Call for Work: Making IT exhibition at Mess Hall, Chicago

MAKING "IT" will be an exhibit exploring the process and labor of creative
practice and it's relationship to the "work" that supplants and/or supports
it.

ABOUT

Are you making "IT"? Your artwork? A living? What is the "IT" that you make?
Can you make "IT" full time or do you have to work for wages? Do you find
you have to work so much to survive that you can't do "IT" anymore? What
then replaces "IT" as your creative output?

Are you a worker harboring artistic dreams or an artist who dreams while
working the 9 to 5? Have you experienced a sudden and unexplained calling to
make art, or have you always believed you were an artist struggling to be
free to create? Do you decorate your workspace? Your car? Your body? How is
your creative output informed or inhibited by your wage-job, your social
interactions, your everyday experiences?

SUBMISSIONS

All media will be considered. This exhibit will consider equally
submissions that might elsewhere be categorized "outsider", "folk", or
"craft" along with submissions that might elsewhere be considered "fine
art". We reject such categorizations and view all creative practices as
artistic output.

Performance submissions must be summarized, described and specified as to
length of time of performance, amount of space needed to perform, and any
other specifications or details.

Submissions will be accepted in digital file format no larger than 600 x 800
pixels.

Please title the images with your last name and then the image number. For
example:

Doe1.jpg
Doe2.jpg

Please submit a corresponding "slide" list including title, materials used,
description of the image and a brief artist statement addressing aspects of
the above thematic questions that you are responding to and that you feel
apply to you. Digital submissions should be e-mailed to
[email protected].

Submissions of physical slides or photos with accompanying slide or photo
list including title, materials used, description and brief artist statement
may also be made by snail mail to:

Making IT
c/o Mess Hall
6932 N. Glenwood Ave.
Chicago, IL 60626
USA

Those in the Chicago area can also drop off their work in the Mess Hall
mailbox on our front door.

Chicago area exhibitors may be asked to install their own work. Those in the
Chicago area during the exhibition dates may also be asked to "gallery sit"
for one four to six-hour shift on a Thursday evening or a Saturday or Sunday
afternoon.

DEADLINES AND EXHIBITION DATES

Submission deadline is *Friday, August 4, 2006* (5 pm CST for digital
submissions).

The exhibit will open Thursday, August 10, 2006 at Mess Hall in Chicago. It
will close Sunday, September 17, 2006.

We will accept as much work as we can find space for, but please be warned
that Mess Hall is a small storefront space. Therefore, smaller pieces will
have an advantage.

There will be an opening reception, along with Thursday evening discussions,
Sunday brunch potlucks, artist demonstrations, and/or other related events
culminating in a closing de-installation party on Sunday September 17.


Please contact Diana Berek or Marianne Fairbanks for more information by
e-mail at [email protected]


Mess Hall, a non-commercial resource in the Rogers Park neighborhood of
Chicago. Mess Hall hosts a printed matter archive, exhibitions, workshops,
lectures, public projects, actions, events, meals, and more.

Mess Hall
6932 N Glenwood, Chicago
just across from the Morse stop on the Red Line
(773) 465-4033
[email protected]

www.messhall.org
http://plus.calendars.net/messhall for schedule updates