tag:www.audreymichelle.net,2009:/news//2 2009-08-24T23:24:02Z Chicago- and St. Louis-based writer, editor, and consultant specializing in the arts, media, culture and lifestyle topics for print and online publications, businesses and nonprofits. Movable Type 3.33 tag:www.audreymichelle.net,2009:/news//2.59 2009-08-24T23:09:48Z 2009-08-24T23:24:02Z

From the glittering blue waters of Lake Michigan to the packed streets of the Magnificent Mile and the lush greenery in Grant Park (affectionately known as our "front yard")...

pillow audreymichelle.net From the glittering blue waters of Lake Michigan to the packed streets of the Magnificent Mile and the lush greenery in Grant Park (affectionately known as our "front yard") –– summer in Chicago is the city at its best. And unlike many culture capitals in the US and abroad who might trim hours or close for vacation, summer is no longer a slow season for the local art community...Read on (download PDF, 3.4MB)]]> tag:www.audreymichelle.net,2009:/news//2.61 2009-08-20T23:48:17Z 2009-08-25T00:10:42Z

Le Concorde, Photo: Todd Baxter A roundup of selected music reviews/previews from Flavorpill: The Panda Band w/Pale Young Gentlemen Le Concorde Bettye LaVette Punch Brothers...

pillow audreymichelle.net
Le Concorde, Photo: Todd Baxter A roundup of selected music reviews/previews from Flavorpill: The Panda Band w/Pale Young Gentlemen Le Concorde Bettye LaVette Punch Brothers ]]> tag:www.audreymichelle.net,2009:/news//2.62 2009-08-17T23:59:31Z 2009-08-25T00:10:00Z

Chinese New Year Brunch A roundup of selected food-and-drink-centric clips from Flavorpill: Delilah's 11th Annual Vintage Strong Beer Fest Consider the Cocktail: A Slow Celebration of the Repeal of...

pillow audreymichelle.net
Chinese New Year Brunch A roundup of selected food-and-drink-centric clips from Flavorpill: Delilah's 11th Annual Vintage Strong Beer Fest Consider the Cocktail: A Slow Celebration of the Repeal of Prohibition Chinese New Year: Dim Sum Brunch Green City Market Chef Demonstration feat. Sarah Stegner and George Bumbaris of Prairie Grass Café The Violet Hour New Year's Day Pajama Brunch Green City Market Chef Demonstration feat. Chef Bruce Sherman ]]> tag:www.audreymichelle.net,2009:/news//2.63 2009-08-15T00:19:03Z 2009-08-25T00:30:38Z

Chicago, Courtesy A.M.P.A.S. A roundup of film clips (reviews and previews) from Flavorpill: Gigantic Who Does She Think She Is? Waitress (2007) Chicago (1927) w/ accompanist Dave Drazin Tampico (2006)...

pillow audreymichelle.net
Chicago, Courtesy A.M.P.A.S. A roundup of film clips (reviews and previews) from Flavorpill: Gigantic Who Does She Think She Is? Waitress (2007) Chicago (1927) w/ accompanist Dave Drazin Tampico (2006) and Chicago Phonography Night Mail (1936) and Whisky Galore! (1949) ]]> tag:www.audreymichelle.net,2009:/news//2.60 2008-09-01T23:36:19Z 2009-08-24T23:47:25Z

In "Urban Warp/Weft," collaborative partners Amanda Browder and Stuart Keeler investigate and expose the interrelated, overlapping, and frequently obscure systems that sustain modern urban life. The artists assert that...

pillow audreymichelle.net In "Urban Warp/Weft," collaborative partners Amanda Browder and Stuart Keeler investigate and expose the interrelated, overlapping, and frequently obscure systems that sustain modern urban life. The artists assert that their projects do not attempt to solve environmental challenges; instead...read on (download PDF, 1.7MB)]]> tag:www.audreymichelle.net,2008:/news//2.49 2008-01-17T17:59:14Z 2009-08-24T23:03:52Z

