ArtXDetroit | Art X Detroit is a unique celebration of the Kresge Arts in Detroit program ArtXDetroit

Check out sample works of the artists in the gallery below

Marcus Belgrave - Eminent Artists

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Marcus Belgrave

Eminent Artists

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PERFORMANCE 1: Jazz Development Workshop Youth Ensemble & Performance Film Clip, Community One

A youth performance with Jazz Master Marcus Belgrave – An ensemble composed of current students being trained and mentored, continuing the program he started in the early 70’s. At that time, his students were Geri Allen (piano), Robert Hurst (bass), Kenny Garrett (sax), and Karriem Riggins (drums), to name a few. Today’s ensemble consists of: Endea Owens (bass), Kavon Gordon (drums), Ian Finkelstein (piano) and Marcus Miller (sax), and Kasan Belgrave (clarinet). There will also be a short duet with Marcus and pianist Bill Meyer under a film on “One Hamtramck,” a project supported by Marcus & Joan Belgrave’s Jazz Development Workshop.

PERFORMANCE 2: Marcus Belgrave performs with legendary trumpet master and master percussionist from Ghana, Isaac Okyerema Asante

Marcus revisits his early 1970’s awakening to the effects of the African drums in American jazz with master Ghanaian drummer Isaac Okyerema Asante in a performance between American trumpet and African drums, bringing his sound to deep rooted African rythyms.

PERFORMANCE 3: Marcus performs with members of his 1970’s Collaborative Ensemble “Tribe.”

Original members include: Marcus Belgrave (trumpet), Phil Ranelin (trombone), and Wendell Harrison (sax). Joining the veterans will be Marcus’s protégé, Geri Allen (piano), Robert Hurst (bass), Ralph Armstrong (bass),and Karriem Riggins (drums). Opening pieces by composer Lawrence Williams, with dance choreographed by the Lisa McCall Dancers.

http://www.marcusbelgrave.net

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Charles McGee - Eminent Artists

Spirit Renewal

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Charles McGee

Eminent Artists

Spirit Renewal

Measuring 8’ x 22’, this newly commissioned work will be located in front of the Horace H. Rackham Memorial Building across from the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA). The work consists of two 4’ x 20’ dark gray coated aluminum panels positioned 6” apart, serving as the support system for this 56-piece sculptural configuration. Each layer extends ½ inch above the other. The variety of materials required to build this sculpture are a relatively new aluminum alupanel which is a decorative aluminum composite that is available in several thicknesses, colors, etc. It is comprised of 0.3 mm black and white aluminum sheet metal on either side with a solid polyethylene core, coated stainless steel, flat hexhead screws, ½ “ aluminum tubing, and welded framework. All structure units are attached with hexhead screws that fit into drilled holes that are tapped and countersunk into each succeeding layer. McGee’s Spirit Renewal promises to be a highlight of the future Midtown Loop Greenway Public Art Plan.

The dedication for Charles McGee’s sculpture, Spririt Renewal, will be held on Wednesday, April 6th, at 4:00pm, on the grounds of the Horace H. Rackham Educational Memorial Building located at 100 E. Farnsworth (at the corner of John R and Farnsworth Streets). A program will include remarks by the University Cultural Center Association, the Kresge Foundation, the Engineering Society of Detroit, and the Rackham Foundation of Engineering.

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Vince Carducci - Literary

The Art of the Commons: A Discussion About Contemporary Art in Detroit

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Vince Carducci

Literary

The Art of the Commons: A Discussion About Contemporary Art in Detroit

The “Do-It-Yourself” aesthetic of the Detroit scene has received international attention as of late in online, print, and broadcast media coming from as far away as Australia. The New York Times, Time magazine, Der Speigel, The Toronto Star, and the San Francisco-based design magazine Juxtapoz have all published feature articles on contemporary Detroit art and artists in recent months. The BBC and others have included the perspectives of local artists in their Detroit coverage.

Carducci asks, what makes current Detroit art unique? Where did it come from? Where is it going? This panel discussion will explore these topics and more from the point of view of the people who live it every day, local artists and other hometown observers of the Detroit scene. Artists and critics will discuss the broad range of art being produced in the City and reflect on the local conditions and history that have influenced it. The audience will be invited to take part in the conversation. Panel moderator and Kresge Fellow Vince Carducci is editor and publisher of the blog Motown Review of Art. He has covered the Detroit art scene for local and national publications for more than 25 years.

