photos oct. 18, 2007

I was doing laundry across the street from my apartment and it started raining so I took the photos below.

feature in centerstagechicago.com

Living the Art Life, Literally
Five gallerists tell all about living and working in one small space.
Friday Oct 12, 2007
By Alicia Eler

The adage says you shouldn't combine work with pleasure, but sometimes it's best to buck the establishment and do your own thing; in this case, we're talking about opening an art gallery in the space where you live. Despite saving big bucks, this venture is risky business, sometimes making it impossible to find privacy or peace of mind. We tracked down five gallerists who "live their art" on a daily basis to find out if they'd do it all over again.

Britton Bertran of Gallery 40000
The gallery-filled building at 119 North Peoria Street in the West Loop usually empties out around 6 p.m., but one guy hangs around. No, he didn't get locked in; he lives there. Behind Britton Bertran's cube-like gallery space, filled with cutting-edge work by local and national artists, sits a bedroom littered with contemporary art. "It's a necessary thing if I'm going to give this gallery thing a go," says Bertran. Problems arise mostly during openings, when people want to use his bathroom, but he says the positives, like the fact that his room can serve as a VIP place for artists to relax during stressful showings, trump the negatives. His five-year plan is to eventually move into a separate space, but for now he goes with the flow, trying not to work on Sundays and Mondays. "I literally cover my eyes when I walk through the gallery," he says about his days off.

Dubhe Carreno of Dubhe Carreno Gallery
When Dubhe Carreno came to Chicago in 1999 to complete an MFA in ceramics at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she never envisioned opening her own space dedicated exclusively to that art form. But after she found a great live-in/work space in Pilsen, everything just clicked. Large white platforms display hand-crafted ceramic vases, and Carreno greets patrons from behind a front desk. She says that the positives of her living situation heavily outweigh the negatives. "With sculpture, [most] people [don't really know] how to live with it," she says. "They have [this] assumption that you need a pedestal or something to elevate it. It really helps when they see my home space [in the back], which is full of sculptures."

Lisa Flores of All Rise Gallery

It's not easy transforming a once-adolescent art co-op, aptly named High School, into the mature All Rise Gallery, especially when the entire loft building used to be hipster party central. Owner Lisa Flores admits the past two years have been hard. But visitors who climb three flights of rickety stairs to her Wicker Park space (that's easily twice the size of most galleries) could never tell she did a massive overhaul. Today, All Rise is finally gaining notoriety, thanks in part to Flores being uniquely connected to artists all over North America. Living at your workspace isn't easy, though. "It's hard being tied down to the space everyday…and it feels like I'm always working," she says. But on the up side: "It's great because there's always so much to do. And if I need to hang a show all night long, I can work until 3 a.m. without interruption."

Marco Logsdon of Logsdon 1909 Gallery & Studio
Marco Logsdon moved to Chicago from Kentucky a few years ago and opened a gallery and studio space for his own work. But in September 2006, after a few successful shows, he decided to start showing other artists' pieces, too; he now rotates exhibits (mostly mixed-media, drawings and paintings) in the front and shows his work in the back. In line with the nature of most Pilsen galleries, Logsdon's space is only open on Saturdays and the second Friday of every month. With slim to none walk-in traffic, he's able to have some privacy though, "[I've always] got to be ready for people, so I can't be a slob," he says. Though keeping tidy isn't very fun, drawing a curtain at the halfway point of the gallery ensures his privacy.

Miguel Cortez of Polvo

For the past four years, Miguel Cortez has displayed challenging installation, new media and performance art in his gallery/home space, with white walls, wooden floors, TVs showing experimental video work and a kitchen right in the open. "The only downside is my loss of privacy; it's a minor inconvenience," says Cortez. But since living and working in the same space means only paying one rent, Cortez says it's "easier and cheaper to keep things going." It's been a while since he took a vacation, so after hosting a few more shows in 2007, he's going to take a well-deserved six-month break. Although Cortez juggles running Polvo on the weekends and working as a graphic designer during the week, he's received a tremendous amount of acclaim that many full-time gallerists could never live up to.

interviewed in culturalchicago.com

I was interviewed by culturalchicago.com recently.
/mc
------------------

“We felt that Pilsen needed a contemporary cultural space,” says Polvo co-founder Miguel Cortez, “where artists could be free to experiment.” Among the most long-running artists’ organizations in the Chicago area, Cortez formed the Polvo conglomeration over a decade ago, in 1996, with the assistance of partners Jesus Macarena-Avila and Elvia Rodriguez-Ochoa. The three met in the early 1990s through their mutual affiliation with alternative artist spaces Casa de Arte y Cultura/Calles y Sueños and Taller Mexicano de Grabado. Through these affiliations, the three recognized a void in the local art scene of the time in its lack of outlets for contemporary Latino art; such artists were typically relegated to commercial Latino galleries or the Mexican Fine Arts Museum while the art which interested Cortez and his partners was too experimental to gain recognition at such venues.

