Robyn Hill Hendrix

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Drinking in the Darkness

October 20, 2013 By Administrator

CCLI Journal

“What if we were living our art in the service of skillful lives?” – Wendy Morris

“How can you have an existence that is simple and spacious and outrageously useful?” -Erik Takeshita

“Skepticism means you really care.” – Bill Cleveland

Two months ago…

During nap time, I sit in the dark surrounded by tiny little humans dozing away, and on a small device in the palm of my hand, I read about James Turrell, social entrepreneurship, feminism, gentrification, innovation, crowd sourcing, placemaking, crowd sourced placemaking, private-public partnerships, appropriation, social sculpture, sustainability, the “realest” tweets, vulnerability, baby boomers, millenials, thin privilege, Cindy Sherman, Theaster Gates, the many uses of chalkboard paint, rape culture, revolution on the other side of the world…and my heart beats hard, longing for action. And I sit still and listen to the children breathe in their peaceful slumber. Drinking in the darkness.

Drinking in the darkness. I didn’t get that phrase from teaching preschool. I heard it repeated ten, maybe eleven times, over the span of four and a half months, in improvised warm up exercises led by Wendy Morris at each convening of the Spring 2013 Creative Community Leadership Institute. Rub your hands together, she said. We let the rhythm spread to our shoulders, back, hips, whole body, two dozen souls inside flesh humming along. Stop. Put your hands, warmed from the friction, over your eyes. Drinking in the darkness.

I meant to write more about the Institute a while ago. Somehow the first paragraph above brought me back to that circle. It was originally just going to be a little Facebook status update. I wasn’t even thinking about CCLI. Yet suddenly that phrase came back to me, thinking about the darkened classroom where I hold a whispered vigil every afternoon, writing notes to parents and mixing tempera paint and catching up on an overwhelming backlog of “relevant” and “important” articles I’ve saved on my phone.

Skip ahead to October…

[Read more…]

Filed Under: art Tagged With: Artplace, arts leadership, Bill Cleveland, CCLI, community arts, community organizing, Creative Community Leadership Institute, Erik Takeshita, intermedia arts, irrigate, placemaking, springboard for the arts, Wendy Morris

Constellation Rejuvenation Orientation

February 1, 2013 By Administrator

Orientation for the Creative Community Leadership Institute was last night at Intermedia Arts. Intermedia is a creative space that already has a cherished place in my heart: exhibiting there, house managing for Fringe Festival, seeing great shows and events, etc. Joining a circle of artists and community organizers there to kick off 4 months of this intensive learning community centered around arts as a social change agent feels so natural. I was nervous, and haven’t slept well all week in anticipation, but I was so happy and grateful to be able to be there, be present, and start the process with an engaging, genuine, caring group of people (see all our bios and happy mugs here).

It was also the second time that I’ve found myself at Intermedia sitting next to a fellow Carleton grad without realizing it right away. (I ended up next to Anna Minkina purely coincidentally at a Give & Take event once). I’m honestly not sure whether Lucas Koski looked familiar to me yesterday due to graduating from the same class almost 8 years ago, or whether I recognize him more recently from his work with Bedlam Theatre. Probably some of both. Anyway, it was a sweet bonus discovery. I know Amanda Lovelee as well through Irrigate events; the rest of the faces are fresh yet vaguely familiar. Several people commented on the feeling that we all probably have only two degrees of separation; someone said she could see “constellations of connection” forming already. The experience faculty member Bill Cleveland shared with us about working within the California corrections system resonated with my own background working in chemical dependency, and over dinner he told me his great great (or great great great?) grandfather was a founder of Washington State University, so he has a heritage and familiarity with the Palouse culture and landscape where I did most of my “growing up.” With Bill plus a fellow Carl and Irrigate artist there, it is reassuring to feel like there are people in the circle who “get me” from various angles mixed in with plenty of other voices who will be new, challenging and surprising.