Panel Discussion: The Art of the Commons: A Discussion About Contemporary Art in Detroit
Panelists: Glenn Mannisto, Metro Times; and artists: Scott Hocking, Kate Daughdrill, and Amy Kaherl
6:00-7:30pm
College for Creative Studies – Anderson Auditorium

http://www.motownreviewofart.blogspot.com

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Tim Lampinen - Performing

HUMAN EYE & Timmy’s Organism

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Tim Lampinen

Performing

HUMAN EYE & Timmy’s Organism

HUMAN EYE & Timmy’s Organism will be performing at the Magic Stick. HUMAN EYE has been a working band since 2003. They play high energy, raw, and psychedelic cosmic punk. Timmy’s Organism is Lampinen’s solo project, three piece band. This can be considered experimental and “straight-up slimey, ugly, loved musick.” They are out for “the salvation of Rock-n-Roll.”

http://www.humaneyedetroit@myspace.com

Please note the following change in the schedule for Timmy’s performance on Saturday, April 9:

12:30 – 1:15 am – Majestic Theater Center – Magic Stick
Music Performance, Timmy Lampinen’s band, Timmy’s Organism. Human Eye will not be performing. This performance will be preceded and followed by a DJ.

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Susan Goethel Campbell - Visual

Detroit Weather: 365 days

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Susan Goethel Campbell

Visual

Detroit Weather: 365 days

Susan Goethel Campbell brings a video installation and a guide. Her video installation, Detroit Weather: 365 days, is a project that documents one year of weather in the City of Detroit. The West wall shows a half-year of weather starting from the winter solstice, December 21st, 2009 and ending at the summer solstice, June 21st, 2010. The East wall begins with the summer solstice and ends with the Winter solstice Dec. 21st, 2010.

The images were captured using a web cam placed on the 22nd floor of the Fisher Building, located in Detroit’s Historic New Center. One image was archived each minute, 24 hours a day for an entire year. Running at 30 frames per second, the video shows three different views of the City: the South has views of downtown and mid-town, the Southwest shows views of industry, Zug Island and the Ford Rouge complex, and the East shows the Detroit incinerator and Lake St. Clair.

Cloudspotting Detroit is a guide that focuses on the unique atmosphere of Detroit. The accordion style brochure highlights intriguing man-made clouds as well as those that are occurring naturally. The guide includes a key to identify cloud types and a map showing a bike route to interesting cloud spots in the City.

Susan will be participating in a panel discussion, scheduled for Thursday, April 7th, at the Guyton Studio located at 42 Watson, Detroit, MI 48201, entitled, Taking It to the Streets. This is an open discussion on environmental art, the impact such art has on the community and the environment and the motivations of the artists who create it.

She will also participate in an additional public discussion on Saturday, April 9th, at the Detroit Science Center – Toyota Engineering Theater. Joined by meteorologist, Dave Kook from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Susan Goethel Campbell will discuss her art project, Cloudspotting Detroit, which focuses on the city’s unique atmosphere. Seasonal videotaped segments will be screened and copies of the Cloudspotting Detroit guide will be distributed.

http://www.susangoethelcampbell.com
http://weather2250.com

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Steve Hughes - Literary

Stupor: a Treasury of True Stories

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Steve Hughes

Literary

Stupor: a Treasury of True Stories

For the last 16 years, Steve Hughes has been listening to people he meets in Detroit bars, diners, laundry mats and bus stops talk about their lives. He writes and then publishes the stories they inspire in his zine, Stupor. Their stories – of infidelity, drunkenness, disappointment, and, sometimes, dumb luck – are told like they’re being spoken from the barstool next to you, as raw as they are real. Stupor: a Treasury of True Stories is a collection of 14 issues designed by some of Detroit’s most talented artists in a unique collaboration that depicts a place and its people like no other publication of its era.

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Shiva Ahmadi - Visual

Oil Barrell #18 and Oil Barrel #19

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Shiva Ahmadi

Visual

Oil Barrell #18 and Oil Barrel #19

Ahmadi is fascinated with oil politics and the major role it plays in the world’s economic and political balance. She thinks that it is clear that competition for petroleum motivates a huge number of international conflicts as well as an equal number of relationships between nations that otherwise would not find cultural commonality. Painting on oil barrels helps Ahmadi to work out and to identify the political and economic complexity and instability that exist in the Middle East today. Look carefully at the images painted on the barrels and you will find not only beautiful patterns and designs deriving from Middle Eastern arts emphasized with reflective crystal beads, but also symbols of violence and conflict such as shields, faceless figures, arrows and fighting animals. Much of this iconography is influenced by Persian and Indian miniature painting. The shiny beads give an impression of the aesthetics of a kind of superficial life-style that derives from oil-wealth, as well as ideas of glory and dominance, while the bleeding bullet wounds in the body of the drums points to pretty obvious connections between the practice of violence and the desire for oil.

