Helen picked-up this book at the MoMA last year.  Page 27 features this amazing photo combo…works by Harry Callahan and Jens S. Jensen.

Almost done – what a crazy amount of paper.

This is a Noble Boulder Badge extracted from a painting by Berndt Lindholm that I grew attached to while in Rauma, Finland.  The boulder was produced as an embroidered badge (edition of 45), and awarded to participants during ‘Featured Features’ an orienteering-based art project (or art-based orienteering project?), I created this fall.  I have finally posted documentation of the project here.

Still going through old photos and am remembering it was only a year ago that we lived in Portland and didn’t know where we would be as of December 2012.  Who’s to say where will we be in December 2013?

Just looking through some old photos and found this one .  My dear friend Rebecca took it during our summer in Dawson City, (2006).

Going to Céline Condorelli’s workshop about Support Structures today.

Heading to London this week for a research trip as part of our ongoing work with The Pedagogical Impulse.  We’ll be interviewing Annette Krauss, Antony Hudek and Barbara Steveni in addition to visiting the Tate Archives (Artist Placement Group files), visiting the APG retrospective at Raven Row and stopping-in on some research/programming at Whitechapel Gallery and The Showroom Gallery.

Hannah Jicklingin ja Rasti-Lukon taidesuunnistustapahtuma.  Sunnuntaina 28.10.2012 klo 13.30 – 15.00. Ilmoittautuminen ja Vanhassa-Raumassa ja hieman sen ulkopuolella kulkevan reitin karttojen jako Café Salin Loungessa, Kuninkaankatu 22, klo 13.30-14.00. Ei osallistumismaksua. Koko perheen tapahtuma. Tervetuloa kaikki!

Raumars-taiteilijaresidenssissä vieraileva kanadalainen taiteilija ja suunnistaja Hannah Jickling venyttää humoristisella tavalla vakiintuneiden karttasymbolien merkityksiä. Osallistujat löytävät reitiltä epätavallisia vesireittejä, satunnaisia veistoksia, arvaamattomia installaatioita ja muita topografisia kuriositeetteja.

25 ensimmäiselle tapahtumaan ilmoittautuneelle brodeerattu “Ylväs siirtolohkare” -merkki.

Lisätietoja: hannah.miami@gmail.com 044 0959545 tai liisa.snellman@rolls-royce.com 040 5646987.

Kirkon portti – Santeri Salokivi, 1923. UPM-Kymmenen Kulttuurisäätiö.

Working on Featured Features, the art and orienteering project I am co-producing with Raumars and Rasti-Lukko in Rauma, Finland.  Here is a preview-of-a-preview of the prize: a limited edition of Noble Boulders.  More details soon…

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

I want to let you know about my upcoming project and an opportunity to invest in an event-based artwork. I have been inspired by so many of the new and inventive funding models that artists have used to support their work.  Instead of using an existing platform, I am appealing to you directly, as an experiment in DIY crowd-sourcing.

I have been accepted to do a residency at Raumars, an international artist-in-residence program in Southwestern Finland, for seven weeks this fall.  While there, I will be collaborating with the local orienteering club in Rauma, on the production of a project that will use the structure of orienteering as a system for navigating artworks and cultural institutions. Read this PDF for more info!

Raumars is one of very few residency programs that facilitates collaborative projects between artists and locals as their main programming mandate. This will provide unique and critical support for my practice. The residency is giving me a place to stay, a small stipend for materials and production assistance, but I still need financial support for travel, health insurance, food and additional project costs. These expenses will total an estimated $2500 – I NEED YOUR HELP TO RAISE THIS MONEY.

For each sliding-scale donation between $50 – $400, I will provide a limited edition photographic print from my work in Finland (approximately 10 x 14″, signed and numbered on the back, and sent to you). For donations under $50, I will send a hand-written postcard update from Rauma.

So, you want to invest in this work?!  Please pay what you can (and as much as you can).  Click the PayPal button below and enter the amount you would like to pay under ‘item price.’  You will be prompted for your address and will receive your piece-of-the-piece by the end of November.

Score O (2009), by Hannah Jickling.  Photo by Motoya Nakamura.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

August 2^nd, 2012
EYELEVEL GALLERY HOSTS 2012 WORLD PORTABLE GALLERY CONVENTION

HALIFAX – August 2^nd, 2012 – Eyelevel Gallery announces the line up of artists and curators that will be in Halifax this September for the first ever World Portable Gallery Convention (WPGC).

