Rebel with a Cause

First, some personal art announcements and news:

I got interviewed by CanvasRebel! Read it here. Thank you for the opportunity to tell my story!

I’m happy to announce that I’ve been selected to publish my art in Bruxelles Art Vue’s Limitless Nature book! Here are my pages in the volume, featuring my 2015 photo Fall in Love and my 2017 photos Singing Sands, Danxia, and Binglingsi, all shot on my iPhone 5s (view more of my mobile photography here).

You can get a free digital copy here.

Thank you, Art Vue Foundation!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jenny Lam (@artistsonthelam)

I’m also excited to share that I have an exhibit at 21c Museum Hotel Chicago: An activation / site-specific installation of my Dreams of a City project! Thank you to Museum Manager Juli Lowe and everyone at 21c for making this happen!

(For those of you who aren’t familiar with my labor of love: From 2008-2009 in Manhattan, and then from 2012-now in Chicago, I’ve been making thousands of pre-stamped self-addressed postcards, each with the prompt, “Tell me one thing you dream of doing before you die. Use this card as your canvas,” and each with a different code on the bottom. I’ve been leaving these postcards in public places all over the city, using the codes to record where I leave each one. So, when a card returns to me, I’m able to match its code with its location / am able to tell where each one was found, and have been gradually creating a map of the city from all your dreams. It’s a love letter to the city and a message of hope.

Watch, listen to, and read recent interviews about the project on WGN Morning News (live TV interview), WBEZ (live radio interview on Reset), and the Chicago Reader.)

And now, on to a visual recap of MdW Art Fair! (Photo-heavy, so if you’re navigating from the main page, continue reading after the jump.)

In the lobby of Mana Contemporary Chicago.

Thank you so much to all the wonderful people who came to the Artists on the Lam booth, many of whom I hadn’t seen in years or hadn’t met in real life, and who had such overwhelmingly kind words to say! (And the rest? New folks who got so into the interaction!) What a great weekend that was.

Edra Soto and Fiesta!

I love this Reel that featured artist Cristy Corso made of the opening night! I can’t believe I was completely oblivious to the video’s creation. You can see me chatting with artist Devin Kenny (! such a nice surprise—last time we saw each other I’d visited his studio nearly a decade ago!) and many others.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Jenny Lam (@artistsonthelam)

From the second night (which also happened to be Mid-Autumn Festival): My dad came towards the end and took this far-away candid of me being very animated. The person I’m chatting with? Artist Juliann Wang, who was in the original virtual version of SLAYSIAN 2.5 years ago! It was our first time meeting in person, after all this time!

As for the aforementioned new folks: During the Vernissage, someone replicated featured artist Emily Calvo’s painting How We Move to Be Fruitful so well! I didn’t get his name (and he didn’t want to be photographed and I respect that) but he was amazing and sat there for an entire hour and would’ve stayed even longer [until they kicked everyone out at the end of the night] and asked me for my critique and was so dedicated to making this perfect and it is perfect!

Earlier that evening: Emily with her piece and its first interaction.

 
From Day 2: This visitor made this outfit herself! LA artist Jaana Baker had traveled to Chicago for the first time to attend the closing of a show she had a piece in, and then came to MdW afterwards—and I’m so glad she did! One of many lovely people I had the pleasure of meeting at our booth, Jaana added the worm to Emily’s piece.

Here are some of my favorite interactions with featured artist Zachary Trebellas’ Time Warp, which was an evolution of his work in 2012’s I CAN DO THAT!

This is Artists on the Lam’s assistant for that weekend, Nanxi Jin—thank you for your help!

And: Featured artist Nancy Bechtol surprised me with this gift for the 10th anniversary of I CAN DO THAT (which she was also in back in the day) during install! I didn’t have time to open it until after the fair, and oh my goodness. Thank you, Nancy! You are a treasure.

 
(Some context for the Lee Groban shirt: Nancy and I met in 2010 when she was an artist in the very first big show I curated in Chicago, SOMNAMBULIST, spanning the cavernous second floor of the Zhou B Art Center, back when that space was still raw and warehouse-y and had no walls you could hammer into. I co-curated that exhibition with my mentor Robin Rios (this was when I was Head Curator of her 4Art Gallery), and to solve the wall problem, we suspended the art from the ceilings, truly adding to the show’s dream theme. Nancy’s piece was an multimedia installation about local artist Lee Groban.

I love OG hippies!)

Image courtesy of Nancy Bechtol.

Also pictured: An adorable selfie Nancy and her husband Dave Bechtol took in the Mana Contemporary Chicago lobby, as well as a photo I took of Nancy, Dave, and Emily and her husband Scott (whose review of LEXICON I still cherish) unpacking their art, and Nancy’s piece at various stages of interaction.

Happy Halloween, everyone!