The group’s first action was to begin a zine in 1996 to publish the art they found interesting as well as bilingual poetry. This venture led to the opening of Polvo in storefront gallery form three years later, establishing a venue for the collective to showcase the sort of avant-garde Latino art they hoped to promote in the Pilsen community. Faced with financial difficulties, the gallery was forced to close soon after and the group instead focused on developing a noticeable presence on the internet and promoting their zine. The success of these ventures resulted in the opening of the current Polvo space in 2003, which has shown a continuous stream of exhibitions since.

For their gallery, Polvo’s founders logically chose Pilsen, Chicago’s nexus of Mexican-American culture. They were drawn to the neighborhood due to its mutually supportive combination of working class families and artistic community. Additionally, Pilsen’s rich history over the past century—including, Cortez cites, artistic subcultures from the Bohemians to the Mexican muralists—made the location a unique setting for the sort of organization into which he and his colleagues hoped Polvo would develop.

Cortez describes the second show in Polvo’s current venue as a turning point in media coverage for the space. “We were the first space/gallery in Chicago to organize an anti-war show against the Iraq War,” he states. “Our show opened the week that the US started bombing.” The critical attention and dialogue earned by the exhibition set the course for Polvo’s agenda in the years since; the collective has exhibited thematic group shows by artists who deal with such politically charged issues as gentrification, the environment, and surveillance.
Despite the increasing attention Polvo has received in past years, Cortez, Macarena-Avila, and Rodriguez-Ochoa still aim to exhibit work by emerging artists, to serve as a springboard for the career of such local and international figures. The work of such practitioners is complemented by work by more established artists from such locales as South Africa, Australia, and Mexico. They are likely attracted to Polvo due to the space’s focus on diversity. “I don't mean ethnicity but also types of media and art making,” explains Cortez. “We needed a space where artists could be free to not just hang 2-D work on the walls.” Artists exhibiting at the gallery have shown work of a variety of media including new media and installation art, among others.

On November 16, an exhibition entitled “Goin’ Mobile,” curated by Kimberly Aubuchon and dealing with the theme of travel will open and run through December 15. The show will be the last in Polvo’s physical space, which will close at the end of 2007 and, instead, exist primarily as a webspace and curatorial endeavor. (Britany Salsbury of www.culturalchicago.com)

This is for you...

This is for you...

James Beckman
Holly Sabin
Stephen Shapiro
Kyra Termini
Miguel Cortez
Sarah Perez
Arielle Bielak
Marc Salha
Michael Una
Renee Prisble Una
Nikki Hollander
Blake Lewis

Saturday November 10 (7PM)

Happy Dog Gallery
1542 N. Milwaukee Ave. , Chicago, IL

toninght's closing reception

Landscapes of Experience and Imagination: Explorations by Midwest Latina/o Artists

Landscapes of Experience and Imagination: Explorations by Midwest Latina/o Artists
April 4 through July 27, 2008

Curator: Judith Hoos Fox
Research Assistance: Oscar E. Vázquez and David Dorta


Paul Sierra, Afternoon Landscape

This exhibition highlights and explores the ways that eight, largely Chicago and mid-west based Latina/o artists have developed the theme of landscape through mixed and new narrative media installations, as well as through more traditional means of drawing, painting and sculpture. The exhibition examines their responses, through a variety of pictorial forms, to the natural and built environment. The works included will address the memories or imaginings of a tropical forest, the suburbs, or the density of urbanscapes, as well as the artists' own self-identities, or understandings of Latina/o presences in the United States.

http://www.kam.uiuc.edu/

artXposium

artXposium 2007 in West Chicago
September 21-23, 2007
http://artxposium.org/

ArtXposium, a 3-day multimedia art experience created by more than 50 artists. Local, National and International talent will come together to display a variety of art work ranging from traditional painting and sculpture, to interactive and multimedia installations.