With ground breaking this summer for the controversial Nova Centre, a massive $164-million convention centre to be built in downtown Halifax, there is a huge emphasis being put on the economic potentials of convening and networking. Against such a backdrop, the World Portable Gallery Convention 2012 brings together the more Lilliputian institutions and their shades of independence, who seek other effects and affects from intimate exchanges. Eyelevel Gallery has worked with guest curator Michael Eddy inviting curators from around the globe including; Craig Leonard (CA), Hannah Jickling (US/CA), Temporary Serivces (US), Judy Freya Sibayan (PH), Valerie LeBlanc and Daniel Dugas (CA), Kate Rich (UK), Ozawa Tsuyoshi (JP) and many more to flood unsuspecting corners of Halifax with contemporary art for the entire month of September 2012.

From September 1^st – 29^th, Eyelevel Gallery will function as a taxi-stand for up to fifteen portable and alternative exhibition venues, each weaving throughout the city of Halifax, making themselves available to the public on a “by chance or appointment” basis. Information flyers will be distributed throughout Halifax, jingles will be advertised on the radio with Eyelevel Gallery’s phone number, and WPGC 2012 operators will be ready to dispatch portable galleries to viewers.

In the convention taking place September 5th – 8th, presentations, performances, panel discussions, and events will playfully punctuate the gathering of local and international “industry professionals” (with appropriate levels of tongue-in-cheek). These contributions will open up dialogues on topics surrounding scale, autonomy, mobility, intimacy, as well as transitions from alternative to established, and the pathways between DIY and entrepreneur.

ABOUT EYELEVEL GALLERY
Eyelevel Gallery is a not-for-profit charitable organization dedicated to the presentation, development and promotion of contemporary art. Through a range of programming initiatives such as exhibitions, performances, special projects, and workshops, Eyelevel Gallery has provided a forum for the discussion and education of contemporary visual art for 37 years.

CONTACT
Elizabeth Johnson
WPGC 2012 Coordinator

Helen and I are sorting through photos from several projects we did this spring.  Look for YOUR LUPINES OR YOUR LIFE soon – HERE.

We are honoured.  See more here.

Helen, Stephanie and I will be presenting different projects through our work with The Pedagogical Impulse this weekend at Open Engagement. We will be participating in an Alternative Schooling panel on Saturday, May 19 from 10:30 am – noon at 2000 SW 5th Ave (AB320) and will also be leading a workshop on Sunday, May 20 from 3 – 4:30 pm in the same place.

As a part of Open Engagement, I will be presenting a variety of ‘documents’ from my project, HOWARD HUTS, that I completed during a residency at the Multnomah Education Service District’s Outdoor School (Fall 2011). Highlights will include:

MODULAR STICKS,

250 POSTCARDS,

A MOSS-COVERED PIZZA HUT,

A FLAPPING TARP,

AN ACCOUNT OF TRAMPLED RATTLESNAKE PLANTAIN,

A LINE MADE BY WALKING

AND MUCH MORE.

Find me, and all of these things, at:

HOWARD HUTS OPENING – at Field Work (1101 SW Jefferson St), Friday, May 18 from 5 – 7 pm for happy hour.  Beer and wine! A SURROUNDED SPACE THAT EXPANDS IN THE DIRECTION YOU WALK (a walking/talking panel organized by Dillon De Give) – meet outside Art Building (2000 SW 5th Ave), Saturday, May 19 from 3 – 4:30 pm.

Howard Huts is/was a series of embedded art-works and experiments produced in the woods near Corbett, Oregon in collaboration with 6th graders, high school students and staff of the Multnomah Education Service District’s Outdoor School. This project was initiated in parallel to ArtODS, a pilot project that began to incorporate the arts and creative practices into the existing curriculum and community life at Howard Outdoor School during the Fall of 2011. Both of these initiatives have been generously supported by; Friends of Outdoor School, the Gray Family Fund, the Wieden Family Public Fund and The Starseed Foundation.

Aski’s chocolate intestine inspired by Wim Delvoye’s Cloaca.

An Over Attachment or Excessive Engagement That Goes Beyond the Intellectual by Sarah Todd just published through Switch On, the Power Plant’s ‘online hub.’  Sarah talks about her own experiences surrounding the Cinenova collection and mentions our ‘enabling session’ through All Hands on the Archive, hosted by the FAG, the Power Plant and the AGYU.

Through our work with The Pedagogical Impulse, we have been doing a residency at ‘Multiple Elementary,’ making limited editions of chocolates with a Grade 6 class.  Here are some process shots… stay tuned for a description and more images under PROJECTS (soon).

