Happy Faces Chicago

Thursday, October 13, 2011

It All Converges to $8.00 an Hour

I spent a year working on my books and then recently decided to take a break and start freelancing again. I have been scouring the internet looking for viable and interesting work that would allow me to use my skills and to keep my creativity flowing at the same time if at all possible. With graduate degrees in education, business, and finance, I thought that I wouldn't have any problems finding work writing, blogging, editing, or researching in these areas. After a few months of applying for jobs and trying out some contracts, I've come to the conclusion that either the world has gone crazy or there's something wrong with me. I discovered to my dismay that every hourly rate I earned would eventually converge to minimum pay--about $8 an hour--because of the time, effort, and diligence required. Like Dostoevsky's Underground Man, I take pleasure in the painful knowledge of how the world works.

I have tried working for a company that requires writers to read 100 pages of guidelines for various types of writing. In order to become a featured writer (I was trying for financial), you have to first write 3 acceptable articles. There were thousands of how-to titles to choose from, mostly technical, engineering, or computer related. I finally selected something on making paper. For each article you have to provide at least one reference for the write-up and a couple of resources for the editor to review. The problem is that you can only use certain websites for your references. I submitted the article and the editor sent it back with detailed instructions, and I spent time re-writing it. It was finally accepted. Pay including research, writing, and rewrite: $8 per hour.

What about private tutoring? The agency I'm with takes a huge cut if I work less than 20 hours a week, so I have to raise my rates to make tutoring worthwhile. I'm tutoring writing and grammar, so I have to spend time building a website, doing lesson plans, interacting with clients, and so forth. Pay including lesson plans, preparing materials, website input, travel, etc.: $8 per hour at times.

What about poetry for greeting cards? They pay a lot for creative poems on an e-card. I tried but all I can come up with is drivel, and they all end the same way. An example:

not texting, messaging, or emailing--

rather a personal note

to say:

sorry,

i'm breaking up w/ u.

Potential pay including writing, re-writing, etc.: $8 an hour

I admit the world has not gone crazy. I'm the one who can't fit in. Like the Underground Man, I'm off in my little corner, wallowing in my pain, but laughing at the same time because no matter what I do, I can't fight the way things are. I accept the world for what it is, and I accept myself for who I am. The problem is that everything is still converging to $8 an hour while I'm doing this.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

A New Life for Still Lifes

Although I mainly do illustrations, sometimes I think about doing still lifes. Why paint inanimate or motionless objects such as fruit or flowers on a table when you can paint people, animals, and landscapes? I think that if you learn to paint representational still lifes well because it takes so much skill, concentration, and attention to detail, you should be able to paint just about anything. I've discovered that your subject matter is not as important as your ability to embue your art with subliminal emotions, memories, and energies. When I think of modern still lifes being able to convey these qualities, I think about the art of Susan Kraut. I interviewed her for an article I wrote in November, 2007, for Chicago Artists' News, which is no longer being published by the Chicago Artists' Coalition. Here is the entire article.

Capturing Light in Italian Still Life: An Interview with Susan Kraut
By Amy Rudberg

Susan Kraut, Italian Still Life 19, oil on panel.

About two and a half years ago, Susan Kraut spent a month in Bellagio, in northern Italy on the edge of Lake Como, intently observing the sloping earthy landscape with fruit-laden trees, the heavy white-gray clouds floating on mountain tops, and the blue-green serenity of the sky – but above all, painting what she experienced, trying to capture the essence of that particular moment of time.

In her Evanston studio, Kraut surveys her latest series of Italian still life paintings currently under way, and comments, “These were done when I returned from Italy. I start with little studies first before I do the actual paintings. These [objects in the paintings] are all things I found there – persimmons, pomegranates, pears, leaves. I always work on many paintings at once. These are all in various stages, some closer to being finished. I’ve been working on the Italian series for over two years now.”

Kraut reveals that in her youth, she could not draw, so she never considered going to art school. Instead she majored in English literature and then went into education, but she felt she was a failure at teaching a classroom of children. In her mid-twenties, she tried social work and then finally decided to take some art classes, and thought of becoming an art therapist. She took a figure drawing class and realized that she could indeed learn to draw the figure. For Kraut, drawing and painting something realistic was magical. She contemplates, “If I can paint something and it looks real, such as capturing the exact quality of light as it falls on the skin of a pear, I’m thrilled. I think that’s the reason I’ve never had any inclination not to paint from real life. I have to see it in the world and then I fall in love with it and then I paint it.”