Some of the artists involved:
Jeffery Byrd, IA
Miguel Cortez, IL
Stephanie Dean, IL
Kristina Dziedzic Wright, IL
Kazuki Eguchi, PA/Japan
Mary Farmilant, IL
Deborah Gúzman Meyer, IL
Annie Heckman, IL
Anni Holm, IL/Denmark
Irena Knezevic, IL
Jennifer Litterer, TX
Lindsay Obermeyer, IL
Irene Pérez, IL/Spain
Mark Porter, IL
Naomi Pridjian, IL
Jason Reblando, IL
Brian Reis, IL
Brandon Sorg, IL
Brian Sorg, IL
Edra Soto Fernandez, IL
Genevieve Waller, NY
Rachel Weaver Rivera, IL
Nyok-Mei Wong, Malaysia
Margaret Wright, IL

ArtXposium
103 W. Washington St.
West Chicago,IL

ArtXposium Hours: Friday 6-11pm, Saturday 12-11pm, Sunday 11-4pm. This event is open to the general public and free (suggested donation $2). In conjunction with ArtXposium, Gallery 200 and West Chicago City Museum will also feature gallery hours. Gallery 200 artists will demonstrate various techniques in art with hands-on experiences for all ages and the West Chicago City Museum will offer tours of its current exhibition.

loose change

Galaxie 500 - Tugboat

Micro worlds 1-3

Micro worlds 1-3
Oil and acrylic on canvas
Miguel Cortez, 2007

Several years ago I did a series of paintings that dealt with imaginary aerial landscapes. With this new series of work I go to the opposite end and imagine microscopic environments plus imaginary abstract forms and shapes. For inspiration I looked at decaying textures that I came across such as found rusted and cracked objects, paint peeling off walls and buildings, oils stains on the pavement and other examples of urban/nature decay. - Miguel Cortez, August 2007

See a review of these paintings in labotanica.org

Aerial landscape 4-5

Aerial landscape 4-5
computer prints with found object
Miguel Cortez, 2007

In my quest to compare shapes and forms that are minute and microscopic I came across a found street object(mounted on wall) with intricate linear patterns that resembled a street map viewed from above. This inspired me to sketch it and I then transferred it to the computer and traced it.This reminded me of the Chaos Theory and Fractals which says that everything is connected to each other from the smallest of atoms/energy/strings to universes and at that different levels forms and shapes seem to repeat themselves. For example moss on the ground may look like an aerial view of a huge forest landscape.

Exist Within Your Timeline 2

Exist Within Your Timeline 2
heat embossed belts and wallet
Miguel Cortez, 2007

Series statement
I've always wondered about humanity's never ending quest to define existence throughout the ages via religion or philosophy and I started asking myself these questions back in May: Where was I before I was born? We are born on such a year and then die on such a year in linear time. Did our consciousness/soul exist before and will it exist after? Or are we limited to exist just in our designated timeline? From these questions arose this series of artwork.

One is a plastic sign, similar to signs you may see in buildings that inform and guide you. The second is poking fun at consumerism and products; How a phrase or brand impulses you to buy certain things. And the third is a simple computer animation which uses technology to blast a message that is forever distorted on screen.

Photo August 24, 2007, 4:17pm

some Pilsen pics

...more surveillance

Bush Signs Law Widening Reach for Wiretapping
By James Risen
The New York Times

Monday 06 August 2007

Washington - President Bush signed into law on Sunday legislation that broadly expanded the government's authority to eavesdrop on the international telephone calls and e-mail messages of American citizens without warrants.

Congressional aides and others familiar with the details of the law said that its impact went far beyond the small fixes that administration officials had said were needed to gather information about foreign terrorists. They said seemingly subtle changes in legislative language would sharply alter the legal limits on the government's ability to monitor millions of phone calls and e-mail messages going in and out of the United States.

They also said that the new law for the first time provided a legal framework for much of the surveillance without warrants that was being conducted in secret by the National Security Agency and outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the 1978 law that is supposed to regulate the way the government can listen to the private communications of American citizens.

"This more or less legalizes the N.S.A. program," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, who has studied the new legislation.

