Switch 'n Stitch

After, Publication, our first collaboration with Libro Books, we're helping out with some promoting of their next project, Switch 'n Stitch.

This Friday, November 12th at Libro and The Paisley Tree in the lower level of the Majestic, bring your unwanted clothes and exchange them for other people's old clothes. It's like a barter-system thrift shopping experience. While you're here feel free to use some of the provided sewing machines to make alterations. Or just bring some of your knitting supplies, enjoy good company and get some new clothes.

So that's Friday:
6:00 - 9:00
at the Majestic Center
150 N. Schuyler Ave.

Kankakee, IL

Check out the facebook event page, for more info and to RSVP.

Publication #1

Hey. We just finished folding and binding the first issue of Feed's Publication, a collaborative zine produced by the folks that attended last weekend's workshop. It is a Halloween themed zine featuring drawings by Curtis Askew, Stephen Bauman, Chris Clark and Rachel Nietfeldt. There's also instructions on pumpkin carving by Cynthia Bauman and a short story by Stephen Bauman.

If you want to get a copy, you can stop in at Libro Bookstore in the Majestic Center (150 North Schuyler) and pick one up. They have a $2.00 cover price, but you can just have one for free if you ask nicely.

To order a copy by mail, just click the button below. It's just 2 bucks to cover shipping costs.

Publication: Zine Workshop

According to Stolen Sharpie Revolution, "a Zine is an independently created publication. The contents are anything you want them to be; personal experiences and stories, political ideologies, music related writings, gardening tips, travel stories, comics, photography, or anything you like. Zines can be produced by one person or a group of people and they are usually photocopied."

Feed and Libro Books are presenting a zine making workshop on the evening of October 15 at Libro Bookstore in the new Towne Mall at the Majestic Centre. We'll go over the history of the zine and mini-comic scene, and cover a few of the most common methods of layout and binding. Together, we'll work on creating a collaborative zine to be published by Feed and offered for sale at Libro.

We'll provide:
• Supplies needed for designing a zine layout: paper, scissors, markers, stencils, staplers etc.
• Publishing and marketing
• Music and snacks
  
• A copy of the finished zine for each participant

You provide:
• Found images for creating collage pages
• Cool ideas

So here are the details
What: Publication
When: October 15th, 6:30 p.m.
Where: Libro Bookstore, 150 N Schuyler - Lower Level, Kankakee, IL

For inspiration check out: Stolen Sharpie Revolution, Optical Sloth, Zine World, Quimbys, We Make Zines.

Fall Arts Stroll

We're planning to set up at this year's Fall Arts Stroll organized by the Community Arts Council and our friends at the Kankakee Events Partnership. Everything is happening between 11:00 and 4:00 this Sunday, September 19th on the 100 blocks of North and South Schuyler Avenue, on either side of Court Street. The event this year should be a lot bigger than in the past, with over 70 artists, vendors and entertainers. In addition, there will be a bunch of demonstrations by area craftspeople at the Downtown Depot. Hopefully, you'll stop by to take part in the festivities and check out the Feed Team at our booth.

Guerrilla Gallery - 5x5x5

Get ready for a cheap art show. Feed is planning our first Guerrilla Gallery Exhibit. In an abandoned storefront, the middle of a corn field, or the basement of a barbershop, a Guerrilla Gallery Exhibit could pop up anywhere at anytime. It's an unauthorized party with music, refreshments, prizes and, obviously, some seriously great art.

For the first GG, we'll be exhibiting 5x5x5, a group show featuring the work of a bunch of awesome artists from around the country. All the exhibited artwork will be available as limited edition, five inch by five inch prints for the unacceptably low price of only five dollars a piece.

The date and location must remain top-secret for now, so join our facebook group to get the low-down about when and where the action is happening.

Call for Artists - The Littlest Print Exchange 2010

The Littlest Print Exchange is a juried trade of tiny 3" x 3" art prints. Each artist is invited to submit an edition of 50 prints and will in turn receive a complete portfolio of 50 prints from all 50 individual artists.


