I, like most Americans am inundated with sharing. It takes seconds to share. For better or worse, my networks generate the vast majority of the visual, political and cultural content I see. The artists in this collection of videos were selected because for years I have admired their work and their sensibility has influenced me in some way and what they care to share consistently displays one of two qualities that I prefer to see: Poetics and Things that Make Me Laugh.
To the artists: The world can be a bitter and disappointing place some days, but you guys surprise me, remind me, teach me, inspire me and crack me up! Thank you for your contributions to this project. Thanks for sharing.
Jen López lives in Chicago, Illinois and completed her MFA in Fiber and Material Studies from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago in 2004. She is a recovering academic, makes art for pleasure, curates for fun and the majority of the time is a champion of artisan cheese.
Ken Castelli moved to Tangier Island, Virginia five years ago as the inaugural Artist in Residence at the Tangier History Museum. After three years of building exhibits and learning the local dialect (an accent, much like most Tangiermen eccentricities, wholly unique to the island), he decided to make Tangier his home. But this home is disintegrating, bit by bit, chewed away by winds and tides. Tides that swell and surge through the town, unearthing the dead, encroaching on homes, and drowning the marsh. In this exhibition, Castelli, whose larger body of work documents the landscape and lifestyle of Tangier and the Eastern Shore/DelMarVa Peninsula region of the United States, sketches out vignettes of the inevitable. Abandoned by local politicians and put on hold by scientists and studies, the people of Tangier stand on land that is ever sinking and shrinking, waiting for the water to reach their necks. This series of drawings is both a warning and a dirge. The rhythm of Castelli's linework rings out a threnody for a piece of American history. This tiny world speaks to the universality of our entropy.