SUMMER SESSIONS
Curated by Kate Bowen & Raven Falquez Munsell

Artists:
Kayla Anderson
Alexandra Antoine
Marina Balko
Catron Booker
Burning Orchid
Colin Timothy Dickson
Ben Driggs
eric fleischauer
Kate Klingbeil
Heather MacKenzie
Allen Moore
A.E. Pattera
Julie Potratz
Aay Preston-Myint

ACRE (Artist Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions) is an organization founded and run entirely by artists for artists. Each summer ACRE transforms a farm in Wisconsin into a proving ground for community making and participatory learning. With creativity at the core of the organization the potential sites for experimentation are endless and beyond studio time and workshops also take the form of dinners, dance parties, impromptu nail salons, ad hoc parades, tubing excursions and, even, daily administrative tasks.

The residency is staffed by artist-volunteers with diverse creative backgrounds. Together their varied perspectives are combined to build a dialogue-rich and exploratory space for summer artists in residence to grow, focus, and learn from one another. For the two-week residency, ideas between staff, residents, and visiting artists co-mingle and collide as we socialize, brainstorm, and create together.

In this spirit, staff members from each department at the residency (printmaking, fiber studio, ceramics, A/V, recording studio, wood shop, and kitchen) were asked to invite a recent resident with whom they connected or worked closely while at the residency. Summer Sessions is an exhibition built from mutual admiration and fruitful experimentation.

MARINA BALKO is an artist and the Director of Institutional Engagement for AS220, a multidisciplinary community arts organization in downtown Providence, Rhode Island. Primarily exhibiting in mixed-media installations, Balko’s artistic disciplines include film, video, 3D modeling and animation, creative coding and interactive design, digital and darkroom photography, fibers, costume design, food art, performance and curation. Balko starting working with the ACRE kitchen in 2013 and has returned every summer since. She has made food themed to the exhibitions at the ACRE Gallery and contributed to the publication of Kadabra, the ACRE Kitchen’s annual artist cookbook.

JULIE POTRATZ is an artist whose performances, videos, and celebrity impersonations take a phenomenological look at what it means to inhabit a body. With excesses of material, drama, and grotesque cartoons, she slips between the fantastical and the everyday, while continually undergoing physical and psychological transformations. Potratz was a resident in 2012. juliepotratz.com

COLIN TIMOTHY DICKSON is a native of the Midwest. Born in Wisconsin and raised in Indiana, he received his BFA in Sculpture at the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. Dickson works in Chicago as a skilled craftsperson and builder, generating a range of objects including mid-century modern-inspired furniture, utilitarian cabinetry, and an expanding collection of cat furniture/sculpture. Dickson began working with ACRE as a resident in 2013. He returned in 2014 and 2015 bringing his carpentry skills to the woodshop.
clndkn.com

BURNING ORCHID is the meeting of the multidisciplinary practices of Rosé Hernandez and Efrén Arcoiris, which exists as a third entity and moves towards a faceted crystalline form. Hernandez brings experience in performance, movement, and Butoh; while Arcoiris incorporates sculpture and installation. They were residents in 2015 and have volunteered in various and very helpful ways in Chicago ever since.

BEN DRIGGS was born in Pekin, Illinois. He received his BFA with a focus in sculpture from Columbia College Chicago in 2004. His work relates to the countryside and everyday art objects. He is currently rehabbing a building in Little Village where he lives with his partner. Driggs was a resident in 2010 and kitchen staff in 2011. He returned in 2012 and 2013 to work in the wood shop. In 2015 he, along with fellow ACRE alumni Wolfie E. Rawk, successfully proposed and built a ceramics studio at the residency.For summer 2017 he plans to introduce a raku kiln to the studio.
Bendriggs.com

KATE KLINGBEIL is a multi-disciplinary artist currently living and working in Brooklyn, New York. She grew up on a farm in the suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin where she spent her childhood surrounded by animals and riding horses. Her work spans the mediums of painting, sculpture, ceramics, and animation, and investigates sexuality, feminine power, memory, personal experiences, animal/human communication, secrets and movement. Klingbeil was a resident in 2016.
kateklingbeil.com

eric fleischauer is an artist, curator, and educator living in Chicago, Illinois. fleischauer utilizes conceptually-driven production strategies to be read as an aestheticized form of media theory and criticism examining the nuance of technology’s pervasive influences. fleischauer was a Visiting Artist to ACRE in 2011 and 2012, and became staff in 2013. He has worked with the A/V department from 2013-2017. He has also served as a member of the ACRE Admissions Committee in 2016 and 2017.
ericfleischauer.com

