Waterpod™ and Other Works

Info:

w/ Mary Mattingly

Month:

Bird Sanctuary

Edition:

032

As with most of our programming, some things definitely overlapped from month to month and today’s featured artist definitely ticks off a lot of things covered in Nomadic Studio in one overarching swoop. Jim Duignan invited the supremely talented Mary Mattingly to present her staggering work, Waterpod™, among other things. The Waterpod™ was a floating eco-habitat that Mary built up with her collaborators and sailed the coasts of the five Burroughs of New York from June to October of 2009.

The Waterpod™ had a geodesic dome, chicken coop, greenhouse dome for growing, living quarters, garden beds, rainwater tanks, galley, library, and showers/toilets amongst many, many other things. It was a completely self-sustainable mobile habitat that Mary and her crew lived aboard for months. Incredible stuff, except that it actually happened, so I guess…credible stuff! It references masterworks of the past such as that of Buckminster Fuller, but is also forward-facing as our ecosystems face some eventual collapse.

Mary’s presentation covered a lot of the work she did towards the Waterpod™, but also featured some of her wearable homes, which are outfits that turn into miniature tents and sleeping bags photographed against these improbable apocalyptic backgrounds. They’re beautiful, inspiring, and kind of somber, and I highly recommend digging through her site to see more of it. We are now almost caught up with August’s programming for the Bird Sanctuary and will be moving into September’s Back Of the Yards month very shortly. More soon!

Faiz

Prototype Nomadic Studio

001 Faiz Razi and Beth Wiedner

Today marks the ten-year anniversary of Nomadic Studio! Beth Wiedner and I co-curated this interactive exhibit with Jim Duignan and Stockyard Institute at the DePaul Art Museum from July 8th-November 20th, 2010. It was roughly five months of workshops, events, panels, performances, and the like in a…

Nomadic Floorplan

002 Faiz Razi

The preparation for Nomadic Studio dates back all the way to December of 2009—about seven months before the opening. We learned that our exhibit was to be part of a larger citywide initiative about the artists’ studio and what that meant to us. And while we were artists, more importantly we were all…

Portable Nomadic Studio

003 Brian McNally, Faiz Razi, and Beth Wiedner

With Nomadic Studio set in stone on the calendar, and our booking acumen pushed to the max to wrangle and organize the dozens of individuals set to participate, Beth Wiedner, Brian McNally and I decided to make our prototype for the exhibit a reality. We couldn’t think of better way to showcase the …

the Rumpus Room

004 Faiz Razi, Beth Wiedner, and Brian McNally

Welcome to the Rumpus Room! The Rumpus was both the first Studio and first monthly theme. It’s a hand-built recreation of Gwen Ihnat and Brian McNally’s beloved basement bar and recording studio. While the recreation itself is a hat tip to the general institution of Chicago basements, the Original R…

Anode

005 Ian Bennett

In the space right behind the Rumpus Room, was a portal to Anode Gallery. I say portal, in that the installation straddled the line between Portable and Studio space. Functioning as foyer and lounge in the Studio, the actual Anode Gallery is owned by artists and proprietors Ian Bennett and Renee Ben…

Moving A Home Studio / Questions for Steve

008 w/ Steve Albini

This week, I’m taking a pause on the Studios and the Art to spend some time on the Events we held during the first month of Nomadic Studio. On opening night, it was our distinct pleasure to have Steve Albini come and speak to us about moving his Electrical Audio home studio in East Irving Park to th…

Rumpus Room Housewarming

009 w/ Bric-A-Brac, onono, & Small Awesome

The Rumpus Room has been used as a recording studio since at least 2001. Even before Brian McNally moved in and modified the Rumpus to its current glory, Gwen Ihnat encouraged us to use the space as a recording studio. Portions of Bric-A-Brac’s “16 Luxury Units” and Danger Adventure’s “the Pomegrana…

Protect Yr. Neck: Credit and Insurance for Artists

010 w/ Bob Farster and Alex Maiolo

Our first non-opening event at Nomadic Studio involved two super smart gentlemen providing practical advice. Bob Farster and Alex Maiolo presented a double-header on how artists can improve their credit, and sort their insurance, respectively. The aptly titled panel “Protect Yr. Neck” sought to shed…

