Creating an artist's lecture about one's own work can be an immensely fulfilling but it can be nerve-wracking too. My first venture into public speaking was a thirty-minute talk about an interactive animation called Littoral Zone. In February of 1999, I flew to Providence, RI, rented a car and got lost at least six times in attempting to find Connecticut College. The title of my talk was "Littoral Zone: Seeing Bodies and Letters in Cyberspace." This lecture was part of a festival called the Seventh Biennial Symposium on Arts and Technology.
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I have found that the reality of being an emerging artist differs somewhat from the intense cosmology that is often fed to and proliferated by students. While everyone knows someone-who-knows-someone who's had that "big break" right out of school, the likelihood is that you will have to do some work to get where you are going. If you have found this article, you most likely already know this.
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I came to art somewhat late. As a third-year college student, I visited Isamu Noguchi's Garden Museum in NYC and was deeply moved by the work in ways that were impossible to ignore. I had been brought up with the notion that making art or being an artist was not a viable way of life in today's America. Worse, I knew no artists already practicing with whom I felt a close kinship or with whom I might study. So as I grew more and more compelled to consider art as a profession, I grew more and more anxious more...

Gretchen is a young sculpture student, under her arm is a tattered sketchbook that announces her scatter brained yet intriguing personae. She is going to a lecture with Thad, a lanky iPod assisted young painter, and videographer, who makes sure that there is always visible paint on his clothes and body.
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It has been very important for me to update my skills on an ongoing basis for a number of different reasons. I have had to seek out new skills to be able to produce just about everything I ever have ever made. The idea I have for a piece drives the materials, processes and techniques I use. Often the work, although conceptually similar with other work I’ve made, will bear little physical resemblance. The process of gaining the knowledge and skills to make the piece becomes part of the work itself. more...

The decision to attend graduate school became a turning point in my career path and artistic life. Some people advised me that one should clearly know his or her career goals and skills before even applying for graduate school. Honestly, it wasn't precisely like this in my situation. I had a bachelor's degree in performing arts management and two internships at a nationally renowned theater company, as well as at an art museum. more...

An interview with Britton Bertran, CAR Artist Story Editor

Bleached Whale came first. It is a design studio I started with Keith Streble in 2004. featherproof was started in 2005, by Jonathan Messinger and myself, over a falafel lunch break from our day jobs. I was a designer at TimeOut Chicago, and Jonathan is still the books editor there. I wanted to bring more design to literature. more...

Make good work! Be self-critical and informed enough to know if the work you are doing stacks up to the work you would like to be hanging next to. Through constant engagement with work that is being shown, know where and if your work fits into a particular area of current discourse. Nothing else matters more than this, and nothing else will make up for this if you are not doing it. more...