Year-long program kicks off at “Artists at Work” Forum on Oct. 29 at Chicago Cultural Center
The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with Columbia College Chicago, UIC – Gallery 400, Hyde Park Art Center, Museum of Contemporary Art, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and threewalls, announces STUDIO CHICAGO, a year-long collaborative project focusing on artists’ studios.
The project will be introduced at a DCA Artists at Work Forum on Thursday October 29, 2009, in the Millennium Park Room on the 5th floor of the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington Street.
The event is free and open to the public.
STUDIO CHICAGO will explore the artists’ studio in terms of creativity; production; and infrastructure at venues across the city.
In exhibitions, talks, publications, tours and research presented throughout the year, as well as the Studio Chicago website, participating organizations and artists will celebrate the working artist and reveal their sites of creative production.
From both historical and contemporary perspectives, topics ranging from the “studio as muse”, “virtual studios” “street as studio” and “gallery as studio” will consider:
- Why is the studio important to art and artists today?
- What is the artist studio today?
- What infrastructures are needed to support art practice and production?
Artists at Work Forum: Introducing Studio Chicago
Thursday, Oct. 29, 6:00 pm – 7:30 pm
Chicago Cultural Center, 5th Floor Millennium Park Room
78 E. Washington Street
This Artists at Work Forum will introduce key components of STUDIO CHICAGO, including the new interactive website and blog (studiochicago.org), and explain how artists, art organizations and the “art-curious” can become involved.
Presenters will represent the core partner institutions: Barbara Koenen (DCA); Elizabeth Burke Dain (CCC); Lorelei Stewart (UIC); Chuck Thurow (HPAC); Dominic Molon (MCA); Mary Jane Jacob (SAIC); and Shannon Stratton (3W).
A reception will follow at the nearby Hard Rock Hotel to continue the discussion.
The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs’ Artists at Work Forums address current issues of interest and concern in Chicago’s art community.
Please visit chicagoculturalcenter.org or call 312-744-6630 for more information.
Featured STUDIO CHICAGO programs include: (More information available at studiochicago.org)
Artists Run Chicago Digest Release Party
Sunday, Nov. 8, 2:00 – 5:00 pm
Hyde Park Art Center (HPAC), 5020 S. Cornell Avenue, Chicago ADMISSION FREE
To celebrate the launch month of Studio Chicago, HPAC hosts a book release party for ARC Digest, published by threewalls and Green Lantern Press.
The book is the official catalog of Artists Run Chicago, a recent Hyde Park Art Center exhibition that featured 34 Chicago-based artist-run spaces.
The book documents the history of artist-run spaces from 1999-2009, offering a look at exhibition venues that often act as extensions of studio practices.
MEDIA CONTACT: Crystal Pernell, cpernell@hydeparkart.org
Reflection: a video program
Through Nov. 21
Gallery 400 at UIC, 400 S. Peoria Street
Hours: Tuesday–Friday, 10 am–6 pm; Saturday 12–6 pm ADMISSION FREE
In Reflection, video works by five artists are linked by their varying approaches to artistic agency. From the consequences of action in the studio to the productive talk of a therapist’s office, from providing platforms for the creativity of others to asserting an alternative national history, the works in Reflection, while literally featuring the artist’s voice, activity, and milieu, disclose the breadth of how artist’s conceive of their making. Exhibited as a recurrent weeklong program, the selected works are shown one artist per day.
Each work is scheduled for a specific day of the week: Phyllis Baldino’s work is shown on Tuesday, Alex Hubbard’s on Wednesday, Glenn Ligon’s on Thursday, Andrea Zittel’s on Friday and Patricia Esquivias’ on Saturday.
MEDIA CONTACT: Anthony Elms, elms@uic.edu
Picturing the Studio
Dec. 12, 2009 – Feb. 13, 2010
Sullivan Galleries, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), 33 S. State Street, 7th floor
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 11 am–6 pm ADMISSION FREE
Picturing the Studio explores the richly complex politically and psychologically charged notion of the artist’s studio through the work of contemporary makers including Susanne Doremus, Joe Fig, Rodney Graham, Karl Haendel, Bruce Nauman, David Robbins, Amanda Ross-Ho, and Frances Stark. Curated by SAIC Professor and Chair, Department of Painting and Drawing Michelle Grabner, and Annika Marie, Columbia College Chicago Assistant Professor, Department of Art and Design, this show is presented in conjunction with the College Art Association’s 98th Annual Conference, February 11-13, 2010 and is supported in part by the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency. A poster-catalogue with art by Adelheid Mers will also be available.
Numerous artists, historians and critics expand upon these themes in the forthcoming book The Studio Reader: On the Space of Artists a co-publication of the University of Chicago Press and SAIC, co-edited by SAIC Executive Director of Exhibitions Mary Jane Jacob and Michelle Grabner.
MEDIA CONTACT: Elysia Borowy, eborowy@saic.edu
Production Site: The Artist’s Studio Inside-Out
Feb. 6 – May 30, 2010
Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), 220 E. Chicago Avenue
Hours: Tuesday, 10 am–8 pm (FREE); Wednesday–Sunday, 10 am–5 pm
Production Site reflects and addresses the pivotal role of the studio in artists’ practice while alluding to its enduring status in the popular imagination. The exhibition reexamines the artist’s studio as subject and reconstructs, documents, and depicts that space with work from local to international artists.
Multi-channel video projections, photographic light-boxes and installations, and life-sized fabrications of artists’ studios — real and imagined – are presented.
The exhibition provides the viewer with an unprecedented and illuminating look at how some of the most compelling artists of our time have demystified, remystified, and reconsidered this site.
The exhibition is organized by MCA Curator Dominic Molon and accompanied by numerous educational programs.
MEDIA CONTACT: Erin Baldwin, ebaldwin@mcachicago.org
Summer Studio
July – Sept. 2010
Sullivan Galleries, SAIC, 33 S. State Street, 7th floor
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 11 am–6 pm ADMISSION FREE
In summer 2010 the Sullivan Galleries of SAIC will be transformed into living studios–bringing together the space of production (the studio) and the space of exhibition and display (galleries).
Participating artists working in a wide range of media, and coming from Chicago and beyond, will open up their creative processes for public view.
This “Summer Studio” will become, too, a site for forums and workshops on artists’ issues and practices. It will host probing discussions for practitioners and public alike on Chicago as a site of production and the contribution of artists to the local community.
This exhibition is presented by the SAIC Department of Exhibitions and Exhibition Studies and supported in part by the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency.
MEDIA CONTACT: Elysia Borowy, eborowy@saic.edu
threewalls summer thematic residency
July – Sept 2010
Threewalls, 119 N. Peoria Street
threewalls summer thematic residency program will be integrated into the Sullivan Galleries Summer Studio.
Curated from an open application by Mary Jane Jacob, Michelle Grabner and Shannon Stratton, four emerging professional artists working across similar concepts and methodologies will be selected to participate and included in additional programming at threewalls, including their annual summer symposium.
This once-a-year, two-day event is organized around a chosen theme featuring a panel of local and national visual arts professionals. This year the Symposium will focus on “The Studio,” presenting work by critics, historians and artists that address the questions raised by Studio Chicago.
MEDIA CONTACT: Lauren Basing, Lauren@three-walls.org