March Updates

It's been a few weeks since I've last posted. I'm still working on reviewing the transcripts as I get them and editing them down for the book. I'm in a pattern of reviewing a transcript then editing it down, reviewing a transcript, etc. It's a really thrilling process of taking each interview through each step!

I recently heard about a fundraiser/art show that deals with issues close to my heart: Nasty Woman Art Chicago on May 5th. It's a sister show to the one held in NY several months ago. All proceeds will be donated to Planned Parenthood. Submissions are open if you are interested in submitting work. Read more here: https://www.nastywomenartchicago.org/

In Artist News, Edra Soto currently has her show "GRAFT" at Sector 2337 on 2337 N Milwaukee Ave, Chicago, until April 2nd. Check it out!

Progress

It's been a rough few weeks. Things didn't end up the way I was hoping political-wise. However, as a result of the election, I feel a stronger sense of urgency to work on this book and get these amazing interviews out in the world. These stories need to be told loudly and widely. 

I have some good news!  I've just completed 70 interviews. In November, I talked with Gladys Nilsson of the Hairy Who and with photomancer Danielle Tanimura. What amazing women! What fantastic interviews! I'm so lucky to have gotten to talk to both of them.

The interview portion of the project is now done. Yes, done. I know I've said this before but this is it. Now I focus on the transcribing and editing of the 70 interviews. I've made progress; I've got 7 interviews edited and various transcripts out and about. It's exhilarating to see this book take shape. It's alive! 

That's all for now!

Backstory

It keeps going... Yesterday, I completed 61 interviews. I had the absolute pleasure of meeting Edra Soto, conceptual artist and co-founder of the amazing gallery The Franklin. She was so incredibly generous with her time, showing me the gallery and walking me through her work. I am so lucky. I have only a few more interviews before it's time to get busy editing the book and working on getting it published. Almost done interviewing...

It's been a while since I've last posted. It's been a very busy few weeks for me. For the fourth year, I've been interviewing people for the Chicago Northside Mini Maker Faire at Schurz High School. For those of you unfamiliar with a maker faire, think DIY with technology in a festival format. People come and talk about the amazing things they do and teach it to you.  Think 3D printers, robots, drones, electronics, crafts, and so much more. Back in 2013, my best friend, Christina Pei, asked me to help interview makers for the faire. I've been so lucky to interview people at makerspaces across Chicago, the STEM Teen Program at the Adler Planetarium, Tinkering Lab at the Chicago Children's Museum, teachers at the Schurz High School, Chicago Public Library YOUMedia and so much more.

It was tricky at first since I hadn't interviewed people before. I had to learn about what people were doing and talk to them either in person or more often on the phone. And I loved it. I realized it was so much fun talking about the amazing things they do. It gave me the confidence to do something like this project. Without this project of Chicago Northside Mini Maker Faire, I really don't know if I would have been able to do all of this. So I want to tip my hat to Christina and the Chicago Northside Mini Maker Faire. 

You can read more about the Faire here (along with many of my interviews): makerfairechicagonorthside.com

Updates and News

I completed 56 interviews today. I met with the extraordinary Ruth Kaufman, voice over and on camera talent and a romance novelist. It was an insightful conversation.

We are getting close to the end of the interview portion. Only a few more interviews in the works! Soon I'll begin the editing and promotion process for the final product. So stay tuned!

Upcoming events and projects by women in the project:

Shanta Nurullah, storyteller and musician, will be performing in Classic Black: Southern Roots, Urban Migrations at the Pegasus Theater on Friday, March 25 at 7:30. The Theater at the Chicago Dramatists is at 1105 W. Chicago Avenue, Suite 202. The admission is $10. You should check it out.

Lucy Knisley will be publishing her book: Something New: Tales from a Makeshift Bride on May 3 about her experiences planning her wedding. I'm really keen to read this since I love Knisley's work and I have strong feelings about wedding planning. You can preorder  it  here: http://www.indiebound.org/book/9781626722491

That's all for now!

Upcoming Art Events!

Lots of exciting events coming up!