To be considered for inclusion in the 2010 portfolio, please check out the guidelines on the Littlest Print Blog and submit a portfolio.

Merchant Street Art & Craft Fair

Feed, has been asked to help organize an art/craft fair to be a part of the annual Merchant Street Music Fest in downtown Kankakee. This year's festival will take place on Friday and Saturday, August 13th and 14th.

In the past several years the Merchant Street Music Fest has grown into the premier live music festival in Kankakee and one of the most anticipated summer weekends in the entire region. This year the festival will feature more than 30 musical acts on two stages including Grammy nominees Liquid Soul, Southern Rocker Devon Allman and his band Honeytribe, "Chicago Jazz Act of the Year" Joel Patterson and the Modern Sounds, and the eclectic world music of The Chicago Afrobeat Project. Not to mention local favorites The Swing Kings, Ponyboy, Lisa Jackson & Shades of Gray, Lupe Carroll and many more.

The art and craft fair, new for this year, will be a major component of the festival with vendors located centrally along the path between the two music stages. The festival organizers feel so strongly about the importance of the art fair that they have given us permission to waive the entry fee to art and craft vendors. Those vendors that need access to electricity, however, are being asked to pay a minimal $20 surcharge. The entire reason for organizing the Music Fest is to offer something positive for the community, so in that spirit, we are hoping to find vendors willing to hold informal mini-demos of their areas of expertise or to simply be working on your craft for visitors to see.

If you are interested in setting up a booth, please send an email to feedartcenter@gmail.com and we'll get a vendor entry form out to you right away. As always, if you have an questions, concerns or suggestions, please let us know. More info on the festival can be found at merchantstreetmusicfest.com and on Facebook.

Spree

Our second photography event in as many weeks. Feed is sending out an assignment to all area photographers. Simply attend the Bourbonnais Friendship Festival anytime between June 23rd and June 27th and take some photos. Email your favorites to feedartcenter@gmail.com before July 17th.

An online gallery of all the submitted photos will go up on July 18th and the best of them will be published in a hand made postcard book.

View Finding

Last weekend's View Finding workshop was nice and laid back. Seven people showed up with vintage cameras, ready to point a digital camera through them. Today I edited, formatted and printed two photos from each participant. Tomorrow those prints are headed to Ireland where they will be included in John Baucher's TTV exhibition. The rest of the photos are available for viewing right now in the slideshow below. All in all it was a nice, fun, easy project and I hope to be able to do it again for next year's World TTV Day.

View Finding

June 19th, 2010 is World TTV Day, an international event intended to promote the re-purposing of vintage, analog cameras in a modern, digital world. In a nutshell, the TTV technique involves using a digital camera to take pictures "through the viewfinder" of an older, waist level camera. Pictures shot TTV have a look all their own. The glossy hi-tech nature of a modern digital photograph disappears behind the dust, grime, distortion, and ghosting typical of old cameras leaving a timeless image with an old-fashioned style you just can’t get with a nice clean digital camera.

To celebrate the process, we'll be hosting a TTV workshop on Saturday, June 19th at Perry Farm's Pavilion at Noon. We'll quickly examine the technique, build simple cardboard TTV rigs, and then spend the afternoon shooting pictures. This event will be totally free, but please RSVP to let us know how many people to expect.

We'll Provide:
• Supplies for building a cardboard contraption to eliminate reflections and glare.
• An online gallery of the best pictures taken by our photographers.
• Entry into a TTV exhibition in Belfast, Ireland

You Provide:
• A digital camera.
• A vintage camera with a viewfinder to shoot through. These cameras are commonly found in attics, yard sales, basements and thrift stores. Online, good cameras are commonly sold on ebay for just a few dollars. Pretty much any cheap camera with "flex" in its name will work. We'll only be using the viewfinder so it doesn't even matter if the camera is fully functional. Some of the popular models to search for are: The Kodak Duaflex, The Brownie Starflex, The Argoflex, The Anscoflex, The Ansco Rediflex.