Shots from our in-progress-installation at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.  Find more under PROJECTS or here soon.

Helen and I have be accepted to do a residency at the Nida Artists’ Colony in November/December 2012 – Lithuania, here we come.

Join us in our up-coming-under-the-table-enterprise at Art Metropole’s book launch for ‘Commerce by Artists’ (edited by Luis Jacob).

Helen and I will be circulating an under-cover currency of LESBIAN CONFETTI – hand-made and hand-harvested fingernail clippings from real lesbians, friends of lesbians and the queer and questioning cats of lesbians. This byproduct of lesbian lifestyles achieves new value as a maximum visibility, biodegradable party supply.

CELEBRATE WITH US!  BOOK LAUNCH = CONFETTI LAUNCH!

TONITE! (FRIDAY, MARCH 23), STARTING AT 9 PM AT DOUBLE DOUBLE LAND (209 AUGUSTA AVENUE).

As part of Cinenova: All Hands on the Archive, a collaboration between the Feminist Art Gallery, the AGYU, and the Powerplant, Helen & I will be presentingVeronica 4 Rose, a 1983 documentary by Melanie Chait.

Helen and I are super excited to have been chosen as ‘enablers’ for this up-coming series at the FAG:

Cinenova: All Hands on the Archive

In conjunction with Will Munro: History, Glamour, Magic (11 January – 11 March, 2012), the Art Gallery of York University (AGYU) continues to celebrate the legacy of Toronto’s feminist and queer communitiesout there with Cinenova: All Hands on the Archive, the inaugural program of Feminist Art Gallery’s 2012 programming year.

Cinenova is a London-based, volunteer run, non-profit organization dedicated to the distribution of films and videos made by women. Cinenova is a cultural community and network for feminist film and video practice, but beyond that, it is an activist platform for making these practices known and publically accessible. Run by artists Allyson Mitchell and Deirdre Logue, the Feminist Art Gallery is a Toronto-based, volunteer-run, non-profit centre also firmly rooted in activism: hosting, funding, advocating, and supporting feminist practices, beyond gender and privilege.

All Hands on the Archive develops a dialogue between the work in the Cinenova collection and Toronto’s long-rooted feminist and queer histories as a means to access, activate, and animate both.

All Hands on the Archive Events

The month-long engagement with Cinenova begins on February 3 at The Department, 1389 Dundas Street West at 7:00 PM with a screening curated by Cinenova Working Group member Emma Hedditch. Presenting a program of work by two Toronto artists, Ronna Bloom’s I Feel Hopeful About the Future(1986) and Midi Onodera’s The Displaced View (1988), her selections foreground the local context for Cinenova’s international and intergenerational collection. Both artists join Emma Hedditch for a discussion following the screening.

From there, the programme relocates to FAG, 25 Seaforth Avenue, side gate, on Saturday February 4, 11, 18 and 25. An Audience of Enablers Cannot Fail takes place from 1:00 to 5:00 pm and feature eight local artists, activists, or educators, who have been invited to animate the Cinenova collection from their particular point of view, selecting work for collective viewing and group discussion. They are:

February 4: Midi Onodera and Lisa Steele

February 11: Natalie Kouri-Towe and Logan MacDonald & Hazel Meyer

February 18: Chase Joynt and Syrus Marcus Ware

February 25: Michèle Pearson Clarke and Hannah Jickling & Helen Reed

Please arrive early as space is limited.

All Hands on the Archive concludes on March 4 in the Gladstone Hotel Ballroom (1214 Queen Street West) at 8:00 PM with a closing party that features a commissioned performance by local artistSharlene Bamboat. Rebels Rule, a special screening featuring Will Munro’s films and his appearances in films, curated by Toronto’s GB Jones, Alex McClelland, Leila Pourtavaf, and Lex Vaughn at 9:00 PM, follows the performance.

Cinenova: All Hands on the Archive is an initiative of the AGYU, the Feminist Art Gallery, and The Power Plant and celebrates the affinities of our collective winter programing. All Hands on the Archive is presented as well in the context of The Power Plant’s exhibition Coming After (10 December, 2011 – 4 March, 2012).

Cinenova: All Hands on the Archive is generously supported by the Ontario Arts Council Art Investment Fund. Special thank you to the Feminist Art Gallery for hosting An Audience of Enablers Cannot Fail.

Will Munro: History, Glamour, Magic is on exhibition at AGYU from January 11 – March 11, 2012. The exhibition is generously sponsored by Salah Bachir and Jacob Yerex.

