Art Buff

My goal for 2012 is to make more art than 2011. I felt really proud of my projects from last year, but in the end, I only completed two. With a shorter commute this year and a slightly shorter work week, I think I can do better this time around. 

My  first art project of 2012 is about highlighting something hiding in plain sight. I’ve had a growing interest in the visual symbols of cultures and places lately, so I’m really excited about the Chicago Municipal Device, a 120-year-old symbol which most Chicagoans have never heard of.

So, my plan is find as many symbols as I can and highlight them with chalk. With each chalked Y I leave a laminated card which explains:

“This Y shape is known as the Chicago Municipal Device. It was introduced during the 1893 World’s Fair after the Chicago Tribune held a contest seeking a new symbol to represent our city. It derives its shape from Wolf Point, the place where the Chicago river forks. You’ll find it on the marquee of the Chicago Theater as well as your library card — but it’s all over Chicago. If you keep your eyes open, you’ll start to see it everywhere.”

Make room Chicago flag, we have another civic symbol.

With Farewell Tevatron I wanted to use art to provide a forum for Batavians to voice their feelings about the shut down of Fermilab’s particle accelerator. Named the Tevatron, it was was until 2009 the largest particle accelerator in the world, and until September 30th was operated by Fermilab scientists on the east side of Batavia. Fermilab plays heavily into the town’s image of their community. Its main building is featured on welcome signs alongside a windmill, the symbol of the city. Batavia’s slogan was also changed in 1983 from “The Windmill City” to “City of Energy” to encompass the legacy of both the windmill industry and Fermilab. I wondered then, how would people feel about its shut down? The Chicago Tribune, Kane County Chronicle, and Chicago Reader, among other newspapers have written about the scientists’ reaction to the change, but none have focused on the Batavia residents.

For the street art response, I asked artist Michael Jewell to create illustrations of images that related to Batavia and Fermilab’s history. There are twelve in all, some are symbols of Batavia’s history like a windmill, fox (the Fox River bifurcates the town), or ghost of Mary Todd Lincoln (she briefly stayed in Batavia’s sanitarium following the death of President Lincoln). Others are particles discovered by Fermilab like the tau neutrino or top quark. Each image then responds to the accelerator’s legacy and is accompanied by an image of a bulldog (the high school mascot) asking residents what their feelings are: How do  you feel about the shut down of the Tevatron? Write something! 80 images were placed around the high school and downtown area.

After two weeks, I returned to remove the installation and was excited to find responses left by residents. Overall, residents’ displayed a variety of emotions, mainly sadness, anger, optimism, an acceptance. The most impressive response was a woman who took down several fliers, scanned them, printed out new ones, and made her own shrine to the Tevatron on a telephone pole, complete with chalked hearts and a white bow.

Other responses were:

• “Well the probability that we will find something before the LHC [Large Hadron Collider] is low, so we have to move on to new and better things. Muon Collider FTW”

The Muon Collider is a yet to be realized particle accelerator that speeds up muons. Fermilab is a possible future site for the collider.

•”I’m angry. We should still conduct research here no matter the ring size.”

•”A part of me just died, but another part has just been born.”

I’m hoping to make this idea of cultural connectedness a more central part of my life. I want to engage in it more and gain a better understanding of its qualities. I would love to begin to tie some of my art into it as well. May 17, 2010

What this all comes down to is that I think that it’s on us to create new traditions, symbols, and cultural products for the purposes of representing our local, regional, or national cultures… If this idea “sticks” for me, if it proves to be something I continue to believe in, then I can see myself working to make it a focus of my career. I’ve always known my passion for culture was stronger than my passion for art. Perhaps I’ve found the cause I’ve been looking for. July 24, 2010

Back in the spring I felt like I finally came upon what I was searching for through these past ideas. I hadn’t forgotten my passion for culture and identity building, so I began re-reading chapters on National Romanticism I first came across during my thesis research on the Arts & Crafts Movement. From there I began putting all of my thoughts about it down on paper. The part of the movement I was interested in was how architects and designers took imagery from folk crafts and textiles, translating and visually updating them to create buildings and objects that worked to build their nations’ identities. A peasant-made table leg might be translated into the column of a great library, for instance. It was that abstraction and translation in particular that really struck me.

