Congratulations to Cornelia Lein on the successful completion of her Public Collectors Joong Boo Residency!
Cornelia has been visiting Chicago from Vienna, Austria for a residency at Latitude—a digital printing lab. She was tipped off to the Joong Boo Residency Program by Joseph Wade Wilcox, and Cornelia was particularly attracted to the idea of a residency within another residency. Though her time is up at Latitude, this as as close as I've gotten to a Russian nesting doll effect. I should also note that Cornelia is the second Latitude Resident to also become a Joong Boo Resident. Nathan Pearce also had a residency at Latitude.
We met up at Joong Boo on a particularly gloomy damp afternoon and easily found some counter space. Cornelia had the Bi Bim Bap and I decided to go for the complicated-but-worth-it Spicy Cod Soup, which has a lot of little bones to try not to choke on.
Cornelia Lein came to Chicago with the intention of producing a body of work based on collecting ontologies, doll houses, and the art inside of them. She took photos at the Museum of Science and Industry and will also be visiting the Thorne Miniature Rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago. While here, she began working on an additional unplanned project when she discovered a German language lesson book in a Chicago antique store. Using a digital scanner as a camera, she created a series of photos of her hands holding objects opposite the words for those objects in German (with the phonetic pronunciations from the found book). She also included English translations, with a phonetic pronunciation of how a German-speaking person might say the word in English.
I brought a few publications for Cornelia to have, and she brought her work in progress for me to look at. Trying to view her books at the snack counter proved challenging so we decided to use some boxes of frozen swimming crabs as a display surface. Surely this must be the first time in Joong Boo's history that frozen crabs have been used to support an impromptu artist presentation. The frozen crabs seemed okay with this, though I did notice some live crabs that looked to be on the verge of escaping their basket. Maybe they were trying to get a closer look?
After lunch, Cornelia did some food shopping and told me about a regular series of artist dinners that she and a group have back in Vienna where everyone converges on a kind of secret Szechuan restaurant. The meals are a way for artists to get away from their solitary studio practices and have some focused time together. She wanted to bring some things back for participants in those dinners. For myself, I picked up a package of sweet buns that turn out to be cream-filled (not what I was hoping for) and a 5-pack of frozen corn and chocolate ice cream sandwiches (discussed in previous Joong Boo Residency reports).
After a series of residencies with people I already know, I was glad to return to the experience of sharing a meal with someone I've never met before, so thanks to Cornelia for her openness.
Joong Boo Residencies are fully booked for the rest of October and all of November, but you can still apply for December, so long as you are a creative person that does not live in Chicago. Details here.