New Work

Humble Kintsugi

Kintsugi repairs (‘golden joinery’) on a suite of items not usually considered for conservation. A meditation on consumerism, accumulation and the definition of beauty via Wabi Sabi.

 

Materials: Plastic, Paper, Rubber, Metal, Fabric, Acrylic, 18k Gold Leaf

Year: 2017

Portfolio

The Dada Suite – Four works inspired by and incorporating the art of Dana Atchley, III

 

 

Postdigitals – “The state of being in which you assume the digital instead of marvelling at it” (Next Conference, 2012)

Saint Carmen (do not be lured by the express, sometimes the stairs are best)
“Saint Carmen (do not be lured by the express, sometimes the stairs are best)” – click to see detail

“In ‘The Future of Art in a Postdigital Age’ Mel Alexenberg defines “postdigital art” as artworks that address the humanization of digital technologies through interplay between digital, biological, cultural, and spiritual systems, between cyberspace and real space, between embodied media and mixed reality in social and physical communication, between high tech and high touch experiences, between visual, haptic, auditory, and kinesthetic media experiences, between virtual and augmented reality, between roots and globalization, between autoethnography and community narrative, and between web-enabled peer-produced wikiart and artworks created with alternative media through participation, interaction, and collaboration in which the role of the artist is redefined.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postdigital

 

Virtual Virtue – Art with Integrated Text

 

 

Unseen Works – A place to park my ideas, some created but unshown, some unexecuted and some still in the development phase

Bio

My work focuses on the domestic voice, utilizing the tools/materials of the home/wife/mother often in combination with written word. The experience of consuming each piece requires participation: the audience bends, tilts their head, scans, circles in an interactive dance with the art.

Education:

M.A., English/Creative Writing, University of Illinois at Chicago

Exhibitions:

  • Burning Man, Black Rock City, NV
  • Digital Storytelling Festival, KQED, San Francisco, CA
  • Chicago Gallery Week, Chicago, IL
  • Central Illinois Planned Parenthood Calendar
  • Artists against Aids benefit show , Champaign, IL
  • Lemp Neighborhood Art Gallery, St Louis, MO

Who is Blulou?

BluLou was created in 1979 when I was working as a doorman at a Blues bar in Chicago. A combination of “Blue Lou” Marini  (saxophonist in the SNL/Blues Brothers Band. The group frequented the bar while they were filming “The Blues Brothers” movie) and the great 30’s singer Blue Lu Barker (11/13/1913 – 05/07/1998).

The name became an easy alternate identity, both in the bar, where she was much cooler than the broke college student I really was, and during my stint in the 90s as a blues DJ at public radio station WEFT in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois

It was at U of I Champaign that I was introduced to the wonders of the World Wide Web.

I registered blulou.com in February of 1998.

Blue Lu Barker: Kind of Blue