Community, News

Gratitude Project: Tell me what you’re grateful for

Gratitude Project > Call for Submissions

WHAT:

I need your help! Tell me what you’re grateful for.

WHY: I’m an artist whose projects examine positive emotions, optimism, and pessimism.

My next installation—to be exhibited in the UK—will be a collective gratitude journal of sorts.

Gratitude journals are often cited by psychologists as first step towards increasing subjective well-being (happiness). Psychologists Bob Emmons and Mike McCullough found that people who wrote down five things they were grateful for each week for nine weeks had more positive emotion overall than other groups in the study. In a study that replicated the results, the gratitude journal-keepers “reported greater satisfaction with their lives, more optimism regarding the upcoming week, and greater connection with others.” (Philip Zimbardo and John Boyd, The Time Paradox, 2008)

HOW: Write your first responses, or mull it over and submit a list. Submit as often as you like. Submit by:

Comment below

or

Send me an email: gratitudeproject (at) christinewongyap.com.

WHEN:

Submit now. I’ll accept submissions through September early October. Keep ’em coming, please!

The text you submit (edited for brevity or clarity) may appear in an installation. I’ll post documentation by the end of November on my website. Your name will not appear with the work, but if you include your name/contact info, I would be happy to acknowledge your contribution on the project web page, and send you a note when the documentation is posted.

Thank you for your help. I will be very grateful for your submissions.

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News

Through 8/31: Window Work @ DXDX Studio, Plymouth, UK

Have a look! One of my Positive Signs has been interpreted as a window drawing in Plymouth, UK.

Window Work, DXDX Studio, Plymouth, UK

Window Work, DXDX Studio, Plymouth, UK

WINDOW WORK is a programme of artworks in a display window of an artist run studio space.

The current WINDOW WORK project asks artists (through an open call submission process) to propose a text work, diagram, drawing, instruction piece, design etc that can easily be drawn (translated) onto the main studio window using chalk pens.

The selected works are drawn/traced/copied onto the window by studio members who follow simple instructions provided by the artist.

Window Work
8/16–8/31
DXDX Studio

Regent Street, Plymouth, UK

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Community, News, Travelogue

Goodbye Byrdcliffe, Hello Positive Psychology!

I had a lovely time at the Woodstock Byrdcliffe residency. It was really an idyllic place to live and make art. A typical day for me:

Wake up to birdsong.
Run (including my first 10-mile).
Read and write in my sun-drenched studio—Mihaly Csiksentmihalyi’s thought-provoking Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (1990) and Alain de Botton’s beautiful The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work (1998).
Work on drawings, collages, mixed media, or photo projects.
Eat and socialize in the large communal kitchen with the other AIRs, including some amazing, health-minded cooks. They inspire me to eat more whole grains and less meat, and cook more. You’d be inspired too, if you’d had Dan’s homemade pita bread, Tryn’s key lime pie, and Bob’s chilled carrot-coconut milk soup.

Sights around Byrdcliffe: a brilliant meadow, backlit leaves, turkey vulture, black bear.

Sights around Byrdcliffe: a brilliant meadow, backlit leaves, turkey vulture, black bear.

Chipmunks everywhere.

Chipmunks everywhere.

Julie, Mary, Robert, Tryn, and Dan hanging out in the kitchen after Mexican food night.

Julie, Mary, Robert, Tryn, and Dan hanging out in the kitchen after Mexican food night.

Outdoor sculpture show at White Pines. Really loved the architecture.

Outdoor sculpture show at White Pines. Really loved the architecture.

View from White Pines.

View from White Pines.

In addition I took a Machine Woodworking class with Paul Henderson, down at the Byrdcliffe Barn. Cutting dovetails, mortises, and tenons with Paul, we’d chat about tools and music (he’s a trumpeter in a funk band!). It was tons of fun, and it reminds me how nice it is to have access to a really nice woodshop….

Paul and Jessica in the woodshop. That day's lesson: using routers and jigs to machine dovetails.

Paul and Jessica in the woodshop. That day's lesson: using routers and jigs to machine dovetails.

