My City, My Actual Home - Category: My City, My Home
It is Wednesday and that means I post under the category "My City, My Home." I thought today it would be fun to show you my actual home here in MKE. After the opening I went on a cleaning and reorganizing rampage. I still have to get to my studio, which I will post on Monday.
I was a little paranoid to show you my place because I have mild OCD...ok...severe OCD when it come to my house. Ask my poor sister Jenni who had to live with me for a year. The poor thing couldn't even put a dirty spoon in the sink without me freaking out.
Since I am on an artist's budget I get about five dollars a year to put towards my apartment. Ok, that is also an exaggeration but I really don't have a lot to work with. This is fine with me though because one of my favorite things to do is go thrifting and resurrect old junk. I added up what I have spent on furniture for my place in the last six years and it came to four hundred fifty dollars. That includes my mattress, couch, dining room set and everything. The majority of my furniture my Grandpa Barenz made in his off time and I inherited it after he passed away. My favorite piece of furniture is a dresser he made that I restained a mossy green.
One perk of being an artist is that you can afford great art because all your artist friends will trade with you, I have examples of some of my favorite works below. I used to be a resident at the Chicago Printmaker's Collaborative and I always crash their Twenty Dollar poster sale in the spring. I have works by Amos Kennedy, Jay Ryan, and many more because of this awesome event. I will spend here and there on a good rug or something to bring the room together and I usually find it at Target of IKEA. Other than that, I just spend a lot of time painting old furniture and trying to bring odd lot pieces together with the help of a can of spray paint.
The Milwaukee thrift stores are AMAZING. I have lived in a couple of places and I have never come across so many great finds. I usually find a lot of vintage suitcases, gold leafed glasses, funky knick-knacks, and modern looking furniture. I would tell you where the best thrift store is in town but if I did I would have to kill you.
So without further ado here is La Casa de Estefania.
One of my favorite paintings by Stephen Hoskins
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Grandpa's dresser.
Left: Print of Johnny that I got from Hatch Show Print in TN. Right: Dennis O'Malley, one of my favorite Chicago printmakers.
Painting by Sara Mulloy
I Should Have Listened to Kierke"Jenni" - Category: Personal Stories
By Guest Blogger, Jennifer D. Barenz
I invited my sister, Jenni, to guest blog today. She is full of insight and is getting her PhD in Clinical Psychology. We were taking a walk the other day and she brought up some of interesting points. I asked her if she wouldn't mind blogging about it and I was very happy when she agreed. Enjoy! -Stephanie
Kierkegaard says, “Don’t compare yourself! It’s stupid and will make you fall down!”
The other day I was sitting in my personal library, stroking my imaginary beard, smoking a pipe filled with imported Cuban tobacco, sipping scotch, and admiring my many leather bound books. All of this gets one to thinking, “I think it’s time to read some Soren Kierkegaard.”
WARNING: I am mildly obsessed with the great philosopher and was thusly nicknamed “KierkeJenni” in college so take my loving interpretation of him as you wish.
Jenni's love obsession, Soren Kierkegaard. It should be noted that Jenni has decided to name her first son Soren. For real.
When it comes to loving Gd, yourself, your partner, your family, your friends, your job, your art, and your life in general, there is one major thing you have to watch out for. Comparison.
Comparison is sneaky because it is not the first thing we think to watch out for, especially in American the Beautiful. In fact, it is probably one thing that Americans do best. We read People magazine (how does one not compare oneself to, “Halle Berry, Katie Perry, Julia Roberts, oh my!”). We check out which new love story is unfolding between the stars. We compare how well football players and washed up reality TV stars shake it on Dancing with the Stars. We compare women on the Bachelor. We compare FOX news with CNN with CNBC. We compare political candidates, supermarkets, flat screen TV’s, churches, diets, gyms, salaries, schools, ect…ect…ect…the list goes on. Americans know how to compare.
