TuckUnder Projects Raspberry Patch Diagnosis

TuckUnder Projects Raspberry Patch Diagnosis

TuckUnder Projects seeks funds to diagnose stunted growth symptoms in Raspberry Patch via UMN Plant Disease Clinic & meet fiscal needs.

TuckUnder Projects seeks your help with artistic funding to scientifically diagnose stunted growth and diseases within its Raspberry Patch Residency site in conjunction with the University of Minnesota Plant Pathology and Disease Clinic, and to finalize its budgetary needs and grant status with Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. This past spring and summer, a unique agricultural public art project entitled, TNT/Tunnel & Trellis/Sarah Wolbert/Raspberry Patch Residency took place at TuckUnder Projects, a tiny home based art gallery in Southwest Minneapolis. The Raspberry Patch Residency project began May 15, and ran thru September 15, 2012. The Raspberry Patch has been a source of visual inspiration and growth for the artist, the curator/homeowner and family, Fulton neighborhood residents, and art gallery patrons. 

During this first growing season, the artist successfully nurtured and diagnosed many agronomical ailments unique to the Raspberry Residency Patch. These included a variety of natural and unnatural elements, including weather, water, soil inconsistency, bunnies, Earwigs, Japanese Beetle infestations, and fruitful growth patterns amongst others. With the help of theUniversity of Minnesota Plant Disease Clinic, we would like to scientifically diagnose the soil, the roots, the canes, the leaves, and prepare for the Fall die back, and properly cultivate the patch in preparation for the next raspberry growing season. 

Raspberry Patch Resident artist Sarah Wolbert has initialized a fire blightworking diagnosis, and has recommended an “official diagnosis to ensure health of bushes and next season's production of raspberries. Additionally, this diagnosis will lead to appropriate steps for home-owner mitigation and future maintenance recommendations." 

The University of Minnesota Plant Disease Clinic is super raspberry and artist friendly! The Clinic is a “multi-disciplinary laboratory that serves commercial growers as well as the general public. The services provided include routine plant disease diagnosis (e.g. leaf spots, root rot diseases, cankers, wilt diseases, etc.), nematode analysis, seed quality testing, viral analysis, insect identification, and contract research. Certain plant pathogens and diseases can be detected and diagnosed using sensitive and specific PCR (polymerase chain reaction) assays.” And they know their raspberries, too! 

According to the UMN PDC, “disease diagnosis is a critical initial step for successful disease management. Several different diseases and/or plant health problems can cause similar symptoms; therefore, it is important to obtain an accurate diagnosis to choose the best disease-control measures and to know what is affecting your crops or plants. Accurate and timely plant disease diagnosis starts with proper sample collection and submission.” TuckUnder would like to get its sample in right away, to help prevent further damage to our berry patch, and to help preserve it for future gallery visitors. 

A secondary, and equally important part of the Kickstarter project will help TuckUnder Projects meet its minor fiscal obligations with its Metropolitan Regional Arts Council Community Arts Grant. Within this inaugural season of visual arts programming and community arts development, TuckUnder has gone slightly over our budgetary estimate. Our simple gallery dry wall build out, wall insulation, interior painting, track lighting, postcard printing, and general administrative costs have created a small cost overrun. Along with the UMN PDC diagnosis, money will be allotted to pay our final exhibiting artist stipend, postcard printing, fiscal agency fees, and to help bring our first gallery season to a successful visual and economic close.

With your generous help, you can receive a neat envelope filled with dried raspberry leaves, little TuckUnder buttons and postcards for your pleasure. Higher giving levels include a raspberry salsa recipe, two maps of the site, tour of the site/gallery, and a copy of the official UMN Plant Clinic diagnosis. To find out more about TuckUnder Projects Raspberry Patch Residency please visit our website at www.tuckunder.org, or our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/TuckUnderProjects . Please go now to support the TuckUnder Kickstarter campaign at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/raspberrydiagnosis/tuckunder-projects-raspberry-patch-diagnosis.  If the link doesn't work you can Google Kickstarter and search TuckUnder Projects Raspberry Patch and it should appear. Thanks again for your generous support!

With appreciation from our future raspberry pancakes. xoxoxox, pete

Mind & Eye Candy at the Canvas Outlet.

