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Joan Dickinson

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Joan Dickinson is an American artist working in interrelated forms including visual and performance art, writing and translation, photography, farming and environmental restoration, and teaching. Through these varying forms Dickinson conducts collaborative investigations into language, media, and cross-disciplinary elements that explore the confluences of home and land, autobiography as a resistance to history, encounters with site and weather, the sky, other worlds, and bodies.

Biography

Education and Teaching

Dickinson has been a teacher for over twenty-five years serving as both faculty member and visiting artist at various art schools, colleges, and universities; and in writing centers with diverse populations [students from Mexico, China, Japan, Egypt, Viet Nam, Pakistan, Norway, Iraq, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and France], American culinary students, self-identified learning disabled students, and homeless women. A first generation college graduate, Dickinson holds a doctorate from the Creative Writing Program at the University of Denver (2012).

Creative Practice

Beginning as a young woman, Dickinson developed and presented performances, exhibitions, and public art projects that merge mythological, autobiographical, geographical, and historical lines of inquiry. During a twelve-year period, Dickinson moved her creative practice to a 200-acre wetland in rural Illinois often living outdoors––sleeping in abandoned deer beds––or inhabiting a six-floor silo and bat-infested barn. In that place and its surrounds. Dickinson worked in cooperation with others to unpin straightened rivers, remove agricultural tiles, rout buckthorn, and safely conduct controlled burns. She became a beekeeper and herbalist and, for those twelve years, sat daily and nightly beneath the sun, moon, and stars in order to observe and integrate their alignments. In so doing, Dickinson familiarized herself with one place––its stories and mythologies entwined with its geographies, communities, and climate––and the wider connection of one place to others and all that is embodied within that suggestion.

Other work has been presented in more traditional contemporary art spaces and theaters: the Institute for Contemporary Arts in London,[1] the Théatre Royal de la Monnaie, Brussels, Belgium, PS 122 in NYC,[2] Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, California,[3] and in Chicago: the Lyric Opera of Chicago,[4] the Chicago Cultural Center,[5] Hyde Park Art Center,[6] Randolph Street Gallery,[7] the Lurie Garden at Millennium Park,[8] the Museum of Contemporary Art,[9] and the State of Illinois Museum.[10]


  • Goat Island Retrospective/Exhibition + Performances + Symposium (2019)[11][12][13][14][15]
  • The Cooking School of the Air (2019)
  • Gathering A Museum: the Tides at Flinders Island (2017-2018)
  • Coming in from the North (2007-2016)[16][17]
  • The Dream of the Owl Sisters (book; 2015)
  • The Dream of the Owl Sisters (performance; 2013)[18]
  • The Cooking School of the Air (as a work-in-progress; 2012)[19]
  • Mule Deer Are Everywhere in the West from A Poetic Inventory of Rocky Mountain National Park (2012)[20]
  • Lindow Man from Fat Boy Review (2011)[21]
  • With All that She Is She Desires to Give Great Pleasure (2007–2009)[22]
  • pretty pretty pretty over there too (2007)[23][24]
  • Degrees of Wildness/The Charioteer (2006)[25]
  • The Language of Birds (2005)[26]
  • Atmosphere (2005)[27]
  • In the Palace of the Night Heron (2004)as part of Bird Brain with Jennifer Monson[28][29][30]
  • 13 Moon (2003–2004)[31]
  • Devotion (2001–2002)[32]
  • Drove Road (1999–2000)[33]
  • The Architecture of Honey (1997–1998)[34]
  • Flower (1996–1997)
  • Hunter’s Moon (1995–1996)[35]
  • Hula (1994)[36]
  • Big Goddess Powwow (1994-1996)[37][38][39][40][41]
  • Black Cake (1993)[42]
  • White Castle (1993)[43]
  • Mental Beauty/Enduring Affection (1992)[44]
  • We Got A Date (1989); Can’t Take Johnny to the Funeral (1991) as part of Goat island Performance Group[45][46][47][48][49][50][51]

