All Art Friday

All Art Friday

All Art Friday Spotlights

✦ Elegance is a distinguishing characteristic of the beautiful, sculptural forms created by Australia's Meredith Woolnough, who came to my attention via FaceBook. Woolnough uses embroidery or other  threads, pins, and glass rods on paper in a process all her own. Her work takes its inspiration from nature—ammonites, ginkgo, coral, ferns, leaves, water lilies—reflecting its beauty, fragility, and ephemerality. Imagine her work on the cover of a book! Woolnough's new work can be seen in a major exhibition opening in August at The Milk  Factory Gallery in Bowral, NSW. 

Meredith Woolnough Blog

Meredity Woolnough on FaceBook

✦ A former bank in Chicago is slated to become Stony Island Arts Bank. Artist Theaster Gates, who is based in Chicago, paid the city $1.00 for the space, which will open during the Chicago Architectural Biennial (October 3, 2015-January 3, 2016) in which 60 international studios will participate.  Gates talks about his project in this video (filmed in 2012).

CAB on FaceBook

✦ Paper artist Helen Hiebert offers a highly affordable array of paper weavings. Don't miss her artists' books or the many interesting posts and videos on her blog.

Helen Hiebert on FaceBook and YouTube

✦ Smithsonian Libraries' Artists Books Collection is now online. It's a treasure!

✦ Spend some time in the natural world with fine printmaker Sarah Horowitz who, in addition to gorgeous prints and drawings, makes hand-printed and bound artists' books and collaborates with Tavern Books (one recent cover was for We Women by Edith Sodergran). Horowitz's imprint is called Wiesedruck. Watch an Oregon Art Beat profile of the artist. Horowitz's exceptional prints are available through Froelick Gallery, Portland, Oregon.

✦ The woven metal artworks of Michelle Mckinney are exceptional and exceptionally beautiful. McKinney, whose exhibition "Held" at Northcote Gallery, London, concluded in mid-April, recently began making "ghost editions" of her woven metal work; these are limited-edition, signed images; reimagined as negatives, they are printed with archival inks. They're eye-catching!

Michelle Mckinney on FaceBook

✦ InterVarsity Press has released J. Scott McElroy's Creative Church Handbook: Releasing the Power of the Arts in Your Congregation (2015). McElroy, founder of the nonprofit New Renaissance Arts Movement, addresses the use of live art, dance, media, film, and video; structuring and launching an arts ministry; establishing an artists-in-residence program in a church; working with outside artists; inspiring, empowering, and leading artists in church; interactive arts projects; and much more. 

Exhibitions Here and There

✭ In Washington, D.C., George Washington University's Luther W. Brady Art Gallery continues through July 17 "Art in the Making: A New Adaptation". The exhibition presents work by teachers and students of three New York City art institutions and their counterparts at GWU's Corcoran School of the Arts and Design. Work by Helen Frankenthaler, Jackson Pollock, Kit White, and others represents the New York City institutions; work by Gene Davis, Jules Olitski, and others represents the Corcoran School. 

Brady Gallery on FaceBook and Twitter

✭ Porcelain installations drawing on nature and technology are featured in "Dawn Holder: Several Collections of Commemorative Plates", continuing through July 19 at Ft. Smith Regional Art Museum, Ft. Smith, Arkansas. Holder's interest is in "the ways local populations alter, cultivate, and mythologize the landscape around them." In creating her installations, she uses utilitarian light-switch plates and outlet covers, assembling them in repetitive grids and enveloping them in porcelain flowers, creating a striking contrast between what we use and consume and how it affects our lives. Images of Holder's Sunset (2104), Sunset (2014), Value Scape (2014), and Sprout (2015), Street View (Dream Homes) (2015), and Compendium of Arkansas Plants (2015) are at the exhibition link above.

Dawn Holder Website

FSRAM on FaceBook and Twitter

✭ The future as depicted in fantastic murals, digital prints, and drawings by Japanese pop artist Chiho Aoshima is cause to pause while visiting Seattle Art Museum's "Chiho Aoshima: Rebirth of the World". The ticketed exhibition of dreamscapes, continuing through October 4, imagines both darkly and surrealistically the artist's vision(s) of how reality might look as the world grows older.

Chiho Aoshima at Galerie Perrotin, Kaikai Kiki Co., Blum & Poe, and Kumi Contemporary

SAM on FaceBook and Twitter

SAM Blog 

✭ A show of contemporary artists — emerging, mid-career, and established — connected to Cleveland, Ohio, and cities in Pennsylvania and Michigan opens June 12 at Cleveland's Museum of Contemporary Art. On view through September 6, "How to Remain Human" is described as an expansive, immersive look, through a wide variety of media, of what it means to be of, acting in, and experiencing the world. A series of public programs complements the exhibition and a comprehensive catalogue with commissioned essays on each artist will be available for free download once the exhibition begins. Images may be viewed at the exhibition link.

MOCA Cleveland on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

✭ Opening today at Monmouth Museum, Lincroft, New Jersey, is "Michael Burris Johnson: Grid Paintings". The show, which continues through June 28, is part of the Monmouth's "NJ Emerging Artists Series". In his Artist Statement, Johnson says, "Each painting conjures an image from deep silent regions of existence, pulled from under the heart. There is an effort to find passage—beyond memory, past the senses' horizon—to pass through a rigid structure and hold in tact an honest affirmation of life."

See images of Johnson's Grids at his Website. Depicted in the promotional image above at Sisyphus (at left) and Patience. These are lovely oils on canvas.

Monmouth Museum on FaceBook and Twitter