Romantic Nationalism was particularly popular in Scandinavia, Poland, Hungary, and Russia (though the aims of Chicago’s Prairie School of architecture tie into it too). I’d been deeply interested in National Romanticism and the notion of folk art and folk culture for a while, but always got mentally stuck when reading about them because they just don’t make sense in today’s world. Both concepts are very much 19th century ideas. National Romanticism relies on a peasant folk culture that we don’t have anymore and that America never quite had in the same way Europe did. Still, one quote in a particular seemed so beautiful to me:

National Romanticism provided a series of answers to the 19th century search for styles that would be culturally meaningful and evocative, yet not merely historicist.

Reading that, I thought, that’s exactly the idea I want to get at today — tying cultural meaningfulness into aesthetics. But how? Things that worked in the 19th century just can’t work the same way in the 21st. So, I started reading about all the ideas I was interested in that related to the intersection of culture/identity building and art/design: vernacular architecture, The Prairie School, the 1970’s Roots Movement in the US, the 21st century “new roots movement”, and folk art. With every chapter, I took notes, created questions, and tried to make sense of it all. My main question eventually became “How can folk art, which drew on a shared community culture and aesthetic be created today in an individualistic, culturally fragmented/pluralistic, much more creative society?” After all, when you get right down to it, folk art relies on a certain lack of creativity and cultural isolation. How else would numerous people make objects in the same style? Art making, for the most part, is much more individual and creative today. People create their own styles, and often times even go beyond that and create their own techniques and personal iconographies.

Eventually I came upon how this could all work. If an artist can’t draw on a common aesthetic anymore why not expand one’s sources of inspiration and shoot for a common history, experience or lifestyle? That way an individual retains control over their aesthetic, but still draws inspiration from something a community holds in common. I thought of communities I was familiar with, what did they share? What would be relevant to create art about? I thought about the Athena Grocery Store I used to frequent in Greektown. It’s the only Greek grocery store in Chicago and closed due to fire a year ago. Greek people all around the city relied on it, it was a staple of the neighborhood, and now it’s gone, damaged by the smoke which burnt down Costas and severely damaged the local Greek music shop next door. I thought too of Batavia, with its shut down of Fermilab’s Tevatron, the world’s highest energy and, until a few years ago, largest particle accelerator, and a source of pride for most people in town. Could an art project speak to these common experiences? Out of these and other ideas, I came to think a new breed of folk art is certainly possible. If one were to create very public, accessible art pieces addressing the common history or experiences of a community wouldn’t that be a kind of folk art? Wouldn’t that help bolster a sense of shared identity?

As I became excited about this idea, I started reading a book published by the American Folklore Society on folklore, folklife, folk art, etc. Their quotes seemed to speak to this same idea.

Botkin poetically sounded the humanist call for “folkness”, the use of traditional ideas that could invigorate mass culture through creative artists. Robert Bishop + Jacqueline Atkins

Folk artists are the ongoing celebrants of the American experience and spirit. They are the documenters of the way life is lived. Simon Bronner

[Ruth Suckow was] concerned for building social identities that revolve around one’s own heritage and contribute to a national cultural awareness, she wages that this movement relate to…the social context of the folk arts. It may include looking to the traditions of family or small-town life, the ordinariness of everyday life, or the specialness of local celebrations. Simon Bronner

Ruth Suckow’s essay was my favorite and really summed up my ideas best. Written in 1932, her essay focused on a need for more domestically, rather than exotically, inspired art. In it she asked, “Who constitutes ‘the folk’ today?” I’d wondered the same thing myself, and both of us had come to the same conclusion. It’s us. It was that simple idea that made me realize that I have the power to create folk art because “the folks” have expanded to include me and everyone else within a given community.

