These Photos Make Up The Second Half Of The Sacred Spaces, Created Over The Past Six Weeks. As The Project

These photos make up the second half of the sacred spaces, created over the past six weeks. As the project went along, I enjoyed experimenting with new ideas like alternatively shaped spaces, spaces that extended onto walls, and encompassing benches for sitting.

I also was fortunate to catch two people using the space I'd placed in McNabb, IL. It wasn't too surprising, though, as I'd created it at the back of the meetinghouse used by the Illinois Yearly Meeting of Friends. With so many Friends in attendance, it was only natural they'd make use of a Quaker-inspired space. During the weekend there, other Friends who discovered that I'd created the space shared with me how much they enjoyed it. It was quite a gratifying experience.

Towards the end of summer, I started placing the spaces in some of Chicago's ethnic neighborhoods, translating the phrases into Cantonese, Mandarin, Polish, Spanish, and Greek.

(My Yia Yia's tombstone, located in a cemetery on the outskirts of Champaign near my great grandparents', Uncle Johnny's, and Aunt Vi's tombstones)

Ever since the death of my Uncle Johnny my sophomore year of college, I've worried about what would become of his side of the family's Greek legacy and more specifically, what would become of the Trebellas family name. Uncle Johnny was the patriarch of the Greek side of my family and the last remaining child of my great grandparents. Because of the premature deaths of Yia Yia, my great aunt Vi, and the estrangement of my great aunt Mary, he was the only blood relative I knew from that generation.

When he passed away I understood that it became my responsibility to carry on our Greek heritage for the subsequent generations. Though I only speak a little Greek and didn't grow up Orthodox, since Uncle Johnny's death, I've worked to memorize my immigrant great grandparent's life stories  and have delved much more seriously into Greek cooking, among other things. 

Still, the issue of our family name has always bothered me. The only relative I know of with the name Trebellas is my great aunt Artemis, Uncle Johnny's wife. Once she's gone, beyond a few distant and unreachable cousins, the name will go too. It's been hard for me to know what to do to preserve it. I thought a bit about changing my last name or adding it as a second middle name, but both decisions seemed too drastic. Just a few weeks ago, I hit upon the idea of using it as a pseudonym when making art. The idea struck me as a bit pretentious at first, but talking it over with a few people, it began to seem like a more reasonable idea. After all, there's a long traditions of actors, writers, and artists using professional names. Furthermore, my Uncle Stevie already uses Steven Trebellas as his pen name when he writes poetry.

The only thing that will be odd about this second name is that my art-making activities and non art-making activities are so intertwined. I'll have to use one name when writing about art, curating it, etc. and another when making it. Still, despite the inevitable confusion, I'm feeling good about this decision. It puts me at ease about the future of the Trebellas name and gives me confidence that I can help carry it on. After all, whether or not I have kids, at least I'll have some sort of legacy through art. Art is what lasts, as they say, I'm glad that through that, this name can too.

These patterns are featured on the walls of the restored Dutch structures of Dejima in Nagasaki. Dejima was a tiny, artificial island inhabited by Dutch traders from 1640 to the early 19th century. During that isolationist period no foreigners were allowed into Japan. The Dutch were given the island to use as a port for the one ship allowed in a year. Besides introducing countless European products to Japan (billiards, beer, chocolate, tomatoes, clovers, cabbage, coffee, paint, and the piano being the major ones), Dejima was home to an interesting mix of Dutch and Japanese architectural styles. These wallpaper patterns, for example, were based off of Dutch designs but hand printed onto Japanese paper using a Japanese printing method. The effect is gorgeous, especially against the exposed timber of the Japanese-style walls. 

With Farewell Tevatron I wanted to use art to provide a forum for Batavians to voice their feelings about the shut down of Fermilab's particle accelerator. Named the Tevatron, it was was until 2009 the largest particle accelerator in the world, and until September 30th was operated by Fermilab scientists on the east side of Batavia. Fermilab plays heavily into the town's image of their community. Its main building is featured on welcome signs alongside a windmill, the symbol of the city. Batavia's slogan was also changed in 1983 from "The Windmill City" to "City of Energy" to encompass the legacy of both the windmill industry and Fermilab. I wondered then, how would people feel about its shut down? The Chicago Tribune, Kane County Chronicle, and Chicago Reader, among other newspapers have written about the scientists' reaction to the change, but none have focused on the Batavia residents.

For the street art response, I asked artist Michael Jewell to create illustrations of images that related to Batavia and Fermilab's history. There are twelve in all, some are symbols of Batavia's history like a windmill, fox (the Fox River bifurcates the town), or ghost of Mary Todd Lincoln (she briefly stayed in Batavia's sanitarium following the death of President Lincoln). Others are particles discovered by Fermilab like the tau neutrino or top quark. Each image then responds to the accelerator's legacy and is accompanied by an image of a bulldog (the high school mascot) asking residents what their feelings are: How do  you feel about the shut down of the Tevatron? Write something! 80 images were placed around the high school and downtown area.

After two weeks, I returned to remove the installation and was excited to find responses left by residents. Overall, residents' displayed a variety of emotions, mainly sadness, anger, optimism, an acceptance. The most impressive response was a woman who took down several fliers, scanned them, printed out new ones, and made her own shrine to the Tevatron on a telephone pole, complete with chalked hearts and a white bow.

Other responses were:

• "Well the probability that we will find something before the LHC [Large Hadron Collider] is low, so we have to move on to new and better things. Muon Collider FTW"

The Muon Collider is a yet to be realized particle accelerator that speeds up muons. Fermilab is a possible future site for the collider.

•"I'm angry. We should still conduct research here no matter the ring size."

•"A part of me just died, but another part has just been born."

The first project I want to exhibit at my jr. high is Face Your Pockets, a project created in 2007 by Russian artists Timur Akhmetov and Yulia Yakushova. The project aims to show what the possessions we carry with us say about who we are. To do that it invites anyone to place their face and the contents of their pockets and bag onto a scanner and his scan. Since 2007, hundreds of people have participated from all over the globe. I'm excited to have the jr. high students participate as well!

Currently the project's website is down, but you can see a lot of good scanograms on flickr here. It's odd to look at how many of what I carry with me now are things I didn't own or use in America. The cloth in the lower left corner is for drying my hands, as paper towels are a rarity in Japanese schools. The small oval above my left eye is my signature stamp that I use to sign in at work and stamp important documents. Even within my pencil case (ubiquitous among students at my school) is the red-topped Japanese glue that I'd never seen in the US. Then of course, there's my car key. Never owning a car was a dream I had to give up after moving to rural, public transit-less Japan. It's fascinating to look at the other Face Your Pockets photos and see the wide variety of objects they take with them.

The artist is neither a guru, nor a guide, nor a model, nor a rock star. The artist must not exceed his intrinsic role, which is to feel life and express it through his own spectacles.

Fabien Verschare in What is the Artists's Role Today, page 46.