I went to the beach this weekend for an Explosions in the sky concert. While it was fun to take videos and photographs at the concert, my real work was at the beach gathering stones for my prescription bottle installation. I was able to find an entire bucket of stones in just a few hours! I also found four pieces of sea glass, two of which were high quality.
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After first arriving in Montpelier, Vermont, in July of 2017, and returning to campus four more times, I have finally finished my MFA in Visual Arts degree! Two long years of non-stop work led to this exhibition titled resilienceRSVP.
Check out the gallery below, the virtual tour, and the website for the project. This work is ongoing, so you can still participate if interested. After coming home from Vermont, the first thing I did was reflect on the residency. I re-listened to my critiques and took bullet point notes about the feedback I received on my work. I finished reading a book that is relevant to my research titled Out of Joint (by Mary Felstiner). I started planning my final MFA exhibition, reread my first and second semesters, and started writing my Process Paper (which is like a graduate thesis). The most fun thing I did this month was drive up to Williams College to meet my Artist-Teacher Maggie Nowinski. We discussed my planning pieces and visited the campus art museum, where we saw a piece of the AIDS quilt which was incredibly inspiring to my work.
Vermont College of Fine Art ResidencyThese past two weeks I was away at my college residency where I exhibited my chronic illness memoir postcard project. I also participated in a formal review of my work for the past semester, critiques, assisted in a performance, and attended two art openings. In addition to all of that, I attended lectures and workshops run by professional artists in the field such as Mario Ybarra Jr, B. Wurtz, Luis Jacob, and Dalida Benfield.
I spent quite a few hours applying to art shows this week. First, I had to organize all of my digital files to find my most recent and relevant works I wanted to submit. Then I had to follow the directions for uploading the images. I also had to spend some time drafting statements about the work. I fully submitted to one show and am still working on a larger application that is due February 1st.
Finally, even though this is not art, I read artist bios and pre-selected who I wanted to have critiques with during my upcoming residency in Vermont. I also had to pack my exhibition supplies which helped me clean out my studio, too. This week I mailed out my final set of postcards in the 15-set series. I also prepped 120 photo corners with double-sided tape for my exhibition later this month. I have been documenting medical spaces in an ongoing series and had the opportunity to get a few more shots this week. I especially like the lettering on the alcohol bottle and the symbolic elements of the blood pressure cuff.
This past week, I worked on practicing my exhibition installation by hanging the fronts and backs of my postcards on my studio wall. I had to figure out all the measurements so they would be spaced equally across 10 feet. I also Skyped with my art professor to speak about my studio work for the last time this semester. I completed all six of my end of semester finals! Finally, I updated my Anatomical Heart page on my professional website.
This week I went to more galleries in Toronto, including the Ontario Gallery of Art, which had a huge show of large scale photography and video works, titled Anthropocene. I also spent the weekend at Saltonstall, an artist retreat. As a tradition, when I go to Saltonstall, I create a sketch of an anatomical heart. I continued to work on my postcard project, and started to plan out how they will look for exhibition. I also added to my process file and research log, both for grad school.
I prepared for and attended the state conference for art teachers this week/weekend. I was super fortunate to hear Dr. B Stephen Carpenter and Mark Dion speak at the conference. Dion was especially humorous in his talk and his work is incredible, both in scope and scale of his investigations and studies. I attended several workshops and presented one of my own on Studio Thinking.
On Sunday, I was able to go to the Albright-Knox art museum and see the We the People exhibit, which was amazing, in that there was a collection of diverse artists showing together, making the personal political. |
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