Tag Archives: art institute

RIP Barbara Rossi

Posted on by under Life
Barbara Rossi. “Shep Step II” from 1973. Elmhurst University Art Collection

RIP Barbara Rossi, one of my favorite teachers. One memory:

Her old-school slide shows are legendary. One particular day the class sat in darkness as Professor Rossi went through slide after slide of her travels in India. She had amazing experiences around the world, but I found myself particularly fascinated by her images of street life there. Her eye for design and the presence of design in spaces was sharp and always curious. I’ll never forget the Coca-Cola signs she she showed that day.

They displayed economic/corporate colonization, yes, but also intimated a kind of cultural osmosis; they took on some essential Indian quality in spite of their western origin. It was the kind of thing I’d see personally many years later in China.

Professor Rossi turned my eye on in a real way, and maybe that’s the best thing we can hope for from our teachers. She (like Jim Lutes and Anoka Faruqee from around the same time in my education) is one of the enduring influences on my work and thinking.

PS: Her epic study of Indian painting, “From the Ocean of Painting: India’s Popular Paintings, 1589 to the Present”, was published in 1998 by Oxford University Press. Buy it here.

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Ten Years On

Posted on by under Art, Life

I graduated from SAIC nearly 10 years ago, and I’ve got a lot of memories from there. At first, right after I graduated, I was pretty negative about my experience. I felt as if they’d denied me some aspect of my education necessary to my future, that they’d tried to indoctrinate me, that they’d treated me like a number, not an artist.

In ways I was right, but in a lot of ways I was wrong. I’ve since gotten over it and look back with fondness, thankful that I grew so much during those years. One of the ways in which I grew was in my attention to the things that drew my eye. I began to document heavily, shooting thousands of photographs in the last couple years of my undergraduate career. Below I’ve posted some of those images. These are all from SAIC hallways and environs circa 1999/2000. I was obsessed with the angles, passages of light, and transitioning spaces in the places I saw every day.

Above, looking through the peep hole of my dorm door, 112 South Michigan Ave, 9th floor. This space no longer exists. Below, the elevator I took so many times.

Dead birds (they constantly flew headlong into the bank of windows on that facade, then fell, in droves, into the water below), dead leaves, and my shadow in a pool outside the lake side of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Two stairwell views on the way to the Advanced Painting studios (above and below).

Another stairwell view, light on the landing.

Glass and light, looking up toward the Advanced Painting studios.

Sunlight glances through the shades of my 13th floor (the smoking floor) dorm at 162 North State Street.