HINDSIGHT - WRITE SOMETHING WORTH READING ABOUT OR DO SOMETHING WORTH WRITING ABOUT
Thursday, August 26, 2010
NEW ART FOR THE TULLMAN COLLECTION FROM KATIE MILLER - CONNER CONTEMPORARY ART - WASHINGTON DC
NAKED BABIES ON A FURRY COAT
Friday, August 20, 2010
TRIBECA FLASHPOINT MEDIA ARTS ACADEMY IN CHICAGO TRIBUNE ARTICLE BY NINA METZ
By Nina Metz, Special to the Tribune
August 20, 2010
Without much fanfare, Chicago has become something of a film school hub in the last few years. Even as UCLA and NYU are still the brand names to beat, the offerings in Chicago have a good shot at closing the gap. Digital media is where it's at, and these days you're just as likely to find video game designers and animators as well as filmmakers among the ranks of graduates. With classes set to start next month, I decided to see where things are headed for some of the newer programs in town.
DePaul University's School of Cinema and Interactive Media was launched in 2008, and the department added several new faculty positions this year, including director Tommy O'Haver (credits include the Anne Hathaway comedy "Ella Enchanted") who is relocating to Chicago from Los Angeles for the school year. Also on board is Chicago-based film producer Steven A. Jones ("Wild Things" and "Mad Dog and Glory").
While these kinds of hires bring real-world experience, one of the more intriguing aspects of DePaul's program is something called Project Bluelight, which gives a faculty filmmaker a budget upward of $50,000 to make a film. Industry professionals are hired and students fill out the crew.
The forward-thinking momentum is all about the technology. "It's basically film school for the new era," says assistant professor Jonah Zeiger, who thinks competing schools with longer established reputations (including his alma mater, NYU) are "somewhat encumbered somewhat by the last hundred years of cinema history, whereas DePaul in a sense kind of said, OK, we're not going to deal with celluloid. We're going digital on the professional level. There was no baggage of an earlier program."
A similar "no baggage" vibe is evident at Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy, located in the Loop. The two-year, high-end alternative to traditional undergrad programs was known simply as Flashpoint when it launched in 2007. Last spring, the Tribeca Film Festival inked a deal with the school to become both a financial and creative partner. "It's a very snobby business, and the truth is the Tribeca thing was a tremendous additional credential," says Howard Tullman, the school's president and CEO.
Basically, the school is a faster route for students who want careers in digital media but aren't interested in plowing through a four-year liberal arts education to get one. (It's also cheaper, roughly $43,000 for the two years compared to four years at DePaul, which can run to $114,000.) Already alumni have seen some success with their gaming company Tap Me! Games (for iPhones and the like), based here in Chicago.
Class size at Tribeca Flashpoint is kept intentionally small (about 260 are enrolled this fall), and Tullman has been using his contacts to help students network with the likes of Chevy Chase, John Woo, Ken Burns and Liev Schreiber.
"The whole business is relationships, so we bring hundreds of employers and talent of every stripe through the school, they do a session with the students and they end up becoming advocates. So by the time we launched the first group of graduates this past spring, we were able to place eight or nine students, for example, with Mark Burnett on his various TV pilots. Our kids go in and get the jobs and it's theirs to lose, whereas 10,000 other people are out there wondering how do I get my resume under the door to Mark Burnett?"
Life, or something like it
Think you can capture the human condition on film in 60 seconds or less? The Chicago International Film Festival's competition is open to anyone with a camera and a point of view. Finalists will have their submissions screened at this year's festival as well as online. The entry deadline is Wednesday. For more info go to chicagofilmfestival.com/thehumancondition.
Take it off
Filmmaker Leslie Zemeckis (wife of director Robert Zemeckis) tracked down an impressive number of former burlesque performers for her documentary "Behind the Burly Q," which runs at the Siskel Film Center through Wednesday. For more info, go to siskelfilmcenter.org.
Can we talk?
The After Hours Film Society screens "Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work," the 2010 doc that the Tribune's Michael Phillips called "gripping" and "guaranteed to complicate whatever feelings you have about the movie's subject." The film plays at 7:30 p.m. Monday at the Tivoli Theatre in Downers Grove. For more info go to afterhoursfilmsociety.com.