I have an inkling this is exactly what I need right now. Over the past year or so I have noticed myself shifting from an enthusiastic, outgoing mindset into one that is a bit more guarded, pensive, sometimes quite pessimistic. I am no longer as excited to meet new people. I feel stretched too thin with too many expectations coming at me from every direction, and yet I don’t feel like I’ve evolved into what I actually want to be doing and being, so there is an instinct to retract away from the world. I’m sure that upheavals at my old job combined with excess baggage from my divorce the previous year are a main cause of that shift. If you want to read a really personal piece I wrote about those two things, you can find it on the Clever Kate blog as a guest post.

There are a lot of benefits to taking time to rest and heal, and you can’t blame yourself too much when it is -16 degree windchill outside, AND I suppose since I’m 30 now I could whine about how I’m “getting old,” but for the most part that hermit instinct is not doing me much good. I feel like I am outgrowing it again just as I have had to shed an earlier version of it before. I suppose it is a cycle that we go through on and off throughout life, two steps forward and one step back. After pushing the “eject” button on an unhealthy marriage I pledged to jump into the life I want to live, and kind of toppled into a whole new reality, so now I’m at another layer of the feeling-stuck-onion. I need to stop letting shyness and uncertainty paralyze me, and start reaching out more. Experiment. The Institute is giving me a priceless opportunity to do that in a safe, close-knit cohort for five months, and I plan to treasure the time and use it as the next step in the process of, essentially, renewing my faith in humanity.

I’ve also recently noticed that the never-quite-satisfied feeling I struggle with comes from an intense desire to make up for lost time. Thank you to those who have already reassured me that the years and events that took me to what felt like the “wrong path” were not actually wasted at all. I am trying to remind myself of that frequently, and hope that this experience of fellowship with other people juggling similar multidimensional personal and career roles will give me courage and vision to understand how and why I am made up of the pieces that I am, and why those pieces have been created in a specific fashion in order to get me where I’m going. After the first night I feel energized, and hopeful I’m on a path to being more grounded. Grounded in my own beliefs, perspective, experience, and strengths.

Something tells me I’m going to end up writing a lot. Some of it might come out too wordy and sound a bit cheesy. I don’t plan on apologizing for that. You are invited to grab some crackers and wine, and come along for the ride.

Filed Under: art Tagged With: CCLI, community arts, intermedia arts, leadership

Twenty-twelve.

January 1, 2013 By Administrator

Happy New Year everyone! I’ve been visiting family in Portland, Oregon and eastern Washington for the past week, soaking up good family time, mountain views, and catching up with old friends while reflecting on the past year. Summing up 2012 is proving a little tricky. There’s been some tough stuff this year. Lots of transition, which is not exactly my favorite thing, thus the lack of fall art emails. I’ve been saying I’m in a bit of an “incubation period.” I’m not sure how much longer I can get away with that, but hey! I did some stuff, quite a lot actually, so here we go.

In January I took down my first solo show at the Baroque Room, selling two pieces to a retired physician who loved the microscopic, biological influence in my work and planned to have them hung at a library at Mayo Clinic.

In May I spoke to junior art majors at my alma mater Carleton College with fellow alums Dustin Yager and Mira Rojanasakul. Looking back at how my life and artwork has evolved over the past 7 or 8 years was surprisingly revelatory. That thing about not being able to connect all the dots until you look back later became very real for me and I saw continuous threads between my day jobs, studies abroad, and my artwork that helped me reexamine and rephrase the way I think and talk about what I do.

I dipped my feet in the arts festival world for the first time at Art-a-Whirl and Red Hot Art Festival. I made temporary tattoos of my artwork, which are funny, and a little bit weird (I still have some and would be happy to send you one if you missed out). At Red Hot Art, I had a TENT! I painted outdoors surrounded by green grass, live music, and lots of smiling people and dogs, which was absolutely lovely. My booth was right next to the hamburger stand, which was also lovely for the first hour or so.

Women and Water Rights was re-mounted in June at the Phipps Center for the Arts in Hudson. It was a beautiful showcase of artwork by women concerned with global water issues. There are some photos of the exhibit here.

