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Mapping connections between artists, their ideas and creative work
introduction
Featured Artists
From the creators of House Calls, Daisy Chain is a series of short vignettes documenting the candid and illuminating perspectives of 9 national and regional artists during this time of re-entry. The name refers to the traditional string of daisies threaded together by their stems, as well as the contemporary wiring scheme by the same name used in electronics and engineering. For this Daisy Chain, as curator, I interviewed nine regional and national artists with diverse experiences, perspectives, and practices. Each of them were asked the same series of questions: How do you feel you are emerging from the past year? What kind of world are you trying to build for the future? How are you thinking about responsiveness and responsibility? Are there any creative strategies you have identified moving forward? Rather than
Ruth Buentello Abigail DeVille Hubert Massey Shanna Merola Scott Northrup David Opdyke Shani Peters Sheida Soleimani Jeffrey Augustine Songco
absolutes, it was the hope we could get at the heart of the matter, beyond the rhetoric. Their answers—along with images of their work— have been “strung together” visually in video format, one artist connecting to another in sequence. This zine becomes an artifact documenting the project. In this time of re-entry, when we are cautiously emerging from a year in isolation, and also merging back into action at breakneck speed, Daisy Chain offers the opportunity for contemplation in its assemblage of artists, art, and ideas. It explores the ties that bind us, the past and the future, and the loose ends. Perhaps as important, it alludes to surprising and new combinations, and a renewed capacity to find joy.
-Amanda Krugliak
Daisy Chain Artist Curation by Amanda Krugliak Concept by Juliet Hinely and Amanda Krugliak Video Zine Production and Editing by Juliet Hinely Daisy Chain Logo by Laura Koroncey Daisy Chain Zine designed by Laura Koroncey with Madison Flood
Ruth Buentello
Visual Artist, San Antonio, TX
“Ruth Leonela Buentello’s compositions at times suggest relationships to the luminosity of Diego Velazquez, the tenderness of Frida Kahlo, the championed workers of Diego Rivera, the blurred “ghost” portraits of Gerhard Richter. Rather than implying a derivative, the connections are proof of Buentello’s undeniable place at the table...the inclusion of her work on her own terms as part of an ongoing visual conversation and painting tradition.” -Amanda Krugliak
Inner
ow Shadd
0 , 202
Beast
“How do I marry this life of motherhood and my artistic practice? How do I bring those two together?” The Sitter 2021
"In covid, the work had to get outside of the galleries for people to see it... How do we build on that momentum?”
Tres Madres, 2021
Abigail DeVille Visual Artist New York City + New Jersey
atory,
serv The Ob
2021
-Abigail DeVille
“Abigail has a deep, divine understanding of the relationship between materiality and experience; the edit and excess, the poetry and utterances, the see-saw like balance between the extremes. Every encounter with her whether in the gallery or over breakfast is a much needed love letter and a wallop.”
-Amanda Krugliak
3000 Moons, 2020
“After the state-sanctioned murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the art world was scrambling to show their allegience to Black Lives Matter. And I had a rush of opportunies. So it has been the best of times and the worst of times.”
"We don't need normal. We need to be thinking about what we've learned in the last 14 months."
Historic Carriage Town District Mural, 2008
Hubert Massey
Fresco Muralist, Detroit, MI “Massey's vibrant murals are imbedded in Detroit's identity as a city, offering day to day affirmations, humble, more about the communiy they hope to benefit than granduer. They signal what matters.” -Amanda Krugliak
“Some of my pieces are collaborative, so there was definitely an impact on that, not knowing who could bring the virus into the studio. But it gave me an opportunity to be that much more focused on me creating work.” -Hubert Massey "I do feel that sense of responsibility. As a community artist I am also Like a historian."
Detroit Crossroad of Innovation, 2018
Uranium, from We All Live Downwind, 2018-present
Shanna Merola
ker
Artist, Teacher, + Legal Wor Hamtramck, MI
“Believe it or not I feel hopeful. And something I keep coming back to is, two things: The movements for racial justice and mutual aid, because it is all about community and neighborhood self-determination.”
"I think, like a lot people, I don't want this past year to have been in vain."