Home Recording Panel

011 w/ Mark Greenberg, Greg Norman, and Brian McNally

This one’s fun! I had the privilege of moderating this fine “Home Recording Panel” featuring Mark Greenberg, Greg Norman, and Brian McNally. Mark Greenberg of the Coctails runs Mayfair Workshop where he captures spots for commercials, tv shows, movies and the like. Greg Norman is an engineer at Elec…

Paint Wars

015 w/ bear.illa x Anode

Taking a quick detour from the mural tour to talk about a really cool mini exhibit we held within the walls of Nomadic Studio. Jim Duignan, Beth Wiedner and I are all educators by trade, and so the lens of our exhibit was almost always about teaching others about art and the process as opposed to ju…

ConfiDance & A Night at the Museum

016 w/ ConNatural Artists & the Arts of Life feat. David Krueger

Yesterday’s “Paint Wars” benefit post is directly tied to today’s art. As I had mentioned, planning for the exhibit had already been locked in and underway when Beth Wiedner and I received an exciting opportunity to try something new with Nomadic Studio. Ian Bennett and Renee Bennett of Anode Galler…

Solar-Powered Theremin Workshop

017 w/ Kate Revitte

Nomadic Studio wasn’t just a snappy title, although it was that, too. We worked in the space near-daily and while the panels were fun and informative presentations with Q&A sessions, we also held some hands-on art workshops in the space, as well as in 0170, the science lab satellite studio we ha…

Pigeon Printing Workshop

020B

w/ Jay Ryan

We’re just getting into August today in our retrospective, and I’ll be talking a bit about our second thematic month, the Bird Sanctuary. About seven years before Portlandia requested that we “Put A Bird On It”, Nomadic Studio dedicated a full month to our winged comrades as a hat-tip to their fligh…

The Art of (Foot) Hockey

028 w/ andrewandandrea

Let’s look at some events this week, and see if’n we can close out August. Nomadic Studio had a ton of workshops and presentations, and none were more physically demanding than andrewandandrea’s “the Art of (Foot) Hockey”. Brought to our exhibit by our comrade in common, W. Keith Brown, this present…

Community Impact & A\V-Aerie Install

030 w/ Joanna Lakatos & Marshall Preheim and Pat Kenneally

The thirtieth (!) entry in my guided tour has a pretty great story behind it. We started a Saturday with a small workshop with non-profit wunderkind, Joanna Lakatos who has been a Development Director at several places in our fine city, most recently and notably, Kartemquin Films. She spent an hour …

Last Night of A\V-Aerie

031 w/ Baby Teeth, Tim Kinsella, & Willis P. Jenkins

And on to the big show! With the A\V-Aerie stage in place, courtesy of Marshall Preheim and Pat Kenneally, we were ready to throw our first last-night revival. This concept of the convertible stage came to me on a very wide awake late night, as I brainstormed some thoughts about Nomadic Studio. Form…

Cultural Fermentation 101: Sauerkraut Workshop

038 w/ Liena Vayzman

Website: https://www.lienavayzman.org/ During Nomadic we had a series of small residencies where artists would come in and do a one-two shot of workshop and presentation. It was a nice way to get both context and content in one fell swoop. For September’s Back of the Yards programming, we had a co…

Bookbinding Workshop

040 w/ Brandon Warren Alvendia

And so, with Brandon Warren Alvendia’s “Silver Galleon Press” unpacked and ready to go, he held a scintillating Bookbinding Workshop in Nomadic Studio’s Workroom. Brandon ran a clinic on the Publishing Process as a means of democratizing the way people consume the written word. Brandon takes a real …

Last Night of Union Rock Yards

041 w/ Bear Claw, the Bismarck, and Bottomless Pit

In August, the Convertible Stage was installed for a revival of the last night of AV-Aerie, and for September’s Back of the Yards programming, it changed over to the dearly departed, and fittingly titled Union Rock Yards for one last go at it. Union Rock Yards is a particularly special place for me.…

Form and Content of Writing Panel

043 w/ Thea Liberty Nichols, Bert Stabler, Abraham Ritchie, Claudine Ise, & Patrice Connolly

Going to do a bit of back-tracking today to cover the last event of our Back of the Yards month at Nomadic. Fittingly it’s about writing, which has been a touch more difficult as I close out these last dozen or so entries. Writing, like most art forms, is a discipline that you have to nurture. The m…

