We are happy to announce
SARAH BELKNAP AND JOSEPH BELKNAP
as the recipients of our
Monthly Gift(s) for both February and March!
Sarah and Joseph are a Chicago-based,
collaborative, dynamic duo of artists,
educators and citizen scientists.
Through an intensely dedicated,
highly ambitious and refreshingly inquisitive art practice,
Sarah and Joseph have been creating together since 2008.
Propelled by an energy of curiosity
concerning our time and place in the cosmos,
they travel freely between sculpture,
photography, video and performance,
producing work that invites us all
to share in their sense of wonder and excitement.
For the past two months,
we've responded to Sarah and Joseph's
exciting experiments with one of our own:
We call it
THE SOLAR BEHOLDER
for Sarah and Joseph Belknap.
Sarah and Joseph write:
We want to record Sun spots.
We want to draw them; record our angles, conditions and thoughts.
This book will travel a lot and needs to be durable.
We like intense color. We like graph paper. We love the Sun.
It was clear to us from the beginning that this gift
-- for Sarah and Joseph; for February and March --
had to be twice-as-nice, double-the-fun.
It had to be a harmonious dance of many components:
a solar system of a new variety.
Preparing for a practice of observing and documenting
astrological activity is an order far too tall
to embody in a single notebook.
For that reason, we allowed this gift to expand
into a tackle box of sorts:
a beginner's toolkit for the citizen astronomer.
It is our hope that THE SOLAR BEHOLDER will serve
as a reliable instrument for the next chapter in
the Belknaps' exciting adventure through the cosmos.
