These images stem from my work in the WARP residency at The Weaving Mill in Chicago in 2017, where I carried out a series of collaborative mask making workshops with clients from Envision Unlimited, which houses The Weaving Mill and it’s program. My practice has for years delved into camouflage, concealment, conspicuous visual signaling, distortion, collage and related concepts and processes that all hinge on a playing with figure and ground. Over the course of the month I worked with Envision’s community members to paint cardboard, manipulate different scavenged materials and play with forms until we had a set of structures that could somehow function as masks–usually in the form of a manipulated and adorned cardboard box placed over one’s head. At the end of the process I created an ad hoc photo studio and shot a set of images of my collaborators wearing their favorite masks. I then used these images as source material for various projects, usually distorting and fragmenting the images further, but refrained from showing the portraits themselves as printed photographs.
My resistance to showing these portraits directly as photographic images eventually led me to look for other ways of printing them, and the CMYK screen printing process proved the perfect option: they are both shockingly “photographic” (thanks to the adept printing of Angee Lennard) and visually coy, summoning the presence of the masked subjects through another layer of distortion, translation, and play. The images themselves both reveal and conceal a subject behind the mask, and something about the printing process seems to mimic that visual dance.
Envision’s mission is to “provide persons with disabilities or special needs quality services that promote choice, independence and inclusion”. I wanted to approach the workshop with their clients in an open way that allowed them to dip in and out of the process as they wanted. Rather than each collaborator making their own mask, every step of the process was an aleatory group effort, circulating materials and gestures around the tables we worked at, slowly accruing and distilling raw materials into strange structures that reflected all of our gestures and whims. As portraits, I set the intention of not having any prescribed meaning of what it means for my collaborators with disabilities or special needs to be wearing these masks, trying instead to let them simply be a record of our process together.
Jordan Martins is a Chicago based visual artist, curator, and educator. He received his MFA in visual arts from the Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA) in Salvador, Brazil in 2007, and is a lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and North Park University. He is the executive director of Comfort Station, a multi-disciplinary art space in Chicago. Martins’s visual work is based in collage processes, including painting, photography, video and installation, and he has exhibited nationally and internationally. His work has been featured in exhibitions at Goldfinch, The Mission, Evanston Art Center, LVL3, The Franklin, The Museu de Arte da Bahia, Zeitgeist, and Experimental Sound Studio. He was a resident in the Chicago Artists Coalition’s HATCH program in 2013. Martins is co-director of the Perto da Lá <> Close to There, a multidisplinary project with international artists in Salvador, Brazil and Chicago.
]]>These images stem from my work in the WARP residency at The Weaving Mill in Chicago in 2017, where I carried out a series of collaborative mask making workshops with clients from Envision Unlimited, which houses The Weaving Mill and it’s program. My practice has for years delved into camouflage, concealment, conspicuous visual signaling, distortion, collage and related concepts and processes that all hinge on a playing with figure and ground. Over the course of the month I worked with Envision’s community members to paint cardboard, manipulate different scavenged materials and play with forms until we had a set of structures that could somehow function as masks–usually in the form of a manipulated and adorned cardboard box placed over one’s head. At the end of the process I created an ad hoc photo studio and shot a set of images of my collaborators wearing their favorite masks. I then used these images as source material for various projects, usually distorting and fragmenting the images further, but refrained from showing the portraits themselves as printed photographs.
My resistance to showing these portraits directly as photographic images eventually led me to look for other ways of printing them, and the CMYK screen printing process proved the perfect option: they are both shockingly “photographic” (thanks to the adept printing of Angee Lennard) and visually coy, summoning the presence of the masked subjects through another layer of distortion, translation, and play. The images themselves both reveal and conceal a subject behind the mask, and something about the printing process seems to mimic that visual dance.
