Make it rain on [art shows]

I…

·         Have been selected to receive a 2013 Individual Artists Program grant from the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events for Dreams of a City!

·         Guested on a podcast last week. (Started off talking about my latest projects. Ended up going on tangents about things like Justice League, the demise of Cary Elwes’ face, how great a Ken Burns-style mockumentary for World War Z would be, etc. Naturally.) It’s up today—have a listen. Many thanks to Sawyer Heppes!

·         Have been asked to co-host a networking event for artists and arts administrators called Meet Your Maker, happening October 10 during Chicago Artists Month. Save the date!

·         Am in yet another the artblog news post. Thanks again!

What have you been reading this month? Scroll down, look for the [new!] popular posts gadget on the right, and dig in to the archives. (For the most read posts of 2012, check out this entry.)

When you’re ready, Jay-Z and Marina Abramović will walk you out of this post.

Everybody get up, it’s time to sLam now

Happy summer solstice! (To the southern hemisphere folks: Happy winter solstice, although I’ll still wish you a happy summer solstice as well because summer.) I’m back, un-jetlagged, and bear happy news (happy!):

Artists on the Lam has been named the “Best Local Visual Arts Blog” in the Chicago Reader’s Best of Chicago issue! It’s so crazy / such a great honor especially when I consider how established the runner-up is. (While this blog has posts like this and this.) Thank you so, so much to everyone who voted! You can view the issue online and / or pick up a copy at newsstands.

On Saturday I conducted portfolio reviews at Sixty Inches From Center and WBEZ’s “Get Archived!” event. I had so much fun meeting artists and seeing their work. I also had fun doing things like this. (I wish everyone could’ve witnessed, firsthand, just how much SIFC co-founder Tempestt Hazel giggled while she took and uploaded that photo.) (A photo that, I’d say, sums me up pretty well.)

And that little trip I got back from…

Inside a Man Mo temple.

Ah, Hong Kong. My soulcity. From partying in a parking garage on the industrial outskirts of town to kickin’ it with a cousin in the infamously seedy Chungking Mansions, I micro-blogged about my adventures in the Fragrant Harbour on Facebook and Twitter. I also took plenty of photos, and you can check them out in the following albums:

The inaugural Art Basel Hong Kong:

Facebook

Flickr

Everything else (including the local art scene):

Facebook

Flickr

More about my trip to come. For now… here. Click on the cap below. Do it.

Oh hey.

Yep, that’s me at the first Art Basel Hong Kong Conversations panel. I ask my question / introduce myself at around 1 hr. 24 min. into the video.

Heads up:

Chicagoans: Next month, the Chicago Public Library will welcome the city’s first free “Maker Space.” That means public access to 3D printers, laser cutters, and more.

East Coasters: The glorious giant inflatable rubber duck I saw in Hong Kong will be gracing Pittsburgh next. Also, go see this new mural by ICY and SOT, young street artists I interviewed several months ago:

ICY and SOT at Welling Court in Queens. (Photo by Lois Stavsky.)

            The revolution will not be televised.

Now, go out and enjoy summer! (Or winter and backwards-flushing toilets and unicorns.)

O’Hare, so hot right now

I’m flying out to Hong Kong in less than an hour!

While I spend the next myriad hours in transit, you can:

In the Un-valley by Jackie Furtado.
(Image courtesy of The Prospective Series.)

·         See some art: I was asked to write a piece for the latest catalog of The Prospective Series, a new organization that cultivates the relationship between emerging artists and young collectors. Chicagoans, pick up a copy at their pop-up art show tomorrow! (I went to their first—and most recent—show and it was great. It was also in a speakeasy. So. Cool.) If, like me, you can’t make it or aren’t in Chicago, you can view the catalog online here.

·         Get free art supplies: Chicago artists and arts educators, visit the Chicago Center for Green Technology tomorrow and Saturday for materials from ZeroLandfill.

·         Get annoyed: Specifically, at Mashable’s ludicrous “If You Use the Web, You Are a Curator” article. I have, as you can imagine, strong feelings about this. (And this isn’t the first time I’ve railed against the co-opting of the word “curator.”) As you can see from the more recent Facebook thread, I’ve answered some questions for a piece Sixty Inches From Center will publish sometime. When that happens, I’ll make an accompanying discussion post here. (Let’s hear it for discussion posts!)

·         Be amused: A 1,100-year-old paint pigment, believed to be the oldest of its kind, has been found in a 10th century artist’s studio in China and will go on display. This is exciting news, of course, but mostly I’d like to direct everyone’s attention to the comment section of the linked Telegraph article. Trolling in the deep.

Thanks so much to the artblog for the shout out!

And don’t forget: For daily updates (including photos!), follow along on Twitter (where I passed the 500 follower mark last week—welcome, new followers, and thank you, everyone!) and Facebook. See you soon!

