If you’re in the neighborhood and stroll by the CGN office windows, you’ll notice a new addition to our walls.  We are now showcasing a fresh, blue, geometrically weaved installation by artist Elizabeth Burke-Dain. 

The process began a few weeks ago when Elizabeth visited our office to scout out proper placement of the installation.  We knew the final piece would consist of a series of plotted nails, with a connected weaving of string, but the end result was still unknown.  Sadly, we missed most of the install action while we were manning the CGN booth at Art Chicago last week.  We saw the initial blank wall, and were pleasantly surprised when we returned to the office and discovered the finished work – a striking and complex woven system of blue cotton thread (one long single strand) wound around hundreds of strategically placed white nails, forming symmetrical half-circles and a large X at the same time.

Elizabeth has a background in the humanities, arts, and art administration, and has been creating installations like these for about a year.  CGN’s is the most recent addition to her repertoire, but she’s also installed them in businesses including an advertising agency office, as well as in several other homes and residences.

Each piece is carefully thought out and custom-designed for each recipient/space, keeping lighting, color schemes, placement, and other architectural design elements in mind to best utilize the wall space and maximize the impact of each piece.  Though each installation involves pounding lots of nails (we missed that part…), the holes can be easily filled/patched if the piece is eventually removed, with no significant damage to the structure of the wall.

Elizabeth welcomes solicitations and commissions for unique pieces for business offices, design showrooms, restaurants, personal homes or anywhere else that would be a good fit for an intricate, colorful, intriguing installation.  Contact her with questions, comments, and to learn more about her work: email eburkedain@gmail.com, connect with her on Facebook.

You don't need an excuse to visit the MCA, one of our very own terrific arts institutions, devoted to art by the living, but you may not know much about the museum's stage performances, so CGN's challenge to you is to make cool, last minute plans and go see the Trisha Brown Dance Company perform this weekend at the museum.  The company gets major accolades, having performed for the past 40 years, and to demonstrate just how accessible, as well as cool, they are, they perform to a variety of music, ranging from the Grateful Dead to Gordon Lightfoot and Bob Dylan, making for an unusual mix of contexts that will appeal to any audience. Seeing such performances at the MCA should make you reconsider what you know to be 'visual art', and the shared experience could give you plenty of dinner (maybe date?) conversation all weekend.

MCA Stage celebrates the 40th anniversary of Trisha Brown Dance Company with a program that spans the depth and creative range of one of the foremost artists of our time. This is a rare opportunity to experience select early works that shaped postmodern dance, in combination with her newest piece, which is choreographed to a baroque opera.  Eighteenth-century French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau's one-act Pygmalion, based on a myth as told in Ovid's Metamorphoses, is a story of love and magic rendered in an elegant and intricate architecture of human movement by Trisha Brown. The stage set, based on her drawings, reflects her ongoing interests as a visual artist.

Below are performance times and ticket prices.  One performance on Saturday afternoon is included with regular MCA admission. In tandem with this concert program, Trisha Brown Dance also performs one of her signature site-based works in the MCA galleries:

Early Works: Saturday, April 16, 3-4 pm
Free with museum admission or performance ticket
A rare event, join the Trisha Brown dancers on the MCA's main floor where they perform signature works from the company's forty-year history, including Accumulation (1971) set to the Grateful Dead's "Uncle John's Band", Sticks (1973), and Spanish Dance (1973) set to Gordon Lightfoot's "Early Mornin' Rain" performed by Bob Dylan.

Another opportunity truly does involve dinner and dancing:

         Dinner + Show: Trisha Brown Dance Company
         Friday, April 15, 2011, 6 pm

         Feast and mingle with MCA Stage Director of Performance Programs Peter Taub and, special guest, Rehearsal Director Di Madden, immediately prior to the opening night of Trisha Brown Dance Company. A tapas dinner reception and drinks are provided by Wolfgang Puck Catering before guests enjoy the opening-night       performance from the best seats in the house.
         $75, includes dinner and performance ticket
         For ticket reservations, call Bridget Eastman at 312.397.3827

More info about Trisha Brown Dance Company.

• Friday, April 15, 7:30 pm  Tickets $22, members $18
• Saturday, April 16, 7:30 pm Tickets $28, members $22
• Sunday, April 17, 3 pm  Tickets $28, members $22
Buy Tickets Online or call the MCA Box Office, 312.397.4010

* Student tickets are $10 and subject to availability

"I'm a kid from a sandbar, from the Pacific Northwest where I grew up watching my father pick up a piece of driftwood asking all of us children 'what do you see?' Mornings I rose to the sounds of seashells opening at low tide, gurgling their way back to sea. That was and is my life, my inspiration, my reason d'etre.  My work today is because of all things beautiful from the lip of low tide, the flotsam and jetsam of love, passion, and life."

Diana McKnish, Excerpt from Of This Land The Artist's Touch

This evocative statement from artist Diana McKnish refers to her childhood long ago - 80 years to be exact.  Her latest exhibition is installed throughout the sprawling treasure trove that is Salvage One, and it celebrates both McKnish's 80th birthday and her 40 years as an artist.  McKnish creates her creatures and female figures from driftwood, steel, and found objects, including some from Salvage One and various flea markets.

Salvage One is a magical destination - part high-end flea market, part vintage design warehouse.  McKnish's own figures made from driftwood and metal blend in well with old chuch pews, iron gates, foosball tables, old neon pharmacy signs, and Mad Men-era vinyl couches.  And McKnish's own messages of discovery and unpredictability fit with in Salvage One's whimsical setting.

Salvage One

1840 W. Hubbard (60622)
Th, F 11-6; Sa 9-5; Su 12-5; Call for additional hours
Staff@salvageone.com

thru november 21:
Diana McNish: Women
A celebration of 80 years of observation and 40 years of sculpting.