We were invited to produce Mystic Pizza at the Artists’ Soup Kitchen, a project organized by Jess Dobkin, Stephanie Springgay, Catherine Clarke and Karen Wielonda.  Visitors chose from four pizzas: The Patron, The Art Star, The Scream and The Artist’s Statement.  Crusts, crumbs and grease spots were divined by our amazing readers: Lisa Smolkin, Michael Freeman, Maya Suess, Jacob Ireland, Matias Rozenberg and Coco Taylor.  Thanks to Julie Smitka for all of the photos.

Helen and I have just arrived back in Toronto to work with Dr. Stephanie Springgay at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto on Stephanie’s SSHRCC-funded research project entitled The Pedagogical Impulse.

“The Pedagogical Impulse is a platform for research-creation concerned with contemporary art’s paradigmatic re-orientation towards the educational. The project will orient itself around a series of artist residencies that will take place across a number of educational sites (K-12 classrooms, teacher education programs, graduate programs, and community spaces) in order to examine how artists are engaging with educational concepts as spaces for the development of new critical practices, and the potential transformative engagements that occur when such art practices are located in schools…”

Helen and I have been invited to produce a meal project for:

THE ARTISTS’ SOUP KITCHEN

Toronto, January 9 – February 13, 2012: For six Monday afternoons this winter, artists are invited to a FREE HOT LUNCH at the ARTISTS’ SOUP KITCHEN. Each week is hosted by different artists who will bring their creative practices to The ARTISTS’ SOUP KITCHEN. Lunches include a Dr. Seuss homage by artist Ulysses Castellanos offering green eggs and ham on January 9 and mystic pizza crust divination readings by Helen Reed and Hannah Jickling on Janaury 16. Documentation from the ARTISTS’ SOUP KITCHEN will be used to create a printed catalogue/recipe book that includes recipes, images from participating artists and critical writing about the project. The ARTISTS’ SOUP KITCHEN is presented by the Starving Artists Collective: Catherine Clarke, Jess Dobkin and Stephanie Springgay.

FREE hot lunch for artists
A different menu each week
Mondays from 12-3pm
The Raging Spoon Cafe
761 Queen Street West, Toronto
Wheelchair accessible space.

Monday, January 9: Ulysses Castellanos
Monday, January 16: Helen Reed and Hannah Jickling
Monday, January 23: Tobaron Waxman
Monday, January 30: Natalyn Tremblay
Monday, February 6: Annie Cheung
Monday, February 13: Swintak

Made possible with support from the Toronto Arts Council and Social Sciences and Research Council of Canada.

Saying goodbye to a lot of people and adieu to the mummy jar, the weather mug and the gold rimmed polka dot tumbler.  Moving is so strange.

We just got back from a sunny week in LA where we saw friends, family, freeways, fine art, psychics, body builders, surfers, korean baths and more…

Went to Seattle this weekend with Julie Perini and Jamie Dawson…I got to sleep in this room full of drying walnuts.

Finally had the chance to see Jesse and Morgan’s piece of pakora in the shape of SIMBA… witness this striking resemblance.  One of my favorite examples of pareidolia so far…

Jackie’s kitten JayJay is the newest member of our household.  I caught her having an afternoon nap on my bed… it is rare to find her still and not  galloping down the hall hunting earplugs, feathers, plants and flies.  We love JayJay in our lives!

Misspelled-celebrity-lesbian-graffiti from outside the Oak Leaf Steam Baths on Bathurst – in Toronto.  Transferred to a limited edition of  hand-made canvas/denim bags – made by me.  These are now available, in a variety of colours, at Sword and Fern – in Portland.

DOWN WITH DRESSING DOWN! DRESS-UP GANG!

Dress-Up Gang is a proposed affinity group for liberation and the development of increasingly more and more fabulous versions of one’s self through solidarity, freak-fashion exploration, mutual aid, wardrobe and accessory sharing, emotional support, reflection and critique, photo opportunities, stylist-skill-building, make-up tips, alteration, consultation, influence pooling and power in numbers.  The first convening of this group-to-be will coincide the the STAG’s (Strathcona Art Gallery) last event in it’s current incarnation.

Yesterday we woke up in Vancouver and got dressed for success at U.S. Customs and Immigration.  It was noted that Helen looked like a professional professor, while my dressed-up style made me look more like a professional stand-up comic.  After at least a month of full time hustling for new visa status (thank you to everyone who helped out), Helen and I re-entered the U.S.A. yesterday on our new visas.  What a relief, our outfits worked.

