Composite

In preparation for our next issue, Aberration, due out this month, I felt it would be helpful to breach the most basic form of Glitch/electronic based art: The Gif. Like a paint by numbers, anyone can make a Gif that will impress viewers and readers of Reddit across the developed world, if only they understand the key.

Gif’s are made quite easily, with only a novice understanding or adobe Photoshop. Create some layers, turn on the animation panel, make a tween, BAM! You will be all over the computer screens of people avoiding their actual responsibilities. [For a more detailed explanation head here: http://creativetechs.com/tipsblog/build-animated-gifs-in-photoshop/]

However… much like any fine art form, the skills are not enough; to really make it in the Gif world, you need a quality topic and goal. Hopefully over the next few images I can help get your eye well trained for the right concept.

1. One obvious way to win fans over the internet, is to appeal to their previously mentioned desire to avoid actual responsibilities. Leaving your dog to tend the baby? Obviously a hit.

2. Creating a gif to highlight a moment in pop culture history is another useful example. Something happened on TV? It’ll probably be even funnier the next day, week, month, year, etc, there after on the internet.

3. If you’re new to the Internet all together, its important you are aware that “cult following” topics, such as a TV show SO NERDY it lasted only 9 seasons, makes for mega hits on your Google Analytics.

4. See number 3, and assume anything about nerds is also just as “nerdy”. Even if half of American saw the movie three times in theaters. Seriously. I did.

5. Much like nerds, space and antiquated pop culture are guaranteed gems. President Obama killed the space program, this means space it free for unique people to explore.

6. Sometimes Gifs are actually closer to true animation. Almost always they include cartoon gore, which we all agree is entertaining.

7. Gif’s can also be art. Or about art rather.

8. There is always the often misunderstood genre of “journalism Gif” in which, someone takes something awesome someone did, like break dancing, and turn it into an animation to pass around.

9. See #5. See #8.

10. Lastly, the truest truth of the internet: anything with cats is the best. A cat as a DJ. The best ever. Except for if the cat was in space.

Post by Zach

Smart Museum of Art

at the University of Chicago

through June 10^th

Just as we explored the convergence of food and art with No. 5 Omnivorous, the Smart Museum of Art has done so with Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art. All of the work in Feast, which is from the 1930s to the present, centers around the act of sharing food with each other, using this everyday experience to have a conversation about how we relate to each other and the food that we put in our bodies. It makes sense that most of the show is made up of remnants from performances, which can be difficult to translate in video, sketches, and props.

Before even entering the gallery, you are greeted with teaspoon of strawberry preserves. This Serbian tradition is a sweet introduction to the theme of hospitality, etiquette and generosity that can be found in the other work. Some highlights of the show, for me, were Mella Jaarsma’s “I Eat You Eat Me” and Laura Letinsky’s still life photographs of tables after meals.

Mella Jaarsma, photo documenting performance of I Eat You Eat Me, 2002.

Mella Jaarsma’s “I Eat You Eat Me” is an ongoing performance piece she began in 2002 in which volunteers share a meal by feeding each other. First they wear a special table of sorts that Jaarsma created: it consists of a metal tabletop (for two or six people) with spaces carved out for plates and drinks, and is connected to bibs for each person to wear. This way the table rests on the diners’ legs as they eat. Each diner orders food for their partner, and feeds each bite to them. The diners have to be careful not to move too much, since they are connected to the table and each other, and they must become sensitive to the rhythm and eating habits of their partner. With this intimate experience, Jaarsma wants each person to “get into the skin of the other.” While feeding the other person, she wants you to think about how the other person tastes the food.

Feast features the apparatus used in the performance, and video documentation of some of the performances. You may also become part of this ongoing project by checking out the bibs-and-table at the Smart Museum Café.

Laura Letinsky, "Rome," 2009.

At first glance, Laura Letinsky’s photographs seem like snapshots of a messy dinner table, but it doesn’t take long to realize they are more than that. For example, “Rome”, 2009, shows the sensual opulence of a meal that includes fancy pink plates, runny egg yolks, and prawn shells. The photo is at once natural and extraordinary, because we create leftovers daily, but they are not often viewed larger than life and with such careful composition. Letinsky’s photos made me want to take the time to appreciate the beauty of leftover food, though “Rome” is more about the tension between food as nourishment and overindulgence.

Feast felt more like eating at a fancy modern restaurant than your everyday meal: you didn’t always know what you were eating, much of it was good, some of it was weird, and instead of feeling stuffed at the end, you are left wanting more, which is about as successful as a show like this can be. Thankfully, the Smart Museum has included many related programs throughout the run of Feast, helping to connect the art on the walls to the viewers (and their stomachs).

