The University of Windsor’s School for Arts and Creative Innovation offers a one-month Emerging Artist Research Residency. This program is an opportunity for emerging artists to cultivate new ideas through research and production, access the school’s resources and facilities, and exploration of arts and culture in the border region of Windsor/ Detroit.
Resources available include; Sculpture Studio and equipment, Multi media, Woodshop, and much more. Each resident artist will present their work in the form of a public lecture for the Artist-In-Residence Speaker Series at the University of Windsor.
Application Deadline: January 15, 2013 (post marked).
2013 residency program dates: May 1- 31.
Submission Materials and Guidelines:
– C.V.
– Artist Statement (1 page max)
– Residency Intent (1 page max)
– 10 Images on CD, Mac compatible (768 x 1024 dpi)
– Image list
Residency program fee is $350. All applications will be considered. Individual application feedback will not be provided. Please note that the residency program does not include accommodation, although the Program Coordinator can assist with information.
Please send all application materials to:
Residency Program Coordinator
School for Arts and Creative Innovation
University of Windsor
401 Sunset Ave
Windsor ON, N9B 3P4
Image courtesy of http://www.powerhouseproject.com/
The University of Windsor’s Humanities Research Group 2012-2013 DISTINGUISHED SPEAKERS SERIES presents GINA REICHERT & MITCH COPE of Power House Productions / Design 99.
“Too Much of a Good Thing”
Mitch and Gina will discuss work initiated in their Detroit neighborhood over the past six years as visual artists (Design 99) and as facilitators and collaborators (Power House Productions).
7:00 pm, Thursday, October 18, 2012 at the Freed Orman Centre, Assumption University on the University of Windsor campus.
A reception follows the lecture.
For more information, phone 519-253-3000, extension 3508, or email hrgmail@uwindsor.ca
Just a copy & paste, but there’s too much to try to condense. Upcoming in Windsor and an opportunity for artists and food lovers from friends…
Please let m know if there’s anything I can do to assist you with editorial coverage and/or attendance (very affordable $5 rates are available — just ask!) For tickets and information: www.ensembletheaters.net
For more info, watch this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MIKhl5ydvUo
6:30 p.m. – Opening at Art Effect (420 E. Fisher Fwy., Detroit, MI 48207; www.arteffectgallery.com)
7 p.m. – Rogue HAA Panel: Art and Development in Detroit “Art, the Avant-garde and the Realities of Resurrecting an America City” with Philip Lauri (Detroit Lives!), Mike Han (Street Culture Mash), Jela Ellefson (Eastern Market) and Oya Amakisi (film/us social forum) (www.roguehaa.com)
9 p.m. – Detroit Performances including: Monica Blaire, Hardcore Detroit (www.hardcoredetroit.biz), Ryan Meyers-Johnson, Invincible (www.emergencemedia.org)
Saturday, August 18, 2012
9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. – Community Tour Tracks (three options)
Track A – Southwest Detroit: Art Impacting a Neighborhood. Matrix (www.matrixtheatre.org), The Alley Project (www.facebook.com/tapgallery)
Track B – The Urban Network: Art Impacting the Justice System (5740 Grand River Detroit, MI 48208). Yusef Shakur (www.yusefshakur.org), Prison Creative Arts (www.lsa.umich.edu/pcap), 4TheatrSake (www.vimeo.com/cellships)
Track C – College for Creative Studies: Art Impacting Redevelopment. Bus tour led by Mikel Bresee, Director of CAP/CPAD and Vince Carducci, Assistant Dean/author (http://www.cpadetroit.org/about-us/)
12:30 – 1:30 p.m. Lunch (bring cash)
Track A – In Mexican Town
Track B – The Urban Network
Track C – WSU reVITALunch (Pine and Huron Streets, Detroit, MI 48216)
MICROFEST USA SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
Saturday, August 18, 2012 (continued)
2 – 3:30 p.m. – Art Impacting Youth Workshops
Detroit Summer Workshop (http://detroitsummer.wordpress.com/)
Mosaic Youth Theatre of Detroit (www.mosaicdetroit.org)
3:45 – 4:45 p.m. – National Plenary
5:30 – 7 p.m. – Detroit Soup project-funding dinner (2051 Rosa Parks Blvd, Detroit, MI 48216). (www.detroitsoup.com)
7:30 p.m. – The Hinterlands with Design 99: (3346 Lawley St. Detroit, MI 48212) (www.thehinterlandsensemble.org) and (www.powerhouseproject.com)
9:30 p.m. – African World Festival at the Charles Wright Museum (315 East Warren Avenue, Detroit 48201) (http://www.thewright.org/)
Sunday August 19, 2012
9 – 10 a.m. – Invincible with Complex Movements
10 – 10:30 a.m. – Brunch provided at the Hilberry Theater (Cass Avenue Detroit, MI 48201)
10:30 a.m. – noon – Town Hall Discussion “How do you know the work is having impact?”
noon – 12:30 p.m. – Closing
The Design Studio has extended their commission for an artist/culinary team interested in designing a week-long open Public Kitchen in September or October. The new deadline for applications is August 16th.
