MEGHANN J. SNOW

My Very First Photo shoot EVER!

2011-03-01T14:08:00.000-08:00

Second Day of Rehearsal!

2011-03-01T09:25:00.000-08:00

painting is dead, but I made shoes

2011-02-26T14:42:00.000-08:00

   PPL PRESENTS PERFORMANCY FORUM XII
        COLLABORATIONS AND INFLUENCES

   MEGHANN SNOW WILL BE PERFORMING MARCH 5TH @ 7PM
   15 THAMES STREET, BROOKLYN NY BETWEEN MORGAN AND BOGART

The beginning of 2011 ......

2011-01-02T17:40:00.000-08:00

Photo taken by David Gibson: envoy enterprises 2/16/10 NYC

This photo will be featured at NDEO in October 2011!

Hi all, so I know I have let my blog go to the waste side since my last post. I have been working on multiple projects and my work all at once. What can I say, I like to keep myself busy. The life of an Artist. Always following up, researching new venues, new outlets, anything. You get it. So here, I am today on the 2nd of January going to fill you in on some exciting new things that are going to happen! Here they go!

1) I am opening this month with my 3RD SOLO Exhibition at Legation, a gallery located in Cleveland. This show will feature my large paintings and ballet shoes from my Visiting Artist Residency and from INGENUITY performances. I will be exhibiting some video documentation. Here is my Show card!

Front of the show card Photo taken by Tampa Bay Photographer Tom Kramer 2010

2) I will be in my first International Group Show in Antwerp, Belgium @ MONTY ABN. This show is curated by Jan Von Woensel. This show opens March 17, 2011. I will be exhibiting a video documentation of a performance I did at Surreal Estate this past year, which I performed my Dance Drawing series at.

LINK : http://www.monty.be/

3) I will then be having my 4th Solo Show at RED HOUSE GALLERY which is located in New Harmony, IN. This show is expected to open March 26th, 2011.

4) April, I will be in a group show @ ART JAIL in NYC curated by David Gibson.

5) October 2011, my will be featured at NDEO (National Dance Education Organization) in Minneapolis at a conference which is geared for Dance Education. The conference is called: Collaborations - Different Identities, Mutual Path's.

This is all I have for right now, and will keep you posted on whatever there is to come!

Thank you!!!

FLOOR works from HCC -Ybor Performance 2010

2010-12-08T11:47:00.000-08:00

Hello, so I am back in Tampa taking photo's of the rest of my work and working on getting ready for my 3rd Solo exhibition which will open Jan. 21st at Legation in Cleveland, OH. Here I present to you my floor works from the performance I did at HCC - Ybor back in September. All of these works are 13' x 15', acrylic on tarp.

1st night of performance

2nd night of performances. This one is by far my favorite one.

Here is the 3rd floor piece.

Please check back later I will have more images of the last painting that was created from this performance.

Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

An Assignment for Rachel Rolon: Interview an emerging artist.

2010-11-21T21:52:00.000-08:00

Photo taken by Tom Kramer, "Dance Painting: Time To Get Personal", 2010

Rachel Rolon: What was your grad school experience like? Was it beneficial? Why?

Meghann Snow: I attended Parsons The New School for Design from 2006 – 2008. I applied to graduate school as a Painter. I was definitely ready for graduate school when I applied. I was 24 when I was accepted… I was pretty young, age wise. My classmates were all different ages, we had people like my self in their early 20’s, late 20’s, early 30’s and I think 40’s… I was ready for graduate school when I applied, make sure you have a strong feeling if it’s something you want, because if you don’t, you will be taking out a lot of loans for something worthless. It was a very important moment for me as an artist, because I knew I wanted to go to graduate school to pursue my work. However, I had previously attended The New York Studio Residency Program for my Fall Semester of my senior year, which was in 2005. At the that time the program was affiliated through Parsons and literally within 3 weeks of that program, I had asked John (the director) if he could make an appointment for me to go over and look at Parsons MFA program, and meet with the director.

Parsons for me was exactly where I knew I wanted to go. The program structure was so similar to NYSRP. You had two seminar classes and a lot of studio time. The studios at Parsons are almost the same layout as the NYSRP. So, I knew after my meeting and seeing the space that this was a program I could handle, and want for myself... It was multidisciplinary and I needed and wanted that. It also helped that some of the faculty that I worked with at NYSRP also worked at Parsons and I really wanted to continue my dialogue with Glenn Goldberg, so I went and applied to Parsons with my all. I was accepted on Deans Scholarship. (A small scholarship, something is better then nothing, remember that.)

Mind you when I got into the program, my first year felt like a crazy mix tape. I got my studio, which was in the front hallway, basically I had no privacy, I had an old radiator that took up one wall, that was full of plaster and not workable and two short stubby walls…. Not much to really work with… I started making these horrible paintings, but I was reading about constructivism, looking at Jessica Stockholders work, really becoming interested in Rauschenberg… I had my first studio visit with Jackie Brookner who psychoanalyzed me…I had diarrhea of the mouth.. that was an experience I never had before. I basically told her everything about my life. I should say graduate school for me was like, REALLY expensive therapy. I should tell you I never had therapy before this…. So, I stopped painting my first year. I was re-visiting these odd photos’s I was taking of myself in the bathroom at the NYSRP program and in my old apartment on 47^th and 3^rd (Which was a hostel. I lived in the YMCA for 5 months, a room the size of a bathroom) and I had an old FUIGI Film Camera and started doing video’s of my radiator, and making these mundane video of everyday routines, either if I was cooking, I would video that. anything really. My first year could have been like a “free for all”. This was really and truthfully my time to “play”. It felt refreshing to be somewhere new and challenge my work and myself. I think my peers hated my work my first year, which honestly, I didn’t care. I was there for myself, and focused on myself. I guess you could say I didn’t make many friends in graduate school, but I wasn’t paying for friends, I was paying for my art.

So anyways, I was also working during my first year of graduate school. I held three jobs. I worked at Diesel, and I was teaching 4^th grade Hebrew and I worked in the Admissions office giving perspective students tours of the downtown campus and the fashion campus. (Don’t get too excited, there’s not much to see there…) As in for my work, I also was really into Adrian Piper’s work. I was really lucky, I found out Adrian Piper was working with CREATIVE TIME on a collaboration called, “Everything Will be Taken Away #10”. I was debating on being a part of it, and I wasn’t going to but then I mustered up and I did it. I met the program coordinator of CREATIVE TIME. I should also tell you, I was so ambitious my first year of graduate school. I found out through this class I was taking my first year… I think it was called, “Art Outside the Gallery.” something like that, and I did a lot of research on CREATIVE TIME do these open sessions where you can propose your work to them for some of their public projects. I knew from this class that they had a video project called “The 59^th Minute”… I think… something like that, and they show a video every minute… so I created a hand video dancing… like scrambling.. Or you can say it looked like someone was playing the piano but it was bright, and slow motion, and I thought it would have looked awesome on a large screen… until the women who I was showing this too, asked me.. Are you in school? (hahah…um…yeah) After I was honest, she said, come back when you’re out, but good idea… Anyways, I came back; I came back because I really wanted to be apart of Adrian Pipers Performance. I wore a henna tattoo on my forehead that read, “Everything Will be Taken Away”. This was really the first time I participated in any type of performance art, outside of my dancing.

This was an amazing experience because an amazing experience for me because I had never really put myself out in the public like this. I was attracting the public straight to my face. I had people come up to me in the subway and confront me, and say, “Do you know you have something on your forehead?” Or, I went to work at Diesel, and I almost got fired, and then the best was teaching my 4^th graders and one of my students said, “it’s true everything can be taken away, my dad lost his job…. I feel like everything is being taken away from me..” I was blown away from that. And side from that, I was personally going through a tough time with my own relationships… I literally felt like everything was being taken away. I also had some classmates who were jerks about it, but I didn’t let that stop me from experiencing this.

I had to document myself until the henna tattoo was gone, and I kept a diary and to submit those at the end of the project. At the end of the project, my photos were published in a two-page spread! That was rewarding.

The end of my first year I had made some paintings, and a lot of videos. During the summer, we were allowed to work in our studios all summer. I got myself back into ballet classes and working on videos, and starting these hand drawings. I started making a lot of hand drawings on paper.

My second year of graduate school, I got a great studio that was in a little cubby hole… in the far back of the program! I started working on plywood, and getting myself back into figure skating. During my thesis is when my work really took shape. We started writing about ourselves (or at least I did) really figuring where our work was. We examined history, and looking at the events that happened around the time we were growing up. Which I did but my thesis started to be about my own personal history. To sum up my life in a nutshell I was a competitive figure skater on an Olympic route as a child and I was a classically trained ballet dancer who went to intensive programs for most of my childhood…. So yeah I had a lot to go through. I have been emotionally independent most of my life and I had intense studio visits with Jackie and Glenn, I had to pick myself apart. I definitely agree that graduate school was beneficial. I met some great people and worked with great professors. Jackie Brookner I would say really helped me get to the core of my work. I will be honest and say that it was not easy whatsoever. We did butt heads a lot but she got through to me. I have her to thank for the work I am doing now.

My MFA thesis (our thesis was two parts, half paper / half work) I was told was the …only non-academic paper. I had a lot of personal investigation to get through. Years of performance work. Me being a good mimic of movement, I couldn’t / can’t really follow music for the life of me. I come to dance because it was something to keep me focused and kept my attention. I got really good at it because of my learning disability. For my MFA exhibition I showed a painting called, “Ballet Finger.” My 4^th graders named my painting and my class had our MFA Thesis show at The Kitchen. My painting that Bill Carroll picked for the show was written up by the Brooklyn Museum by the Feminist Blog that they have. They asked me if I was feminist and compared my work with Eleanor Antin. Whom I found out does not like my work either. Go figure. You can’t please everyone. But I will say that there was a point during my second year where I THOUGHT graduate school was a waste of time. I didn’t like the work I was doing until the very end.

I am overall happy I went through the experience I did in graduate school. I met some awesome people who I am still connected with today.

RR: What has your experience with galleries been like? Working for them? Showing in them. Selling work in them?

MS: Well, when I originally came to New York City back in 2003 I interned for Artists Space. I love this gallery, which is located in SoHo. It broke me but in a good way. I learned about prepping walls, picking up art from artists studios, installing exhibitions, taking down exhibitions, answering phones, helping out in the Irving Sandler Artist File, and I worked with the whole staff. This is where my networking skills were taught. They told me all the things that I should know and do. From that experience on I continued the same way of networking.