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Lynne Avadenka - Visual

Goes and Comes

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Lynne Avadenka

Visual

Goes and Comes

Lynne Avadenka’s art is inspired by the philosophical and physical presence of the book: as a repository of memory and loss, as a vehicle for transmitting transcendent information, as a singular object binding together a multiplicity of ideas. Her work is driven by the combined power of word and image, the notion that both word and images are formed from abstractions and that both are codes to be deciphered.

For Art X Detroit, Avadenka has created two separate, yet conceptually connected art works that expand upon the ideas mentioned above as part of her installation, Goes and Comes. The wall drawing and the accordion screen pieces are made from a combination of traditional (relief printing, letterpress printing), obsolete (typewriter) and contemporary (scanning and laser printing) print techniques. Included are collage elements from books that range from a French manual for machine made paper and a history book celebrating The Detroit News. The wall drawing expands the idea of the page, the accordion screens are book structure expanded into sculpture.

Lynne will also lead a Book Arts Workshop to 15 teens on Saturday, April 9th, on Wayne State’s campus in the Art Building, Room #354. Participants will fold, sew and glue together several different books to later fill with their own writing, drawings, or paintings. For more information on this workshop, please contact 313.420.6000.

http://www.lynneavadenka.com

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Invincible - Performing

Quantum Leap: Complex Science, Social Justice Movements, and Hip-Hop

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Invincible

Performing

Quantum Leap: Complex Science, Social Justice Movements, and Hip-Hop

Invincible + Waajeed will premier music from their upcoming album at the Detroit Science Center’s 4-D theater, along with live musicians Diana Nucera, Rick Robinson, and Gayelynn Mckinney, with special guests Monica Blaire and Finale. The performance will include a multimedia art installation by That’s That, and video projections by el iqaa.
Location: Detroit Science Center – Toyota Engineering Theater
Time: 9:00-11:00pm

This live production will be preceded by an interactive performance and projection-based workshop in the Planetarium. Some of today’s most groundbreaking artists and activists, including Grace Lee Boggs, Kathy Wan Povi Sanchez, Theory, and D. Blair will explore the connections between science and social justice movements.
Location: Detroit Science Center – Planetarium
Time: 7:00-8:30pm

http://www.EMERGENCEmedia.org

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Monica Blaire - Performing

“ALIVE:Detroit – exploring our connection from the inside out”

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Monica Blaire

Performing

“ALIVE:Detroit – exploring our connection from the inside out”

Monica Blaire believes that we are all connected in such a basic human way. Her performance, Alive:Detroit – Exploring Our Connection from the Inside Out, will explore those connections in an unconventional concert format with voice as the main vehicle. The goal is to create a show that concert goers are familiar with and gradually soften the barrier between audience and performer. Alive will be the debut of several performance pieces including (all tentatively titled): “everyone is talking, no one is listening” a work about dialogue and how misused it often is, an analog “musical suit,” “Blur the Line” and several other interactive musical explorations. We will explore our human connections through song and grow together as one.

http://www.Facebook.com/AliveDetroit

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Rick Robinson - Performing

Rick Robinson and CutTime Simfonica bring a Concert of Peace

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Rick Robinson

Performing

Rick Robinson and CutTime Simfonica bring a Concert of Peace

This concert shows classical music as a vibrant mode of expression even without a drummer. It features several works by Rick Robinson that are virtuosic, powerful, playful and funky as played by 6 string players from the (striking) Detroit Symphony Orchestra. With titles such as Pork ‘N Beans and Gitcha Groove On, Robinson builds bridges for the curious to wander deeply into classical music’s vast neighborhood. His big hit City of Trees is a poignant essay for his depressed hometown of Highland Park, MI and will by danced by Haleem “Stringz” Ar-Rasheed. His Elegy captures the devastation and loving memories of a colleague who lost his wife to cancer. His Gigue Rondo is a high energy festival of Bach-meets-rock for the solo oboe which will be played by DSO Principal Oboist Donald Baker. Valeria Montes will dance flamenco to transcriptions of Spanish music. A selection from Robinson’s Mighty Love collection shows his full understanding and appreciation of the traditional rules of classical music with new ways to bend those rules.