The commissioned team will get:
$4,000 commission, plus $1000 budget
A space near Uphams Corner for their installation of the Public Kitchen
A built brick stove from Bread Oven
Free fruits and vegtables from Fair Foods
Interested? Learn more about the Public Kitchen and the art commission here.
WTPh? (What the Phonics) is an interactive installation set in the touristic areas of Copenhagen. Street names in Denmark are close to impossible for foreigners to pronounce, so Andrew Sptiz and Momo Miyazaki did a little intervention
Nora Mandray (director/producer) and Hélène Bienvenu (co-producer) are part of a growing group of people who believe that Detroit, MI, is a laboratory for the city of tomorrow. They’re a duo of French filmmakers/journalists, and they’ve been working for over a year on an interactive documentary project supported by the French Film Institute. DETROIT JE T’AIME tells the story of the DIY spirit that’s leading the Motor City’s transition from the assembly line into a new collaborative economy.
DETROIT JE T’AIME is an interactive documentary that weaves together three stories of com- munity-building in the post-industrial era. It follows a group of female mechanics, an urban farmer and an activist hacker who are each working to transform Detroit into a sustainable city through small-scale DIY projects.
Here’s the interactive part:
* DETROIT JE T’AIME will be broadcasted on a website made up of a series of web pages or “screens.” Each screen will feature a video.
* When you decide you’re finished with a page, you’ll click on the next one. You’ll be taken through the documentary at your own pace.
* At anytime, a “DIY toolbox” will be available in the corner of the screen. The “DIY Toolbox” will adapt itself to the story: guidelines and tools will suggest you to start similar projects depending on what’s happening on the screen (be it a community garden, basic bike repairs, or an LED light project.)
* You’ll be able to share ideas from the film with your friends across social networks.
* Through each screen/video, you’ll have access to a different Detroit neighborhood — historic background will be provided through datavisualization, interviews and/or archival footage.
There’s also a Kickstarter page (they’re looking for funding until the end of July 2012).
And, on the short video above:
Detroit and Lafayette Coney Island has the best coney hot dogs in the world (so say Detroiters). The chili, mustard and onion topped super fast treat is a Detroit staple that simply can’t be argued with. Whether occasional delights on the way to a Red Wings, Tigers’, Lions’ game or daily food, the experience is pure Detroit. The classic style of the small Downtown space recants the Motor City glory days, the customers joke with the Yemeni cooks and the waiters do magic tricks… Mind you it’s hot!
Several months in the making, CARTographyTO formed through word of mouth when the first Astral Media pillars were sunk into the sidewalk in Toronto: concerned citizens, artists and others with a creative streak came together with the desire to reclaim the lost public space in their neighbourhoods.
A spokesperson for cARTographyTO stated, “These structures are billboards masquerading as sources of useful public information. When you look at the pillars, it’s hard to find the maps, and this goes against the City’s own public space guidelines. How could City Hall allow this to happen? Beyond mere visual pollution, these pillars are a safety hazard. And Astral’s influence on our city is a public insult and embarrassment – more power has been given to those who already have the loudest voices, to the detriment of all who use these spaces.”
This one goes out to Josh for his love of play, design, and Calgary…
Innovative drinking fountains are being installed in Calgary. Linked to the drinking water system through fire hydrants and designed to have their workings exposed, the fountains have three distinct design “characters” suggesting different gathering around water: “strangers” (or the “dating fountain”), “family” (set up like an family picture with bowls at different heights and the dog bowl), and “group”. Each fountain also has taps to fill bottles and dog bowls.
This initiative was developed by the City of Calgary UEP department through the WATERSHED+ art program, the fountains were designed by Sans façon and built by the municipal fabrication workshop.
