Owls and Voles, published by Drawn Lots Press

Owls and Voles by Brian Nerney, Photographs by Regan Golden-McNerney | Make Your Own Book

New Website for 2014

I continue to make art and write about the importance of "place" in contemporary life. For updated images of my artwork and links to my published articles, please go to my new website: regangolden.com

Recent Reviews and Articles

Very excited to be getting in a few more words these days (a cumulative 1850 words). . . recent reviews include:

"The Spectacular of Vernacular" at The Walker Art Center in Art Lies, Issue no. 68
This show will be coming to the The Contemporary Arts Museum of Houston in July, will take a slightly different form there, and it should be interesting to see how it changes in this context with the very different (but equally strong) vernacular style and tradition of Texas.

. . .and an article in Newcity on the panel discussion, "How Chicago are you?" which was at the Graham Foundation in mid-May. The panel consisted of eleven artists, musicians, architects and designers from Chicago including, Alex Lehrnerer, Pamela Fraser, Jimenez Lai, Geoff Goldberg and Damon Locks. Good stuff.
"What's to Like about this place?" in Newcity, May 19 edition.


Also had the wonderful opportunity to write about Huma Bhabha's work in Newcity, just a short review, but really got me interested in her work and process. There is a great interview of Bhabha by Julie Mehrehtu in the catalog for Bhabha's exhibition at Peter Blum Gallery. My review of Huma Bhabha's show at Rhona Hoffman appeared in the April 11 edition of Newcity.

Winter/Spring Reviews. . .

After a brief reprieve from writing while making new work for the show "Pushing Paper" at Dominican University (Jan.26-Feb.26) and taking a week long trip to New York, I am back to writing. Here is a list of my new and upcoming articles:

"Philip Vanderhyden's Outside Group" at Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Newcity, February 2011.

The bulk of my writing time in the past month has been dedicated to my first 1000 word review in print in Art Lies. This show at the Walker is raucous and far-reaching with 40 artworks by 25 different artists:


"The Spectacular of Vernacular" at The Walker Art Center, Spring/Winter Print Edition.

In March look for my first review in the new online journal, Art in Print.

List of Fall / Winter Reviews. . .

I have been terrible about keeping up my blog lately, but am still doing lots of writing. I published several reviews this fall of shows in Chicago. I decided to write about each of these artists because their work either utilized everyday objects in a new way (see Stephanie Syjuco and Alberto Aguilar), or because I was amazed by their intensive process (see Anthony Pearson and Zach Mory), or because their two-dimensional work created a different type of experience for me in the gallery. I am interested in two-dimensional work that engages the gallery, not as installation, but using the relationship between the drawings/paintings and the gallery (both as a literal space and conceptual framework) to expand certain ideas in the work (see Deb Sokolow and Hilary Wilder). These themes just evolved over the course of a few months as I continued writing. Here is the list and links. Enjoy!

"Deb Sokolow at Western Exhibitions," Newcity, December 2010.

"Hilary Wilder's Ornament and Crime at The Suburban Gallery," Art Lies, Fall/Winter 2010. (In print only).

"Light and Air at The Coalition Gallery" (Robin Dluzen, Zach Mory and Connie Wolfe), Newcity, November 2010.

"Things to be next to . . . at Three Walls" (Alberto Aguilar, Peter Fagundo, Warren Rosser and James Woodfill), Newcity, November 2010.

"Anthony Pearson at Shane Campbell Gallery," Newcity, October 2010.

"Stephanie Syjuco's Particulate Matter at Gallery 400," Newcity, September 2010.

Summer Studios Temporary Installation

In the end of July and early August, I assisted Adia Millet in the building of three installations for the Summer Studios project at Threewalls and the Sullivan Galleries at the Art Institute. For a week I was an interloper at the Sullivan Galleries after Adia invited me to fill one of the spaces she had been allocated with an installation that responded to her adjacent installation, "Blood, Sweat & Tears." For more information about this piece you can read Adia's entry about the Summer Studios on the Studio Chicago blog.

While working in the studio, our conversation kept returning to the issue of indeterminacy: what you can't see but know is there, and the limits of what you can ever really know, understand, or identify. There is a sense of uncertainty, ambiguity, potential that lingers in Adia's installation in which an old wooden chest sits beneath floating, irregularly shaped circular forms. A single light casts shadows against the gray walls multiplying these forms and making it nearly impossible to tell whether the rings are coming or going, filling the chest or emptying out. In an adjacent installation, I addressed similar ideas in different materials: a granite rock (not from Plymouth, but close) is tightly wrapped in paper ribbons opposite a pile of sand from Cape Cod that buries an unfurling cream-colored bow. These two objects have a reciprocal relationship in that the rock will eventually dissolve into sand and the sand will someday be compressed into stone. Casting shadows on the rock and the sand is a web of pearl-organ-blobs cut from plastic sheeting. Together they created a strange landscape of plastic, stone and paper that I plan to keep working with. Thanks to all who made this improvised project possible.

Residency at the Harvard Forest

Just recently completed an artist residency at the Harvard Forest near the Quabbin Reservoir in Western Mass. The residency was a time to talk with biologists and ecologists at the Harvard Forest about their research, understanding and view (quite literally how they see the forest). It was also an opportunity to look at the photographs in their archive of the damage that the 1938 Hurricane caused in the forest. I was interested in how scientists photograph the forest versus artists, are they looking for or looking at different aspects of the woods? Are scientists as interested in making a whole, unified image of the forest as a landscape photographer would be? As conversations evolved, the questions shifted more to how does the perception of the forest as ordered or disordered, balanced or imbalanced impact the images that artists or scientists make of the woods?

I was joined on this residency by Jeremy Lundquist, we collaborated on an installation in Fisher Museum at the Harvard Forest. The museum describes the changes that have taken place in the forests of New England over time through dioramas, photographs, and graphs. We worked with the documents that were already on display in the museum and within the conventions of display that existed in this natural history museum. Images of the project will be compiled into a book and posted on our website: http://www.drawnlots.com/