In July I worked with Alis Olsen and Bethany Whitehead to coordinate WARM Pop! – a one week pop up art installation for the Women’s Art Resources of Minnesota in the St. Anthony Park Pop Up Shop, which was later included as one of the projects featured inStarling Project’s Your Idea Here: A Toolkit for Unlocking the Community Potential of Vacant Storefronts. Twenty-five WARM artists participated in the spontaneous gallery show on University Avenue, which also included a mini library/resources corner with feminist art criticism and WARM history. Photos can be found here. It was a blast.

Making a move to refocus my work life towards arts and early childhood education, I had a tearful goodbye with my coworkers and clients at Wayside Family Treatment after five years of pouring so much of my heart and energy into serving women recovering from chemical dependency and their children. I still carry the grief, humour, and resilience of those women with me every day.

I was stationed at Intermedia Arts for my annual house managing duties with the Minnesota Fringe Festival. This year included live tweeting a show that didn’t exist (the company pulled out last minute, leaving an open “TBD” show page on the fringe site that attracted wild assortments of made up reviews, which I pretended were all coming true before my eyes as I live-tweeted from the technically completely empty venue during the show’s abandoned time slot). Various other good shenanigans also ensued and the Twin Cities Daily Planet posted my recap.

During election hoo-ha I felt blessed and humbled to play a very tiny part in helping promote and donating artwork to a fundraiser put on by Artists in Storefronts and Cult Status Gallery to commission world famous feminist political art group the Guerrilla Girlsto create a billboard and poster campaign to help defeat the marriage and voter id amendments. Click here to listen to the KFAI Fresh Fruit radio interview that organizers Joan Vorderbruggen and Erin Sayer let me join on behalf of WARM. And the best part of all: both hateful amendments that would have disenfranchised voters and injected discrimination into our state constitution were voted down! Minnesota did us proud.

I turned 30, celebrating with good friends, food and drinks at Moto-i and a Boundary Waters canoe trip with my parents. Part of the bday festivities even got podcasted (ep. 13, NSFW) when my friend Noah ended up in the hot seat at Joseph Scrimshaw’s Obsessed show.

In October I celebrated the successful first year of Irrigate with my Springboard for the Arts colleagues at the fall Art Happens Here event (which included capturing a video of Mayor Coleman and a bunch of other happy souls doing a cake walk), plus we got to go to the swanky Minnesota Monthly Best of 2012 event when Irrigate was named best public art project in the Twin Cities. Irrigate artists are using performance, music, spoken word, writing, theatre, visual arts, and other creative endeavors in unique ways to improve economic vitality on University Avenue, create new community narratives and enhance neighborhood identity amidst light rail construction. See the video from the first year of the project to see what I mean.

We helped make some stuff happen! Jazz Hands!
(With Springboard for the Arts makers’n’shakers Noah Keesecker, Laura Zabel, Jun-Li Wang, Peter Haakon Thompson and Rachel Summers)

Saving the best for last, I was just recently selected as a a 2013 fellow in the Creative Community Leadership Institute at Intermedia Arts. It is a program that “provides comprehensive, professional-level training and support for local community-engaged artists and community developers…The Creative Community Leadership Institute matches people who work at the intersection of the arts and community development with the tools and experiences to address the social justice issues affecting our communities. Based on the fundamental belief that the future health of communities demands innovative, cross-sector leadership at every level, this program builds a dynamic core of capable leaders and partnerships over an intensive five-month program of hands-on workshops and on-site experiences.” I hope it will be a good match for me as I continue to explore the ways I’d like to connect my artistic practice with my passion and experience in early childhood education and social services.

I finished out the year learning about ninja legos (“Ninjago”) from my 5 year old cousin, cooking balsamic beef brisket with my cousin and aunt, eating the traditional Orange Julius pepperoni cheese dog while shopping with my mom, listening to disco star wars music while playing Settlers of Catan with the best of old friends from high school, and just generally trying to rest up and replenish so that I can jump into another year of hard work.  Thanks to each and every one of you who supported me, cheered me on, and made me laugh in 2012. Special thanks to creative friends and fam in all pursuits doing work that inspires me every day. Here’s to celebrating all the things that change and all the things that stay the same.

