Heather will be exhibiting new mixed media mosaics at The Artist Project, part of Chicago's Artropolis, later this month. I get to watch these creations come to life one shard of glass at a time and can't help broadcasting it when they're going to be showing somewhere everyone else can enjoy them too...
Great show on night three of Wilco's five night residency at the Riviera Theater in Chicago. Fine form with a horn section and fiddle on several numbers. Tight, tasty twists on some classics and a few straight up takes. Annotated playlist at the Tribune, but here's the list again for posterity's sake:
1. "Blue Eyed Soul"
2. "Remember the Mountain Bed"
3. "Bob Dylan's 49th Beard"
4. "Hesitating Beauty"
5. "That's Not the Issue"
6. "Wishful Thinking"
7. "You Are My Face"
8. "Side With the Seeds"
9. "A Shot in the Arm"
10. "We're Just Friends"
11. "Kamera"
12. "Handshake Drugs"
13. "How to Fight Loneliness"
14. "Jesus, Etc."
15. "Should've Been In Love"
16. "Pick Up the Change"
17. "Theologians"
18. "Walken"
19. " I'm the Man Who Loves You"
Intermission
20. "Via Chicago
21. "Impossible Germany"
22. "She's a Jar"
23. "Say You Miss Me"
24. "Box Full of Letters"
25. "I'm Always In Love"
26. "Hate It Here"
27. "The Late Greats"
28. "Red-Eyed and Blue"
29. "I Got You (At the End of the Century)"
30. "Monday"
31. "My Darling"
Encore
32. "Can't Stand It"
33. "Nothing'severgonnastandinmyway(again)"
Celebrated Christmas this year by unplugging and before that December got hectic. Getting back in gear now and intend to get some fresh thoughts flowing here.
A few observations / thoughts to get the observational flow going again:
Might actually have a thing or two to say about web marketing once I soak in it for a while...
In London on Remembrance Day (at least, that's what we Canadians call it). Striking to see bemedaled Veteran's in uniform around the city. Also saw a very timely exhibition at StolenSpace Gallery in Brick Lane: Shephard Fairey's NINETEENEIGHTYFOURIA. Very large scale works to smaller prints staring back at big brother. With it's palette of poppy reds and its subtext of the costs and trade-offs for freedom. Struck me as strangely appropriate to photograph people viewing and photographing the work.
The space is spectacular too, above the Old Truman Brewery Sunday Market. Additional work from Fairey's Obey series "deface" the area around the gallery. Brilliant work and entirely sold out, including the massive canvases. Maybe I can go back and steam one of the posters off the wall outside!
My photos on Flickr. More info at stolenspace.com and a great review from the London Times: Poster boy with a difference.
London's Saatchi gallery is taking a crowd-sourcing approach to promoting art online, letting artists promote and sell their work for free from a custom site. Seems to be phenomenally successful from a traffic POV, ringing up tens of millions of daily "hits" (seems like a long time since I've heard that metric!).
Having just added Heather's work to the site, I have to say that the user interface for artists and browsers is remarkably bad. I kept getting weird errors trying to log-in to the account and got landed on blank pages when I added images. And the page elements dance all over the screen more garishly than a LowerMyBills ad as the page loads. You'd think that Saatchi would be able to find/fund resources to build him a world-class site. The art gathered there deserves a more professional environment. He'd never settle for this type of shoddy experience in his galleries!
Here's Heather's new page on Saatchi: Heather Hancock Mosaics. Judge for yourself.
A few pictures to capture the vibe at the annual Around the Coyote Fall Arts Festival in Chicago's Bucktown neighborhood.
UPDATE: we were lucky enough to find some new artists to add to our collection at ATC. Check out some really great work from these deserving artists and genuinely good people:
And at risk of driving up prices on artists we're still just watching, check out Eric Mecum's photo realistic paintings, which took an interesting spare turn year, and Robert Burnier's taut duels with chaos.
The quietest, beautifulest rock show you'll ever see. Yo La Tengo played an intimate acoustic set tonight in Chicago for diehard fans and newer devotees, me in the latter category. In their "The Freewheelin' Yo La Tengo" mode, they chatted with the fans, alternately answered and dodged questions (like how Ira proposed to Georgia), and covered everything from the b-side of Ira's first ever 45 (Let's Spend the Night Together has never sounded so innocent) to Brian Wilson's Farmer's Daughter (the closer).
Great versions of three or four songs from "I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass," including Weakest Part and a quietly blistering Pass The Hatchet. Plus a lot of stuff that all their real fans knew well but we got to enjoy for the first time!
Ira claimed that none of them are great players, but they clearly know who they are and play who they are. They could not look less rock and roll but they "totally delivered the goods" (as James said Van Halen did when they were the second band he ever saw).
A graffiti inspired, immersive installation by collective Keep Adding. Looks like they're well on their way, exhibiting this winter at Art Basel... They're also profiled in Apple's Pro News...
My wife, mosaic artist Heather Hancock, will be exhibiting this weekend at Chicago's emerging arts festival: Around the Coyote. Other artists to check out in various Bucktown venues: Gabriel Mejia, Kim Frieders, and Russ White.
It will be truly amazing to watch this go up over the next few years: The Chicago Spire. Noticed the first ads in the loop today. Construction started in the last few weeks. Projected to be completed in 2011. Wikipedia has more details...
