“Can I Speak to You about Text?”

Thinking about Electronic Literature and my own artist’s writing practice. What writing practice you say? OK I admit that I have not shared much of that on this blog, but I do write. I write poetry and, recently, a vignette inspired by a scene from Anna Deavere-Smith’s Fires in the Mirror. Nurtured and inspired by…

Read More

Exiled in Light :|: Never(W)here

SAIC’s LRMFA Open Studios Exhibit 2017 I create immersive environments that are contemplative and trace-inducing in order to produce shifts of perception for the participating viewer. Installations of slow moving animations and projections provide portals to sublime light and dark visions based on my experience of being exiled in an alternate universe which is both…

Read More

The Sublime Light & Dark: Concepts behind the installations.

The vision for this work will be a two-room “diptych” installation. It is an immersive installation expressing sublime experiences of light and darkness. Photo-sensitivity and hyper-awareness are catalysts for the work. Room ONE is a room of overwhelming immersion inside a space of digital projections (described below) COME IN! The Sublime Light & Dark: An Experiment in…

Read More

Notes on Lorde & Allison

Reading Audre Lorde “Poetry is Not a Luxury” and Dorothy Allison “Deciding to Live” for Writing with Pamela Sneed. Powerful and inspiring. Some reflective notes….   “…the hidden stories of my life that lay in disguise behind the mocking stories I did tell – all the stories of my family, my childhood, and the restless…

Read More

Art Ideas Final: Immersive Experience – Theoretical Musings with Diana Thater

Here is the PowerPoint file of my Final Art Ideas Presentation. xanos_art-ideas_final-paper  I explore connections between Diana Thater and my own work. Thinking about Immersive Experience and what that means as an art idea for installation that is intended to envelope the viewer.  viewer lost in an installation that becomes an immersive experience Valerie Xanos, The…

Read More

Corpuscles

These photographs are channeling inner space rather than outer. The universe exists within on microscopic levels. Falling inward.   All photographs are the sole property of Valerie Xanos

Immersive Space with Diane Thater

November 11, 2016 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago If you know my work, then you know why THIS is the show of the year! How wonderful to experience Diane Thater’s The Sympathetic Imagination, as I am just beginning to work with projections and immersive environments. To quote the MCA introduction, “At the heart of Thater’s…

Read More

A New Killer Star

Light and Space Channeling my love of alternate dimensions and outer space to convey a sense of sublime alienation. All photographs are the sole property of Valerie Xanos In-Camera Editing The Process All of these images are straight from the camera, no post-production work in Lightroom or Photoshop other than some cropping. The color intensity…

Read More

Inspired by 3hund’s “Lucid”

Light Installation by 3hund Oh my!   This is right up my alley… “Installing beacons in scenes of thick forests and milky lagoons, German duo Tarek Mawad and Friedrich van Schoor of collective 3hund produced the film LUCID in order to capture the melancholy mood of these displaced works. The short film is a surreal tale…

Read More

Light – what are others doing?

I have loved looking into other artists who use light. Right now, just watching, listening, and absorbing. Consolation: Smoky, fiery performances. Beautiful sculptures of smoke, soft colors and intense colors. Then come the explosions of lights inside the layers of chromatic clouds. Sublime, Beautiful, terrifying, apocalyptic, and heavenly. Cai Guo Qiang Sky Ladder Revisiting materiality:…

Read More

OH! “This blog is about my studio practice?”

I’ve begun my MFA, 30 years after starting my BFA. It’s good to be back at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. We are asked to keep a blog about our studio practice. What is my studio practice like? Well, it is multi-faceted. That is because I am an artist, AND an activist, AND…

Read More