Tomorrow is our presentation!  Come see us discuss our fabulous trip to NYC tomorrow at noon in the Art Building. 

As several of us approach graduation, our lives become increasingly scary as we prepare to leave the safety of our nourishing classrooms. As art students, we hope to live in a place where we can become part of the dialogue of contemporary art. New York City has always had a mythic reputation among art students, a place were art evolves fast and with great affect other broader world.  Though our trip was frantic and exciting, nothing meant more to us than learning that even the seemingly unconquerable New York City, was a very livable and learnable place. Not all of us want to move there when we graduate, but our trip reduced NYC from a Mecca-like status to an art scene where we feel able to participate. 

Again, lots of love and thanks to everyone who helped us!

Hey there!

So we thought for our first post-NYC bit of sharing, we would share this wonderful video!

KLRU just did an episode of their Arts in Context series about the VAC’s Artist-In-Residence program, the way we met Diana Al-Hadid. Our experience working with her in Austin definitely shaped our trip to New York, and we would know so much less about being a professional artist if it wasn’t for her sharing her knowledge and showing us how her practice is maintained.

For anyone reading this blog who is applying for a travel grant, planning a trip to New York, or just wants to understand what it means to be an professional artist nowadays, learning about ways to get involved, like with this artist-in-residence program at the VAC, are incredibly important and will open doors to what you can see and do!

Get involved and make connections, you will be happy you did!!

We have finally reached the end of our trip!

Note: sorry we didn’t post this last day post until now, we did not have internet mysteriously the last few days.

Staying true to our schedule of making this a free day/catchup day for anything we missed, we started off the day with a 1oam appointment at the 9/11 memorial. Security was very tight, and the appointment process and getting there on time was a little hectic, but overall it was completely worth it. The memorial, if you are not already familiar, features two fountains that are built within the footprints of the Twin Towers. 30 foot waterfalls pour water into a void, made of dark grey stone. Along the edges are the names of those who perished on 9/11, as well as in the WTC attack in 1993, cut into bronze. The space was incredibly moving and peaceful for being in the middle of the financial district in lower Manhattan.

Then we took a cab out to Bushwick in Brooklyn to visiti Diana Al-Hadid’s studio! Reunited with our old residency buddies! The space was AMAZING, big enough for Diana and her crew to work on 3 large pieces at once, not to mention space for storage and an office. The rest of the floor was built up by Diana into other, smaller studios that she rents out to other artists. While we were there, we checked out the work that is currently in progess and talked with Diana and her assistants about living in Brooklyn, getting a studio, running the business, and about being involved in art in NYC. It was one of the most enlightening conversations we had about our careers, and it meant a lot to hear it from a young artist who we respect. Thanks Diana! And thanks to all the assistants for their help!

The rest of the day we branched off, some of us going to shop, some going to the American Museum of Natural History, and just exploring.

At the end of the evening, we headed back to Brooklyn to have dinner and drinks in Williamsburg with our NY advisor Jack and some of our other friends who were in the city for spring break.

We left Wednesday early afternoon for the airport, and I think that it is safe to say that we all completely exhausted ourselves, but also got to see and do everything we wanted. Such a successful trip!!!

We will be back in a little while to post all of our wrap up information, but until then, happy spring break!

Hi everyone!!!

Our Internet has disappeared so this is being posted from an iPhone. We will post pictures when we get home.

Today was a less hectic day. We headed to Long Island City in the morning to visit the Sculpture Center and MoMA, P.S. 1. Both were very impressive. P.S.1 had some especially fantastic work. With the most consistently good body of work, P.S.1 was by far one of the best institutions of the trip.  The exhibitions of Henry Taylor and Darren Bader were stand outs.

Next, we took a short taxi ride into Bushwick. Jeff Williams and his fiancé Marie Lorenz were kind enough to welcome us into their studio/home. Jeff had work set up for a studio visit so we got to see his work and Marie’s boats. They also took us into their awesome basement which they use as a gallery space. Thanks Jeff and Marie for being so generous and welcoming!

After a very pleasant lunch with Jeff and Marie, we attempted to go see a Joan Jonas installation at a light store in SoHo. We arrived right after they took it down!

