All Art Friday

All Art Friday

The Brain as Art

Formerly a civil rights lawyer, Elizabeth Jameson "discovered" art after receiving a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis in 1991. She derives her artwork primarily from MRIs of her own brain. Jameson gave an interview recently to The Beautiful Brain, which also has produced an online gallery of her work. The Harvard Center for Brain Science has commissioned an installation of four of Jameson's fascinating paintings.

Jameson's Brain Series (Etchings), Silk Paintings, Mixed Media Silk Works, Silk Quilts

National MS Society, "Brains and Beauty: A 'Public Interest Artist' Reimagines Her Life and Re-Images the MRI" (Other articles about Jameson are listed here.)

Filmmaker Cheryl Bowlan produced this wonderful video of Jameson describing how she came to use her brain scans in her art and how the scans could be used to facilitate communication about chronic illness and disability:

Exhibitions Here and There

✭ Only two days are left to see "Whispering Tones", Danish artist Merete Larsen's unique lathe-turned wood vessels at Patina Gallery in Santa Fe. A master with a chain saw and lathe, Larsen, whose work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Art and Design in New York, crafts exceptionally fine vessels, many just millimeters thick, from freshly cut green wood. Go here, here, here, and here to see the pieces in beech sycamore, still on view. Some are polish, a few many-colored, some with acrylics, and others natural. Other recent work may be seen here.

Image at top right: Merete Larsen, Red Polished Beech, 18 cm x 15.5 cm. (Check with the gallery for purchasing information.)

✭ Work of Jay (Bird) Thompson is on show at Green Rice Gallery, Charlotte, North Carolina, through August 1. The exhibition, "Aotearoa: Land of the Long White Cloud", showcases in photography, acrylics, and other media Thompson's inspirations from his seven-month adventures in New Zealand and more than a dozen other countries. Go here for additional examples of Thompson's work.

Image above at left: Jay Thompson, "Ciao Bella", acrylic on canvas (also available as a print).

✭ A show of more than 50 small-scale portraits opened yesterday at the Milwaukee Art Museum and will be on view through October 31. Most of the paintings in "Intimate Images of Love and Loss: Portrait Miniatures" measure less than three inches high. Drawn from the museum's own collection, private collections in the Milwaukee area, as well as England, Europe, and elsewhere in the United States, the miniatures are painted on ivory and set within cases of glass and metal.

The museum's exhibition of "American Quilts: Selections from the Winterthur Collection" continues through September 6. In conjunction with the show, the museum is holding an Amish quilt auction on July 24, 9:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m., with registration beginning at 8:00 a.m.

✭ Opening at Concourse Gallery in San Francisco on July 20 is "Contemporary Mosaic Art: An Exquisite Collection", curated by JoAnn Loctov, principal at Bella Figura Communications, and artist Kate Kerrigan.

This fine art exhibition promises to be exactly as its title describes, for it features the work of six renowned mosaic artists, a number of whom I've featured in earlier posts: Ellen Blakely, Kate Kerrigan, Sonia King, Julie Richey, Lillian Sizemore, and Laurel True. All of the award-winning artists have been working in mosaic for more than a decade, using such materials as asphalt, 24k gold leaf tile, marble, concrete, tree bark, granite, copper, rock crystals, tempered glass, shells, and semi-precious stones. They produce custom public and private mosaic installations around the world.

Image above at right: Julie Richey, "Nightshirt", Smalti, 24k gold smalti, dichroic glass, stained glass, smalti, filati, millefiori; Winner, Grand Prize, Orsoni Internacional 2009.

Included in the show are 14 works of mixed media mosaic art in 2D and sculpture.

The show will continue through October 1.

The gallery is located at 555 California Street, San Francisco. For hours and other information, contact Jan Casey of Casey & Associates Art Advisors, 415-834-2394.

Image above at left: Kate Kerrigan, "Perspective Golden Gate Bridge", Smalti.

Kazaan Viveiros: Artist in Residence

Kazaan Viveiros, whose exhibition at Alexandria, Virginia's Athenaeum was the subject of a post in January, is a visiting artist-in-residence at Torpedo Factory Art Center during the month of July. Kazaan will be in Studio #301 every Tuesday through Saturday throughout this month. The Torpedo Factory, one of the largest art centers in the United States, with more than 140 artists occupying its studios, is at 105 North Union Street, Old Town Alexandria; hours are 10:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m. daily.

Call for D.C. Artists

The District of Columbia Commission on the Arts and Humanities has issued a call for artists for Art Bank 2010. The call is open to any artist who resides or maintains studio space in Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, with preference given to District residents. The theme for Art Bank is "District Identities: Depictions of Washingtonian Life, Landscapes, and Cultural Legacies. The DCCAH is looking for two- and  three-dimensional works — prints, drawings, mixed media, paintings, photographs, ceramics, sculpture, digital media, video art. It will give special attention to innovative photography. The deadline for submissions is August 2. Go here for the prospectus and entry forms.

Artists Create iPhone App

Artist John Baldessari has joined ranks with For Your Art to create a new iPhone app that will allow users to take on the persona of a 17th Century Dutch still-life painter. Creation of the app, underwritten with the generous financial sponsorship of arts channel Ovation, celebrates in a unique way Baldessari's retrospective, "Pure Beauty", at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the show runs through September 12. Designed for users with no artistic skills, the app allows 38 elements of the oil painting "Banquet Still Life", in LACMA's collection, to be rearranged at will. Go here to learn more about Baldessari's concept for the app.

David Hockney is another only artist enamored of technology. Go here for a New York Review of Books article on his passion for iPhone apps.

Artist Trading Cards

Baseball and other sports fans trade cards; so, why not artists and their aficionados? Active trading of Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) takes place the world over. There's even an ATC Quarterly, published in Canada, that tracks artistic trends in such cards and offers artists opportunities to share information about their card creations, themes, techniques, and ideas.  Artists from the United States, Canada France, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, Singapore, Netherlands, Italy, Japan, Lebanon, and other nations participate in a collaborative network called Artist Trading Cards, founded in 1997. Images of the collaborative artists' cards are here (click on artists' names to view the ATCs). The cards are self-produced, on card stock and in small editions, and typically measure 2-1/2" x 3-1/2". Because their are originals, they are collectibles.

Another group involved in the creation, trading, and collection of ATCs is Art-e-Zine in the United Kingdom. A bead artist has established her own niche group, Bead Artist Trading Cards.

Inspired by an article describing the use of ATCs in art therapy, art therapist Gretchen Miller has created an ATC exchange for Art Therapy Alliance members of the Materials and Media in Art Therapy subgroup on LinkedIn. Her post on the exchange, which includes a video on making ATCs, is here.

To learn more about ATCs, visit Art in Your Pocket: A Primer on Artist Trading Cards.

Art's Desire

This charming piece, "Art's Desire", written, directed, and animated by New York visual artist-animator Sarah Wickliffe, was the winner of the Gold Student Academy Award for 2007 in Animation.


Art's Desire from Sarah Wickliffe on Vimeo.