May 2010 Archives

Hausman by Kevin Cyr

Stunningly sunny San Francisco greetings collectors! I'm in California, yet again, with a handful of team 20x200, eagerly anticipating tonight's big event: our Third Annual Collectors Confab at Chronicle Books. Are you in the neighborhood? You're invited! We would be so pleased to see you. Swing by and say hello, would ya? We'll be sipping on some of the area's finest wines, thanks to Cameron Hughes, snacking and chatting with some of our favorite artists and friends from the West Coast from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. Even if it's last minute, please RSVP on Facebook or by email. Because no party is complete without favors, we'll make sure you leave with a tote and treats from popchips.

If our paths don't cross tonight, perchance we'll meet at the Web 2.0 Expo tomorrow? At 9:45 in the morning (early!) I'll be sharing the eCommerce Disruptors stage with Charlie Kim of Next Jump and Rebecca Thorman of Alice.com. It's shaping up to be a great week for geeks—today is Star Wars Day! While tomorrow's 20x200 edition will be totally techie-worthy, we have a plethora of prints sure to please the pocket-protector-wearer in us all.

With all these goings on in the next 36 hours, I must keep this introduction short but sweet! Today's edition from Kevin Cyr, Hausman, offers the opportunity to revel in nostalgia. When I first introduced the now-totally-sold-out Koolman and almost gone Berry, I took a little trip back to the New York I grew up in:

Kevin is documenting the here and now, but his work also recalls the New York of another time for me. I grew up here, commuting in from Queens to Stuyvesant High School, back when it was still on East 15th St. The F train took me to 14th St and an L train, very different than today's uncomfortably overpopulated-with-hipsters version, carried me east to First Avenue. That I took the subway each day was a source of major anxiety for my parents, but I loved going to school in the city.

Back then, the L train was rickety and graffiti-covered, and riding the line into Brooklyn was considered an unthinkably risky adventure by the mother of a girl from Queens. "Graffiti is a crime" was the conventional wisdom, and ridding the city of its scourge was the raison d'etre of the day.

While these sentiments still persevere when I'm looking at Kevin's paintings, Hausman makes me long a little for that time when Hostess was of the mostest! Snacking was simple and fun—that food could last in a pantry for eons was novel, not cause for an agricultural-industrial backlash against a major crop from the heartland of America. That these snacks are not considered the tastiest of treats these days is as much a sign of changing times as the absence of graffiti on trains and a much quieter commute to Queens.

Till tomorrow—or if you're anywhere near SF—tonight!

Regency TR1 First Pocket Radio by Mark Richards

The-morning-after-a-confabulous-evening greetings collector friends! It's been a whirlwind visit in SF this week. I'm still slightly delirious after last night's shindig at Chronicle Books which was followed by a delish dinner at Globe with the 20x200 crew—all topped off by this morning's presentation at Web 2.0. Whew! But it's not over yet. This afternoon's plans include some art seeing and a much-anticipated studio visit with Ms. Jessica Snow. I missed Jessica the last time I breezed through the Bay Area—not having enough hours in the day to catch up with all of the wonderful people we work with at JBP is a perpetual problem. In the whirl of seeing friends old and new last night, today's edition-maker, Mark Richards, came and went before we too could properly say hello!

Had we had a moment, we could have toasted the one-year anniversary of Mark's first editions. The timing of today's edition, Regency TR1 First Pocket Radio, is no coincidence, just about twelve months after we offered up Apple 1 and IBM 360 Model 30 Tape Drives 1965.

So here we are again, looking back at how far we've come since then—and farther still since the Regency TR-1 was introduced to the world in 1954 with the slogan "The revolution in your pocket." Its remarkably compact design spawned a series of successors all bent on making music portable. After Bell Laboratories brought us the TR-1, Sony followed up with the Walkman, then there was the Discman, and eventually the iPod. "1,000 songs in your pocket" was used to promote Apple's first generation of the device. Anyone remember the iPhone's first slogan? "The internet in your pocket." Who woulda thought that things would go so far beyond revolutionary!?

I'll leave you here to examine the innards of this technological wonder of yore as I'm still moving full speed ahead with today's agenda. If you're obsessed with this kind of wondrous gadgetry, I'd suggest Mark's book, Core Memory, beautifully published by, you guessed it, Chronicle Books. Enjoy the weekend but be on your toes; next week, in honor of NYPH, we'll be releasing an ethereal image from an acclaimed photographer, much beloved by the people of the Bay Area and so adored by the photo community that it's nearly impossible to collect even his books. I'm not one to sit on a secret for long so stay tuned for hints, here and there!

We want to extend hearty thanks and glad-to-meet-yous to all who came out to Chronicle Books on Tuesday night for our Collectors Confab! We hope you had plenty to nibble on, wine to sip, and a tote (and perhaps some books) to take home. And, mostly, we hope you enjoyed seeing just a few of our favorite editions on the walls—after all, they could be on your walls too. We had a terrific time learning a little bit more about what you've collected (or plan to), what kind of art you like to live with, how you discovered us, and what kinds of projects you're working on. Also, we're always glad to have a bit of face-time with our Bay Area artists, many of who dropped by.

Of course, none of this would have been possible without the help of Chronicle Books, wine from Cameron Hughes, and snacks in your bags from popchips. For those of you who couldn't make it, here are just a few snapshots from the evening, and hopefully our Confabs will soon start to spread out to your neck of the woods.

Untitled mm42,09, 2009, acrylic, colored pencil and graphite on paper by Gary Petersen

Opening this Friday, May 7th at Deep Space New York, Gary Petersen has several works included in part I of the two-part show, Drawing on Drawing. Curated by Erica Mercado and Rory Donaldson, Part I is open to the public on Friday from 7 - p.m. and Part II will open two weeks later on May 21st, from 7-9 p.m. To visit the exhibition at other times than the openings, an appointment is required.

Artists in Part I:
Eric Brown, Shane Caffrey, Vincent Como, Bruce Conner, Rory Donaldson,
Jay Ivcevich, Jason Bailer Losh, Gary Petersen, Heidi Pollard, Sean Ryan, Andy Warhol.