“Will you be electric sheep / Electric ladies, will you sleep”

I’m delighted to say that I’ve been invited to conduct portfolio reviews at Sixty Inches From Center and WBEZ’s “Get Archived!” event (a great opportunity for artists to “take ownership of their place in [their] city’s cultural history”), happening at art centers and community bureaus in the Chicago neighborhoods of Bronzeville, Englewood, Rogers Park, and Little Village. Artists, come and show me your work! (Also, according to those links, I’m “established,” awww yeah. And awww shucks.)

For the past week, I’ve been featured on the front page of Gapers Block. (I snickered that a photo of me surrounded by glowing phallic objects was, at one point, next to an article with “nuts” in its title. Because sometimes I have the sense of humor of an 11-year-old boy.) In case you missed the previous post, I got interviewed about Dreams of a City. And about how weird my life is.

If you’re on Facebook and / or Twitter, make sure you follow Artists on the Lam there! Observations from the past week included a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it art moment (the screen cap above) in Janelle Monáe’s latest music video (although the entire video is an art moment let’s be real). News / interestingness included portraits derived from DNA in hair and gum found in public places. You’ll also be privy to things like this.

O Pioneers

Gapers Block interviewed me about Dreams of a City. Check it. A million thanks to Caitlin Bergh!

From 108th St. & Broadway. New York City, May 2009.

Happy May, everyone. Here. Have some Beyoncé Art History. (Also relevant: this.)

2 weeks ‘til Hong Kong!

Between TMNT and paisley paramecia

So the Chicago Reader’s annual Best of Chicago poll is now open. (No idea why they’re doing a Best of 2013 survey in April. Maybe these past few months have just been that awesome?) Vote for Artists on the Lam in the “Best Local Visual Arts Blog” category! (It’s under “Arts & Culture” / section 4.) I’ll love you even more than I already do.

My 10-year-old self wants you to vote. Or to RISE.

If you need some refreshers / convincing / reading material to procrastinate with:

• Most recent post: An interview with Iranian street art duo ICY + SOT
• The top 10 most read posts of 2012
• And things to look forward to: In 3 weeks, I’ll be in Hong Kong—stay tuned for posts about my antics there!

I’ll close with my favorite search keyword that, somehow, led someone to this blog today: “biggie smalls walking threw [sic] brooklyn.”

East Middle West // An Interview with ICY and SOT

Tabriz, Iran, 2012. (Image courtesy of ICY and SOT.)

When they’re not crashing at a Brooklyn warehouse among a collective of creatives they’re tearing across America in a van and trailer with a punk band (why don’t more visual artists do this?). Street art duo ICY and SOT, two young brothers from Iran, have been taking the underground art world by storm. In an onslaught of paint and paste and that old time punk rock and roll, these stencil artists have been touring the country with New York-via-Tehran band The Yellow Dogs, spreading art at every stop.

I met the brothers several months ago when they visited Chicago for the first time, and I corresponded with them when they hit the road again for their “East Middle West” tour. As a preview of their upcoming show at Co-Prosperity, below is our conversation about art, politics, their skate culture roots, life on the road, and more.

ICY and SOT’s exhibition at Co-Prosperity opens this Friday, March 22.

Istanbul, Turkey, 2012. (Image courtesy of ICY and SOT.)

Jenny Lam: How did the two of you first become interested in street art?

Not about The Armory Show // We are all jelly doughnuts

"They deftly represent one of the many valuable functions of Art and its necessity to the human experience: these paintings possess the ability to transcend fear and oppression, to make whole again through emotional, visual communication."

Such is the role of art.

East Side Gallery, Berlin. June 2012.

The quote is from ArtSlant’s “The Art of the Wall and the Spirit of Berlin” (emphasis mine), calling for the preservation of the paintings that run the length of the East Side Gallery, which I visited over the summer. One of the last remaining sections of the Berlin Wall, the Gallery is a 1.3 kilometer-long memorial to freedom and peace. Now, part of this landmark is under threat of demolition to make way for a luxury condominium complex’s access road. So far, protesters have succeeded in stalling deconstruction, and an online petition has, as of this writing, nearly 75,000 signatures.

And announcements:

Thank you to the artblog for mentioning me in a news post! (Scroll down to “Artist News.”) Added the link to the press page.

I’ve received a VIP invitation to Hong Kong Contemporary art fair. My third VIP invite for May! (One being the inaugural Art Basel Hong Kong and two being the Asia Contemporary Art Show.) This will be quite the trip of contrasts; when I’m not at the fairs, I’ll be hitting up artist studios hidden within industrial buildings on the outskirts of town, visiting my grandma in the projects, hoarding more plastic red watches from the market and turning down stateside people who offer to buy one off me for more than ten times its original price (this really did happen) because it’s become an extension of my soul, etc.

