Check out our interviews with Rhizome and art:21 from this past week:

Rhizome — interview by Ceci Moss
art:21 — interview by Beth Capper

Also listen to the podcast of Bryce Dwyer at the panel “(Alternative) Arts Funding for Sustainable Creative Practice,” presented at New York University on April 30, 2009. Organized by Tracy Candido of Sweet Tooth of the Tiger.

drawn by Roman sometime in early 2007

“SKYDIVE utilizes an open and collaborative model for producing its programming. A group of artists, curators, and other professionals function as Advisors to help create shows, invite artists, and collaborate in the mission and programming of the space.”

Randall Szott prepared a vegetarian miso soup. During Soup, Diane Barber of DiverseWorks gave a talk about Houston’s IDEA fund.

The $160 grant that Sunday Soup at SKYDIVE raised was awarded to Mindy Fisher’s proposal for Houston Outdoor Learning Academy (HOLA).  The proposal is below.

Thanks to Nancy and Randall for all their help making it happen.  Thanks also to Sasha and Ariane for hosting Sunday Soup at SKYDIVE.

You can find more pictures of InCUBATE’s time in Houston here.

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The Winning Proposal – Houston Outdoor Learning Academy

Houston painter Mindy Kober is the artist mentor for the Houston Outdoor Learning Academy, located in the Heights.  The Houston Outdoor Learning Academy, HOLA, is a non-profit 501(c)(3), full-time non-traditional school for students in grades six through twelve (ages 11-18) who wish to combine their inquisitive nature and enthusiasm for the outdoors and environmental topics with personal academic growth in an educational setting that uses a hands-on approach to enhance self-esteem, multiple intelligences, academic knowledge, social skills, and personal development. Inspired by Los Angeles artist Fritz Haeg, and his Edible Estates project to replace grass lawns with productive edible landscapes, Mindy Kober plans to revamp HOLA’s campus, which is a lawn the size of a double residential lot, into an interactive garden full of Texas native plants and vegetables.  Students will tend the garden, learn about environmental and community issues, and will harvest their own lunches.

Free Bowl Excursions on the City of Chicago
(Or, a socio-recreational approach to the art of land use interpretation)
Small groups are loosely organized to approach the urban landscape with leisurely intent.  Matches of Bowls are played in a variety of settings (this may lead to other tangential events such as promenades, gallery visits, lunch, etc).  Accounts of these experiences are then collected.  Land/Site data is studied.  Some observations are made and fragments are re-presented.  This leads to future excursions.

Participants are invited to join Michael in one or a series of such outings.  He may be contacted by email at studio@michaelcoolidge.com, or by visiting InCUBATE at the Orientation Center (contact Michael to work out a time).

InCUBATE at the Orientation Center
2129 N Rockwell St
Chicago, IL 60647

Michael Coolidge
Michael is a visual artist whose practice draws upon various conditions of space and perception.  His work has been presented in both gallery exhibitions and public spaces, in the form of photography, installation, sculpture, and community-based activities.

8 People Are Invited To Give Talks About Geography
Organized by Sarah Elliot and Zayne Armstrong
Hosted by InCUBATE
24 and 31 March 2009
7:00 PM

at the Orientation Center
2129 N. Rockwell
Chicago, IL 60647

PART I:
24 March 7pm
with talks by:
Lin Hixson & Matthew Goulish, Laurie Palmer, Samuel A. Love

Abandoned Cartographies
Lin Hixson & Matthew Goulish
Lin Hixson and Matthew Goulish teach at the School of the Art Institute and have a new company called Every house has a door. Matthew is the author of 39 Microlectures in proximity of performance and co-editor of Small of Acts of Repair – performance, ecology, and Goat Island. Lin’s writing on directing and performance has been published widely in journals and anthologies.