Feast is in its final week, so be sure to check out the show, along with two remaining events:

The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art

Thursday, June 7th, 5:30pm

Free beer will be offered at the bar installation in the exhibit as a continuation of Tom Marioni’s salon project that he began in 1970. Chicago’s theater collective The Neo-Futurists will be guest bartenders.

Ice Cream Social

Sunday, June 10^th, 2pm

The closing party for the show will include ice cream cake with special designs by artist David Robbins.

There are also several ongoing events: http://smartmuseum.uchicago.edu/join-the-feast/.

Post by Suzie

It was the need to runaway that compelled and invigorate the adolescent us. The yearning to escape humdrum days of painted scenery and aromatics that covered the seediness of sights too profane and provocative to share with others there, but it was universally felt and understood too damn well. To escape home meant escaping the demons that lived within us, but perhaps it only stowed them away, making room for others to occupy that space.

In Toni Morrison’s Home, Frank Money is a young black man that escapes the humdrum town of Lotus, Georgia for the battlefield of the Korean War only to return with PTSD and the new charge of rescuing his sister Cee from a Confederate sympathizing doctor for whom she worked for. Along the way, he must confront the demons of war and of his hometown plagued by Southern hatred in the 1950s as personified by the brutal murder of a colored man.

Although the novel is brief, 160 pages, its brevity is beautiful. Morrison is a noted master of story telling that within a few sentences, the poem at the beginning (an allegory of a man confounded by why his key opens a shadowy looking lock on a strange house), for example, sets the mood and setting without it feeling forced or contrived.  Her economy of language is outstanding, removing unnecessarily sentimental and flowery imagery for that of rawness so true that one can hear the braying of horses that haunt Frank. Morrison’s concise word choice is just one element that gives the story weight.

Home presents revolving viewpoints of Lotus and life that crowns the main plot involving Frank and Cee. At first, those that seem vicious, distant, and stark antagonizing characters in the lives of Frank and Cee are soften through this Faulkner-esque device. Highlighting dreams deferred and loves lost, motives for these characters sullen and misplaced retaliatory behavior are revealed. They are not villains waiting to be vanquished, but people of unfortunate luck that are dealt with by the degrading nature of human life. Yet, all characters are redeemable, but they must fight for redemption. As the narrator points out in the voice of Cee, “She wanted to be the one the rescued her own self. Did she have a mind, or not?” This is not just a statement for her, but rather every character in the book including Frank.

Morrison sidesteps the dichotomy of good versus evil by positing that the citizens of Lotus are the product of southern 1950s racism illustrated by Cee’s medical abuse at the hands of a wealthy Confederate sympathizing doctor for whom she worked for. Her exploitation brings to mind the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, a government sanctioned experiment in which many poor black men were subjected to exposure to syphilis. The actual villains of Lotus and its citizen are not flesh and blood, but ideas turned laws in the racist south.

As Michiko Kakutani of the New York Times states about Morrison’s book, “This haunting, slender novel is a kind of tiny Rosetta Stone to Toni Morrison’s entire oeuvre.” Indeed, within this novel breathes excellent character development, storytelling, and the ability to set the mind aflutter that can be found in any of her books but shows its mastery through a concise use of language within these pages.

Toni Morrison’s Home was publish through Knopf Publishers and became available on May 8. Her book is available through local and retail book sellers now.

Post by Xavier

Greetings from sunny Oakland! I’m here now visiting fellow editor Zach Clark, nearing the end of my Art-cation. From Seattle through Oregon, and now in the Bay Area, I have made a grand tour of northern west coast art. (Sorry, LA, I couldn’t take any more time off work.)

Growing up in the Midwest, and never having gone past the rocky mountain range, this past couple of weeks has been very exciting for me, seeing an entirely new ocean. My first stop was to visit my sister in Seattle.

This is a view of  the iconic Space Needle and the Olympic Sculpture Park. Fun Fact: this year is the 50^th anniversary of the Space Needle, which was created for the 1962 World’s Fair. In honor of this, the top of the Needle has been repainted to the original orange-y “Galaxy Gold.”

The Olympic Sculpture Park is a visitor-friendly place to relax, mingle with the artwork, and have a spectacular view of the Puget Sound. The largest and most visible piece is Alexander Calder’s The Eagle. Red chairs painted in the same hue are scattered around the park for visitors to enjoy. My personal favorites of the park are the Eye Benches of Louise Bourgeois, and Claes Oldenburg’s Typewriter Eraser, Scale X, which I affectionately refer to as the “pizza cutter/baster.”

