All Art Friday

All Art Friday

Exhibitions Here and There

✭ The work of Alex Todorovich (1950-2009) is on view at the Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery at Smith Farm Center, in Washington, D.C.,  until June 19. The show, "How to Get Off a Well-Traveled Road. . . ", presents collage drawings, assemblage sculptures, and beaded jewelry that Todorovich, who was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer at age 54, created in her desire to give expression to what she was experiencing. For Todorovich, who was not trained as an artist, art became a path to connection, love, and the celebration of life, and an exploration of questions for which answers are wanting.

Speaking about her work, Todorovich said, "I've always loved life. But now, at the age of 58, I find myself heading to death. These drawings were first meant as leaving some information about myself for my children. But now I do not know what they are. Kind of an accounting of myself, a review of things that move me."

Image above left: "How to Get Off a Well-Traveled Road" © Alex Todorovich

Go here to view individual artworks.

Limited-edition prints of each of the artworks on view in the gallery are available in two sizes, either framed or unframed. All are printed on archival paper with an Epson Stylus 4000 inkjet, using archival grade inks. Prices range from $100 (9"x12", unframed) to $320 (12.5"x16.5", framed).

✭ Opening June 25 at Washington's National Museum for Women in the Arts are "Ju-Yeon Kim: The In-Between", a two-sculpture installation by Kim in collaboration with the Savannah College of Art and Design; "The Collaborative Print: Works from SOLO Impression"; "June Wayne's Dorothy Series", a series of lithographs in "hyper-realist" style that narrate the life of Wayne's mother as captured in photographs, scrapbook memorabilia, and other documents. All three exhibitions will be on view until September 13.

✭ At San Antonio's San Antonio Museum of Art, work by New York abstract artist Deborah Remington, who died in April, is included in "Psychedelic: Optical and Visionary Art Since the  1960s". Described as the "first-ever look at the development of a 'psychedelic sensibility' in contemporary art of the last 40 years", the exhibition, which continues until August 1, also features works by Al Held, Alex Rubio, Frank Stella, Victor Vasarely, and Alex Grey, among others A 140-page, fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the show.

✭ Drawings and mixed media works on paper by Isaac Payne are showing through June 27 at Green Rice Gallery, Charlotte, North Carolina. The exhibition, "Charcoal Cities: Drawings of People and Places by Isaac Payne", depict imagery and environments that "are everywhere in general and yet nowhere specific." Payne, who has been awarded the 2002 John Paul Wrobbel Painting Prize, the 2001 Mary Seymour Brooks Scholarship for Painting, and the 2000 Sybil J. Gould Scholarship for Excellence in Drawing and Graphic Arts, is the subject of a forthcoming issue of New American Paintings 2010.

✭ The work of superb glass sculptor Shelley Muzlowski Allen is presented in "Against the Surface", opening July 7 at Blue Rain Gallery's Santa Fe location. Allen creates fantastical animal forms of glass and mixed-media, such as horse hair, twine, and steel. Her beautifully crafted sculptures are admired for their depth of color and surface texture. Go here to see of the pieces available through Blue Rain. Images of additional selected work are available here on Allen's site.

The Beaches of Agnes

Mark June 29 on your calendars. That evening, PBS will broadcast Les Plages d'Agnes or The Beaches of Agnes (2009) by French filmmaker Agnes Varda, known for Vagabond, Cleo From 5 to 7, Kung-fu Master!, among others, as well as for her work on Bernardo Bertolucci's Last Tango in Paris, for which she wrote dialogue. In the documentary, the much-honored, eighty-something Varda uses film clips, old photographs, and reenactments to tell the engaging story of her never-dull life, from her youth in Belgium, to her marriage to director Jacques Demy (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg), to her movie-making, to her politics and intellectual concerns. She takes us on a delightful trip. To see the trailer, go here. To read more about the film, go here. 

A podcast of radio journalist Ruth Seymour's interview with Varda is accessible here. At Film Studies for Free, you'll find a trove of links to video interviews and talks and scholarly articles about Varda and her film essays.