Nina Metz is a Tribune special contributor. Send items for Chicago Close-up to ninametzfilm@gmail.com.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Sunday, August 15, 2010
NO PEREGRINATIONS FOR THIS KC ARTIST
NO PEREGRINATIONS FOR THIS KC ARTIST
By Joe Miller August 13, 2010
An interview with Peregrine Honig after her experience with reality TV
Peregrine Honig (arm in air) cheers during the screening of the finale episode of "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist" at the Brooklyn Museum on August 11. Pictured with her are one of the judges, China Chow (at left), and, to Honig's left, fellow contestants Abdi Farah (winner of the show) and Miles Mendenhall, judge Bill Powers, and fellow contestants Cynthia Rowley and Nao Bustamante. Photo: Barbara Nitke, courtesy of Bravo television network
On the morning after the grand finale of Bravo’s Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, Kansas City artist Peregrine Honig took a few minutes to talk with Review about her experience on the reality television show.
JM: What are some of the ways you grew as an artist through the process of being on this show?
PH: My work is about social structures and pop culture, and I wanted to learn about the other side of pop culture. So it’s kind of like learning a language. I thought it would be smart to ensconce myself in the country of pop culture. And so I did it. And I came in second, which is incredible, and I made work under these really postmodern conditions, and I made some incredible friends.
And I completely gave myself to Bravo — my time, my mind, my art, my identity — for this project. And Bravo provided back to me their version of it.
I think they did a really good job. I was really happy to have millions of people considering my work and ideas, it was very worth it for me.
It was really great last night, too — you know, to be sitting next to (the show’s executive producer) Sarah Jessica Parker and these new fast friends that I made through this abstract experience, watching my show that’s been in bars, in living rooms, in different parts of America. The small box is powerful.
JM: Do you feel you used television media as a medium within the work you did for this show?
PH: Yes. It’s one thing if you’re making artwork about popular culture from the standpoint of where you’re looking at popular culture. It’s another thing to make work through the other side of the mirror. It’s like understanding how it happened. It’s like understanding how to market an idea or a story to millions of people through this very specific medium with cameras and lighting and timing and archetypes.
And so to put myself in that place and have that language and that knowledge, it’s like being on the other side of the water. I know why my work is dealing with these different issues differently because I’ve actually experienced it.
JM: How were the critiques given by the show’s panel of judges?
PH: I really respect Jerry Saltz. I think he’s an amazing writer, an amazing speaker. I’ve been reading him like Dear Abby since I was in college. One of the reasons I went on the show is because of him. Anything that he was going to be involved in probably was going to be of high quality.
Bill Powers is really bright, really funny. And Jeanne Greenburg and China Chow, they had more to lose than I did, having a higher-brow perception of their cultural capital.
JM: Do you have that level of critical input here in Kansas City?
PH: Yes. I’m surrounded by amazing, bright, and incredible artists who give me critical feedback whenever I do or do not want it. We have great writers in Kansas City. We have really intelligent doers and makers of things. The Dolphin is a great gallery. In showing with them, John O’Brien has always been sincere and honest with me.
JM: Will you be showing your final project from Work of Art here in Kansas City?
PH: No, Bravo owns all the work. And I already showed that show, so I wouldn’t do that again.
JM: Did you watch the whole show?
PH: Oh, sure.
JM: Did you like it?
PH: I loved it. Wasn’t it amazing? It was so much better than I thought it was going to be. So much better. So much more interesting. It was much higher drama behind the cameras, I’ll tell you that. They definitely edited it down to a more poetic and interesting narrative because we were all sort-of off the deep end, for sure.
Richard Prince wrote a really good article about the show that said, "Here’s the art world. All of the things that are bad and good about the show are true of the art world. The way that some of it’s bullshit, some of it’s high drama and some of it’s super bright and incredible. It’s the full gamut." So if there’s somebody out there that even gets just a little bit more of a taste of it, or just a little bit more confidence in terms of looking at art or buying art, we win.
JM: Did you get a sense of different levels of reality while you were on the show?
PH: You mean because I was like hallucinating from lack of sleep?
JM: Maybe. But more along the lines of what you were saying, how the show could have gone in a different direction, to where it was more dramatic —
PH: It was very close to the storyline. What I watched is what I came close to experiencing. Little things were edited out, big things were edited out, just to make it cohesive. But what I saw was what I went through when I was on it.
JM: One reason I ask that question, I read fellow contestant Jaclyn Santos’s blog, and she wrote about the show in which Erik Johnson was eliminated and talked about how your team felt as though you were being pulled into a certain story. Did you feel you were being pulled into other stories or versions or interpretations of reality?
PH: I do. When we were pulled for interviews and we were put in really high stress situations. It makes for good entertainment. I do think that Erik kind of got the raw end of the stick in terms of just becoming afraid after an interview, and when he came back to us he was turned off.
