School of the Art Institute of Chicago Opening Event: BFA Exhibition
Fri, March 16, 2012 7pm – 9pm - This is the opening.
Sat, March 17, 2012 11am - 6pm - Most artists will be there all day the next day as well.
The show is open until April 4th.
I can't imagine not being a part of the show considering that I've been in the school since I was 30, and I'm 38 - soon 39. When I started at SAIC I thought I was getting student loans. Unfortunately I'd been working as a programmer and made too much money the year before to get student loans. My dream was to exit the corporate world, go to art school and probably be poor forever, but at least I'd be happy with what I was doing. You can defer those loans forever right? So, after one eye-opening semester, due to poor planning and a lack of funding I had to take the next semester off. I was told to get private loans (no) or see ya later. So, the following semester I took a temp job at Abbot Laboratories, gained ten pounds, and paid my tuition in six months. Nine years ago tuition was $780 a credit hour. It's now about $1200 a credit hour, for fucking art school.
I then decided to go ahead and take 1 or 2 night/weekend courses at SAIC a semester and take a full time corporate job. It was a catch 22. If you're responsible and work at a job where they pay you money (and it doesn't have to be all that much money either), you can't get student loans and must get private loans with a higher percentage rate. But if you don't work at all, or just work a little, then they'll gladly hand over TONS of money. This makes no sense to me. Do the people who've never worked have a higher potential for getting a high paying job to pay the loan back? This is a perfectly good example of why our economy went to shit. Okay, reading that again it sounds like I don't want kids to get loans who's parents can't pay for school. OF COURSE they should get loans. Absolutely. Just don't penalize the people who held jobs in the past and want to become educated.
Strangely, the fellow who hired me at the corporation where I'm still working now only hired me because I went to SAIC and put it on my resume, which I had hesitated in doing. Though he was a programmer, he had run a successful African art gallery in the past. At my interview he warned me that I'd be working from home (Yay!). So I've been working at home and going to SAIC in the evening or on weekends for the past 9 years.
Anyway, I'll continue that story later, but what I figured out is that this is probably the easiest way for me to document my work and frustration day by day. I have a very short period of time to do a huge amount of work because I waited too long to start this project.
I have a schedule that has to be kept, or the project will not turn out as expected. I'm working after work approximately 8-10 hours every night and non-stop on the weekends. My family is being really great about dealing with stuff that I normally deal with.
For my installation, I'm recreating a still from a dream I had. I was me as a little girl, running through sparse woods and I was looking for something, but I don't remember if I knew what I was looking for. I came up to an old wooden farm house and was looking through a dusty window. I used my hand to wipe it off and was trying to see inside. Suddenly I was two people. I was me as a grown up with my back plastered against the wall next to the window on the inside of the house, hiding from the me as a young girl. I could switch to being me as a little girl easily and in that body just felt curious and desperate to find this thing. It dawned on me that it was a dream and I went back and forth once more and it started to feel like I was in both bodies. Before I realized I could fly or do anything I wanted because I was lucid, I woke up. There was more to the dream prior to that but I can't remember that part. I've had lucid dreams that I remember only a handful of times in my life.
For the installation, I'm making myself as a six year old child in porcelain, life sized - 42" standing and looking into a window. There will be a wall hanging from the ceiling of the gallery and bolted to a piece of wood on the floor. We are remodeling our house and we have a ton of old windows and old wood so I'll be using those materials for the wall. The figure will be attached to a base. But the base (wood) that the wall is bolted to on the floor will be maybe 3.5 feet by 4 feet. On the side where the girl is bolted down I will cover the ground and around her feet with sod so you can't see the ugliness of the bolts, and so that the viewer understands that it's outside. Initially I wanted to recreate myself hyper-realism style as I am as a grownup with my back to the wall on the inside but I can't realistically pull that off in the amount of time I have. I don't know what will be on the other side of the wall yet. Definitely wallpaper.
I'm going to document each day (and retro back to the beginning of the project) with pictures, descriptions, problems, solutions, freak-outs and cats.
