Towards the end of 2017, I had been spending a good deal of time looking for new opportunities whether they be in the form of exhibitions, publications, and/or residencies. I applied to a handful of group exhibition calls in the United States and made my biennial application to the Shiseido Art Egg. I also submitted artist residency applications to the Albers Foundation and the Studios at Mass MOCA. Whenever I think of doing an artist residency, MacDowell, Djerassi, and the Headlands always pop into my mind. Unfortunately, I missed the 2018 deadlines for those residencies, but they are now on my radar for 2019.
The shape that 2018 was going to take was still unclear as December came to an end. The end of the year brought a bit of clarity into my plans. I decided to focus my administrative efforts on submitting applications for artist residencies with the goal of spending a month this coming fall somewhere to develop my work and dive more deeply into the studio process. I still have an eye out for exhibition opportunities within Japan and also in the United States and elsewhere. For those exhibition opportunities, I decided to submit works that were already created in 2016 and 2017 rather than submitting ideas for new and not yet realized works.
During my visit to the Bay Area, I had a chance to visit the Minnesota Street Project which is becoming a mainstay on my itinerary when I visit the Bay Area. After wandering through 1275 Minnesota and seeing some great work, which I will come back to in another post, we were told about Building B of the Minnesota Streets Project which was just across the street. As I wandered over there, I noticed Building A which was a large structure housing artist studios. Making my way past Building A, I took in the impressive and diverse collection of the McEvoy Foundation.
Upon my return to Tokyo and updating my list of call for entries, I came across the Little Paper Planes Residency in San Francisco. My last recollection of Litter Paper Planes was in late 2008 when I visited their brick and mortar shop in the Mission and learned that they were closing their shop shortly. As it turns out, LPP continued on and has thrived in those years in between with another brick and mortar shop in the Mission and organizers of the LPP residency. This residency is based in the studios of Building A of the Minnesota Street Projects and the deadline was in mid-January. I had a few days to put together the application and sent it in as soon as it was finished. With these handful of applications submitted, I am going to wait and see if any of these three residencies will take me for the fall of 2018. I would gladly head over to the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation or the LPP+ residency should they find me a suitable match. The Albers Foundation would give me a chance to return to my painting roots as like most painters, Josef Albers was instrumental in my early development as a painter. Artsy.net has comprehensive profile of Josef Albers with over 350 works available to peruse. Anni Albers also has an extensive profile with 75 works at Artsy.
The Studios at Mass MOCA is an interesting one as it would give me an opportunity to be explore Mass MOCA during my residency. The only thing that gives me hesitation is the cost which is $650 / week. Beyond the cost of roundtrip airfare which I am expecting to cover, this adds up to a substantial additional cost. If I were to take that opportunity, I would probably have to look at crowdfunding as a way help subsidize that residency.
Should I not find a suitable match among these three, I am prepared to submit another round of residency applications which are due roughly around the beginning of March. These include Millay Colony and UCross for 2018 and Djerassi for 2019 among others.
Outside of that, I am looking to submit a series of my Daily Drawings for some publications as I think they would translate well onto print and online publications. I have submitted a series of my Daily Drawings to group exhibition calls, but I also have a sense that they made not make it through the rigors of jurying. Three submissions from the fall and winter 2017 of the Daily Drawings has helped to further improve my resiliency for rejection and also has me taking stock about the viability of these drawings as single works.
The Open Sessions Call from the Drawing Center is probably the one call that I am most excited about putting together. The Drawing Center in New York City is one of my most favorite art institutions of all time. The exhibitions that they organize are regularly a source of inspiration for my studio practice. The Open Sessions started in 2014 or 2015 and are a series of workshops and events centered around new practices in drawing. The new call is for 2018 through 2020 and I am excited to develop a proposal that either focuses on my Memory Walks Project or my Daily Drawings. If I am appropriately inspired, I would love to propose something that integrates both projects.
In terms of concrete plans, Art Byte Critique book artists will be sending some of their zines and books to St. Helens, England for the St. Helens World Book Day exhibition at the beginning of March.
I will be sending the works that I created for the Tokyo Art Book Fair 2017 and maybe a few more editions of the 2016 Memory Walks Books. I am also working to organize a slideshow presentation to introduce Art Byte Critique, the artists and their works during the exhibition.
There are two other projects in the planning phase for 2018 and 2019. The first is a potential pop-up event with two different spaces and artists that I have worked with and gotten to know over that last two years. We are hoping to have an announcement at the beginning of April. The second project is a longer term project that would span until the summer of 2019 with a small museum in the Kanto area. I had a preliminary discussion where I introduced my works and concepts last weekend. This would not be a traditional exhibition, but rather a more interactive, community-based project with workshops and events being an important component of this project. After finishing my collaboration with Artfull Action this past fall, I think this project would offer some new challenges for my studio practice as well as for the way I think about the value of art. I hope to have more definitive information to share about both these projects over the next couple of months.