The refreshment of 2010: Solo show and a new studio

The 2010 new year has welcomed in many new and exciting announcements in my life. I have been selected to have a solo show at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, a contemporary arts gallery in the Shadyside section of Pittsburgh. Having grown up going to see their shows, I am thrilled and honored to become a part of its amazing exhibition history. As my dear friend told me when she heard the news, Keith Haring showed there. So yes, I am quite honored.



As a pre-college student at Carnegie Mellon, I remember going to see my sculpture professor Carlos Szembak's solo show at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts. I promised myself on that Friday night while gazing at his re-imagined wheat fields and stacks of bread that someday I, too, would have my art within the gallery's rooms. I wonder if this is how Shackleton felt as he read the memoirs of Norwegian Arctic explorer Fridjtof Nansen, whose many accomplishments included crossing into the depths of Greenland. Someday... someday, did he think? The thrill of new territory for an artist is not unlike the adventure of finding one's feet in the first fallen snow for the Antarctic explorer.



I have also set up a new studio and am continuing the Angalavaa series along with a few new sculpture pieces: one for my solo show at the 1708 Gallery in Richmond, VA, and two for the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts show. Having not worked as an artist in Pittsburgh before, I am excited to take in the energy of the city and my neighborhood of Lawrenceville and then huddle away in my studio for some long hours and nights.

Yes, 2010 is a good year.

I am finally finishing up my new website design. Adding titles, sizes, etc, which for some reason has taken me too long to finish!

Recently I became part of the Pittsburgh Artist Registry, an online database where you can find many many southwestern Pennsylvania artist, writers, performers. It is a project through The Office of Public Art in partnership with the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council and the city of Pittsburgh Department of City Planning. The NEA has a hand in it, too, of course. Artists are listed alphabetically and have images of their work, website links, and short artist statement and bio.

http://pittsburghartistregistry.org

Another resource that I have been a member of for the past year is Sermitsiaq, the Greenlandic english speaking newspaper. By subscribing, you receive a weekly emailed newsletter offering short articles about current issues such as the induction of the new prime minister this past early fall, tourist/ mining expansions, and of course all of the climate changes causing disruptions. Sometimes the translations are a bit off but overall it has been an interesting weekly read. Also, this week talks about the Greenlandic movie, Nuummioq, being shown at this year's Sundance Film Festival! The website also offers news in Danish, which can easily be translated into English. I have attached the translation program I usually use.

http://sermitsiaq.gl/english
http://gramtrans.com

Center on Contemporary Art Seattle

Two of my photographs from the It Is Never Tomorrow series are out in the Center on Contemporary Art in Seattle, WA. The show, 2009 Annual, opens tonight 6pm at the Ballard Gallery and runs through January 9, 2010. If you are out in that area, take a look! The show was curated by Jess Van Nostrand, curator at Cornish College of the Arts.

http://www.cocaseattle.org/2009_annual.html

UPDATE

So for some reason, my website is best viewed through Firefox right now. Safari is dragging behind. And who knows about Explorer.

My timeline for my new website has dragged on for a few weeks now. Thanks for your patience. Sometimes life throws in little bumps that get in the way of a deadline.

I hope to have the new site up and going by this coming weekend. Please come back and visit!

New website design

I have decided to redesign my website. It was in need of a refurbishment, some autumn cleaning. I hope to have it finished by this weekend: Sunday night is my deadline. So please stay tuned and check back!

National Maritime Museum's Caird Fellowships

The National Maritime Museum in Greenwich London offers Caird Short-term Research Fellowships for 2-3 months each year for scholars to do research within their collections. These collections are not small either. They include more than 2 million items, from manuscripts in their library and archive, to prints & drawings, objects for navigation, ship models, maps and ship blueprints. Though my interests fall within their polar collections, some of the past research projects include their slave and abolition collection and women's employment at sea. Basically anything maritime related and British historical. The deadline is quickly approaching- November 1- and is their annual deadline.

My proposal is based around how communication was handled in the polar regions in the 1800's and at the turn of the century. Shackleton used semaphore in the Antarctic to guide sledge teams back to the ship over the high ridges of ice. I am interested in this and other ways in which technology played a role in cold weather communication. Tin cans with notes listing longitude and latitude buried in cairns along Arctic coastlines was a way in which the British adopted an Inuit way of storing stashes of meat in these stone piles. I would like to investigate how these communication efforts changed and evolved as more British expeditions ventured into the Arctic/Antarctic. How were they influenced by the landscape and Inuit, or completely ignored both? How did items, such as sledges and clothing, evolve as well to aid in travel? This topic is one that I briefly skimmed the surface of when I was doing research at the museum two years ago. It is time to go back and revisit it more indepth. The use of nautical flags in my work stemmed from it.

My aim for this research is to create a new series of sculptures/photographs inspired by what I find. Now whether the National Maritime Museum's selection committee will be hip to my idea as a visual artist and not an academic scholar is another issue. But here's to trying.

Currently the museum is showcasing the famed Northwest Passage in an exhibition which runs through January 2010.

http://www.nmm.ac.uk/visit/exhibitions/on-display/north-west-passage/