For inspiration, examples of TTV pics from more than 6000 photographers can be found online at the Through the Viewfinder Flickr Group or the Official World TTV Day Group.

This Is What Democracy Looks Like

Just Aesthetics with Feed Art Center presents a screening of the documentary film, This Is What Democracy Looks Like, followed by a discussion on globalization and the upcoming G20 economic summit led by Bruce Taylor. Scheduled for: 12:00 Noon – 2:00 p.m. Saturday June 12th, at the Kankakee Public Library. This is a free event and is open to the public.

How are the G20, the International Monetary Fund, the current economic crisis, and YOU connected? What can WE do in our daily lives to counteract the negative aspects of globalization? Please come and discuss with us!

"This Is What Democracy Looks Like", a co-production of The Independent Media Center and Big Noise Films, weaves the footage of over 100 videographers into a gripping document of what really happened on Seattle’s streets during the '99 World Trade Organization protests. The film cuts through the confusion and tear gas to paint an intimate, passionate portrait of a week that changed the world. With narration by Susan Sarandon and Spearhead's Michael Franti, and with a driving soundtrack including Rage Against the Machine, DJ Shadow, DJ Musaka, and Company of Prophets, "This Is What Democracy Looks Like" is the first documentary to capture the raw energy of the WTO protests, while clarifying their global and historic significance.

Bruce Taylor is a teacher of Economics, Astronomy and Cultural Studies at Dundee-Crown High School in Carpentersville, IL. He has held numerous conferences and discussions featuring speakers as highly regarded as linguist and political philosopher, Noam Chomsky and the civil right activist, Howard Zinn. Taylor also works closely with the National Labor Committee to spread awareness of sweatshops and child labor. He holds a degree in economics and astronomy from the University of Illinois Urbana/Champaign and has studied and taught international finance/foreign policy issues for 10 years.

Just Aesthetics is a group directed toward consciousness-raising concerning social justice issues. The aim of Just Aesthetics is to inspire our communities to begin acting directly, and working cooperatively by means of non-hierarchical organizing and decision making, using the arts as a bridge to make connections with those who otherwise might be turned off by the rhetoric of social change.

Related documentaries:
Blue Gold: World Water Wars
Flow
The Corporation
Life and Debt
The Take

Rock the Stacks

Saturday, May 22nd, we'll be representing Feed at the second annual Rock the Stacks concert at the Kankakee Public Library. We'll have artwork for sale and we'll be doing everything we can to promote our upcoming events, This Is What Democracy Looks Like and the View Finding workshop.

There will be a ton of great bands playing all during the day and a bunch of local artists selling their work. The whole thing is free, so you probably don't have a good excuse for not coming around and checking it out.

You Never Get a Second Chance

I've been busy putting together an exhibition of my most recent body of work, a series of screen printed photographs documenting my affection for the commonplace sites of Midwestern America. The show will be open from May 17th through 24th, with a reception on Friday, May 21tst from 6:00-9:00 p.m. at the Governors State University Visual Arts Gallery in University Park. Hopefully I'll see you there.

More information can be found at the gallery blog.

Triple Threat

Triple Threat, an exhibition of the work created during our last three events, Put Yr Layrs On, Gouge Away, and Speed Painting will be on display here at Feed Art Center from February 13 through 27. We will be hosting a closing reception on Saturday, February 27 from 2:00-4:00 pm.

Put Yr Layrs On was a mixed media collage workshop focusing on recycling and re-purposing ephemeral paper material into unique art objects. The artwork created during the Gouge Away workshop consists of block printed ink on paper. And finally, Speed Painting was an open studio session in which participants were encouraged to produce a completed painting in one sitting. Participants in this exhibition include: Javier Acevedo, Megan Acevedo, Megan Anstrom, Reilly Ayers, Stephen Bauman, Cynthia Bauman, Christopher Clark, Michael Costanza, Kelly Costanza, Roy Marin, Rhiannon Sallas, Claire Skelly and Jessica Van Swol.

Speed Painting

Saturday, January 30th. 3:00 -7:00p.m.

