Praeterita

After eating all the food and drink, my friends kindly watched my new film... Last weekend I took part in my third open studio in the building that I moved into in February. The building, an old factory next to the railway tracks on the northside of Chicago, has about thirty studios, used mostly by painters and sculptors, plus a few people (like me) who use different media. My new studio is the biggest I've had since I closed my London studio in 2002 and it's also the first time I've been working in close contact with or proximity to other artists since 2004. For the last two open studios, I showed older work, hoping to sell it to make space for newer work. Last weekend, I premiered a short film that I've been working on for most of this year. After all this contact with the public and other artists this year, here are some things that I've learned: Collectors with deep pockets, gallerists, and curators don't go to open studios.  People who go to...

The latest installment in an interview series for which I pose the same six questions to artists of various species. Judith Mullen is a mixed-media artist working in Chicago, in a bright studio building that I visited for the first time recently. Her spellbinding, densely-layered, multi-textured work will be on show in 2014 at Chicago's prestigious Linda Warren Projects . Forest Floor Relief VIII PH: What medium/media do you chiefly use, and why? JM : I consider myself a mixed media artist and within that I do work with a broad range of materials. I started out working mainly as a painter using traditional painting media and supports. As my interest broadened to three-dimensional work, I found myself experimenting with fabric, tree limbs, paper and more. Rather than having a prescribed list of materials needed to work on a piece, I found myself playing around with various media, which allows me to work in a more open, experimental way. I still find this way of working ver...