I also worked for Chelsea gallery for what a hot moment, of 3 DAYS. That was total hell. I worked for Mike Weiss, and yeah, that was an experience I will never want to relive.

Showing in them have been wonderful. I am really happy about the work I am creating now. I have been very fortunate for my solo show I had 3 years ago in Portland, OR, right after graduate school. I am getting ready for my second solo show, which will be in Cleveland in Jan. 2011. I also showed my work a lot in Cleveland before I left for graduate school. Nobody there really took me seriously, until I left and I started showing in New York. My performance work has been really taking shape. I recently was a Visiting Artist at Hillsborough Community College in Ybor Florida. I collaborated with the Dance Department and was commissioned to create two new works.

I would have to say, I have been thinking outside of the gallery space… I performed on a stage in a theater…. So really anywhere I can have some space, I will perform. DIY.

Selling my work… I have only sold my work once through a gallery. All the other work I have sold has been directly out of my studio.

RR: How do you get gigs to show in multiple cities? What type of networking is most beneficial?

MS: I get shows in multiple cities by contacting people I know in those cities who have a voice and power. However, it’s also a good point to say, you should keep track of your friends down the road and the people you meet because they might have a gallery and want to show you or maybe they know of places you don’t know where your work could fit in.

I think the most beneficial type of networking is through going to openings, any program you have attended, or facebook. I have been having artists find me on facebook that like my work and want to add me and talk about each other’s work. I would also have to say really promote yourself and don’t be afraid. You’re the only one who can get your work out. You have to be your own number 1 fan. You have to believe in what you do or it’s not there in your work.

RR:Have you applied to or received any grants? What was that experience like?

MS: Yes, I have applied for a few grants and have received a few as well. In college I had applied first for a Materials Grant. The first time I came to NYC to intern for Artists Space, I also proposed I would make a series of small works along with my internship and exhibit them in the student gallery when I return. I was awarded that in 2004.

I also wrote a Travel Grant for my junior year of college 2005 to go to London and research Frank Auerbach’s painting at Marlborough Gallery. My art department had planned a trip to go and I included my research to be apart of the trip. This was the most amazing experience. The gallery had let me into secret rooms where only collectors and dealers come to buy his work. I was able to sit with 15 of his paintings and 15 charcoal drawings!!! I was in total awe.

Recently I just applied for a NYFA Fellowship Award. I will not hear back about this for a while. This experience was difficult. Online applications are not as easy as they seem. At least not for me. You have to make your images a certain size, you need to do all this advance work… it’s a lot to do. But, I bit the bullet and do it.

RR: Can you talk a little bit about how you relate to your work? You use your body in your work and I want to know what that experience has been like and how you see your body functioning in the work you make.

MS: I am my work. How I relate to my work is through movement and muscle memory. I am really interested in going backwards in my work. Really what I mean is re teaching myself figure eights on ice. I have been researching compulsory figures. I have been learning that history of competitive figure skating and why these figures no longer exist. I have my scribe from when I used to perform figures. I scribe makes carvings in the ice and I will be able to follow them. That is my goal for the next coming months.

Yes, I do use my body in my work. At first I went back to what I wrote in my MFA. I talked about how dance and figure skating really were the foundation of my practice and routine. I had such a rigorous life and routine that it was only right to go back to what I know. I think what helps me the most, is to go back to what I know best when I am making something. I knew my body for such a long time, and I REALLY started figuring out that my body is my tool, like a brush, like a human one. I have horrible anxiety and performance nerves. However, what I love the most about my performance is really blocking out the audience and bringing the focus back on myself. I am making the audience sit through something that is a big uncomfortable. I like to question the audience and see how long I can keep them interested.

I make ballet shoes out of bubble wrap and tape. The sound is very cage and I like to think of my work as minimal. Mark making happens fast yet, I like to slow down that process. When you are on the ice you make edges fast and quick, your mind is always thinking, figuring out where your weight is and how to position yourself. I like making my figure eights with graphite and charcoal b/c what moves fast is the material of the pigment being used yet my body is able to stay grounded and planted on the floor. I like to push my body and stretch my body to its limit. How far can I make a circle with my body standing in place? How long are my legs? Do I need to be in a different position? Sometimes I fall, and I just get right back up.

That was what I was taught.

Recently being a Visiting Artist at HCC (Hillsborough Community College) was a new experience for me. This was the first time I was asked to be a Visiting Artist. I collaborated with their Dance Department. This was a new exciting experience. Each dancer was like a fresh canvas for me. All of them were vibrant with a unique outlook. Opening my work to them was out of this world. For them, knowing that you can bring art into dance was so new for them. I came to Florida with a conceptual idea of what I wanted. I told them what I wanted and we worked together to make it happen. I did set one work in a weekend, but then when I came back for the show we changed it. I like to let nature takes it course. If things don’t work I like changing them.

Making this dance was like a drawing but in a physical space. I realized I am good at directing people! I learned that I am able to give critical feedback and I know what I want and when I didn’t see it I changed it. I was able to stand for what I wanted. It was great being in control of a real space and not in a 2D sense. I am writing this and I am all smiles!! This experience not only helped my work but really put my career into perspective. Not only did my work grow but also I grew as a person through this experience.

RR: Working in NYC what are the benefits and disadvantages?

MS:Working in NYC has its benefits for some people. NYC is not for everyone. They say if you can make it here you can make it anywhere. But really is that true? I wouldn’t know, I have lived here now for 7 years. I wouldn’t mind a change of scenery however this is where I have rooted myself. Everyone within my circle is here. My network is here. I have built a strong network here in NYC; I don’t see why I would want to leave it. The perks about living here is that there are lots of opportunities, you just need to search for them. You also learn how to survive. Surviving is not all that glamorous but I know how to live and take care of myself. Also by being here I had a better chance of finding a job then I would lets say in Cleveland, or anywhere else. There’s so much going on here NYC that there is something bound to open or happen.

The disadvantages would be that being that it is NYC and its highly saturated with people all wanting the same thing, it is hard to find a job or find your place in the city. I went to a private art school and getting a TA position was very competitive. It wasn’t until this past year did I really have the experience to be a TA. I want to say it’s all about timing as well. Ones timing means a lot.

INGENUITY 2010 - CLEVELAND, OH

2010-10-23T15:52:00.000-07:00

Before I went back down to Florida to finish my residency, I performed two works in INGENUITY. In this festival I performed Stretching X Two and Dance Drawing. Bringing both of these works to my home town was a big deal. None of these works had ever been performed in the Cleveland area. New York City has been my sampling ground for the development of this body of work.

To give you some background on the creation of these works, they were both born and premiered at HATCH, a festival that takes place at Jennifer Muller / The Works Studio located in Chelsea. I first premiered a mimic piece which was partnered with Danny Coeyman called "Action+Reaction+Action" in 2008/2009. This work is where I mimicked Danny's mark making on a panel, and I was making marks with my feet.

2010: I was told I was not allowed to make a mess in JMTW's space.

So with that being said, I presented "Stretching X Two." This title came about by a conversation I had with John Tomlinson, Director of The New York Studio Residency Program. In conversation, we were talking about duality of words. It was then I made the connection that relating dance to painting was the key. As a dancer, we stretch our bodies and as a painter I stretch canvas. Frank, was my student while I was the Teaching Assistant at NSYRP. He soon later became my assistant for this work. Frank Castanien is in his senior year of his BFA at CCAD (Columbus College Art & Design). Photo taken by Tommy Kha.

Frank Castanien - Photo Taken by Tommy Kah

BELOW: Stretching X Two: Photo taken by Memphis Photographer, Tommy Kha at the premier in Chelsea, NY.

Here is the newest video documentation that was taken at INGENUITY this past September.

LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbYgxNkfsKY

Along with Stretching X Two. I re-staged Dance Drawing into a new work called, "A Short Program" which originated from my figure skating background. I perform making a figure eight with graphite and purple chalk. These are figures one used to have to pass in order to compete in a figure skating competition. Please click this link to view the whole video.

LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvGPVNIXfGk

Here are some more photo's from my trip to Cleveland:

ABOVE: I am standing with a talented artist from Cleveland Institute of Art named Brian Sabalausky! He silk screened these amazing shirts for Jasmine!

ABOVE: Hilary Aurand (Director at Legation), Charmaine Spencer (sculpture) and myself.

Thank you to everyone in Cleveland who made this experience possible!

The Beginning of my Visiting Artist Residency - HCC, Ybor

2010-10-23T06:57:00.000-07:00

I was invited by Keith Arsenault The Theater Manager at Hillsborough Community College, YBOR - FL to be a Visiting Artist and collaborate with the Dance Department. Here are some of my photos from the very beginning of my residency.

ABOVE: After my presentation the dancers told me they wanted to move. As a painter, I stretch my hands, and arms to get ready to stretch a canvas. In this photo above, I have the dancers running in a circle. I gave them instructions to run close to my camera so I could capture their feet when they hit the floor. Cool thing about the floor is that it has springs in it for jumping. While the students were running I was able to video in HD the slow movement of foot's impact with the floor.

ABOVE: In one of my works called, "Dance Drawing" I start each performance with making my own ballet shoes. These shoes become a tool that I use to create marks on a tarp / canvas surface. Here I am demonstrating how to make them. As a gift to them, they were able to keep these gaff tape shoes.

Below, you will see how I make these, and photos from a workshop with the students.

ABOVE: In this photo the is tarp not secured to the floor. I let the dancers experience how it feels to dance on a surface that is not taught on the floor. A large apart of my process, is looking down which is a big no, no in ballet. I break this rule and focus on the floor while creating an image. I find this my mechanism to break contact the audience. By looking down, I am able to focus on what I am doing. If I think about the audience then that allows my anxiety to take control.

ABOVE: Here I started to stage a new work called "Time To Get Personal." I had a hard time picking, and choosing, and auditioning these wonderful students. I started by lining them up on each side. I thought maybe it would be nice to have multiple people making marks at the same time. But as we know it, I had to take into consideration that this would become a mess. I was also given a challenge by Keith to work, "more theatrically." Something that know body ever pushed me to doing. I found this to be a big challenge. In the end, I did only choose one person to perform in this work.

THE END.

DAY 1 OF BEING A VISITING ARTIST @ HCC-YBOR, FL

2010-08-28T07:59:00.000-07:00

Hillsborough Community College -Ybor Campus Dance Department

The students I set them up at the barre, in my new piece, which is has not been titled yet, but it is about posture and preparation. This piece is still currently in progress.