Mounds and Holes
Laurie Palmer
Laurie Palmer is an artist and writer whose current book project titled “Raw Materials” includes 18 chapters named after chemical elements: helium, carbon, sodium, aluminum, silicon, phosphorus, sulfur, chlorine, potassium, calcium, iron, copper, silver, iodine, gold, mercury, lead and uranium.

Chicago April 1968: A West-Side centric series of panels about the April 1968 Riot
Samuel A. Love
Samuel A Love is from the Calumet Region and currently resides in Rogers Park, having never lived more than 5 miles from Lake Michigan. He teaches courses on Research Methods at Westwood College, in the Loop, and also works as a photographer, writer, and interviewer. He is good-bad but definitely not evil, and is a rocker until the day he dies.

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Stay tuned for PART II:
31st March 7pm
with talks by:
Devin King, Nance Klehm, Megan Ransmeier and Andy Yang

But Only Soap, and Tobacco, but chiefly Soap
Devin King
Ambling in the style of Leopold Bloom, Guy Debord, and W.G. Sebald, Devin King passively investigates the geographic ghost notes bred between soap, movie theatres, musicals, professional wrestling, the poet Louis Zukofsky, that sound on that one Pink Floyd record, and maybe, just maybe, dungeons and dragons.

Devin King was recently awarded an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. A philologist with a heart of gold, he writes about pop music for The Boston Phoenix, teaches poetry to young adults, and probably listens to too many showtunes and too much bubblegum pop. His serial-opera Dancing Young Men From High Windows can be seen bouncing monthly from gallery to gallery in Chicago and his long poem, CLOPS, will be out from the Green Lantern Press in fall 2009.

Geoherbology of the Congress Theatre Footprint
Nance Klehm
Peripatetic naturalist whose karmic debt as an urban dweller is nearly complete, Nance connects to the nearly invisible realm of wild plants and animals to remind herself and others of other ways of moving, being and living in cities.

At the Scale of the Sun: a Spoon
Megan Ransmeier
Megan Ransmeier, among other activities, sings, dances, teaches, and converses in Chicago IL. She lives in a building which, among other things, once served as sink factory and as a storage place for used bank safes, with – among others – two black cats and eleven chickens.

Geography, Genealogy, Making Places (Venus, Slovakia, Brazil, Chicago)
Andy Yang
“I study biology and the visual culture of science and teach at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Having moved to the Midwest just over 3 years ago I have been thinking a lot about geography, but this is the first time I get to talk about it.”

FEAST stands for Funding Emerging Art with Sustainable Tactics

“FEAST is a recurring public dinner designed to use community-driven financial support to democratically fund new and emerging artmakers.

At each FEAST, participants will pay a sliding-scale entrance fee for which they will receive supper and a ballot. Diners will vote on a variety of proposed artist projects. At the end of dinner, the artist whose proposal receives the most votes will be awarded funds collected through the entrance fee to produce the project. The work will then be presented during the next FEAST.”

Two With Water won InCUBATE’s March soup grant of $250 which was both raised and voted on at yesterday’s Sunday Soup Brunch.  Their grant proposal is posted below.

Soup was prepared by Daniel Kerr of Snow City Arts and Caitlin Stainken of the Neo-Futurists.  After we ate, they led us in discussion about how theater funding works in Chicago and how it relates to bigger questions about funding common to the visual art communities in the city.

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Two With Water (Amy Ganser and Rebecca Roberts)

Favorite Soup:  Alphabet Soup (Butternut Squash as a close second)

Two With Water is a new, Chicago-based magazine that publishes emerging authors, poets, and visual artists.  We are currently online and raising funds to put our first issue into print.

While we fully appreciate how Al Gore invented the internets and always wish to maintain a web presence, Two With Water wants to offer a simpler, more authentic experience for its readers through the personal interaction and downright quaintness (these days) of seeing, touching, and owning a physical literary gem.  In print, Two With Water will not only showcase the work of up and coming authors, but exists as a work of art itself.

Two With Water hopes to reach outside of the close-knit Chicago literary “scene” by connecting with the intellectually curious through local organizations and businesses that nourish, like soup, a wide spectrum of creativity.