My next stop was the EMP Museum, which houses galleries and interactive exhibits about music and science fiction. The first thing to note is the beauty of the architecture, designed by Frank O. Gehry, who I immediately recognize from Chicago’s own Jay Pritzker Pavilion. Inside the museum, though, I really enjoyed their look into the history and theory of the horror movie in Can’t Look Away: The Lure of the Horror Film.

I ended up my Seattle art parade at the Seattle Art Museum (SAM). I really felt connected to the museum’s curatorial style and saw striking similarities to how we curate for Composite. Their exhibits are always a comparative conversation. For example, in one room was a collection under the title “Burden of History”, grouping the work thematically, rather than by genre or style.

“Burden of History” reflected on how all of history and the history of art affect those making work today.

“Artists struggle continually with the burden of what has come before them and how to make new contributions to the field. Likewise, most strive to create art—whether socially, culturally, or politically—that addresses the times in which they live. To find a  path that incorporates all of these concerns is one of the greatest challenges contemporary artists face, and in this room one can discover a surprising range of innovative solutions to the problem.”

Above: Some/One, 2001, Do-Ho Suh (made of military dog tags) and St. John the Baptist, 1988, Jeff Koons

This style of curation was found throughout the building, in rooms such as the glass room, where contemporary glass artwork—such as Goblet by Chihuly on the right—were shown in comparison to ancient roman vessels made by Julius Alexander in 3^rd Century A.D. Another exhibit housed ancient Greek pottery and sculpture next to contemporary vessels as well.

Another aspect about the museum that really made an impression on me was the emphasis on American art, and even more specifically to Pacific Northwest art. A great example is Chihuly, a great Seattle glass artist. I also particularly enjoyed this  American Landscape of a fictionalized Puget Sound: Puget Sound on the Pacific Coast, 1870, Albert Bierstadt.

And so concludes Seattle.

On my way down to the San Francisco Bay area, I passed through Oregon, stopping in Eugene to visit the studio of my good friend, Katherine Spinella, who is working on her MFA through the University of Oregon.

Katherine is a Midwestern girl as well; she even grew up in the area in Michigan where I was born. Her greatest influence from the move to the west coast and the art found over here is the use of color. Her color palate creates a visual sound as she uses objects to “draw” in a space.

The last stop on the art train is here, in SF Bay. My gracious host Zach is showing me the Bay Area art scene. First off we visited artMRKT.

We noticed a growing trend of the use of books as materials and subject matter, which was neat to see, and made us think of one of our other editors, Joey. While there, Zach and I both purchased our own copies of Infra by Richard Mosse, who photographs in the Congo with old infrared film. It is nothing short of amazing. The surreal qualities of the pink landscapes reinforce the surreal political situation of that area. Last but not least, my new favorite artist discovery is Scott Hove, who made the above cake sculptures.

Today, Zach took me by his studio, which is a really great space, with great facilities, and great artists, including Giles and Jeanne—Giles will have work in the upcoming issue, and Jeanne was featured in No. 6 Process. I am greatly privileged to have met them on this trip, along with all of the artists and writers who came tonight to our SF Bay meet up! This trip has been amazing for me, and I’m so glad to have topped it off having a few drinks with some of our contributors!

Thanks for reading,

Kara

In the spirit of You Are Here, we are bringing you another interview with a Composite contributor. This week, we sat down with Danielle Sepulverez to find out where she is at and what she’s been doing since her essay was published in No.6 Process.

Composite: Your memoir, Losing It: A Semi-Scandelous story of an ex-virgin, was recently published by Bryce Cullen Publishing.  What made you decide to go the route of self-publishing?

Danielle Sepulverez: Years of disappointment!  No seriously, I had agents interested in my work but publishers were resistant because they said my memoir straddled genres and would be difficult to market.  I kept hearing, “it’s so well written and funny, but…” and since I’m not a patient person I felt that the only way to get it out to the masses was to self-publish.  I knew if I waited and another book similar to mine ended out on the market I would always kick myself for not taking the iniative.  Self-promotion never was a deterrent, in fact regardless of whether you do get published by a traditional house you need to self promote, so I would be doing all the same things I’m doing now.

DS: Oh boy.  This is a tough question.  I made sure that everything revolved around me.  (That sounds conceited!)  But, I felt that if I wrote everything to the point of how I observed it, how I experienced it and how I felt about it, then that was the validation behind it.  I know my mother isn’t thrilled about some of the conversations I included in the book, but I needed to include them to show how I felt at that particular moment.  I really didn’t leave any pertinent details out of the book.  I feel like everything that mattered, whether or not it portrays me in the most positive fashion, ended up in the book.  I will say that I left out a few other heartbreaking situations with Matt Ryan that I experienced because it wasn’t essential to the point of the book. The ones that mattered were all in there because they directly related to my main message.  I didn’t need to demonize him to get my point across.