On surveying the Italian series, the viewer can see that Kraut allows the objects in her oil paintings to interact with one another by playing with light and shadow, to reveal the ripeness of their lives with glowing colors and textures, and to provide a natural setting for them to interact with the observer. All at once, the still life comes to life, and the viewer is startled by the recognition of a memory of a similar scene somewhere in the past.

Susan Kraut, Italian Still Life 16, oil on panel.

In the beginning, Kraut painted figures, which were her first love. She put figures in a room so there was a narrative taking place, and then she started removing the figures and just painted the rooms. She delighted in painting interiors with light coming through the windows, trying to capture a certain moment of daylight. She had visited a Vuillard show at the Art Institute and was inspired by the artist’s depiction of small, intimate interiors. Her paintings started to evolve from an emphasis on the room to the objects in the room, particularly the objects in front of windows. At a certain point, she moved closer and closer to the objects. She never planned it that way. It just happened over time.

She ponders why she likes to paint still lifes today. “When I taught at Ox-Bow, in Saugatuck, Michigan, across the lake from Chicago, I began to be interested in the landscape seen from the windows of the little cabins where the faculty and staff stayed. If I went into other artists’ cabins, I often noticed their sketchbook or coffee cup. For several years, the subjects I painted included my own coffee mug or my sketchbook. So those were a little more autobiographical because they were my objects – it was somehow me in that space.
“Maybe the paintings I do now aren’t about me,” Kraut continues, “but the objects are representative of me. I was there, observing those things. I like the stillness of the still life. I have always thought that painting can capture stillness, something that you just see at a moment. I want the object to look natural, sitting casually on the window sill, perhaps half natural and half composed.”

Working methodically in Italy, Kraut found her objects, took photographs of them and the landscapes, painted a series of studies of the objects and the backgrounds, and then started to paint her first series, all while on location. Like the old masters, she begins by applying a reddish brown underpainting to her canvases and then blocks in the forms, indicating the lights and darks in her composition. She works and re-works the painting in thin layers of colors, sometimes using 30 or more layers of paint, working simultaneously on different paintings to allow the paint layers to dry. She continually struggles to capture exactly the hazy, cool light from cloud-filled skies, and to allow the glow and warmth of the still life forms to come through.

In a work-in-progress in Evanston, she is experimenting with layers of texture, light, and shape. She has some water spilled on the table among the other objects. She is studying how light is reflected in the water and how the surface tension provides a certain dimensionality to the painting by the way it echoes the water in the vase and the lake in the background. There’s a leaf with a hole in it and light comes through, and the little red berries echo the hole in the leaf. The glass vase filled with water, the clouds, and the surfaces by the window sill reflect light from the sky.

Kraut indicates that she would like her paintings to be “meditative and contemplative, because everything in our daily lives is so fast. I think oil painting is about stopping and slowing down and just looking. The paintings I have always liked best are ones that you look at over a period of time and that stay with you, like a classic Vermeer. It’s all there in front of you but it’s mysterious, the light is tangible, and you are confronted with something beyond the mundane objects described. My goal is to create something that just slows you down and gets you to really look at the world.”

Kraut’s paintings reflect a serenity, a satisfaction with where she is in life. She’s happy to have gone through all of the experiences that she’s had, and now she wants to share that serenity with the viewer.

Susan Kraut is represented by Addington Gallery, 704 N. Wells Street, in the River North area. She is scheduled to show her new Italian Still Life series this fall, starting November

Friday, October 2, 2009

Double Self Exhibition by Christine Gendre-Bergere

Printmaker and artist Christine Gendre-Bergere is currently exhibiting Double self (in French Double je) in honor of the 340th anniversary of Rembrandt's death. Her exhibition at Galerie La Hune Brenner in Paris includes nine intaglio prints based on a series of Rembrandt's self portraits from 1630 to 1658.

Her Rembrandt portfolio includes some citations (below) from the 17th century philosopher Baruch de Spinoza from his Short Treatise on God, Man and His Well-Being. Spinoza alludes to the body and soul as the "double self." Christine said she included both men because Rembrandt had supposedly painted a portrait of Spinoza (David Playing Harp in Front of Saul) during their lifetime. although no one knows if they actually met, they both confronted the ongoing financial, religious, social, and political powers, reflecting similar beliefs. They chose to live their lives in their own way.

Why philosophers have confused mind with corporeal things
Here the only requirement is that everyone should attend to his perceptions as accurately as possible, so that he may distinguish what is clear from what is obscure.

Whence it clearly follows that the natural love which prompts everything to preserve its body cannot have any other origin than in the Idea or the « objective » essance of such body which is in the thinking attribute.