Let's get together and make some paintings. On Saturday afternoon, come on down to Feed and join the speed painting party. The goal of this event is to start and finish a complete painting in one sitting and, more importantly, to socialize with like-minded artists.

You provide: a canvas, your favorite brushes, some paint, and snacks to share.
Feed provides: a bunch of random brushes, various acrylic paints, and some loud music to keep the energy up.

This event is free if you bring a canvas, otherwise we'll have some 12" x 12" canvases available for $10 if you don't have your own.

PUT YR LAYRS ON - mixed media workshop

Tuesdays

January 26 through February 9

With instructor Michael Costanza, learn to build a cradled wood panel and use various art techniques to create a mixed media one-of-a-kind piece-of-mind. All participants completing this three week workshop will have the opportunity to exhibit their work on the walls of Feed as the second group installment of the Lower Level Levens.

Feed Provides: wood, glue, brushes, hammers, nails, drills, matte medium, etc.
You Provide: papers, envelopes, old books, comics, wrapping paper, junk mail, magazines, pencils, paint, anything else you want to use, etc.

Registration fee: $40
To register email: spill.forward@yahoo.com

For inspiration check out these awesome artists:
Arturo Herrera
Mark Bradford
Kerry James Marshall
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Fred Free
Andrew Schoultz
Shaun O'Dell

East Meets West Meets Success

Thanks to everybody that came out Saturday for the awesome performance by Manpreet and Stefen. And thanks for bringing so much food. We ended up with a box so heavy that I tricked Michael into carrying it out to the car. Later this week it will be dropped off at a branch of the Northern Illinois Food Bank.

We'd especially like to thank Stefen and Manpreet for coming and putting on such a great show. We look forward to doing it again sometime in the future. There are a bunch of pictures of them performing in our Flickr Stream. Check 'em out.

Littlest Prints

From January 20th through February 13th Feed is presenting an exhibition of small prints culled from 2009's Littlest Print Exchange coordinated by Christopher Clark.

The Littlest Print Exchange is a juried trade of tiny 3.5" x 3.5" art prints. Fifty printmakers and photographers from around the world were invited to submit an edition of prints. These editions were then collated into portfolios containing one print from each of the fifty artists and sent back out to all of the participants. The exchange was announced in February of 2009 and completed in November of the same year.

Participating Artists include Jennifer D. Anderson from California, Trina Baker from Kansas, Rakesh Bani from India, John Bergmeier from Michigan, Donald Booth from California, Marc Bosworth from Kansas, Brainstorm from New Jersey, Craig Burkhalter from Georgia, Katarzyna Cepek Idaho, Christopher Clark from Illinois, Bonnie Cook from Washington, Michael Costanza from Illinois, D. Wesley Davis from Kentucky, Patricia Delgado from Spain, Daryl DePry from Nevada, Karri A. Dieken from Washington, Erin Dollar from Oregon, Carolina Espinosa from Canada, Kari Garon from Wisconsin, Brett Grunig from California, Mary Hanson from Minnesota, Stephanie Harvey from Pennsylvania, Nancy Jo Haselbacher from California, Robert Howsare from Ohio, Teréz Iacovino from New York, Ashley Kanaley from New York, Mari LaCure from Kansas, Adam Laughlin from China, Amos Leager from Missouri, Melody Knight Leary from Connecticut, Luke Leyden from New Jersey, Big John Lingenfelter from Arizona, B. Love from Idaho, Nichol Markowitz from Hawaii, Jill Marie Mason from Indiana, Casey Neumann from Hawaii, Carrie Ohm from Illinois, Matthew Pazzol from Indiana, Sage Perrott from West Virginia, Diana Phillips from the United Kingdom, Roxanne Phillips from Missouri, Joanne Price from Minnesota, Dennis Raines from Washington, Pete Rangel from Illinois, Lindsay Riley from Kentucky, David Spencer-Pierce from Missouri, Lee Turner from United Kingdom, Lorna Turner from California, Jessica Van Swol from Illinois, and Maggie White from California.

For more information on the exchange and each of the participating artists please visit The Littlest Print Blog.