Rick Robinson has played bass in the Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) for 21 years. His work outside of the DSO is driven by the fact that most people who love music in this country avoid classical music for many reasons. As a black musician, he can draw people to their concerts by playing symphonic music and giving just as many reasons to open up to it. His transcriptions for chamber groups capture the energy, textures and charm of a large orchestra. His compositions offer the power, intimacy and excitement of the great romantic and post-romantic traditions refreshed by urban pop culture in very surprising ways, building bridges across the cultural divide. Robinson’s informal passion for classical gives curious music lovers pause to listen with new ears.

With the DSO famously on strike, in December Robinson began the Detroit chapter of Classical Revolution, a collective social enterprise of local volunteer musicians to hold free, informal, weekly chamber music readings in bars, coffeehouses and restaurants to make classical music part of the nightlife of Detroit. The response couldn’t be more apparent that people who otherwise avoid “clam” (classical music) appreciate its special qualities. Clam engages our imagination with adventurous stories without words when we identify with the melody and its episodes. It grabs us by the lapels, builds to a crisis and transforms us with its inevitable return and surprising changes. We can show that clam is for the masses… that clam is not just for Christmas anymore.

http://www.cuttime.com

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Chido Johnson - Visual

Installations: The Wire Car Parking Lot exhibition at Tech II; Video Projection: a dance for Diego; Sculptural Object: me, me, me

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Chido Johnson

Visual

Installations: The Wire Car Parking Lot exhibition at Tech II; Video Projection: a dance for Diego; Sculptural Object: me, me, me

Chido Johnson will be exhibiting two pieces at MOCAD, and will also have an installation at Techtown, along with a performance outside of the DIA for Art X Detroit. The two pieces at MOCAD are a video titled a dance for Diego and a small ebony carved tourist object titled me me me. The video is a documentation of a wire-car cruise on the historical Woodward Avenue performed to the formation of Detroit’s version of soul train, The Scene. The participants were requested to make their dream car and choose their favorite cruising song for the performance. The cruising music and wire-cars made by diverse communities within Detroit, its vicinity and others as far as Zimbabwe, will be exhibited to a scaled parking structure in the lobby of the old Dalgleish Cadillac Dealership, now Techtown. As a dance for Diego celebrates our community as individuals, me me me, originally a tourist object from Kenya which was then carved upon transforming it into a self portrait of the artist, questions the public’s assumptions of the individual. Having lived between two cultures, the United States and Zimbabwe, has led Chido’s work to persistently locate cultural spaces identified as other and different in an attempt to find physical or narrative performances to transform and negotiate a new sense of self, place and belonging.

http://www.wirecarcruise.com
http://www.chidox.com

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Corine Vermeulen - Visual

Recent photographs from the series Your Town Tomorrow, Detroit 2001 - 2011

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Corine Vermeulen

Visual

Recent photographs from the series Your Town Tomorrow, Detroit 2001 - 2011

Corine Vermeulen states that life in Detroit feels strangely futuristic. It is a prescient model of our failing post-industrial, post-urban culture and loss of civic life. But what does it mean to live in the aftermath of widespread cultural and economic collapse? How do people cope with it? What is the potential of all that vacant land? What would its use look like?

Her ongoing series of photographs, Your Town Tomorrow, explore new topographies and ways of urban life. Detroit is capable of offering these scenarios because of its place in our current socio-economic system, rather than despite of it. These images function as a glimpse into an alternate future – as a series of memories of the future – in which things could be different.

http://www.corinevermeulen.com

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Lynn Crawford - Literary

Simply Separate People, Two

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Lynn Crawford

Literary

Simply Separate People, Two

Lynn Crawford published Simply Separate People (a novel Harry Mathews described as “bewitching and original”) in 2002. Her next collection, Fortification Resort, was an oulipean inspired series of sestinas responding to visual art seen in the Detroit area. Now, with Simply Separate People, Two, she returns to the novel form. This book is full blown, character driven and includes her reworking/re-imagining of texts by Ernest Hemingway, Henry James and Virginia Woolf. According to the writer Peter Markus, Crawford “is a dead-on inventor of human dislocation. Her people, separated as they are from both themselves and the rest of the world, are skinlessly rendered by a writer who reminds us of who we are inside our own skins.”

http://www.lynncrawford.net/

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Matthew Olzmann - Literary

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Matthew Olzmann

Literary

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Bigfoot gets shot, a man writes a series of letters to a shipwreck, a dead body rides the subway, & NASA video transmission is picked up by a baby monitor.

