All Art Friday

All Art Friday

All Art Friday Spotlights

✭ A fascinating look at technique, process, and instruction in fine art jewelry design and fabrication can be had at Atelier Hg, Laboratory of Jewellery Arts and Sciences, in Caldeon, Ontario, Canada. The company turns out meticulously hand-crafted pieces, using the Japanese technique mokume, among others, and highest-quality gems. Firm principals Jennifer Howard and Ezra Satok-Wolman received training in classical goldsmithing under masters in Florence, Italy, and are certified in gemological sciences. They use their fully equipped foundry for workshops and instruction. Their work is exquisite.

Image Gallery of the Atelier

✭ A special shout-out for Where: 50 years of ending homelessness, which tells in 50 images, 50 words, and 50 voices the story of the Calgary (Canada) Drop-In & Rehab Centre (DI).

The images are the work of professional photographers of C+N Photography; the voices and words are those of clients, staff, volunteers, donors, and others who contributed prose and poetry.

For a sneak peek, go here.

Sales of the book, which launched earlier this week, benefit DI, which provides a wide range of services and programs, including art and music, to rehabilitate and otherwise help those experiencing homelessness. 

✭ I have a deep respect for artists who work with metal. One of the best is James Reynolds, who has a successful commercial and residential business and also exhibits in galleries. His work is in the permanent collections of the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art and the Wheeler School's Public Sculpture Collection, also in Rhode Island. An interesting two-page feature on Reynolds, who works with tinplated steel and copper, appears in Metalsmith Magazine (Vol. 31, No. 2); another, "Proving His Metal" appeared in the March-April 2009 issue of New England Home. The latter article is available online and includes images of the artist's extraordinary work. 

Exhibitions Here and There 

✭ Richmond, Virginia, painter Mark Sprinkle is exhibiting several dozen works, both paintings and prints, at Linden Vineyards near Front Royal. The show, which runs through the end of August, combines Sprinkle's new work (scenes of Italian vineyards) with older pieces.

Sprinkle, who was Senior Fellow in Arts and Humanities at BioLogos Foundation, also is a writer and fine craft artist who designs, hand-carves, paints, stains, and gilds frames at his workshop and studio.

Mark Sprinkle at ArtWay (You'll find here a profile of the artist, an explanation of his process, and a statement about his use of animal emblems, as well as images of his excellent work.)

✭ In Cambridge, Massachusetts, Mobilia Gallery will present June 1-30 "Linda Threadgill: Cultivating Ornament". Threadgill's designs, inspired by patterns and shapes in nature, are beautifully realized. Included in the show is Threadgill's multi-layered, textured, and patterned Rosette Brooch Series, several images of which are here. 

Glen R. Brown, "Linda Threadgill: Conceptualizing Ornament ~ A Penetrating Investigation Into the Nature of Ornamentation", Metalsmith Magazine, 2009 (This is an excellent article on Threadgill's work.)

This past winter Mobilia exhibited Tomie Nagano's Japanese heritage quilts.

✭ Seattle's Traver Gallery is showing through May 29 "dual: the private life of sculpture", featuring the fascinating work of metal artist John Marshall, glass artist Kait Rhoads, and Nancy Worden, who creates wearable objects of metal zippers,  cow bones, pebbles, lead weights, glass, paper, and other seemingly disparate materials.

Nancy Worden, Electric Fence, 2007

Steel, Porcelain, Copper, Gesso, Cow Bone, and Paint

7" x 13.5" x 2"

© Nancy Worden

Kait Rhoads Website and Blog

Nancy Worden Website

Traver Gallery on FaceBook and Twitter

✭ I first saw the work of Caio Fonseca at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in 2004-05 ("Inventions: Recent Paintings by Caio Fonseca"). New paintings by the artist currently are on view through May 23 at The Drawing Room, a gallery in East Hampton, New York. The works, in gouache and mixed media on paper, are in Fonseca's characteristic style, punches of color pulling at the eye as it tries to take in intentioned markings in  abstracted shapes or curving lines that play off against both foreground and background.

(Having viewed the online images, I don't think the new work looks so very different from what I saw seven years ago when I took in the Corcoran exhibit. A quick look at Fonseca's 2008 show at The Drawing Room seems to suggest that the artist is content to mine variations on a theme. Nonetheless, if you have never seen Fonseca's work, do take a look. His best paintings can be engaging.)

Caio Fonseca Images at The Drawing Room

Charlie Rose Interview with Caio Fonseca 

The gallery is showing concurrently "the space between", an exhibit of jewelry and works on paper by East Hampton-based John Iversen. I had the pleasure of seeing Iversen's beautiful hand-made yellow gold and sterling silver pieces at the Smithsonian Craft Show in mid-April (images here).

✭ MIT's List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts, is showing through June 17 "Berenice Abbott: Portraits". The 18 black-and-white portraits by the famed 20th Century photographer were donated to MIT by alumnus Ronald Kurtz and are part of the center's Student Loan Art Collection.

The center is the recipient of a new installation by Scottish sculptor Martin Boyce: Through Layers and Leaves (Closer and Closer). Commissioned for the west lobby wall of the David H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, as part of MIT's Percent-for-Art program, the work is approximately 10 feet high and 95 feet long; the text "closer and closer" appears near the base (see image below). The installation was dedicated April 26.

Martin Boyce, Through Layers and Leaves (Closer and Closer), 2011

Photo: MIT List Visual Arts Center

Koch Institute Public Galleries  (To view the galleries' arresting images virtually, go here.)

More about the KIICR and Boyce's installation can be found here.