CO: For anyone that intends to self-publish their own book, can you give us a little bit of insight as to how you are going about promoting your memoir?  Any nifty tricks you’ve learned along the way?

DS: I feel like I’m still learning too!  What I can say is find organizations that share your message or your niche and talk to them. Get involved with their events.  Talk to people wherever you go.  I was being interviewed for a job and by the end of it, the woman interviewing me was logging onto Amazon to purchase my book.  You never know who you’re going to connect with and word of mouth has been amazing for me and I’m so grateful. Friends of my friends whom I’ve never met send me emails asking if I’m writing a sequel and tell me how much they love LOSING IT.  Word of mouth is priceless.

CO: You act, you write, you’re a filmmaker.  How do you find time for all your creative endeavors, and do you ever feel like one overshadows the other?

DS: It’s like dating.  When you really want to see someone, you make the time to make it happen.  It’s difficult when you have to work to make money in order to have the time to create your own projects, but I’m learning to make it work and prioritize so that I’m doing what I want to be doing as often as possible.  Writing probably overshadows everything.  I’m a novice producer, director and actress, but I’ve been writing creatively since I was six years old when my dad gave me my first diary.

CO: Do you have any plans and/or want to adapt Losing It for the screen? If someone were to make a feature out of it, who would you want to play you?

DS: I do want to adapt it!  A small group of friends and I collaborated and put together a six minute short film loose adaptation for the film festival circuit, but particularly Tropfest and the Hamptons International Film Festival.  We’d like to generate interest so that a production company will want to make a feature.  Everyone asks me who I would want to play me!!  I have a hard time deciding, but I love Mila Kunis and I think Shailene Woodley from The Descendants is really talented, so those two would be my fantasy choices.

CO: What projects are you working on now?  Anything your fans should be looking out for in the future?

DS: I’m writing a sequel to Losing It, so I hope to finish that over the next couple months, as well as producing and directing a one act play for the Strawberry Festival in NYC this summer.  We just wrapped on our short film adaptation of Losing It and now I’m in pre-production for another short film called “The Family Way” that has the potential to be a web series.  I’m also editing a work in progress memoir for my good friend Emily Walsh entitled Beautiful Disaster that chronicles her experiences with substance abuse and anorexia.

You can snatch a copy of Losing It in paperback or Kindle version here.

Joey

Haiku No. 30, April 22, 2012.

One of what will be Guillermo Delgado’s 100 haikus for his Haiku-In-Residence project with North Branch.

I’ve had the privilege of having No.7 You Are Here artist Regin Igloria as a teacher at Marwen, just one of the places where he has taught.

In addition to being an artist and teacher, Regin is the Director of Artists-In-Residence at The Ragdale Foundation in Lake Forest, IL, and in September 2010 he founded North Branch Projects, a community bookbinding space in the Albany Park neighborhood of Chicago, IL.

After the release of No. 7 You Are Here, Regin answered a few questions about his experiences so far with North Branch Projects, including an ongoing project by Guillermo Delgado being shown there, “Haiku-In-Residence: Daily Conversations with Nature.” The Haiku project will also include a workshop on Sunday May 20th. (See more information below.)

Composite: What inspired you to start North Branch Projects?

Regin Igloria: I was very frustrated with my relationship to the contemporary art world, mostly because the people I grew up with were not involved with the part of my life that involved art and art making. The further I pursued a career in the arts, the more I seemed to move away from those important people. I wanted to create a crossover, a place where everyone could see the value of creativity in their lives and in society as a whole. I took everything that I know and love—teaching, making books, and hanging out with others—and put it all together in a storefront where I could continue to share it with others.

CO: What are your main goals for the organization?

RI: The main goal of North Branch is to bring people together to share their work, ideas, time, energy, skills, and drive with other people in an inviting setting. We want to allow people the opportunity to make something that is beneficial on many levels, and get them excited about it. Hopefully it will make their day. The book arts just happens to be the way we choose to make it happen.

CO: What has been most surprising to you in your experiences with North Branch Projects so far?

RI: The most surprising thing has been how appreciative people have been about being in the neighborhood. They literally say “thanks for being here,” which goes a long way. I’ve never doubted how important art is, but since I’ve started operations at North Branch, I am that much more a believer in the gift economy, the value of conversation, and the deeper meaning of community.

CO: Where do you see the organization going in the future?