  The past two years I have enjoyed great success creating collages,  ship fleets and paintings with both solid black camping canvas and prepainted phosphorescent orange canvas.  Last December I set a wide range of artistic goals that continue my ongoing commitment to my passion and professional craft.  One specific goal, in my artistic production arena, is to expand materially and to further experiment with various types of textiles.  This goal is part of an ongoing broader goal  to further move away from the monarchy-based traditional rectangular painting.  By investigating and questioning the absorption qualities, rheological properties, and staying power of various textiles with acrylic paints and mediums,  I will hopefully be re-informing my painting and mixed media artwork and reanimating my creative self.


The first week of the new year I took a little stimulating safari north off U.S. 169 to SR Harris Fabric/Canvas Outlet in glamorous Brooklyn Park, Minnesota.  This little step towards my goal just happened to be the start of their post holiday 50% off sale. Thanks to a friendly artist tip from Pete H-T from Tent Services last Spring, this was my second visit to SRH. The store is packed to the gills with canvas, fabrics, textiles, sewing accessories and upholstery items of all colors, patterns, shapes and sizes.

As a visual artist and painter, I cannot help but absolutely love wandering aimlessly down the aisles and gently gazing at all of the visual eye candy.  Customers are allowed to pick and cut their own fabric bolts on large tables, write down the price and quantity, and hand them  to the lonely clerk at the register in an honorable trust system.  Craft ladies and penny pincher's love bending the rules here in order to receive a slightly larger piece of fabric, or better value for the dollar.  It is also fun to chat and joke with your fellow customers at the cutting tables, to find out what project they are creating, why they chose their fabric, and to compare stock prices.

For the traditional painter who worries about snotty art critics, art historians, and art conservators with their need for market driven quality and archival status-- this place may not be for you.  Although there is a small assortment of short cotton ducks, you will not find the high quality Belgians and 144 inch wide 12 oz. cotton ducks or mass produced and preprimed Fredrix canvas here.  SR Harris is not a Utrechty and Dicky Blicky retail type of setting.  But if you are DIY, theatrical, installationary, contemporary and new genre this is the artsy fartsy fabric site for you. Weavers, knitters, crocheters,  sewers, quilters, clothiers, costumers, braiders, macramists, needlers, batikers, tie dyers, thimblers, and yarn darlings will all be sent fashionably adrift into  their next signature style. Textile artists beware:  this is your very own garage sale and primo private palace to "find finds." Consider SRH the place for your secret fabricistah orgasm. It will be all yours, and we are not telling anyone!

Here is a selection of my thirteen fabric finds that I will be using to create new small, medium, and large scale bodies of two and three dimensional mixed media artwork and unstretched paintings in the near future:  Rose Satin, Soft Emerald Velvet, Muted Dark Green and Red Mottled Velvets,  Fancy Orange Fuzzy Hair(It Sheds!), Phosphorescent Lime Yellow-Green Medium Hair, Scrumptious Purple Shags, Pink and Orange Polka Dots, Bright Blue Canvas, Yellow Ochre Canvas, Avocado Green Canvas, and Dark Teal Blue Canvas, and last but not least-- Red Jute/Burlap.

The SRH assortment of textiles is chaotically uncategorized and finding what you want can be difficult for the newbie. Asking one of the few store clerks on hand is advised to help find your specific animal, vegetable, mineral or synthetic fabric.  Also available are multiple varieties of inspiring Awesome Awning, Chic Chiffons, Cocky Corduroys, Colorful Camouflages, Flowing Fencing, Fickle Fishnets, Flirtatious Flannels, Goofy Gingham's, Hick Hunting's, Lipstick Leopards, Loquacious Lingerie, Luxurious Laces, Naked Nylons, Peculiar Paisleys, Pompous Prommers, Puppy PJ's, Raucous Rayon's, Sexy Spandex, Tacky Tentings, Tickly Tartans, Traditional Too-wools, Turkish Tunics, Wacky Weddings, and Zannie Zebras.  These are just a few of the scrumptious swatches and if not to purchase, the store is always well worth the thread titillation, visual stimulation and artistic inspiration.
See you at the sewing machine or the grommet stamper,  Pete XOXOXOX

Cache @ the Casket Today!

See the Foot Powered Ship at Cache @ the Casket today 10am to 5pm. Cache @ the Casket is an annual Fall Open Studio tour at my studio in the Casket Arts Complex in Northeast Minneapolis.  Over 75 artists with art, free food, wine, music, and candy, candy, candy. See more info at www.casketartscache.com

Read the write up in City Pages at  http://www.citypages.com/events/cachande

acute-3rd-annual-fall-arts-show-and-stud

io-tour-1600833/http://ow.ly/i/5DUu

or see the Facebook Page at 

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=11

6442638414397

Image from Nauticalia Tentacalus-Ship #10, Pete Driessen ©2010, Size Varies, Mixed Media/Found Object, from Fleet of 50 ships.

 x0x0x0x's, pete

Link to new album from recent Nauticalia Tentacalus installation!

