This and That in Art

I read a lot over the course of week and can't always find room in my regular art columns for items that deserve a shout-out. Following are seven I've come across recently.

✦ Telling The New Yorker he "got tired of writing poems, of trying to make sense—verbal sense", poet Mark Strand began making collages. He has a show of them at Lori Bookstein Fine Art  in New York City. If you're lucky enough to be in the Big Apple between today and October 5, go see these wonderful artworks. Read Strand's interview. His comment about the "immense pleasure" he gets "cutting and tearing paper. . . as if I were in kindergarten again" shows a playful side that we all might cultivate.

Online Exhibition of Collages

✦ Nanoart: The Immateriality of Art (Intellect/University of Chicago Press), by Paul Thomas, was published earlier this year. Thomas, head of painting at the College of Fine Arts, University of South Wales, provides an overview of the history of nanoart as traced from the time (and in the work) of Umberto Boccioni to today. He also gives attention to art inspired by research into nanotechnology. Nanoart, which Thomas emphasizes is not a scholarly work but intended "to explore ideas, thoughts, and concerns from [his] experience as an artist", is available in print and as an e-book.

✦ Australian Lynne Roberts-Goodwin is the recipient of the 2013 Hazelhurst Art Award, a competition in "outstanding art created with, on, or about paper." Roberts-Goodwin's as the sky FALLS through five fingers #131, won out over more than 90 other short-listed finalists for the prize.

✦ Founded in 1998, ArtsSmarts is a national organization that works with its partners across Canada to deliver arts programs in schools. Its core mission is to support, promote, and demonstrate the beneficial effects of arts programs and activities in helping students learn and prepare for life in the 21st Century. More than 300 communities across the country engage with ArtsSmarts.

ArtsSmarts on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

✦ Yale University Press published Ellen G. Landau's Mexico and American Modernism this past spring. Landau, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, Case Western Reserve University, examines how the relationships of Philip Guston, Robert Motherwell, Isamu Noguchi, and Jackson Pollock with Mexican muralists, expatriate Surrealists, and leftist political activists of the 1930s and 1940s influenced the direction of the former artists' work. Yale ARTbooks blogger Caroline Hayes interviewed Landau for a Yale Press Log feature in June.

Yale University Press on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

Yale ARTbooks on Twitter

✦ Basil Hall Editions makes prints with hundreds of artists from across Australia. It wholesales its prints to galleries and sells prints directly from its studio and Website, and at art fairs and exhibitions. Works include etchings, drypoints, monoprints, screenprints, linocuts, and woodcuts. Collectors take note: BHE publishes a wonderful series titled Collectors' Folios. I've seen some of the prints from the most recent (and sold out) collaboration with indigenous artists; the series is superb and affordable. 

Basil Hall Editions on FaceBook and Twitter

✦ The platform Transartists is a one-stop resource for information about artist-in-residence programs. It also covers artist tools and services, art education, funding, festivals, and art competitions, and includes a section, Offered & Wanted, where artists can exchange information about studio swaps, workshops, or other activities.

Transartists on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube