Chicago/MilwaukeeAugust 14–September 20, 2014

Milwaukee/ChicagoAugust 27–September 20, 2014

Photo by David A. Brown

Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than a moving plane, ship or train. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is in front of our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, new thoughts new places. Introspective reflections which are liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape. The mind may be reluctant to think properly when thinking is all it is supposed to do.Art of Travel, Alain de Botton

The “artist residency,” by contrast, is fluid and

liminal. It exists to separate a maker from their

typical existence and then embed them in

another. It is an opportunity to force oneself from

the grind of quotidian concerns and to plant

oneself in a new and potentially fertile field, even

if it is only for a moment. Its aim is to create the

conditions for production and to generate new

possibilities for the individual artist.

Started in 2011, Christopher Sperandio and

Simon Grennan’s Cargo Space is the first fully

mobile, self-contained art residency and it takes

place in a converted diesel bus. At any one time

it sleeps a possible six artists—if four of them

pair off and figure out who gets to be the inner

spoon. It is the kind of residency that is about

personal transformation and tourism. An artist

hops on this magic school bus—complete with an

occasionally surly, but mostly Disney-esque tour

guide (often Christopher Sperandio himself)—and

has the kind of experience that can change their

life. Like Harry Potter catching the night bus, they

meet strange new people and travel, for a time,

with their brothers and sisters of the art road.

Although, it is fun to imagine Grennan and

Sperandio (one clutching a dogeared copy of

On the Road, while the other holds fast to a

beautifully maintained first edition of Zen and

the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance) as sculptors

merely crafting a bus, just setting a stage for an

infinite number of possible outcomes amongst,

an as of yet, unknown cast, but the project

accesses something deeper. Cargo Space begs

us to consider the form of residency. What

is a residency? How does it play a role in the

production of art and in the production of artists

themselves? If Cargo Space is itself an artwork

and a residency, where is the “art” experience

produced? And for whom does it occur? What

do we as viewers witness? What do we see?

Or is it about the experience of the artists on

their residency? Can the system produce an

exhibition? Who can claim authorship of what

we see? How on earth can it be presented as

an exhibition?

Cargo Space is a kind of whirling dervish, a

carnival-esque exhibition in which we have

asked 12 artists and artist teams from Chicago,

Houston, and Milwaukee to accompany Cargo

Space through a journey that will begin with

a weekend at the Poor Farm Experiment in

Wisconsin and roll on towards these concurrent

exhibitions in Chicago and Milwaukee. During

our time in Wisconsin, the artists will conceive

and develop what their residency experiences

should be and how those experiences will

translate into the exhibitions and events.

So, as of this writing I can tell you very little

about what these twin exhibitions looks like.

I can only tell you that by their nature they will

strip back some of the polish that we glaze on

to exhibitions and that each day the exhibitions

will physically change as the artists develop their

vision for the space and their residency. Together

we are creating an exhibition experience that

is open to sharing the development process,

connecting a viewer directly to the artists and

curators, and one that is a tad bit messy.

Duncan MacKenzie

The standard “gallery exhibition” is a theoretical proposition made physical. A notion, experience, or affect made concrete and enshrined in a space through objects and images. We are familiar with its basic objective, the creation of a profound or poetic experience, ideally one that makes something unfathomable, real.

Chicago/Milwaukee

Judith Brotman is an artist and educator

from Chicago. Her work has included mixed

media installations and theatrical immersive

environments that occupy a space between

sculpture and drawing. Recent work also includes

language/text based conceptual projects that are

meditations on the possibility of transformation.

Brotman has exhibited extensively in Chicago &

throughout the US in venues including threewalls,

Chicago Cultural Center, Gallery 400, Illinois State

Museum, the DeVos Art Museum, Hampshire

College, Smart Museum of Art, The Society of Arts

& Crafts, Boston, and The Museum of Fine Arts,

Boston.

Alex Chitty is an artist who stands at about

5’6 and is of average weight and build.

Born = Miami, 1979

Lives = Chicago (mostly)

BFA = Smith College

MFA = School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Work = Educator at Museum of Contemporary

Art & School of the Art Institute of Chicago

See More = alexchitty.com

Heather Mekkelson lives and works in Chicago.

Her work has been exhibited in solo and two

person shows at 65GRAND, Roots & Culture,

medicine cabinet, Old Gold, threewalls, and

STANDARD which are all located in Chicago.

She has also been included in group shows at

The Museum of Contemporary Photography in

Chicago, The Figge Art Museum in Davenport,

IA, The Poor Farm in Manawa, WI, Raid Projects

in Los Angeles, and Vox Populi Philadelphia.

Mekkelson’s work has been written about in Art

Journal, Broadsheet, Time Out Chicago, New City,

Chicago Tribune, and Artforum.com among others.

Erik L. Peterson is a pro-bono public artist,

sculptor, and curator living in Chicago. He is best

known for his large-scale urban interventions

(Face Value and Inner State) and signature edible

ice cream sculptures (CreamCycle and Soft

Palate). Public performances employing sculptural

elements like Two Tow’n and Square Dance, are

camouflaged urban spectacles, while the annual

Southwest Wisconsin Make Your Own Softball League

game gathers artists who build their own bats and

balls in order to play. Additionally, Peterson is a

founder of Hyde Park Kunstverein, a community

museum and solo project space in Chicago.

John Sparagana received his MFA from Stanford

University in 1987. He has presented solo

exhibitions of his work in New York, San Francisco,

Chicago, Houston and internationally. He has

been the recipient of numerous awards and

fellowships. Among these are awards from the

National Endowment for the Arts, the Cultural

Arts Council of Houston and Cité International

Des Arts, Paris (through Stanford University).

Wacom, TX is a comedy channel created by

Jay Meyers and Chris Kerr. The duo creates

and stars in episodes about art, comedy and

life. Jay Meyers received a BA in flim and video

from Columbia College Chicago in 2011. Since

graduation, he has created two human beings and

scores of feature length, shorts, documentaries,

music videos, animations, experimental work

and one wedding video. Chris Kerr received

a BFA in Fine Art from The School of the Art

Institute of Chicago in 1999. Since graduation,

he has shown his paintings, drawings, prints,

and sculptures nationally and internationally.

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Milwaukee/Chicago Organizers

Sara Daleiden directs MKE<->LAX to

investigate cultural exchange between two

American regions through residencies and

public programs focused on the arts.

With bases in Milwaukee and Los Angeles,

MKE<->LAX offers support for empathetic,

structural development of independent,

organizational and community identity

embracing various scales of experimentation

and production. The initiative encourages active

interpretation and embodied exploration of local

places valuing public space, civic participation,

economic sustainability, pedestrian awareness

and celebration of difference. In Milwaukee,

Daleiden is currently working with America’s

Black Holocaust Museum, ‘Creational Trails,

Friends of Blue Dress Park and the Milwaukee

Artist Resource Network.

Paul Druecke lives in Milwaukee, WI. For his

projects, Druecke has undertaken endeavors

as diverse as initiating a Board of Directors

to memorializing the at of memorialization.

His residencies and fellowships have

resulted in permanent, public installations

of bronze plaques that commemorate their

own legitimacy. Druecke has worked with

the Kölnischer Kunstverein in Cologne, The

Suburban in Chicago, and the Many Mini

Residency in Berlin, among other national and

international venues. His work was included in

the 2014 Whitney Biennial and he is an invited

resident at the 2014 Zentrum für Kunst und

Urbanistik in Berlin.

Shana McCaw and Brent Budsberg have

collaborated since 2001 in a wide variety of

media. Their work often incorporates scale

models to explore notions of scale, deception,

and suspension of disbelief. McCaw and

Budsberg are founding members of the

WhiteBoxPainters, a performance art group

specializing in large-scale, temporary public

projects. Recent exhibitions include solo

shows at Spaces Gallery in Cleveland and the

James Watrous Gallery in Madison. The duo

have had residencies with MKE<->LAX in LA

and the Center for Land Use Interpretation’s

outpost in Wendover, UT, and received a Mary

L. Nohl Fellowship for Individual Artists from

the Greater Milwaukee Foundation in 2008.

Ashley Morgan received her MFA in

sculpture from the University of Wisconsin-

Milwaukee and her BFA in visual arts at

Arkansas State University. She has created

site-specific installations and been a part of

numerous group exhibitions both nationally

and internationally. Morgan was selected

as a fellow for the Greater Milwaukee

Foundation Mary L. Nohl Fellowship and

awarded a Sonnabend Fellowship from

the Museum of Jurassic Technology

in Los Angeles. She lives and works in

Milwaukee, where she is an instructor at

the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design.