Artists in Part II:
Eric Brown, Vincent Como, Matt Mullican, Jim Nolan, Deirdre O'Connell, Lucy Pullen, Sean Ryan, Kelly Wilson

Drawing on Drawing
Deep Space New York
220 East 17th Street, #1G
New York, NY
212-253-8244

20x200 prints on display at the Collectors Confab in SF

Welcome back to the Week in Review, a (somewhat) short and sweet review of 20x200 news, links and happenings!

• Thanks to everyone who came out to our San Francisco Collectors Confab at Chronicle Books. We had an awesome time and it was great to meet you all! If you couldn't make it, don't miss our recap with photos of the event.
• Gary Petersen is included in a group show in New York titled Drawing on Drawing, the exhibition is open for viewing by appointment only during the next two weeks.
• This Saturday, May 8th is the opening reception for a solo show of work by Juliane Eirich at Gallery Schuster Miami.
• Bert Teunissen has posted a new series of images from the Balkan on his website.
• The Santa Fe Art Colony is having their annual Open Studio Day on May 16th from 12 to 6 p.m. Make sure to stop by studio 205 to visit Christina Muraczewski.
• While in sunny SF, Jen, Sara and Philae got to swing by the studio of Jessica Snow for a visit.
• Have you seen our framing inspiration page lately? We've been keeping it updated with photos of how people frame their 20x200 prints!
• Thanks to Yay Today for featuring us as their 200th post.
• Meighan O'Toole over at My Love for You... had a timely studio visit with Kevin Cyr, just before the release of this week's edition.

New Editions

Hausman by Kevin Cyr	Regency TR1 First Pocket Radio by Mark Richards

That's it for this week, collectors! See anything we missed? Reply to @20x200 on Twitter and let us know.

Jen's advice was recently featured in an amNY article dishing advice on collecting art. Her words ring true to all 20x200 collectors, "Buy art because you love it and you want to live with it."

Perfectly put Jen!

Salty by Michelle Vaughan

Slurp by Michelle Vaughan

Oys-terrific greetings collector friends! I'm bouncing back and forth between New York and San Francisco again—spending more time in the air than on the ground it seems. Somewhere between here and there, I'll be serving up some super special editions this week. If you caught our little game of Twitter-hangman on Friday, you already know about tomorrow's photography edition by T_DD H_D__. While he currently calls the Bay Area home, Todd's a photographer beloved everywhere and we couldn't be more excited to be working with him. Be at the ready tomorrow at 11:00 a.m. EDT sharp to snap up your Hido print.

Today's prints are a treat for connoisseurs of both oysters and the art and craft of letterpress. Salty and Slurp by Michelle Vaughan are the handmade fruits of hours of labor at Brooklyn's own The Arm. Like Dylan Fareed's We Are So Good Together, Michelle's prints are hand-pulled—the product of ink pressed onto paper. Of minimal proportions, it's the details that make these editions so sweet—soft, slightly off-white paper, deckled edges and a velvety pale pink ink, the color of oyster shells' interiors. Slurp and Salty are the simple sums of the acts of eating and tasting oysters—delish. Goodies from the sea aside, these prints are just plain fun. Sometimes a bit saliferous myself, I like the thought of these words hanging overhead.

As are most letterpress aficionados, Michelle is pretty particular about her type-faces. (Unlike our friend Lawrence Weiner, she is a fan of Helvetica.) She picked the Hamilton Gothic type—a.k.a. Franklin Gothic to the design nerds among you—for these prints because, as she put it, "it's a clean, honest face for everyday use. [And] oysters were once the everyman's food, eaten by rich and poor alike." Michelle's also an ostreaphile and a member of the Meetup group "New York Oyster Lovers". She's pretty much obsessed with food and art and these bivalve-licious editions are the print-perfect marriage of the two. Art and oysters for everyone!

Before I go, be sure to mark your calendars for this weekend's events at the JBG. On Friday, from 6 to 8 p.m., we'll be toasting the opening of Gregory Krum's ...Practice.... If you miss us then, please come by on Sunday, from 2 to 5 p.m. for a LES gallery walk with JBP's Philae Knight. The tour will begin at 2 p.m. at Invisible-Exports and end at JBG, where you can relax with a glass of wine for a brief talk about Krum's exhibition with Associate Director Jeffrey Teuton. Artists Penelope Umbrico and Ryan Humphrey will also be around and talking about their work at LMAK and DCKT galleries, two stops along the way. Space is limited so please RSVP to info AT jenbekman DOT com by Saturday, May 15th.

#4124 from the series House Hunting by Todd Hido

PLEASE NOTE PURCHASING LIMITS BELOW.

Good morning collectors—it's Sara today—so thrilled to introduce #4124 from the series House Hunting by Todd Hido. Go, grab your print, fast, now. They won't be around for long. Then come back because it's a perfect day for looking at and reading about photography and art for a little too long. It's gray and rainy in New York and Jen and I have been to sleep too late and woke up too early—but talking about Todd and this edition are the kind of things that make you excited to get out of bed when it's just plain miserable outside and you're on the edge of exhaustion.

Jen is still in San Francisco, so we have been chatting over IM. Our conversations about the artists we are working with are always ongoing—we send links to images, articles and interviews back and forth, commenting along the way. Studio visits are cemented by this type of dialogue, in addition to, of course, actual conversation, when we are in the same place at the same time. It's a process we've been honing for a couple years now.

Jen's history with Todd extends much farther than mine and ours, so I will start there.

Jen: He was one of the first people who showed me the path of "art for everyone." In part, because my first experience with his work was meeting him at a book signing. The signed copy of Roaming that I got that day was my first experience of an "art book" that had deep resonance for me. It is personal and universal and democratic all at once. But it was the interaction with him at the gallery that opened the door for me—the universality of the experience and emotion that the work depicted, combined with the democracy of having access to such an evolved body of art work because it was presented in the form of a book.

Like a lot of great artists, like, say, Raymond Carver, Todd's making something beautiful, deep and moving out of the mundane—taking our every day and creating moments that feel so nostalgic and familiar, but are uniquely his own.

