. . . art and healing and reality are all connected.
~ Frederick Foote
Recently, I had the pleasure of interviewing by e-mail one of the Washington, D.C., area's most notable local poets: Frederick Foote. A retired Navy Medical Corps physician, Fred currently leads the Warrier Poetry Project at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and works tirelessly on behalf of our veterans. His debut poetry collection is Medic Against Bomb: A Doctor's Poetry of War(Grayson Books).
Part 1 of my interview, "Healing with Poetry: Interview with Poet Fred Foote", appears at TweetSpeak Poetry. There, Fred talks about his early experience with poetry and about writing poetry as a veteran (he served in the 2003 Iraq War on the "U. S. S. Comfort". Included is an excerpt from his poem "You Made the Iraqis Their Scarves".
The second and third parts of my interview are forthcoming, also at TweetSpeak Poetry.
Today's short, filmed by Mike McGregor, is a video with Marcy Borders, who on September 11, 2001, became the subject of an unforgettable photograph that quickly became famous: "The Dust Lady", by New York-based Stan Honda.
Marcy Borders, whose life following 9/11 was filled with pain, died this past Monday of stomach cancer. She was 42. May she rest in peace.
✦ On November 24, Yale University Press will publish Mark Rothko: From the Inside Out, by his son, writer and psychologist Christopher Rothko, who chairs the board of the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas. Read an excerpt from one of the book's 18 essays, which, among other topics, address Mark Rothko's commissioned works, his works on paper, his writings of the 1930s and 1940s, his appreciation of music, and his role as father.
Cover Art
✦ Sophia Khan, the subject of one of my Artist Watch features at Escape Into Life, is offering from September 14 to October 12 a four-week online watercolor workshop, "Let's Paint the Beauty of Italy: A Unique Online Watercolor Workshop". The workshop will include a tutorial, access to a private, dedicate Webpage providing step-by-step illustrated exercises, a private group page on FaceBook, and watercolor tips and techniques.
✦ The resource-sharing Creative Exchange offers a number of toolkits for artists, arts councils, community organizations, and other art-related groups. Among them are "Artists' Health Fair", "Pop Up Museum", "The People's Creative Toolkit", and the forthcoming "Work of Art: Professional Development for Artists".
✦ The nonprofit Chicago Artists Coalition is dedicated to artists' advocacy and professional development, and champions collaborative partnerships and development of innovative resources. In addition to offering educational opportunities and promoting leadership in the arts, the coalition sponsors exhibitions. Forthcoming on September 18 is "The ANNUAL: An Exhibition of New Chicago Art".
✦ Sister Jacques-Marie was the "true initiator" of Matisse's Chapel of the Rosary, Vence, France, according to the artist. See the trailer for A Model for Matisse (2005), directed by Barbara Freed. Read "Matisse and the Nun" at ArtNews. [Note: I have visited the chapel; seeing it was one of the highlights of my first tour of France.]
✦ Below is A Portrait of Pat Carey (2011), a documentary about the late San Francisco activist and artist. (She died in May 2013 at age 93.) The film, by Anson Musselman, includes many of Carey's drawings and portraits and interviews by those who knew her.
✭ Pastel works by Rae Smith and Rhoda Yanow are on view through September 20 at Noyes Museum of Art, Oceanville, New Jersey. The internationally exhibited artists also are teachers.
✭ At Colby College Museum of Art, 65 paintings, cutouts, and collages, some of which come from Katz's own collection and others from major public and private collections, are on show through October 18 in "Brand-New & Terrific: Alex Katz in the 1950s". Accompanying the exhibition is a catalogue (Random House/Prestel) of the same title (see image below), which includes color and black-and-white illustrations. Click the exhibition link above for a selection of images and related articles and other features. A wing of the museum is dedicated to the work of Alex Katz.
✭ Wall-mounted low reliefs, such as Leonard Baskin's bronze Owl; mixed media floor installations, and other sculptures, including Louise Nevelson's Thrones, John Newman's Fuchsia Unfurls in a Gilded Cage, and John Bisbee's Zero, may be seen through September 27 in "3D: Contemporary Works from the Farnsworth". The Farnsworth Art Museum is in Rockland, Maine.