Awards

  • Flinders Island Artist Residency (2016-2017)
  • Platte Forum Creative Residency (2013)[52]
  • University of Denver (DU) (2008-2012) Fellowship[53]
  • DU Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Graduate Writing Scholar (2009-2010)
  • Crosscut Award (2007)[54]
  • Illinois Arts Council Project Grant (2006)
  • Columbia College Faculty Development Award m(2006)
  • Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs commission (2005)
  • Illinois Arts Council Fellowship (2004)
  • Illinois Arts Council Project Grant (2002)
  • Richard H. Dreihaus Individual Artist Award, the Richard Dreihaus Foundation, Nomination (2001)
  • Cal Arts/ Alpert Award in the Arts, Nomination (2001)
  • Columbia College Excellence in Teaching Award (2000)[55]

Other Cultural Work

Beginning in 1989 and continuing until early 1997, Dickinson worked at Randolph Street Gallery (RSG), the erstwhile alternative arts space in Chicago (1979-1998). Initially, Dickinson was a member of the committee responsible for performance programming (called “Time Arts” at RSG) under the direction of Mary Jo Schnell along with Peter Taub, the Executive Director of the gallery. From 1993 and until her resignation, Dickinson was the Director of Time Arts.[56][57]

In addition to Time Arts programming, and what are now called “relational” art events (including the Grotto d’Amore––a fund-raiser cum ceremonial happening wherein same-sex couples and groups, inter and intra species companions, and lovers of the incarcerated could marry and divorce in a single night), Dickinson’s work, in tandem with the Time Arts Programming Committee and RSG Staff members, included the design and implementation of several public art projects beginning in 1989 with the first Day without Art events in collaboration with Encarnacion Teruel and the Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum (now called the National Museum of Mexican Art), the University of Illinois with Matthew Owens, and, with Nathan Mason, the First Presbyterian Church. On December 1, 2, and 3 of that year, portraits of people living with AIDS were projected at locations throughout Chicago: the ballroom of the museum, the student union of the university, and outdoors against the walls of the church on Michigan Avenue’s Gold Coast.

Selected Time Arts Programming (1989-1996)

Quraysh Ali,[58] Nancy Andrews,[59] Ron Athey,[60] [61] Sadie Benning,[62] Dalida María Benfield, Jaap Blonk,[63][64] Lynn Book[65] ,[66] Mwata Bowden,[67] Maris Bustamante, Janet Cardiff,[68][69] Sandra Cisneros, William Close,[70] Portia Cobb, Dominique Dibbell, Richard Elovich [71] ,[72] Coco Fusco,[73][74] Goat Island,[75] James Grigsby,[76] Essex Hemphill,[77] In the Flesh (Series)[78] ,[79] John Jesurun,[80] John Malpede,[81] Iris Moore,[82] Jennifer Monson, Eileen Myles,[83] Natsu Nakajima[84] ,[85] Achy Obejas, Matthew Owens,[86] Michelle Parkerson, Guillermo Gomez Pena,[87][88] Adrian Piper, Pomo Afro Homos,[89] Lordes Portillo, Marlon Riggs ,[90][91] Root Wy’mn Theater Company,[92] [93] Sacred Naked Nature Girls[94] ,[79] Carolee Schneeman[95][96] Dread Scott, Joe Silovsky, Theodora Skipitares, Laetitia Sonami,[97][98] Patricia Smith, Spiderwoman Theater,[99][100] Lawrence Steger,[101][102] Chris Sullivan, That Time of the Months (Series),[103] Blair Thomas, Rose Troche,[104] Kitty Tsui, Brendan de Vallance, Gregory Whitehead,[105] Dolores Wilber,[106] Michael Zerang[107]