The reason why I am in Tampa (for those who don't know) I am a Visiting Artist at Hillsborough Community College - Ybor Campus (A BIG Thank you to Keith Arsenault who is the Theater Manager at HCC who invited me down work with the Dance Department). I am setting my work on the students in the Dance Department. I also had a lovely meeting with the Director of the Dance Department, Christina Acosta, and discussed my plans.

Yesterday I presented a group of 40 images of my work talking about the concepts of my work: figure skating, ballet and painting. Note, this is my first time that I have been invited to a college to present and set my work on a group of students!! I was slightly nervous and excited to see how these students would react. I don't know why I started out being nervous, because they were so thrilled to have me, and were fully engaged with my images. This was an interactive and conversational presentation. Here are some of the questions that they were asking me: Are you worried about failure? How do you know if something is good or bad, or even finished? Do you change your work around if people don't like it?

The first one they asked, I will point out, is one of my favorites! I will go more into discussion on that at a later date. However, that is a question I have been evaluating right now with my work. Failure of the newness of my work.

After the presentation, they wanted me to give them a master class. The students were ready to move. So, I decided to audition them for my new piece! The idea of auditioning, is also new to me. I usually perform solo. However, this NEW piece is a very simple piece with minimal gestures and movement. This work is about getting ready for a dance mentally and physically. Getting into preparation. The natural act of coming and approaching a class.. How we get our minds ready, the change in our bodies, to being present...and ready. It's about the "How"and "present" act. Now, I don't want to give this new piece all away right now, but "auditioning" and "looking" at students has been so far one of best experiences in my artistic career. I should say. I used to teach a Beginner Pre -Ballet class at Cleveland City Dance when I was much younger, and yesterday it was so awesome to be on the other side of the barre.

Yesterday I realized that I am good at is looking. Better then I thought in a physical sense. Being trained my whole life in classical ballet, being drilled into my core, and facility, I was able to correct these students. Show them their mistakes, in a natural way for this work.

So, anyways... I'm going to end this blog, on this note. Someone, a choreographer once told me that I could NOT choreograph, and to that, I can say, I can, but I come to it in a different light. I come to choreography from a visual presence. I come up with my work from an idea that I have about my visual art, and things happen in that way.

Also, you should know, when someone says "NO" to me, that just pushes me farther :-)

Good day to all, and I will follow up as today is my second day of rehearsal!

WHAT CLEVELAND NEEDS! (I THINK)

2010-07-03T21:53:00.000-07:00

Tonight I attended the Brooklyn Museums Target First Saturdays! This was an awesome event! First let me tell you this event is FREE, and open to the public. The moment I arrived here, I was thinking about the Cleveland Museum of Art's Summer Solstice. As much fun as I had that night, I am sorry to say Brooklyn made it rock 100% more. I attended this event with a native Clevelander who I am proud to say is studying at a summer intensive at Parsons in their Architecture Department (my Alma mater) Ricky AKA Richard R.

Ricky does not attend an art school but attends John Carroll University in Cleveland, OH. What makes me happy is that he is looking outside of Cleveland for graduate school and is expanding his network. I am proud of this fella! Anyways, besides the great shout out, we attended this event together. We both attended CMA's Summer event and came up with the idea, that the CMA should sponsor an event like this too besides the Summer Solstice. The Summer Solstice was a hit because it is a SOCIAL EVENT. Also it was said that the CMA sold around 4 K of tickets. Now, get this The Brooklyn Museum tonight was FREE!!! VERY SIMILAR event, but FREE... they had the same amount of people the CMA had, or possibly more. They were selling drinks, and the book store was open. IF the CMA did this and opened their doors and was FREE and had this event once every month, this would allow more culture, and more of a social scene for youngster's of Cleveland. I'm not going to vent, b/c Cleveland is a lovely place, and I am from there, but like the Cleveland event, when you were there, you felt like you were in Brooklyn, and tonight I was in Brooklyn and pinched my self, and I was in Brooklyn!.. hope this blog made sense.

Check out my face book for my highlights!

BTW, Happy 4th of July wherever you are.... :)

Meghann Snow introduces the Freudian Foodie!

2010-06-28T23:47:00.000-07:00

I am here to introduce to you a great person! My best friend Shira Greenberg a L.A. based emerging Kosher Chef! Why you ask, that I am introducing you to her? Well... she is a great and lovely person in my life, but this girl has a lot of good things going on but most importantly her cooking is out of this world!! She has inspired me to eat healthy and she also had encouraged me to apply for a job at Trader Joe's! And look what happened! I am working at the NEW location in Chelsea. There is no date set when the store will open but I will keep you posted.

I have asked Shira to answer some questions regarding why she loves food and what has inspired her to become a foodie, or better yet, a Kosher Chef. I hope you will enjoy this post and also feel inspired about eating right and taking care of your body!

Q & A session with Shira Greenberg: Regarding her passion for food, and cooking.

MS: Shira, for starters... give me a short Bio of yourself?

SG: I am born and raised as a Jewish American Princess in West Los Angeles (only 4 miles from Rodeo Drive, kids), I defied all odds to become the opposite, by circumstance, if not by choice. In this town, you gotta be skinny from age 4, and while some kids got to lose their baby fat and become "cool", I became a mildly socially isolated and depressed young woman, despite being seen as spunky, vivacious, and impetuous. Not to be a downer, but it shapes who I have become today! Too many years of therapy, one weight loss surgery, and more plastic surgery than she can admit to without being seen as TOO shallow, but I have emerged as a promising young kosher chef in the burgeoning field of "healthy eating". Currently, my business is in the process of becoming "real", with the concept of being a [Jewish] E.L.F., the idea of "Elevated Living through Food". Previous entrepreneurial experiences has been her baking business "Cookies and Cakes and Pies, Oh, My!", sponsored by her mother, synagogue, and one movie producer. Okay, so he got ONE cake. In my free time I contemplate my love affairs with coffee and butter, and is known as an idiot savant of musical theatre.

MS: So.... you went to NYU.... What did you study?

SG: I went to NYU because, for starters, it's in my favorite city, New York City. And while technically that includes Staten Island, who does? It's also 3,000 miles away from my parents, was a quick train ride from my Mommom, and set me in the middle of what I loved - Broadway. My foodie-ness did not actually begin until later. In fact, when I began at NYU, hard boiling eggs was the extent of my cooking. I will state, however, that I brilliantly discovered that you could add the chocolate chips from the ice cream station to your waffles in the morning. When it came to overeating, I basically majored in it. Well, actually, I had a pretty damn cool major. Or "concentration", as we pretentious NYU Gallatin-ites would say. I majored in an Independent Study, with a concentration in "Health Policy, Nutrition, and its effects on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology". Like I said, we're good at pretentious. The flow chart of my studies went like this:

I wanna study Psychology --> I lose 100 lbs --> Ooh, maybe I should do something with food!

And so it began.

MS: So you graduated from NYU, and now you want to be a CHEF, why?

SG: Do I want to be a chef? I don't know, really. I just want to cook. And feed. (Jewish Momma, HOLLA). I like to see people enjoying my food, knowing it benefits them in both mind and body. If that makes me a chef, so be it.

MS: How did you become a foodie, or inspired to work, research and fall
in love with food?

SG: I became a foodie during my years in New York, but only after I had a gastric bypass surgery on July 10, 2007. I had to change everything about my life and they way I looked at food. The process is very restrictive and gradual as you slowly reintroduce your stomach, now the size of an egg, to food. When cottage cheese became exciting, I knew I was transformed. Food would never again simply be something to be gorged upon without thought and reason. My friends who knew everything cultured better than I took me to some incredible restaurants, and to this day, I will always remember the following dishes: Pumpkin Risotto at Artisanal, Cheese Spaetzle at Grayz, Rum Raisin Ice Cream Truffles at Grayz, Duck with Frisee (don't remember the proper name) at Dovetail, the rabbit at Ouest...there are two gentlemen who shall remain nameless who took me to these places. And on the times I ate at their homes, they introduced to me to triple creme bries and the simple beauty of a fig jam, as well as the amazingness of a foie gras.

Even up to the summer of 2008, when I was living with my friend Emily in my studio in Astoria, I couldn't cook. Okay, I could boil water, and feed myself. But it was Rosh Hashannah 2008 that I started the bug. You see, a Jewish meal isn't just a couple of dishes. There's tradition steeped in everything. Fearful as I was of cooking anything, I went to the kosher market in Manhattan and spent a small fortune on a roasted chicken, kugel

MS: Where do you want to go with food?

SG: I want to keep cooking. I keep becoming inspired by what I eat, by what I see. I don't read cookbooks, and I don't read recipes for fun. Usually I'll have a good meal and say "Gee, that was good. Can I do something similar, albeit healthier?" After having lentils with a jalapeno pesto at a restaurant here in Los Angeles, I made lentils for weeks. Indian Daal Makhani with Urad Lentils, French Green Lentils with Goat Cheese and Roasted Onions, and one day, plain ol' lentils with tomatoes, caramelized onions, and spices. Some days I feel like going Indian, and I'll bring out the curry. One day I felt like making Chicken Provencale -- it turned out well, I just forgot that I personally dislike manzanilla olives. My mother was thrilled to eat all of it though!

MS: What are you doing now with your passion of food?

SG: I didn't start cooking for money, for, well, the money. I was living in my Dad's house in West Los Angeles (see, the JAP lives on!), and teaching Hebrew School. I was making enough to get by, considering I had so few expenses. But the clincher is, I got bored. BORED. And when I'm bored, my mood takes a trip to misery-land. So I started trying to put together odd jobs.

I was dog sitting for a friend of my mother's from synagogue, and I knew she has diabetes. I subtly said, "hey, why don't I make you some low-carb chicken so that it's more palatable?". I don't know where it came from, and who was I to say I could even do such a thing? But I was hired. Now I'm in that kitchen often twice a week, chopping up fresh veggies and cooking up chicken. Now I also cook for her friend, and I'm hoping word will spread. I'd like to essentially work nonstop once the High Holidays come around.

MS: What inspires you the most about food?

SG: Ah, the question of inspiration is truly whatever is happening in my life. Whatever meal I've last eaten, with the exception of a fried calzone that I ate in Brooklyn. Because I don't need to be deep-frying anything, but I'll enjoy it when it's given to me. I try to avoid making desserts, because really, I'm all about FRESH.