The world is bound with secret knots

Hope you enjoyed that red-drenched February holiday spent with loved ones and gifts in paper form... Chinese New Year, duh.

(Still relevant to CNY.) Spotted this in downtown Chicago.
One of my Dreams of a City assistants saw one in Lakeview as well.

Some personal news:

• Apparently I have one of the top 1% most viewed LinkedIn profiles of 2012. Thanks for creeping stalking looking at my profile!

• Two years ago, I moved into the city of Chicago. What a great decision. Here’s to all the wonderful people I’ve met in this wonderful place.

• Here’s a lovely idea for you all to steal.

A roundup of news and tips from the past few weeks (if you’re interested in getting these and more on a daily basis, you can follow Artists on the Lam on Twitter and Facebook!):

Awesome people doing awesome stuff:

• Congratulations to Tempestt Hazel, friend and co-founder of Sixty Inches From Center, for topping Chicago Magazine’s “C Notes Power List: Art’s Hit Makers”! She deserves it. She’s also a great hugger.

• As a preview of the Art Institute of Chicago’s new Kara Walker: Rise Up Ye Mighty Race! exhibition, I live-tweeted last week’s sold-out Chicago Humanities Festival talk about race and identity, featuring the artist herself. (The last local event I live-tweeted was “Art: How It Moves,” part of Chicago Ideas Week, which you can read about in this post.) She casually threw around questions like “What are the stories we tell to help us understand our being in the world?” She shaded Steven Spielberg. She wore an outfit that I coveted. She called her childhood self a witch. She elicited an audience reaction that tempted me to create the hashtag #WhiteLaughter (but I refrained). Her brilliance here (scroll down a little, past my freaking out about David Bowie and Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but not further than my freaking out about Frank Ocean and Depeche Mode... welcome).

Free stuff:

• Speaking of the Art Institute, Free Thursday Evenings are back! (I may or may not have already used one such evening to plaster the place with postcards.*) Just in time for the new Picasso and Chicago exhibition.

• Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebooks have been published online. (I idolized him as a teen because he made me feel less weird about simultaneously being an artist and a scientist-slash-nerd. Slightly less weird.)

Interesting stuff:

• This is a 3D printing pen that lets you draw sculptures in midair. This was my reaction after watching the video.

*(“Snail mail is dying”? “The post office is going bankrupt”?

Everyone chill out.

I got this.)

And impressions of L.A.:

James Turrell installation at NYE+BROWN, L.A.

You can take a look at photos of my recent L.A. trip on Flickr, on Facebook, and via the slideshow below.

Insert decade-old Phantom Planet lyric here

Starting tomorrow, I’ll be in California to explore L.A.’s art scene and to walk faster than everyone else. Since this will be a relatively brief visit, I’ll do a proper write-up when I’m back in Chicago, as I did after my trip to Miami, but—as with all my art travels—you can follow me on Twitter and Facebook for live updates.

For the time being, check out young Iranian street art duo ICY and SOT, whom I met when they stopped by Chicago last week as part of their art tour across America. (Can more visual artists please do this? Go on the road as rock star art stars? I imagine it’s like Almost Famous, but with less Manic Pixie Dream Girls and more chances of getting arrested.) Thanks to artist Avisheh Mohsenin, who participated in both I CAN DO THAT and Exquisite Corpse, for bringing the brothers to my attention. They’ll return in March for an exhibition at Co-Prosperity Sphere, and I’ll be interviewing them before the opening.

And I will end the post with this: Getting postcards from about a dozen children living on the South Side of Chicago, with dreams that include being “the greatest inventor ever in history and [being] remembered forever,” having her / his “face on a bill,” and living “on an island surrounded by sharks” = grinning like a fool at the post office. Happy Febufriday, everyone.

She sneaks around the world

First words: I’ve been invited to be a VIP at the Asia Contemporary Art Show, happening this May at the same time as the inaugural Art Basel Hong Kong, which I’ll also be attending as a VIP. Weeee.

Words of gratitude: Thanks to everyone who came out to The Funny Story Show last week (art, comedy, tarot card readings—it’s everything you didn’t know you wanted), and congratulations to Caitlin Bergh for a super successful show! Caitlin will continue killing it at Studio BE with CHUNKS: A One-Woman Show all February long. Here’s a preview / review by The Qu.

Words of wisdom: The other day, one of my Dreams of a City assistants told me how leaving postcards for the project is a wonderful way to actually get out there and explore your own neighborhood. She’s also seizing the opportunity to meet and get to know the owners of her local / indie businesses as she drops off a postcard in each one. These, friends, are the real-world connections we often forget we can still make. (Interested in being an assistant? Hit me up.)

Photo by Stephanie Lindquist, 2013.

