portfolio: natalie a edwards

From my article in F Newsmagazine:

“Art critic Jerry Saltz has challenged the inflammatory, paranoia-inspiring Fox News talk show host Glenn Beck to an art duel. Saltz would like Beck, who recently attacked the public art on Rockefeller Plaza, to curate two art exhibitions: one of images or actual works of art that exist in New York City which Beck would like to see demolished, and another show featuring contemporary art he approves of. “In the spirit of bi-partisanship,” wrote Saltz, he would “secure a first-rate New York venue for each exhibition,” and would write about each show in New York magazine.”

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From my feature on Kyle Beachy:

“Kyle Beachy answered his phone, “Kyle Beachy, published author.” It’s a joke. He isn’t married to the idea of being an author, even though he has just published his first book, “The Slide,” which was named “Best Book by a Chicago Author in the Last Year” by the Chicago Reader, and is working on his next.”

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Excerpt from my feature on Art Talk Chicago:

“On one fall evening, year after year, Peoria street fills with Generation Google-Its in search of free booze and someone to flirt with. They ride the trolley to River North to feel alienated by the grown-up art in the spacious galleries. They are disappointed with the sparse selection of wine in plastic cups and mounds of sweaty cheese cubes atop wilted lettuce, and they quickly return to the West Loop. It is on this day of the year that they don their best duds: a sloppy boustier, perhaps, fashioned out of leather scraps. A skinned rodent pelt delicately placed atop a shaved head. A tuxedo. And it is on this day that they squeeze through corridors to make sense of the bold and sometimes baffling choices that our Chicago galleries make.”

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From my profile of Chicago artist Gregory Jacobsen:

Flags in butts, drippy cunts, shit beaks, and fleshy chunks of meat caught in seemingly intimate moments: these are the images Chicago artist and musician Gregory Jacobsen chooses to render in his awkward acrylic, confidently sensual world. “I was always interested in weird, fucked-up imagery and I always made ‘shocking’ little pictures,” Jacobsen says, “but it took me a while to really push it in a direction where it transcended ‘shock-art.’”

I rip Matthew Barney a new taint. Just kidding:
For the four people out there that aren’t familiar with Matthew Barney and the Cremaster Cycle, let me give you a quick rundown so you don’t look like an idiot when you go to your Teaching Assistant’s Valentine’s Day party and everyone’s talking about their cremasters. Matthew Barney, love him or hate him, has had a tremendous impact on the world of Modern Art, if only because everyone says so. He has been called “the most important American artist of his generation because his imagination is so big” by Michael Kimmelman of the New York Times, alternatively, the joke about the Cremaster Cycle is that the trailers are arguably the best part, distilling about seven hours of striking visuals into manageable minutes. In five independent cinematic ventures, Barney builds a phosphorescent, lubricated world with its own logic.

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A bad show on a bad night:

“The world needs another review of the MCA’s birthday party, Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967, like I need another hole in my head, and for this I apologize. But every review I’ve read is boring and excruciatingly balanced. All the critics seem to say different variations of the same thing: “This show is kinda good and kinda bad. Happy birthday.” Why is everyone afraid to hurt the MCA’s feelings? Why is everyone not talking about the boring, stupid, shoe-gazing elephant in the room? I fear no art, as the MCA would say, and I also fear no art institution; I will say it: Sympathy for the Devil is like a huge, sorta pretentious, cold, burgerless, Aerosmithless Hard Rock Cafe.”

read the rest. Why not?

Because I love the environment AND art:

“The glassy, rubix-cubist Spertus building and the organization’s rejuvenated curatorial agenda are coming up on their first birthday, but the celebration may be more about the exterior than what’s happening inside.”

Read the rest!

I love sustainability, bro…

“Critics often discuss the “Bilbao effect,” museum officials’ efforts to reproduce the success of Frank Gehry’s 1997 Guggenheim Museum design in Spain, with a hint of cynicism. But the fetishizing of art museum buildings by celebrity architects, like the new glassy, chunky, Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver and the rabidly anticipated iMac-looking New Museum in New York, has already “jumped the shark,” leaving museum-makers scrambling to define a new trend. Could environmental friendliness be the new metal-building version of a crumpled piece of paper?”

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Profile of performance artist RRRRRRRRROberto Sifuentes:

“If Jeff Koons’ success is symptomatic of slack-jawed consumers eager to gobble up shiny, uncomplicated objects, Roberto Sifuentes is the anti-Koons. He doesn’t cultivate a celebrity to hide behind. He is inviting, rather than selling. He is not cynical or tongue-in-cheek; he is, rather, open and engaging. His performances are earnest, gruesome, unsettling, sad. He covers his body in blood, roaches, leeches and barbed wire, but when we met, he had a fresh haircut and a pressed shirt.”

read the rest. He’s interesting.

Probably really outdated, eh?

“Grant Reynolds, a recent SAIC graduate and the holder of $70,000 in educational debt, thinks the idea of paying off his student loans is so abstract that he can’t imagine actually doing it at any point. “Basically,” he says, ‘I’ve come to terms with the notion that my loan payments are just another bill I’ll be paying every month for the rest of my life.’”

If you’re just really bored or a stalker, read on…