Monoprint Workshop

047 w/ Jessica Caponigro

In addition to unveiling the twinned prints,“Our Vanities Differ”, Jessica Caponigro also led a workshop on the process she used to create them. Spudnik brought in their portable press, and Jessica took us through the paces. A plexiglass printer functions like a sheet sent under a giant rolling pin.…

Union Rock Yards Install

050 w/ Faiz Razi and Jose Roselló Cañones

Fiftieth entry! In going through this massive archive of Nomadic, stuff falls between the cracks. For example, while it was a catalogued studio throughout the exhibit, I never did an official entry for the Convertible Stage, nor did I cover the installation of Union Rock Yards like I did for A\V-Aer…

Spraypainting Workshop

054 w/ Lavie Raven

In addition to the exhibit being held at the DePaul Art Museum, we were constantly connected to their School of Education through Stockyard Institute. Students frequently came through both as tour groups and as workshop participants for their classes. Jim Duignan held his Art Education classes in No…

EEC: Education As Art

056 w/ Jim Duigan, Bert Stabler, et al.

The second event for during Nomadic’s Extraneous Education Conference was moderated by Jim Duignan and Bert Stabler. They had co-edited the most recent issue of Proximity Magazine. Both the issue, and the title of the event was “Education as Art”. Jim and Bert invited a clutch of contributors, edito…

Extraneous Education Conference: CVAE

057 w/ Jerry Hausman, John Ploof, Nick Hostert, Jim Duignan, and Keith Brown

The big event for Teaching Artists Month during Nomadic was the Extraneous Education Conference, or EEC. Think of it as a meeting of the minds for Artists, Educators, and Art Educators alike. EEC was a series of informal conversations and projects on reimagining the impact of effective and meaningfu…

Printmaker’s Panel

058 w/ Angee Lennard, Wrik Repasky, Tom Lucas, and CJ Mace

During Teaching Artists Month we had three different panel presentations that covered different aspects of the education process for artists. “Printmaker as Distributor, Collaborator, and Facilitator” explored the role of education within contemporary printmaking. Panelists included Wrik Repasky, Co…

Workroom

034 Jim Duignan

The Workroom was between the Rumpus Room and the SITE Office and was where we usually sat to plot the coming installs and events in the exhibit. It had a lot of artifacts, new and old from Stockyard Institute. On either side of the twinned green tables were tributes to the late, great, artist a…

Black Public Radio

035 Jim Duignan, Davion Matthews, and Brandon Hudson

Stockyard Institute has historically had a fascination with radio as an institution, and our showing at Nomadic Studio was no exception. Jim Duignan and Davion Matthews installed their low-wattage radio transmitter into the spot between the main gallery and the Rumpus and Workroom, and dubbed it “Bl…

SITE Office

055 Beth Wiedner, Faiz Razi, and Stockyard Institute

I purposefully waited to present this Studio towards the end, even though it was technically the first Studio we constructed. The “SITE Office” was a production studio and hub for collecting and organizing all of the generated content from Nomadic Studio daily. SITE initially stood for Stockyard Ins…

Convertible Stage

060 Faiz Razi w/ A\V Aerie and Union Rock Yards

Throughout the exhibition, the Convertible Stage in the main gallery transformed several times to represent different venues in Chicago that have closed. A\V Aerie, the loft space in Fulton Market’s warehouse district and the literally underground club, Union Rock Yards in Humboldt Park were paid ho…

Main Gallery

061 Faiz Razi, Beth Wiedner, and Jim Duignan

The Main Gallery was a congregational space. It functioned as a classroom, a venue, a workshop, a staging area, and was host to the majority of the events at Nomadic Studio. The gallery was flanked by Jeff Zimmermann’s imposing photo-realistic paintings, “Not” and “Sowf” and Dayton Castleman’s cardb…

Dayton Castleman

006 "Chicken"

While we’ve focused on the some of the more spatial aspects of Nomadic Studio, I’d like to spend today and tomorrow talking about a couple of the large-scale artworks that we had in the Main Gallery. Up first is artist and educator Dayton Castleman’s massive work “Chicken”. Quick note: Dayton ended …

Jeff Zimmermann

007 "Norf" & "Sowf"

The first thing anyone saw when visiting Nomadic Studio were Jeff Zimmermann’s gigantic twinned portraits “Norf” and “Sowf”. But they weren’t in front of the entry. They were at the back front wall of the Main Gallery, but they’re so large that your eye was immediately drawn. They’re maybe seven fee…

Funderburk & Castleman

012 "Starcross'd"

