CR Event Series: Making It What We Need

Brittany Southworth-LaFlamme + Etienne LaFlamme
still from "Illuminate Each Other," single-channel split screen video, 2014

On Saturday, January 31st at 10am Cultural ReProducers presents Making it What We Need, a workshop and conversation generating concrete ideas in addressing the needs of cultural producers who are also working it out as parents. This is the final installment of the Cultural ReProducers Childcare-Supported Event Series, and also a chance to help shape what happens next. MIWWN is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Division of Labor: Chicago Artist Parents on view at Columbia College’s Glass Curtain Gallery, 1104 S. Wabash, Chicago IL.

Led by Cultural ReProducers organizers Christa Donner and Selina Trepp with the participation of students, arts administrators, exhibiting artists and others, Making it What We Need considers alternate models for living, making, and making a living as artists. Non-parents are welcome to join the conversation, which will be relevant to anyone working toward a sustainable life in the arts.

During the event, kids in our on-site childcare area will construct their own visions for the future using colored dough, washable ink and poster-sized paper. Cultural ReProducers events are free, but space is limited. Childcare is available through pre-registration only.





The Cultural ReProducers Event Series is a roaming series of free lectures, performances, and other events designed to allow parents with small children participate more actively in the art community. Events take place on weekend mornings and feature great artist-curated programming, on-site childcare and all-ages receptions. Our goal is twofold: to give parents and their kids the chance to participate as critical members of the arts community, and to inspire cultural institutions to better serve artists and audiences, providing positive models for future programming. This project is made possible through support from the Propeller Fund.

ChristaDonner and Selina Trepp are internationally-exhibited multimedia artists. As parents they actively engage issues of creative practice and family life. Donner uses drawing, installation and small-press publications to re-vision the human body through physical sensation and imagination. Her work has been exhibited internationally including recent projects for BankArt NYK (Yokohama), the Museum Bellerive (Zurich) and the Horst Janssen Museum (Oldenberg, Germany). Trepp merges multiple dimensions through animation and a hybrid process of painting, performance and photography. Solo projects include exhibitions for Document and Comfort Station (Chicago) the Migros Museum for Contemporary Art (Zurich), and Le Centre Culturel Suisse (Paris). She is also half of the video-performance duo Spectralina in collaboration with her husband, musician Dan Bitney.

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FAQs:
I’m not a parent. Can I come? Absolutely, and bring your friends. While focused on the challenges of family, this event is relevant to anyone working toward a sustainable life in the arts. It’s vital to have non-parents as part of the conversation, too.

I am a parent. Does my kid have to be in childcare, or can I keep them with me? Parents who'd rather keep their children with them during the lecture are welcome to do so. We're just offering the option to participate without the distraction of wrangling small children.



Why do I need to pre-register for child care? For safety and legal reasons, space is limited to 18 children per event, and we expect it to fill quickly. Registration is first-come, first-served.



What time should I arrive if I have children? Sign-in starts at 9:15am. The event itself starts at 10:00 and will last about an hour and a half. Of course, timing with children is often a bit unpredictable. You’re welcome to sign in and quietly join us at any time during the event. 



Who will be watching my kids? We’ve hand-picked a great selection of experienced babysitters and playgroup facilitators who will lead hands-on activities linked to the events that parents will be attending. These are people we know and trust with our own kids. Keep in mind that this is a grassroots, artist-run childcare project, not a licensed daycare facility. You will be asked to read and sign a waiver before registering your child.

What about parking and public transportation? Glass Curtain Gallery is located about 3 blocks from the Roosevelt CTA Orange/Green/Red line station. 

Street parking downtown can be challenging. If you plan to drive we suggest using a service like  SpotHero to locate and reserve discounted parking ahead.