Eat cherries. Who gives a crap about some Sara Lee cake when you can have fresh nectarines, with the juice falling from your chin? Have you had pea sprouts? Seriously, delicious. Try getting some fresh spinach, let it wilt, add garlic. Tell me that ain't good! Need inspiration. Ask me. Sure, some days I'll still open up the freezer and have the scallops with Emmenthal cheese from Trader Joe's. They're yummy, and I have yet to perfect seafood.

Much like I have yet to perfect myself. I just turned 25 the other day, and I'm living life to the fullest. No time is wasted on crappy food, and that doesn't mean it's expensive. It just means a lot less diner and a lot more chopping. I wouldn't have it any other way.

MS: Thank you!!!!!

A picture of Shira's taco! These taste amazing!

Check out what it's made out of!

Shira's recipe:

one onion diced and caramelized with 4 cloves of garlic, minced in olive oik.
Add 1/2 packet TJ's seasoning Mix.
Add turkey. Break apart.
Add turkey. Break apart.
Stir regularly making sure it's cooked through
Add tomatoes BEFORE turkey is done
Let extra juice evaporate, but not ALL of it.
Make sure turkey is NO PINK
And voila.

MS: One last question, Shira... What are you cooking this week for one of your clients? Can you give me a sneak peak, a preview... something... ?

SG: Tomorrow.... Homemade chicken stock (soup). then I'll dice the poached chicken and make the soup And some basic sliced veggies

MS: That's it folks! Bon Appetit!

I am not a comic but Jim Tews of Cleveland is!

2010-06-28T22:35:00.000-07:00

Please, let me introduce to you Jim Tews. A comic from Cleveland,Ohio.

Yes, some people say to me, that I am a chameleon. I was a competitor figure skater, a classically trained ballet dancer, painter and video artist, so why not try Stand Up for one night? I'm in Cleveland, and I am interested in meeting new people and new experiences.

I met Jim Tews at the Cleveland Museum of Art Summer Solstice last weekend. I found out he is a comic and a good one! My brother had been telling me about this comic for months, and he sees perform at Hilarities .

Small world it is.... So we start talking, and I should mention that this comic is moving to Brooklyn, NYC come October! How exciting! Another Clevelander transporting to Brooklyn! It is true great artists come out of Cleveland! Anyways, we start Facebooking and he tells me it's open mic night in Lakewood. Now I live on the East side of Cleveland and rarely go over to the West side..but, why the hell not!! I am a performance based artist, I can do this...I wanted a challenge! A subject change ( I am listening to John Meyer)....... I've seen a good amount of stand up in my time, and I figured I would give it a shot! And I did! I did it! I did Stand Up for a single night.

So, I am here to to tell you all about my Stand Up experience. I only had 5 minutes. So, I decided to talk about a couple themes, which were: Therapy, Marina Abramovic, online dating, giving good phone and being single, and unemployment. I could have talked for hours after a while! It was a great experience, and it felt natural to be up front in a crowd.

Thank you to Jim Tews for the awesome Cleveland experience! I look forward upon your arrival to Brooklyn! Keep it real!
So we . k
kjhkjhjhH

SHOWS SHOWS AND MORE SHOWS....

2010-06-17T08:04:00.000-07:00

(Photo taken by : writer/curator David Gibson, 2010)

Hello, hello! I would like to update everyone with dates of my upcoming shows. Please mark your calendars!!!

- July 2nd, 2010 : PANOPLY PERFORMANCE LABORATORY : (Surreal Estate) is 15-1 Thames Street, Brooklyn , 8- 10 PM.

- July 22ND, 2010 : A.I.R GALLERY, BROOKLYN, NY TIME: TBA

- September 4th: PANOPLY PERFORMANCE LABORATORY: (Surreal Estate) TBA

- September 22nd- 24th INGENUITY FESTIVAL, CLEVELAND OH

- September TBA: Visiting Artist @ Hillsborough Community College : Dance Department

He touched me so low.

2010-06-09T20:26:00.000-07:00

Let me take a moment and introduce you to, Danny Coeyman AKA my gym buddy, art buddy, roommate and good friend from graduate school. We are gym regulars! We started going to the gym together last summer, when we were in the audition process, or should we say acceptance process of BRAVO. Danny and I were on a mission. A mission to not being fat on TV. Anyways, aside from us not getting on... we decided to continue to work out as a team.

Now this summer, Danny and I are back on track! We are CRUNCH junkies.Monday, Wednesday, Friday, we take a 30 - 45 min. spin classes, and created a weight training regiment. We have been building our routine up! I love it! I think from all the devotion I've had from figure skating and ballet, I have a passion for routines and working out.

This picture here, is a picture from one of our weight exercises. Mind you that after we take our spinning class, we are exhausted, tired but very giddy! I suppose all of our endorphins are running wild. The reason why I chose to show this picture is because Danny, wanted to put the seat belt on! At the time, it was really funny... Mind you we just had an intense spin class...

As we continue our routine, we work our triceps, biceps, back and abs.

When we finish we go into the studio and work on our abs, and we do our planks... we do 4 sets of holding for 45 seconds, and then 2 sets of 1 minute holdings.... As Danny and I are doing our 3rd set, I randomly get touched in my lower abs, pelvic area by a good looking trainer. Danny and I I would say are regulars at CRUNCH in Park Slope but I did not expect a trainer to come in the studio and randomly want to fix my position! I mean, I wasn't complaining but a little shocked that this trainer was inspired to tell me I was arching my back and put his hand on my lower back and to lift my abs, from wayyy down below.... daring, right of him to do that! Danny and I started laughing. Danny, thinks he's cute, and thought maybe he was flirting with him but I guess not, or maybe like Danny said, he's trying to do the friend approach.... but who knows, at the end, Danny and I were doing our last plank, and we were holding it for 1 minute... and as soon as I feel my arms give up, the trainer then says, "your arching...." maybe he was flirting with me.... who knows I'm not good at picking up these things....But it was definitely a surprise!

Here's how I felt after my morning work out which lasts until noon! Till next time!

HOME AWAY FROM HOME

2010-05-24T09:25:00.000-07:00

My home away from home is specifically Beachwood, Ohio. Here the picture to my and your left is a picture of a field down the street from my parents house. (Richmond Rd). This field growing up was never truly developed until maybe 5 + years ago.

Today I am back to walking to the library. I wanted to recap my week. I leave for New York this evening. And this has been the second time I come back "home" where the environment is not so stressful. My family welcoming me with open arms, happy to see me, proud of everything I am doing. Definitely what I needed after the last couple weeks of my life feeling like an emotional roller coaster.

Right now I feel as though I have some clarity . Right now it's about me. Nobody else. I am going to be selfish, and do what I need to do for myself. It's amazing how much or how far we go for other people. But I am back to focusing on myself. Now, my professional and personal life are matching up.

I am also happy to say that I am continuing to work on memory as a theme in my work. I can see that my grandma has early stages of demensia. She keeps asking where she is, and she doesn't feel as though she is home. When in fact she is at home. I plan on continuing reading and learning more about memory loss and creating work based upon this. I am working on creating a new performance piece called, "dancing without memories" Images and video to come.

In conclusion, it has been overall a peaceful, relaxing to some extent week. I am ready to head back to New York and get to work. Thank you to my friends and family in Cleveland and I shall see you soon! Hold the fort!

:)

Feeling the LOVE...

2010-05-19T19:18:00.000-07:00

So tonight, the image I give you is a view of my seat spending time with my grandma. Yes, maybe your thinking I shouldn't taken a picture, but I had too. I had to blog tonight. I had to let out all these feelings of frustration, sadness, happiness, knowledge of family, friends.... home. Where I am, where I stand..

I have been coming home more frequent due to family, and I was in a group show last month at Asterisk Gallery. As it is said, we do grow up really fast... and we forget where we come from. Or maybe I have, because I have been on a personal mission, and a mission of a driving force to be successful, or I don't even know if that's the case. I just know what I want, and I get it. (if I want it- so badly, I get it).

But it's got me thinking. Okay so for me, I am dealing with a break up, a big cross roads in my work, people would say transformation, and dealing with elderly in my family. I promise I'll make this short, but I promise I can't keep my promise. To give you some history, this women that you see is my grandma Milly. This is a women of, pride, strength, devotion, loving, giving, caring, support. She has always been there for me since the beginning. Here is a good story, I'll share with you, So my mom tried for 7 years to have me. She took pills and 25 shots to have me. My dad would always play jokes on my grandma because the running story with my mom is that she only wanted girls... girls were hard to come by in my family...When my mom had my middle brother my dad joked with my grandma and told her that Aaron was a girl, and she was pissed that it was a boy... So on Feb. 3 , 1983 my dad rushed my mom to the ER, here at University Hospital, where I am at now, and was admitted to Rainbow and Babies next door, basically I started coming out in the car... but as soon as they got my mom on a bed, as my mom says, "The party was over!" I was born ready! I was born in the bed, and my dad came out of the hallway, and told my grandma this time it's a girl, my grandma Milly did not believe my dad, and made the doctor undress me in the hall! She wanted to see with her own eyes it was a girl!

So, what I am trying to get at is that my grandma is 84 and still full has her spark. She has a great personality, strong willed. I know it my past post I talked about how I have a New York family.. and now that I am home, more and more, My family here, memories start coming back. I love my mom. I am lucky to have the family and friends (not to forget) that I do have here. My parents, can not help me much finical but emotionally and mentally, are rich and full of life. My mom is my rock, and I probably don't listen that well, because I have my own agenda, but being home right now, has been wonderful.

My life in the past couple years have been crazy.. graduated with my MFA, had my first solo show in Portland, a big right up by the Brooklyn Museum, I've worked in the Operations Department of Sotheby's, (I like to think of it as the belly of the beast), I've worked at Parsons, and now I am at The New York Studio Residency Program. My extended family, mentors, are there. I do not take my job lightly. I was the first ever Teachers Assistant at NYSRP. I have held this position with honor and dedication to the students. I relate well with people, and creative people to be exact. I can't say Thank You to John Tomlinson enough for being the best teacher, mentor in my life. Thank You for believing in me!