Olzmann is interested in the figurative potential of the “absurd”, and how it can reveal new relationships between us and the world around us. He will be participating in two readings, including one with Vievee Francis and Rachel Harkai, and one with Chris Tysh. Olzmann will be reading poems from two different manuscripts-in-progress.

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Michael Smith - Visual

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Michael Smith

Visual

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Smith was born in Detroit in 1977. He received his BFA from The College for Creative Studies and MFA from Yale University School of Art. Smith’s work includes painting, sculpture, video, performance and mixed media installation. He has shown at Mary Boone Gallery and Clifton Benevento Gallery (New York), Marc Jancou Contemporary (Paris), KOW (Berlin) and just held his first solo museum exhibition at Monchehaus Museum in Goslar Germany in January 2011. He is currently adjunct faculty at both the College for Creative Studies and University of Detroit Mercy, and lives in Ferndale, MI, with his wife and son.

Smith’s project for Art X will be unveiled on Opening Night, along with any information pertaining to the work.

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Rod Klingelhofer - Visual

Stuffed: A Theory of Human Motivation

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Rod Klingelhofer

Visual

Stuffed: A Theory of Human Motivation

Rod Klingelhofer asks, “What do you want?”

In a consumer culture, he believes it is tempting for us to equate getting stuff with being happier. Stuffed: A Theory of Human Motivation questions that equation. Certainly, there is an amount of stuff required for well-being; but at some point the accumulation of more can become an end in itself.

Stuffed is a mechanized sculpture made of vinyl and steel that depicts the modern dilemma of life’s pursuits once basic needs are met. Operating like a grain elevator, ‘stuff’ accumulates at an upper level to the point of overflow. Conveyor belts collect and move the excess through the system, representing the cyclical nature of consumerism. Can the life we want be produced? Do our homes hold us? Does the car take us where we want to go? Do the phones connect us? What do you really want?

www.rodklingelhofer.com

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Louis Aguilar - Literary

The Troublemakers: The True, Epic Story of Diego and Frieda in Depression-era Detroit

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Louis Aguilar

Literary

The Troublemakers: The True, Epic Story of Diego and Frieda in Depression-era Detroit

The Troublemakers: The True, Epic Story of Diego and Frieda in Depression-era Detroit is a multi-media telling of the battle over Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry mural – a fierce controversy that nearly resulted in the whitewashing of Rivera’s masterpiece at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

The words said by Rivera and his wife Frida Kahlo—now one of the most famous artists in the world—have been preserved in archives and newspapers articles of the time.

Presented in Rivera Court and told in the form of a three-act play, community leaders and artists recreate Rivera’s and Kahlo’s impressions of Detroit. Other voices include architect Albert Kahn, an ardent supporter of the DIA, as well as some of the artwork’s fiercest critics.

Rivera loved Detroit and called Henry Ford “America’s greatest poet.” Kahlo considered Detroit a “shabby old village” plagued by poverty and racism. But Detroit is where Kahlo produced her first great art.

The Troublemakers also features more than 100 archival images, including unpublished images of Kahlo and Rivera at the DIA. An original musical score has been composed by Jessica Hernandez.

The archives have been provided by the DIA, The Detroit News, the Collections of The Henry Ford, Wayne State University’s Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs and the estate of Lucienne Bloch.

Please note the following change for the performance time of The Troublemakers:

8:00–9:00 pm – Detroit institute of Art – Rivera Court

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Russ Orlando - Visual

Dear Detroit

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Russ Orlando

Visual

Dear Detroit

Being born and raised in Detroit, most of Russ Orlando’s work deals with his reconciliation with the City. The insertion of himself becomes a conduit—for curiosity, for empathy, for social criticism and introspection. As a maker of moments for contemplation, his work is an attempt to reawaken humanity to itself.

