Thanks to Dusty Herbig and his students, this fantastic poster creates high
expectations for my visit to Syracuse University from 10/13 - 10/15/2009. Now I
have to prepare a really good lecture...
Recent Posts
- Adriane Herman Lecture 10/15 at Syracuse University promises to be artificially sweet and a bit unctuous...
- Apparently real reform is not a piece of cake...
- "Checklist Deluxe" on view at International Print Center New York
- Work on view in Western Exhibitions' booths at Chicago's Next Art Fair
- "Sticky Situations" dubbed "embarassingly voyeuristic" by Ken Greenleaf
- "Sticky Situations" at Whitney Artworks, April 3-25, 2009
- "Human Doings" opens at Western Exhibitions (Chicago), February 20
- Sticky Notes sought
- Checking It Twice
Apparently real reform is not a piece of cake...
Carpe Mandate
2009
ink-jet print
edition size 44 (with #44 reserved for #44.)
(created as a more upbeat sequel to Cookie Cutter Culture: The Smoking Gun)
"Checklist Deluxe" on view at International Print Center New York
Printed in Madison, Wisconsin, with Fresh Hot Press, Checklist Deluxe is on view at IPCNY (International Print Center New York) as part of its New Prints Spring 2009 exhibition. IPCNY is at 526 West 26th Street in Manhattan, Room 824. The show is up through May 30th and is chock full of new prints in a wide range of media. Here is an installation shot followed by a photo at a raking angle to reveal some of the blind embossment designed to recreate the folding, creasing, and abrasions on the original found index card listing all the things an unknown but highly earnest art student enumerated as the requisite ingredients to concoct art period, or perhaps good art.
Checklist Deluxe, 2008, silkscreen with blind embossment from collagraph plate, 14.5 x 24 inches on mat board.
Edition size: 9. (Less deluxe version available for less than half the price, on Stonehenge.)
Work on view in Western Exhibitions' booths at Chicago's Next Art Fair
4 of my "Checking It Twice" inlaid burnishing clay lists are on view in Western Exhibitions' booth at:
NEXT:The Invitational Exhibition of Emerging Art
NEXT:
"More than an art fair, NEXT is a showcase for the world’s talents and an adventure in cutting-edge culture. An opportunity to redefine the relationship between art and its public, NEXT is a portal to seeing contemporary art in new, innovative, eye-opening ways. NEXT will include works from both commercial and non-commercial arts organizations--galleries, project spaces, art publications and key private contemporary collections from around the world."
NEXT will be located at:
The Merchandise Mart • 222 Merchandise Mart Plaza, 7th Floor • Chicago, IL 60654
Show Hours:
Friday, May 1, 11am - 7pm
Saturday, May 2, 11am - 7pm
Sunday, May 3, 11am - 6pm
Monday, May 4, 11am - 4pm
_____________________________________________________
ALSO: My new "Sticky Situations" portfolio is on view in the Goffo section of NEXT
"Goffo, a special section at NEXT, focusing on multiples, editions, artist books, prints and handmade objects, will host an exceptional curated selection of presses, artist collectives and small galleries."
(same location and hours as Next Art Fair, listed above)
click here to view Sticky Situations prints and installation
"Sticky Situations" dubbed "embarassingly voyeuristic" by Ken Greenleaf
On view in conjunction with "Considerable Thinking" at Whitney Art Works in Portland Maine (492 Congress Street), "Sticky Situations" garners critical attention and anxiety about leaving sticky notes floating around. (Read review)
(View installation photos and boxed set)
"Sticky Situations" at Whitney Artworks, April 3-25, 2009
A new body of work called Sticky Situations is on view at Whitney Artworks from April 3 - 25 here in Portland, Maine, as part of a three person exhibition entitled Considerable Thinking, with Melinda Barnes and Tim Clorious. (Opening reception this Friday, April 3 from 5-8.)
For this exhibition, I have created forty one woodblock + silkscreen prints that re-produce found and gifted sticky notes at 500% "life" size. The prints are available individually or en masse in a drop spine portfolio designed to look like a giant pad of yellow sticky notes. This work furthers my efforts to monumentalize the mundane and fix the fleeting. I hope you'll visit if you're in the area.
"Human Doings" opens at Western Exhibitions (Chicago), February 20
No Acrylic, inlaid burnishing clay on wood, 26 1/4” x 38 1/4
Press release:
On Friday, February 20, 2009, Western Exhibitions opens two news shows: In Gallery 1, we present a solo exhibition by Adriane Herman and in Gallery 2, a group show of new prints from Fresh Hot Press, a Madison, Wisconsin-based printmaking shop. Both shows open with a public reception from 5 to 8pm. The show will run from February 20 - March 28, 2009. A closing reception will take place on March 26 from 6-8 pm, in conjunction with the Southern Graphics Council Conference.
For decades Adriane Herman has instinctively archived minutiae that others would likely toss out without a thought or, even more likely, never have accumulated in the first place. For her third show at Western Exhibitions, she will present a series of inlaid burnishing clay tablets that take their inspiration from other people's "to do" lists. These wall-mounted tablets have surfaces that are extraordinary in every sense of the word - shiny, sensuous, even sublime. To make these works, Herman transposes a larger reproduction of her source image (a "to do" list) to a wooden board coated with 20 thin layers of burnishing clay. She carves out the text and fills it in with thin layers of an opposing color of clay. Next, she sands, polishes and burnishes the top layer of clay until the text/image is revealed, a laborious and time-consuming process whose resulting shine, that sublime surface, is all elbow grease - no varnishes or coatings. It has to be seen in person to be truly appreciated.
Nadine Wasserman, an independent critic and curator, aptly describes Herman's intentions in an essay for the recent show "Ruminant" held at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Portland, Maine:
Adriane Herman takes items that would normally be discarded and transforms them. Herman has collected an archive of other people's shopping and "to do" lists as a way to ascertain human action and intention and to reveal the human compulsion for order. List-making is often a coping mechanism and a way to organize an otherwise chaotic world. By recreating these lists in a more permanent and labor-intensive medium, Herman makes them monumental. Like a forger, she copies the look of the list as closely as possible into a clay medium and then burnishes the surface into a fine polish. In this way, they are transformed into culturally significant artifacts. Each list reveals individual characteristics about its anonymous writer. Some are neat, others are messy. While many of them list food items, some are statements of intention: "Get colored yarn. Only wool, no acrylic," "earn the resources to finish house and pay off debt," or "Lunch, check-in, nap, movie, dinner, drinks, sex, breakfast." One particular list even has corrected spelling. Unlike more public documents these bits of scrap paper exhibit inventories that were never intended for anyone but the writer. By monumentalizing this mundane activity, Herman shows us a raw and unrefined version of our own transient objectives.
Scott Speh
Owner and Director
Western Exhibitions
119 N Peoria St, #2A
Chicago, IL 60607
312-480-8390
http://www.westernexhibitions.com
Checking It Twice
Download a pdf of the catalog for my Checking It Twice project shown at Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA) in Rockport, Maine, and more recently excerpted in the exhibition Ruminant, at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) in Portland, Maine. FREE PDF downloads (and UN-FREE hard copies) are available from Lulu.com. Thanks to Kelly Jackson, former Assistant Curator at CMCA, and Rachel Epp Buller for contributing essays, and to Brian Reeves for catalog design.
To peruse project more locally, see CURRENT WORK link.
