Nikita Gale: Place is the Space is the Place / Art21 Magazine
Born in Alaska, Nikita Gale spent her formative years in Atlanta before attending Yale University, where she studied anthropology and archaeology. But she always had a sense that she’d end up making art. A turning point occurred during her last undergraduate semester,...
Letter from the Editor, ART21 Magazine’s Sept./Oct. 2015 HAPPINESS issue
When I was twelve years old, I remember seeing it: my first smiley face. It was gigantic and bright yellow, hanging on the exterior brick wall of a car dealership, located on a busy street in Evanston, Illinois, a suburb just north of Chicago. I hated that smiley...
Letter from the Editor, ART21 Magazine’s May/June 2015 FAMILY Issue
I am pleased to present the May/June 2015 issue of Art21 Magazine. FAMILY is the theme for the next two months — and it's definitely a family affair, y'all. For this exciting issue, I carefully selected and commissioned 11 writers and artists to contribute work. Each...
Asher Hartman’s Ritualistic Marathons / Art21
Asher Hartman’s art is located at the intersection of performance, theater, and magic. He doesn’t practice hocus-pocus or the style of Gothic witchery seen in the 1996 film The Craft; he creates spaces for psychic, intuitive work that allows people to come together...
Emergency Response / Art21 Magazine
Little disasters pop up in our lives whether we notice them or not. They may be as mundane as getting stuck in traffic or a cycle of negative thoughts that manifest as poor decisions. Can these be avoided? Or is it that the tides of chance turn, and not everything is...
Magic in Rural Southwestern Wisconsin: Meg Leary Sounds Off at ACRE Residency / Art21
In any place that isn’t the otherworldly realm of the ACRE Residency, twelve days doesn’t feel like a long time away from one’s day-to-day life. Launched in 2010 by Nicholas Wylie and Emily Green, ACRE (short for Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions) was...
New Bonds and Studio Space Lead to Creative Leaps: Stacia Yeapanis on Chicago’s BOLT Residency / Art21
When Stacia Yeapanis finished graduate school at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2006, she did what many MFA grads do: moved her studio into her home. But soon thereafter Yeapanis found herself overwhelmed by an inability to separate her art practice...
Carrie Schneider Adds a Finnish Touch / Art21
Carrie Schneider arrived in Helsinki, Finland already feeling an an intrinsic, intuitive connection with artists from the region. Her one-year Fulbright fellowship (2007-2008) at theFinnish Academy of Fine Arts only intensified her affinity to the style of Finnish...
An Earthquake Strikes Aspen Mays’s Starless Fulbright Fellowship to Chile / Art21
Aspen Mays traveled to Chile, the astronomy capital of the world, to look at the stars through some of the world’s most advanced telescopes. But over time, the bright stars, possible planets and meteors weren’t actually what interested Mays. Inside Chilean...
From Performance Artist to Object Maker: How Reality Television Changed Young Sun Han’s Practice / Art21
To be on a reality television show, contestants voluntarily leave their familiar surroundings, home life, and regular routines to temporarily thrust themselves into a world dictated by short attention spans and video editors with their own agendas. While on the show,...
France is for Phonies: Julie Lequin Isolated in Paris / Art21
French-Canadian artist Julie Lequin consciously blurs personal history and fictionalized worlds in her videos, performances, drawings, and writings, creating new narratives in the process. Lequin’s real-life events become part of an ongoing, first-person storyline...
Christopher Meerdo Experiences the Icelandic Landscape Through the Body of a Decomposing Sperm Whale / Art21
Christopher Meerdo’s deep interest in Icelandic culture and geography led him to apply for the three-month SIM International Artist Residency in Reykjavik, Iceland, where he was based from February to April 2012. Now back in Chicago, Meerdo says the residency has...
Traveling with Peregrine Honig’s American-Argentinian Twin Boys / Art21
Peregrine Honig’s experience at the Proyecto Áce Residency in Buenos Aires, Argentina, attuned her senses to an unfamiliar culture as well as her American roots. This sentiment is reflected in the image she honed at the residency: Analogue Tendril, a silkscreen series...
How Residencies Change an Artist’s Practice / Art21
In a perfect world, every artist would have an opportunity to take time off and wander into that space outside of reality where creativity blossoms. Few artists make a living off of their work alone, and even so it’s difficult to constantly feel inspired and motivated...