Here is a link to a new Facebook photo album from my recent Nauticalia Tentacalus: YeOldeSe(a)menShoppe installation at They Won't Find Us Here Gallery. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=75407&id=1635349353&l=bd9953e57e.  Take a maritime walk around the fore, aft, port and starboard sides of the gallery installation with images from photographer Sean Smuda.  The images reflect the breadth of the object finds, ephemeric research, and bibliographic entries from the exhibition.  An eight page List of Works/Bibliographic Artist Statement accompanied the gallery show.  Listed were all items in categorized sections of the gallery, including the Optimist Dinghy w/Boat Parts, Turntable/Trophy Case, Dressing Chair/Objects, Nautical Library, Stag Magazines, & Swabby Washbucket items. Thanks, pete

Butterflies Overtake New Artist Home.

Here is a realtor photograph of the new, anonymous artist home that boasts three hokey butterflies on the front, and a wooden woodpecker in the backyard.  Built in 1951, the artist/gallery bachelor pad comes complete with  Jute wallpaper in the basement, an orange Linoleum main bathroom, a Barbers style wallpaper in half bath, a red Naugahyde bar with red Shag carpet foot rest, a Knotty pine second floor with Daisy stickered ceiling, a dark Sheet paneling bedroom, Fake garden flowers, extra low Awnings, Faded circular exterior Thermometer, Raspberry bushes, Kitchen key and Matchbook racks, BluDot shelving, Built in Gun rack, thin Clothes shoot, several Shoe Horns, Millionaire Cologne, Ten year old Snyder Mouthwash, framed SplitRock Lighthouse poster, Christ Has Risen wall hanging, and Astro Turf lawn.  This simple urban home is the future site of pancake smorgasbords, actively engaged creativity, and artistic conversation in the rear TuckUnder Gallery.  

 Best wishes, pete

New CSI Images back from the CCC/KQ? Labs!

Detecting Curation Detritus-Orange Fuzzy String/Yarn. From Metal Detection Performance at Curatorial Cult Club/Kwestion Quration?, Walker Art Center Open Field, Minneapolis, MN USA, 9/1/2010. Pete Driessen © 2010.

A new album of my CSI images from Curatorial Cult Club/Kwestion Quration? have been posted on my Facebook page.  Taken in studio, these artist cell phone images illustrate the hidden detritus collected with a metal detection device during my performative Detecting Curation event at the Walker Art Center Open Field commons on 9/1/2010.  Whether  small or large, metal or plastic, sticky or slippery, a partially eaten Wolfgang Puck hamburger or a lost silver peace sign earing/necklace hanger, the images reflect, reframe and represent the wide spectrum of artist, viewer, audience, participant, administrative, museological and curatorial activities that often go overlooked within the subterranean spatiality of the art center.  The participatory found objects and process based studio images both combine and become exhibitionary elements and alternative publication components. pete

Thanks to They Won't Find Us Here Gallery!

Thanks to all those who ventured out to view my opening of Nauticalia Tentacalus at They Won't Find Us Here Gallery on Friday Night!  A beautiful mid October night and fall evening in South Minneapolis was perfect for gathering, conversing, and talking art.  That little pinkish beige ceramic and metal ship in the window was a "Find" at a local thrift store.  It is unlabeled,  actually lights up thru the portholes, and was a beacon signal to let gallery viewers know that they had found the right spot.  I'm guessing it's from the 50's or 60's.  If anyone who knows more about this type of lamp-- please send me a note-- because I am researching its value. Images of the installation in the raw gallery space will be posted on Facebook soon. 

x0x0x pete

Photo Credit: Sean Smuda.

Sneak Peek of Tonight's Show!

Here is a sneak peek of my artwork opening tonight at They Won't Find Us Here Gallery. 7-11P.M.  3500 Bryant Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN.    Photo by Sean Smuda.  Hope to see you!,  pete

Nauticalia Tentacalus/YeOldeSe(a)menShoppe

My solo show entitled, Nauticalia Tentacalus/YeOldeSe(a)menShoppe at They Won't Find Us Here Gallery opens this Friday night from 7-11. They Won't Find Us Here Gallery is located at 3500 Bryant Avenue South(Alley side), Minneapolis, MN, USA. For more information call: 406-207-0796 or visit our website: http://www.theywontfindushere.com/

Image:  Walt Disney Presents the Story of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Album Cover, Walt Disney Productions, ©1963.

