Friday, September 11, 2015

All Art Friday

All Art Friday

All Art Friday Spotlights

✦ The highly welcome Alper Initiative for Washington Art, a space dedicated to the art and artists of Washington, D.C., is slated to open on the first floor of the American University Museum at Katzen Arts Center in January 2016. Currently under construction, the space will comprise 2,000 square feet and provide for five exhibitions yearly, as well as art-related programming and resources for art study and encouragement of the metropolitan region's art and creative community; it also will feature a digital archive of Washington art. The project is the result of a major gift from art advocate and AU alumna Carolyn Alper.

Alper Initiative on FaceBook and Twitter

✦ Last month Utah painter Leslie O. Peterson and her wonderful portraits of Mormon leader Joseph Smith's 34 wives were featured in the The New York Times. Peterson calls her watercolor portrait series The Forgotten Wives. According to the article, Peterson will be showing her portraits next month at Utah's Dixie State University at St. George. 

In the video below, Peterson explains why she undertook her project and talks about the women:


Leslie O. Peterson Art Blog

Leslie Olpin Peterson on FaceBook

✦ Work of 55 printmakers is featured in the new book Fine Print: East Anglia's Artists Celebrate 20 Years of the Norwich Print Fair (Mascot Media, 2015). The book is available directly from the publisher and through Amazon.



The Norwich Print Fair Website (This year's fair continues through September 19.)

✦ Fiber artist Sandi Garris, who apprenticed under an Amish master quilter early in her career, currently paints on silk. Her intense sense of color is a distinguishing characteristic of all her pieces. Visit her online galleries to see for yourself. A Pennsylvania resident, Garris will be showing at Virginia's annual Alexandria Arts Festival September 19-20 and at the Historic Shaw Art Fair in St. Louis, Missouri, October 3-4.

✦ Below is a video look at some of the fine art of printmaker Sarah Ross-Thompson of the United Kingdom. Ross-Thompson specializes in collagraphy.



Sarah Ross-Thompson on FaceBook

Exhibitions Here and There

✭ Tonight, in Rockville, Maryland, Artists & Makers Studios opens "Quilting for Change", an international quilt exhibit involving Solar Sister, which seeks to end energy poverty by empowering women economically; The Advocacy Project, which helps members of marginalized communities tell their stories to achieve social change; and Quilt for Change, which aims to raise awareness on global issues affecting women and advocates on behalf of quilters as social-change agents. This important show will continue through September 28.

Below are images from the show of three stunning works by, respectively, Diana Ferguson of Sweetwater, Tennessee; Lorraine Landroche of West Warwick, Rhode Island; and Laura Cooke of Barrington, Rhode Island.


Diana Ferguson, Light for Enlightenment, 24" x 24"
Raw Edge Applique, Piecing, Color Discharge, Free-Motion Quilting
Thread Painting, Embellishment, Fabric Ink Pencils
Courtesy Artists & Makers Studios



Lorraine Landroche, The Giving Circle, 8" x 8"
Machine-Pieced Fabrics, Paint, Embellishments
Courtesy Artists & Makers Studios



Laura Cooke, Good Day Sunshine (Detail)*, 6" x 9"
Fabrics, Raw Edge Applique, Free-Motion Quilting with Rayon
 Cotton Thread
Courtesy Artists & Makers Studios

* See the image of the entire quilt at Quilt for Change.

Artists & Makers Studios on FaceBook and Twitter

Solar Sister on FaceBook and Twitter

The Advocacy Project on FaceBookTwitter, and YouTube

Quilt for Change on FaceBook

✭ Contemporary work from the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art is on show through October 25 in "Into Dust: Traces of the Fragile in Contemporary Art". Included are paintings, sculpture, photography, and video by artists including Gabriel Orozco, Alina Szapocznikow, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Peter Fischli, David Weiss, Alan Saret, Mona Haoum, and Lorna Simpson, who are inspired to explore the fragility of the human condition in both ephemeral and resilient media and forms. A slideshow of selections from the exhibit is available at the exhibition link above.

Philadelphia Museum of Art on FaceBook and Twitter

✭ The Art Museum at the University of Kentucky at Lexington is presenting "Bottoms Up: A Sculpture Survey" through December 18. The show features carved, cast, and assembled works of varying scales and materials, on the floor, on pedestals, suspended from the ceiling, and on the walls. Among artists whose work is on view are John Ahearn, El Anatsui, Alexander Calder, Willie Cole, Tony Matelli, Pablo Picasso, George Rickey, and Rachel Whiteread. Included is a Native American totem pole and a functioning race car created by Federico Pizzurro.

The Art Museum at UK  on FaceBook and Twitter

✭ Continuing through December 5 at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, Georgia, is "Howardena Pindell", a solo exhibition of the internationally renowned and influential abstract artist's oblong and unstretched canvases, as well as works revealing Pindell's experimentation with hole-punched dots, hand-drawn arrows, printed text, and personal postcards. In addition to early works on paper, the show presents examples of Pindell's monumental paintings, important works from her Autobiography series, and her color video Free, White and 21 (1980), which speaks directly to the racism Pindell encountered and carries a strong political statement against discrimination and on the effect of gender.

Distinguishing characteristics of Pindell's work include intricate layering of mixed media, rich textures, creative risk-taking, attunement to color, and painstaking attention to detail and composition. She is the author of The Heart of the Question: The Writings and Paintings of Howardena Pindell (Midmarch Arts Press, 1997), an essay collection. (The book can be ordered through the publisher.)

Pindell will be appearing at a museum-sponsored event with Spelman's president, Dr. Mary Schmidt Campbell, on September 24 at 6:30 p.m. 

Below is a front-cover image of a new publication by Barry Schwabsky, Howardena Pindell: Paintings, 1974-1980 (September 29, 2015), forthcoming from Garth Greenan Gallery and available for pre-order.


Cover Art for Forthcoming Publication on Howardena Pindell

Read Raphael Rubinstein's "The Hole Truth", Art in America, October 30, 2014; John Yau's "The Beauty of Howardena Pindell's Rage", Hyperallergic, May 11, 2014; and Jessica Holmes "Howardena Pindell, Paintings, 1974-1980", The Brooklyn Rail, June 5, 2014.


Spelman College Museum of Fine Art on FaceBook and Twitter

✭ Work by the late poet-turned-sculptor Sy Gresser (1926-2014) is on view in "Stone, Silence and Speech: Sculptures by Sy Gresser" in the Sculpture Garden at American University Museum, Katzen Arts Center, through September 21. Images of three works are may be seen at the exhibition link.

Sy Gresser published more than 700 poems during his life; a selection of the poems and essays on and other information about his work as an artist are available at his Website. Watch a video interview with the artist.

Notable Exhibition Abroad

✭ Painter Noel Paine, whose work I featured in my August Artist Watch column at Escape Into Life, will be exhibiting a selection from his Viennese woodland series at Sechsschimmel Galerie in Vienna through October 2.

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