We’re living in Pittsburgh, PA, where I’ve begun my Warhol Curatorial Fellowship at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry and Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University. The good folks at the STUDIO have set me up with a desk, a stipend, and a new iMac.
My 17 minute ‘on foot’ commute from Wilkins Avenue is heavenly. We’re renting a three-story (plus finished basement) furnished home from two computer scientists who are living abroad. As such, we’ve got an elevator, full gym, dart board, outdoor grill, and a jacuzzi that’s sadly off limits (but perhaps could perform as an ‘encounter zone’). Just kidding, landlords. :)
My fellowship here is an outgrowth of the exhibition, 29 Chains to The Moon, that I curated for Miller Gallery in 2009, and which I’m developing into a traveling exhibition and publication that presents artists’ proposals for rethinking the production of food, shelter, transportation and energy for a rapidly increasing global population. The notion that overpopulation can be addressed before imminent catastrophe is gleamingly optimistic, and nods toward visionary designer Buckminster Fuller, and his radical ideas for improving the quality of life for all humankind via progressive design and maximization of the world’s finite resources. The 29 Chains to the Moon exhibition essay is here.
The first part of my fellowship will be a getting-to-know-you series of meetings with interesting people doing interdisciplinary projects on campus at Carnegie Mellon. I just met former fellow, Axel Straschnoy, whose project here involved working with the Robotics Institute to create “art done by robots for robots.” It was fascinating to hear how Axel’s abstract concept (create a robot that makes art for another robot) was embraced by the Robotics Institute and approached as an empirical problem that could be solved using scientific inquiry. Axel is going to introduce me to the resulting robots this Thursday.
From STUDIO for Creative Inquiry Flickr site: "The New Artist" is a project to develop art by and for robots undertaken by Ben Brown, Garth Zeglin, Geoff Gordon, Iheanyi Umez-Eronini, Marek Michalowski, Paul Scerri and Sue Ann Hong and Axel Straschnoy. It is being produced by Piritta Puhto.
Photos courtesy Aurora Picture Show, Melissa Hung, and Andrea Grover (me!)
During the ten years that I was with Aurora Picture Show, I hosted at least 300 visiting artists, and gave almost that many tours of Houston. Like an old cabbie, I have fine-tuned these trips into a scripted tour that features folk art environments, underground tunnels, celebrity grave sites, art cars, urban bayous, museums, mega churches, and art chapels. Imagine my gravelly voice coming through an old p.a. system as I humbly present to you, “Grover’s Guide to Houston, Part I.” Read this post on Glasstire.com
Thanks to my friend Bree Edwards for suggesting I write it all down!
“Indirect Collaboration” is a blog that I and my indirect collaborators, i.e., SXSW co-panelists (Joe Alterio, Tim Lillis, Riley Crane & Josh Glenn), will be posting to in the lead up to SXSW Interactive. The theme of our panel is “The role of crowd-sourced input on the creative process.” I was invited to represent the art exhibition side of the equation, namely my involvement in organizing Phantom Captain: Art & Crowdsourcing at apexart, as well as a Never Been to Tehran, Never Been to Houston, and TxtMeL8r – all exhibits with works generated by the crowd. (Both of the Never Been exhibits were co-organized with artist Jon Rubin, my hero.)
