All Art Friday

All Art Friday

All Art Friday Spotlights

✦ Creating DIY cast-metal sculptural artworks is the mission of AbOmInOg International Arts Collective, in Trenton, New Jersey. I learned about the collective from the nonprofit arts organization FracturedAtlas, where I read an interview with founding member M.C. Reiley, prompting me to have a look at the Website. The collective offers educational workshops for artists and non-artists and frequently holds metal-casting events. A great idea, the collective is a boon for both the community at-large and the artists who, serving as resources for one another, share technical knowledge and expertise, have opportunities to improve their metal-casting techniques, and receive exposure in exhibitions and other arts-related activities. 

To view some of the artworks created to date, visit the collective's online sculpture gallery.

AbOmInOg on FaceBook

✦ If you missed my tweet about painter/printmaker Zsuzsi Roboz's marvelous portraits of writers, seven images of which were published in The Guardian, take a quick look. Included are portraits of Anita Brookner, Will Self, Seamus Heaney, Colm Tolbin, Harold Pinter, Andrw O'Hagan, and Josephine Hart, plus Roboz's commentary on the sittings. Work by Roboz, born in Hungary in 1939 and a long-time resident of London, is in the collections of the Tate and the National Portrait Gallery.

The portraits, all 42 of which may be viewed here, were part of the "Face to Face" exhibition at Messum's Fine Art gallery in October and November and at Foyles Charing Cross Road bookshop, through tomorrow. Go here for an 8:44-minute video interview with the artist about the exhibition. A fully illustrated catalogue, with a signed self-portrait of the artist and an essay by John Russell Taylor, is available from Studio Publications through Messum's.

✦ With the National Art Museum of China as co-curator, Drexel University's Leonard Pearlstein Gallery presented a historic exhibit, "Half the Sky: Women in the New Art of China", comprising more than 60 artworks, including painting, photography, sculpture, video, and installation, by 22 contemporary artists, all women. Although the exhibition ended on November 12, this 13-image slideshow, from ArtInfo, remains. The press release also includes images with artist biographies. Both are worth a look.

✦ Cinema for Peace, Deutsches Institut fur Menschenrechte, Google, Typo London 2011 Places, and the Universitat der Kunste Berlin collaborated on the Human Rights Logo Initiative to produce a new universal human rights symbol. The winning design (out of more than 15,000 submissions from more than 190 countries), seen at right, was created by Predrag Stakic of Serbia. All the finalists' designs may be viewed here. The symbol, titled "Free as a Man", is an open-source product and so may be used by anyone to promote and protect human rights.

Human Right Logo on FaceBook and Twitter

✦ Digital technology's replacement of film prompted artist Richard Nicholson to undertake a project, "Analog — Last One Out", to document the few professional and commercial darkrooms remaining in London. Here's a brief feature with Nicholson about his wonderful project:

Exhibitions Here and There

✭ Santa Fe's Georgia O'Keeffe Museum is presenting through January 15, 2012, a major loan exhibition, "From New York to Corrymore: Robert Henri & Ireland". Organized by the Mint Museum of Art, the show of approximately 50 paintings by Henri (1865-1929), leader of "the Ashcan School" of urban realists, include portraits and landscapes, all inspired by Henri's travels to Ireland. (A number of images from the exhibit are shown on the Website.)

Robert Henri Museum

On January 27, the museum opens "Jaune Quick-To-See Smith: Landscapes of an American Modernist". Part of the Living Artists of Distinction Series, the exhibition will include oil paintings and works on paper by Montana-born Smith, who became an artist in her '30s and is among the best known Native American artists of the late 20th Century. Her work can be found in the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and many other public and private collections in the United States and abroad.

Profile of Janue Quick-To-See Smith

This video, from a 2007 "Made in America" exhibit at Lauren Rogers Museum of Art in Laurel, Mississippi, shows some of Smith's work:

Georgia O'Keeffe Museum on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

✭ Poets e.e. cummings and Elizabeth Bishop painted, so perhaps no one should be surprised to learn that poet Sylvia Plath also was drawn to art and had a pronounced affinity for drawing. A show of her work, "Sylvia Plath: Her Drawings", opened at London's Mayor Gallery on November 2 and runs through December 16.

An online selection of 11 images, including Plath's sketch of Ted Hughes, may be viewed here. Plath's daughter Frieda Hughes, writes about the artworks in "Lines of Beauty: the Art of Sylvia Plath". Sam Leith of The Guardian calls the drawings "moving".

Sylvia Plath Stamp, United States Postal Service

✭ What looks to be a stunning show of watercolors by Edward Burra (1905-1976) includes images of Harlem in the 1930s and landscapes of the early 1940s. The work is on show through February 19, 2012, at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester, West Sussex, United Kingdom. Be sure to click through the various sections on the Website to see selections of Burra's work: High Art, Low Culture; The Danse Macabre; British Landscape; and Painting the Stage. A catalogue accompanies the exhibition. A review is here.

Carole Smith produced a fascinating film on Burra for the Arts Council of Great Britain.

Edward Burra in Tate Collection

✭ The University of Arizona Poetry Center, in Tucson, is exhibiting "Portraits of Poets by Gwyneth Scally" through January 13. The exhibition's five portraits — of Wallace Stevens, H.D., Langston Huhes, Elizabeth Bishop, and Sylvia Plath — are from a series of limited-edition, linoleum cut, hand-pulled prints and are available for purchase. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., the award-winning Scally lives and works in Arizona; she exhibits her work around the world. Visit her Website to view images of her paintings, drawings, and sculpture and installation. Scally blogs at The Museum of Dying Giants, a fascinating site.

UA Poetry Center on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

✭ In the Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery at Smith Center for Healing and the Arts in Washington, D.C., you'll find through December 17 the exhibition "U Street Project Project: Photography by Tom Wolff". The specially commissioned series from the well-known photographer encompasses the District's U Street Corridor, a culturally and historically important neighborhood. 

Smith Center for Healing and the Arts on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

✭ Masters & Pelavin in New York City is presenting through December 17 a solo exhibition, "Gates of Eden", comprising recent work by Karl Klingbiel. Included are large woodblock prints and abstract paintings. The artist draws inspiration from Mayan cartographic pattern-making, Dutch tapestries, British engravings, comic books, 11th Century Buddhist Thangkas, and other disparate sources with which, he says, "I am trying to create ... the idea of relationships, or the ghosts of relationships as different histories that veil and unveil themselves...." (read more here). Klingbield's work can be found in a number of public and private collections, including those of the New York Public Library, Agnes Gund, and the Museum of Modern Art. It has been reproduced in handwoven silk carpets by Joseph Carini (an example is here).

© Karl Klingbiel Studio and Masters & Pelavin, New York

Gallery Artist Page and Biography (Additional images may be viewed on the Artist page.)

Karl Klingbiel: The Diving Science (Elizabeth Moore Fine Art, 2007) You'll find more about that monograph here. It was published in conjunction with Klingbiel's show, "Karl Klingbiel: Ghosts, Plants & Poetry - Recent Paintings", at Elizabeth Moore Fine Art.

Masters & Pelavin on FaceBook and Twitter