I saw this in the Globe and Mail this morning and thought it was worth reposting here given how deep we’re into thinking about text in public spaces at the moment … seems like it would be a really fun installation to see in person! The project is called S/N (Signal to Noise) and can be found in Terminal 1 at Pearson Airport in Toronto. It’s part of this year’s Luminato Festival, one of the preeminent arts festivals in North America, having commissioned over 50 new works of art, and featured 6,500 artists from 35+ countries. Luminato launched in 2007 with a work by one of our favourites, Rafael Lozano Hemmer‘s Pulse Front: Relational Architecture 12.
As for S/N, here’s the project description…
The transformation of random letters into legible words is at the technocentric heart of S/N (Signal To Noise), created by the Belgian artists LAb[au]. The installation is constructed from an assortment of discarded technology and salvaged split-flaps, components from the information displays that predated LED monitors in public spaces like airports and train stations.
Arranged in a circular grid, the flaps randomly rotate until the system identifies a word. The flow of words creates an auto-poetic sequence, inviting viewers to interpret its meaning.
LAb[au] explores the theme of space and time constructs relative to information processes. Its three members – Manuel Abendroth, Jérôme Decock and Els Vermang – specialize in system art and are mainly active within the interactive, reactive and generative realm.
This one goes to out Rosina and Sara … a look at an incredible zine for an incredibly fun project sponsored by Creative Time, SPACE PROGRAM: MARS. Think DIY aesthetics, playful criticality, and really engaging performative works.
Artist Tom Sachs takes his SPACE PROGRAM to the next level with a four week mission to Mars that recasts the 55,000 square foot Wade Thompson Drill Hall as an immersive space odyssey with an installation of dynamic and meticulously crafted sculptures. Using his signature bricolage technique and simple materials that comprise the daily surrounds of his New York studio, Sachs engineers the component parts of the mission—exploratory vehicles, mission control, launch platforms, suiting stations, special effects, recreational amenities, and Mars landscape—exposing as much the process of their making as the complexities of the culture they reference.SPACE PROGRAM: MARS is a demonstration of all that is necessary for survival, scientific exploration, and colonization in extraterrestrial environs: from food delivery systems and entertainment to agriculture and human waste disposal. Sachs and his studio team of thirteen will man the installation, regularly demonstrating the myriad procedures, rituals, and tasks of their mission.
With the recent shuttering of NASA’s shuttle program and the shifting focus towards privatized space travel, SPACE PROGRAM: MARS takes on timely significance within Sachs’s work, which provokes reflection on the haves and have-nots, utopian follies and dystopian realities, while asking barbed questions of modern creativity that relate to conception, production, consumption, and circulation. SPACE PROGRAM: MARS is organized by Park Avenue Armory and Creative Time and is curated by Creative Time President and Artistic Director Anne Pasternak and Park Avenue Armory Consulting Artistic Director Kristy Edmunds.
Hi, 5 (5 Questions) is a web-only interview series which presents five questions to artists, activists, and creative thinkers alike. The project acts as an educational device which allows us to gain insight into the narratives that define successful individuals. We are interested in the motivations behind ambitious ideas and how these individuals chart personal change in relation to their surroundings.
About Kirsten McCrea
Kirsten McCrea is a Canadian artist whose work explores issues of cultural memory, looking at pop vs. underground culture, the media, and popular mythologies. Known for her bright colours and figurative subject-matter, Kirsten is quickly establishing herself as a prominent emerging Canadian artist. Primarily a painter, she is also the founder and editor of Papirmasse, an affordable art subscription that sends a monthly print to hundreds of people around the world every month.
Her paintings have been exhibited nationally and her work has been reviewed by The Walrus, Chatelaine, and The Montreal Gazette, amongst others. She has illustrated for the Polaris Music Prize & the Under Pressure Graffiti festival, and her patterned drawings can be found on notebooks and apparel in stores across the country. When not working on her own she collaborates with the art collective Cease and the drawing initiative En Masse, whose work was recently shown in the form of a massive installation in the Musée des Beaux Arts in Montreal. QC.
Kirsten McCrea - Ampersand, ink on paper, 2012
Kirsten McCrea
If you had to describe your current self to a 16-year-old you, what would you say?
Your parents and everyone you know are going to lie to you and say that nobody can really be an artist as their job. They won’t do it out of malice, but out of love and concern for your future. But you know what? They’ll all be wrong. You CAN be an artist full-time, and you will be. Also, in two years when you decide to grow dreadlocks – don’t. Just don’t. It’s not going to work out.
Could you describe an evolution in your work or way of thinking?