This whole idea of a contemporary, relevant approach to folk art really excited me for a few reasons. First is that I’ve been slowly searching for and working towards a workable idea like this for the past year. Second is that I’ve had dual interests in art and culture since high school (always viewing culture as more important but art as more fun and thrilling), but had never found a way to tie them together. Whenever I tried to think up a culturally based art piece, I couldn’t generate any ideas. With this new approach, I came up with four rough ideas without even pushing myself very hard. Third is that I’ve always had an interest in movements. Counter-cultural movements, youth movements, subcultural movements, whatever. I’ve always found the idea of people banding together, calling themselves something, and working passionately for something new or different to be really exciting.

Lastly, it also excites me because it feels so different than what’s expected of contemporary art-making. Since only a few centuries ago, the artist has been viewed as a heroic individual, pursuing his own vision and inspiration. To me this approach feels so different because it makes a community a higher priority than an individual. Inspiration doesn’t start internally so much as externally. Instead of art transcending culture (which it often does nowadays – arguably), it relies on it.

I felt through all of this that I’d come up with something new. It resembles folk art and National Romanticism in the idea of identity-building through aesthetics. However, it does away with their reliance on traditional, communally shared art forms, instead making use of shared history, lifestyle and experiences, categories more associated with folklife. At the same time it adds to folk art the artistic freedom contemporary artists revel in. I’ve decided to call this idea lolk, combining the words local and folk.  It’s localist in that the art would be particular to a region, folk in that it would draw on shared aspects of that community.

Last weekend I finished my first lolk project in Batavia, and it was totally exciting.  I’m excited to select other communities and then delving into their histories, values, daily life, and common experiences to find something to create art about. I like the idea of using this concept to create art in towns where the common person doesn’t get much exposure to it otherwise. How would they react to art focusing on something in their life and their community? I want to view these art projects as gifts. I want to create something people can relate to and take value from. As my own practice is moving more and more into guerilla/street art, I’m excited to confront people in public during their daily lives.

Internal links to each of my projects developed over the past 18 months.

Sacred Spaces

Snow Writing

Private Medicine

Private Medicine: Video

Behind Their Backs

Behind Their Backs: Video

Take

Dada Escape 

Mirror

These photos make up the second half of the sacred spaces, created over the past six weeks. As the project went along, I enjoyed experimenting with new ideas like alternatively shaped spaces, spaces that extended onto walls, and encompassing benches for sitting.

I also was fortunate to catch two people using the space I’d placed in McNabb, IL. It wasn’t too surprising, though, as I’d created it at the back of the meetinghouse used by the Illinois Yearly Meeting of Friends. With so many Friends in attendance, it was only natural they’d make use of a Quaker-inspired space. During the weekend there, other Friends who discovered that I’d created the space shared with me how much they enjoyed it. It was quite a gratifying experience.

Towards the end of summer, I started placing the spaces in some of Chicago’s ethnic neighborhoods, translating the phrases into Cantonese, Mandarin, Polish, Spanish, and Greek.

These are the first half of the sacred spaces I’ve been creating over the past six weeks. Overall the project proved more time-consuming (and sweat inducing) than I’d expected, but ultimately, I’m quite happy with its progress so far. I even went back a few weeks later to find some of the more weather-sheltered spaces still in tact.

(My Yia Yia’s tombstone, located in a cemetery on the outskirts of Champaign near my great grandparents’, Uncle Johnny’s, and Aunt Vi’s tombstones)

Ever since the death of my Uncle Johnny my sophomore year of college, I’ve worried about what would become of his side of the family’s Greek legacy and more specifically, what would become of the Trebellas family name. Uncle Johnny was the patriarch of the Greek side of my family and the last remaining child of my great grandparents. Because of the premature deaths of Yia Yia, my great aunt Vi, and the estrangement of my great aunt Mary, he was the only blood relative I knew from that generation.

When he passed away I understood that it became my responsibility to carry on our Greek heritage for the subsequent generations. Though I only speak a little Greek and didn’t grow up Orthodox, since Uncle Johnny’s death, I’ve worked to memorize my immigrant great grandparent’s life stories  and have delved much more seriously into Greek cooking, among other things. 