It was an excellent day full of wonderful art and wonderful people.

Today we indulged in a much needed slow start. The time change threw the group off a tad bit, but we were out the door before 11am  and ready to explore…more. We spread out this morning, heading out to different spots. Lucy and Claire hit the Guggenheim for the John Chamberlin exhibition, while Annmarie visited a local church and Isabella made her way to The Armory Show. Thankfully it was warmer today. Our feet are slowly and painfully failing, but at least there was less wind and good sun.

Everyday there is so much to do. It is baffling how time slips away so quickly in the galleries. We made it to the MET today. I dont think any of us finished the whole thing. In the MET, prioritizing is crucial to sanity, while observing all the masterpieces in my opinion. Cezanne, Seurat, Monet, Manet, Van Goh, Klimt and countless others filled room after room. Oh it was beautiful! Van Goh’s paintings in particular maintain a different presence face to face. There is a real sense of craft in his strokes. They occupy such a bold and firm space, while illuminating the image. Small moments like this were inescapable and much appreciated among the vast offerings of Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Combined with a stroll through Central Park in the afternoon, I couldn’t have asked for a better Sunday. Thank you, New York.

Looooong day of galleries. But we DID IT ALL!

First, the Lower East Side, Isabella took some photos on the way to breakfast. We got breakfast at Milk and it was fantastic. Then LOTS of galleries, featured are works by Not Vital, Max Glaser, and other artists.

Then CHELSEA. Dang, it was crazy, probably since it was a Saturday. It was also an open house studio day in Chelsea which added to the foot traffic. We snaked along from 27th to 21st, going into maybe 30 or so galleries. We should go back and reminisce on our free day if at all possible.

After we rested our feet in the hotel room, we went and got some fried chicken for dinner, and then headed to Jack Hanley Gallery for the opening for Marie Lorenz’s show. We met some fantastic undergrads and a grad student from Yale, who were all Marie’s students. The show was fantastic, displaying some of the material from the landscape she works in along with various projections of the artist rowing her self-made boats. The video’s were all recorded from a camera attached to the end of a pole that extends from either a vest or the back of her boat, high into the air to record a bird’s eye view. At the afterparty at Ear Inn, we talked with gallery owner, Jack, about his running the gallery and learned that he taught at UT for a while back in the 90′s! We are finding comfort in the fact that even NYC can be a small world…

Check out Jack Hanley Gallery and Marie Lorenz’s work! >>>>>http://www.jackhanley.com/

–Lucy

The Frick Collection is housed in the former residence of Henry Clay Frick, an extremely wealthy New Yorker, who amassed an impressive collection of 19th century masters.  First of all, the house is unbelievably beautiful. Right at the center of the house is a beautiful garden courtyard with a fountain.  The ceiling is opaque glass planels that give the marbled space a soft and pleasant glow.  Then theres the art.  Each painting is housed in opulent frames that look original.  The West Gallery held the first startling moment of the day, a beautiful Vermeer.  The Mistress and Maid was an excellent example of Vermeer’s mastery of light.  There are two other Vermeer’s in the collection.  Each room is more impressive than the last.  Hans Holbein, Peter Brughel, Goya, Valsquez, Camille Corot, Rembrant, El Greco were just a few of the older masters.  There were even a few beautiful, small Van Eyck’s.

The special exhibition was a room full of Renoir’s.  The Umbrella was stunning.  I was especially drawn to the young girl who stares out of the picture, holding her stick and wooden hoop. Her face is sly, crowned by a small, exquisite smile.  Renoir has a particular way of painting eyes.  They are always the darkest points of the paintings, making them piercing and unavoidable, but still detailed and individual.

The MoMA: HUGE. And incredible. We worked our way up the 6 floors, one by one. The first was mostly reception, but the sculpture garden had a great collection of Katarina Fritsch sculptures. Their matte surface treatments looked particularly fantastic in the outdoors! The 2nd and 3rd floors are dedicated to contemporary work, with artists working from the 80′s until now, and a wide range of media. A few favorites of ours were Doris Salcedo’s shoe reliquaries, in which she placed women’s shows within shoe box sized niches, covered in a translucent sheepskin. The effect was beeeeautiful!