Sara: The beauty and nostalgia in Todd's work are what initially turned me off to it. I had been art-school trained to be wary of both. But, because his work is so freaking gorgeous, I couldn't stop looking—and I realized that I could really spend time with the images and not get bored. If I was lucky like you and had snagged a copy of Roaming (or any of his books), I imagine hours would be lost to them.

Jen: I love how much he loves books, and I also think that his love of books and the way he uses them is part of what makes it so easy for him to understand what we're doing [at 20x200], and why it makes sense to him for HIM to do it. Having published so many books, Todd understands firsthand what it means to have a broad audience engaged in the ideas that inform his practice, and guess what? He LIKES it; it doesn't sully his work to have a lot of people, all kinds of people, engaged. It enhances the process and, I think, it kind of makes him work harder.

Sara: He totally does love books! I had read that interview with him and he said something about finding inspiration in books. And it makes sense. His house was full of them! And places to sit down and actually look at them.

Jen: After we spent the afternoon with him, everything about putting the edition together felt SO right. I left his house that day not only feeling like it was great that we could work with him, and amazing that it was going to happen, but also that it HAD to happen, because 20x200 seemed a perfect extension of his practice, a bridge between his books and the very scarce-to-date (not to mention tres cher!) photographs that you see in his exhibitions.

Sara: Yeah, for certain. I was also so happy to see and recognize that quote from The Road. You think of Raymond Carver, but this work, and this image, now really remind me of that book. The Road is probably McCarthy's most personal work to date. It's elegant and sparse and also strangely optimistic—the father and son are seeking out means of surviving and it becomes clear that they won't be able to carry on without the help of other people that they trust. And for as desolate as Todd's photos can be, I think there's something of that in them.

PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING PURCHASING LIMITS:

- We're limiting collectors to two 8"x10" prints each, and only one per collector for prints 16"x20" and larger.
- This edition is not eligible for any discount or promotion.
- We reserve the right to refund purchases if we determine that a single collector has acquired multiple prints or used a discount code.

As an avid reader and collector of books who organizes the thousands of titles in my apartment by the color of their spine—on an expansive shelf of reclaimed wood that spans one-hundred square feet—the challenge of selecting 15-18 books that are marked favorites, was a distinct and nearly impossible challenge. It's one Jane Mount put me up to a few months ago, when she emailed asking for my selection of "ideal books," for her show Ideal Bookshelves, which opens at The Curiosity Shoppe in San Francisco tomorrow, May 14th.

Ideal Bookshelf 27: JH by Jane Mount

I slowly pulled down Margaret Kilgallen's In The Sweet Bye & Bye (the first edition pink-cover version), A Summer's Day by Joel Meyerowitz, and Selected Poems by e.e. cummings, each eliciting a memory of when those books were acquired and how I first languored over their pages. I got excited putting together a collection, then felt fraught with great indecision, knowing that my "ideal" may soon be permanently down on paper in gouache and ink.

The exhibition features paintings, print and postcards of the bookshelves of friends around the country—the shelves of chefs, designers, artists, moms, dads, kids and collaborators. Jane is a firm believer that books say a lot about who a person is. She writes, in the statement accompanying the five Ideal Bookshelves available as editions on 20x200, "For a while, I've been documenting people's bookshelves as a form of portraiture; you can actually learn a lot about folks by their book covers."

Ideal Bookshelf 20: CR by Jane Mount

The ideal component of the series makes a slight departure from the literal organization of titles (messy or perfectly stacked as they may be), as an amalgamation of favorite books that might not sit next to each other in real life. One can fancifully add books they've lusted over but never acquired, rare editions that are no longer available, and books exterminated by time and use that live on in memory.

So, if you are in San Francisco tomorrow, stop on over to The Curiosity Shoppe (where there are lots of fantastic books, trinkets and objects worth browsing in addition to the gallery), and browse amongst Jane's painted shelves.

Ideal Bookshelf 1, JMM by Jane Mount (editions available on 20x200)

Ideal Bookshelves, Works by Jane Mount
Opening Party: Friday, May 14, 6-8 p.m.
The Curiosity Shoppe
855 Valencia St., San Francisco

For those of you unable to make it to the party, or to the show, the works will also be available for viewing and for purchase on the The Curiosity Shoppe's Gallery.

The stars are aligning tonight for the opening of a solo exhibition tonight at LMAKprojects presenting three series of recent works by Penelope Umbrico: Broken Sets (eBay), 2009- 2010, Zenith Replacement Parts, 2009, and Desk Trajectories (As Is), 2010. Penelope, ever using the Internet as source material for culling images and observing the behavior of our "technologically obsessed society," layers, accumulates, maniuplates and extracts images that reflect taxonomies of both ideas and objects that are omnipresent on the web.

Broken Sets (eBay) AD6D264E-3D49-42D8-9775-27293A37C401, 2008 by Penelope Umbrico

We first saw such taxonomies in her two editions on 20x200, 87 Suns From Flickr - 29 Visible and 79 Moons From Flickr - 51 Visible, which superimpose the images that comprise the ideas of "sunset" and "moonrise" as documented by millions of people around the world on popular image-sharing sites like Flickr. Penelope collects and then curates them into a surreal and somewhat psychedelic images, that are an abstraction based on the real.

From the press release:

Broken Sets (eBay) are images of the screens cropped from pictures of broken LCD TVs Umbrico found on eBay.com, where they are sold for parts. The sellers turn on the TVs while photographing them so that potential buyers can see that the electronics behind the screens work. Umbrico became interested in the incidental abstract beauty of the screens because they are derived from the breakdown and failure of their own promising technology...

Zenith Replacement Parts are photographs, also taken from eBay, of dusty cardboard boxes containing Zenith replacement parts. What intrigued Umbrico about these images was the seller's belief in the photograph - that a picture of the box storing the part would lend more veracity to the objects inside, than to simply list the parts numbers.

The third part of the show, Desk Trajectories (As Is), reflects on how "unattainable lifestyles are marketed, lusted after, and devoured by consumers," only to later become objects that exist on Craigslist and eBay—used, unwanted and devalued because they are now simply things taking up space.