60 WRD/MIN ART CRITIC // Yi-Ping Hou, Sylvia Krüger, and Charlotte Lohr

photo © Nils_Klinger

The following was announced on the windows of a small blue house at dOCUMENTA (13), the summer 2012 installment of the international art exhibition that takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany: The “60 wrd/min art critic” is available. Reviews are free of charge, and are written here on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays between the hours of 1 and 6 p.m. Lori Waxman will spend 25 minutes looking at submitted work and writing a 200-word review. Thoughtful responses are guaranteed. Completed reviews will be published in the Hessische/NiedersächsischeAllgemeine (HNA) weekly, and will remain on view here throughout dOCUMENTA (13).

Lori Waxman is an art critic and historian who lives in Chicago. For d13 she decamped to Kassel for three-and-a-half months, together with her husband Michael Rakowitz, an artist also included in the exhibition, and their daughter Renée, who at the time was two-and-a-half years old. Lori wrote a total of 241 reviews during the course of the project. A few of them were for artists whose work revealed their existence as parents; some were even for children.   

A book of the entire project was published by Onestar Press, with an afterword by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the artistic director of dOCUMENTA (13). It can be purchased in print or downloaded as a free PDF.  Cultural ReProducers is pleased to share a series of reviews excerpted from the project, which recognizes children and parents as relevant participants in cultural dialogue.

Yi-Ping Hou

60 WRD/MIN ART CRITIC // KASSEL // 230

Yi-Ping Hou
 Yi-Ping Hou and I have been sipping oolong tea for 20 minutes, as part of an artwork she calls “Serve Tea.” Her set is delicate and she uses it with sureness. Her three-year-old son Jasper flits around, wondering if it’s time to pour yet, time to paint. Are young children compatible with “tea,” a centuries-old practice meant to take the participants out of the space and time of quotidian circumstances? We discuss this and decide they are not. This feels painful but true. Is the self-conscious nature imposed by my open, public performance space compatible with “tea,” a ritual whose mastery involves slowing down and relaxing into intimate, subtle communion? We discuss this and decide it is not either. Finally, we take the wet, open tea leaves, scatter them on thick white paper, and together with Jasper’s help, ink them down in black and a bit of red. (Hou took up printmaking when her pregnancy forced her to stop using oil paint.) Would one of the Japanese masters Okakura writes about in “The Book of Tea” recognize or even appreciate our interaction? If he was a true master, then yes, if only for the deep honesty, flexibility and generosity that Yi-Ping Hou’s “Serve Tea” brought out in us all.

—Lori Waxman 9/12/12 4:06 PM

60 WRD/MIN ART CRITIC // KASSEL // 235

Sylvia Krüger

Sylvia Krüger
The compatibility of motherhood and art making is not a given, but it is excruciatingly important to raise as a possibility. Sylvia Krüger, a weaver and the mother of a boy who will turn three next week, is currently working out her own answers to its complicated questions. This feels like more of a necessity than a choice, as it similarly was for feminist artists like Mierle Laderman Ukeles and Mary Kelly beginning in the 1970s. Krüger, like her predecessors, works with and in her domestic and quotidian environment: she shreds and re-weaves used dishtowels; embroiders nighttime musings into her pillow (when finally there is enough quiet to think adult thoughts); builds the image of a house as a kind of feminist portraiture; spins yarn on a record-player bobbin, marking the constant passage of time; carves found sticks into hundreds of spools; and even fashions conventional, fairy-tale like tapestries. It is not easy to raise a child, and it is even more difficult to do this while making art; Krüger reveals these tensions with great honesty when she cuts up an unsettlingly chaotic tapestry, allows the record player to spin endlessly, and leaves the angry wood chips of her whittling spread across the floor, with three kitchen knives nearby. Redemption comes when these gestures and materials join together to form works of art.

