Erik Moe: Critic at Large

Discovered after my recently posted podcast playlist, the art-talk podcast Bad At Sports is well worthy of its own post. I’ve caught three episodes so far, and each has been at least nine times as entertaining as any artist talk I’ve attended in recent years (and without uncomfortable folding chairs). Though its focus is the Chicago art scene, I’m sure Seattle and Philadelphia will find plenty to love in its brainy and witty dissection of art, art school, and the scary world of the professional artist. The most recent episode (#61) features an excellent interview with Kerry James Marshall.

While exploring after dinner last night, the paintings of Icelandic artist Anna Jóelsdóttir caught our eyes. A few of her works are on display at Zg gallery – located under the brown line tracks at Chicago St. They don’t reproduce as well on screen, but the combination of detail and sparseness was appealing to me. This is a detail from a journal in which she draws one panel daily before flipping the page. These drawings then become the basis for larger paintings. More works at the zggallery.com.

So that last post about (virtually) meeting the neighborhood bloggers needs to be amended a bit. Not only because half the neighbors mentioned added comments about having left the Wilson/Sheridan neighborhoods, but also because I didn’t end up living there either. I’ll save you the gory details two-plus months after the fact. For now, lets just appreciate the simple joys of shopping for soy milk, tofu, and pasta. More interesting photos and Chicago explorations are forthcoming.

P.S. Go Twins!

Two books starring the 1893 World’s Columbian Expo have been on my favorites list for some time – and have shaped my understanding of Chicago ahead of my move there next month. Sunday’s Sun-Times reports that both Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan: Smartest Kid on Earth and Eric Larson’s The Devil in the White City are being made into feature films (via Gapers Block).

If done right, the Expo could be a perfect subject for the big screen. It was itself a sort of fleeting fantasy that was (mostly) destroyed after its six-month run. It is unlikely that any other event did as much to craft the American cityscape of the 20th Century (for better or worse, I suppose). Most fascinating to me is the monumental scale of the Expo. Quoting Chris Ware in the Sun-Times:

“Ironically, to the modern mind, the whole fair seems a wondrous and practically inconceivable ‘folly,’ something I think people today unconsciously hunger for, though they might not be willing to admit it… The scale and expenditure that went into the 1893 Exposition is really only matched today by Hollywood blockbuster movies, and is just about as transitory, but there’s still something so much more reassuring, dignified and hopeful about it being a real place to visit and encounter rather than simply a brief flickering of colored shadows on a screen.”

It would be great if Hollywood could do a good job recreating the 1893 Expo, but it would be better if cities were inspired to take more risks with fantastic architecture. In these conservative times, would any city take on something like a Statue of Liberty or a Mount Rushmore? On that note, Mayor Street has still not commented on my proposal for 8th and Market.

Pictured: vintage playing cards from the World’s Columbian Exposition

Since Tuesday’s primary election solved all of Philadelphia’s problems, Rachel and I are turning our sights to Chicago. Above is a panorama of two giant video art monoliths in Millenium Park – just across the street from Rachel’s new school for the fall (click image to enlarge).

Some fun with panoramic photography from a lazy Sunday at Clark Park last month (click to enlarge). If you look closely, you’ll see that a ghost is doing Rachel’s painting homework for her. The source images were taken on a cellphone camera – believe it or not.

Rachel and I spotted this giant metallic dragonfly heading west on Spring Garden Street yesterday.

I have no idea where where it came from or where it was going, but it provided a brief moment of magic after a Sunday morning brunch in Northern Liberties. Presumably it is some kind of public art installation (click images for enlargements).

One of my recent Flash projects went live a few days ago. It’s a timeline! Who doesn’t love timelines? Sure, it isn’t exactly the Met’s timeline of all things visual in the history of planet Earth, but it does have a cool zoom effect if you skip around a bit. You can launch the timeline from the sidebar on this page.

While I’m talking design, have a gander at my latest portfolio (beta). I’ll be adding more samples to it in the coming days.

If you are in Philadelphia this weekend, check out Rachel’s show on the 3rd floor of the Gilbert building (where Vox Populi, Highwire Gallery, and the Fabric Workshop are). She is showing some of her yarn creations and paintings. She says that the other artists are going to be superstars someday (t00), so you should buy their work now.

Back in August, Rachel and I captured this mysterious flicker in the basement of my parents’ house. Lets call it “Experimental Film No. 1.”

Note that this post is filed in a new category: “podcasts.” WordPress has built-in support for podcasting, which means that you can grab my RSS feed (bottom of the page) and use it to automatically download this movie and any future audio/video craziness I post. Enjoy!