Tallest Skyscraper by a Woman

Aqua by Jeanne Gang

Friend / blogger Jenn Mowery Marsh brought this New Yorker article and gorgeous piece of architecture by Jeanne Gang to my attention. Favorite bits from article in case you are in a rush...

- A lot of attention—in Chicago, at least—has been given to the fact that Aqua is the tallest building in the world designed by a woman. That’s nice for Gang, but beside the point, and dwelling on it leads too easily to predictable interpretations of skyscrapers as symbols of male identity...
- balconies on every floor, all the way up. Usually, condominiums sixty or seventy floors above the street don’t have balconies, because it’s just too windy up there to go outside...
- you might think it’s a gigantic version of one of those “blob” buildings of the past few year
- In an age in which so much architectural form—even, sometimes, the best architectural form—has no real rationale beyond the fact that it is what the architect felt like doing, there is something admirable about the tower’s lack of arbitrariness. It reclaims the notion that thrilling and beautiful form can still emerge out of the realm of the practical.

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I see my revisitation of practically placed, undulating forms in my artwork's future.

Molly Springfield's Translation

My favorite exhibition during my recent trip to Chicago was Molly Springfield at Thomas Robertello Gallery. The artist painstakingly render the first chapter of Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. Working page by page, rendering even the type in graphite, the task took her two years and took my breath away. The space was bizarrely comforting, especially having just left my own labor-intensive recent artwork, pictured below. I'm happy with my new paintings, but still, go Molly...what a clear-headed, powerful gesture.