Friday, December 17, 2010

All Art Friday

All Art Friday

You, Too, Can Be a Philanthropist

United States Artists, which I last mentioned here, devotes a section of its Website to "Projects" that anyone may fund directly. Its current projects list encompasses visual arts, music, crafts and traditional arts, dance, theatre arts, literature, architecture and design, and media such as film. 

Each listing is fully described on its own page, along with the number of days remaining for public funding, amount of money to be raised and amount remaining to be raised, and number of supporters. Levels of pledges for different projects range from $25 to $1,000 or more, which means that anyone with some extra change and a desire to help an artist accomplish a project can do so. Artists who post projects on USA's site offer a variety of "perks" to their supporters, from public recognition on social media sites, to a signed print of a design, to exclusive access to a project blog, to an original photograph, hand-made thank you card, or CD.

The kinds of projects seeking funding vary widely, from creation of a temporary outdoor installation on MIT's campus that will transform wind into light, to development of an educational resource documenting a young poet's exchange with his mentor, poet Donald Hall, to an Arctic expedition. There are a number of success stories. For example, artist Judith Schaechter's project to make stained glass windows for historic Eastern State Penitentiary in Pennsylvania had a $5,000 goal. Supporters pledged more than $10,000, or 205 percent. Industrial designer and Readymade Projects founder Stephen Burks sought $7,500 to produce a documentary series, "Made on Earth"; he received pledges of more than $15,000, or 201 percent of his target. In some cases, supporters' pledges are eligible for corporate or foundational matching funds.

Any artist who has received an award or grant from a USA partner or recognized organization is eligible to post a project. Go here for details.

Even if you can't afford to give to a specific project, visit the site and take a look around just to inform yourself about the breadth and depth of artistic initiatives. 

Exhibitions Here and There

✭ The Provincetown Art Association and Museum, Provincetown, Massachusetts, is showing Rachel Brown Photographs: Nature in Action" through January 30, 2011. Work in the exhibit is drawn primarily from three of Brown's projects: "Clouds", "Snow", and "Fieldwork", which Brown describes as "a documentary study of the things people make as part of their work, creating a new landscape, interacting with nature, rebuilding the architecture of place."


Rachel Brown, Field Work, Drystone Walls, Northern Ireland, 2003
20" x 22" (51 cmx 56 cm approx)
© 2003 Rachel Brown

Brown, who has photographed and exhibited around the United States and abroad, including in France, Northern Ireland, the Netherlands, and Germany, has shot authors' portraits and book covers; most recently, she did the cover for Out of the Earth: Ecocritical Readings of Irish Texts, edited by Christine Cusick (Cork University Press, 2010), and for Hult Hely, a translation into Hungarian of a collection of poetry of Seamus Heaney (Kalligram, 2010). Her own books include Rachel Giese: The Donegal Pictures. (Faber & Faber and Wake Forest  University Press, 1987).

PAAM on FaceBook

✭ In Louisville, Kentucky, Speed Art Museum has mounted "Modern in the Making: Design 1900-2000", on view until April 3. The exhibition, drawn from the museum's own 20th Century design collection, features furniture, ceramics, silver, and other objects ranging from French Art Deco to Bauhaus to mid-century Modern to Post-Modern.

Speed Art Museum on FaceBook 

✭ Connecticut's Center for Contemporary Printmaking, in Norwalk, is showing through January 30 "Leona Pierce & Antonio Frasconi: Woodcuts". (Pierce is Frasconi's late wife.) Frasconi (1919—),  of Argentine birth, is known for "The Disappeared", a haunting series of woodcuts depicting persons who were "disappeared" during the period of dictatorships in Uruguay that ended in 1985; Pierce (1921-2002) is known for colorful woodblock prints of children at play in New York City streets. Both artists are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art and the Brooklyn Museum of Art, among other museum collections. For this show, Frasconi is exhibiting work inspired by the wetlands and marshes of Long Island Sound.


Antonio Frasconi, Migration IX, Woodblock Print, 2008
© 2008 Antonio Frasconi

Center for Contemporary Printmaking on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

Article on the Exhibition in Minuteman News

The Woodcuts of Antonio Frasconi (You will find here an excerpt of a film about Frasconi by his son Pablo Frasconi. The excerpt shows Frasconi creating a woodcut.)

The Woodcuts of Antonio Frasconi on FaceBook

Antonio Frasconi Papers

Biographical Information about Leona Pierce (Scroll down; entries are in alphabetical order. An image in the New York Public Library Collection is shown.)

Leona Pierce, "Goose", Color Woodcut on Paper, in Smithsonian American Art Museum Collection

✭ The Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, New York City, is presenting through January 9, 2011, the "National Design Triennial: Why Design Now?", which looks at the work of designers addressing human and environmental problems across the many fields of design practice. At the exhibition's Website, you'll find information on some of the project themes, including energy, mobility, health, communication, and simplicity. 

Cooper-Hewitt on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

Coming Up in the New Year

The 16th Annual Los Angeles Art Show 2011 is scheduled for January 19-23 at the Los Angeles Convention Center. Presented by the Fine Art Dealers Association, the event is open to approved galleries from around the world, and will feature artwork from all genres, painting to video, and from all periods, from Old Masters to Contemporary. In addition to the gallery exhibitors, there will be a Guest Country Program and a series of lectures with curators, artists, collectors, art writers, architects, art history scholars, and film producers and directors.

LAAS on FaceBook, Twitter, and Flickr


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

just imagining how much art is going on in the world right now.