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 gallery converted into a functioning studio where we could create and collaborate in a public setting. And then there’s the wonderful art. It was a gallery after all. Every month the space changed to a different theme, and we reset the works on the walls. It was wild!
Well, in leading up to this ten-year marker, Beth and I had discussed how we would envision a revival or a revisitation. Years back, we had diligently catalogued every event and piece of art that passed through the exhibit because we thought it worth preserving. To boot, we had also hand-built a miniature version of the entire exhibit, art and all, with Brian McNally. A museum inside a museum, if you will. Personally, I thought a small gallery show with some select objects might be nice. And then everything went topsy-turvy!
That said, since we both gave dozens of tours of our exhibit a decade back, and know it like the backs of our hands, we decided that a virtual tour might be a good solution. It’s a way to showcase a huge project that we thought was pretty great, build an archive of all of the artists involved who are still making vital art today, and entertain at least ourselves with something positive, hoping that some of that will resonate with you.
Buckle up, I guess! There’s a lot of cool stuff we’re looking forward to sharing with you. First few weeks are going to be dense, so if you feel like I’m turning into a sentient spambot, I won’t feel bad if you snooze me. For those sticking around, the photo in the image above is the “Portable Nomadic Studio Prototype”. It was hand-made by Beth and I, and is to the size and scale of the gallery itself. We’ll give you a peek into all of this later.
Cheers!
Faiz Razi