Desk Trajectories (As Is and Everything must go 20 Desks), 2010 by Penelope Umbrico

In addition to the opening tonight, Penelope will be at LMAK this Sunday, May 16th to talk about her work during the gallery walk led by JBP's Philae Knight from 2-5 p.m. For more info and to RSVP, click here.

As Is
Penelope Umbrico
LMAKprojects
139 Eldridge Street
New York, NY 10002
Opening reception: Tonight, May 13, 6-9 p.m.
On view through June 20, 2010

Team 20x200 hit San Francisco in stride last week for our annual Collectors Confab, and while we were in town Jen stopped by the Web 2.0 Expo to speak to a packed room about how 20x200 is disrupting e-commerce and the art world. The talk was fast-paced, each presenter had just 5 minutes to present 20 slides that advanced every 15 seconds.

You can check out Jen's talk above, as well as presentations by fellow "disruptors" Charlie Kim of Next Jump and Rebecca Thorman of Alice.com.

A huge thanks to everyone at O'Reilly and Web 2.0 for putting together this great event!

Talisman I, graphite and watercolor on paper, 2010 by William Powhida

When Hrag Vartanian announced on favorite go-to art blog Hyperallergic last week that they were going to host a lecture by artist/provocateur William Powhida on "Surviving the Art World Using the Art of Sorcery," I was both intrigued and confused. After coming off the heels of the month-long #class, would this be something like that? Would it be like watching the Art World Town Crier? Would it be performance art? Stand-up?

From Powhida's site:

I will be discussing the magical aspects of art including illusionism, conjuration, alchemy and drawing power from malign art world entities. I will also be presenting a new work in progress for the operation of composite art magic. While some of the forms are borrowed from traditional black magic this is a highly personalized, composite magic made with common studio materials. I will also perform certain magical operations that use the ability of the mind to alter the physical world and bridge the gap between what is and what is desired. In the words of A.E. Waite "You have to be good to do evil."

Not living in the city itself, I watched with interest as the limited-space seating quickly filled up, shrugged my shoulders, and added this to the great long list of Things-I'll-Miss-'Cause-I-Don't-Live-In-the-NYC.

Enter Facebook fanpage for Hyperallergic:

Seriously. Awesome.

Why every art venue worth a damn doesn't do something similar, I'll never know. But kudos to you that do. I'll listen to your podcasts, watch your streaming video, Vimeo, YouTube, etc in whatever way you choose to make art more accessible.

Tune in tonight at 8 p.m. on the Hyperallergic site to get some Art Magic, baby.

Untitled (Whale), 2010 by Gregory Krum

Before we begin this week's recap, we have one special announcement:

A solo-show of work by Gregory Krum titled ...Practice... opens TONIGHT, Friday, May 14th at Jen Bekman Gallery! We hope to see you at 6 Spring St. at 6 p.m. for the opening reception.

Titled after Gerhard Richter’s book The Daily Practice of Painting, ...Practice... embraces Richter’s convictions about art and art making. In a series of carefully grouped photographs, Krum explores the ways in which truth is derived simply by virtue of belief.

Of Krum’s work, Jen Bekman notes:

I cannot articulate what makes Greg’s work so magical for me. That formal qualities and deep intellect inform his practice doesn’t justify the way that it seems perfectly acceptable for me to allow his truths to serve as impostors for my own memories. But does that matter, really? Is memory about experience and belief, or an emotion?

...Practice...
37 Photographs by Gregory Krum
Opening Reception: Friday May 14, 2010, 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
On View: May 15, 2010 through June 27, 2010
Jen Bekman Gallery
6 Spring Street
New York City, 10012

And without further ado...the Week in Review: a (somewhat) short and sweet recap of everything in the 20x200-iverse!

20x200 News

• William Powhida is lecturing on "Art Sorcery" tonight in Brooklyn. The event is completely sold out, but you can tune in online at 8 p.m. tonight to catch a live stream. "Prepare for a trainwreck," tweets Powhida.


• Check out Jen Bekman's lightning-speed Ignite talk on "Disrupting E-Commerce" given last week at the Web 2.0 Expo SF.


• A few JBP'ers were out on the LES last night to check out new work by Penelope Umbrico, whose show As Is opened at LMAKprojects.


• San Franciscans! Swing by The Curiosity Shoppe tonight to check out the opening of Jane Mount's Ideal Bookshelves. If you submitted a photo of your shelf, it just might be in the show, alongside the shelf of JBP's own Youngna Park.


• This weekend you're invited to tour the studios of Jaclyn Mendicov, Marcie Paper, and a host of other Brooklyn based artists at the MADARTS Open Studios. Saturday and Sunday 12-6 p.m. at MADARTS (255 18th Street, Brooklyn, NY) in South Park Slope.


• Jeffrey Teuton, Associate Director of Jen Bekman Gallery, gave his semi-weekly good links on Monday and they are not to be missed.


• Birthe Piontek, Scott Eiden, and Cara Phillips are featured in The Portrait as Allegory and Graphic Intersections, a joint show at Umbrage Gallery in Brooklyn on view through June 26th.


• JBP's resident art world insider and gallery fanatic Philae Knight will be leading a Lower East Side gallery walk this Sunday, 5/16 and only a few spots remain. Several of the artists will be on site at their respective shows to talk about the work. RSVP to info@jenbekman.com.

New Editions

Salty by Michelle Vaughan	Slurp by Michelle Vaughan	#4124 from the series House Hunting by Todd Hido

That's it for this week, collectors! See anything we missed? Let us know on Twitter @20x200.

Corner Cafe by Jorge Colombo

Going Under by Jorge Colombo

Drizzly-gray greetings collector friends. I left for Boston in the wee hours of this morning and because early-to-bed, early-to-rise just doesn't happen in the JB universe, I've been watching the landscape go by in a sleepy haze. It's fitting that the drawings by today's edition-maker, as I mentioned when we first brought his work to 20x200, capture the New York City of my day-to-day and my daydreams. In short, Jorge Colombo's iSketches are the perfect anecdote to NYC's dismal weather and sleep deprivation, bringing reminders of the clear summer skies to come and the cozy neighborhood haunts we retreat to on the days when rain persists. Plus, Jorge's work and the bringing together of art and technology are things that make me warm and fuzzy.