Gabriella Boros will have several pieces up in several shows in Chicagoland and Milwaukee. Her piece “Crowding Out the Gift Horse” is in a show at Nixie Gallery in Skokie, 7925 Lincoln (just south of Oakton Street). The show opened on the 23rd and will end on February 12th. Check out the gallery website for more information: http://www.nixiegallery.com

Gabriella Boros has work in another show at the Union Street Gallery in Chicago Heights, 1527 Otto Boulevard as part of the Chicago Printmakers Collaborative Show. The opening is Friday the 29th from 6 to 9. Check out more information here: http://www.unionstreetgallery.org/

She has three prints from “Going Viral” in the show “Intimate Systems” at 100state, 30 West Mifflin, 6th floor, Madison, Wisconsin. The show opens on February 6th from 1-5. For more information, check out: http://100state.com/

Tomeka Reid, cellist extraordinaire, will be performing on February 17th at 7pm at the Mary & Leigh Block Museum of Arts in Evanston as part of A Feast of Astonishments, an exhibition about Charlotte Moorman, “a groundbreaking, rule-bending artist, musician, and advocate for the experimental art of her time.” It should be an amazing performance and exhibition. Check out more information: http://www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu/muse/Participate/2016/charlotte-moorman-opening.html

Hull House Museum still has “Into Body Into Wall” exhibit up featuring The 96 Acres Project with Maria Gaspar. It’s up until February 29th. The project “uses the wall of Cook County Jail to look at architectures of power and incarceration. The project investigates the wall as a social, political, psychological and physical frame, imagines and reflects on new alternatives, and grapples with personal stories from both sides of the wall.” Check out more information here: http://www.hullhousemuseum.org/intobody/

Honey Pot Performance with Meida Teresa McNeal  will be presented /Shift/: First Annual Benefit Gala to support future performances of HPP on February 27th. The event will take place at Stony Island Arts Bank at 6:30pm. Check out the website: http://honeypotperformance.virb.com/

Conversation with Mairin Hartt

Since I’ve been working on this project for over a year and a half with over 50 interviews, I think now is a good time to return to the very first interview with visual artist and educator Mairin Hartt. Below is a little taste of our conversation.

 

I asked her about her interest in the random or disorder and she explained about entropy:

Ok, it’s not necessarily referred to as the theory of entropy but one of the ideas of entropy that I learned in classes in college was… the second law of thermodynamics, I believe, that everything uses the least amount of energy for the most amount of output... The other law of entropy is that everything slowly moves towards entropy. Everything eventually loses energy. One of my professors was saying basically if you look at these two laws, life shouldn’t exist because it doesn’t make sense if it requires energy to be life. So that idea kinda caught on me. So anytime I see entropy I see as this weird balance between entropy and not entropy, or existence and nonexistence. So I guess a crack in a sidewalk doesn’t look like disorder if you think of it as just water slowly breaking rock over time. It’s an interesting thought to me.”

 

We continued on with this theme of disorder and the sublime when we talked about her ink and glass MFA Project:

 

“That came about because I was having lots of talks about the sublime. For those who don’t know, the sublime is an idea… of the Romanticists that nature was this awesome, frightening, empowering thing all at the same time. A lot of the literature that talks about sublime references skies and oceans, things that bigger than the human being or bigger than the viewer. And so a lot of my professors would go sublime has to be big, sublime; [it] has to be big. And I would go ‘No no, it doesn’t necessarily have to be big.’

 

“A large part of my MFA was making works that I could prove that the sublime could be small. The ink pieces came out from me  just playing around with ink and glass slides that I found from American Science and Surplus, which is always fun. And then I built the boxes, which took a long time, viewing boxes that were backlit just sort of to encompass the viewer’s peripheral vision so there was no sense of size or scale. So the little miniature thing, which before didn’t see all that interesting or..intimidating, but when you take away sign of size, it could be anything. It could be microscopic or macroscopic. So I wanted to show that something small could be sublime if you put it in the right context or depending on what it is. There is a small snippet of one text talking about the infinite micro being sublime, because it’s so small, you can’t see it…

 

“[It] was basically India ink on drafting film, which It’s hard to explain. It’s basically sheets of plastic that can absorb ink to a certain extent... I liked translucent aspect of it that light could fall through; [it] made a  glowing effect. I think someone mentioned it reminded them of stained glass, which is something I didn’t think about. I guess in that way, it does emphasize the traditional sublime. When you put it together, it’s bigger than you.

“And it’s also blue. Every example that I did research on I’ve read about, all these examples, everything was pretty much blue. And I couldn’t figure it out why until I realized that all the authors and Romanticists usually referred to the sky and ocean, which are blue. It kinda makes sense that blue would be the color people chose. But that's mostly creating sort of playing around an amorphous thing.

“It was interesting cause I asked people’s reactions to it. I was trying to make something a little intimidating. I was asking if people would describe this as sublime. It turns out that a lot of people have a lot of very different feelings on what would be sublime. Some people said ‘Oh I should be more frightened.’ Some people say it should be more comforting. It should be darker or it should be lighter. It was very interesting. Because sublime wasn’t this just one thing. It was sort of a more messy grouping of horror and joy. All these things put together. Some people wanted to have more a joyful experience; people wanted to be frightened by it. One guy said it scared him and he didn’t want to get too close to it. I got a variety of reactions. It was interesting. I did it just to see what would happen.”