The pieces featured in Two With Water center on personal metamorphoses and the evolution of how we interpret life.  Currently we’ve got work on our website detailing the experience of peeing in a cup so you can work at Target, pondering whether we like babies or just want to put things in our mouths, life seen through various verb tenses, and embracing your inner stalker.

Issue #1 will include the content on our website, sardonic letters to the editors we’ve received, as well as drawings, collages, and an interview with infamous local rock poet Thax Douglas.

We plan to print 500 7” X 12” copies of Two With Water, which will be distributed at our release party (and other events) and sold (very cheaply; only about $2/copy) at locally owned Chicago businesses.

Printing costs are expensive, which is why we we’re applying for this grant.  We plan to go with a professional printer, as (respectfully) opposed to DIY-zine style, because we want to offer our artists an opportunity to have their work published in a professional setting.

So far we’ve raised over 50% of the money needed through two fundraisers.  Our most recent event featured readings by our authors and Thax Douglas, as well as performances by local musicians and installations by visual artists.  We’re also looking for sponsorship by promoting local businesses in the print edition.

Sunday Soup is a community meal that functions as a grant funding process.  Proceeds from meal tickets are given as a grant to support an artist initiative or community project.  Houstonian artists and other community members are invited to submit proposals to sundaysouphouston@incubate-chicago.org until April 2. Soup is the center of the meal because it is nourishing, economical, and easy to prepare in large batches. The soup is served family-style and sold for a modest profit at $5 per person.

Sunday Soup: Houston will be hosted at SKYDIVE by InCUBATE, a Chicago-based research institute and residency program. Guest chefs Randall Szott and Nancy Zastudil, in collaboration with InCUBATE, will prepare soup, organize presentations, and engage visitors in conversation at SKYDIVE.

All submitted proposals will be displayed at SKYDIVE during the meal. Anyone who purchases a meal ticket can vote on the proposals. The grant recipient, determined by popular vote, will be announced at the end of the meal and receive proceeds from the meal, whether $5 or $5,000.

Community participation in the grant funding and selection process is key. The application process is intentionally simple and un-bureaucratic in order to encourage broad participation. This enables InCUBATE to stimulate and promote experimental, critical, and imaginative practices that may not be eligible for conventional funding.

Sunday Soup, while raising money, also serves as a way to build a network of support that reaches beyond purely monetary assistance. It is an open platform to discuss ongoing projects with new audiences, meet new collaborators, and share ways of working.

Randall Szott alternates between life in Oak Park, Illinois and various locations along the coastline of the southeastern United States on the largest US owned hopper dredge. His life is a series of three week cycles on land and three at sea. He believes himself to be the only cook in the merchant marine with an MA in Interdisciplinary Art and an MFA in Art Critical Practices.

Nancy Zastudl moonlights as a curator based in Houston, TX, and currently works as Program Manager at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts at the University of Houston. She is cofounder of Slab, an exhibition method that collaboratively facilitates art projects and events.

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InCUBATE won the February Chicago Sunday Soup Grant of $250 to help bring all of its members to Houston for this event.

“As a part of a lecture series entitled, The Mediated Image*, De Geuzen hosted a three course dinner devoted to the work of Michel de Certeau. During the meal, there were related presentations and visual interventions by De Certeau admirers Rob van Kranenburg and Mike Tyler.”

The above picture shows an apron with the definition of “la perruque” which literally means “wig,” but refers to the practice of workers who on company time and with company materials devote labor to their own creative work.

From their proposal: “With postcards we can reach beyond our already established networks and circulate the announcement to people within organized labor, fair-trade economics, and foundation philanthropy circles.”

January’s Sunday Soup Brunch was prepared by Philip Von Zweck on New Year’s Day.  He made the traditional Southern New Year’s Day meal of black-eyed peas, rice and cabbage.  While we ate, we watched Down By Law.