Fanelli's—as featured in Corner Cafe—has long been a favorite stomping ground. An icon tucked off busier streets, it's always full yet there's almost never a wait. It's the kind of place where no one pays attention to the occasional celebrity sighting, too focused on the good company and good food in front of them. Going Under features one of those arching overpasses that mark the edges of the outer boroughs. While these are sights of home to me, I'm guessing they're starting to become familiar to even the non-New Yorkers out there too. Jorge's drawings are making regular appearances on The New Yorker blog and have popped up on another cover. (His fourth one! But who's keeping count...?)

The steady din of energy and excitement at 20x200 HQ reached unprecedented heights when one of the said New Yorker covers appeared during the live blogging of Apple's iPad release. Jorge isn't using an iPad yet but I had to ask him about it. He offered up a smart analysis of the tool and what it will offer, both what it definitely means and what it might mean:

I do not have an iPad yet, but will surely get one. I have drawn on one already, and loved a larger screen. (I'm tired of mixing phone calls in with my art supplies). One day we'll be able to draw on touch screens the size of a door. Compare the early iPods—2001: heavy, grey screen, no pictures, etc.—with current ones. Doesn't it make you feel like this one iPad is ONLY the beginning? The basic thing for me remains: no visible tool. Finger creates art, period... The other key point is portability: a regular digital studio is now in your pocket. It's not so much a toppling of status quo, more like a broadening of alternatives—shooting a movie in black-and-white film now doesn't mean the same it meant a century ago—back then it was the single option; now it's a choice among many.

That Jorge views this as a single tool among many, and within a history of evolving mediums, is evidence of his savvy approach. It's not the app that makes these drawings so great but the artist who figured out how to use it. Jorge isn't alone in his pursuits, not in the how and not in the what—legendary artist David Hockney is also adapting to new tools. And in NYC, I always think that Jorge is a bit like photographer Joseph O. Holmes. They are both tirelessly devoted to seeing the city and have looked long enough to have an appreciation and the maturity to not be overwhelmed by it. So, when I'm spending all this time away from home, I can come back knowing that they've captured parts of it for me, forever.

A recent New York Times article by Tara Siegel Bernard looked into pay discrepancies between men and women at the top of their games—and their companies. Bernard quotes Hannah Riley Bowles, an associate professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, who says of studies on gender, negotiation and leadership, "We have found that if a man and a woman both attempt to negotiate for higher pay, people find a woman who does this, compared to one who does not, significantly less attractive."

And there are more challenges than pay discrepancies. Successful, entrepreneurial women are also confronted by a lack of role models, difficulty navigating an "opaque and clubby world" dominated by men, and left out of invitations to speak at conferences, even when positioned with phenomenal business experiences to share.

A few entrepreneurial women will come together next Thursday, May 27th, to address these challenges—particularly those faced in the process of raising venture capital. Jalak Jobanputra, the senior VP and venture investor at the New York City Investment Fund, will lead a discussion with female innovators who have done so successfully, including our very own Jen Bekman. The panel is part of the kick-off event of the Girls In Tech Entrepreneurship and Venture Series with ASTIA, a global non-profit working to propel women's participation as entrepreneurs.

The panel will also include the following panelists:

Heidi Messer – Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of LinkShare
Stephanie Sarka – Co-founder and SVP Product and Marketing and Executive Director of Overture Europe
Jenny Fleiss – Co-founder and President of Rent the Runway
Jen Bekman – Founder of 20x200

So, if you're a budding business-person (men and women, both!), looking for advice on how to start your own fundraising, or simply curious about how others in the field have paved their way, make sure to snap up a ticket in advance.

The GIT NYC Entrepreneurship and Venture Series Kick-Off with ASTIA
May 27th, 2010
6:30 - 9:30 p.m.
$5 (to benefit Girls in Tech)
DogPatch Labs, 36 E. 12th Street (between Broadway + University)

Jump by Thomas Prior

Steps by Thomas Prior

Hello collectors! I am back from Boston, ever happy to be home for a fortnight, at least. And even more pleased to be introducing today's editions from Thomas Prior: Jump and Steps.

These editions came together a hop, step and a jump after the most recent Hey, Hot Shot! opening at the gallery. Tom was a contender in the last round (a very close contender, more on that in a few!) so I was happy to see him. He's someone who drops by the gallery frequently, is always nice, genuinely interested and without an agenda. The casual conversations we've had reinforce that he's both engaged in his practice and also paying attention to how hard everyone at JBP is working on all the projects we do here.

Likewise, Tom works hard and has kept at the photography thing for awhile. I've know him since 2003—which is starting to feel like a long time ago—the seven years in between span the better portion of his ten years of picture making. A decade's worth of dedication and persistence is evident in his work—it's gotten better and better.

When Steps popped up during the last Hey, Hot Shot! review, I thought, "wow, that's cool—what IS that—oooh—then OMG, I know this guy, and I really like him and I know he's doing the very, very hard work." I wasn't the only panelist who took interest; we actually spent a good deal of time discussing Tom and his work and, of course, the project itself. Ultimately, however, he wasn't selected for that edition of the competition, which speaks to the core of the challenge in evaluating the work of so many talented artists: choosing the final five almost always involves making heartbreaking decisions.

But, thankfully, there's 20x200! And I can share Tom's work with you all here. Having a platform to create an opportunity for someone I know and like and respect is one of the deepest pleasures of my job. It's why I do what I do. I just couldn't be on the other side of things: I could never be an artist, putting something out there —that's (on some level) about who I am and how I feel—to be judged, and often so arbitrarily. It's essentially really brave to me. It's usually a long rough road out there for artists. The idea of a young "art star" drives me nuts—for most it's a marathon of portfolio reviews (for which Mr. Teuton has offered up a few tips), competitions (Tom was recently named one of PDN's 30 New and Emerging Photographers to Watch), group shows and assisting gigs, all while making photos. It's WORK.

