July 2010

“Between Three Nations”

This multi- media installation is part of a series of collaborations I have been creating with my mother: as nomads we have dealt with issues of displacement throughout our lives. In the middle of this installation there is an image of a landscape including iconic buildings from different cities around the world in which we have traveled or lived, to create an ideal dream landscape.

I am a son of the Américas. Growing up among different cultures has colored my life and in turn has influenced my creative process. I create environments that pull viewers into fantastic and seductive experiences. I am interested in building collaborations with communities–artists as well as with their audiences. I call attention to social and current events in my work. I create narratives that can be followed by the viewer through exquisite visual images, non-verbal sound, fragmented events, the erotic flavor of my culture, the passion and comic man in the subject matters. The intention of the installations is to evoke memories, associations, discomfort, anger and to provoke conversations that evoke subconscious and conscious thoughts as well as a call for action toward changes that will stop the cruelty and madness that is destroying us all.

www.javierAlara.com

June 2010

I am a self-taught artist. For the past eleven years I have used discarded pieces of plastic, metal and cloth found on the streets of Chicago to create sculptures and assemblages.

In their scarred, bent, broken and crushed condition these pieces tell stories of the city. They represent cycles of life in the city. I work with found objects because they speak to me. Each piece contains not only a unique history but potential for aesthetic function.

I use objects that I find in antique shops, thrift stores, and garage sales, or that I find in the street and in people’s curbside junk piles. Sometimes things come together quickly and other times it takes years to find that missing piece that ties it all together. I love the randomness of it all.

I am deeply satisfied by creating. I aim to stimulate the viewer’s perceptual awareness of the beauty and value in the ordinary and to encourage creative imagination regarding reuse of materials in the hope that they will discard less and recycle more.

http://chicagoartistscoalition.org/salvadorcampos
scartbrute@gmail.com

May 2010
30 Days of Dinner Time

Visit Kimmy’s blog for a day-to-day photo diary! http://kimmynoonen.blogspot.com/

May 1, 7:05 pm

May 2, 7:47 pm

May 3, 7:10 pm

Every evening at exactly 7:00 pm, for 30 consecutive days, two people will enter this human-sized picture frame. Told only to bring their “dinner time,” they will spend one hour in this conceptually tight and vulnerable space; a space where action becomes art, art becomes self-conscious and the viewer is asked to think on the complex structures found in simple everyday activities.

30 Days of Dinner Time investigates the space between action and art, personal and private, and viewer and object.

Please come daily to experience a unique Dinner Time, May 1-30 from 7-8pm.

To contact this artist: kimmynoonen@gmail.com

April 2010

“A que hora termina?” “When Does It End?”

This piece was created to recognize the destructive effects of America’s un- sustainable and un-winnable “war on drugs.”

For over 40 years America has poured its resources into a conflict that has propped up foreign governments that have violated human rights, and made criminals out of individuals at home who are guilty of nothing more then smoking a plant whose medicinal, spiritual and recreational use has been know for centuries.

Now Mexico is at the epicenter of the conflict. As American dollars and guns flow south the country is engaged in an internal war. The vast profits to be made in the cultivation, and trans-shipment of illicit drugs has produced millionaire thugs, corrupted officials, caused thousands of deaths and torn the fabric of Mexican society apart.

Now is the time to decriminalize Marijuana and to begin a serious re-examination of our entire drug policy.

If not now, when?

To contact this artist: fholla@artic.edu

March 2010

A Glass Prairie

The tradition of beaded flowers dates back 500 years. Originally fashioned by Italian peasants from beads considered flawed and rejected, elegant arrangements of flowers were fashioned for the graveside. The craft became popular during the Victorian period with the first publication on the subject. Soon every fashionable home had to have a beaded floral arrangement.

As with every medium, its popularity has ebbed and waned, but memorial arrangements have remained a constant, particularly in France. Unlike live flowers or silk flowers, beaded flowers do not fade. They delight the eye as they twinkle in the sunlight. They honor those we mourn.

I am working on an installation, a glass prairie filled with flowers and grasses rarely seen in today’s world, but which are critical to the well being of our fragile ecosystem. Each stalk is placed in a glass beaker, representing man’s intervention, for good and bad, into our landscape. As I slide each bead into place, I offer a prayer for the prairie’s ongoing future and solidify my commitment to its wellbeing.

Though bead embroidered gardens dominated my focus of study years ago, this is my first foray into a sculptural format on the subject. I return to the subject after five years of volunteering as a Master Gardener with the University of Illinois Extension. Unlike my previous work, the scene I choose is wild, not domestic. It can be harnessed, but not controlled.

I mourn what has been lost, but like spring’s return after a long winter, I have hope for the future.

www.lbostudio.com