Previously, the government needed search warrants approved by a special intelligence court to eavesdrop on telephone conversations, e-mail messages and other electronic communications between individuals inside the United States and people overseas, if the government conducted the surveillance inside the United States.

Today, most international telephone conversations to and from the United States are conducted over fiber-optic cables, and the most efficient way for the government to eavesdrop on them is to latch on to giant telecommunications switches located in the United States.

By changing the legal definition of what is considered "electronic surveillance," the new law allows the government to eavesdrop on those conversations without warrants - latching on to those giant switches - as long as the target of the government's surveillance is "reasonably believed" to be overseas.

For example, if a person in Indianapolis calls someone in London, the National Security Agency can eavesdrop on that conversation without a warrant, as long as the N.S.A.'s target is the person in London.

Tony Fratto, a White House spokesman, said Sunday in an interview that the new law went beyond fixing the foreign-to-foreign problem, potentially allowing the government to listen to Americans calling overseas.

But he stressed that the objective of the new law is to give the government greater flexibility in focusing on foreign suspects overseas, not to go after Americans.

"It's foreign, that's the point," Mr. Fratto said. "What you want to make sure is that you are getting the foreign target."

The legislation to change the surveillance act was rushed through both the House and Senate in the last days before the August recess began.

The White House's push for the change was driven in part by a still-classified ruling earlier this year by the special intelligence court, which said the government needed to seek court-approved warrants to monitor those international calls going through American switches.

The new law, which is intended as a stopgap and expires in six months, also represents a power shift in terms of the oversight and regulation of government surveillance.

The new law gives the attorney general and the director of national intelligence the power to approve the international surveillance, rather than the special intelligence court. The court's only role will be to review and approve the procedures used by the government in the surveillance after it has been conducted. It will not scrutinize the cases of the individuals being monitored.

The law also gave the administration greater power to force telecommunications companies to cooperate with such spying operations. The companies can now be compelled to cooperate by orders from the attorney general and the director of national intelligence.

Democratic Congressional aides said Sunday that some telecommunications company officials had told Congressional leaders that they were unhappy with that provision in the bill and might challenge the new law in court. The aides said the telecommunications companies had told lawmakers that they would rather have a court-approved warrant ordering them to comply.

In fact, pressure from the telecommunications companies on the Bush administration has apparently played a major hidden role in the political battle over the surveillance issue over the past few months.

In January, the administration placed the N.S.A.'s warrantless wiretapping program under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and subjected it for the first time to the scrutiny of the FISA court.

Democratic Congressional aides said Sunday that they believed that pressure from major telecommunications companies on the White House was a major factor in persuading the Bush administration to do that. Those companies were facing major lawsuits for having secretly cooperated with the warrantless wiretapping program, and now wanted greater legal protections before cooperating further.

But the change suddenly swamped the court with an enormous volume of search warrant applications, leading, in turn, to the administration's decision to seek the new legislation.

my father's 71st birthday

J.G. Ballard

excerpt from a BBC interview with J.G. Ballard:

"Virtual reality is something slightly different. I mean I take for granted that eventually virtual reality systems will be available to us which create a simulated reality that is more convincing than that which our central nervous systems create. I mean one must remember the brain is itself a virtual reality machine, the illusion we have of the real world, of factories and streets and office blocks and other people talking to us is itself a virtual reality simulation generated by our brains.

I think when the first true virtual reality systems become available, and contain more visual information and are more visually convincing than ordinary reality, the temptation for the human race will be to enter this virtual reality system and close the door behind it. I mean, I think there's a danger there because one will really be able to enter into a fantasy world which, unlike all fantasies in the past, would be more convincing than everyday reality."

Robot unravels mystery of walking

Runbot can adapt to changes in the terrain (Credit: Manoonpong et al) Runbot in action

Roboticists are using the lessons of a 1930s human physiologist to build the world's fastest walking robot.

RunBot is a self-learning, dynamic robot, which has been built around the theories of Nikolai Bernstein.

"Getting a robot to walk like a human requires a dynamic machine," said Professor Florentin Woergoetter.

RunBot is a small, biped robot which can move at speeds of more than three leg lengths per second, slightly slower than the fastest walking human.

Bernstein said that animal movement was not under the total control of the brain but rather, "local circuits" did most of the command and control work.

The brain was involved in the process of walking, he said, only when the understood parameters were altered, such as moving from one type of terrain to another, or dealing with uneven surfaces.