Class Pictures By Dawoud Bey [Aperture, 2007. 164 pages. $45.00, hardcover] “For all this rhetoric about ‘leave no child behind,’ I don’t think this society, quite frankly, gives a...

pillow audreymichelle.net Class Pictures By Dawoud Bey [Aperture, 2007. 164 pages. $45.00, hardcover] “For all this rhetoric about ‘leave no child behind,’ I don’t think this society, quite frankly, gives a shit about young people other than as a kind of periodic political football,” says photographer Dawoud Bey in an interview with his former student Carrie Mae Weems in Class Pictures. “I’m trying to construct a kind of representation of the teenage subject that functions in opposition to those representations of teenagers as socially problematic or as engines for a certain consumerism.” Read on (download PDF, 828K)...]]> tag:www.audreymichelle.net,2008:/news//2.48 2008-01-16T17:33:06Z 2008-02-16T18:06:14Z

She's a filmmaker who embroiders, a feminist who loves guys, an artist who's making noise as a curator: Columbia alum Marci Rae McDade (B.A. '01) believes in timelessness and...

pillow audreymichelle.net She's a filmmaker who embroiders, a feminist who loves guys, an artist who's making noise as a curator: Columbia alum Marci Rae McDade (B.A. '01) believes in timelessness and finds inspiration in art history—the unapologetically turns it on its head. Read on... ]]> tag:www.audreymichelle.net,2008:/news//2.52 2007-05-23T18:45:13Z 2008-02-16T18:48:52Z

The Great Chicago Places and Spaces festival exposes private Loop spots that are usually closed to the public. Here’s what to see before the doors slam shut. Read on......

pillow audreymichelle.net Read on... ]]> tag:www.audreymichelle.net,2008:/news//2.50 2007-05-02T18:10:07Z 2008-02-16T18:38:41Z

After years of competing for attention and attendance, the city’s annual art fairs are coming together under one roof (well...two, actually). Here’s how to avoid visual overload. Read on......

pillow audreymichelle.net Read on... ]]> tag:www.audreymichelle.net,2006:/news//2.53 2006-12-07T18:49:03Z 2008-02-16T18:50:11Z

"MP3: Midwest Photographers Publication Project," DEMO4, Fall/Winter 2006, Vol. 2, Issue 1, p. 37. I'm a big fan of photographer Brian Ulrich, so I was pleased to write a...

pillow audreymichelle.net "MP3: Midwest Photographers Publication Project," DEMO4, Fall/Winter 2006, Vol. 2, Issue 1, p. 37. I'm a big fan of photographer Brian Ulrich, so I was pleased to write a book review of MP3, the recent trio of books published by MoCP and Aperture, which highlights Ulrich's work, for the Fall 2006 issue of DEMO, the beautifully produced magazine for friends and alumni of Columbia College Chicago (my alma mater). Read my review at DEMO online.]]> tag:www.audreymichelle.net,2006:/news//2.54 2006-10-15T19:10:41Z 2008-02-16T19:14:07Z

Neighborhood art walks are a great way to explore the city’s creative enclaves. Put these favorites on your calendar....

pillow audreymichelle.net Neighborhood art walks are a great way to explore the city’s creative enclaves. Put these favorites on your calendar. ]]> tag:www.audreymichelle.net,2006:/news//2.55 2006-09-16T23:12:20Z 2008-02-16T23:13:43Z

"Scott Fife at Bodybuilder and Sportsman," New City Chicago, September 7, 2006, p.21. My first art review for the Chicago alt-weekly New City covers the inimitable Scott Fife's recent show...

pillow audreymichelle.net New City Chicago, September 7, 2006, p.21. My first art review for the Chicago alt-weekly New City covers the inimitable Scott Fife's recent show at Tony Wight's Bodybuilder and Sportsman gallery.]]> ]]> tag:www.audreymichelle.net,2006:/news//2.19 2006-06-20T02:12:08Z 2007-01-03T01:28:41Z

In addition to my new position as Contributing Arts Editor to Flavorpill Chicago, I've recently contributed to two issues of Artkrush, an online magazine focused on the international fine art...