I know I am using family lightly, but people I see, and the people I deal with and have studio visits with... have been the most wonderful people in my life. This is a very special time for me in my life. I went to Parsons for my MFA for my work and to be able to teach. However, when I got out, I wasn't ready and working at Sotheby's was the best learning experience for my Administrative experience and responsibility. I shipped expensive art internationally and domestically... like babysitting expensive art works that came to my dock. I had a one on one with many great pieces. I got as close as I wanted, and walked around, inspected.. I am grateful for my life. I think I am loosing myself right now....

I am sad. I am getting stronger but still sad. My grandparents have a lovely marriage. Been married for 64 years!!! 64!!!!!! OMG! My parents are also together, through thick and thin... honest, loving towards each other. Crazy, but loving, and caring. Gave me the best life, in a nice Jewish suburb. I grew up going to temple. My grandma's parents from London were founding members of our Reform Temple.... I have learned a lot by them. Being home is like refresher. I come home from New York, and it's nice to be welcomed home by my family. I love my family. Being heart broken, they are there for me. No feeling of anxiety anymore, just love. I don't understand my family well, b/c I am so focused on making something of myself, but coming home is reality. I look at my grandma laying in bed, and I tear up... like right now... Who am I?

I came from a great, great family and I want that to be known. I am strong because of the women in my life. I am sad my heart is broken, but what the perfect recipe, my family... my mom. My grandma. (my grandma is snoring and I am crying... or tearing up) I am scared. I am happy I have been coming home to see her, my grandma. All the nurses tell me that I am her favorite, and that she misses me... I am here. I am sitting, reflecting with her, holding her hand, touching.

Thank you to my friends here for being here, and catching up... I have come a long ways, and I owe that to my wonderful family. Sometimes we need a reality check, and I am good at giving that to myself, because I live in the present. I act in the present, I am a thinker.

I am done ranting... I hope I made some sort of sense...

I am who I am. And I love myself and the people around me.

Thank you mom for being the best mom ever, being the rock of our family!

B'Shalom.

Memory Process

2010-05-19T08:45:00.000-07:00

Top painting:

Title: Reflection of thoughts
Medium: Zippers on wood
Size: 12 '' x 12''
Date: 2010

Bottom painting:

Title: Short Term Memory
Medium: Acrylic, color pencil and zipper on wood
Size: 18'' x 18''
Date: 2010

Idea of Memory

2010-05-16T15:47:00.000-07:00

Today I want to touch on the subject of memory, and memories. Can you remember your memories? Do you have a good memory? Well.... I do not have a good memory. Maybe this is common with everyone. Life happens extremely fast, and we don't always remember things or we bury them far far into our brain's. I will openly admit I have started going to therapy. I know that this is probably not a thing to mention to the whole world, but as we know it, or some know it, therapy is a common ground in which people do. I am learning. I myself just started, and very happy for the most part. I found myself in a place where I needed to seek someone to just talk about my issues, more or less a clean slate of eyes and ears. Someone who doesn't know me all to well to have an outside perspective.

This last week the topic of conversation was memory. And we touched on the ideas of dreams, and imagination. Now I know I shouldn't probably be talking about my therapy but I was excited to talk about memory. Memories got me thinking. I am a thinker and an idea type. I like to consider myself a problem solver to some extent. I usually don't solve all my problems, but who does really?

This brings me to my current reading, Formal Real - Time Imagination this is an essay written by Madhura Nirkhe at the Department of Electrical Engineering at University of Maryland, College Park, MD and Sarit Kraus at the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at Bar Ilan University in Israel. I am only 6 pages in and still dissecting the article, but I am fascinated about how common sense is put into a formula and how our brains put together problems, and the process of how we solve them...

Anyways, now that it's been a couple days and I had this post unfinished, time to wrap up the idea of memories, because I am continuing to work with this, and not sure where this blog was going. But to end this, blog, I made a new painting called, "Short Term Memory." Idea of sex being short term, relationships are short term... and I wanted to be humorous.

Enough said for one day..... next!

THE STRUGGLES : DENIED GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE

2010-05-08T13:52:00.000-07:00

Hello, I hope everyone is doing well on this great Saturday. I wanted to take a moment and respond to a story I read in the L Magazine : No Soup for Me / Broke from Student Loans, a Sick and Hungry Hipster Gets Denied Government Assistance.

This article for me touched home. In response not only am I writing about it but it inspired me to make a new drawing about this subject. However, we are all struggling, well.... Okay, not all of course, but my demographic, of some sorts, we are struggling. Before I go further, here is another story that was published by CNN about a jobless woman who finds generosity on the streets. With this being said here we can see some pros and cons about people losing their jobs.

So what drove me to respond to this epidemic of jobless people, I have been one of them. Anyways, I came across Henry Stewart's story about food stamps in New York City, and he shares his own struggles budgeting his own money and what he is left with after paying his bills. Well, Henry I am here to tell you, you are not alone.

Last year, I went to the FOOD STAMP office in Brooklyn near Hoyt Street. I, too had all my information, pay stubs, rent bills, student loan paper work, unemployment paper work, basically any type of paper work I needed to show I NEED FOOD STAMPS. I had talked to some other artist friends here about food stamps because they receive them. I wasn't so ashamed to applying for them, because I needed them myself.

So, I go early in the morning, like everyone said I should, because the lines are forever long. I get there around 4:30pm, because I also know they need to see everyone in the office that day and they close at 6 pm. So, First you start downstairs go in this line, the woman in the counter asks you what you are applying for assistance for. Mind you I am the only white person in this line. And I am getting looks. People are looking at me this line.. probably thinking I don't need them. But this kind girl behind me sighs with frustration about just losing her job, having two kids, being a graphic designer and her office closed.... I turned around, and I responded, I feel ya. I mean I don't have kids, and I am not married, but being 1 person for me is enough. She looked to be around my age. Anyways, after this little story, I get up to the counter, I tell the woman I am here to apply for food stamps. She throws this packet at me, and tells me to go up to the 3 floor.

So I do. Get inside this crammed elevator... gross... and get up to the third floor.

This room where you sit in is packed with people. People of all colors, shapes and sizes, screaming babies! You name it, we are all here. I fill out my paper work. And take a seat. They give you these random numbers, And you wait.... and wait... and wait.

"To give you some stats, In February 1.7 million New York City residents received food stamp benefits, an almost 20 percent increase from the same time last year, and more than 50 percent increase from the same time in 2005." (pg.19, L - Magazine)

I lost my first job in 2008 and I lost my second job in 2009. Hearing Henry's story and the people around him I fit his category. The application that they make you fill out basically asks you to check off such: unmarried, I am, childless, I have none, what my roughly income is for the month, with utilities and rent... Okay, my rent is pretty low, but it's still something and my unemployment is not much. However to receive food stamps you need to make less than 1,200 a month. To cut into the story, I waited until 6:30 pm to meet with someone behind the glass counter. I sit down, I have all my paper work, she looks it over.... and then asks, do you get unemployment benefits? I respond .... slowly....... yes. Yes, I do. She then says okay well we need to see how much you receive. I tell her not much! But still shes demanding and tired... we pull up my paper work. I am denied!!! She tells me, I'm sorry but you make to much!!! REALLY! I look at this women like, okay, my account shows you how much I get by the year. She tells me, you don't have any kids, and it's only 1 in your house hold. 1 yes.. to feed myself. I will admit, I have fallen off paying my school loans, and other things to survive. I know this does not make me a good person, or responsible. But when duty calls, and survival skills come into play. I'll tell you I'm all for it.

I am a fighter. I am a survivor. I have / been looking for jobs. I am the Project Coordinator for the Alumni show for the NYSRP! All I can say, is that every bit helps out in the long run.

And also my last statement, I do agree with Henry, some hipsters are just fucking fake. He states, "There poverty is so fucking fake." Yes, it is. People have their parents helping out, which I totally respect, but someone like me who doesn't. It is hard. Poverty is real. I am in that category. You wouldn't notice that by the way I dress, or the way I act, BUT I have an education. I have that piece of paper. I did it, regardless if it made me broke, it was worth it. Where else would I rather be?

That is my two cents for today. I'm not asking for it back but have a great and safe Saturday night and I leave you with this Simpson's video: Comments about PhDs and Grad Students. [HQ]

Drawing above :

Poverty = making art about Poverty
ink on graph paper
1'' x 2 ''
2010

2007 PAINTINGS WITH IMAGES

2010-05-06T10:02:00.000-07:00

NEW ART OBJECT

2010-05-05T09:53:00.000-07:00

Last night I created a new piece. People have been asking me, "have you made any new objects lately, or new paintings...." The answer before last night was NO. Working on multiple projects, giving up my studio space. I haven't really been inspired to make anything. For certain I have been thinking a lot. Thinking a lot about my life, and my work. I am currently reading, The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard. Bachelard is a French philosopher, who is best known for his works in poetics and philosophy of science.

I should mention I am not inside the book but only have re-read the forward and introduction twice. Language is dense and I like to pick through it like a fine comb, and really understand it. I underline, still look up words I don't know. That type of thing. Meanwhile, The Poetics of Space, talks about the concerns of analyzing our "home." How your "home" creates memory and creates our dreams. Do you remember your dreams? I usually don't remember mine. Being an artist, however, I do have a pretty active imagination.

In the foreword written in 1964 edition Bachelard talks about formal imagination and material imagination. Formal imagination "creates all the unnecessary beauty it contains, such as the flowers; the material imagination, on the contrary, aims at producing that which, in being, is both primitive and eternal."(pg. xiii) What really stuck with me this past week after discovering these two new terms, is that material imagination "is necessarily required for a complete philosophical study of the poetic creation." (pg.xiii) Well, is that what we do as artists? What materials we use is our own way of describing a part of our selves or better yet this other that drives our inner sense of being to be expressed.

Going back to the introduction, from the 1994 edition, the author writes some things that I noted that stood out the most, which are:

"Can one hear oneself close one's eyes?

" cross - cultural" / "universal vocabulary of space "

" ...micro-Bergsonism that abandoned the thesis of language-as-instrument would find in poetry numerous documents on the intense life of language. "

"life of words"

"Poets and painters are born phenomenologists"

With all this being said, last night I made a new painting, that was made out of a small found crate and some tarp that has canvas like qualities. I started stapling my crate and the tarp and the more tough it got to make the tarp firm, the more it was taking on it's own sculptural form. I put some music on and went to town. Now thinking about my vocabulary of space, or materiality, I have always used staples as a gestural. Stapes have this immediacy, shiny, finish look to it.