Toluene from We All Live Downwind, 2018-present
Polychlo rinated Biphenyl We All L ive Down wind, 20 18-prese n
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-Shanna Merola
“Shanna Merola is an artist, activist, photographer, human rights observer, with a practice that can't be easily parced apart. Her innovative photo collages and constructed landscapes express urgency. Her compositions transend the containment of the gallery walls, more concerned with real world chalenges.” -Amanda Krugliak
p u r h t r o N Scott Filmmaker & Educator Dearborn & Detroit, MI
“Scott Northrop's work is expectant, searching, looking for clues, for evidence, maybe a gesture or expression, a note in the margins, something found to suggest proof. Incorporating film, phtography, collage, and text, Northrop's work embraces impermanence, fleeting and unforgettable, revelatory in the small things rather than attachments to big pictures.” -Amanda Krugliak
"Merge. Emerge. Remerge."
Recurring Nightmare, 2013
“I've found myself wanting to work analog. I think all this digital interaction drove me back to scissors and glue.” -Scott Northrup
Weekender, 2018
17 e, 20
EGBDF, 2021
K-Hol Model Male
David Opdyke
Artist, Queens NY
"I'm primarily focused on climate change and I'm realizing more clearly that it is not about telling people what will happen, but to make them feel it and have them understand it will be part of their own life and affect people they love.” -David Opdyke
“An emergent pattern illustrates the cumulative impact of disasters to smaller things, egregious acts against our environment and one another. Opdyke’s visual testimonies urge us to take heed, to see the road signs before the inevitable catastrophic endgame.” -Amanda Krugliak
"I think we all have to be more responsible in how we take care of each other and how we pay attention to elected officials"
All images from Untitled work in progress
Shani Peters k Artist + Co-Founder of the Blac School, New Orleans, LA
“Shani Peters’ installations are driven by identity, commitment, action and imagination… individuals coming together sharing histories...making the time, creating the place for the exchange, the mutual space for imagination and caring.”
“I was really not in a place to do what was initially asked of artists -- to go on Zoom, to go on IG Live, and make your practice a virtual thing. I had NO interest. I was already teaching on Zoom for multiple universities and I was very much in the space of 'Look, I just need to survive right now. I'm a person too, right?”
-Amanda Krugliak
-SHANI PETERS Collective Care for Birth Justice, by Shani Peters w/ NYC Department of Maternal Health, 2019-2020
"I want to make a world that is actually good for me, good for all black people." The Black School Summer Social Justice Residency and Exhibition at New Museum, 2018
17,195 Sunrises, by Shani Peters commissioned by Contemporary Art Center at Virginia State University, 2019
i n a m i e l o S a Sheid Multi-Disciplinary Artist, Providence, RI
Hotbed, 2020
PS752, 2020
"Now everyone, whether lower class or upper class, has felt fear in some way shape or form. The fear is not equal in any way shape or form though across classes, but is that fear something that could begin a conversation about the other types of traumas individuals feel on a daily basis -- in regards to other issues and other inequities.” -Sheida Soleimani
"I'm coming out of this year thinking that there are still so many blind spots that pervade media and news.” “Sheida's work is almost audible, at once a cacophony and a symphony, a dizzyng, highly orchestrated glut. Both deeply personal and geopolitical commentaries, Solemani's photocollages are seductive, potent, absurdist, and defiant...impossible to unsee.”
, 2021
usting
Cloudb
20 HR2118, 20
-Amanda Krugliak
Jeffery Augustine Songco
Artist, Grand Rapids, MI
Great, 2021
"The pandemic has also been a huge cultural and social shift. But for someone like myself, as an AAPI person, as a gay person, it was not so much a shift as it was an unveiling of something that has already been happening.” “Songco's practice undulates between performance and installation, crafting and articulating his own narratives, exploring the highly complext nature of self-portraiture, where one thing leads to another... in an endless hall of mirrors.” -Amanda Krugliak
“I think humor is a big strategy. I use it as a defense mechanism. I use it to avoid awkwardness even though sometimes it makes things more awkward. But it can bring down a wall.” -Jeffrey Augustine Songco
Society of 23's Trophy Game Room, 2021
With support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation The University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities presents Daisy Chain