Curatorial Cult Club/Kwestion Quration?

 This past summer I had a blast at the Walker Art Center Open Field Commons.  Here's a brief report:

Pete Driessen © 2010.   Sandwich Board #2-Installation Detail (Loneliness).  Dry Erase Marker on Sandwich Board. Size Varies.  Series of 10 weekly Sandwich Boards.  The Curatorial Cult Club/Kwestion Quration? Walker Art Center Open Field, Minneapolis, MN. An artist curated, ten week participatory/performative solo exhibition and alternative publication project. Artist Cell Phone Photo.

     My recent conceptual project, Curatorial Cult Club/Kwestion Quration? at the Walker Art Center Open Field commons was an artist curated, ten week participatory and performative solo exhibition and alternative publication project.  The hybridic project started as a post work/happy hour discussion group that questioned the shape shifting status of curation.  Based in the variables of viewer and audience participation, museum rules and guidelines, and artist and museum worker communication, the project changed shape throughout the summer with weekly art and social dialogue, interactivity and exchange.

Pete Driessen © 2010.  Curation Study Image #1-Installation Detail (Which type of curator are  you?)  Xerox on Copy Paper.  8.5x11 Inches. Series of 10 weekly Visual Image Handouts.  The Curatorial Cult Club/Kwestion Quration? Walker Art Center Open Field, Minneapolis, MN.   An artist curated, ten week participatory/performative solo exhibition and alternative publication project. Image from Carmel, James. Exhibiton Techniques. NY: Reinhold, 1962. Artist Cell Phone Photo. 

The three main goals of the Curatorial Cult Club/ Kwestion Quration? were to: 1. Demystify and discuss the multiple vectors of the curator, the curation field, and the curatorial habitat and ecosystem.   2. Co-Curate a participatory exhibition/event within the Open Field commons that questions curation.  3. Self publish our curatorial discussion/outcome in an alternative publication at the end of the summer.

Pete Driessen © 2010  Curation Study Image #3-Detail (Pontoon Boat as Curatorial Ecosystem).  Xerox on Copy Paper. 8.5x11 Inches. Series of 10 weekly Visual Image Handouts.  The Curatorial Cult Club/Kwestion Quration? Walker Art Center Open Field, Minneapolis, MN.  An artist curated, ten week participatory/performative solo exhibition and alternative publication project.  Image from www.freepatentsonline.com.  Artist Cell Phone Photo & Internet Download.

    Multiple curation topics and definitions were informed organically via participant discussion.  From curatorial models and museological structures to the curator as a developer of institutional memory, the weekly conversation acted as a springboard to our collective exhibition and publication.  Topics included but were not limited to:  Curatorial & Museological Spatiality, Habitats, & Structures; Curatorial Cults & Curator Star Status; Curator Traveler/Art Tourist; Curator as Critic, Collector, Gallery Owner; Curator as Participant  & Viewer; Academic & Institutional Curator Vs. the Everyday Armchair Curator; Curatorial Capitalism and Markets; and a Curatorial Information Exchange.

Pete Driessen © 2010.  Curator Flakes-Installation Detail (What Cereals Do Curators Eat?).  Color Xerox on Copy Paper.  8.5x11 Inches. Curatorial Cereal Taste Test.  The Curatorial Cult Club/Kwestion Quration? Walker Art Center Open Field, Minneapolis, MN. An artist curated, ten week participatory/performative solo exhibition and alternative publication project.  Image created at www.cerealfreak.com. Artist Internet Creation & Download.

Each week a brief structure was followed and expanded upon by the artist and participants:  Creating the sandwich board, conversing with participants, distributing visual study handouts, taking physical or hand written surveys, performing an interactive task(s), recording documentational cell phone photos and videos, as well as follow up with internet post distribution via social media.

Pete Driessen © 2010. Fly Swatter-Installation Detail (Smiley Face).  Internet Stock Photo Image. 8.5x11 Inches. Curator Fly Swatter Survey. The Curatorial Cult Club/Kwestion Quration? Walker Art Center Open Field, Minneapolis, MN. An artist curated, ten week participatory/performative solo exhibition and alternative publication project. Artist Internet Download.