The basic walking steps of RunBot, which has been built by scientists co-operating across Europe, are controlled by reflex information received by peripheral sensors on the joints and feet of the robot, as well as an accelerometer which monitors the pitch of the machine.

These sensors pass data on to local neural loops - the equivalent of local circuits - which analyse the information and make adjustments to the gait of the robot in real time.

How does RunBot walk?

Information from sensors is constantly created by the interaction of the robot with the terrain so that RunBot can adjust its step if there is a change in the environment.

As the robot takes each step, control circuits ensure that the joints are not overstretched and that the next step begins.

But if the robot encounters an obstacle, or a dramatic change in the terrain, such as a slope, then the higher level functions of the robot - the learning circuitries - are used.

About half of the time during a gait cycle we are not doing anything, just falling forward Prof Florentin Worgotter

The latest findings of the robot research study are presented in the Public Library of Science Computational Biology journal.

Four other scientists - Poramate Manoonpong, Tao Geng, Tomas Kulvicius and Bernd Porr - are also involved in the project, which has been running for the last four years.

Professor Woergoetter, of the University of Gottingen, in Germany, said: "When RunBot first encounters a slope these low level control circuits 'believe' they can continue to walk up the slope without having to change anything.

"But this is misguided and as a consequence the machine falls backwards. This triggers the other sensors and the highest loop we have built into RunBot - the learning circuitry - and from that experience of falling the machine knows that something needs to be changed."

Dynamic process

He said human walking was a dynamic process.

"About half of the time during a gait cycle we are not doing anything, just falling forward. We are propelling ourselves over and over again - like releasing a spring.

"In a robot, the difficulty lies in releasing the spring-like movement at the right moment in time - calculated in milliseconds - and to get the dampening right so that the robot does not fall forward and crash.

"These parameters are very difficult to handle," he said.

All these big machines stomp around like robots Prof Florentin Worgotter

RunBot walks in a very different way from robots like Asimo, star of the Honda TV adverts, said Prof Woergoetter.

"They are kinematic walkers - they walk step by step and calculate every single angle, every millisecond.

"That can be handled through engineering but it is very clumsy. No human would walk like that. All these big machines stomp around like robots - we want our robot to walk like a human."

The first step in building RunBot was creating a biomechanical frame that could support passive walking patterns.

Passive walkers can walk down a slope unaided, propelled by gravity and kept upright and moving through the correct mechanical physiology.

Prof Woergoetter said: "Passive walking looks pretty realistic - but that's level one. On top of this we have local circuits, nested neural loops, which operate between the muscles (the joints of the robot) and the spinal cord (the spinal reflex of RunBot)."

He said RunBot learned from its mistakes, much in the same way as a human baby.

"Babies use a lot of their brains to train local circuits but once they are trained they are fairly autonomous.

"Only when it comes to more difficult things - such as a change of terrain - that's when the brain steps in and says 'now we are moving from ice to sand and I have to change something'.

"This is a good model because you are easing the load of control - if your brain had to think all the time about walking, it's doubtful you could have a conversation at the same time."

Nervous system

The principle was first discussed in the human nervous system by Russian physiologist Nikolai Bernstein.

Prof Woergoetter said: "He said it made sense that local agents, local networks, do the basic job, but the brain exerted control whenever necessary."

So using the information from its local circuits RunBot can walk on flat surfaces at speeds of more than three leg lengths per second.

Prof Woergoetter said RunBot was able to learn new walking patterns after only a few trials.

"If walking uphill, the gait becomes shorter, the robot's upper body weight shifts forward," he said.

The key lesson from the study, he said, was that the nested loop design first proposed by Bernstein more than 70 years ago "worked and was efficient".

He said the challenge was now to make RunBot bigger, more adaptive and to better anticipate situations like change of terrain.

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Frames 1 - 3: The robot's momentum causes the robot to rise on its standing leg and a motor moves the swinging leg into position

Frame 3: The stretch sensor of the swinging leg is activated, which triggers the knee joint to straighten

Frames 3-6: The robot falls forward naturally, with no motor functions being used, and catches itself on the next standing leg

Frame 6: As the swinging leg touches the ground, the ground contact sensor in the foot triggers the hip extensor and the knee joint of the standing leg and the hip and knee joints of the swinging leg to swap roles