There's a slew of intrepid photographers out there who have started to enter this year's Hey, Hot Shot! competition—which I'm pleased to note, will award one photographer a $5,000 cash prize to prepare for a solo exhibition at JBG. In addition to all of the incentives that have made Hey, Hot Shot! so great in the past, like our incredible panel, the opportunity to have work reviewed for 20x200, and $500 awards and a group exhibition for the five selected Hot Shots, we're now offering this really-big-deal prize and a series of Curator's Choice Awards throughout the competition. The first Curator's Choice Award winner, Phil Underdown, was selected by Radius Books' acquiring editor, Darius Himes. The deadline for the next award is TOMORROW, Thursday, May 20th. CEO of Chronicle Books, Nion McEvoy will review all HHS! entries to date and award one with accolades and five books from Chronicle. So, if you haven't entered yet, now's the time!

Among the other photographers and Hot Shots out there who I know, respect and hold dearly to my heart is Gregory Krum whose solo exhibition at the gallery ...Practice... is super smart, beautiful and not to be missed. See it. ASAP. It will be on view at 6 Spring Street till June 27th.

Baby Giraffe No. 5 by Sharon Montrose

"I hate to admit it but I think everyone will benefit from a baby animal today." Thus speaketh the lovely Ms. Sara Distin to me, mere moments ago over IM. Unlikely as it may seem to those who know the mild-mannered, seemingly-sweet-as-pie Sara, she takes a dim view of all my widdle-baby-animule-loving hijinks. This is why I am especially pleased when one of the little suckers melts her cold heart, as today's beguiling Baby Giraffe No. 5 by Sharon Montrose has done over and over and over again during the past few months.

As regular readers are well-aware, we sprang a couple of Sharon's captivating creatures upon our collectors right before Easter. What you all have no way of knowing is just how hard it was to choose. Choose we did, but we've been holding this edition in our hip pocket till just the right moment. Turns out that today's the day, although I hope it won't mean an end to the giraffe-related link trading that Sara and I have been doing as of late.

And with that I'll embed the link most germane—the video below features Sharon talking about her work, with a supporting cast that comprises members of her ever-changing menagerie. Keep an eye out for baby Stanley's loping entry from stage right and see if YOUR heart doesn't melt when he flicks his ears around just so.

Anyone whose goal is 'something higher' must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.
—Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

It's rooftop season again, in more ways than the casual impromptu bbq with drinks and friends. The must-experience art of the season is going on right now on the rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and it will be going, growing, morphing and inviting you to take part all the way until Halloween.

© LitLinx

The project Big Bambú, by Mike + Doug Starn, is the whole ball of art-wax: It's installation art, it's performance art, it's sculpture, and if you believe in their claim to have been afraid of heights before they conceived of it, it's even art-therapy. The work-in-progress is already open to visitors on the rooftop of the Met garden, and is currently over 30 ft. high and involves 3,000 bamboo poles and over 30 miles of nylon rope. The Starn twins and a team of 20 rock climbers are continuing to work on the piece throughout the 6-month duration of the exhibit, and at its end it will be swaying over 50 ft. high above the Met's roof and have over 5000 bamboo poles lashed together with over 50 miles of rope.

© Mike + Doug Starn, Big Bambú, Metropolitan Museum of Art 2010

The evolving architectural aspects of Big Bambú are inherently related to sister philosophical/metaphorical concepts concerning change, chaos, interconnectedness and what it means to be a living organism. In an audio interview with Metropolitan curator Anne Strauss, the Starn twins commented that:

We've always done work that was about change, and about how nothing is ever really finished. It's always going to exist in time and through time. Meanings change and objects change. This piece is representative about what it means to be alive. Not just like an animal—it could be a city, a society or a culture. Something that is always complete, but never finished.

I'm quite fascinated to see how the visitors at the Met [going into the piece]...how that's going to change and feed the piece.

We found out that it was a lot of fun. We had no idea; it was a dry, conceptual piece. But climbing in it, we feel like kids again—it's amazing. I feel that joy of life coming through on the piece, I really can't remember being happier than I am up on the roof, over Central Park.

One detail I loved listening to in the interview was that when the Starns first conceived of the piece, they considered hiring workers that were in the business of constructing huge bamboo scaffolding in Asian cities where the material is ubiquitous, and often stands in for steel. But they realized that if they did that, they would be confronted with skilled workers that were used to doing things in a very systematic and proscribed ways, and that this would clash with the notion of organic and wave-like growth that they had for the piece. "We wanted people who knew nothing about building, but weren't afraid of heights. So we thought of rock climbers," the Starns said.

One of the most beautiful aspects to Big Bambú are the lashed pathways that weave up and through the piece (and the air!), building upon itself as the exhibition continues to evolve.

Bamboo pathways inside Big Bambú, © artlobster

For a great introduction to the piece (and to see how twins really do complete one anothers' sentences), watch the interview below with Mike + Doug from the NYT:

Now, how to get to this roof? There are two ways to see the piece. From the Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition page:

Visitors are able to experience Big Bambú from the Roof Garden level, open to everyone during regular Museum hours, weather permitting, and to walk among a forest of bamboo poles that serves as the base of the sculpture. Alternatively, visitors are able to explore the artwork on brief tours led by Museum-trained guides. On the guided tours, held during regular Museum hours, weather permitting, small groups of visitors are able to walk along the elevated interior network of pathways roughly 20 to 40 feet above the Roof Garden. Tickets are required for the guided tours, and specific guidelines apply to those interested in participating.

You can read the full guidelines here. I'm told that if you go on the guided tour, you have to sign all kinds of death and dismemberment disclaimers. And I'm totally afraid of heights. But I just might have to do this.

Big Bambú runs through October 31, 2010.

Install shot of Ideal Bookshelves by Jane Mount at The Curiousity Shoppe

Welcome back to the Week in Review, a (somewhat) short-and-sweet recap of 20x200 news and links!