Comparing flat screen TV’s is one thing but when it comes to love, comparing is dangerous. When we stop what we are doing in order to look around and see what others are doing, we miss everything. Kierkegaard says, “What does comparison always lose? The moment.”
The guest blogger Jenni, taking advantage of the moment and loving her nephew.
Regarding loving ourselves, whether we are kicking ourselves for not measuring up or thinking about how much better we are than another person, we are losing the moment. We just spent precious moments of life doing something that actually does not accomplish anything except make us feel really poopy or falsely superior. When I compare my abilities, looks, or status in life with other people – I spend more time moping and less time loving myself by actually doing the things that lead to a meaningful life. If my sister spent her whole day wandering around art galleries and trying to make her work look like someone else’s, by the end of the day she would be really upset and have a really weird looking piece of art. She would be missing out on her own creative process and all the joy, sweat, and tears that goes into making a great work of art.
When it comes to loving others, comparing is just as dangerous. What happens when we start comparing those we love and our relationships to them with the things we see in movies, in other families, or in other friendships? We spend a lot of time wishing for things that only happen when you STOP comparing. When we’re in the moment of hugging, laughing, cooking or sharing, there is no room for comparison. The minute you start thinking about how funny your loved one is compared with someone else, it’s hard to pay attention to the joke they are telling. The minute you start wondering whether your family is as close as other families, you miss the moments you should be spending asking about each other’s days.
Word.
So we get why comparing is stupid and gets in the way of love but why will it make you fall down?
Kierkegaard says that love is like an arrow. It starts off doing just fine, blazing through the air, getting things accomplished. But what if an arrow started to try to turn around and look at how fast it was going or which direction it was headed, or just to check his hot arrow self out? Well, then the arrow would no longer be flying through the air, it would have lost direction completely due to turning around to look at itself. It would be spiraling down to the earth and thinking, “I should have listened to Kierkegaard.”
So don’t be like that poor unfortunate arrow. Love with all your heart and leave comparison for the flat screen TV’s!
Arrows should be shot away from you. One should always wear green tights while shooting arrows too.
New Friends, Uneasy Paintings, and The Tree of Life - Category: From the Studio
Good Morning!
This is the last week I have to get my work done for Caggio. I am almost there and it feels good. I wouldn't recommend locking yourself away for four weeks and painting because you will go crazy. Seriously. I have made friends with every june bug, squirrel and morning dove that lands on my porch. They are great friends and after our week of deep, intellectual conversations the squirrel even asked me to be her maid of honor in her wedding in late August. It feels great to be loved.
Okay, enough of that nonsense. It all honesty it has been a trying week in the studio. Only good artists know how to finish their work, so I always get anxious when putting the finishing touches on my paintings. There is a fine line between getting it right and a massive fail. I remember hearing from an artist that whenever he thought he had a "Great" idea he knew the painting would be complete crap. It was the ones that he felt really uneasy about that usually ended up being good work. So maybe it is a good sign that I feel uneasy about everything that is happening in my studio right now. There is a joke among my family that if I don't like a painting it will sell. And it is true, every painting I have ever felt undecided about is the first one to go at a show. So in the end it is all worth it and I usually end of loving that painting I hated in the beginning.
Here are some details of some of the paintings I have been working on this week:
I did make it out to the Oriental this week to see "The Tree of Life" which was an amazing mostly non-verbal, non-linear, collage of nature, grace, life, and death. I imagine that the director and writer were sitting in a dark little cafe somewhere, drinking scotch, and they were hit with a moment of brilliance to make a movie about everything. Instead of laughing it off they actually did it. It is movie about all of life's big existensial questions- about the beginning of time, coming of age, wrestling with God, the magnificent micro and macro beauty of nature, loss of innocence, grief, and love. At first I didn't know what to make of it and by the end I was an emotional wreck. I also thought it was a great movie to watch around the time of Father's Day. It is a great movie in the sense that is doesn't "preach" at its audience about these major, controversial topics. Whether you are a Christian or atheist, someone who believes in creation or the Big Bang, or someone who is just neutral, you can approach it with your own experience and interpret it in any way. It is personal and universal at the same time. It leaves it up to the viewer to fill in the blanks. Any work of art that embraces contradiction is a mystical, brilliant thing. So go see it!