On our way home to Portland, we stopped in Seattle to look for sneakers.  Helen got a sensible and fashionable pair of new shoes, and though I was being ‘picky’, I did get these not-crocs-not-loafers (clown shoes) on sale.   And a pair of wizard socks to match.  Here’s to a new visa, new footwear and another 5 months in Portland!

Helen and I finally made it to Fancyland in Northern California.  It was a 10 year anniversary party for queers living on the land in style.  Thanks for all of our hosts (especially Sacha), for making us feel at home and for showing us some radical campfire nightlife.

Same feeling, different words.  The great Hazel Meyer and the great Irit Rogoff are jamming on some grrrreeeeeaaaat ideas.  Thanks to Hazel for giving me one of her t-shirts in Toronto and thanks to Transformazium for pointing me towards Irit Rogoff’s ‘What is a Theorist?”

From: James Woycke, “Au Naturel: the History of Nudism in Canada,” (Etobicoke, ON: Federation of Canadian Naturists, 2003).  Thanks Amish!

After months of preparation, I have just returned from ‘The Wanderer,’ a graduate course that I co-taught with Helen. During our three days on the river, I was the most relaxed and contented I’d been for months.  I wish I could be back on this gravel bar now…

“The Wanderer is a course that centers preparation and conversation around a 3-day canoe trip on the Willamette River.  Starting at Independence and ending at Champoeg State Park, this combination studio (canoedio), seminar and experiential education course will navigate ideas of wandering, aimlessness and alternate view points – taking a canoe trip as the place/space/experience where unknown course content is generated as a down-stream progression.

The Wanderer will draw on examples from contemporary art but will also offer moments respite and reflection (away from the ‘art world’), as valuable components of an art practice.  We recognize that there are diverse forms of art production and that research can take many forms – we are excited about this canoe trip as a way to practice and live through these ideas together.”

It’s been almost a year of intermittent meetings and brainstorming with the amazing people at The Multnomah Education Service District’s OUTDOOR SCHOOL – we just got funded.  I will be artist, researcher and collaborator in residence – still sorting out the details.  Super excited and getting ready to dive in.

Last weekend I did a one-day whitewater rescue course to brush up on skills and to think through emergency scenarios on the river.  This entailed a fascinating morning and a harrowing afternoon on a small, fast river in Washington State.  The day was filled with mechanical-advantage-practice, more physics, knot-tying, appropriated tribal imagery, extreme-sports-wild-child-bumper-stickers, thousands of dollars of gear, non-verbal-heroic-white-men, a group lunch (with salami in the salad), swimming in rapids and an accidental drop over ‘Rattlesnake Falls.’

I returned to Portland after 30 ice-cream headaches, after using-up all of a three month adrenaline quota and with water jammed through every opening in my head.  It took me a while to get out of the shock (I cried one week later), and it left me wondering about the kinds of feelings this picture signifies.  Nylon rope and webbing, prusiks, carabiners and pulleys… I think these objects tell a story about who gets to participate in the wild, on a river.  Or maybe they communicate more of a feeling, a sort of bad feeling.   I kept thinking, where does imagination get to happen and when does gear take over?  What does an outdoor space for queers, misfits, visionaries, people-of-colour and low-income adventurers look like?

Helen and I went on a scouting mission on the Willamette Water trail this past weekend (we are taking out class there in May).  We found an unnamed gravel-bar island just north of Salem and collected rocks and nettles and sun on our pale bodies.  Thanked the nettles for their contribution to my dinner (nettle pesto) and didn’t get stung.

Note Laura Dern’s pleated khaki shorts, dino-tulips, prehistoric flowers and green jello.  Many scenes were recreated on SUPER 8 which will eventually be developed and then transferred to dv and then edited…

In less than a week, I’ll be at the Foundations in Art: Theory and Education Conference in St. Louis, MO presenting on a panel with Pat Boas and Robin Corbo from Portland State University.

I have finally finished assembling my teaching package.  Here are a few piled together (the satisfaction!) ready to get shipped out…

I will be participating in the upcoming Conference of Conferences (organized by Ariana Jacob and Helen Reed) at Field Work this-coming weekend.  In response to Claire Bishop’s lecture ‘Is everyone an artist?’, I will be talking about the experience of being ‘moved’ as a mode of response and evaluation of cultural movements, events and artworks.  I will be talk about this with specific relation to the role of social networking amidst the wave of popular demonstrations in the Middle East and North Africa.