But the truth of it is, nobody kicked anybody else off. Everybody who left mostly did it to themselves. We all have a tipping point, and it’s definitely not a matter of somebody’s quality of art or how talented they are. It’s the mechanics of how they’re driven. So people who were super-talented sometimes went home early. Because they just couldn’t stomach it. It’s a hard thing to stomach. Everything is taken away from you. There’s no music, there’s no outside material. So you are really pulling from inside yourself.That’s very stressful.
JM: My one criticism of the show is that it latched onto this myth that artists can just snap their fingers and brilliance comes out.
PH: You can, though. And that’s great.
And yeah, it takes time to make art, but it doesn’t necessarily take a lot of time to fabricate it. Everybody there had made things over long periods of time, had done things that had taken long periods of time. But the challenge was to pull from those moments, those epiphanies, and make some out of what was in front of you
Picasso’s line drawings, maybe they took him three or four minutes. Pen to paper. You know, it took his whole lifetime to make that simple line.
JM: What’s next?
PH: I'm in a show up at Dolphin through September 4 and in a show with Dwight Hackett Projects in Santa Fe in October. I have such a great relationship with Dolphin. One of my sketchbooks is sort of pinned to their wall. It’s nice to offer smaller pieces of my work to my community.
And I’m making art about souvenirs and classism and why certain souvenirs are for one’s class. Like, you go to Mexico, and you get a shot glass and sombrero that’s made in China — international souvenirs and the aesthetic of that.
JM: Thank you and congratulations.
PH: Hey, silver ain’t bad.
JM: I have to admit, I was fuming afterward.
PH: Me too, in a way. (Laughs)
JM: But the more I thought through it, the more I felt that both your show and winner Abdi Farah’s were very powerful. They just told different stories
PH: And he had the hero’s journey.
By Joe Miller August 13, 2010
An interview with Peregrine Honig after her experience with reality TV
Peregrine Honig (arm in air) cheers during the screening of the finale episode of "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist" at the Brooklyn Museum on August 11. Pictured with her are one of the judges, China Chow (at left), and, to Honig's left, fellow contestants Abdi Farah (winner of the show) and Miles Mendenhall, judge Bill Powers, and fellow contestants Cynthia Rowley and Nao Bustamante. Photo: Barbara Nitke, courtesy of Bravo television network
On the morning after the grand finale of Bravo’s Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, Kansas City artist Peregrine Honig took a few minutes to talk with Review about her experience on the reality television show.
JM: What are some of the ways you grew as an artist through the process of being on this show?
PH: My work is about social structures and pop culture, and I wanted to learn about the other side of pop culture. So it’s kind of like learning a language. I thought it would be smart to ensconce myself in the country of pop culture. And so I did it. And I came in second, which is incredible, and I made work under these really postmodern conditions, and I made some incredible friends.
And I completely gave myself to Bravo — my time, my mind, my art, my identity — for this project. And Bravo provided back to me their version of it.
I think they did a really good job. I was really happy to have millions of people considering my work and ideas, it was very worth it for me.
It was really great last night, too — you know, to be sitting next to (the show’s executive producer) Sarah Jessica Parker and these new fast friends that I made through this abstract experience, watching my show that’s been in bars, in living rooms, in different parts of America. The small box is powerful.
JM: Do you feel you used television media as a medium within the work you did for this show?
PH: Yes. It’s one thing if you’re making artwork about popular culture from the standpoint of where you’re looking at popular culture. It’s another thing to make work through the other side of the mirror. It’s like understanding how it happened. It’s like understanding how to market an idea or a story to millions of people through this very specific medium with cameras and lighting and timing and archetypes.
And so to put myself in that place and have that language and that knowledge, it’s like being on the other side of the water. I know why my work is dealing with these different issues differently because I’ve actually experienced it.
JM: How were the critiques given by the show’s panel of judges?
PH: I really respect Jerry Saltz. I think he’s an amazing writer, an amazing speaker. I’ve been reading him like Dear Abby since I was in college. One of the reasons I went on the show is because of him. Anything that he was going to be involved in probably was going to be of high quality.
Bill Powers is really bright, really funny. And Jeanne Greenburg and China Chow, they had more to lose than I did, having a higher-brow perception of their cultural capital.
JM: Do you have that level of critical input here in Kansas City?