Envision’s mission is to “provide persons with disabilities or special needs quality services that promote choice, independence and inclusion”. I wanted to approach the workshop with their clients in an open way that allowed them to dip in and out of the process as they wanted. Rather than each collaborator making their own mask, every step of the process was an aleatory group effort, circulating materials and gestures around the tables we worked at, slowly accruing and distilling raw materials into strange structures that reflected all of our gestures and whims. As portraits, I set the intention of not having any prescribed meaning of what it means for my collaborators with disabilities or special needs to be wearing these masks, trying instead to let them simply be a record of our process together.
Jordan Martins is a Chicago based visual artist, curator, and educator. He received his MFA in visual arts from the Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA) in Salvador, Brazil in 2007, and is a lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and North Park University. He is the executive director of Comfort Station, a multi-disciplinary art space in Chicago. Martins’s visual work is based in collage processes, including painting, photography, video and installation, and he has exhibited nationally and internationally. His work has been featured in exhibitions at Goldfinch, The Mission, Evanston Art Center, LVL3, The Franklin, The Museu de Arte da Bahia, Zeitgeist, and Experimental Sound Studio. He was a resident in the Chicago Artists Coalition’s HATCH program in 2013. Martins is co-director of the Perto da Lá <> Close to There, a multidisplinary project with international artists in Salvador, Brazil and Chicago.
]]>These images stem from my work in the WARP residency at The Weaving Mill in Chicago in 2017, where I carried out a series of collaborative mask making workshops with clients from Envision Unlimited, which houses The Weaving Mill and it’s program. My practice has for years delved into camouflage, concealment, conspicuous visual signaling, distortion, collage and related concepts and processes that all hinge on a playing with figure and ground. Over the course of the month I worked with Envision’s community members to paint cardboard, manipulate different scavenged materials and play with forms until we had a set of structures that could somehow function as masks–usually in the form of a manipulated and adorned cardboard box placed over one’s head. At the end of the process I created an ad hoc photo studio and shot a set of images of my collaborators wearing their favorite masks. I then used these images as source material for various projects, usually distorting and fragmenting the images further, but refrained from showing the portraits themselves as printed photographs.
My resistance to showing these portraits directly as photographic images eventually led me to look for other ways of printing them, and the CMYK screen printing process proved the perfect option: they are both shockingly “photographic” (thanks to the adept printing of Angee Lennard) and visually coy, summoning the presence of the masked subjects through another layer of distortion, translation, and play. The images themselves both reveal and conceal a subject behind the mask, and something about the printing process seems to mimic that visual dance.
Envision’s mission is to “provide persons with disabilities or special needs quality services that promote choice, independence and inclusion”. I wanted to approach the workshop with their clients in an open way that allowed them to dip in and out of the process as they wanted. Rather than each collaborator making their own mask, every step of the process was an aleatory group effort, circulating materials and gestures around the tables we worked at, slowly accruing and distilling raw materials into strange structures that reflected all of our gestures and whims. As portraits, I set the intention of not having any prescribed meaning of what it means for my collaborators with disabilities or special needs to be wearing these masks, trying instead to let them simply be a record of our process together.
Jordan Martins is a Chicago based visual artist, curator, and educator. He received his MFA in visual arts from the Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA) in Salvador, Brazil in 2007, and is a lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and North Park University. He is the executive director of Comfort Station, a multi-disciplinary art space in Chicago. Martins’s visual work is based in collage processes, including painting, photography, video and installation, and he has exhibited nationally and internationally. His work has been featured in exhibitions at Goldfinch, The Mission, Evanston Art Center, LVL3, The Franklin, The Museu de Arte da Bahia, Zeitgeist, and Experimental Sound Studio. He was a resident in the Chicago Artists Coalition’s HATCH program in 2013. Martins is co-director of the Perto da Lá <> Close to There, a multidisplinary project with international artists in Salvador, Brazil and Chicago.
