Praeterita

Artfully shot black and white photo of me, taken by my wife Patricia Ann McNair , through the tunnel of holes in a sculpture by Barbara Hepworth .

It's about time I wrote another blog post. As it is the last day of 2017, here is a list post looking back at some of the highlights from the last 12 months. January : Taught in Paris for most of the month with my wunnerful colleague Kathie Bergquist from Columbia College Chicago. We were teaching a class which is basically "Hemingway and Baldwin in Paris." Here is a photo of our drinks, purchased at the newly reopened Hemingway Bar in the Ritz Hotel, Place Vendome: February : Participated in a group drawing event at the Ed Paschke Center, Chicago, organised by the terrific artist Anne Harris. March : Spent a week in Tucson, Arizona, truly one of the most magical places in the United States: May : Two of my small handmade books were purchased by the Joan Flasch Collection at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago:   July : Patty and I moved after 10 years in our third floor apartment, to the 9th floor of a high rise building overlooking Lake Michiga...

Here is a short video of me in my studio, talking about me, my art, and my influences.

When so much of making work as an artist involves slogging away in a room with no idea if it's ever going to be seen by the world outside, it's satisfying when a little success comes your way. I am very proud that two of my handmade books were acquired recently by the Joan Flasch Artist's Book Collection at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago. This collection is one of the most renowned collections of books made by artists in the United States, so it's a huge honour to be included. Here is one of the pieces, an interleaved slit accordion fold of two etchings: And here is the other, a heavily collaged accordion book bound together by sisal: Each piece is now being catalogued and digitized, and at some point in the future they will be on display at the library, possibly in the company of books by artists such as Joseph Beuys: And Christo: And Richard Tuttle: I have paintings in my studio that are six feet square, yet it's these two smal...

Over on my studio blog, I've just posted a piece with lots of photos, detailing some of the intricate work involved in making a new 3-d piece of work for my next exhibition: link here .

Here are some things I've been assembling in my studio for a forthcoming exhibition: large scale (up to 6 feet high) and small scale models, some of which will have moving parts with the aid of tiny motors, wheels, and pulleys.

On the afternoon of January 6th, 2016, I led 20 Columbia College students and two colleagues on an art walk through Montmartre in Paris. We started at the Caulaincourt metro stop on the northern side of the hill, because it's a less steep climb from there, and spent about two hours walking up the hill and around Montmartre, visiting sites that are associated with visual artists. Some of these are very well known, like the Basilica of Sacre Coeur or the Moulin Rouge, but others are much less well known, such as the residences and studios of Van Gogh, Picasso, and Suzanne Valadon. At every stop, I handed round print-outs of paintings by the artists I was talking about so that everyone could make stronger visual associations of the place with the artists and their art. I have rounded up some of my notes and images of those paintings and linked them all together in this Google Map, which traces the exact route of the walk. Click on any of the red place markers to display the associat...

These two paintings are on show in Chicago for the next four months as part of a group show at Robert Morris University Gallery, in the heart of the downtown loop district: The reception for the show is on October 15th. Links describing the show: Chicago Artists' Month Exhibition Blog

After three years, thousands of words, dozens of interviews, 100 web videos, thousands of photos uploaded, it's finally here: this is the one thousandth post on this blog. In my first post, at the end of December 2009, I quoted John Ruskin, from whose great autobiography I borrowed the title for my blog: Ruskin also said that he would write " frankly, garrulously, and at ease; speaking of what it gives me joy to remember at any length I like ... and passing in total silence things that I have no pleasure in reviewing." I think by and large that I've followed through on that. My reason for starting this blog at all was for the purposes of self-marketing, to talk about my studio work and to lure potential buyers of my art (complete failure on that score, so far). But I quickly started using it not only to record my thoughts about my own work, but to seek out other artists and invite them to talk about their work and process, as a way of finding out about creati...

Forgive the egotism: this one is about my own process as it relates to some paintings I've been working on this year.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

This week's Meditation is in the form of a personal memory of seeing a statue by Michelangelo for the first time when I was fourteen.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Students in J+S Class “What is this drawing? Not once in describing the shape of that mass did I shift my eyes from the model. Why? Because I wanted to be sure that nothing evaded my grasp of it... My objective is to test to what extent my hands already feel what my eyes see.”—Auguste Rodin.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

Here is the sixteenth of the weekly Meditations on Art. The subject is a 1920 painting by Otto Dix, called 'The Skat Players'. I remember going around the bookstores on the Charing Cross Road in London, trying to find a book about this artist. I kept announcing to the assistants 'I'm looking for books on Dix', and wondered why they kept directing me to the Gay section.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

This week's Meditation is on a stunning installation by Richard Wilson, which is back on show again at the new Saatchi Gallery in London, for which the piece was first created in 1987.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

This week's (slightly late) Meditation is on a sculpture by American artist Jim Dine that I saw in the Denver Art Museum. If you have any thoughts on the opinion expressed in this short talk, please leave a comment.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

This weeks's Meditation is on a photograph by Michael Johnson called 'Big Hill Road #2'. Michael is a great (I don't use the word lightly) photographer who lives about 140 miles west of Chicago.   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

This week's Meditation is on ukiyo-e prints by Japanese masters:   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

This week's Meditation is on an installation series by French artist Christian Boltanski, whose work deals with memory, loss, and death, often arising from references to the Holocaust:   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

As a follow up to the last Meditation, on Indonesian artist Dadang Christanto, here is a 60-second clip from a TV station in Indonesia about one of his performances in Jakarta:   Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader

This week's Meditation is on a piece by Indonesian artist Dadang Christanto that combines installation and performance:    Subscribe to Praeterita in a reader