✭ Drawing from its own collection, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York, continues through October 18 "Playing with Perception: Photographs by Florence Henri". The early 20th Century artist (1893-1982), who studied painting with Fernand Leger and others, used mirrors to create reflections, distort images, and challenge reality.
Copper wire is the material of choice of London-based Alice Anderson. More than 100 of her works currently are on view at London's Wellcome Collection. A highlight of "Alice Anderson: Memory Movement Memory Objects", which runs through October 18, is "The Studio", an immersive experience that "extends into the gallery" the artist's creative process by allowing visitors to help "mummify" with copper wire a 1967 Ford Mustang and smaller objects. See the preview below and images of a selection of works on view.
Accompanying the exhibition is a catalogue that includes commissioned new photography of the artworks and essays by Wellcome Collection senior curator Kate Forde (Read Forde's "The Art of Memory") and scientist Israel Rosenfield. See image below.
The film examines the life and artistic expression of Tanavoli, from formal training in Italy to emergence internationally, from the sculptor's break with Persian influence and traditions to his involvement in the 1960s in the founding of the contemporary Iranian art movement, the Saqqakhaneh School. In addition to interviews with Tanavoli, the documentary features some of the most prominent people in international art, including curators and gallery directors, art collectors, other artists, and art critics and writers.
To date, the documentary has been screened at Wellesley College, whose Davis Museum held a comprehensive retrospective of Tanavoli's work February 10 - June 7, 2015; Sunnylands, Rancho Mirage, California; and Los Angeles County Museum of Art. It will be screened September 25 at Whitechapel Gallery, and followed by a Q&A between Tanavoli and director Turner.
Here is the trailer for the film:
Immediately below is a video from the exhibition at Wellesley's Davis Museum:
[T]he fundamental magic occurs at the moment when wood,
fire, salt and ashes combine with the clay to change shape
and surface. The image of perfection disappears—
the piece obtains its identity. . . .
~ Anne Mete Hjortshoj
Below is a lovely documentary about the talented Danish ceramist and potter Anne Mette Hjortshoj, who studied with Phil Rogers, a Welsh potter. In the film, which shows us the potter's workspace and where she sources her clay, Hjortshoj explains how she learned her vocation and introduces some of the artists who inspired and mentored her.
The Goldmark Art Gallery in the United Kingdom, specializing in 20th Century contemporary art and ceramics, carries Hjortshoj's work, including lidded jars, slab bottles, teapots, tea bowls, and mugs, dishes of varying shapes and sizes, and jugs. Not only is her pottery beautiful to look at; it also is functional.
The potter's salt-glazed porcelains and stoneware also can be seen at Oakwood Ceramics (UK) and Sylvester Fine Art (UK). She has exhibited in Denmark, Sweden, Estonia, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
Hjortshoj was the subject of a Studio Visit feature in Ceramics Monthly in February 2013.
Chard deNiord is Vermont's eighth Poet Laureate. (I learned of the appointment from deNiord's FaceBook page.) He succeeds Sydney Lea, whose four-year term began November 4, 2011. (Lea's last work published as Poet Laureate is the forthcoming essay collection, What's the Story? Reflections on a Life Grown Long, from Green Writers Press. Read Lea's column "On Poetry: Thanks from a grateful Vermont Poet Laureate" at Vermont Today.)
Information about the state poet's position and related resources are found in my 2010 post about the late Ruth Stone. Stone held the office from July 2007 to July 2011.
De Niord will begin his laureateship officially on November 2, 2015, where an installation ceremony is planned at the State House in Montpelier.
* * * * * I feel writing must take over in order for me to succeed at discovering something I didn't know I knew. . . .*
Poet, essayist, interviewer, and book critic Chard deNiord is the author of Interstate (Pitt Poetry Series, University of Pittsburgh Press, forthcoming Fall 2015), The Double Truth (Pitt Poetry Series, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), named a Top 10 poetry book by The Boston Globe; Night Mowing (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), Sharp Golden Thorn (Marsh Hawk Press, 2003), and Asleep in the Fire (Alabama Poetry Series, University of Alabama Press, 1990).
