All Art Friday

All Art Friday

Focus on Virginia Artists: Potter Richard Busch

Clay artist Richard Busch owns Glenfiddich Farm Pottery, which operates out of a converted 170-year-old dairy barn in Leesburg, Virginia, atop Catoctin Mountain. Busch took up pottery in the 1980s, after a career in magazine editing and writing and photography.

Busch's wheel-thrown and hand-built ceramics are functional, Asian-inspired stoneware — vessels, bowls, plates, teapots, oil jars, cookie jars, garlic keepers, mugs, sake sets, planters, bird houses — and each is stamped with a deer symbol (the pottery takes it name from the Celtic word for "valley of the deer"). Busch achieves his beautiful natural glazes through a two-stage process that includes firing in a salt kiln that Busch built and that he describes in detail on his Website. 

Busch has studied with such master potters as Sybil West of Wrightsville Beach, North Carolina, and Malcolm Davis, formerly a campus minister who now has a mountaintop studio in Upshur County, West Virginia, where he creates work internationally recognized for its shino-type glazes. Busch also has traveled to Japan to research and write about Japanese potters (see his Website for his interesting posts). He sells his work primarily from his studio and showroom by appointment and through galleries and juried exhibitions throughout the United States. He holds several shows and sales a year at the pottery.

Tjelda vander Meijden's "Present Water" Film

Artist Tjelda vander Meijden, who lives in Charleston, South Carolina, has added to her Website a new film that shows off her wonderful paintings and prints, the most recent of which address environmental issues. Travel with her to Iceland, Argentina, Baffin Island, the Arctic and Antarctica, and other locales for her plein air work. The film is beautifully produced. Her "Present Water" series may be viewed here.

Meijden most recently exhibited in June, with Rosemary Cooley, at Washington Printmakers Gallery, Silver Spring, Maryland. Go here to see their work for that show.

Exhibitions Here and There

✭ Printmaker Terry Svat's three-dimensional print-collages on canvas, etchings, collagraphs, and mixed-media works appear in "The Unbroken Line: A Cast of Characters" at Washington Printmakers Gallery. The works are on view until August 1. 

Image shown at left: Terry Svat, "New Life", solar plate etching on Arches cover, 12" x 18"

A graduate of George Washington University Art Therapy Program, Svat has studied, taught, and exhibited her work world-wide. She is a practicing art therapist and art therapy instructor at GW. She is also a member of Washington Printmakers; go here to view her WPG profile.

✭ The Art League in Alexandria, Virginia, is showing Megan Coyle's "Stories in Paper" through August 2. Her collages are crafted from layered and differently shaped bits of magazine photos that give the effect of abstracted paintings. Using her painterly technique, Coyle creates portraits, scapes, animals, and still lifes; she also works on commission. Her exhibition "The Animal Kingdom" will be on view at Goodwin Gallery in Alexandria from August 1 to September 25.

✭ Some 50 sculptures and installations of Charles LeDray are on view through October 17 in the exhibition "workworkworkworkwork" at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Massachusetts. The New York-based artist creates hand-made miniature sculptures in stitched fabrics, carved bone, and wheel-thrown clay, as well as small-scale, thought-provoking vignettes of second-hand clothing shops. The ICA show includes LeDray's Throwing Shadows, a ceramic work of more than 3,000 black porcelain vessels, each less than two inches tall. Be sure to view the slideshow on the exhibition page. Below is LeDray's extraordinary installation Like a Memory: Perspectives on Men's Suits, three still-lifes in miniature. The Telegraph reviewed Like a Memory here. Additional images of LeDray's work are here.

Like a Memory: Perspectives on Mens Suits from Artangel on Vimeo.

✭ The Museum of Fine Arts, also in Boston, opens "Nicholas Nixon: Family Album" on July 28. The show, on view until May 1, 2011, features in its entirety Nixon's well-known series of portraits of the Brown sisters, whom Nixon photographs each year. Also included are Nixon's photographs of daily life with Bebe, his wife, and their children, as well as self-portraits. Go here to view images of the Brown Sisters from 1975 to 2009. Other selected images are here. Another very good source of information about Nixon, selections of images, reviews, and interviews is here.

✭ Rockland, Maine's Farnsworth Art Museum is presenting a number of noteworthy exhibitions: "Alex Katz: New Work", recent work from the artist's own collection, through December 31; "Louise Nevelson", also through the end of the year; and "A Bird's Eye View: Journeying Through 21st Century Climate Change", a multimedia, interdisciplinary, and collaborative exhibition of work by 35 students, which may be seen through August 29. Other exhibitions at the museum, which includes the Wyeth Center, are listed here.

Sound Installation Artistry

In the hands of Swiss artist Zimoun, plastic bags, motors, styrofoam, wood, wires, hoses, and other materials are the stuff of sounds that many of us probably wouldn't or haven't bothered to listen to. This video offers an excellent introduction to Zimoun's sound sculptures and installations. More videos of his work are here.

Zimoun : Sound Sculptures & Installations | Compilation Video V1.9 from ZIMOUN VIDEO ARCHIVE on Vimeo.