Friday, July 8, 2016

All Art Friday

All Art Friday

All Art Friday Spotlights

✦ Princeton Architectural Press has published Pen to Paper: Artists' Handwritten Letters from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art (June 2016). Letters by Mary Cassatt, Frederic Church, Howard Finster, Winslow Homer, Grandma Moses, Georgia O'Keeffe, Maxfield Parrish, Jackson Pollock, and other artists are included. Accompanying each letter is an archival image of the artist or a related artwork and a full transcription.



Smithsonian's Archives of American Art on FaceBook

✦ I recently learned about visual artist, poet, and writer Mary-Kim Arnold (Kim Mi Jin) from the Michigan Quarterly Review, which interviewed Arnold about her fascinating installation Guidelines for Arrival and Transfer: Artifacts, which has been exhibited at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Arnold's project involved the use of Joomchi, a Korean paper-making technique; the creation, in fabrics that had belonged to Arnold's mother, of "toddler dresses" representing the kind of dress the artist wore when she came to America; and a video projection, arrival and transfer. Read the interview.

✦ Next Wednesday, July 13, Stephanie Midon, curatorial assistant at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, gives a gallery talk about the art of Alison Saar, whose printmaking techniques are explored in the NMWA's special exhibition "Alison Saar in Print". The talk runs from noon to 12:30 p.m.; admission is free and reservations are not required.

✦ Photographer Rania Matar, whose work is included in the NMWA's exhibition "She Who Tells a Story", on view through July 31, has published a book of portraits of girls ages 8-12, L'Enfant-Femme (Daimiani Editore, 2016). The book, in English with 97 illustrations, includes an introduction by Queen Noor, an essay by author Lois Lowry, and an afterword by arts curator Kristen Gresh. Matar, who was born and grew up in Lebanon, lives in the United States.

Rania Matar on FaceBook and Twitter

✦ In Box of Delights, below, English artist Amanda Cobbett demonstrates her textile skills. In addition to textiles, including vintage fabrics, Cobbett works with paper, wire, and found objects to create her sculptures of birds and other animals, trees, flowers, and people.



Amanda Cobbett on FaceBook

Exhibitions Here and There

✭ The American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, Washington, D.C., has five summer exhibitions on view through August 14. They are: "Contemporary North Korean Art: The Evolution of Socialist Realism", which addresses the painting medium Chosonhwa; "South Korean Art: Examining Life Through Social Realities", a look at the Realist paintings of 10 South Korean contemporary artists; the Alper Initiative's "The Looking Glass: Artist Immigrants of Washington", celebrating the work of 10 Latin Americans, including Carolina Mayorga (Colombia), F. Lennox Campello, Ric Garcia, and Jose Ygnacio Bermudez (Cuba),  Joan Belmar and Juan Downey (Chile), Muriel Hasbrun (El Salvador), Frida Larios (Honduras), Irene Clouthier (Mexico), and Naul Ojeda (Uruguay), who came to the region over the last 60 years; "Art Cart: Honoring the Legacy", an inter-generational, interdisciplinary project in which professional visual artists ages 62 and older are paired with students in art, healthcare, and aging to document and preserve their artistic legacy; and "Bandits & Heroes, Poets & Saints: Popular Art of the Northeast of Brazil", which examines via photography, sculptures, paintings, religious objects, and poetry collections how ancient indigenous and contemporary cultures and traditions have been blended to reflect the society's vibrancy. See the exhibition title links for images and related events.

Jin-ju Lee, Conversation of All Those Whose Lips Are Sealed, 2012
Color Pigment on Fabric
(South Korean Art Exhibit)

American University Museum on FaceBook and Twitter

✭ Fifty works by Matisse (1868-1954),  along with major works by contemporaries Picasso, Derain, Braque, Renoir, Modigliani, and Miro, are on view for the first time outside Europe at Oklahoma City Museum of Art. The Oklahoma Humanities Council is the show's sponsor. "Matisse in His Time: Masterworks of Modernism from the Centre Pompidou, Paris" includes paintings, prints, drawings, and sculptures from the late 19th Century to post-World War II. The OCMA is the sole North American venue for the exhibition, which continues through September 18. Tickets are required.

A catalogue, Matisse In His Time (Ore Cultura, 2015) with essays by Matisse scholars is available. The museum also is offering exhibition-related films, workshops, and other events. View a selection of images at the exhibition link above.

OCMA on FaceBook and Twitter



✭ For her sculptural installation Reliquary, on view at Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, Anna McKee of Seattle sewed 3,405 glass ampules to 678 silk panels, row by row, creating the sense of a wave that, when looked upon from a distance, appears to be a colorful graph. Inspired by time on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, the piece represents McKee's vision of 68,000 years of temperature history from an ice sheet. The artwork, in the museum's Casazza Gallery, is on view through September 18.



NMA on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

✭ Michigan's Kalamazoo Institute of Arts is showing through September 18 painter Barbara Takenaga's series of large and small paintings that evoke the cosmos: "Waiting in the Sky II". Describing herself as one who "love[s] the idea of the Big Bang," Takenaga, known for her use of dots, applies colors boldly in complex patterns that appear to both "radiate and recede in what seems to be infinite space." View selections of her beautiful paintings online.

Barbara Takenaga at D C Moore Gallery, New York City

KIA on FaceBook and Twitter

✭ Work by nine contemporary Aboriginal Australian artists, drawn from the Debra and Dennis Scholl Collection, is on exhibit in "No Boundaries: Aboriginal Australian Contemporary Abstract Painting" at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. All from Australia's Western desert, the featured artists are Paddy Bedford, Janangoo Butcher Cherel, Tommy Mitchell, Ngarra, Boxer Milner Tjampitjin, Warlimpirrnga Tjapaltjarri, Tjumpo Tjapanangka, Billy Thomas (Joongoorra), and Prince of Wales (Midpul). A selection of exhibition images may be seen at the link above. 

An illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition, which has been presented at Nevada Museum of Art, where it originated; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Perez Art Museum Miami, and Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History. The show at HFJM closes August 14.


Exhibition Catalogue Cover Art

HFJ Museum of Art on FaceBook and Twitter

✭ Continuing through September 18 at Arizona's Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art is "southwestNET | Sama Alshaibi: Silsia", comprising photographic installations and videos by the Iraq-born artist, who is a resident of Tucson, Arizona, and Ramallah, Palestine. (Silsila means "link".) The work is the result of Alshaibi's visits to 15 predominantly Muslim countries, including Egypt, Morocco, Oman, and Palestine, whose landscapes Alshaibi has been exploring and documenting since 2009. Alshaibi completed her Silsila project earlier this year. The project is shown in its entirety at SMoCA. Five images are available at the exhibition link above. Also see Silsila images at Alshaibi's Website. Below is a preview.


The exhibition will travel in Fall 2017 to the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

Read Greg Marzullo's article "Palestinian-Iraqi Artist Sama Alshaibi Explores Muslim Identity at SMoCA", Phoenix New Times, May 31, 2016.


SMoCA on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

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