PH: Yes. I’m surrounded by amazing, bright, and incredible artists who give me critical feedback whenever I do or do not want it. We have great writers in Kansas City. We have really intelligent doers and makers of things. The Dolphin is a great gallery. In showing with them, John O’Brien has always been sincere and honest with me.
JM: Will you be showing your final project from Work of Art here in Kansas City?
PH: No, Bravo owns all the work. And I already showed that show, so I wouldn’t do that again.
JM: Did you watch the whole show?
PH: Oh, sure.
JM: Did you like it?
PH: I loved it. Wasn’t it amazing? It was so much better than I thought it was going to be. So much better. So much more interesting. It was much higher drama behind the cameras, I’ll tell you that. They definitely edited it down to a more poetic and interesting narrative because we were all sort-of off the deep end, for sure.
Richard Prince wrote a really good article about the show that said, "Here’s the art world. All of the things that are bad and good about the show are true of the art world. The way that some of it’s bullshit, some of it’s high drama and some of it’s super bright and incredible. It’s the full gamut." So if there’s somebody out there that even gets just a little bit more of a taste of it, or just a little bit more confidence in terms of looking at art or buying art, we win.
JM: Did you get a sense of different levels of reality while you were on the show?
PH: You mean because I was like hallucinating from lack of sleep?
JM: Maybe. But more along the lines of what you were saying, how the show could have gone in a different direction, to where it was more dramatic —
PH: It was very close to the storyline. What I watched is what I came close to experiencing. Little things were edited out, big things were edited out, just to make it cohesive. But what I saw was what I went through when I was on it.
JM: One reason I ask that question, I read fellow contestant Jaclyn Santos’s blog, and she wrote about the show in which Erik Johnson was eliminated and talked about how your team felt as though you were being pulled into a certain story. Did you feel you were being pulled into other stories or versions or interpretations of reality?
PH: I do. When we were pulled for interviews and we were put in really high stress situations. It makes for good entertainment. I do think that Erik kind of got the raw end of the stick in terms of just becoming afraid after an interview, and when he came back to us he was turned off.
But the truth of it is, nobody kicked anybody else off. Everybody who left mostly did it to themselves. We all have a tipping point, and it’s definitely not a matter of somebody’s quality of art or how talented they are. It’s the mechanics of how they’re driven. So people who were super-talented sometimes went home early. Because they just couldn’t stomach it. It’s a hard thing to stomach. Everything is taken away from you. There’s no music, there’s no outside material. So you are really pulling from inside yourself.That’s very stressful.
JM: My one criticism of the show is that it latched onto this myth that artists can just snap their fingers and brilliance comes out.
PH: You can, though. And that’s great.
And yeah, it takes time to make art, but it doesn’t necessarily take a lot of time to fabricate it. Everybody there had made things over long periods of time, had done things that had taken long periods of time. But the challenge was to pull from those moments, those epiphanies, and make some out of what was in front of you
Picasso’s line drawings, maybe they took him three or four minutes. Pen to paper. You know, it took his whole lifetime to make that simple line.
JM: What’s next?
PH: I'm in a show up at Dolphin through September 4 and in a show with Dwight Hackett Projects in Santa Fe in October. I have such a great relationship with Dolphin. One of my sketchbooks is sort of pinned to their wall. It’s nice to offer smaller pieces of my work to my community.
And I’m making art about souvenirs and classism and why certain souvenirs are for one’s class. Like, you go to Mexico, and you get a shot glass and sombrero that’s made in China — international souvenirs and the aesthetic of that.
JM: Thank you and congratulations.
PH: Hey, silver ain’t bad.
JM: I have to admit, I was fuming afterward.
PH: Me too, in a way. (Laughs)
JM: But the more I thought through it, the more I felt that both your show and winner Abdi Farah’s were very powerful. They just told different stories
PH: And he had the hero’s journey.
The Next Great Artist - Exclusive Interview with Peregrine Honig
Work of Art: The Next Great Artist - Exclusive Interview with Peregrine Honig
Posted on 08/12/2010 by Gina in Work Of Art and Cast Interviews
by Gina Scarpa and Mike Bandy
On last night's season finale of Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, the three artists remaining in the competition, Peregrine, Abdi, and Miles, presented their final art shows at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The judges admired the work that Peregrine put into her exhibit, "Fair Game", but felt it was cluttered. She took second place, while Abdi took the win. Today, we caught up with Peregrine in an exclusive interview about her journey on Work of Art, the friends she made, and her upcoming art show.
Q. Gina, RealityWanted: What made you want to try out for Work of Art?
A. Peregrine: I had just finished a book called "Widow" and I really didn't have the funds to market it. I thought, "Hey, I'll just do this and it'll be a way for people to get to know me."