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, pai…

Watie White

013 "Common Ground"

The next big-ticket item on our tour of the on-site murals is this enormous canvas by Nebraskan Watie White. We met Watie through our co-curator at Stockyard Institute, Jim Duignan. Jim had been in regular contact with Watie regarding an artistic conduit between us in Chicago and him in Omaha. Watie…

Lavie Raven and Kat

014 "Resistance"

One of the fun things about hosting an exhibit covering the nomadic nature of artists is having their work move in and out of the space and be a part of other shows and exhibits. At the top of Nomadic Studio, were were loaned this portable mural by Lavie Raven and Kat entitled “Resistance”. It was m…

Zebadiah Arrington

019A

"Self-Portrait"

Following up with another collaboration with the University of Hip Hop’s alum comes Lavie Raven’s protege, Zebadiah Arrington. Zeb’s a bit of a graffiti wizard and also a bit of a rascal. Jim Duignan introduced him to Beth Wiedner and I when he was maybe fifteen when we were working on “Musical Chai…

Jay Ryan

021A

"Three Pigeons" and "A Jay"

As mentioned before, our exhibit changed over and heavily featured flying animals as a new theme. We swapped in several dozen pieces of art, and it changed the entire mood of the space, bringing the action from the back of the Rumpus Room into the front of the Main Gallery. Our first pair of artists…

Diana Sudyka

021B

"Four Birds" and "An Egg"

Our exhibit changed over and heavily featured flying animals as a new theme. We swapped in several dozen pieces of art, and it changed the entire mood of the space, bringing the action from the back of the Rumpus Room into the front of the Main Gallery. Our first pair of artists featured in the Bird…

Erik Stenberg w/ Ian Bennett

022 "The Amazing Bubu" and "Hooters"

Back to the birds! As we transitioned from focusing on the Bird Sanctuary for a month, the Rumpus Room stayed in place as a hub for rehearsing and recording. Fortunately the Rumpus had space on the walls, so we were able to decorate the installation with a second layer of art as the months changed. …

Susan Hall

023 “Five Birds” featuring “Grackle”

This is starting to feel like “Clue”! Susan Hall was the second avian artist featured in the Rumpus Room during the Bird Sanctuary, and she loaned us a flock of five exquisite paintings. Her densely detailed works feature layers of stained wood, and hand-painted lacework and tapestry flowers that fr…

Tom Stack

024 "12 (13) Paintings"

Here are 13 minimalist masterworks by Milwaukee’s Tom Stack. This particular showing at Nomadic Studio was the largest collection of his paintings in one place at the time. Of this baker’s dozen, only one was courtesy of the artist himself, and everything else was loaned by their proud owners. Whi…

Starling Artists

026 "100 Starlings"

Another hundred birds! A little context: Stockyard Institute is an arts education nonprofit where we worked for years. Part of the work that we did was through Jim Duignan’s students at DePaul’s College of Education. One of Jim’s student workers suggested doing an all-call for 100 starlings as a way…

Christophe Roberts

027 "Our Bird" and "Hawk's Revenge"

Hoo boy! Today, we have a couple of monster birds to close out the featured artists of the Bird Sanctuary. Beth Wiedner and I stumbled upon the work of Christophe Roberts while doing a gallery walk in Pilsen and were immediately smitten. Christophe’s striking animal sculptures have a mix of comic pl…

Zikr

029 "Unplanned Residency"

One of the neat things about an exhibit of this size and scale that focuses on a creative space are the incidental events that happen in-between the programming. I have had the pleasure of introducing George Joseph Miller IV and Reid Garrison Miller as both employees at the DePaul Museum, but also a…

Katrin Schnabl

036 "#16"

We are now in the “Back of the Yards” portion of Nomadic Studio. The third month of this five-month exhibit focused on the literal Back of the Yards neighborhood of Chicago where Stockyard Institute started, as well as the overall yards, alleyways, and other under spoken spots of the city where publ…

Jim Duignan

042 "Back of the Yards"

Nomadic Studio was also in part the 15th anniversary of Stockyard Institute, so it made perfect sense to include a call back in the exhibit. Jim Duignan shot these ten large photographs of the Back of the Yards neighborhood where the Stockyard Institute began in 1995. Fittingly, “Back of the Yards” …

Kevin Cyr

044 "Studio Bike"

