Ten x Ten 2015
Friday Nov 13, 6-10pm
CAD East

Join Elastic Arts, Homeroom and Spudnik Press in the celebration of Ten x Ten 2015 with a gallery event at Chicago Art Department on November 13th. The event will showcase each artist’s print and include music by a DJ and a silkscreen station. The vinyl LP, full-color booklet and digital download will be available in a limited edition of 200. A limited edition of 10, hand-screenprinted and signed 18” square prints by each visual artist will also be available. Admission is free.

The Ten x Ten 2015 Collection is the manifestation of a year-long collaboration involving ten unique partnerships between musicians and visual artists. Producing organizations Homeroom and Spudnik Press along with Guest Curator Elastic Arts
highlight the Chicago free jazz community to investigate how artists across media interpret improvisation.

Each of the 20 distinct contributors have explored their artistic practice in a cross-media collaboration with another artist in a series of live visual art and music performances including a Working Performance at Constellation and a live Recording Performance at Elastic Arts. Working within the genre of jazz and improvised music, the musicians each composed and performed new work in collaboration with a visual artist. Working in tandem with their musician counterpart, each visual artist developed a new screenprinted artwork. The final product of their collaboration is a limited edition LP and a full-color publication featuring each print, statements by each artist/musician pair that illuminates their collaboration, and a digital download link.

“Seeing how each musician and artist pair responded to the direction we gave them has been extremely interesting. We tried to give directions that we’re somewhat strict while we also left a lot of room for openness and creative exploration. Watching the process unfold in different and unpredictable ways–both between the musicians and the artists and the musicians working within the ensemble–has been very eye-opening for me as an improviser and composer.” –Paul Giallorenzo, Ten x Ten 2015 musician and Elastic Arts curator

“This is the first time I’ve done anything like this, so it’s interesting to see how a musician works. Breaking off from traditional notation is sort of the wild west!” –Hannah Ireland, Ten x Ten 2015 visual artist

The vision of Ten x Ten is to go beyond a typical call-and-response collaboration by encouraging artists and musicians to deeply investigate the creative process. Paul Giallorenzo of Elastic Arts hand-selected ten musicians to create an ensemble whose members composed and performed new works for the project. Visual artists were invited by Homeroom Curator Colin Palombi, and represent a broad spectrum of styles and traditions, from street art to pure abstraction.

Ten x Ten 2015 Producing Organizations:
Founded in 2002, Elastic Arts has presented over 2000 events: live music shows, multi-disciplinary performances, theater pieces, literary readings, art exhibitions, and film/video screenings, establishing itself as a leader among grassroots venues and presenting organizations in Chicago and throughout the world.
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Homeroom designs artistic projects and programs with two core values: conversation and collaboration. We build programming structures with artists, audiences, curators and venues to create an artistic dialogue with shared and far-reaching impact.
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Spudnik Press Cooperative was founded on the premise that art should be a democratic and empowering medium, Spudnik Press Cooperative is committed to being an approachable and affordable print shop; a space where professional printmakers merge with aspiring students; a space that encourages collaboration and the sharing of ideas.