Cheers,

Robyn

Work in Progress

Filed Under: art Tagged With: 2012, CCLI, intermedia arts, irrigate, public art, saint paul, springboard for the arts, starling project, women's art resources of minnesota, year in review

opening reception recap

March 19, 2011 By Administrator

Big huge mega thanks to all the awesome peeps who came out to the opening reception for the SMARTS Arts of the Community II exhibit at Intermedia Arts last night.  I am so grateful and humbled by the sweet compliments on my artwork from many people.  Was told that the curating committee loved my stuff instantly and even checked out my website to see what else I had, so sweet!  David Luke who hung the show (and to whom I owe deep gratitude for giving me prime real estate) said to me “I hope you don’t mind if I describe your work as delicate, funky, weird and science-y.”  My answer: of course not!  That’s exactly how I describe it myself.  Actually haven’t specifically used the word science-y before but two different people said it to me last night and I think it fits.  Too bad it’s not actually a real word.

Me with my artwork at Intermedia Arts

I got to chat a lot with Susan Hensel and we mutually discovered that the two exquisitely drawn graphite male nudes by Donna Dralle are actually of composers Haydn & Handel, which makes me giggle.  Also saw fellow WARM members Jeanne Souldern, Debra Roinestad, Angela Sprunger, and Loretta Bebeau.  Chatted with Eyenga Bokamba a bit, and also reconnected with Leann Johnson when I recognized her across the room and remembered we did the Labor Room project together at Center 4 Independent Artists several years back.  She has a really nice monoprint homage to her father in the show.  And at the end of the evening I met Jeremy Smith and Steven Berg, who run the StevenBe Yarn Garage Workshop which is literally right up the street from where I live and I can’t believe I haven’t been there yet.  Jeremy got me all excited to stop in and find some new yarn and rekindle my knitting projects.  (Who wants me to knit them something?)  I ended up hanging out with them at Moto-i for drinks after and heard about their MN fashion week show April 14th, the proceeds of which will go to aid south minneapolis teen Guadalupe Galeno-Hernandez who was shot and paralyzed last year.  Plus they have a fair trade yarn spinning project in South Africa in the works.  And of course they have a fantastic collaboration fiber installation piece in the SMARTS show, which you should go see if you haven’t already, hint hint.  It’s up through March 30th.

It’s exciting to learn more about the fantastic things going on right in my own neighborhood, some of which I didn’t even know existed.  So much more to explore.  In fact I met two people who live only a few blocks away from me (in addition to the yarn shop).  So to conclude: community, connection, art, energy, neighborhood, yay.  Happy dance.  Feels like it’s gonna be a good year.  I think I’ll go peruse the tweets from the Solutions Twin Cities 4 event, see what I missed.  Hope they post some video for us poor souls who had to miss out.  Also need to make something to submit to the Art 4 Shelter fundraiser coming up at Circa Gallery in May which Eyenga convinced me to get involved in; deadline is April 20th.

A sneak preview of what I’ve got in progress:

working on several small pieces at once

Filed Under: art, crafts Tagged With: community, events, fiber arts, intermedia arts, mnarts, mnfashion, smarts, south minneapolis, stevenbe, women's art registry of minnesota, yarn garage

update on Intermedia show

March 14, 2011 By Administrator

I now have a list of all the artists participating in The Arts of the Community II at Intermedia arts, opening this friday.  I went for a sneak peak on Saturday and it’s a very diverse show with lots of intriguing stuff.

Artists include Barbara Lea, Bouky Labhard, Christopher Anderson, Donna Dralle, Eddie Hamilton, Eyenga Bokamba, Iggy Beerbower, Jane Powers, Jeanne McGee, Jenny Jenkins, Kat Corrigan, Kate Van Cleve, Katie Sherman, Leann Johnson, Lisa Petersson, Megan Moore, Nicole Houff, Pamela Gaard, Robyn Hendrix, Steve Brooks, Maghan Rangitsch, Marcos Montano, Steven Berg, Jessie France, Jeremy Smith and Stephanie Aichinger.