KAYLA ANDERSON is an artist, writer, and organizer based in Chicago, Illinois. Using a playful approach to methods of excavation, her work engages with cultural artifacts of the past in order to propose parallel worlds. Anderson was a resident in 2015.
kaylanderson.com

HEATHER MACKENZIE is an artist and educator with a research-based and concept-driven practice founded in hand weaving. Her research takes both theoretical and practical forms as she experiments with materials, processes, and loom technologies. MacKenzie was a resident is 2012 and joined the residency as staff in 2013. Starting in the kitchen MacKenzie helped at the beginning the residency’s first fibers and weaving studio in 2014. She has continued to work in that department in 2016 and 2017.
cargocollective.com/hmackenzie

CATRON BOOKER is a video and performance artist originally from Chicago, Illinois and currently living in Oaxaca, Mexico. Her work has screened at Anthology Film Archives (NYC), Seattle Local Sightings Film Fest, Artists’ Television Access (SF) and Cologne International Videoart Festival. Performance works have been presented at Lexington Art League and in Obsidian: Literature & Arts of the African Diaspora. Booker was a resident in 2016, while there her performance was featured in the Boscobel Dial, a local newspaper.
freeandfunky.tumblr.com

A.E. PATERRA is a drummer, synthesist, and composer born, raised, and currently living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He co-founded the synth-prog duo Zombi in 2001, who have since released 6 full length albums while touring the world extensively. Paterra came to ACRE in 2011 as a visiting musician under his solo project Majeure. He returned to the residency to work in the ACRE kitchen in 2012. In 2013 Paterra moved to the recording studio working closely with residents to record music and experimental sound projects from 2013 to 2017.
majeure.bandcamp.com

ALLEN MOORE is a Black American visual and experimental sound artist born and raised in the small village of Robbins, Illinois, just south of Chicago. His work converses with the signifiers of African American culture and popular culture; bringing into view the underlying themes of racial, emotional and socio-economic conditions. Moore was a resident in 2015. He returned as staff in 2016 and 2017.
allenmooreart.com

AAY PRESTON- MYINT is an artist, printmaker, and educator living in Chicago, Illinois. Their practice employs both visual and collaborative strategies to investigate memory and kinship, often within the specific context of queer community and history. Aay was staff in 2010 ACRE’s first year a resident in 2011 and returned as staff in 2015 in the screenprinting studio. They have served as a member of the ACRE Admissions and Equity Committees.
aay.pm

ALEXANDRA ANTOINE is an interdisciplinary artist from Orlando, Florida who now resides in Chicago, Illinois. Her work addresses the themes of identity and culture through the use of typography, line and portraiture. She uses the portrait as a tool to re/present individuals of the African diaspora while exploring her relationship to them within the larger narrative of her Haitian identity. Antoine was a resident in 2016.
alexandraantoine.com

KATE BOWEN is an artist, curator, and arts organizer in Chicago, Illinois. She runs an experimental screening series called Video Playlist at the Museum of Contemporary Photography and is the Exhibitions Director for ACRE. Kate was a resident is 2011 and began working for ACRE as a curatorial fellow in 2012. As a summer residency staff member she started in the kitchen, and now works in the AV Department from 2014-2017.
katembowen.com

RAVEN FALQUEZ MUNSELL is a writer, curator, and arts administrator in Chicago, Illinois. She is cofounder of the late artist bumper sticker project and mobile gallery Trunk Show and currently co-directs Third Object, a roving curatorial collective. She started with ACRE as a curatorial fellow from 2013-2015 and has worked at the summer residency in 2015, 2016 and will work in 2017.
thirdobject.net

Heaven Gallery is a non-profit gallery and multi-disciplinary arts space in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood that encourages, mentors, and presents new and emerging artists, musicians, and filmmakers to audiences throughout Chicagoland and beyond. Heaven has been a sister organization to ACRE since its inception. They have generously hosted exhibitions and fundraisers with ACRE since 2010.

ACRE (Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions) is an artist-run non-profit based in Chicago devoted to employing various systems of support for emerging artists and to creating a generative community of cultural producers. ACRE investigates and institutes models designed to help artists develop, present, and discuss their practices by providing forums for idea exchange, interdisciplinary collaboration, and experimental projects.

Image credit: Still from SetOutputWorld, virtual environment, Kayla Anderson, 2016, Courtesy of the artist

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Tags: A.E. Pattera, Aay Preston-Myint, Alexandra Antoine, Allen Moore, Ben Driggs, Burning Orchid, Catron Booker, Chicago, Colin Timothy Dickson, Eric Fleischauer, Heather MacKenzie, Heaven Gallery, Julie Potratz, Kate Bowen, Kate Klingbeil, Kayla Anderson, Marina Balko, Raven Falquez Munsell, Summer Sessions, West Town