RI: I would like to see North Branch become completely immersed in the Albany Park community, which means becoming a creative resource for all of my neighbors, especially the families within walking distance, the local schools, and the businesses up and down Lawrence Ave. I also envision a much wider breadth of collaboration, which has from the very beginning been the most worthwhile experience of running a space like this. I’d like to work with people in fields that are in the opposite spectrum of the art world, people who are as far removed from our own practices as much as possible to see what the outcome would be. I’d like to test several theories of interaction between different people and truly challenge
not only a particular audience but also the individuals I work with and myself.

CO: What is unique about the neighborhood North Branch is located in?

RI: The unique thing about Albany Park is the mix of people. And the “mix” is really deeply rooted in how far the people want to take it: there’s ethnic diversity, certainly, but I think it goes beyond trying to define where people come from. It’s the one kind of neighborhood in the city where people can’t be judged or stereotyped. Everyday I look out the storefront windows and there are so many kinds of people passing by—it’s truly the kind of place I would want to live—I can’t figure it out and that’s what keeps it interesting for me.

CO: Who is North Branch Projects for, and how can they get involved?

RI: North Branch is for anyone who wants to share ideas and learn new things along the way. Even if making books isn’t your thing, you can take something away from a “community binding” experience. I suggest people attend any of our community binding sessions to get involved and learn about what takes place in the studio. We offer this six days a week (Mon-Thurs 6-9 p.m. and weekends from 1-7 p.m.) and it’s completely free. Over time, and through the process of making books for our Neighborhood Archive, visitors become more familiar with the working process of other artists. If the process is something that is compelling enough to take to the next level, we have classes and workshops that are offered regularly throughout the year.

CO: How did the haiku project with Guillermo come about?

RI: Guillermo and I go back a while. We have taught together and run together, and have had many long conversations. He has always been an influence on me and the work I do, so it was a natural collaboration. I noticed Guillermo posting haikus regularly on Facebook, and I thought they were quite poignant: personal and to the point. In a more universal way, he would often take into account the daily happenings of the world around him—such as the news—and make it seem that much more important to consider. I felt like this was something that should be shared with others outside of the internet.

I had the idea of using a light box as a window gallery display a long time ago. Ideally it would have been a home-made version that would be about 3’ x 4’ feet, but due to time and budget constraints, I just used an old light box and hung it from our storefront sign, and transferred printed text with a Sharpie onto Mylar sheets. I invited Guillermo to send me a series of haikus for about a month, but as we discussed it, he got excited about the possibility of turning this into a longer project that could be incorporated into his thesis work. He proposed to send me a haiku for 100 consecutive days, lead a haiku workshop, and help North Branch self-publish a chapbook of his collection.

CO: How does North Branch Projects relate to your personal art practice?

RI: Everything about North Branch Projects is directly related to my art practice. When I talk about the creative process to visitors and guests, I am really sharing my ideas about my own art. Physically, the space is my studio, and I live upstairs from where I work. Psychologically, I am vested in it as much as a work of art. The drawings I make are slow-going and have a lot to do with this labor of love, much like binding books. In general, every aspect of my life is based on each other. I do not separate work from life, work from play, and so on and so forth.

Here is more information about the Haiku-In-Residence project and the related
workshop:

“Haiku-In-Residence: Daily Conversations with Nature,” is an artist residency project
by Guillermo Delgado in collaboration with North Branch Projects. Guillermo Delgado,
an interdisciplinary artist, reflects on daily life – annotating the wisdom in nature through
a daily practice of haiku poetry. Since March 24th, and for the 100 days following, North
Branch Projects will exhibit Mr. Delgado’s sequential haiku articulations in its storefront
window. In addition, the collected texts and images will be available for viewing on
North Branch’s website and on the artist’s blog. A hand-bound book collection of haiku
poems will become part of North branch Projects’ Neighborhood Archives and available
for viewing at the end of the residency.

Haiku Hike Workshop
Sunday May 20th, 2012 1:00 P.M. to 3:00 P.M.
North Branch Projects, 3550 W. Lawrence, Chicago

“Join us for an afternoon workshop of walking, chalking, crafting haiku, and bookmaking
in this fun and family-friendly two-hour event. With the help of artist Guillermo Delgado

and the North Branch Projects staff, participants of all ages will construct a handmade
book for their very own haiku. This event is open to the public – no registration
necessary – and donations of any amount will be accepted. All monies collected at this
event will go toward the support of North Branch Projects – a community bookbinding
facility.”