Some themes and subjects found throughout deNiord's poetry are loss, the witnessing of injustices, compassion, nature and animal life, self-exploration, love, sex, myth, truth and its fractures, redemption, religion and the bible, the spiritual and the transcendent—what deNiord calls "writing toward the unsayable". There is darkness in his work but also humor.
Below are excerpts from several of deNiord's poems that give a sense of his elegant style, firm command of technique, sensualness, and richly evocative imagery. Many of deNiord's poems are brief and yet pack a punch, especially in their concluding lines.
I still taste you from the time you painted my tongue with your scarlet finger. It cured my heart of innocence, [. . .]
~ from "The Double Truth" in The Double Truth
[. . .] I picked up the bodies like bloody socks and prayed to the god in charge of this field for my own weakness to feel this much for slaughtered chicks. For an understanding of his need to kill the most vulnerable thing, whether hungry or not.
~ from "In the Grass" in Interstate
[. . .] I stared at the fire that had formed a heart and tongue together and raged in rain. I watched it rise like a beautiful dress. [. . .]
~ from "Burning the Brush" in Sharp Golden Thorn
DeNiord's free verse and formal poems, which may be lyrical or narrative, have appeared in numerous, prestigious literary periodicals, including Agni, American Poetry Review, The Antioch Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Blackbird, The Cortland Review, Green Mountains Review, Harvard Review, Hudson Review, Hunger Mountain, Kenyon Review, Natural Bridge, New England Review, The New Republic, Ploughshares, Plume, Salamander, Salmagundi, Slate, Smartish Pace, The Southern Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Verse Daily. Some of his prose poems ("The Prodigal Driver", The Bear Speaks to the Boy", and "Say I Sound Like One of the Hosts") can be found in StoryScape Literary Journal. (See a more complete list in the Journals section of deNiord's Website.)
Some anthologies in which deNiord has contributed are American Religious Poems (The Library of America, 2006), Best American Poetry (Robert Bly, Ed; Scribner, 1999), Best of the Prose Poem (White Pine Press, 2000), Pushcart Book of Poetry, The Best Poems from Thirty Years of the Pushcart Prize (Pushcart Press, 2007), American Poetry Now: Pitt Poetry Series Anthology (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007), and Ploughshares Winter 1998-99: Stories and Poems (Ploughshares Books, 1998).
In addition to the Joseph R. Accinno Faculty Teaching Award from Providence College (2011-2012), deNiord has received the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America (for his poem "Crow"), a Pushcart Prize (for "What the Animals Teach Us") from Pushcart Press, and a Best American Poetry award (for "Pasternak"). (See the Awards & Citations section of deNiord's Website for other honors.) [Note: DeNiord's "What the Animals Teach Us" is part of a book of 26 etchings of animals by printmaker Brian D. Cohen. Information about this limited-edition fine art book is available at Bridge Press. In addition, 11 of deNiord's poems are included in Brighton Press's limited-edition, The Book of Darkness, complementing 11 etchings and paintings by Michele Burgess.]
A founder of the master's program in poetry at New England College, deNiord is a professor of English and creative writing at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island.
Besides his master's degree in fine arts (creative writing) from the University of Iowa, the poet holds a master's degree in biblical studies from Yale University.
Below is the trailer for the inspirational verite documentary Daughters of the Forest(Red Hill Productions), about a group of girls in Paraguay who learn from their school, Mbaracayu Forest Girls' School, how to protect their remote and threatened old-growth forest and create a better future for themselves. Filmws over the course of five years, the story is set in Mbaracayu Reserve, one of 250 UNESCO Biosphere Reserves.
✦ Print fans, take note! Taos, New Mexico, is the site for the multi-venue, months-long "Pressing Through Time: 150 Years of Printmaking in Taos", which opens in September and continues through February 2016. Below is a brief overview of the event from the curators. (The call to contemporary printmakers that is mentioned in the video closed in March.) Work by the selected artists will be on view at Encore Gallery of the Taos Center for the Arts from October 2, 2015, through January 18, 2016; and at Taos Art Museum at Fechin House from October 9 through the end of January. Activities include talks/seminars, workshops in printmaking, demos, studio tours, and more; see the calendar for specifics. View information about the museum and gallery participating in the festival.