The residency was very productive and re-energizing. I am so grateful I got to be part of the Byrdcliffe story, enjoy the amazing land, and meet the other AIRs and the hardworking Byrdcliffe staff. Thanks Byrdcliffe!

Today
Artist in Residence Open Studios
Byrdcliffe Art Colony, Woodstock, NY
3:30–7pm

Woodstock Byrdcliffe Guild Artist in Residence Open Studios, July 23rd. full text: http://www.woodstockguild.org/artist-in-residence

My 360º studio photo-collage was featured on Woodstock Byrdcliffe’s email announcement! The super smart and interesting Julie Perini will be screening her experimental film and video work in my studio. Photos of my projects are in the Villeta, however, I won’t be there because I’ll be at…

July 23–26
The International Positive Psychology Association’s Second World Congress of Positive Psychology

Philadelphia, PA

Among the speakers are Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, whose books inform my work, including, most directly, the Positive Signs series (a selection is now on view at Steven Wolf Fine Arts, San Francisco, CA). I’m really looking forward to hearing these authors speak, delving deeper into positive psychology, and thinking through how it relates to artmaking and art viewing experiences.

I am able to attend this gathering with the support of a Travel and Study Grant from the Jerome Foundation. I am so grateful to them for the support. Thank you Jerome Foundation!

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Negative Space opens Sunday

Above: David Robbins, Fuck Buttons, 1985-1987, cibachrome, 10 x 8 inches each, edition of 10

NEGATIVE SPACE

MATT BORRUSO, NINA ZURIER, JAMES HAYWARD, DAVID ROBBINS, GUY DEBORD, NICHOLAS KNIGHT, CHRISTINE WONG YAP, JEFFREY SONGCO, WHITNEY LYNN, AND MORE…

July 17 – August 27, 2011
Opening Barbeque Rectption:
Sunday, July 17, 3:00 – 7:00 pm

Gallery Hours
Wednesday – Friday 10:30-5:30
Saturday 11-5:00

Steven Wolf Fine Arts
2747 19th Street, A (cross street at Bryant)
San Francisco, CA 94110
stevenwolffinearts.com

Summer is the time for happy thoughts. And we at Steven Wolf Fine Arts would like to share ours with you in our next show, Negative Space, which brings together art that embodies the various meanings and senses behind the phrase. Art that is pissed off, art that comes from the avant garde critical place we call negation, art that revolves around the void, art that poses an emptiness or art that implies one. The show will open with a Sunday afternoon barbecue, co-produced with our cross-street neighbor Guerrero Gallery.

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6/30–9/3: summer selections in san francisco and new york

hopexpectation, 2011, ribbon, thread, pins, 101 x 18 x 1 in / 257 x 48 x 2.5 cm.

hopexpectation (2011) will be on view at Jenkins Johnson Gallery, NYC.

I am happy to exhibit my latest ribbon texts in bicoastal group shows at Jenkins Johnson Gallery. In Chelsea, I’ll unveil hopexpectation and take charge of your happiness, while unlimited promise continues its residence in the project space. think good thoughts/fortify good attitudes will be exhibited in San Francisco, at the gallery’s location just around the corner from Union Square.

June 30–September 3, 2011
Summer Selections 
Jenkins Johnson Gallery
NYC: 521 W. 26th Street, 5th Floor (near 10th Ave); gallery hours: Tue–Sat, 10am–6pm
San Francisco: 464 Sutter Street (between Powell and Stockton); gallery hours: Tue–Fri, 10am–6pm, Sat 10am–5pm

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Art Practical Issue 40

My review of Under Destruction at the Swiss Institute (NYC) is now online in Art Practical.

Also in the current issue, curator Christian L. Frock summarizes responses to Ai Weiwei’s detainment (including mentions of bilingual Free Ai Weiwei posters and the Love the Future graphic.

Hats off to the Art Practical editorial team, who celebrate the release of their 40th issue today. In two years the publication has grown from a kernel of an idea to a presence in the SF art community, and I am so honored to be part of it.

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