Duncan MacKenzie is an Artist, Pundit, Educator

and a Founding Member/Producer of Bad at Sports.

(badatsports.com) His works have appeared in

galleries all over the world including Canada, Australia,

The United States of America, New Zealand, Estonia

and England. Bad at Sports, a project he began with

Richard Holland in 2005, is one of the USA largest

arts resources and continues to grow every week,

currently sharing an archive of 350 hours worth

of audio documenting the art history of Chicago,

New York City and San Francisco, and over 2000

posts by the best art writers in Chicago. His work

has been discussed in Flash Art, Art Forum, the New

York Times, Time Out, and many other venues. He

currently enjoys a posting as an Assistant Professor

in Art + Design at Columbia College Chicago.

Simon Grennan and Christopher Sperandio met

at the University of Illinois, Chicago in 1988 and have

worked together exclusively as a team since 1990.

Grennan works from North Wales, and Sperandio

works from Houston, Texas. Two things remain

constant in their practice: they always work together

and their work invariably involves the authorial

or editorial participation of other people—other

members of the public. Their work often utilizes media

that are culturally compromised: chocolate, comic

books and television, appearing at social sites of

consumption in the home and store and on the street.

They are often seen as part of a critical history of

artists whose work is focused on social narrative and

social exchange. Over the last twenty years, this history

of practice has been described as ‘interventionist’,

‘New Genre’, and ‘Relational’. In 2010, Bucharest

Biennial curator Felix Vogel chose the term ‘handlung’

(‘acting together’) to describe the social turn in

this approach to practice. thecargospace.com.

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Judith Brotman, The Reading Project, 2014, Photo credit: Kurt Peterson

Alex Chitty, Of Wood and Other Bodies Petrified, 2013, Powder coated steel, green and clear glass, black class cups, stoneware, ash baseball bat, porcelain, shoelace, jewelers pincers, stainless steel, Photo by Joseph Rynkiewicz

Heather Mekkelson, Blue Crater No. 5, 2013–2014, 24” x 24” x 7”, Blue marking chalk, glass, plastic painter’s points

Erik L. Peterson, Plop, 2014, Neon

John Sparagana, Crowds & Powder: Kennedy Brothers, 2014

Wacom, TX

Sara Daleiden, MKE<->LAX Suitcase, © MKE<->LAX, 2012, Photo by Harvey Opgenorth

Paul Druecke, Poor Farm, 2012, Cast aluminum, wood, cement, fastening hardware

Shana McCaw and Brent Budsberg, Foundation, 2011, Charcoal, Earth, 300” x 300”, Photo by the artists. Location: Lynden Sculpture Garden, River Hills, WI

Ashley Morgan, Complete, 2013

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INSTITUTE OF VISUAL ARTS

Milwaukee/ChicagoAugust 27–September 20, 2014Reception: August 27, 6–8PM

Participating Milwaukee ArtistsSara Daleiden, Paul Druecke,

Ashley Morgan, and Shana McCaw/

Brent Budsberg.

Chicago/MilwaukeeAugust 14–September 20, 2014Reception: September 19, 5–8PM

Participating Chicago ArtistsJudith Brotman, Alex Chitty, Heather

Mekkelson, Erik L. Peterson, John

Sparagana, and Wacom, TX.

A + DAVERILL AND BERNARD LEVITON

A+D GALLERY

619 SOUTH WABASH AVENUE

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 60605

312 369 8687

COLUM.EDU/ADGALLERY

GALLERY HOURS

TUESDAY – SATURDAY

12PM – 5PM

THURSDAY

12PM – 7PM

INOVA2155 NORTH PROSPECT AVENUE

MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN 53202

(414) 229-5070

ARTS.UWM.EDU/INOVA

GALLERY HOURS

TUESDAY – SATURDAY

12PM – 5PM

THURSDAY

12PM – 8PMADMISSION TO INOVA IS FREE

Started in 2011, Cargo Space is a residency housed in a converted diesel transit bus. Sleeping up to six, this mobile living unit provides direction connections between practitioners who are geographically separated.

Cover Photo by David A. Brown

Co-organized by Duncan MacKenzieCargo Space (thecargospace.com) is a project by Simon Grennan and Christopher Sperandio

INSTITUTE OF VISUAL ARTS