That’s just a small part of a wondrous interview.

Check out Mairin Hartt’s work at http://mairinhartt.com/home.html

 

 


50 Interview Milestone

This week, I'm so happy to announce that I have completed my fiftieth and fifty-first interviews. Over 50 interviews! Wow. What an absolute pleasure. I talked with Olivia Block, sound artist, and Tomeka Reid, cellist and composer this week. I am so honored to have had the chance to talk to them.

I'm so amazed that I have gotten to talk to so many incredible women. I have gotten to explore the city a bit more seeing neighborhoods that I was not familiar with and revisiting old neighborhoods. I've talked to circus performers, a fashion designer, costume designer, painters, performance artists, and so many others who work in the broad spectrum of the arts. I've talked to a diverse crowd of people of different ethnicities, races, birthplaces, ages, and so much more. 

I thank every single of them for taking the time to meet with me and share their stories. I feel very lucky that I live in a city like Chicago with so many active artists in numerous fields. I'm super excited to start editing the book filled with so much talent and heart. Thank you. Thank you thank you. 

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It's been a busy few weeks. Last weekend was the AAUW's Jane Addams Day at Hull House. It was my third year running the event You can read about how I got involved at my other blog here: http://wp.me/p44HaC-oW

Here is my summary of how the event went itself: http://wp.me/p44HaC-p9

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As a final treat, Artnet published a list of "20 Emerging Female Artists to Keep on Your Radar." While the list is a bit NY centric, it's still rather neat. I can't wait to check out these women's work. Check the article out here:

https://news.artnet.com/people/20-emerging-female-artists-2015-383411?utm_content=buffera5e84&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=socialmedia

Ten Chicago Women/Fifteen Years

Goodness Gracious! This Friday, November 20th, the exhibition "Ten Chicago Women/Fifteen Years" will open at the Bridgeport Art Center Gallery on the Fourth Floor.

The exhibition notes report: "Artists often work in isolation with no one to offer responses to their work. In order to combat a common sense of isolation, ten Chicago women artists began meeting fifteen years ago to provide honest critiques, encouragement and feedback to each other. The founders, Linda Eisenberg and Elyn Koentopp-Vanek expressed the main objective of the group: to be supportive and constructive and to increase exposure through group shows of their work."

One of the artists and interview participants, Rebecca Wolfram, will be exhibiting several drawings. Here's a blog post from our interview earlier this summer: https://elisa-shoenberger.squarespace.com/blog/2015/5/21/interview-with-rebecca-wolfram

You should visit this exhibition. I can't wait to check out myself.

For more information, read  the website here: http://bridgeportart.com/portfolio/ten-chicago-women-fifteen-years/#.Vkv_HGSrQdA

Upcoming Events

Exciting events around town!

I am pleased to announce that AAUW will be hosting its third Jane Addams Day Celebration at Hull House (Resident's Dining Hall) staring performer/songwriter Kristin Lems on December 5th at 2pm.   She will share stories about her family’s experiences with Jane Addams and perform songs written about the life of
Jane Addams. Join us for a historic Jane Addams’ speech and song! The event will
conclude with lemonade and cookies. Come and celebrate this amazing woman with  AAUW! 

For more information check out the Facebook invite: https://www.facebook.com/events/1634847263465352/

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Also Kristin Lems has a new CD out: You, Me, and All of the Above. It has great songs including a song about Captain Streeter and Carl the Guinea Hen. Check it out here: 

http://www.kristinlems.com/you_me_and_all_of_the_above1/

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Jamie O'Reilly, performer, producer, and huge supporter of this project, has re-released her incredible CD I Know Where I am Going. Check it out here:

 http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/jamieoreilly5

There are two upcoming shows with the CD release: 

On Thursday, November 19th, at the Veteran's Room in Oak Park, IL, Jamie O'Reilly, Peter Swanson, Michael Smith, and reader Belinda Bremner will perform "I Know Where I'm Going," an evening of Irish Songs and Poetry.
More information:  http://oppl.org/events/friends-library-folk-music-concert-jamie-oreilly?ajax=1

On Wednesday, December 2nd, there will be a Christmas Show at Chief O’Neill’s PubWith Jamie O’Reilly. Peter Swenson, Michael Smith, Belinda Bremner and surprise guests!
More information at: http:chiefoneillspub.com

For more information about these events, check out Jamie O'Reilly's website: http://www.jamieoreilly.com/jamies-november-e-news-concerts-1119-122-radio-cds/

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Mary Ellen Croteau is also having a solo show at the Harold Washington Library 8th floor gallery starting November 13th until January 15th. Check out more information: http://www.maryellencroteau.net/mec_website/Whats_New.html