One week offered the theme of the Pontoon Boat as Curatorial Ecosystem, where participants engaged in the topic of the common Pontoon Boat as a site for aesthetic, creative and curatorial exchange.  Another theme questioned human nature and curatorial behavior with What Cereals do Curators Eat?, by engaging viewers in an interactive and participatory Curator Flakes cereal taste test.   A live Curatorial Fly Swatter Survey was another theme, where common fly swatters were given to museum goers to curate, operate, and manipulate. 

Pete Driessen © 2010 Detecting Curation—Detritus #12/Detail (Wolfgang Puck Hamburger). Half Eaten Hamburger, Penny, Type Scale, Marker on Copy Paper.  8.5x11 inches. Performative “CSI” image of found hamburger.  Hamburger found by artist while detecting curatorial detritus around museum. Image 12 of 34 objects. The Curatorial Cult Club/Kwestion Quration?  Walker Art Center Open Field, Minneapolis, MN.  An artist curated, ten week participatory/performative solo exhibition and alternative publication project.  Artist Cell Phone Photo

A culminating exhibition and alternative publication was created with the theme, Detecting Curation, where participants used a metal detector around the museum commons to search for curatorial detritus. With a handheld, point-of-view cell phone video recording, the archeological digging and unveiling of found detritus, artifacts, and common waste became an alternative publication, as it was later placed in an anonymous labeled box on a picnic table. Each item discovered during the search was later documented and posted with a performative “CSI” image. 

I hope to  inform you in the coming blogs with further images and documentation. You can also view albums that I am still uploading on my facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/pete.driessen or for further information you can connect with the Walker Art Center Open Field website at http://walkerart.org/openfield.

Gorgonica/New Works in Process

Gorgonica
Pete Driessen
New Works in Process
Art A Whirl 2010

Please be among the first to see Gorgonica/Pete Driessen/New Works in Process as you join us for complimentary refreshments during the 15th Annual NEMAA Art-A-Whirl Open Studio Tour.

The hybridic Gorgonica installation at the Casket Arts Complex studio continues my exploration of the ship form as a metaphorical site of social mystery and political wonder. The French philosopher Michel Foucault commented that “A ship is the ultimate Heterotopia,” and is a theoretical “counter space” where one can question our given culture and predominant conditions. With a juxtaposition of multiple two and three-dimensional vectors, the installation combines lightly textured, medium scale garish colored paintings on unstretched industrial canvas -- with loosely gestured, abstracts on smaller canvas, a fleet of mixed media ship sculptures, fifteen marching soft-water tanks, and a full scale Optimist Dinghy.

The in process ship sails of the Gorgon Fleet will eventually present collaged imagery from 1960’s stag magazines that questions mediated current events within our visual culture, but also combines it with four narrative characters: a wandering neurotic spider creating an inventive web, a serpentine octopus birthing tentacles of gorgons, a beached but hopeful Optimist Dinghy, and an untouchable walled-off bunker. The garage style installation uses the ship structure as a foil and metaphor to help understand our current societal problems and question our present human condition.

Included this year will be special guest photographer and Minneapolis Mosaic winner Sean Smuda exhibiting photographs in our back gallery. In tandem are the release of two new artist statements to the public: An Aesthetic List of 99 Art Critic Beers & Ales with Prices Separated into 3 Categories, and the List of Curating Praxis, Techniques & the General Thoughts That Go Thru a Curators Brain When Preparing, Producing, & Curating the Spatiality of a Prominent Museum Based Exhibition. Also included will be the release of the first limited edition series of Mnartist.org/Minnesota Saints artist baseball cards.

Public Opening: Friday May 14, 6-10pm
Hours: Friday, May 14, 6-10pm; Saturday May 15, 12-8pm; Sunday, May 16, 12-5pm
Where: 681 17th Avenue Northeast, Suite 117, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Directions: Casket Arts is just north of downtown Minneapolis, east of I-94W, west of I-35W, and accessible from the Broadway Avenue, Lowry Avenue, University Avenue, and Central Avenue corridors. Casket Arts is on 17th Avenue Northeast between Madison & Jefferson Streets. On & off site parking is readily available. MTC bus service is one block away. Casket Arts has handicap access via loading dock.
Cost: Free & Open to the Public
For a list of Casket Arts Building Artists/Events/Activities:
For more information on NEMAA Art-A-Whirl:
Above Image: Pete Driessen © 2010, Rage Redue, 8x10 Inches, Digital Image Print, Image in Process. Image from Rage/Magazine for Men, Long Island City, NY: Natlus Inc., Vol. 2, #3, June 1962.

My First Post Test #2

Welcome to my first post test #2. Pete Driessen is a brilliant and prolific visual artist and painter.