]]>spoke the vine
grasping for words
arm-in-arm-in-arm
image-text-designby Aimée Beaubien
Through the tactile pages of Unfurl Unfold: the touch of a leaf, the page in a book felt, Aimée Beaubien visualizes her longstanding draw to books and vines. Mesmerized by vines and their steadfast embrace of all that they encounter, Beaubien has created an artist book in which the reading experience mimics the movements of a growing vine. Gatefolds allow the reader to expand the dimensions of the book while the turning of pages reveal inclusions that feature plant-inspired poetry and clues to the many horticulture-related books visually referenced throughout the book. Imagery in this book include cut-up and woven photographs of plant matter, still lifes featuring books from the Beaubien’s personal library, and documentation of her immersive art installations.
Through combining screenprinting and inkjet printing, the artist was liberated from the expectations of conventional photography. Beaubien dissected her compositions, at times literally peeling layers of a photograph into distinct color fields, and at times rebuilding new fantastical compositions and color palettes. Many textures appear visually in the photographs (architectural elements, plant matter, books, lace, embroidery, etc), and the combination of print methods heightens the sensation of touching the pages. The use of Tyvek paper, inclusions from vintage books, and a woven paracord binding further pushes the tactile playfulness of Unfurl Unfold.
This visceral book has been assembled for aesthetic pleasure as well as to reflect on how gardens and libraries portray time, and examine how plant life, be it immaculately tended or untamed growth, is integrated into all aspects of life.
– 10″ x 23″ artist book that open to up to 10″ x 46″
– Hand-sewn French link stitch binding with paracord that grows into a woven element mimicking interlocking vine structures
– Includes 32 images combining inkjet and screenprint on Tyvek
– Comprised of six folios including two 6-page gatefold concertinas and one 8-page parallel map fold
– The book with its many inserts is housed inside of a 12″ x 18″ inkjet printed and sewn Tyvek enclosure
Image-Text-Design by Aimée Beaubien. Printed in collaboration with Angee Lennard at Spudnik Press Cooperative in Chicago, IL.
– Screenprint on a unique illustrated spread from a vintage garden book*
– Ink and artist tape on index from a vintage garden book*
– Four double-sided screenprints pressed between pages
– Patterned protective glassine interleaving
– Colophon with image descriptions flowing across a facsimile of Emily Dickinson’s herbarium.
*screen print on select spreads from Garden Flowers in Color: A Picture Cyclopedia of Flowers by G.A. Stevens, 1939 (“a most unusual Garden book and one that is made possible only by an extremely happy combination of circumstances.”)
Aimée Beaubien is an artist living and working in Chicago. Beaubien reorganizes photographic experience while exploring networks of meaning and association between the real and the ideal in cut-up collages, artists’ books and immersive installations. A photographed plant, interlaced vine, woven topography merge into fields of color and pattern and back again expanding the ever more complicated sensations of reading a photograph and experiencing nature. Beaubien’s work has been included in national and international exhibitions including Demo Projects, Springfield, IL; Gallery UNO Projektraum, Berlin, Germany; Houston Center for Photography, Houston, TX; Marvelli Gallery, New York, NY; The Pitch Project, Milwaukee, WI; Virus Art Gallery, Rome, Italy. Her work is held in the permanent collections of Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection, Chicago, IL; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, IL; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY. Aimée Beaubien is an Associate Professor of Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL where she has taught since 1997.
Autonomous Democracy is a project that explores, archives, and celebrates the history of temporary experiments in direct democracy within liberation movements.
1. OBREROS UNIDOS JAMÁS SERÁN VENCIDOS
[WORKERS UNITED WILL NEVER BE DEFEATED]
Slogan shared by union activist Terry Davis.
2. a space where we stand for love, fight for freedom, & build community
Slogan shared by Sarah-Ji Rhee from Love and Struggle Photos.
3. ΓΕΝΙΚΉ ΑΠΕΡΓΊΑ!
ΆΜΕΣΗ ΔΗΜΟΚΡΑΤΊΑ ΤΏΡΑ!
