Joan Dickinson


Joan Dickinson is a contemporary American artist, writer, director, curator, and educator. Her creative practice combines visual and performance art, photography, writing, farming and environmental restoration, astrology, ceremony, and palliative care. Dickinson holds a master’s in performance from Columbia College and a doctorate from the Literary Arts program at the University of Denver.

History

Early Work

Dickinson along with others was part of an experimental arts scene that flourished in Chicago during the late 1980s through the early 2000s taking place, primarily, in night clubs . Locations included, Lounge Ax, Cabaret Metro; experimental performance venues such as and ; and alternative, non-profit galleries including Randolph Street Gallery, and N.A.M.E.
Around this time, Dickinson also worked as a production artist and graphic designer on such varied projects as Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Arizona and two of Peter Sellars' operas, Tannhäuser and The Death of Klinghoffer.

Site-specific, Land, and Place-based Work

For a twelve-year period, Joan lived on a 300-acre wetland sanctuary in rural McHenry County, Illinois, where she created a series of eight immersive, dense, and ambitious works including Hunter’s Moon, ''Flower, The Architecture of Honey, Drove Road, and Devotion'' each based in the surrounding landscape. Many of these works took place over the period of a year and culminated in an event in which performers, actors, musicians, installations, objects, movements and actions, and texts converged. Documentation and writing from several of these projects are featured in an extensive photo-essay in TDR.
In roughly the same time period and continuing into the present day, other work has been presented in various contemporary art spaces and theaters including: Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, 3rd Eye Center & Center for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, PS 122 in New York City, Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica, Illinois State Museum in Springfield, and many locations in Chicago including the Lyric Opera, the Chicago Cultural Center, Hyde Park Art Center, Randolph Street Gallery, the Lurie Garden at Millennium Park, and the Museum of Contemporary Art. Other venues include Experimental Sound Studio, Club Lower Links, Cabaret Metro, and, in Platte Forum, Counterpath Press, and Common Name Farm.

With Goat Island

Dickinson's multifaceted practice includes a significant and long-time collaboration with internationally renowned Goat Island between 1988-1990, additionally contributing to the 2019 retrospective at the Chicago Cultural Center: ''goat island archive – we have discovered the performance by making it.''

Selected Work

The Nocturnal Farmer's Almanac for Common Name Farm Goat Island Retrospective/Exhibition + Performances + Symposium The Cooking School of the Air Coming in from the North The Dream of the Owl Sisters
  • "Mule Deer Are Everywhere in the West" from A Poetic Inventory of Rocky Mountain National Park
  • "Lindow Man" from Fat Boy Review With All that She Is She Desires to Give Great Pleasure Degrees of Wildness/The Charioteer The Language of Birds Atmosphere In the Palace of the Night Heron as part of Bird Brain with Jennifer MonsonDevotion Drove Road The Architecture of Honey Flower Hunter’s Moon Hula Big Goddess Powwow Black Cake White Castle Mental Beauty/Enduring Affection We Got A Date ; Can’t Take Johnny to the Funeral as part of Goat island Performance Group