Today, I’d like to start with one of the first inspirations for Nomadic Studio and a part of the exhibit. We we first discovered Kevin Cyr’s mobile marvels when doing our research and stumbled upon his epic camper bike in Beijing, and were smitten. Kevin is a painter and illustrator whose subject ma…

rum46

045 "Seven Biking Vikings"

This particular entry has always been a little tricky, as the images always sell short the amount of cool work we got to do with rum46 in Aarhus, Denmark for Nomadic Studio. The fine folks at rum46 have had an ongoing dialogue with Stockyard Institute for years, as we were both Education-forward Art…

Jessica Caponigro

046 "Our Vanities Differ"

Nomadic Studio was part of a larger city-wide thing called Studio Chicago. Nomadic’s October theme was “Teaching Artists’ Month” to mirror the City’s “Artists’ Month”. I’ve mentioned all the odd satellite spaces we worked in, and of course, we were able to bring in other simpatico organizations into…

Erik Wenzel

048 "Erik Wenzel's Bullet Points About Art"

Erik Wenzel was introduced to us as a possible participant for Nomadic Studio by Thea Liberty Nichols. We were unfamiliar with his oddly minimal work where he would hang tiny incidental scraps of art on the leftover nails from exhibit de-installations. As Nomadic was constantly in flux with art movi…

Chris Chappell

049 "Please Don't Kill Yourself"

At the top of Nomadic Studio, we worked and planned very closely with gifted educator and long-time comrade, Keith Brown. Great mind, great energy, and a healthy dose of saltiness. Keith introduced us to Chris Chappell’s exquisite work, which often straddles the line between murals and skateboarding…

Rob Funderburk

051 "The Robin and the Worm"

Today’s mural is a magic trick. If you recall, Dayton Castleman’s massive cardboard fighter jet and goose, provisionally titled “Chicken” was one of the first things we installed, but was on a giant blank wall. In preparation for turning the Convertible Stage into A\V-Aerie, muralist Rob Funderburk …

Anonymous

052 "Cop"

Today’s artwork is a mystery to me. During Nomadic, there was a lot of stuff moving in and out of the space, and while we kept tabs on 99.5% of it, I have no idea where the painting we casually referred to as “Cop” originated. All I know is “Cop” speaks Spanish, and is very determined to let you kno…

Musical Chairs: Cathode

018 Ian Bennett, Faiz Razi, Beth Wiedner, Kate Revitte

We're excited to share the end result of our Solar-Powered Theremin Workshop, which are the third set of Musical Chairs, entitled “Cathode”. “Musical Chairs” has been a long-running audio/art project featuring several different variants of painted prison bus seats with a musical component. It start…

Musical Chairs: Two

019B

Zebediah Arrington, Faiz Razi, Beth Wiedner, et al.

Mobile Silk Screening Cart

020A

Mike Slattery

Today’s entry came together for the opening reception of the Bird Sanctuary. Mike Slattery’s “Mobile Silk Screening Cart” is really something to behold. It’s a sizable, yet totally portable silk screening studio. It has storage for inks and screens, papers for printing, a complete set of tools, a co…

Mockhouse

033 Mary Mattingly

In addition to her wonderful presentation about her Waterpod™ project, Mary Mattingly stayed in Chicago for a few extra days to use Nomadic as a studio. It was a treat to have her around to share ideas, concepts, and approaches towards liminal existence. While she was there, Mary and Jim Duig…

Community Garden Canoe

037 Eric Utech, et al.

Today’s lovely piece is by the late, great Eric Utech. Eric was an arts teacher who passed in November of 2009, just as our planning for Nomadic was in its infancy. Jim Duignan had been in contact with his colleague Anastasia Mitas at Hoffman School who suggested a novel idea for our exhibit. Eric a…

Silver Galleon Press

039 Brandon Warren Alvendia

Today we’re going to take a look at one of the marvelous Portable Studios we had since the start of the exhibit. Brandon Warren Alvendia is an old friend of mine whose work revolves around movable art studios and portable means of production. His “Silver Galleon Press” is one of many mobile bookmaki…

Cody Hudson, et al.

053 "Tragic Beauty" (excerpt)

This piece was a semi-mystery to me until about an hour ago. I knew Marshall Preheim and I moved it with the rest of the A\V Aerie install from Pat Kenneally’s storage, but that’s about it. There was space in the box truck, and it would help the transformation of the stage, so we brought it along. I…

Waterpod™ and Other Works