And in case I haven’t drilled it into your heads enough yet:

Opening reception is this Friday, March 18th from 7pm -10pm (I plan to be in attendance for most of the evening, so come check it out and keep me company!)

Here’s the facebook event.

Building Hours are 10am-6pm Monday-Friday and 12-5pm on Saturdays.  Show is put on by the South Minneapolis Arts Business Association and lasts until March 30th.

Filed Under: art Tagged With: events, exhibit, intermedia arts, Minneapolis, mnarts, painting, smarts

all my March event info in one place

March 6, 2011 By Administrator

My mom asked me to post exactly which of my paintings are in which shows in March, since she can’t be here to see them.  And since yesterday was her birthday, I better do what she says (Happy Bday Mom!).  So here it is, all the event info for March all in one place:

Climb, Watercolor on Paper, 16" x 20". Sold.

Climb is on view in the Grain Belt Bottling House as a part of the Women’s Art Registry of Minnesota (WARM) member show Temporality, showing through March 31st. The building is open Mon-Fri 8am-6pm, and is located at 79 13th Ave NE, Minneapolis, MN

Thirst, Watercolor on Paper, 16" x 20"

Seedlings 2, Watercolor on paper, 10" x 13"

Incubators, Watercolor on Paper, 16″ x 20″

Thirst, Seedlings 2 and Incubators will all be showing in the SMARTS Arts of the Community II exhibit at Intermedia Arts March 11th-30th with an opening reception March 18th from 7-10pm.  Intermedia is open Mon-Fri 10am-6pm and Sat 12-5pm.

We had a great turnout on Friday night for the WARM members show Temporality.  Click here to see photos!  I had a great time meeting lots of artists whose names I knew from emails and statements but hadn’t met in person yet.  It’s great to see the excitement & potential of the organization growing.  I have been really impressed with the excellent quality of our members’ work.  We are, for the most part, a very professional and yet very unpretentious group.  In short, we take our art seriously, but don’t take ourselves too seriously.

Now I’m getting ready for the SMARTS show at Intermedia.  Framing in progress:

[portfolio_slideshow]

Unfortunately I made a dumb move yesterday and broke the glass in one of my frames.  The paint on the frame was kind of banged up anyway so I don’t feel too bad about having to replace it (especially since my piece in the WARM show was bought by fellow artist Claudia Poser!  She and her hubby are so adorable, and I really love her artwork, so it makes my heart smile that she’s buying my painting).  So I have two out of three done.  Plus I was reminded why it’s important to know what you really need BEFORE you get the framing supplies.  I ended up with some foam core backing that’s way too thick for the frames.  Oops.  Framing is such a pain, but it’s so exciting to see them all done.  They are like my little babies, and now they are all dressed up and ready to catch the bus to go off to kindergARTen!  Aww.

Filed Under: art Tagged With: events, exhibit openings, framing, intermedia arts, Minneapolis, mnarts, painting, WARM, watercolor, women's art registry of minnesota

march madness

February 28, 2011 By Administrator

The website’s been updated!  Check it. Home page info, resume, portfolio and artist’s statement were all tweaked or added to.

I have had probably the most productive 4-day weekend ever.  And I still have one more day to go.  We got the arranging of things pretty much done today for the Temporality show so tomorrow we have to do a little bit of painting and start hanging things up on the walls.  It’s gonna be a really nice show.  Come see it Friday night!  5-8pm.  I’ve been tweeting and facebooking up a storm for WARM, possibly going slightly mad with multiple personality disorder.  Fun stuff.

I also found out last week that three more of my watercolors were accepted into the SMARTS Arts of the Community II exhibition at Intermedia Arts, which will be up March 11th-30th with an opening reception March 18th from 7-10pm.  So it’s another busy busy March for me, similar to last year.  Love this time of year though, so much going on.  And I’m excited to be showing all new work that’s never been exhibited before.  I so completely adore the three pieces that were chosen for the Intermedia show and can’t wait to see them framed and up on the wall.

Filed Under: art Tagged With: events, intermedia arts, march, Minneapolis, openings, productivity, smarts, upcoming exhibits, visual art, watercolor, women's art registry of minnesota

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