 W. Washington, Chicago) and see what I'm all about. It's nerve-wracking but wonderful, and I'm making a book so I wouldn't have it any other way. (Sneak previews to come soon!).

Christopher Meerdo in his studio in East Garfield Park, with his dog, Indiana. June 2011, photograph by JVH.

Down the line, keep an eye out for a new Printeresting project, too! The guys (Amze, RL, and Jason) have been putting together a take-over of a journal called the California Printmaker. I've been helping out a little, and just finished a really exciting interview on the intersections of print and the internet with Chicago artist Christopher Meerdo. The Printeresting California Printmaker should go to print in the next month or so, with a September release date, I believe. I was so happy to be able to interview Chris, he's an amazingly talented and intelligent artist, and I continue to be inspired by our conversation.

Joe Zucker, Joe's Painting #125G, 1965, acrylic on canvas, 72" x 72".

At the gallery I've been toiling away (lovingly) on an amazing catalog for our September exhibition, Joe Zucker: The Grid Paintings, a survey of the grid series of works that is also focused mainly on the years during his undergraduate and postgraduate days at the School of the Art Institute (c.1964-68). I love being immersed in book production, and I'm learning so much about it with the help of John, Jim, and Sonnenzimmer (the book designers--check them out as they live-print at the MCA this week as part of the We Are Here project). The Joe Zucker show opens September 17th, and then a few days later a whole new life begins as I fly off to London to start grad school at the Courtauld. I'm in the midst of a beautiful whirlwind, friends, and I hope to share more with you in the coming weeks. Hope to see you around the spaceways!

"Certainty" by Octavio Paz, from "Days and Occasions" (1958-61)

The Last Picture Show (1971)

"I'm just as sentimental as the next feller when it comes to old times."

In conclusion: little bits.

 Detail of a Van Dyke print on vellum. Printed by John Neff for John Neff Prints Robert Blanchon at Golden Gallery (Chicago).

Bits I've written recently:

Newcity - Nulla Dies Sine Linea / Instituto Cervantes (May 23, 2011)
Printeresting - From Cuba, via Chicago: The Neche Collection (May 24, 2011)
This Public Works - Rebecca Ringquist at Packer Schopf Gallery (June 6, 2011)
Printeresting - Alastair Johnston at Columbia College Chicago (June 15, 2011)
This Public Works - Chicago Art: In and Around the News (June 15, 2011)
Printeresting - John Neff Prints Robert Blanchon at Golden Gallery (June 18, 2011)


In other writing news, I'm trying dreadfully hard to be satisfied with this latest batch of poems so I can send it to the designer and start figuring out how to get the darn thing printed. More to come...

Video: Whole Foods Parking Lot

Alright, this is gratuitous and silly and full of white people problems, but it did make me laugh. Produced by Fog & Smog, out of LA and San Francisco. Directed by George Woolley and Pedram Torbati (who also made a great spot on Emily Haines of Metric).

Exhibit: Blinky Palermo at Dia Beacon

 Blinky Palermo, To the People of New York City (Part XII), 1976.
Dia Art Foundation. Photo: Bill Jacobson.

 

 Blinky Palermo, Coney Island II, 1975. Acrylic on aluminum, four
parts: 10 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches (26.7 x 21 cm), each; 10 1/2 x 57 7/8 inches
(26.7 x 147 cm) overall. Collection Ströher, Darmstadt, Germany. Photo:
Jens Ziehe, Berlin.

Here's a show I'd love to fly to NYC and take the train for an hour to the Hudson River Vallery to see: the first North American retrospective of German artist Blinky Palermo (neé Peter Schwarze, b.1943, d. 1977). The works on paper and metal sculptures in Blinky Palermo: Retrospective 1964–1977 will be stunning, I'm sure, in the wide expanses of Dia: Beacon.

From the PR: The exhibition provides a fresh and in-depth examination of the evolution of Palermo’s aesthetic, illustrating the significance of his contributions to the field of postwar painting. Surveying the four major types of work over his career, the retrospective comprises: objects he created shortly after he graduated from Joseph Beuys’s class at the Dusseldorf Art Academy in 1964; "Cloth Pictures (Stoffbilder)" ; documentation of in situ Wall Paintings and Drawings; and examples of his late "Metal Pictures". The majority of the works will be on loan from private and public lenders in Germany.

I spent a fun afternoon a few summers ago with old college friends Matt and Nick, journeying out of the hot city into the wilderness, only to find Dia: Beacon closed when we arrived.  I've always wanted the chance to return. The retrospective is co-organized by CSS Bard, which would be a dream visit, too.

Ah, missed opportunities.

If you're on the easterly side of things, be sure to direct your travels Beacon-ward.

 We didn't get in, and we were the only folks around, but we sure had a grand time of it.

 We ate terrible food at the only restaurant open in the tiny town.

We drank too much bad coffee, talked about music and carpentry, and jumped off of precipices.