New Work and Opening - Category: From the Studio
As some of you may know last Friday was my opening at Caggio. This was my sixth exhibit there over the last two years. It is hard to believe that two years have already flown by. I will have to say this was one of my favorite openings thus far because of all the people that came out to support me. When I first moved here I didn't know anyone and as I talked to people on Friday I realized how many of you I have come to know through my exhibits. So thank you again for all your love and support.
Matt Eich released his EP "Dirty Screen" at the opening, which was based off of six of my paintings. It was wonderful to have music that connected with the work. Matt is a very talented musician and if you are interested in hearing more of his work check out his website www.matthewroberteich.com. The CD comes with six postcards of the paintings that Matt wrote about and costs ten dollars. If you are interested in purchasing a CD please contact me or Matt.
I don't like to explain my work too much beyond the artist statement unless people have questions. So I will try to keep this short and sweet. To start off here is an excerpt from my statement at the opening:
"When I create a new body of work I challenge myself to slightly alter my conceptual framework, which is based on one's relationship to a place. Each body of work in my portfolio has dealt with a different concept such as the act of traveling, contrasting urban vs. rural landscapes, and exploring local economies. This new work's visual vocabulary comes from Milwaukee's "city middle." The majority of works, focus on one street, like Wisconsin and North Avenue, as opposed to representing an entire city. Other works like "City of Steeples" and "Ma Bells of Milwaukee" are limited to representing one defining feature of our location, such as churches or telephone poles."
I threw in a few new challenges with this work such as working with a CNC Milling Machine. Tuan Tran is an architect from Design Fugitives who helped me fabricate one of my past works as a carved panel. I am still in the beginning stages with this work and am considering it as a starting point for prints, drawings, and paintings. I am having a show in October at BYO Studio and I am hoping to exhibit more of these works. We will see how it goes and I will keep you posted on the process.
The Sentinel Revisited
Another challenge I set up for myself was to limit myself to making work about one street in Milwaukee.This all started because of all the construction on I94 this past spring. I took the side streets to avoid traffic and as a result I accessed parts of the city that I had never been to before. I now try to take the side streets whenever possible. Several of the works were based off of the "hidden treasures" I found on North and Wisconsin Avenues.
The Ambassador
City Middle
Finally, I also forced myself to work with only one image/ form for some of the works. As stated in my artist statement I did this to bring forth one defining feature of my location. The three characteristics that I chose to work with were the steeples, row housing, and telephone poles of Milwaukee. I chose these because they were the top three things I noticed immediately about Milwaukee when I moved here. Through repetition I hope to convey the significant role they play in forming the landscape of our city. The interesting part of these works for me was that they were born out of the blog entry that I wrote awhile ago called "I Come From A City Of Steeples." In the past I would always make the work and then write about it. This time around the process was flipped, I got the idea from writing. I always painted because it was difficult for me to express what I wanted to say through language, and the painting helped me to arrive at what I wanted to say. Now I see the writing occasionally informing the painting, which is exciting for me.
City of Steeples
Out of the Fire
The Ma Bells of Milwaukee
If you have any questions about the work please feel free to ask and I will do my best to answer them. In the next two weeks Maureen Mulhern, will be posting an interview that she conducted with me about the show. I will provide a link to it when it is released. I will leave you with a couple more images from the show. Thank you all again for coming out on Friday!
Off of Prospect Near Farwell
The Golden Dragon
Sign On North
Fish Grotto
MKE to PDX
Photos Coming Soon! - Category: From the Studio
Hey Peeps,
I am waiting to get some photos from my photographer from Friday's show, so I will be posting my studio update tomorrow. So stay tuned. Thanks and see you tomorrow!