In a way I found my self drawing and shaping the canvas minimally. As I was working on this I was looking at these older paintings that I had from 2007, and these images were done on unprimed canvas and were drawing/paintings of parts of fingers. I like the way my marks looked finished on the surface on an unfinished background. I felt content with not having anything on this image. The indents made the image. The cast shadows made the work stand on it's own. The blank surface that looks blank is not blank.

Here is a detail of the left side of the painting. How the staples are puncturing the wood and creating a crease along the edge. I started with only a few staples but I like how I was defining an edge with no other materials. This kind of reminds of the work I was doing in 2006. Wraping large crates with materials and exposing sides and shapes of the support. This also caused me a great deal of controversy. I called this painting and my peers didn't believe it was painting. I thought it was painting and to me this is painting. I am expressing myself through materials, and the way I am constructing them.

This is where it brings me to another favorite book of mine, written by James Elkins. What Painting is. In the chapter: Coagulating,cohobating, macerating, reverberating, Elkins talks about the elasticity of paint. " As the materia prima reminds us, paint is very much like waste.That is so in both sense of the word "waste": some paint is like the refuse of the studio, and some is like the human waste. in the studio it can feel as if paint is not just reminiscent of shit, but it is shit." (pg.136) Right now, Feel like paint isn't necessary. When I finished stapling this work, It felt complete. It didn't need anything on the surface. Just like how I feel about myself. What, and how I present myself, is what you get. I am not fake, I am not afraid to hide myself, but only present myself with what I have.

My last comment of the day is this last quote which, I totally agree with about circulation in my process. "Circulation is all too familiar a feeling in painting : it creeps in whenever the studio and the work seem to be hermetically sealed, so that the only nourishment must come from the refuse of the painting itself. Nothing new enters the studio, and nothing is wasted : everything goes into the work, and come back out again.

And I leave you with this yummy delight! And please, remember we are all cuties!

Introductionary to Performance Art in NYC:

2010-05-02T09:28:00.000-07:00

This morning, my student Tommy Kha posted this article that was published on Marina Abramovic. He sat with Marina and had told me to do it and I did. An article today was released by guardian.co.uk. titled : Artist Marina Abramović: 'I have to be like a mountain'. I read this article and thought it was appropriate to only post my own experience of sitting with MA. I had a inspirational experience sitting with her.

I should say that this performance was not the first one I have participated in New York City. Back in 2007, I was apart of CREATIVE TIME performance of Adrian Piper. #10 Everything Will Be Taken Away. This performance I had to wear a henna tattoo on my forehead that read this exact statement. I was nervous, almost didn't do it, but fessed up, and did it! Why would I want to wear this tattoo on my forehead? In public? Really... do I need to attract more attention to myself? Well, being an artist, and open to experience, and I really admire this artist, and her work, I did it. During this time, I was challenging myself, and my current employer. Almost got fired, my MFA peers, were like, why are you doing this? You know you have something on your forehead... and then outside people also saying the same thing, staring, continuing to say, you know you have something on your forehead. Having people on the subway stand extremely close to you, to see what it is saying.. personal space was definitely being questioned. I was a walking billboard for 3 weeks, close to a month! I have fair, dry very white skin! The henna stayed on forever! I'll tell you that this process, was difficult. I had to document myself everyday, from the beginning to end! Look at myself in the mirror: morning / noon / night / take pictures and write my feelings out. I'll just tell you, that everything in my life during that point felt like it was literally, and physically being taken away, one by one. Here are some photos from that experience (note: these photos were published in a CREATIVE TIME catalog:

Photo's of experience have been published by CREATIVE TIME, I own the copy right:

Beginning of Week 1:

Going onto Week 2:

Evening Week 3:

Week 4: Thinking image

Week 4: Tail end of week 4...

Moving onto my next experience is sitting with MA. Before I go any further is what I experience while sitting with her:

My experience sitting with Marina Abramovic: April 15th,2010
(Artist is Present: Marina Abramovic @ MOMA)

The day was April 15th, 2010 and I arrive at MoMA at 10:00 am. I go to the membership counter get my ticket, I don’t need to stand in the regular line because I have a corporate card. So, I get to skip the long line (HAHA!!) After I get my ticket, I go sit on the side of the wall putting my wallet away. I meet a nice young student named Paula, and we start talking about sitting for Marina. She did not know a lot about Marina's work other then attending a visiting lecture with Marina at NYU. We go stand in line. We see 3 people already in line standing, where the security people normally greet you at the entrance rope.... everyone is lined up (Apparently, two people before me were performance artists doing a performance with in this performance, kinda lame, i thought...but hey, this is NYC, anything is possible and is possible).

By 10:15 am MoMA is packed with a sea of people. The girl in charge of the crowd tells us we can move up to the next level of stairs. We eagerly run to the next sets of stairs, and then dead stop...People in line with us tell us about how when 10:30 on the dot comes people run up the stairs and get in line to sit! And that is exactly what happens. Tommy, one of my students had mentioned that’s what he did, and that was what I should do! The time comes, and Paula and I run up the stairs, like kids going into a candy store.. pushing the people who have sat already aside! HA! (My bitch side came out!) (7-10 times, and one guy who sat a whole day the first sat. of the project).

I end up being 4th in line! (I DID IT!!!!) I came to MoMA maybe 3 weeks ago and I was the 10th person and I just left, I waited and left. My good friend Lauren was in town and she didn't want to wait, so I stepped out.

But this time, I was the 4th. As I am standing in line, I am getting nervous, I keep changing my hair, taking deep breaths, thinking what am I going to do? I think to myself what if I can't sit there? What if I move? What do I think? Paula starts telling me that Marina during her lecture she talked about "doing nothing" We as people are always doing something, and I can see how hard it is to not do anything, and allow your body to be quiet. I am not quiet, just the opposite.I am a professional mover, and shaker and attached to my iphone. (probably not in a healthy way).

As I am standing in line, I keep thinking about why people have come back 7-10 times to sit, or the guy who sat already for a whole day, why come back? I was feeling agitated but happy I cut them in line in the race. I feel like in some sort of way, that it is a greedy act. I mean, I didn't know what I was going to experience,being a painter, I don't like the idea of painting an image twice, and my video's I only make once, and my performances, that's another story? Or is it? Maybe not.. I have been recreating them, or plan on it, I think of them as a learning experience, and I find new things that I get inspired by, by doing them multiple times....I didn't see this experience as a sort of therapy, but a historic importance experience in my artistic career being a painter and a performer.

I start asking myself, What is my practice? What am I doing? I knew that Marina was not going to answer this, but having formal dance training and training with Jennifer Muller, and having a sort of inner dialogue is highly important for me, and for this experience. I will be doing nothing but sitting and observing Marina, having an inner dialogue with myself and giving off a positive energy.

Day 33 : Meghann Snow

My friend Paula's photo:

88 min.

Paula was sitting and I was getting antsy, tour groups were coming up to me asking me what the hell was going on, and why people were waiting... I had to explain her work, and what the process of this piece was. I only knew what I knew about this experience. Then I had two older women who thought the word "performance" meant some sort of theatre act or dance show... I had to explain, a "performance art" work to her, as in the Artist is Present, piece... what was going on and how this "performance" was a performance act. It was an act happening with the actual artist. The artist Marina was giving people of the public her service, sitting silently, and having an inner dialogue of some sort.

You can connect with someone with just eye contact. As I finish explaining this, then they asked me why I would want to do such a thing? I explained that I am a performance artist, and I admire the artists work and practice. That I felt that it was an honor to be in her presence. I wanted to thank her with my eyes, and my thoughts for allowing me to do this, and be apart of this, and to meet her. The women wished me luck and left.

I kept asking myself, how long am I going to sit? Will my nose start running? Can I sit still? For how long? I have never meditated like this, ever. Jennifer Muller taught me in her workshop in 2003 how to have this inner dialogue and this communication with my body, and this type of communication I am fond of, and continue to use it in my everyday practice in the studio, and in my writing. I felt confident but nervous. People all surrounding you, watching you, observing you, taking pictures of you. I was tweeting with my friend Lauren in Toronto, she got on the MoMa site and was going to watch me, and she did!!! How cool, right, to have your friend watch you. She just came to visit me and now she is virtually watching me watch Marina! I was super excited about this! After awhile, I came to terms with over thinking and stopped thinking. Whatever happens will happen! Go do it!

My turn finally comes along. The security guard comes up to me, runs me by the rules of what I am allowed and not allowed to do. "No talking, touching or moving. When you are done, put your head down and slowly stand up and remove yourself....Are you ready? I respond, I am ready as I'll ever be!" Here it goes!

I walk up. Nervous as ever! My heart pounding in my chest! Holy shit, holy shit, I keep repeating...OMG OMG!!! I try to tell myself to relax... so far I can't relax, for one minute..

I approach the chair, I should mention that the table is way shorter then when I remember, which I am happy about! This makes it more personal. Still my heart is pounding about to come out of my chest onto the table. I take a deep breath, put my head down and say to myself, here we go, you deserve this, and let yourself explore your thoughts, yourself, and Marina. She too is a normal person like me, who started making art, who has failed, who has explored, and is full of crazy wisdom and experience...

I let out my breath slowly, here we go!

I am ready for Marina.... she was taking some moments, her eyes were closed. Both hands started in her lap... she opens her eyes, looked ready, refreshed, puts her left hand on the side of her chair, kinda slanted over, chilling out with me.

My first couple breaths I will admit, I couldn't control my breathing or my body, or my shaking, I was in shock that this was really her! I mean we all get star struck when we see a famous artist, I know i do, for a split moment. I think working at Sotheby's and seeing all this famous work and people, I know how to handle myself professionally. Still this was nerve wracking! Having rules, and boundaries set on you. I really didn't want to talk out loud to her anyways...

As I take my next couple breaths, I am becoming more relaxed, I am in my mode. I am really good at mimicking people. I felt as though if I follow her, she will lead me. And that is exactly what happened!!

Our eyes met! I looked at her straight in the eyes, with a welcome, a hello, here I am, Meghann, I am blinking at her pace, keeping up with her, I am looking at her eyes, amazing, colorful, peaceful, her eyes told me I was alright, welcome back.

I then started following her breathing. Keeping up with her. I forgot how good I was in ballet at holding my breath, b/c during these moments, I couldn't tell when or if Marina was breathing, so when I couldn't see her, I wouldn't breath. (Oy!!)

When Marina swallowed or opened her mouth, so did I. When she blinked so did I....