Word: Glendalys Medina, one of the artists from I CAN DO THAT, is doing great things in Rome! Also check out Master Dabblers, which she, Courteney Ervin, and Stephanie Lindquist (the friend referenced in this post) started.

A tip: The Art Institute of Chicago is free for Illinois residents on weekdays, this month through February 13! (To beleaguer museumgoers or not to beleaguer museumgoers? Choosing the former did produce the top 2 most read posts of 2012 and was among the first steps in the road leading up to I CAN DO THAT. Hmmm.)

And a[n ever incessant] reminder: Are you following me on Twitter? Your feed will be lavished with everything from weekend art show and art party picks and documentation of said art show and art party picks to art and science news (at times I will be the one to break the news, unnecessarily—yet characteristically—long hashtag included) to pop and nerd culture news to local weirdness to rare windows into my life. And that’s just from this past week. (And, as a Curator curator, I promise I’ll never call any of this “curating.” People who do, you’re now on my shit list.)

Looking ahead / back / good

Happy [belated?] New Year! 2012 will be hard to surpass (see the previous post for the year’s highlights), but I have confidence in 2013 (and, based on this alone, ‘13 has already far exceeded its predecessor / leave it to me to get wound up over Twitter / but seriously Mykki Blanco really was flawless / seriously).

More of 2012’s best: My piece on Arow Collective made it to Sixty Inches From Center’s top 10 most read articles list. Check it.

Photo by Justin Barbin, 2012.

But, as great as 2012 was, we’re (yes I’m guilty of using the royal “we” and what) hitting the ground running in 2013 and have much to look forward to: Thank you so much to the current Dreams of a City assistants. Most of whom are folks I’d never met before, eager to help with a project they’d just heard about. Chicago’s art community is truly a community, and I’m ever grateful for that. If you, too, are interested in helping out, drop me a line.

And the first art event of 2013: Exquisite Corpse performance artist and I CAN DO THAT storyteller Caitlin Bergh’s first one-woman comedy show is this Sunday, and I’m helping curate the show’s accompanying art exhibit. It’s one of Chicago Magazine’s top 5 things to do this week. Go go go!

Oh twelve oh yeah // Year in Review

First, an announcement for 2013:

I received a VIP invitation to the inaugural Art Basel Hong Kong, happening in May. Count. Me. In.

And now for a look back at 2012. I’m going to try to make this short and sweet (“try” being the operative word here) because the past year felt short and was oh so sweet.

Photo by Sophia Nahli Allison, 2012.

My year in review:

• I CAN DO THAT, the second show I curated independently, was, simply, the best (so far); I

• popped my international contemporary art fair cherry with the likes of ART HK, Art Basel, and Art Basel Miami Beach; I

• traveled the world and explored the art scenes of Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Basel (and other Swiss cities), and Berlin, but also made sure to shine a spotlight on the local arts, including the inaugural Expo Chicago; I

• launched Dreams of a City (and launched a bunch of balloons into the night sky); I

• celebrated my venture’s first anniversary; and I

• had a blast.

OK fine here are 2012’s top 10 most read posts as well:

10. “I Can Spell // Sorry, Time Out Chicago magazines” – The I CAN DO THAT call for artists flyer.

9. “I / We / Can / Did” – The aftermath of the I CAN DO THAT closing reception.

8. “Hong Kong and China were niu bi // Shanghai off spray paint” – Jetlag.

7. “On ubiquitous banana men, palm readers, and maps” – Featuring a couple I CAN DO THAT artists and an introduction to what would later become Dreams of a City.

6. “Best in Show” – I CAN DO THAT rocked.

5. “Midwesterner in the Middle Kingdom // The Outsider” – Third culture kid angst.

4. “Notes from [an] underground [art scene advocate / Miami Art Week virgin]” – “Your report on Miami is better than any article in any newspaper anywhere.” Dude.

3. “Discussion: Art as political weapon, artist as social instigator // This painting would look nice in my foyer” – With great art comes great responsibility. Maybe.

2. “Winging It, in the Modern— / People’s Choice” – In which I stood in the middle of the Art Institute and harassed museumgoers.

1. “Lucky 13 and More Numbers” – The results of #2’s shenanigans.

Thank you for being a part of such a thrilling year. When I think about 2012, more than anything, I see beautiful people, faces, you—whether you squeezed your way through a crowd at a show and found me, months later; or lingered with me outside a 7-Eleven late at night as you peddled pictures of pop stars; or laughed with me in multiple languages in a photo bookstore halfway around the world; or sat with me on a stoop in the summer heat to talk art and life and the love of it all… this year was painted with the light of new friendships forged, old relationships strengthened, fleeting encounters that left eternal impressions. Here’s to an even brighter year. I can’t wait to see what 2013 will bring.

Have a safe and fun New Year’s, everyone.