Praeterita

Yesterday was the last Journal and Sketchbook class of the semester, taught by me and Patty at Columbia College Chicago. Remember that this is primarily a writing class, and that most of the students have not taken any art classes since high school, if that. As part of the final presentations for this class, on the visual art side, we had: A stuffed cat. An acrylic painting with 3-d elements consisting of a play-doh goblet and a styrofoam heart. A collage painting on a pizza box that the creator said she "roasted over a fire that I set in the bathtub of my house." Then there were the: Giant papier mache sculpture/painting. The collage with 90 separately cut pieces of paper lego. The acrylic painting by someone who said she hates acrylic painting (but which turned out pretty good). The portraits consisting of maps. And there were the discoveries that this led to in the writing: the moments of personal memoir involving bad decisions; the terrible ...

It finally happened. After two years and three months, the series of short talks on art that I called Meditations on Art  has finally arrived at the original target of 100. In addition to being a discussion of a painting by Shinique Smith, this one is also a short review of what I've learned after doing 100 videos, or three hours' worth of playing time, or 30,000 words of writing, and currently 97,000 views on YouTube. One of the things I learned: the more you do it, the more people respond. After the first 50, the YouTube channel had only received a couple of thousand views. Now it seems to be getting 1,000 each week. I also learned, as I said in the above talk, that far more of them than I realised are about white, male artists -- not intrinsically a bad thing, perhaps, but it certainly wasn't part of my original plan, which was to display, if only to myself, that I have a broad taste in art. The story of where I got the title for the series from is here ....

... was actually three days ago. I didn't remark on it, as I've been so busy that I lost track of the numbers recently. And with the blogging I've been doing for Hyperallergic , it might take a bit longer for me to get to 1000. But it will definitely happen this year, and in under three years since I started this blog seriously. Meanwhile, here is something that happened today. Someone who lives on the east coast of the USA sent me the following image: It's his version of the giant luminary which has been at the centre of my two public art projects since 2010 (pictures here and here ). This chap constructed his copy from east American cedar, which he says he grows on his property, and burlap for the panels. It looks like there's a light inside it, too. As they say here in the USA: "Nice jaaab!"

Kate Wilson is another artist whose work I found via social media. She is Canadian, and her work in drawing, installation, and animations caught my eye because of its authority and integrity, both in its purpose and in its execution. She is currently preparing for a busy summer of multiple exhibitions, so I'm gratified that she took the time to answers some questions about her work and process. Geometric Sunshine (partial view) Beyond/In Western New York, 2007 ,  acrylic on wall, dimensions variable, University at Buffalo Art Gallery at the  Center for the Arts. Photo credit: Biff Henrich/Keystone. Philip Hartigan : Your work looks like a collision between the organic world, chemistry diagrams, and classic abstract art. How does it appear to you? Kate Wilson : Actually, your assessment is very close. I never know where to begin. It is a matter of placing pen to paper and seeing where the line takes me. Perhaps subconsciously I’m incorporating visuals or tex...

A few weeks ago, I wrote about a student from the Film and Video department at Columbia College Chicago, who attended a workshop that I gave there. A day later, I received an email from Ryan Hoyda , who took the Journal and Sketchbook class during a summer session in Prague back in 2005. In fact, I think that might have been the very first time that Patty and I taught this class. My memories of Ryan from that class are overwhelmingly positive: a good writer, grappling with some difficult material, finding his way to his own voice. He became absorbed in the visual side of the class, and I remember his drawings to be fluid and expressive. I haven't heard from him for a long while until this recent email, in which he directed me to a website that has a lot of images of the oil paintings he has done in the last few years. To my delight, Ryan's paintings turn out to be not only not bad: they turn out to be really very good. You can see the influences in his style (post-Impress...

Here are images of the wonderful students from the Journal and Sketchbook Class, taught by Patty and me jointly in the spring semesters at Columbia College Chicago. There are fourteen students, and they give their final presentations over the lat two weeks of the class. Seven of them presented last Thursday, the rest will go next Thursday. It's a writing class, mainly, with the sketchbook, drawing, and visual art activities intended as a different way of "seeing in the mind", as a way for the students to develop their writing in a different way to their normal process, but with an equally strong emphasis on fully written movements. If I can get permission, I may post some of their writing. For now, what the pictures show are the visual pieces, and I hope you'll agree with me that one needs make very little allowance for the fact that they are produced by fiction writing students to appreciate their qualities of visual expressiveness. It's nice to glance ...

Part 12 of an interview series in which I invite artists to respond to six questions about art, process, and creativity ( Part 1 ,  Part 2 ,  Part 3 , Part 4 ,  Part 5 ,  Part 6 ,  Part 7 ,  Part 8 ,  Part 9 ,  Part 10 , Part 11 ).  Today's artist is  Julia Schwartz , who is a practising psychoanalyst residing in California, and (but) also a maker of abstract paintings of a remarkable, instinctive shape-making and sense of touch. ice XXV after the visit, 2011, oil on canvas 20x20 inches Philip Hartigan : What medium/media do you chiefly use, and why? Julia Schwartz : I paint with oil, mostly on canvas, although linen is a new luxury that may become more of a necessity. It makes the work different: when the surface is primed, the paint goes on easily and the paintings have been delicate and sensual; unprimed or roughly primed linen took the paint in a different direction, and I followed it. I use oil because it has begun to ...