Q. Gina, RealityWanted: I know it's very difficult to judge art. Was that a concern of yours, going into the show?
A. Peregrine: Art is subjective but I know that I walk into a room, and even in my own work, there's a winning piece. I've curated a lot and for me, I do choose what I consider to be the best and what I consider to be the most beautiful.
Q. Gina, RealityWanted: Being the runner up on Work of Art is quite an accomplishment. How do you feel?
A. Peregrine: I feel absolutely great. I adore Adbi and Miles. We all worked very hard. It was like the Olympics. Silver ain't so bad.
Q. Gina, RealityWanted: Has this experience made you a stronger artist?
A. Peregrine: Being on the show did not make me a stronger artist. It made me a more intelligent person. It's such an experience.
Q. Gina, RealityWanted: You seemed very emotional when it came to the twin fawns photo. Tell us a little bit about your process for creating it.
A. Peregrine: I have struggled with that piece for so long. It took tears alone to get those fawns. I had to take care of them and fix them. The glass was hand blown and cut in half. My friend did that. It's been maybe seven years, almost eight years, to bring that piece together. Finally, I found a way I wanted it to be printed. The frame alone was almost $1,000. To get that piece in front of New York City in front of a million or two million people, I really had to consider what would be effective and beautiful. To have it be so successful and seen by so many people is very awesome.
Q. Gina, RealityWanted: Who was your favorite artist to work with on Work of Art, and why?
A. Peregrine: I didn't work with Nicole but I adore Nicole. I worked around her a lot. She was very inspiring to me. Her sense of spirit is phenomenal.
Q. Gina, RealityWanted: What's coming up next for you?
A. Peregrine: I have a solo show coming up with Dwight Hackett Projects. I have a tiny little dog that I continue to puppy train. I have a really wonderful life. I have made some really great friends in this project.
Posted on 08/12/2010 by Gina in Work Of Art and Cast Interviews
by Gina Scarpa and Mike Bandy
On last night's season finale of Work of Art: The Next Great Artist, the three artists remaining in the competition, Peregrine, Abdi, and Miles, presented their final art shows at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. The judges admired the work that Peregrine put into her exhibit, "Fair Game", but felt it was cluttered. She took second place, while Abdi took the win. Today, we caught up with Peregrine in an exclusive interview about her journey on Work of Art, the friends she made, and her upcoming art show.
Q. Gina, RealityWanted: What made you want to try out for Work of Art?
A. Peregrine: I had just finished a book called "Widow" and I really didn't have the funds to market it. I thought, "Hey, I'll just do this and it'll be a way for people to get to know me."
Q. Gina, RealityWanted: I know it's very difficult to judge art. Was that a concern of yours, going into the show?
A. Peregrine: Art is subjective but I know that I walk into a room, and even in my own work, there's a winning piece. I've curated a lot and for me, I do choose what I consider to be the best and what I consider to be the most beautiful.
Q. Gina, RealityWanted: Being the runner up on Work of Art is quite an accomplishment. How do you feel?
A. Peregrine: I feel absolutely great. I adore Adbi and Miles. We all worked very hard. It was like the Olympics. Silver ain't so bad.
Q. Gina, RealityWanted: Has this experience made you a stronger artist?
A. Peregrine: Being on the show did not make me a stronger artist. It made me a more intelligent person. It's such an experience.
Q. Gina, RealityWanted: You seemed very emotional when it came to the twin fawns photo. Tell us a little bit about your process for creating it.
A. Peregrine: I have struggled with that piece for so long. It took tears alone to get those fawns. I had to take care of them and fix them. The glass was hand blown and cut in half. My friend did that. It's been maybe seven years, almost eight years, to bring that piece together. Finally, I found a way I wanted it to be printed. The frame alone was almost $1,000. To get that piece in front of New York City in front of a million or two million people, I really had to consider what would be effective and beautiful. To have it be so successful and seen by so many people is very awesome.
Q. Gina, RealityWanted: Who was your favorite artist to work with on Work of Art, and why?
A. Peregrine: I didn't work with Nicole but I adore Nicole. I worked around her a lot. She was very inspiring to me. Her sense of spirit is phenomenal.
Q. Gina, RealityWanted: What's coming up next for you?
A. Peregrine: I have a solo show coming up with Dwight Hackett Projects. I have a tiny little dog that I continue to puppy train. I have a really wonderful life. I have made some really great friends in this project.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
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