—Lori Waxman 9/15/12 2:09 PM

Charlotte Lohr

60 WRD/MIN ART CRITIC // KASSEL // 213

Charlotte Lohr
Charlotte Lohr is six years old. She has made her first canvas, and it is a picture of a red bird. The bird stands dead center in the middle of a large white expanse, filling it with its round body, pointy beak, tail feathers, two feet and one eye. A phrase runs along the top of the chick’s head. From this description, you might imagine a sweet blob of red paint and some cheery ditty, all squashed onto a wee canvas. You would be wrong. Lohr paints her 90 cm square composition with a bold, thoughtful line, and her sense of restraint appeals. The bird isn’t colored in, and its schematic form feels original and cheeky. The caption, meanwhile, is not only stamped on in a nifty font, it’s an impudent play on one of the most annoying of sayings: The early bird catches the worm. Instead, Lohr wrote: I don’t give a shit about the early bird. This is surprising coming from a six year old, but also not. Children absorb and question everything in their environment, and the alternative maxim hangs in the Lohr family kitchen. So Lohr junior decided to interpret it and picture it. What’s so novel is the witty minimalism of her illustration, a style any grown-up would be hard-pressed to follow.

—Lori Waxman 8/25/12 2:00 PM

Also in this series:
60 WRD/MIN ART CRITIC // Walter Peter and Anna Yema Ditzel
60 WRD/MIN ART CRITIC // Julie Bernattz and Sofia Frank de Morais Barreira

CR Event Report: Division of Labor Opening & Co-Occupations Zine Release

This has been a busy season for Cultural ReProducers in Chicago - In November we came out en masse to celebrate the opening of the exhibition Division of Labor: Chicago Artist Parents at Glass Curtain Gallery, curated by and including a whole lot of remarkable Cultural ReProducers alumni (for the full list and curatorial essay, you can download the exhibition catalogue). The show had not one but two openings: an evening reception on November 19th, and an experimental family-friendly Saturday-morning party on the 22nd, which drew an

all-ages dance party with Tiny Cover Band

incredible crowd of artists and their families. While adults mingled over the snack table, Columbia College's Art Education Department kept the kids busy with a collage project based on included artist Anne Toebbe's layered domestic collage-paintings. Tiny Cover Band played an energetic set of tweaked indie classics on child-sized instruments, and at one point handed out small percussion instruments (maracas, bells and clappers) so everyone could join in. The result was a transformative all-ages dance party that brought everybody together on the dance floor.

One of a handful of recent exhibitions in which parenthood is a point of discussion, Division of Labor has already drawn some positive attention, including a Critic's Pick on Artforum.com and and a notable mention in the Chicago Tribune's Best Visual Art of the Year. Cultural ReProducers is excited to present the final installment of our childcare-supported event series there on January 31st. More on all that very soon.

Candida Alvarez on the relationship between family & abstraction

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On Wednesday, December 10th Cultural ReProducers launched its new zine, Propositions, Manifestos & Experiments, at Sector 2337 with the event Co-Occupations, a multimedia extravaganza organized with Caroline Picard that featured presentations by artists connected with both the zine and the Division of Labor show.

After introductions, Christa Donner kicked things off with the Cultural ReProducers

Manifesto and later shared an excerpt from Palle Nielsen's "Model for a Qualitative Society." Thea Liberty Nichols read from Ellen Lanyard's short essay in the influential M/E/A/N/I/N/G #12, Lise Haller Baggesen performed her new "Yo Mama" essay, Candida Alvarez shared a slideshow considering the influence of both motherhood and daughterhood in her work, Fred Sasaki's how-to videos created with his father and young son were screened, Claire Ashley delivered her own manifesto alongside images of relevant work, and Keiler Roberts brought her deadpan humor to the floor with a live comics reading. Husband-and-wife duo The Speers rounded out the evening with a thrumming electronic sound performance while their two-month-old baby dozed in the back room. All in all, it was a lively, jam-packed evening.

Lost in Living: Review and Online Streaming

We're pleased to present part one of a two-part series featuring filmmaker Mary Trunk's documentary “Lost in Living,” which can be streamed online free of charge through December 25th, 2014 at http://vimeo.com/67761940. Trunk does a remarkable job capturing the joy, exhaustion, and the many conflicts that arise as a result of being both mother and artist.  Don’t miss this opportunity to view an important film that accurately portrays many of the issues mother/artists deal with on a daily basis.