20x200 News

• Jane Mount's Ideal Bookshelves opened last week at The Curiosity Shoppe in San Francisco and the install shots (above and more here) look great! You can also purchase individual paintings online.
• Artists: the ArtPrize deadline is May 27th! Over 226 venues in Grand Rapids, MI await the installation of your art for this sixteen-day art-stravaganza. A prize of $250,000 is at stake, more details here.
• Paho Mann is included in Subjective Research, a show opening tonight at SCA Contemporary Art & ARTLAB Studios in Albuquerque, NM.
• Big Bambú a rooftop installation at the Met Museum by Mike + Doug Starn is now open! You can read all about the interactive sculpture, comprising 3000 bamboo poles climbing 50 feet high, on the blog.
• Jen Bekman will be speaking on a panel at Girls in Tech on May 27th. More info on tickets and times here.
• Photographers! JBG's Jeffrey Teuton has rounded up a list of Portfolio Review Dos and Don'ts (One Reviewer’s Opinions).
• Have you seen the gorgeous install shots from the opening of Gregory Krum's solo-show ...Practice... at JBG? You can read all about the show on the T Magazine Blog, which had some nice words to say about Greg's work.
• The Rema Hort Mann's annual LES Art Crawl is happening this weekend.
• Colleen Plumb is in Disposable: Nostalgia for the Still Image, a group show opening at Dina Mitrani Gallery in Miami on June 12th.

New Editions

Going Under by Jorge Colombo	Corner Cafe by Jorge Colombo	Jump by Thomas Prior	Steps by Thomas Prior	Baby Giraffe No. 5 by Sharon Montrose

That's it for this week, collectors! See anything we missed? Let us know on Twitter @20x200.

A favorite tongue-and-cheek moment of this year's Whitney Biennial was had when I wandered up to the fifth floor where there is a retrospective of work from eight decades of Whitney Biennials past (this being the anniversary of the storied art festival). On a facing wall of the entrance to the retrospective where painted quotes from art critics and other raconteurs through the years that have delighted in belittling the biennial as if they were invited guests at Oscar Wilde's dinner party. The tone of all of these can be summed up in Roberta Smith's observation that, "The world would be a duller place without the Whitney Biennial to kick around every two years."

While it is true that every biennial there are things to love and things to hate (and even, or especially, things that we love to hate), the work of 2010 Biennial artist Nina Berman falls into a strange category unto itself. As you pore through reviews of her work you'll notice a confluence of striking synonyms, "Unflinching," "terrifying poetry" and "heartbreaking beyond description." These were three succinct summations that accurately reinforced other reviews that have been published about Berman's body of work, Marine Wedding, which follows ex-Marine sergeant Ty Ziegal, returning home disfigured and disabled from the war to marry his high school fianceé.

Ty and Renee, 2006 by Nina Berman

Ty gets dressed for his wedding, 2006 by Nina Berman

The thing about biennials at the Whitney (and most biennials in general), is that it is easy and expected to stroll through huge exhibition halls and rooms, blithely taking in what's on display, and offering up diminishing commentary along the way. Irony and disappointment are often as much as on view at these affairs as any art hanging from the walls, and yet when you come to the room holding Nina Berman's photo essay on Ziegal, all of that is silenced. I'm certain that Berman has her own agenda with these images, but whatever that agenda is, it is humbled and present in front of her subjects, who she reveals to us with utter respect and openness to both their experience and our experiencing of them. I've heard some wonder aloud what place documentary or reportage photography has in a contemporary art venue like the Whitney Biennial, but to that I'll defer to the wisdom proferred by DLK Collection, that wrote of her work:

In terms of sheer "memorableness", I found the work of Sinclair, Berman, Casebere, and Mann to be the most compelling and likely to lead somewhere exciting or new. Many of the others seem to be working in styles that we have seen before (in the inbred world of photography), but have yet to coalesce into wholly original lines of thinking. Taking a straight photograph, documenting a performance, appropriating an image, or mastering a process are not enough to make it in the 21st century art world; there are some forgettable photographs here I'm afraid. The photographic works I found most thought-provoking in this show were those that are built on layers of outward looking ideas and realities, that took on the larger forces in our society at this particular moment in time, rather than those that were overly self-conscious or inwardly reflective. The disruptions I saw were based in the context of the times, rather than the fabric of ourselves.

This last week of May is also the last chance you'll have to see Berman's work at this installment of the Whitney Biennial. If you've been putting off going, you'll have ample time to do so before it closes, as the Whitney will have special hours (as part of another participating artist's entry): From Wednesday, May 26th at 12:00 AM through Friday, May 29th 11:59 PM the Whitney Museum of American Art will be open TWENTY FOUR HOURS. And if you are interested and moved by Nina Berman's work, she is having a special event this Friday night at the Whitney, starting at 7:30 p.m. She will be giving a slideshow and audio presentation from three bodies of work pertaining to the war and the military industrial complex since September 11, 2001, and her intent for the evening is, "to bring the war home," presumably with no subterfuge or irony, but with loads of intelligence and heart in its stead.

My Turn: Nina Berman
Friday, May 28th at 7:30 p.m.
The Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street
New York, NY 10021

Nina adds this bit of info on her site:

"The event is free with admission which is Pay What You Wish on Friday nights. No special tickets or reservations are required."

Come and be moved.

Ideal Bookshelf 42, JMM by Jane Mount

Sunny and summery greetings collectors! It's Sara at the helm—bringing you the ninth edition from the ever-industrious and inimitable Jane Mount. It's been a long time since Jen first introduced Jane and her charming bookshelves to 20x200-land. Now we're on the brink of amassing an entire library of picture-perfect tomes. The number of editions we've released with Jane is diminished only by the exponentially larger number of books Jane accumulated and painted in preparation for Ideal Bookshelves, an exhibition now open at The Curiosity Shoppe in San Francisco and on view 'till June 15th. If you're in the Bay Area, go see it!

As Youngna wrote, in anticipation of the opening, Jane called out to friends far and wide to send their own favored volumes to be documented—as a result, a few of team 20x200's tomes appear among the hundreds of painted spines. Jane's inquiry informs the idea behind the project—the books we cherish have somehow formed us and our favorites reveal a little bit about ourselves—giving Jane and the viewers of her works the chance to see an intimate portrait of sorts. For many of us, the books we'd select might not include those we read when we were much younger, whether forgotten or overshadowed by more recent reads.