pillow audreymichelle.net Flavorpill Chicago, I've recently contributed to two issues of Artkrush, an online magazine focused on the international fine art scene that's a part of the Flavorpill culture-pub empire. First, a review of Edgar Arceneaux at Gallery 400 at UIC, and coming soon, a review of Los Carpinteros in Cincinnati. Meanwhile, make sure to subscribe to Flavorpill and get filtered cultural stimuli delivered to your inbox each Tuesday. For a taste of the Flavor, here's my review of Forecast, an exhibtion of local artists Shannon Stratton and Lisa Boumstein-Smalley at Gallery 40000, Britton Bertran's brilliant art space that, sadly, is soon moving out of my 'hood and into the West Loop gallery district proper...]]> tag:www.audreymichelle.net,2006:/news//2.21 2006-06-06T02:39:27Z 2007-01-03T01:28:41Z

As the new web administrator/copyeditor for the Museum of Contemporary Photography, I'm now writing the Uber+Punctum Newsletter, a semi-annual roundup of Museum happening, curatorial projects, and hot artists to watch....

pillow audreymichelle.net Uber+Punctum Newsletter, a semi-annual roundup of Museum happening, curatorial projects, and hot artists to watch. Snap!]]> tag:www.audreymichelle.net,2006:/news//2.20 2006-05-31T02:30:42Z 2007-01-03T01:28:41Z

Another fascinating assignment from Kasia Kay...a brochure on her current exhibition of stylish and cinematic work by husband-and-wife art team Nick and Sheila Pye. Sheila and Nick Pye's work is...

pillow audreymichelle.net Another fascinating assignment from Kasia Kay...a brochure on her current exhibition of stylish and cinematic work by husband-and-wife art team Nick and Sheila Pye. Sheila and Nick Pye's work is a teetering see-saw, a complex set of juxtapositions that illuminates their intimacy while emphasizing our place, as viewers, outside their private coupledom. Yet a glimpse into their secret dream-world reveals that their works do not represent unity, per se. Instead, they are largely concerned with duality – sometimes discord, but more often, harmony. ]]> The Pyes' oeuvre is an exploration of the magnetic attraction of opposites, and a visual depiction of the struggle to retain one's sense of self in a close relationship with another person, especially in marriage. Their relationship (at least as depicted in their art) is not one that upholds traditional masculine and feminine roles. In several of their series, Nick dons dresses, high-heeled pumps, and/or make-up. In Stasis, (2005), the artists are photographed in a grove of trees, both garbed in floral frocks as they each pull on the end of a rope – a sort of summer-camp trust exercise in which neither is signified as more vulnerable than the other. But it is not Nick and Sheila's mere reversal – or sharing of – gender roles that is remarkable. The theatrical nature of their work underscores their view that gender itself as a construct, and their willingness to subvert these paradigms is part of an ongoing experiment in redefining – and refining – their collaborations in both art and life. Their work is heavily informed by performance, their bodies functioning as both media and subject. Their yin-yang qualities are underscored by cinematic mise en scene that divides the two artists physically and thematically. In The Paper Wall series of photographs and the accompanying Super 16mm film (2004), they are separated by a thin wall, yet painfully aware of – and emotionally involved with – one another. In the 2005 photograph Language, they again pose on either side of a wall (this time a bathroom stall), but are connected via a shiny pink ribbon, each end held in each of their mouths. This exhibition, A Life of Errors, plays with and expands upon the Pyes' signature themes while ushering the concept of physical separation into the gallery space itself, with the cinematic and photographic accounts of their narrative shown in two different rooms. With this installation, the Pyes add another layer to their project: the video and photographic series are presented as discrete works, but since they are also both documents of the same scenario, the idea of authorship is questioned. Sheila is a filmmaker and Nick is a photographer, but neither of these works is the sole creation of either artist. Each medium illuminates what the other does not, but they could not function as effectively without the other. They seem to suggest, as well, that if there's a secret to a fulfilling relationship, one might find it here.