I'm very proud to have successfully achieved a Senior Certified Professional status with the Society for Human Resource Management.

I'm honored to be leading a Graduate Studio Critique Course this semester in The University of Texas at Austin's Department of Art & Art History program.

I had fun with Austin-based photographer Whitney Arostegui out at Laguna Gloria, and now have some great new headshots to prove it. Here's to great things in 2019!

The feminist academic publisher Demeter Press, based in Bradford, Ontario, Canada recently announced that Inappropriate Bodies: Art, Design, and Maternity, edited by Rachel Epp Buller & Charles Reeve, will finally be released this fall.

I'm thrilled that my essay, “The Mother-Shaped Hole: Lise Haller Baggesen’s Mothernism,” related to the exhibition I organized at The Contemporary Austin in 2016, opens the first chapter, on "Body Politics."

** Update: an audio recording of the conversation is here.**

Conversation at The Contemporary Austin – Jones Center
700 Congress Avenue, Austin, TX 78701
Saturday, January 12, 2019 (Noon)

Bob Nickas has followed the art of Huma Bhabha since the late nineties, having written about and exhibited her work since 2005, most prominently in that year's Greater New York, at New York's MoMA PS1. Huma Bhabha participated in two iterations of his exhibition Every Revolution Is a Roll of the Dice, first at Ballroom Marfa in 2007 and subsequently at Paula Cooper Gallery, New York, 2009.

A well-known curator and writer, Nickas has organized more than one hundred exhibitions worldwide since 1984. Among his many books are Painting Abstraction: New Elements in Abstract Painting and four collections of writing and interviews: Theft Is Vision, Live Free or Die, The Dept. of Corrections, and the recently released Komplaint Dept.
Associate Curator Julia V. Hendrickson engages Bob Nickas for a conversation about her current exhibition Huma Bhabha: Other Forms of Life and its themes of culture, history, and conflict.

Event is free with Museum Admission. Museum Members receive free admission, however, reservations are recommended for all guests using the "Purchase Tickets" link. Purchase your admission ticket in advance to reserve your spot!

IMAGE: Left: Julia V. Hendrickson. Photograph by Whitney Arostegui. Right: Bob Nickas. Photograph by Jason Metcalf.

Houston-based video artist Ryan Hawk was kind enough to collaborate with The Contemporary Austin on this promotional video for the exhibition Huma Bhabha: Other Forms of Life.

On October 17 and 24, 2018, I had the great pleasure of introducing two of Huma Bhabha's favorite films at the Austin Film Society as part of this film series, The Third Man, 1949 (Dir. Carol Reed, UK) and The Thing, 1982 (Dir. John Carpenter, USA).

The Contemporary Austin presents: Other Forms Of Life — A four-part film series programmed by Huma Bhabha.

From sci-fi horror to film noir to docufiction, this greatly varied and surprising series of films has been programmed by artist Huma Bhabha to coincide with her exhibition Other Forms Of Life, on view at The Contemporary Austin – Jones Center on Congress Avenue from September 15, 2018 to January 13, 2019.

Co-presented with Austin Film Society at AFS Cinema, 6406 N. Interstate 35 Frontage Rd. #3100, Austin 78752.

It is always a treat to get to work with the Chicago-based Sonnenzimmer (Nick Butcher & Nadine Nakanishi). I've known them for a decade now (whew!), and in that time I've worked with them as an editor, a publication production manager, a writer, and a curator, and every experience has been equally inspiring and engaging. They are both such brilliant people, and I'm glad to call them my friends.

They're bringing their delightful, printmaker-selves all the way to Austin this month to open a new exhibition at grayDUCK Gallery, and I've written an essay on their recent body of work called Café Avatar. I'm always appreciative when they are game for me to be playful with art writing (my favorite thing to do!), and when we can bounce ideas off of one another in image and in language.

Look for the essay in my "Writing" section of the website, or here.

And, don't miss a great new body of work from my dear one, Anthony B. Creeden—Nick and Nadine invited him to exhibit in the "Decoy" front space of grayDUCK, and I have to say, these new paintings are kickin'! His show is called Cacti and Semaphore.

This awesome publication (screen printed, of course), titled A Glimpse and a Glance on the Ice Rink. also includes a conversation between Nick, Nadine, and Anthony, as well as an essay on Anthony's work by the lovely Jessi DiTillio, art historian and curator extraordinaire.

It's been fun recently learning about the incredible pool of local artist talent in central Texas through jurying prizes, pools, and awards! In the fall I was a regional judge for the Bombay Sapphire Artisan Series, and this month I'm participating as a juror in the Artist Foundation of San Antonio Visual Artist award category. Then, in a few weeks, I'll meet up with the City of Austin's Art in Public Places (AIPP) team for a review of their Local and Pre-Qualified Artist Pool.

Such a wide range of ideas, projects, and passions!

Sweet Caroline Picard (of the kick-ass Green Lantern Press and Sector 2337 in Chicago) invited me to read just before the holidays at Austin's amazing independent bookstore, Malvern Books. The occasion was to celebrate the release earlier in 2017 of Coco’s graphic novel The Chronicles of Fortune. Along with Caroline (stage name, Coco), Devin King, Anthony Madrid, and Nadya Pittendrigh also read their work.

If you'd like, you can watch my portion of the reading (about nine minutes) here.

I read from my 2011 poetry chapbook, Grow No Moss.

I'm excited to share that soon a long-form essay of mine ("The Mother-Shaped Hole: Lise Haller Baggesen’s Mothernism") will appear in a forthcoming volume from Demeter Press, titled Inappropriate Bodies: Art, Design, and Maternity.

The Contemporary Austin has also recently released a video recording of the discussion Lise and I had in February 2016, which you can watch above.

And, if you would like to listen to Lise's Mothernist Audio Guide to Laguna Gloria you can do so here on SoundCloud. You can also read the text here on the museum's website.

We had fun with Rebecca Marino in this recent interview about the Permanent.Collection project over at Conflict of Interest!


Photo credit: Rebecca Marino, 2015.