References

  1. ^ "Home - Institute of Contemporary Arts". Archived from the original on 2017-02-26. Retrieved 2015-07-09.
  2. ^ "Performance Space 122".
  3. ^ "Highways Performance Space & Gallery".
  4. ^ Lyric Opera of Chicago
  5. ^ "City of Chicago :: Chicago Cultural Center".
  6. ^ "Home - Hyde Park Art Center".
  7. ^ Randolph Street Gallery
  8. ^ "City of Chicago :: Millennium Park".
  9. ^ "MCA – Home".
  10. ^ "Welcome to the Illinois State Museum--Illinois State Museum".
  11. ^ The Visualist. "Goat Island Archive". Retrieved 29 March 2019.
  12. ^ May, Mary. [goat island archive – we have discovered the performance by making it https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/dca/provdrs/attractions_eventsandexhibitions/news/2019/january/goat_island.html "goat island archive – we have discovered the performance by making it"]. City of Chicago. Retrieved 24 January 2019. {{cite web}}: Check |url= value (help)
  13. ^ Lowe, Nick. "From the archives". SAIC. Retrieved 1 February 2019.
  14. ^ Climenhaga, Royd (2020). "Goat Island". Routledge Performance Archive.
  15. ^ Island, Goat. "Goat island Archive". Youtube. Retrieved 24 June 2019.
  16. ^ "Joan Dickinson, artist - Invisible Channels of Commonality".
  17. ^ http://badatsports.com/2016/top-v-weekend-picks-929-105/
  18. ^ "The Dream of the Owl Sisters - A ceremonial performance for listening at the river".
  19. ^ "Joan Dickinson, artist - The Cooking School of the Air".
  20. ^ "A Poetic Inventory of Rocky Mountain National Park".
  21. ^ "12 days of projects from Fatboy Review". 5 January 2011.
  22. ^ "Joan Dickinson, artist - With All That She Is She Desires to Give Great Pleasure".
  23. ^ "Joan Dickinson, artist - pretty pretty pretty over there too".
  24. ^ "pathogeographies".
  25. ^ "Gapers Block: Slowdown - November 16, 2005".
  26. ^ "Joan Dickinson, artist - Invisible Channels of Commonality".
  27. ^ "Joan Dickinson, artist - Invisible Channels of Commonality".
  28. ^ "Joan Dickinson, artist - In The Palace of the Night Heron".
  29. ^ http://www2mcachicago.org/event/jennifer-monsonbird-brain-ducks-geese-migration[permanent dead link]
  30. ^ "Dancer Jennifer Monson goes where birds take her".
  31. ^ "Joan Dickinson, artist - 13 Moon".
  32. ^ "Her Field of Dreams Performance Artist Joan Dickinson Says the Costumed Bears, Dancing Horses and Shrouded Women in Her Work Have Deep Meaning - but Does Anyone Get It?". 17 October 2002. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  33. ^ "Featured Articles about Performance Art - Page 3 - tribunedigital-chicagotribune".
  34. ^ Burbank, Carol. "A World Apart".
  35. ^ Dickinson, Joan; Mallozzi, Dawn; Moore, Iris (1 December 1998). "Hunter's Moon and Flower: Two Performances by Joan Dickinson". TDR/The Drama Review. 42 (4): 14–36. doi:10.1162/105420498760308337.
  36. ^ Obejas, Achy. "Hula, Part I".
  37. ^ Obejas, Achy. "Big Goddess Pow Wow III: the Empress Provoked".
  38. ^ Rago, Carmela. "Celebrating the Spoken Word".
  39. ^ "Performance Artist Wilke Heads For L.a."
  40. ^ "Wordsmyths Offer A Cultural Explosion".
  41. ^ "Girls' Night Out".
  42. ^ Obejas, Achy. "Bizarre and Logical".
  43. ^ "Exhibitions - Gallery 400".
  44. ^ Obejas, Achy. "Next Step".
  45. ^ "Goat Island Performance Group - Performances".
  46. ^ http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/theatre_journal/v048/48.2bottoms_fig02.html
  47. ^ Hayford, Justin. "Intimate Details".
  48. ^ "Goat Island Performance Group - Performances".