[GENERAL STRIKE | DIRECT DEMOCRACY NOW]
Slogan shared by Marina Sitrin
4. كن مع الثورة
[be with the revolution]
Slogan shared by Lara Baladi and calligraphy by Mohamed Gaber
5. ASSEMBLE | STRIKE| OCCUPY | MANIFEST REAL DEMOCRACY
6. AIN’T NO POWER LIKE THE POWER OF THE PEOPLE, ‘CAUSE THE POWER OF THE PEOPLE DON’T STOP. SAY WHAT?
Slogan shared by activist David Solnit
7. RÊVE GÉNÉRAL ILLIMITÉ
[UNLIMITED OPEN DREAMS]
A play on “grève générale illimitée” (unlimited general strike).
Slogan shared by Stefan Christoff
8. QUEREMOS UN MUNDO DONDE QUEPAN MUCHOS MUNDOS
[WE WANT A WORLD WHERE MANY WORLDS FIT]
Slogan shared by activist artist Andrea Narno
9. THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE
Slogan shared by activist artist Aaron Hughes
Aaron Hughes is an artist, curator, organizer, teacher, anti-war activist, and Iraq War veteran living in Chicago. He works collaboratively in diverse spaces and media to create meaning out of personal and collective trauma, deconstruct and transform systems of oppression, and seek liberation. Working through an interdisciplinary practice rooted in drawing and printmaking, he develops projects that deconstruct militarism and related institutions of dehumanization. These projects often utilize popular research strategies, experiment with forms of direct democracy, and operate in solidarity with the people most impacted by structural violence.
]]>The event is free for members. Members can register by filling out this RSVP form. Registration for the general public is $10. A zoom link will be sent to participants the day of the event.
]]>Mara Baker‘s prints are an extended meditation on the intersection of impermanence and regeneration. During her residency, she used the leftover residues from her installation practice as the base material for a new series of monotypes that echo the fragility of our material systems.
Mara Baker is an interdisciplinary artist who combines traditional fiber processes, found materials, animation, light, and video to create multi-dimensional installations and paintings. Her work is an extended meditation on the intersection of impermanence and regeneration. Combining found and newly made materials to create fragile, transient structures that echo the fragility of our material systems, each of her project builds on the last, often deconstructing and reconstructing elements of previous installations and paintings responding to the architecture and context of each site or surface.
]]>This publication was made to accompany WaterBodies, an exhibition featuring artwork by Amanda Lilleston & Lisa Matthias.
Lisa Matthias is an artist and printmaker living near Edmonton, Alberta. After working as a professional ecologist for over a decade she became a full-time artist. Her artwork draws from her experiences as an ecologist and she often captures microscopic images, and field sound recordings, in her creative practice.
Amanda Lilleston is a visual artist living in Maine. Her artwork depicts a long and evolving relationship with human anatomy, physiology and ecology. Using drawing, carving, and printing, Lilleston transforms imagery of the body into adapting forms and structures.
This collaborative publication highlights the relationships within and between humans and the natural world. Organic forms shift and adapt together. They are simultaneously architectural and biological, abstract and referential, expressive and structured, and always in perpetual motion.
]]>Beginning with a crinkling cadenza of paper material, a solitary note eventually finds its voice through quiet colors. This note bends around looking for the “river”, eventually finding the source. A lush melody ebbing and flowing takes over and guides our lone traveler to the end of the river. – Jonathna Hannau
In response to the sound component of this project, the visual process focuses on translating abstract soundscapes with elements gathered from threads of conversation: corresponding colors, lines, and forms resonating the dynamics and density of the sound structure. This imaginary walk traces a long path to the river.” – Yoonshin Park
Ten x Ten is a collaboration between visual artists and musicians exploring visual and auditory interaction. By challenging artists to conceptualize their work across media, Ten x Ten asks participants to stretch and expand their creative process. Through producing a limited edition compilation and public presentation of the resulting artworks, Ten x Ten documents, celebrates, and promotes Chicago’s artistic community.
Yoonshin Park is a Chicago based multimedia artist, curator, and educator working with sculptural papers, artist books, and installations. Her interest in the comprehensive process of papermaking and bookbinding caters her work to encompass various elements woven into complete objects. She often uses her experience as a foreign transplant to question space and its implications in defining one’s identity as the inspiration behind her work.