Some other good works were Steve McQueen’s “Dead Pan” (the artist stands in front of a barn, as a wall falls on top of him repeatedly, only for him to escape thanks to a strategically placed window) and Sylvie Fleury’s “Cuddly Painting (Delft)”, a stretcher covered in fuzzy, polar bear printed fabric. AWESOME.

Floors 4 and 5 feature works from mid-20th century and late 19th/early 20th century, respectively. The Eva Hesse’s “Repetition Nineteen”, made up of fiberglass and polyester resin was fantastic in person. Considering their ephemeral materiality, I am not sure that they will keep showing her work as they do now. And on the 5th floor, all I have to say is Monet’s Water Lillies. Cannot figure out how he works his paint, even after looking at them for quite a while.  Seeing all of the great masters like Mondrian, Modigliani, Frida Kahlo, Max Ernst, Francis Bacon, Duchamp, Joseph Cornell, that we only see on slides in class, but are such a huge part of our education, was amazing. And all the new faces Mary Beth Edelson, Ellen Gallahgner, Sherrie Levine, Marlene Dumas and Marcel Broodthaers were equally as impressive.

The sixth floor started with Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s billboard of the bed he shared with partner, who much of his work is about. The indents of their two bodies in the bed, combined  with the understanding that his partner died of AIDS, is an incredibly intimate and heartbreaking, public display of mourning. But just across the way, the Cindy Sherman retrospective was incredibly entertaining and at times laugh-out-loud funny! The collection of prints from Untitled Film Stills series was surprisingly comprehensive and satisfying, and her more grotesque assemblages and self-portraits as clowns and society women were equally great.

Cooper Union: After we all joined up at the MoMA we headed over to Cooper Union, just a short subway ride away.  Claire’s old friend from high school, Sarah Crowe, who is a senior about to graduate, was nice enough to show us around. What awesome facilities!  She took us all round the studios. Each student got their own studio space.  The plaster room, the massive wood shop, the screen printing studios and the giant architecture studio were highlights.  We also got to walk around their brand new building. It was very clean, linear and a slightly disorienting space, but very impressive.  The great thing about visiting Cooper was seeing what our peers are making half way across the country. We were so impressed by the work coming out of Cooper.

Ahhhhh.  What a long and lovely day.  Keep an eye out for the awesome short videos Annmarie has been making.  The first one is already up on Facebook.  Look for another one later tonight.

–Claire and Lucy

We made it!  We arrived in New York City to a beautiful 70 degree day.  Our taxi ride from La Guardia to our hotel on West 14th street was a great introduction to the City.  After we got settled into our hotel it was about 6:30 so we took a short walk up the road to the High Line.  It was so amazing!  We strolled down the old up-above ground subway line in the early evening and watched the lights of the city slowly twinkle on. We made our way to The Half King, a delicious pub recommended by Jack. We were super exhausted so we headed home and enjoyed to an early night!

–Claire

We leave tomorrow! We have pretty much all the scheduling in order, so now we are just getting mostly logistical things done, our mini toothpaste tubes in order and the like.

We are working on setting up one more meeting through our lovely professor Ann Reynolds with the editor of Artforum online, David Velasco.

His background is not necessarily what you would expect of someone in his position. He studied anthropology as an undergrad and then critical theory for his graduate degree, and before his time at Artforum, had no training in the visual arts or art historical writing. He has now worked as both an arts writer and a performer, working with a few different choreographers.

(Velasco is on the far right, with choreographer Sam Kim standing)

This is really interesting to us, as students who can’t have any real idea of where our careers may take us. I am interested in asking him how he arrived at his current position and how he found himself holding all these different positions.

Ok. Now. Must go pack.

We leave at 6 am and will be in NY a little after 3:00 pm.

So excited to get started! We will keep updating with photos and videos throughout the week, so stick with us!

Xoxo,

L.A.C.I.

p.s. here are links to some of Velasco’s writings and conversations

Let’s Go There: Marissa Perel and Artforum.com Editor David Velasco Talk Dance

An Interview with Sam Kim: by David Velasco 

Drama Queen: David Velasco on Ann Liv Young