  49. ^ Tsatsos, Irene; Dickinson, Joan; Christopher, Karen; Goulish, Matthew; McCain, Greg; McCain, Tim (1 January 1991). "Talking with Goat Island: An Interview with Joan Dickinson, Karen Christopher, Matthew Goulish, Greg McCain, and Tim McCain". TDR. 35 (4): 66–74. doi:10.2307/1146163. JSTOR 1146163.
  50. ^ "The Last Performance".
  51. ^ "The politics of becoming(-woman): Deleuze, sex and gender".
  52. ^ "Joan Dickinson - PlatteForum".
  53. ^ "IMPACT: The Campaign for the University of Denver".
  54. ^ "Experimental Sound Studio - Past Crosscut Recipients". Archived from the original on 2014-07-14. Retrieved 2014-07-03.
  55. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2014-07-14. Retrieved 2014-07-03.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  56. ^ "Programmer Leaving Randolph St. Gallery".
  57. ^ "For Art's Sake".
  58. ^ "Quraysh Ali Lansana".
  59. ^ "Home".
  60. ^ "::::Ron Athey::::".
  61. ^ Obejas, Achy. "Martyrs and Saints".
  62. ^ "Sadie Benning - Video Data Bank".
  63. ^ "Jaap Blonk's Website".
  64. ^ Corbett, John. "Jaap Blonk".
  65. ^ "Lynn Book".
  66. ^ "`Gorgeous Fever' Lets Book Plant Ideas".
  67. ^ "Mwata Bowden - Department of Music - The University of Chicago".
  68. ^ "Janet Cardiff & George Bures Miller".
  69. ^ Litvin, Michelle. "On Exhibit: hearing is believing".
  70. ^ Group, Twelve : Twenty Four Design. "Mass Ensemble - A New Design in Music". {{cite web}}: |last= has generic name (help)
  71. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2013-07-26. Retrieved 2014-12-20.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  72. ^ Williams, Albert. "Someone Else From Queens Is Queer".
  73. ^ "Coco Fusco".
  74. ^ Rago, Carmela. "Specimens From the New World".
  75. ^ "Goat Island Performance Group".
  76. ^ Hayford, Justin. "In Performance: celebrating James Grigsby's polished menace".
  77. ^ "Essex Hemphill".
  78. ^ "Featured Articles about Randolph Street - Page 5 - tribunedigital-chicagotribune".
  79. ^ a b "Randolph Street Takes `In The Flesh' Literally".
  80. ^ Hayford, Justin. "Cubist Collage".
  81. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2014-12-20. Retrieved 2014-12-20.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  82. ^ http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/iris-moore-and-christina-cobb/Content?oid=883991
  83. ^ "Eileen Myles' Homepage".
  84. ^ Mihopoulos, Effie. "The First Butoh".
  85. ^ "The Way Of Butoh".
  86. ^ "Matthew Owns: Extreme Pet Portraits".
  87. ^ "top".
  88. ^ Rago, Carmela. "Guillermo Gomez-Pena and Coco Fusco".
  89. ^ "Owen Keehnen: Interviews".
  90. ^ http://marlonriggs.com/
  91. ^ "Living `Color`".
  92. ^ Sharon Bridgforth (3 December 2008). "The root wy'mn Theatre Company" – via YouTube.
  93. ^ Obejas, Achy. "Sisters in the House".
  94. ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2008-09-07. Retrieved 2014-12-20.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  95. ^ http://www.caroleeschneemann.com/
  96. ^ Stamets, Bill. "Art Facts: Carol Schneemann drives men crazy".
  97. ^ "LAETITIA SONAMI".
  98. ^ "Review_Chicago".
  99. ^ "Spiderwoman Theater".
  100. ^ Telingator, Sue. "Theater Notes: the cause of the Spiderwoman".
  101. ^ Hayford, Justin. "In Performance: the mortal passions of Lawrence Steger".
  102. ^ Hayford, Justin. "Brilliant Demise".
  103. ^ Rago, Carmela. "That Time of the Months . . ".
  104. ^ "An interview with Rose Troche - AfterEllen". 7 March 2012.
  105. ^ "Gregory Whitehead".
  106. ^ "Home Page of Dolores Wilber - Home".
  107. ^ Strell, Meghan. "Michael Zerang".


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