For more information about the workshop and project, please visit:

North Branch’s website: http://www.northbranchprojects.com

Artist’s blog: http://waxingcresentmoon.wordpress.com

Email your questions to:

Guillermo Delgado guillermo@gdelgado.com

North Branch Project northbranchprojects@gmail.com

Mother Anne Lee, 2011. Graphite on Paper

Shortly before the release of No.7 You Are Here, I was able to meet contributor Jenny Mullins at my standard “New Friend Meeting Space” (Rosemunde’s Sausages, in the Mission, SF). The way in which Composite and Jenny came together to be able to work together has been an interesting story for sure, involving mutual friends living in a remote town in Peru, and a future re-location to San Francisco, the half home base of Composite. Shortly after meeting up, Jenny took a few moments from her busy schedule to answer a few questions for us.

Composite: Growing up and getting your BFA in Texas, your MFA in Baltimore, a year in India, mixed with residencies and travel in multiple locals, your life and practice has taken shape all over. How much does your location influence your work?

Jenny Mullins: My work, in a lot of ways, is fueled by travel.  Understanding how different cultures relate fascinates me and I’m addicted to the process of experiencing a place first hand.  It makes it real for me and that, in turn, informs my art.

CO: Bodies of work like “The Dharma Project” are quite obviously and admittedly formed directly out of a locationaly privileged residency. Is this typically how you approach residencies and extended stays in specific places, or did your interest in India/south eastern religion influence the desire to go to India?

JM: My interest in India slowly developed over time through personal relationships.  I started to pay very close attention to what the American ‘idea’ of India really was.  Even then, I saw a distinct disconnect between the American idea of India and what I perceived then as the reality.  It was a natural inevitability that I would actually travel to India and experience it in a more firsthand manner.

In a way, I traveled to India to learn more about my own culture.  By gaining a better insight into what India, as a culture, was actually like, I could understand in a greater way, how the American ‘social imaginary’ of India came about.

CO: Drawing and painting is only a portion of your practice. How does your 3-d and time-based work compare to your 2-d work? Do they come to exist from a similar place, or do you prefer to keep these two practices separate?

JM: The two practices inform each other.  While the two dimensional work is more intuitive and more about upholding and then subverting tradition, the three dimensional work represents the same ideas freed from these limitations.

I create the three-dimension work so that I can create something that’s more participatory.  While I will always have a place for more traditional work, I like creating experiences that are interactive.  In this way, you can experience a three-dimensional work and have a greater insight into a two-dimensional work.

CO: Living and working in cities such as DC and Austin provide for a smaller network to exist within compared to somewhere like New York or LA. How has being in a tighter knit city such as these affected your work and the economy with which you exist in?

JM: I like medium sized cities and I feel that tighter knit communities such as DC, Austin and now San Francisco, allow you to get involved relatively quickly.  There’s room to grow and affect change in these sorts of communities.

CO: Coming up you have a residency at Kimmel Harding Nelson-Nebraska City followed by a permanent relocation to San Francisco. How do you see this cross-country shift affecting your work? Do you have any plans for work based on these events and locations?

JM: I’m excited to drive across the country.  It’s been a while since I’ve the opportunity and the time to do this. It’s a very freeing experience, and allows you the opportunity to experience the countryside in a granular way that plane travel just doesn’t allow.

Check out Jenny’s contribution to No. 7 You Are Here, or see more of her work on her website.

What does it mean to die with dignity? Is it that you have a say in how or when you die? Or in what state your mind or body are in when the event happens? Perhaps the most unnerving element of dying isn’t the eventual death, but rather the path marred by pain, loss of bodily as well as mental function, and being memorialized as a bedridden patient heavily medicated and assisted by cold machinery. To die with dignity, then, is regaining the power death has over oneself by making it a choice rather than a process.

This is the thesis that How to Die in Oregon arrives to.

In 1994, Oregon became the first state in the U.S. to make physician-assisted suicide a permissible act. The only other places allowing such action were Switzerland and the Netherlands at the time.

Director/Filmmaker Peter Richardson elects the use of a videotaped assisted suicide, similar to a home video, as a prologue to the film. By using this, we are engaged because of the symbolic and cultural significance of home videos as a comforting and familiar remembrance of events past. This technique is successful in presenting an unsettling, yet fascinating death of an elderly man as he drinks a prescribed elixir mixed by a nondescript, plainly dressed woman without hesitation. He has gained control over the one thing that his illness has taken away from him, death on his own terms amongst friends and family. The thesis has unfolded.