Still, the issue of our family name has always bothered me. The only relative I know of with the name Trebellas is my great aunt Artemis, Uncle Johnny’s wife. Once she’s gone, beyond a few distant and unreachable cousins, the name will go too. It’s been hard for me to know what to do to preserve it. I thought a bit about changing my last name or adding it as a second middle name, but both decisions seemed too drastic. Just a few weeks ago, I hit upon the idea of using it as a pseudonym when making art. The idea struck me as a bit pretentious at first, but talking it over with a few people, it began to seem like a more reasonable idea. After all, there’s a long traditions of actors, writers, and artists using professional names. Furthermore, my Uncle Stevie already uses Steven Trebellas as his pen name when he writes poetry.

The only thing that will be odd about this second name is that my art-making activities and non art-making activities are so intertwined. I’ll have to use one name when writing about art, curating it, etc. and another when making it. Still, despite the inevitable confusion, I’m feeling good about this decision. It puts me at ease about the future of the Trebellas name and gives me confidence that I can help carry it on. After all, whether or not I have kids, at least I’ll have some sort of legacy through art. Art is what lasts, as they say, I’m glad that through that, this name can too.

Back in the fall I created a prototype for this guerilla art project, but was soon confronted by winter weather and had to wait until the snowy and rainy months of the year were over. Now it’s finally time to launch it full-scale.

The piece itself was first inspired by Quaker meeting rooms and thoughts I’d had about everyday spirituality. I’ve been interested in the way that Quakers can hold their meetings in any sort of space. The rooms don’t have to be built as sanctuaries, but are made sacred simply by the fact that Friends engage them in a sacred way. Quakers speak of their meetings having a palpable, silent power. The fact that that all the energy occurs in an arbitrarily designated space was something I really wanted to explore through art.

I’ve also been thinking about everyday people. Do they think about the sacred or supernatural outside of their religious institutions? If they’re atheists do they think about such things at all? 

These thoughts lead me to want to create a way to confront people with the sacred or supernatural in an out of context environment. At the same time I wanted to create an arbitrary space that could be made sacred through the power of its participant. If Quakers can make converted garages sacred, why not sidewalks? I plan on putting most of these spaces in slightly out of the way locations, where the privacy afforded to the person might inspire them to actually use the space in a spiritual way. For my first space, I placed it near a shady tree at the edge of a park.

Here’s to many more.

It’s been a little while since I’ve written a non-interview article for Sixty Inches From Center, and it feels great to be back into editorial mode. Staring at images, contemplating their meaning and value — I never imagined in college that I would receive so much satisfaction from these activities. To me the responsibility of an art historian is to find meaning in images and present those findings to a wider audience. Art historians are interpreters of the visual, and I’m definitely up for the challenge.

Months ago I wrote about visual creativity and how I understood it as a concept broken into five often overlapping categories: Art, Craft, Design, Folk Art, and Illustration. 

In the past week, I’ve spent a lot more time focusing on this idea and feel like I’ve refined it a bit more. I now see each of the four categories other than art defining themselves against art through a particular constraint on creativity (that is, something that takes priority over absolute creativity). Their priorities break down as such:

Art: Personal freedom and creativity are paramount. Thus, style, approaches, and techniques tend to be highly individualistic.

Illustration: Complementing and representing text becomes paramount. Individual style and creativity are still very important but are limited by concern for the text.

Craft: A concern for function places limits on form and material. Function introduces a priority very different from creative freedom, and these separate ideas must complement each other.

Design/Architecture: A large number of creative visual activities where other priorities must be taken into account (functionality, advertising, structural requirements, etc.).

Folk Art: Tradition and a respect for shared culture and its style, history, etc. take precedent over total creativity. Creativity must exist within a cultural frame.

Obviously creating categories likes these will always be a messy and incomplete exercise, but these five really help me put things into perspective and wrap my head around everything that people create visually in today’s world.

Each category other than art is defined by its creative constraint, while art is defined as “Something that is created with the intention that it is art, produced through a process where creative freedom is of paramount importance.”