This piece, Dear Detroit, is Orlando’s visual letter of consolation to the City of Detroit. It is represented in stages: birth, life, death and rebirth. His body will be present in the opening of the piece and the impression he leaves in the clay will be a reminder that he was once there. In the end, Orlando considers this piece hopeful.

www.russorlando.com

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Kristin Beaver - Visual

Hamtramck Circus

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Kristin Beaver

Visual

Hamtramck Circus

Kristin Beaver’s paintings in Hamtramck Circus are in loving memory of Jim Shaw, who passed away on December 5, 2010. They are a tribute to her friendship with him and his wife, Sandy Kramer, and are based on photographs Beaver took last August—windows into their Hamtramck summer. Jim often rode his motorcycle to chemotherapy, despite offers to take him to the hospital. He always said, Nope – I feel like I’m kicking the cancer’s ass a little more each time I ride the bike….

Beaver’s work could be considered a documentation of her life, using friends, acquaintances, and herself as subjects. In preparation for painting she takes hundreds of photographs, either from staged performances or candid situations. Beaver focuses on unique beauty—one moment someone looks stunning, and in the next vulnerable and awkward. An expression can be loaded, seeming euphoric, complacent, orgasmic, hysterical, and agonized all at once. While viewers might not know the subject personally, they can empathize or fantasize with the presented human image. Beaver has been interested in the investigation of pairs within one painting—people she considers “sidekicks”— but singular gazes and interactions between paintings are also a focus. Blurring lines between the present and the past through allusions to fashion photography and album cover art remains a source of exploration, while the history of painting coincides with her focus on sensuality, sincerity vs. parody, formalism, and color. Beaver continues to paint at a monumental scale in order to manipulate space and create an intense emotional atmosphere.

www.kristinbeaver.com

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Hartmut Austen - Visual

Wedge

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Hartmut Austen

Visual

Wedge

Hartmut Austen’s installation, Wedge, consists of two walls that form a V-shape and several oil paintings; as well as drawings that are attached to the inside and outside and the gallery wall. The structure is made of wood studs that remain visible. Unlike regular patterns used when framing partitions in architectural projects, the irregular placement of studs varies from one side to another. A platform is installed on top of the junction of both walls. The structure is somewhat reminiscent of the bow of a ship that imaginatively could also be climbed and used as a pulpit, for change of vantage point or play. Wedge is a synthesis of architectures, objects and forms found in Europe and America – for example billboards, playgrounds and German wood-frame houses – expressing linearity, fragmentation and the dynamic relationship of inside and outside. On a symbolic level, it expresses memory, play and change – things that Austen feels strongly relate to Detroit but also to his own studio practice.

Situated in a corner of the gallery at MOCAD, the structure however imparts a somewhat tragic expression, like a ship that lost its ability to move. The pictures, results of imagination and formal investigation, add another layer of expression and possibility. They are based on photographic source images culled from newspapers, Austen’s own snapshots and the Internet. Despite or because of its bulky appearance, Wedge also invites immersion and contemplation. When working on this project, Austen repeatedly thought of Caspar David Friedrich’s Wander above the Mist (1817-18) in the Hamburger Kunsthalle. This is Austen’s reference to him.

Many thanks to Graem Whyte for consultation and help with the installation of Wedge.

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Sioux Trujillo - Visual

memory, loss and labor

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Sioux Trujillo

Visual

memory, loss and labor

In my current body of work I’m working with industrial felt and thread because for me fabric holds a collective memory and I see it as a metaphor for the human condition in a post industrial city like Detroit. During the past 3 years I have worked with the concepts of hybridity of the artist in the 21st century and explored the labor of object making to develop my personal visual language. I focused on the deconstruction of memory and the meaning of loss, mourning and labor. Subtlety and Nuance are very important to my work because of the way I think the brain “sees” what is not there. My pieces are hand sewn allowing me to embed spiritual value in every piece. This allows the viewer to experience the seductive, low tech, haptic nature of my sculpture at a pre-industrial pace. This idea of labor is explored on multiple levels in my work: The labor of the artist creating the piece through repetition and obsessive construction, the labor that goes into the manufacturing of the raw materials, the materiality of the felt and the way it carries the human imprint and the sociological role of labor in a contemporary context

I believe that viewing works of art should call for attention and patience, as they push the bodily act of consumption into the mental act of contemplation. Visual art does not unfold in history like a film or a book: It exists all at once. Having no rate of consumption, it throws the viewer back to her own rhythms (or lack thereof), while the act of viewing gives no outward sign of comparison.

www.siouxtrujillo.com

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