I feel like I have gone back and forth between conceptualism and aestheticism quite a bit. At one point I was a huge theory nerd, then I got really disenchanted with theory and fell in love with street art, which at its core is populist and just viscerally appealing (or sometimes viscerally enraging, depending on your take. Either way – it’s goal is to elicit an emotional reaction). Now I’m cozying up to concept again and am coming to appreciate art with big ideas behind it. But I still love aesthetics, and want to find a way in my practice to make work that is nice to look at but still makes you think. I think that it took a long time to realize that I could do both.
Are there any people who have been instrumental in the development of your way of thinking and viewing the world?
David Choe completely blew my mind wide open when I was 18. I was visiting Montreal (still living in Edmonton at the time, a city that is pretty isolated and not exactly a hotbed of radical anything) and found his book Bruised Fruit in (of all places) an Urban Outfitters. Having grown up in a city that has the highest number of chain stores per capita, I honestly thought that if something was in one bookstore it meant that it was in every single other bookstore. Sad, I know. It turns out that that book was a very limited run (and there were certainly no copies in Edmonton!), but my best friend tracked it down for me and even got him to sign it. Talk about the best birthday present ever! My copy is tattered because I have looked at it so much, and even though I’m not a huge fan of Choe’s work anymore (the sexism kills it for me), it was through him that I discovered Juxtapoz and an entire community of artists on the internet who became some of my biggest influences. I had never seen lowbrow before and discovering it was maybe the most exciting feeling of my life. It felt like I had finally found my home.
How do your political beliefs inform or fuel your work as an artist?
I am a very political person. I used to be very involved in activism, but now art takes all of my time (living in Montreal also made me complacent – it’s so good there compared to right-wing Alberta). Nonetheless, I think that my political beliefs are always present in my work. I try to really consider when I make an image what unconscious ideas are influencing it and how it will be perceived. Particularly in portraiture, I think that it is very easy for artists to fall into the trap of regurgitating the language of advertising. We see ads literally all day long – how can they not dictate your ideas about how a person should be portrayed and what kind of person should be portrayed?
I am currently working on a follow-up to my 2008 series Hot Topic, which is 60 paintings of feminist icons. In Hot Topic Redux I’ll paint another 20. Stay tuned to my website (www.hellokirsten.com) because I’ll be launching a site in the next month or so where I take viewer suggestions about which feminist icons should be painted next.
I also run Papirmasse, an affordable art subscription that sends a monthly print to people around the world for only $5 a month. I really think that people should not be shut out of the art world because of income, so I’m doing my part to make art more accessible and help it circulate through the world. People are afraid to have an opinion about art – they think they need an Art History degree to say whether they like something or not! With Papirmasse I always say – it’s yours now, it’s coming into your home. There’s no expert. YOU are the expert. You decide if you like it or not. And at 5 dollars don’t be too precious about it. If you like a part of it then cut it up and frame it. Make art work for you. Have a dialogue with it. The conversation doesn’t have to be a one-way street.
What do you feel a city should be or do for its inhabitants?
This is an interesting question for me at this time in my life, as I am transitioning from Montreal to Toronto (6 years after leaving my hometown of Edmonton). Toronto seems like a cool place with a really active populace who is interested in improving their city, but I have a sneaking suspicion that in some ways it won’t be able to match Montreal. The reason I love Montreal so much (and what enticed me away from Edmonton) is that it is a very actively lived-in city. The population seems to move through and interact with the space in a much more engaged way than, say, Edmonton, where you rarely see anyone out in the street and only see car after car.
This happens because of bike lanes, beautiful public parks, great public transportation, and lots of lots of free shows, festivals, and events. Montreal routinely shuts down entire busy streets for days (or even months!) at a time so that they can become pedestrian walkways. I think that they value the citizen more than cars or commerce. This seems counterintuitive because obviously citizens in a sense *are* cars and commerce. But it shows a different way of thinking about how we interact with our environments, and it shows that basic day-to-day experience is valued more than getting people to and from work fast. Does shutting down St. Catherines street for 4 months every summer make economic sense? Maybe not, in the traditional sense. But it has turned the Village into a thriving neighbourhood, and nothing really beats walking down a street full of people strung with lanterns and bustling energy. Those kinds of moments are what people who visit the city remember about Montreal, and it’s what makes me sad to leave it. I think that in North America there is a tendency to value making money as the most important factor in city-based decision-making, and what makes Montreal special is that it values happiness, culture, and human experience more.
I also think that a city should leave art (aka graffiti) up outside. Urban environments aren’t supposed to be clean showrooms. Cities are slates for multiple expressions, and street art ads to the feeling of being in a vibrant space that is alive.