Jane, on the other hand, readily admits, "I've been more influenced by books I read as a kid than books from any other time in my life." She goes on to explain that Ideal Bookshelf 42, JMM "includes all the ones I read multiple times between the ages of 8 and 12, and a few newer ones I've read more recently, since there's still a 'young adult' in me." And whether the rest of us readily remember, or not, many of these books surely shaped our ideas about the world around us.

Today's edition is the natural and chronological follow-up to the collections for the youngest at heart featured in Ideal Bookshelf 5, TRE and Ideal Bookshelf 1, JMM—the books that helped us accomplish insurmountable odds with a simple chant, nod off to sleep while counting blessings instead of sheep, and to follow our hearts instead of the nagging voices in our heads. The lessons learned in the books that Jane selected for Ideal Bookshelf 42, JMM are likewise influential but more complicated and complex. Combining fantasy and fact, they allude to the challenges we face as adults: in Charlotte's Web, life and death are moderated only by the voices of the animals and young Charlotte, Frankenstein warns about the limits of modern man and industry and The Secret Garden illuminates the healing power of all living things. Not all of these books are quite so serious: From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler indulges the adolescent urge to run away (to The Met, no less!) and The Swiss Family Robinson is abundant with sheer adventure... in addition to some natural history lessons.

If nothing else, reading keeps us learning—I have one more opportunity to offer for expanding your horizons. This Thursday, Jen and a few other women who have successfully raised venture capital will be speaking on a panel at The GIT NYC Entrepreneurship and Venture Series Kick-Off with ASTIA, addressing the challenges faced in this pursuit.

The GIT NYC Entrepreneurship and Venture Series Kick-Off with ASTIA
Thursday, May 27th, 2010
6:30 - 9:30 p.m.
$5 (to benefit Girls in Tech)
DogPatch Labs, 36 E. 12th Street (between Broadway + University)
Purchase tickets in advance here.

We're so excited to announce that we have been named one of Entrepreneur's 100 Brilliant Ideas. Chosen along with 99 other great startups, the editors of Entrepreneur point out the best part of 20x200, "Most any art lover can become an art collector"!

I'm in the midst of planning my wedding and with great crafting spirit have taken on a handful of projects that involve sewing, serging and stitching, en masse. In creating sewn objects, my greatest goals are the basic ones of a beginning crafter: making sure my lines are straight, loose threads aren't showing (at least on the outside), and that the fabric lays against a flat surface without too much unevenness.

Pair (35mm slide), 2010 by Lauren DiCioccio

In Stitches, a show currently on view at the Armory Center for the Arts' Caldwell Gallery in Pasadena, CA, twelve artists take the age-old techniques of sewing, knitting and weaving to an elevated level. This is not craft for the everyday home, it's a much more complex intertwining of materials—involving but not limited to blankets, wire, buttons, canvas, wood, string, twine and towels. With their works, they aim to "illustrate the sophistication and complexity of work that has evolved out of the twenty-first century global curiosity with domestic practice..."

The threaded forms are both two-and-three-dimensional, some large-scale and site-specific installations. Others, like the work of Lauren DiCioccio, operate on a tiny scale. In Pair (35mm slide), DiCioccio recreates a 35mm Kodak slide featuring a tiny stitched "transparency" of a couple standing in front of flowers, with loose threads hanging out the back side as though a tangle of electrical wires. At 2"x2", the slide is true to the scale of the real-life object it mimics, the tiny details embroidered into silk organza pin prick by tiny pin prick.

To see all of Stitches, hurry out to Pasadena, 'cause it's only up for another ten days or so, till June 6th.

Stitches
Armory Center for the Arts
Caldwell Gallery
145 N. Raymond Ave., Pasadena, CA
On view through June 6, 2010
Opening: Saturday, April 10th, 7-9pm
Hours: Tuesday-Sunday, Noon-5pm
Curator: Sinead Finnerty-Pyne
Featuring work by: Jane Brucker, Lauren DiCioccio, Elisabeth Higgins O’Connor, Ruby Osorio, Titus Kaphar, Nuttaphol Ma, Ulrike Palmbach, Maria E. Pineres, Dinh Q. Le, Jim Richards, Elias Sime, and Nicola Vruwink.

9-11-02 by Nina Berman

Welcome back to the Week in Review, a (somewhat) short-and-sweet recap of 20x200 news and links!

20x200 News

• Tonight at 7:30 p.m. in NYC, Nina Berman hosts an evening that "brings the war home" at the Whitney Museum. The Biennial closes this Sunday, May 30th, so hurry uptown before time runs out.
• We are honored to announce that 20x200 is one of Entrepreneur Magazine's "100 Brilliant Ideas for 2010".
• Lauren DiCioccio is included in a group exhibition titled Stitches at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, CA.
• Want Todd Hido looking at YOUR photos? We're thrilled to announce that he has joined the Hey, Hot Shot! panel.
• The arts in NYC need your help! The governor has proposed 40% budget cuts in the arts that will affect museums, galleries, educational institutions and cultural landmarks across the state. Here's info on how to support NYFA, sign a postcard petition, and speak up against budget cuts.
• Progress Report visits the studio of Gary Petersen in midtown Manhattan.
• Communication Arts profiles Bob O'Connor for their series on "Fresh" artists.
• Ropes by Pattie Lee Becker finished it's run at BMOCA on May 23rd, but we could stare at these images forever. Pattie was also recently in residency at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center, which you can read all about on her blog.
• Rachel Sussman is raising money to fund her project, The Oldest Living Things in the World through Kickstarter, and she is so close to reaching her goal with 22 days left! Help her get to the Antarctic to photograph 5,000 year old moss by backing her in the next few weeks.
• Mark Marchesi is also using Kickstarter to find backers for his project, Documenting Portland Maine, aimed at capturing the coastal fishing community of the city's waterfront as both the fish and the fisherman grow more scarce. Help Mark reach his goal of $2K—just 23 days to go!

New Editions

Ideal Bookshelf 42, JMM by Jane Mount	Kite Hill by Paul Octavious