After I was able to get my body in this relaxed stage, I started talking to her with my eyes. Introducing her to myself... briefly... After I did this, I am thinking okay, so here I am, I don't know you, you don't know me, but I wanted her to know me as if I could be friends with her, I explained myself and my process being that I am a painter, who does performance work, I am new at performance, not truly found of performance but something that has occurred in my work, like it or not, I roll with it, it makes me uncomfortable, but I am exploring something new that comes into my practice and process. Something that has been ingrained into my body and mind. I don't know how to truly "choreograph" .

I never declared myself b/c I was bored, and not interested in ever choreographing physical movement. I was not being pushed in a way I could see myself grow… I was always good at mimicking movement because I had a learning disability growing up and everyone thought I was a Failure! This was something I was very good at, even with Figure Skating, my body has an intense memory but also bad stage fright. (I mean not my family but everyone in my school district) It was so apparent on my teachers faces...so my mom put me in figure skating and dance.. I succeeded because I found somethings that I was good at... so after I am done explaining this to Marina there was a moment where I swear her eyes started turning bright red, and watery. Her eyes looked like she was going to cry!!!!!

SERIOUSLY, I was thinking holy shit she looks so upset right now! Why? I started thinking, was I supposed to start crying? Why? If I start crying my nose will run, I will need to blow it, touch it, oh g-d no tears Meghann...no tears! None happened! Thankfully, I talked back to her, inside, saying no need for crying, I've lived, and made something of myself, I am happy to be sitting here with you....she cleared up, and her face started clearing up....

As this happens, I looked away for a hot minute... oh g-d, I looked away, I start getting paranoid... I quickly look back, was I allowed to look away? I mean shes soo beautiful! Wow! What time is it? Clueless, can’t look at my watch!

Okay, time passes and I am starting to tell Marina Thank you.... Thank you for allowing me to be here sitting with you... Thank you for giving me your time....

I'm thinking maybe I'll stand up now... but no, she didn't feel ready for me to leave, and I didn't feel ready to leave... I sat, thinking nothing, staring for a while, her face would dissolve into nothing.... I continued to say thank you and being grateful for this experience. I am who I am....

The third time I started going on my Thank tangent, I was ready to stand up. I did it. I felt refreshed, ready for my performance on Saturday.... I met Marina, and I sat with her for 45 minutes. And no, I don't plan on going back to sit again. I am not greedy, and I got what I wanted and needed.

I recommend anyone who wants to do this, to do it! Artist or not! If you live in New York and can devote time. Do it!

Thank you for reading my story!

The End!

Here are links for you to view my work :

The first time I have done video and dance was at Parsons, and this was the work I was doing. This was the first time I ever made my ballet shoes, and performed for the camera. I started making tape holsters for the camera to sit in, my hands were free to perform and were used to keep balance on the slippery wood surface with paint.

LINK: http://www.vimeo.com/441563
Ballet wrap + tape = Ballet
Created in 2007
Parsons The New School for Design

Then while working with Jackie Brookner, in 2007 she wanted me to perform for my classmates. For this you can clearly see, I was not up to performing for my peers.

LINK: http://www.vimeo.com/777786
Warm up for class
Created in 2007
Parsons The New School for Design

In 2008, I had three of my CHARCOAL DANCE VIDEO'S screened at Apex Art. I was apart of the show, http://www.apexart.org/exhibitions/comeout/rose.htm.

LINKS: of videos screened:

1) http://www.vimeo.com/1152554
2) http://www.vimeo.com/1903063
3) http://www.vimeo.com/723889

This lead me to work with my dear friend independent artist and principle dancer Pascal Rekoret. Also he is the director of his own company Flexicurve Dance company, located in New York City. I was apart of his Portable Dance Fair. During this shoot, I helped Pascal video his dancers. I also tired out some new video techniques by making an arm strap that was on the dancers arm, and would capture a larger. Pascal and I were featured in the DAILY NEWS : BROOKLYN section wrote about Pascal.

Link: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/brooklyn/2009/03/10/2009-03-10_dance_group_flexicurve_films_portable_da.html

Then I was asked to perform for HATCH in 2009, here is the video of this performance. HATCH is a great series for emerging choreographers and artists to showcase new, or finished work.

LINK: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tAF1pl33Hk
ACTION + DANCE + REACTION
HATCH SERIES : JMTW / 2009
Chelsea, New York
Performer: Danney Coeyman + Meghann Snow

This piece was the first time I ever performed for a live audience my work. This performance I felt did not go over to well. A dance audience did not understand my work work, one bit. It went over their heads... I am happy that this work was performed. It might have been a flop but a good flop for me. A great learning experience.

Recently I performed a new Dance Drawing, back in Feburary. This work was curated by David Gibson. I performed a dance drawing that was more like a figure skating drawing. I performed what looked like "figures." I was testing the limits of my body and what my body could create. On the ice to make these marks it's very simple. Dancing with charcoal on paper is not so easy.

LINK: http://vimeo.com/9535511

After this performance, I performed for a second year in HATCH. I presented a piece called "stretching x two." This work was to bring together both painting and dance. Taking a single word that has two meanings. I was recreating what a dance studio and painting studio would be. I also was playing music that would be played in my studio. In this work Frank Castanien, a student from CCAD performed with me.

LINK: http://www.vimeo.com/11036163

Lastly I will close with images of a group show I was in at Asterisk Gallery in Cleveland, OH.This show was called, response/correspondence. http://www.asteriskgallery.com/current.html. In this show, I exhibited four videos. Two new videos from 2010 and two from 2007. Here are the links for you to see the videos. However, there is a big difference of seeing these videos on my page and how the curator Dana Depew set them up. I am a fan of Nam June Paik, but never thought my work would look good in TV's. I should say that my work in NYC has been spoiled. By the fact that since my MFA I have projected my video's large scale. This time, they were placed in TV's that were stacked. I was a fan of the way the curator set my work up. Here is how my videos were set up for this exhibit and links for you to see the work.

VIDEO LINKS OF WORK SHOWN:

LINKS:
1) http://vimeo.com/680474 (Bouncy String)
2) http://vimeo.com/441472 (Dancing Radiator)
3) http://www.vimeo.com/7552932 (Porno Dumpling)
4) http://www.vimeo.com/9795319 (FISTSHITS)

This is my Dancing Radiator piece. Here it is placed in multiple TV's that are stacked. This work was presented right in the entry way of the gallery.

PICTURES OF VIDEO'S DISPLAYED @ ASTERISK

This is my Dancing Radiator piece. Here it is placed in multiple TV's that are stacked. This work was presented right in the entry way of the gallery.

(NOTE: BLOGGER PHOTO IMPORT IS DOWN, I WILL ADD MORE PHOTOS LATER)

Thank you for reading my blog!!!

Daily Struggles

2010-04-29T17:52:00.000-07:00

I have been meaning to post for the last couple days, and what came to mind was "struggling." How each and everyone of us is "struggling." I am not alone. This past week has been emotionally rough personally, financially, and artistically. I have a lot of open ends, and I am starting to close them. This past week, I started trimming off my facebook. I joined facebook in college and it was a great way to see what my friends were doing, and to reconnect... now, I have decided that I am using facebook more for professional reasons. I know I change my status often, and I am working on not making everything in my life so public but professional. So, I have taken people off I truly have not connected with, or don't intend to. I felt good after doing that, in all honesty.

Personally, we all know about relationships being like a roller coaster, ups and downs. Now, I'm in a good place, a medium ground. You know coming to a year mark is not easy for us ladies. But I really had to do a reality check. I don't like when communication is cut, or one of us is not communicating. But this one year mark was a check in point. Is this working? What is going on with myself.. are we both doing our part? There is nothing wrong with evaluating oneself. We learn a lot about our selves. What we want, what we don't want...

I am feeling like 27 is the age of figuring our shit out. No? Am I wrong? 30 is right around the corner, and I'm not saying that I will have myself figured out, but I do know what I want and I admit I am not perfect. But I can't help that I am a driven, caring artist learning the ropes with hopes (that was a nice little rhyme). By the way this is another important subject....age. I am 27. I know I am repeating myself, but what cracks me up these days are how people are so good at putting labels on other people. "Oh, shes 27, shes to young to collect....or, Oh, your not to experienced enough..." It just makes me laugh inside. First off, I'm not trying to rant but state a point. Some people yes, are to young mentally and emotionally, and some people are not experienced enough, but if your like me and you want a chance, (I was going to say break) PEOPLE, look at the people around you, I ask you, and if you know of someone who is eager, talented, then shit, give them a chance. This goes out to all my struggling artist friends, or people who want to come to NYC, I say this, be prepared because this is not an easy journey. And realistically you can't do it alone either. (Man, my thoughts are moving right along in the direction I hoped!!! phew!)

Along with this struggling, I have been looking for jobs else where, but then it hit me. I finally told my boyfriend. That I was looking else where, things were rocky. I didn't care what he thought considering I didn't feel like he cared about what I was doing... but I consoled in him about this job and it wasn't worth it, and then talking with my friends, my family is here. I of course have a wonderful family in Cleveland, but I am connected here. I have a boyfriend of a year, whom I love very much ( I'll confess to the public) my close friends (John Tom, his lovely wife Daria, Al, Jen, Shira, Claudia, Danny,.....the list continues and you know who all are.). This is my family. I choose to be in New York, I am an artist living / working in Brooklyn, New York. I suffered loosing two amazing jobs and yes I am on Unemployment and let me tell you, it is not fun! But I am learning how to budget myself!! Budget, budget, budget. I am constantly looking for jobs.. but you know what, I am in a stand still. I am making new work, working out my own issues and working on some cool projects, (achem, NYSRP ALUMNI SHOW!)... I feel like 27 is about working yourself out. We are not 16, we are adults. 27 = mid to late 20's... mov'in on up in the world.

I have been struggling that my personal life and my professional life have not been matching up. This past week, I cleaned my studio out. My students are getting ready for there end of the semester show. I should mention that I have been very grateful to have a studio and to be the Teachers Assistant for the past year at the New York Studio Residency Program in DUMBO! A million THANK YOU'S to John Tomlinson! What a great person!!! I have been so amune to giving up studio's that I am okay with not having a space, now that my work is moving more towards performance, this gives me time to conceptualize my practice.