What comprises the film’s structure are vignettes of those with terminal illnesses (a veteran T.V./radio host whose vocal box must be removed, a man suffering from ALS whose quality of life is quickly declining, and a man with prostate cancer whose insurance doesn’t cover any treatment but suicide). Some that were suffering from their illiness successfully complete their physician-assisted suicide while others unexpectedly die from complications or are physically unable to self-administer their prescribed death. Another vignette shows a woman’s successful campaign of Death with Dignity’s passage in the state of Washington after her husband endured a painful decline into death. While this vignette shows a gradual acceptance of assisted-suicide in our society by presenting the passage of the act, it does however not add to the poignancy or process of electing the choice of death or the resulting events for it.

With the exception of the woman’s storyline, all of the vignettes add substance to the film by allowing the viewer to ask the question, “Why?” and promptly begins to answer that question with another vignette that becomes the focus of the film.

We are presented with Cody, a 54 year old mother with liver cancer on the cusp of her assisted suicide. Her storyline gives a mixture of hopefulness and hopelessness stirring the same emotional arenas that one would give to the ethical and moral dilemma that is physician-assisted suicide. Richardson does a wonderful job of splicing scenes of great endurance and compassion (Her several nature walks with her children and husband while evidently having a difficult time breathing) with those of pain and grief (her declining health and her numerous emotional breakdowns). They transition at the point one finds a sense triumph in her adversity only to be reminded that death is the only resolution, and how she must face it is her choice. Much like the prologue, she succeeds in dictating when she is to die; surround by friends and family, on her terms.

There is no doubt. These people will die as a result of their terminal illnesses. But, how they die, because of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act, has become their choice. The most useful vignettes lay down a foundation of questions that begin to be answered through Cody’s story. The film doesn’t sway one’s opinion either way in regards to the practice being ethical or moral, but rather generates a sense of understanding on why that decision is made. While one might not support such a choice, it does generate a sense of respect for it.

Peter Richardson’s How to Die in Oregon is distributed through Clearcut Productions and available through Netflix and the HBO Channel. http://www.howtodieinoregon.com/

Pine. acrylic and collage on wood panel. 48 x 48

Adam Grossi, {featured in the newest issue of Composite, No. 6 Process} is a Chicago based painter that has been a friend of the Composite team for several years now. However, beyond painting, Adam has also recently begun a new journey in the practice and instructing of Yoga. Intrigued by how this has all come together, we wanted to ask him some questions about the intersections of Yoga and art, and he kindly took the time to answer them.

Composite: Along with recently contributing to Composite no 6, Process, you also became certified to teach yoga. Growing up in suburban Virginia, I doubt it has always been a part of our daily life. When did you first become attracted to yoga, and what made you decide to pursue higher training in it?

Adam Grossi: I’ve had some kind of intuitive attraction to meditation since I was quite young, but I never had a practice until I was 19 or 20, when yoga first entered my radar. At the time I was an inspired but unstable art school student in Pittsburgh. I was so thoroughly obsessed with art that I wasn’t carving out space in my life to take care of myself, and the physical and psychological intensity was beginning to wear on me. There were a few really influential artists in the grad program and at least two of them were regular yoga practitioners, so perhaps that was what first tipped me off to the idea of attending a class. I don’t really remember how I got there, but I do vividly remember being in my first yoga class. In the middle of the sequence of physical postures I was in a standing forward fold and I just couldn’t believe how relaxed and relieved I felt. I was at a really tense place in my life, and I remember trying all sorts of things to calm down — mostly doofy college things — and none of them working. That was probably the first moment in days that I felt my brow un-furrow.

Despite the revelatory nature of that experience, it took me a few years to start practicing regularly. I was still too ignorant when I first found yoga to realize how much I needed it. It would take the complete unraveling of my psychological health, and the real possibility of losing the ability to maintain a lucid creative practice, to ignite the motivation within me to really commit to yoga. Looking back, these struggles and traumas were like an initiation into another way of life.

I started practicing yoga daily in 2007 and I haven’t stopped. Much like art, it just gets more interesting the more you spend time with it. After yoga served a functionally therapeutic role in grounding me mentally and keeping me healthy, I started to become aware of its larger philosophical implications, and the incredible variety of methods and intentions that all compete for space under the umbrella term of “yoga.” I became aware, much like I did as a painter, that the more I learned and practiced, the less my assumptions made sense and the more I needed to learn. That is why I decided to enter a teacher training program; it is the same motivation I had for attending grad school. I simply wanted to immerse myself in a focused environment that would help me better understand what I was doing.

CO: How does your yoga practice impact your work? There doesn’t appear to be much cross over topically, do they exist at all in the same place for you or do they tend to just be two aspects of your life that tend to stay within their compartments?