 by Christina LaMaster

Mary Trunk’s feature length documentary, Lost in Living, deals with the emotional and practical tensions which arise when artists become mothers. Trunk films and interviews four artists over the course of seven years. Two of them are young artists: Caren McCaleb, a painter and video editor, and Kristina Robbins, a filmmaker. These two women are close friends and experience pregnancy and the birth of their first children at about the same time. We are allowed to see first hand the impact rearing babies and toddlers has on their lives as mother/artists. The other two women featured are writer Merrill Joan Gerber and visual artist Marjorie Schlossman, both of whom have adult children and who reflect upon the impact of their young and growing families on their careers as artists. These reflections are more dramatic when some of their grown children speak of their childhoods, and recall some of the difficulties of being the child of a mother/artist.

What is so impactful in this film are the ambiguities expressed by these mother/artists—the need to be creative contrasted with the often mundane activities of child-rearing and house work; the feelings sometimes amounting to desperation when they speak about the interruption of their artistic careers and the difficulty of getting back on track; the cavalier dismissal by many in the art world of the value of motherhood; and the regret expressed especially by the older artists at the feeling that they neglected their children for the sake of their art.

Trunk’s own struggle with both motherhood and filmmaking inspired her to make the film, and her objective/observational role as a documentarian allows each woman’s journey to be understood. Lost in Living, does not make a case for choosing between motherhood and art.  Trunk does, however, with both hard-eyed realism and immense sympathy, show us how difficult it is to manage both. In this film mother/artists will see themselves and their struggles laid out before them and perhaps feel a little less alone, a little more recognized for their efforts. This documentary is a must-see for all artists, women, and mothers who may consider themselves “lost” in living.

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Christina LaMaster is a photographer, installation and video artist.  A fifth-generation Nebraskan, she has spent most of her life in the Midwest, teaching and holding various program and administrative positions at museums and community arts centers.  She now calls Central Illinois home, and recently earned her MA in Studio Art from Bradley University.  She is particularly interested in women’s issues, motherhood and the idea of the “maternal gaze.”  Chrissy is the mother of two college-aged children, and has spent the last 20 years attempting to find a balance between motherhood and art.   

Cultural ReProducers: Propositions, Manifestos, and Experiments

At long last, our first zine project, Cultural ReProducers: Propositions, Manifestos &

Experiments is finally in print. This risographed think-tank explores the intersection of contemporary artmaking and family life through text and images from 28 international artists published by and with the collective Temporary Services in glorious duotone with a centerfoldout poster of the Cultural ReProducers manifesto. Due to the multilayered nature of the zine (44 pages in 3 colors with a centerfoldout manifesto poster) it was painstakingly collated, folded and stapled by hand and there are just 400-ish copies in existence.

The zine is also available as a lovely e-book and archival PDFs at $2 each through the Temporary Services imprint Half Letter Press.

For those of you in Chicago, join us for the event Co-Occupations, a reading, curated bookshelf and zine launch co-organized with Caroline Picard for Sector 2337 on Wednesday, December 10th at 7:30pm (doors open 7pm) including a live performance by musicians/parents The Speers. The event is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Division of Labor: Chicago Artist Parents, curated by Christa Donner and Thea Liberty Nichols and on view through February 14th at Columbia College's Glass Curtain Gallery. Please join us if you can! Sector 2337 is located at 2337 N. Milwaukee Ave, Chicago, IL.

Propositions, Manifestos & Experiments features contributions by: Christa Donner, Candida Alvarez, Laura Berman, Andrew Yang, Lise Haller Baggesen, Keiler Roberts (Powdered Milk), Lenka Clayton, Jennie Temple (Project!! Wakaka!), Stephanie Diamond, Selina Trepp, Chiara Galimberti, Lauren Weinstein, Alberto Aguilar, Fred & August Sasaki, Orla Whelan (AtHomeStudios, the Mothership Project), Crystal Ann Brown & Eliot Hown (The Hown's Den), Libby Clarke, Rebecca Niederlander & Iris Anna Regn (Broodwork), Jane Marsching & Andi Sutton (Plotform), Kyle Schlie (S.A.C.K.), Melissa Potter, Claire Ashley, Andre Francke & Kim Dhillon (Invisible Spaces of Parenthood).