Now we shall presuppose here, as something already demonstrated, that extension contains no other modes than the motion and rest, and that every particular material thing is nothing else than a certain proportion of motion and rest, so much so indeed that, even if extension contained nothing else except motion only and rest only, then no particular thing could be shown or exist in the whole of extension ; the human body therefore, is nothing else than a certain proportion of motion and rest.

The followikng prints are 38 cm x 56 cm, with plate size 30 cm x 20 cm. They were printed in an edition of ten on 300 g. Magnani Pescia paper.

Christine Gendre-Bergere. R. 1630(a), 2009.
Etching and mezzotint.

Christine Gendre-Bergere. R. 1630(b), 2009.
Etching, mezzotint and soft ground, 2 plates, 2 colors.

Christine Gendre-Bergere. R. 1639(a), 2009.
Etching and mezzotint, 2 plates, 2 colors.

Christine Gendre-Bergere. R. 1639(b), 2009.
Etching, soft ground and direct bite, 3 plates, 2 colors.

Christine Gendre-Bergere. R. 1651(a), 2009.
Etching, 2 plates, 2 colors.

Christine Gendre-Bergere. R. 1651(b), 2009.
Etching, soft ground and direct bite, 2 plates, 2 colors.

Christine Gendre-Bergere. R. 1658(a), 2009.
Etching, 2 plates, 2 colors.

Christine Gendre-Bergere. R. 1658(b), 2009.
Etching, soft ground and direct bite, 2 plates, 2 colors.

Christine Gendre-Bergere. R. 1658(fin), 2009.
Etching, soft ground and direct bite, 2 plates, 2 colors.

Friday, August 28, 2009

Art Institute of Chicago, Modern Wing, Part 2

View of the Modern Wing from across
the street at Millenium Park

This blog is a continuation of my visit to the Art Institute of Chicago's new Modern Wing. On the second floor of the Modern Wing, you will find Contemporary Art from 1945 to 1960 (although there are some items created after 1960), Contemporary Art After 1960, and Design and Architecture.

Contemporary Art 1945-1960, A Sampling

Jasper Johns. Corpse and Mirror II, 1974-75.
Oil on linen (four panels), with painted frame.

Willem de Kooning. Head #3, 1973. Bronze.

Cy Twombly. The First Part of the Return from
Parnassus, 1961. Oil paint, lead pencil,
wax crayon, and colored pencil on canvas.

Robert Rauschenberg. Lincoln, 1958. Printed paper
and stamped metal, with oil paint, fiber-tipped pen,
and silkscreen ink on fabric.

Franz Kline. Painting, 1952. Oil on canvas.

Mark Rothko. Untitled (Painting), 1953-54.
Oil on canvas.

Alexander Calder. Streetcar, 1951. Painted steel,
brass, and wire.

Willem de Kooning. Excavation, 1950. Oil on canvas.

Jackson Pollock. Greyed Rainbow, 1953.
Oil on linen.

David Smith. Beach Scene, 1949. Steel.

Contemporary Art From 1960, A Sampling

Ed Paschke. Mid American, 1969.
Oil on canvas.

Roy Lichtenstein. Mirror in Six Panels, 1971.
Oil and magna on canvas.

Andy Warhol. Self-Portrait, Self-Portrait, 1966.
Acrylic and silkscreen ink on linen.

David Hockney. American Collectors Fred and
Marcia Weisman), 1968. Acrylic on canvas.

Frank Stella. De la nada vida a la nada muerte,
1965. Emulsion with metallic paint on canvas.

Gerhard Richter. Ice (Eis) I, 2, 3, 4, 1989.
Oil on canvas.

Jim Nutt. Da Creepy Lady, 1970.
Acrylic on Plexiglas, enamel on wood frame.

Ellsworth Kelly. Black and White, 1960-61.
Oil on canvas.

Pier Paolo Calzolari. Untitled, 1969.
Tobacco leaves, neon, and lead.

Richard Serra. Weights and Measures, 1987.
Hot-rolled steel.

Eva Hesse. Untitled, 1969. Fiberglass
and polyester resin over cloth-covered
metal wire with metal grommets.

Sherrie Levine. After Egon Schiele, 1982.
Seven gelatin silver and eleven chromogenic prints.

Lucian Freud. Sunny Morning—Eight Legs, 1997.
Oil on canvas.

Lari Pittman. The Senseless Cycle, Tender and
Benign, Bring Great Comfort, 1988.
Acrylic and wood on panel.

Thursday, August 20, 2009

Art Institute of Chicago, Modern Wing

I finally had a chance to visit the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago. Here's a sampling of art on the third floor where they have European Modern Art from 1900 to 1950.