South 12th

Good news, everyone! I have a studio space now, in the Faux Poco collaborative, situated in an old brick warehouse on Vandalia Street in the mighty Midway of St. Paul.

Some of you obsessives may recognize the project ephemera festooning the wall: the screenprints from Potboiler, some handouts from last year’s Common Room, the jersey from Retroactive Minnesotan, and many of the charts and related materials from the already-legendary 2012 U.S. Cities Contemporary Art Rankings: A New Hierarchical Approach. It is like the Hard Rock Cafe of Andy Sturdevant-related art projects!

Come visit me sometime. I’m planning some regular critiques and artists talks for 2012. Or better yet, become a member of Faux Poco: you can buy a shop membership for as little as $50 a month, which gets you 24-hour access to a screenprinting shop as well as a wood/assembly shop. 

In closing, remember to save the planet, and also to love all and serve all.

Professional development.

As a person active in the world of visual art, you are often called upon to greet other art world acquaintances from New York City or Europe. This is usually really lovely, but there is often one minor difficulty: many times, they will want to kiss you on the cheeks.

Now, look: I like kissing people on the cheeks. I like kissing people, period. I am a supporter of kissing in all of its many forms, and let it never be said otherwise. But the fact is, greeting people by kissing them on each cheek involves specific maneuvering techniques that one refines over the course of years. Art people from New York and Europe have much more practice in this because they kiss each other on the cheek several times a day. As for myself, I am only in a situation a few times a year that calls for me to greet someone by kissing them on the cheeks. The will is there; the technique is lacking.

For example, I was at the Minneapolis Institute of Art the other day with an artist friend, a very smart, sophisticated native Minnesotan that studied in New York, and a curator he knew walked by. They greeted with the traditional hug and kissing on the cheek. And he admitted to me afterwards that he still feels totally awkward doing this. Not awkward about the kissing, but awkward about the stilted quality of his technique. And I realized, wow, I am not the only one.

It was then we hit upon the idea of offering a workshop for Midwestern art people on how to best kiss people from New York or Europe on the cheek when you meet them. It would cover need-to-know areas such as the best angle of approach, the precise amount of time the kiss should last, which cheek to do first, etc. Over the course of a few hours, with a lunch in the middle, attendees would learn valuable techniques to this art form, first with mannequins, then with live subjects. By the time the workshop is over, attendees would be able to confidently greet art acquaintances by kissing them on the cheek as well as any native of the Upper West Side or Dresden. 

All that’s left to do is determine a fair price. Maybe $50? Not including lunch?

August is here, which means it is time once again for Common Room at The Soap Factory, now in its third blockbuster year! Sergio and I have changed the format slightly since last time, so click through to read more. We have an actual website now!

Or there’s also some information on The Soap Factory’s website.

You can see what sort of things went on during Common Room 2009 and 2010, as well.

“The painting’s relative obscurity has to do with a whole host of enormously complicated turn-of-the-century political and artistic issues — free silver, prairie populism, Symbolism, European immigration, American exceptionalism, and fin de siècle decadence, among other things…”

Here’s a piece I wrote for mnartists.org about French Symbolist Odilon Redon’s portrait of Governor John Lind, its connection to a short-lived Minnesotan arts fad in Paris at the turn of the century, and Tim Pawlenty’s small-minded plan to sell off the painting at auction to raise funds for the state.

Me: Oh my gosh, wow! Look at these Philadelphia art kids I found on Flickr! Look at them! Lookit how crazy they are! Lookit that hair!

You: No, Andy, you look. This weird obsession with Philadelphia art kids has gone too far. It’s all you’ve written about this week. Your Minneapolis readers don’t care, because it’s not the slightest bit relevant to them, and your non-Minneapolis readers don’t care because you don’t know what you’re talking about. Frankly, you sound like a hayseed.

Me: No, come on, look! If you turned these kids loose in Minneapolis they would be running this place in three days! It would be like Invasion USA! They would slurp up the soft insides of Midwestern Scandihoo MCAD kids like ice waters!

You: They’re called “water ices.” Nice try, hayseed.

Me: And this is just the girls! Where are the dudes? Who even knows? Off building homemade instruments made out of drugs, probably!

You: [zoning out] I wonder what Mills is up to?