AG: On a superficial level, they stay in their compartments. I don’t make art about practicing yoga and I don’t consider my yoga practice to be part of my “artwork.” But at the same time, I’m very interested in synthesizing their underpinnings. Most contemporary art could be said to be a form of yoga practice, even the most seemingly vicious or dark work, if one were so inclined to view it through this lens. I’m moving toward a more cohesive personal metaphysics where yoga practices and the production of art both extend outward from the same place. I didn’t set out to make sure that this would happen, but it seems to be happening naturally as I understand more about both worlds. Yoga is largely about harnessing all of one’s ability and effort to the task of liberating consciousness from the delusions and trappings of the conditioned mind. In this light, it’s very easy to see my image-making practice as a more specific extension of this general goal.

On a more pragmatic level, the yoga practices I’m cultivating are incredibly grounding and work with the body in powerfully therapeutic ways. This allows the art-making to be destabilizing and otherwise difficult when it needs to be. As I learn more about yoga the back-and-forth is becoming richer: I’ll focus on using specific practices to target an area of the body that has become exhausted by my working process, for example, or I’ll emphasize a breathing technique that induces mental spaciousness when I’m frying my brain on some analytical problem in the art.

I remember a long time ago being at an artist residency program and having a studio visit with a well-known abstract painter. She saw an instructional yoga book in my studio and we talked about it a bit. “I love yoga,” I remember her saying, “but I never do it because it makes me not want to do anything else.” I will always remember that. It resonated with me later as I worried that going deeper into yoga was going to make me lose the motivation to make art. But over time I realized that what is lost through yoga is much of the daily anxiety and neurotic energy that so many of us rely on to basically get anything done. We make things, do things, and say things largely because we’re scared of not doing them, we’re worried about achieving certain things which seem important, or we’re measuring ourselves against people we feel we should be in step with. Consistent yoga practice does dramatically reduce that whole way of thinking, and this is initially rather unnerving… but at the end of the day, it’s helpful to pursuing art because it allows the motivation to work to come from other, deeper places.

CO: What suggestions do you have for anyone looking to incorporate yoga into their life?

AG: Find a good teacher that makes yoga comprehensible, accessible, and effective for you. Since there is such an immense variety of approaches, this can take some trial and error. Don’t set unrealistic expectations for the amount of time you’re going to devote to yoga; not every day needs to involve a 90-minute class. If you have a friend that has a committed yoga practice, I think that’s the best place to start: ask them if they’ll show you a few things. And if I had to recommend one book to get you started, it would be The Heart of Yoga: Developing a Personal Practice by T.K.V. Desikachar.

CO: With your inclusion in Pilsen’s Antena Project Space’s Tropical Aesthletics (best show title ever by the way), can we expect a continued trajectory of art and physical fitness to be a defining factor of your career?

AG: Haha! I sincerely hope not. But I do hope that bizarre contexts and strange titles continue to pepper my curriculum vitae.

CO: What do you have in the plans moving forward into spring and summer 2012?

AG: I will continue attempting to pay my bills as I devote almost all of my time to things I really care about. I will be making a lot of new paintings and works on paper, as well as trying to wrangle one of my many fragments of writing projects into a finished publication. In the studio these days the plan is to make work more effortlessly, and to concentrate the ruminating and deliberating into their own little pools of intensity between sessions of making. I’d like to build momentum over at Re:Markmaking (http://remarkmaking.com/), a collaborative blog for people who think through materials. In the realm of yoga studies, this summer I’m going to spend a month at a teacher’s intensive with Richard Freeman out in Boulder, Colorado, and I’m incredibly excited about the opportunity to learn from him. He just couldn’t be more interesting and expansive in his approach and perspective, and I anticipate that the experience will be tremendously generative for me on many levels. It will be painful to be away from my painting studio for a month, but I’m planning to have some kind of creative project to work on in the midst of all that stretching, sweating, and breathing in the mountains.

Learn more about Adam at www.adamgrossi.com.

In our newest issue, Composite no 6, Process, artist Jeanne Lorenz opened discussed a lot of her personal process for her work, as well as some of the topics she has and is currently working with. In doing so, she supplied us with a few videos that help support what she had written, bit for the technical limitations of a PDF we were unable to include them, so we wanted to include them here. You can find out even more about Jeanne and her work by going to her site. [We obviously recommend checking out her section of the new issue if you have not done so yet]

First, learn more about Jeanne’s process in creating her work for “American Vinyl” by viewing the following video:

Second, Jeanne supplied a video of a lecture by Stephen Wolfram that is helping form the inspiration for her newest set of work combing Seventeenth Century Alchemic drawings and Wolframs New Kind of Science. View that video here: