This week, we’re going to focus on some of the large-scale paintings we had at Nomadic. It was a big space to work with, and we had the luxury of some on-site murals made by some major talents. Biggest of them all was Rob Funderburk’s “The Robin and the Worm”, which was a ~468 sq ft environment, painted by hand. Rob was the muralist at A\V Aerie, the venue and studio we were throwing a revival for later in the month, and he graciously came in to put some of his brushwork on the wall to give it that missing touch.
Problem was, that with an exhibit of this size, schedule can get kind of wonky. So we had to install Dayton Castleman’s “Chicken” first, and then Rob had to paint the mural. I had only met Rob a clutch of times, but it did make me laugh to be the bearer of the difficult news. You can’t get paint on the plane and the goose, but you still gotta get that mural up. I’m certain he cursed our names briefly, but ever the flexible and talented artist, Rob designed his mural in response to the Castleman piece and the way the shadows hit the wall. Rob and Dayton would later go on to do more collaborative work because of our unorthodox introduction.
Rob enlisted his wife, writer Gretchen Kalwinski, Marshall Preheim, the impresario of A\V Aerie, Beth Wiedner and myself to help bring this to life. It took us about 30 hours to see Rob’s vision through, and the result was breathtaking. Later on, Dayton’s artwork had to get shipped to another location, so we were left with a brand new unobstructed view of the work, which I’ll share further down the road. There are some really cool process shots of us wrapping the Castleman piece in plastic and working around it, but the image included today was taken by Jacob Knabb.
Faiz
(note: )
Dayton Castleman is a conceptual artist based in northwest Arkansas, with a multi-modal practice spanning sculpture, painting, photography, and performance. He grew up in St. Bernard Parish, New Orleans, and has lived and worked in Jackson, Houston, Philadelphia, and Chicago. His work has been primarily focused on site-specific intervention in architectural and public space.
Rob Funderburk is an artist in Chicago who works in multiple modes, including illustration, painting, and strategic design. Rob has created a 468-square-foot mural for Nomadic Studio as part of a recreation of A\V Aerie, where he was resident artist.
Satellite event: Op Shop, Saturday, Aug 7, 6pm – Rob Funderburk presented an overview of the Nomadic Studio mural project as part of The Op Shop’s event at 5226 S Harper Avenue, Chicago.