Collaborations: Melissa Scherrer + Maeve

Collaborations is an ongoing series of creative projects undertaken by artists with their children. Milwaukee-based artist Melissa Scherrer makes collages, paintings and photographs with her daughter Maeve as part of her larger body of work, included prominently on her website under Professional Collaborations. Melissa is also the producer and host of Mother Friday, a weekly internet radio talk show exploring the many complexities of mothering, fathering, and creativity. Find more at www.mscherrer.com

60 WRD/MIN ART CRITIC // Walter Peter and Anna Yema Ditzel

photo © Nils_Klinger

The following was announced on the windows of a small blue house at
dOCUMENTA (13), the summer 2012 installment of the international art exhibition that takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany: The “60 wrd/min art critic” is available. Reviews are free of charge, and are written here on Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays between the hours of 1 and 6 p.m. Lori Waxman will spend 25 minutes looking at submitted work and writing a 200-word review. Thoughtful responses are guaranteed. Completed reviews will be published in the Hessische/NiedersächsischeAllgemeine (HNA) weekly, and will remain on view here throughout dOCUMENTA (13).

Lori Waxman is an art critic and historian who lives in Chicago. For d13 she decamped to Kassel for three-and-a-half months, together with her husband Michael Rakowitz, an artist also included in the exhibition, and their daughter Renée, who at the time was two-and-a-half years old. Lori wrote a total of 241 reviews during the course of the project. A few of them were for artists whose work revealed their existence as parents; some were even for children.   

A book of the entire project was published by Onestar Press, with an afterword by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, the artistic director of dOCUMENTA (13). It can be purchased in print or downloaded as a free PDF.  Over the next few weeks Cultural ReProducers will share a series of reviews excerpted from the project, which recognizes children and parents as relevant participants in cultural dialogue.

Walter Peter

60 WRD/MIN ART CRITIC // KASSEL // 186

Walter Peter
Children live in another, parallel universe that sometimes overlaps but mostly conflicts with the adult world. In a series of large colorful paintings and high contrast pencil drawings made using digitally altered photographs of his two young daughters, Walter Peter envisions this realm of endless curiosity, rampant play and unmetered time. On this planet, when balls are dropped and roll, cause and effect is learned. When swings go higher and higher, excitement and risk are tested. How does this work? What does that do? How does it feel, taste, smell? The world is fascinating to children, and children are fascinating to adults. That’s partly why we have them. But children are also mischievous and careless. Any honest parent knows this, though few admit it. Peter does, in drawings whose unforgivingly dark pencils and blown-out details sketch the edge between children having fun and children being impish trolls.

—Lori Waxman 8/15/12 2:47 PM

60 WRD/MIN ART CRITIC  //  KASSEL  //  237

Anna Yema Ditzel
I love rainbows. Who doesn’t? But most of us, myself included, would be too unsentimental, or too afraid of appearing sentimental, or naïve, or guileless, to actually paint a picture of

Anna Yema Ditzel

one. For this, as for many other images and acts of the simplest joy and beauty, we need a child. And here we have one: Anna Yema Ditzel, age five, who loves to paint not just the large canvas she presents here but also playthings, tables and walls. Apart from the general loveliness of rainbows, which Ditzel certainly captures, and the accompanying pleasantness of a big green field and a bright blue sky dappled with plump white clouds, what distinguishes her painting from other similar representations is three-fold. Ditzel gives the rainbow in question more than the usual number of colors and arranges them in a novel order. She portrays the sun with not just yellow rays but also green ones. Finally, she signs her name without any restraint, using half the hues on her palette to write the letters A-N-N-A out twice, tall and energetic, as if they were horses running free across the grassy field of her imagination.

—Lori Waxman 9/15/12 3:15 PM

Also in this series: 
60 WRD/MIN ART CRITIC // Yi-Ping Hou, Sylvia Krüger, and Charlotte Lohr
60 WRD/MIN ART CRITIC // Julie Bernattz and Sofia Frank de Morais Barreira