All Art Friday
All Art Friday Spotlights
✦ Irene Belknap has made marvelous use of text in her paintings. See her beautiful series Dressed in Words; Belknap's The House of Belonging uses David Whyte's poetry, while her Two Poems uses poems from Pablo Neruda's Love, Ten Poems. Belknap also uses the words of Thomas Mann and Constantine Cavafy, among other writers. Limited-edition prints are available from Art Brokers.
Irene Belknap Portfolios
✦ Seeking to rectify the under-representation in displays of artists who are women, Tate Britain this spring placed on view two oil sketches on paper, both of her son Bartholomew, one left- and one right-facing, by the United Kingdom's "first female professional painter": portraitist Mary Beale (1633-1699). View images of both sketches; read summary information.
BBC Slideshow of 130 Paintings by Mary Beale
Maeve Kennedy, "Tate Britain Displays England's First Female Professional Painter", The Guardian, May 13, 2013
✦ All of the journals of artist David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992) have been digitized by New York University's Fales Library and can be read online; see Guide to the David Wojnarowicz Papers.
Cynthia Carr, Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012)
✦ Tibor de Nagy Gallery's exhibition "Jane Freilicher: Painter Among Poets", which concluded in June, included a catalogue with an introduction by John Ashbery, more than 60 color images, scholarly text by Jenni Quilter, and poems and letters by Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Frank O'Hara, and James Schuyler. Contact the gallery to purchase a copy.
✦ All of the journals of artist David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992) have been digitized by New York University's Fales Library and can be read online; see Guide to the David Wojnarowicz Papers.
Cynthia Carr, Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2012)
✦ Utah-based conceptual artist Pam Bowman, who holds degrees in interior design and sculpture and installation, is a recent discovery for me. Her labor-intensive use of natural fibers and materials, as well as historical artifacts and a multitude of objects including brooms, bowls of dirt, seeds, and even text of poems, is deeply thoughtful and striking. One of her recent installations, Renascent, which she says "expresses feelings and memories about the circular loop of coping with adversity", is especially compelling. Her sculpture and paintings, in particular her Handwork series, leave me fascinated. Watch a video of Bowman's Ebb and Wax, a kinetic art installation at Art Access Gallery, Salt Lake City, Utah.
✦ Macoto Murayama (b. 1984) is a self-described cultivator of astonishingly beautiful "inorganic flora". What this Japanese artist does with dissected real flowers, his sketchpad, a camera, and software and a computer will delight and surprise you. At the link you'll find a wide selection of Murayama's digital c-prints and a description of how he creates his marvelous, highly detailed images. The Smithsonian featured some of Murayama's work at one of its blogs; see "Macoto Murayama's Intricate Blueprints of Flowers", May 10, 2013. (My thanks to 3 Quarks Daily for the link.)
Here's Murayama's C.warneri:
This video incorporates Murayama's digital work as part of the performance "Evolve" by New Zealand Dance Company during its "Language of Living" season in August 2012:
Slideshow of Images by Murayama at The Telegraph
Macoto Murayama on FaceBook, Pinterest, and Tumblr
Exhibitions Here and There
✭ Continuing through August 25 at The University of Chicago's Smart Museum of Art is "The Land Beneath Our Feet", an exhibition of approximately 80 paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, and photographs from the period 1850-1940. Drawn from the museum's own collection of American art, the show includes work by William Merritt Chase, Arthur Dove, Walker Evans, Child Hassam, Winslow Homer, John Marin, Ben Shahn, and James McNeill Whistler, among others. Timothy O'Sullivan's and William Bell's panoramas of the American West are a highlight.
✭ Delaware Art Museum, in Wilmington, is presenting through September 15 "French Twist", an exhibition of 100 vintage prints by such masters as Eugene Atget, Brassai, Man Ray, Henri Cartier-Bresson, "Queen of the Leica" Ilse Bing, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Andre Kertesz, and surrealist Dora Maar. All the images are from the collection of Michael Mattis and Judith Hochberg. The show, arranged thematically ("Eugene Atget", "Life of the Street", "Diversions", "Henri Cartier-Bresson", "The Lower Classes", "Paris by Night", "Art for Art's Sake", "Andre Kertesz, Dora Maar, Man Ray", "Portraits and Nudes"), will travel.
✭ Michigan's Grand Rapids Art Museum has mounted "The Improvisional Quilts of Susana Allen Hunter". Hunter, who died in 2005, age 93, hailed from Wilcox County, Alabama, home to the famous Gee's Bend quilters. From the scant materials available to her, such as empty grain sacks, worn clothing, and leftover fabric bits of various shapes and sizes, Hunter created hundreds of gorgeous and functional quilts, now in the Collections of the Henry Ford, Dearborn, Michigan. The exhibition continues through August 25.
Susana Allen Hunter, Strip Quilt, 1945-1950
Cotton, Wool, Acetate, and Rayon
The Henry Ford, 2006.79.26
Collections of The Henry Ford, Dearborn, Michigan
In the brief video below, Hunter's grandson and granddaughter-in-law shares their memories of Hunter and how she fashioned her quilts:
In an interpretative gallery for the exhibition, viewers can explore "Quilt of Sound", an interactive Website for creating improvisational artwork with sounds and images from nature. In addition, iPod stations have been set up to allow visitors to listen to and explore spirituals and improvisational jazz.
"Art from Everyday Life: The Quilts of Susana Allen Hunter", The Henry Ford, February 2008
GRAM on FaceBook and Twitter
✭ August 10 marks the opening of "The Lorax" at Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska. The show will feature a selection of Dr. Seuss's preliminary crayon drawings and final pen-and-ink line art for his The Lorax, published in 1971, which Dr. Seuss considered his best work. Dr. Seuss donated the original artwork for his book to the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum, Austin, Texas. The latter exhibited the drawings in 2012, when the Lorax 3-D film was released.
Joselyn Art Museum on FaceBook and Twitter
Notable Exhibits Abroad
✭ "Ice Lab: New Architecture and Science in Antarctica", a collaboration between the arts nonprofit British Council and The Arts Catalyst, curator of the show, opens in Glasgow, Scotland, today, July 26. It features architectural drawings, models, photographs, films, and a light-and-audio installation by Torsten Lauschmann of Glasgow. The commissioned exhibition, the first to look at designs for research stations in Antarctica, notable for its extreme cold, wind, and isolation, and highlighting the cutting-edge science initiatives undertaken there, continues to October 2 and then travels to Manchester Museum of Science & Industry, where it will run from October 21 to January 6, 2014. After that, it begins an international tour. In addition to film screenings, the exhibition includes talks and workshops in design, architecture, art, and science.
You can view nine images at the exhibition link above.
British Council on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube
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