When I graduated from my MFA I moved to Brooklyn, near Prospect Park, with my good friend Danny... and while in graduate school, I thought how awesome it would be to live and work in my apartment. Being a painter, my room is large enough to designate one wall dedicated to painting. I have collaborated with other artists doing video in my room as well, and have worked on few paintings. But there is something to be said about creating work where you sleep. I have realized that it's a little to close for me. And now, that I am working on video/performance my room feels like a room. I love rearranging my room. Now I finally have a nice set up and of course my new sheets.

So, over the past couple months I have performed to new pieces. Stretching x two and Dance Drawing. It feels so good to finally be doing performance work. I never felt real secure with myself until now. Dance Drawing was performed at envoy enterprises this past February. This piece was a break through work for me. I was soo nervous, thinking about having my student perform instead of me, and she pushed me to do it. I wore this very old ice skating dress that was crushed velvet (Thank g-d it was black because I felt like my butt was hanging out!) and black tights. This piece I re-created some figures that I would have done on the ice. This past week, I also had a studio visit with Jan Avgikos. (Mind you it had been a while since she has seen my work) I showed her both documentations from my performance. She made a great comment about this work, and that was, she liked the limits that I was pushing with my body to create the marks. And suggested I look at durable paper that would hold my materials better for a end result. I am currently looking into better paper.

An artist I have been very interested in is Kazuo Shiraga. There was a great article in Modern Painters, April issue. Here is the link if you would like to read it :http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/34160/kazuo-shiraga-mud-sweat-and-oil-paint/ . His work totally inspired me. Al, the studio manager at NYSRP had told me I should look into him and his work. And now, I'm really looking at his paintings and his performance style. It's nice to see someone else's work who performs with their feet. My feet are just like my hands, but more expressive. My body creates better lines then my hands. Jan also told me to look at Ives Kline's body paintings that he did. It's amazing to see how much the body can create! I feel our hands limit so much of our sensibility. Everything is full of emotion. Not just our heads, and eyes, but everything is living and making something. We are just not aware of it.

Onto other things, I made a list of artists I am looking at... I try to look at new artists, and sometimes my list come out to be the same because I am naming artists off the top of my head.. like someone is going to quiz me! Here's what I came up with.

Kazuo Shiraga
Jennifer Muller
Bill T. Jones
Marina Abramovic
Vito Acconci
Kelly Niper
Klaus Rinke
Trisha Brown
Dan Graham
Bruce Nauman

......done with the struggling! I made some progress this week with everything I was venting on! Things are being put into motion, and when you are proactive about the things you truly want, they happen! Thanks for a good week, to myself and the people around me. Thank you for getting me through this! Much love to all.

One picture for the struggling post!

Sometimes, we all need to just take a moment outside of this concrete jungle we live in, and smell the flowers....

Up to speed.. Up to date

2010-04-27T12:25:00.000-07:00

Welcome!!! I have finally decided since 2008 to make this happen. This is in fact the first website that I have ever had to call my own. Welcome to the blog world!!I want this to be a place where I/others, meaning you, can look at my work see problems and make suggestions. I want this to be an open experience. With this being said, let me introduce myself, my work and my practice.

Before I show you a group of images, here is an introductory to how I became about as an artist. First, I started out as a young figure skater at the age of six. I was in the process of training to go to the Olympics. (That's what I remembered, I wanted so badly, but then realized I had a horrible coach and was diagnosed with JRA come to Regionals. Something happened, and I quit.) I was also taking private lessons for ballet about 6 or 7 days a week. Then during my summers in middle and high school I would go study at Pittsburgh Ballet School or The Rock School of The PA Ballet.

I graduated high school in 2001, didn't apply to college, but was taking company class at the time at Ohio Ballet, and ended up taking ballet at The University of Akron's Dance Department. After a couple years of taking class, I simply wasn't feeling inspired. Ballet, had been a venue where I became a good mimic of movement. I love that in ballet it kept my mind and body focused. I was driven. There is a routine in every combination, and your body has to be in perfect place, and it was something that made me push myself and grow as a person. After my second year of college, I felt done, and had to move on to something else.

I then started painting. I had started painting in high school but never thought I would ever continue. My second year of college, while I was still dancing, I started developing a portfolio of paintings in my basement of my college apartment. I remember my mom telling me at the time, "Don't be mad if you don't get in, art school is objective/subjective." (She had been a student at Cleveland Art Institute in the 60's). I had no idea what I was doing or where these paintings were coming from. My early paintings were full of movement and color. I got into the Mary Schiller Myers School of Art, at The University of Akron. (Also, remembering my mom opened the envelope because she didn't want me to be hurt if I didn't get in.) I remember hanging them in one of the schools gallery and some of the professors, looking at me like what are these... but being who I am I still exhibited them. This is where my artistic journey started!

However, with my experiences in dance are very influential in my practice now, even though I was bored by ballet. I was introduced to Jennifer Muller's technique, and to this day continues to be a big influence to my practice now. College really shaped me to be the artist I am today. Here are some major experiences which have shaped me now: My BFA, Being a scholarship student with Jennifer Muller, interning at Artists Space to attending The New York Studio Residency,2005, to graduating with my BFA in 2006 and continuing my education and getting my MFA from Parsons The New School for Design, 2008.

I entered graduated school in 2006 as a "painter." My first year, I started making video's of random mundane objects, and made these objects appear as if they were dancing....Then my second year, I worked with only with Jackie Brookner a sculpture, who was pushing me towards performance, but I refused but and performed in front of my peers. That performance was a flop. I also worked with Brian Tolle another sculpture who really pushed my paintings...Really, these are two amazing artists/teachers helped me get to the point of my work. Jackie also has this way, with talking to me where she gets to my core. At the end of graduate school, I made figurative paintings, video and touched on performance...and made my ballet shoes out of bubble wrap and tape. Overall, I am happy I went to graduate school but not happy I have a lot of debt! But oh well! I got it done! Learned a lot about myself and my process.

I graduated with my MFA in 2008, worked at Parsons, was hired by Sotheby's straight after graduation. Started work full-time, made no art, had my second solo show in Portland, OR. Showed my new Dusty Dance videos at apex art, the same day as my interview at Sotheby's. Was written up by Brooklyn Museums Feminist Blog, lost my job at Sotheby's when the economy fell....went back to working at DIESEL part-time, still was making no work, then lost my job.... then the BRAVO, audition experience happened.

For this experience, I had to create another portfolio, and go to a gallery in Chelsea and present myself and my work to a friendly jury.... I was back at reevaluating my work and and getting my work together for a new updated portfolio. Just when you think, you've made no art, and looking at a group of images of the previous years in graduate school... lots of work just so happens. This application was worse then a graduate application... 35 pages of questions about my process, why I want to be an artist, what is my history, who are my influences, what collectors do I know, (not many right now)... on and on... On the side of things I was going to the gym like a crazy woman, getting my body in shape, didn't want to look fat for the camera :) So I passed the New York rounds, and then made a casting video... funny part was that my roommate and I were both going far in this, he went further then me, but it was fun yet stressful... but it was nice to be there with each other, working with each other, helping one another to some extent. My roommate and I have been friends since the first day of graduate school, too! So, I made this work, which is posted... Looks like a body, some sort of inspiration from Francis Bacon... and I talk about that, my video turned out funny as hell!!! Funny in a way, that I could never see myself being on TV, and then funny because, I could see myself being on TV, I have the chutzpa to do this, make art on TV, be competitive! The producer told me I couldn't be type casted! Really, I say. Oh well, but now that I think about it, this experience got me to making art again, and really this a little bump pushed me more towards performance.

Which leads me to where I am at now. Painting and Performance. I make ballet shoes out of bubble wrap and tape and perform in them. I did a performance called, "Dance Drawing" at envoy enterprises this past February. I recently sat with Marina Abramovic at MoMA for 49 minutes and had a moving experience. I used my dance training with Jennifer Muller to sit! I had this whole dialogue with myself and talked to her through my own thoughts. I was present, and I could tell MA was too. That MoMA was also the craziest experience as well! Running up the stairs early in the morning at MoMA. I was fighting for a chance to sit with this amazing artist who is considered the "grandmother of performance." I thought her show was great! Some rooms were crowded of posters and such, but if you were having a retrospective at the MoMA, I would want to have as much as I can to show. Also in graduate school my first year I participated in a work of Adrian Piper's with CREATIVE TIME. Called, "Everything will be taken AWAY." I had to wear a henna tattoo on my forehead and walk around the city with this, and continue going on my daily life. I almost got fired from DIESEL!!!, they didn't like me having a tattoo that read something on my forehead, they asked me to cover it up, but I said to them at the time, "Really, everyone in the store has at least some sort of visible tattoo..." They shut up. So I had to document myself and take pictures of myself everyday, morning noon and night, until this tattoo wore off. I also had to keep a daily journal what I was feeling. Overall, feeling was that everything in my life at the time was falling apart!!! Just so happened, I was seeing something that was disappearing and the things in my life felt as though they were doing the same!

Currently, I am in a group show at Asterisk Gallery in Cleveland, OH. I am exhibiting 4 videos. Two of which are from graduate school and two that are new! My work is being exhibited in TVs! I would have never suspected them to ever be shown in this format, but they look awesome. I also performed a new dance drawing that was at envoy enterprises, which is in the Lower East Side, and last weekend, I performed a new work at HATCH Series which is affiliated through Jennifer Muller Studios.

Right now I am working on a new work called Short Routine, and really thinking about movement that is from dance and figure skating and incorporating mark making from my movement. Researching about acting, thinking about space, meditating, reading the Poetics of Space, Twayla Tharp's Creative Habit, Performance Art, and The Body in Contemporary Art....and to end this first blog post, which I am rather nervous about posting, all I have to say is Welcome! My name is Meghann and I am a survivor and a fighter of this hard economic time!

So now, I present to you some edited images of the beginning of my process to now:

Meghann, Arabesque pose, 2003

One of my BFA paintings senior year, 2006

1 of 450 small drawings, made during New York Studio Residency, 2005

Memories of Karoline, mixed media on canvas, 2007

Inside my old studio at Parsons. This is what the floor looked like after my performance of dancing with paint. Floor image. 8' x 10 ' Performance stage, 2007

Groupings of my ballet shoes made out of bubble wrap and tape.
Both pairs are from the first couple times I performed in my paintings.
2008

The Ballet Finger, 2008

This is exactly how I felt during my BRAVO application :) Mishka my cat laying on my application on my dresser....

Check out some of my most recent video performances on my vimeo website!!

http://www.vimeo.com/user320499

Thanks for reading this first post!! Have a great day!