✦ Tomorrow, August 22 marks the official grand opening of the Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans. To celebrate the completion of the center, tours will be given of the living and studio spaces of the inaugural group of artists-in-residence. With its mission the support of local, national, and international contemporary visual artists, the center offers an Artist-In-Residence (AIR) Grant Program and the New Orleans Local Artist (NOLA) Studio Program.
✦ Canadian artist Glen Ronald has a background in science (he holds an honors degree in microbiology), education, and the study of chaos. He calls his paintings (they are primarily acrylics on canvas and ink on paper) "chaosmos"; a look at his portfolio hints at the reasons for that description. In the time-lapse video below, he shows a work in progress:
Prints of Ronald's work are available at the artist's Etsy Shop.
✦ September's releases of new art books include "The heroine Paint": After Frankenthaler (Gagosian/Rizzoli), edited by New York art historian Katy Siegel. (The title is taken from a poem by Barbara Guest.) A compilation of scholarly essays by, among others, John Elderfield and Barbara Guest; reprints of historic writing, and text from contemporary artists such as Amy Sillman and Tracy K. Smith, the book traces the artistic careers of Frankenthaler and those she influenced.
✦ Last fall I featured assemblage artist Page Turner in my Artist Watch column at Escape Into Life. Since then, Page has enjoyed a run of well-deserved exhibitions of her fabulous sculptures. She also has produced the video below, which showcases some of her fine art and describes how Page's Appalachian Morman heritage informs it. Here's wishing Page much continued success!
Page Turner Studios (Zephren & Page Turner) on FaceBook
✭ Continuing through October 4 at Atlanta's High Museum is "Sprawl! Drawing Outside the Lines". The exhibition, a sequel to 2013's "Drawing Inside the Perimeter", features more than 100 recently acquired drawings by artists who work in Atlanta or its surrounding areas, such as Athens, Decatur, and Smyrna. The High made its acquisitions between June 2013 and May 2015.
Among the more than 75 artists with works on view are Ashley Andersen, Nick Bable, Corey Davis, Greg Mike, Heidi Graf, Michael Lachowski, Michi Meko, Abbie Merritt, Mac Stewart, Wesley Terpstra, Fabian Williams, and Caomin Xie. See the exhibition link for images and the Participating Artists list, which is hyperlinked to the artists' Websites.
On Saturday, September 12, from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m., 75 local artists, some of whom are exhibiting in "Sprawl!" will create artworks live and make them available for purchase at $75 each. Proceeds will be used to purchase additional works on paper by regional artists. Read additional information about the Monster Drawing Rally.
✭ The Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, continues through September 13 "Branching Out: Trees as Art". Offering a look at how contemporary artists use trees as inspiration and medium, the exhibition features more than 30 works made with bark, wood, roots, seedpods, leaves, and "biosignals"; a selection of interactive experiences are included. Among the more than three dozen artists are Sachiko Akiyama, Sallie Lowenstein, Cedric Pollet, Diego Stocco, and Ursula von Rydingsvard.
✭ If you're in Santa Fe, stop in at the Art House at the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation to view "Luminous Flux 2.0: New + Historic Works from the Digital Art Frontier". On view through next spring, the exhibition showcases the brilliant and innovative work being created by Craig Dorety, Sabrina Gschwandtner (her unique film quilts, which I've seen in person, are exceptional), Jean-Pierre Hebert, Desmond Paul Henry (1921-2004), Siebren Versteeg, Leo Villareal (an animated LED sequence), and others in the digital art field. The pieces on view are from the foundation's own collection and span more than 50 years, beginning in the 1960s.
Sabrina Gschwandtner, Camouflage II, 2015
16mm Film, Polyester Thread, Lithography Ink, and Lightbox
You'll find me today at Escape Into Life, where I'm very pleased to post a new Artist Watch feature on painter Noel Paine.
A Londoner by birth, Noel has lived in Italy and Austria. His East London and Italian paintings and, more recently, his Viennese woodland series have been exhibited in London and Rome. When he is not painting, Noel works as a freelance lecturer at the National Gallery in London.
Today's Artist Watch column presents eight of Noel's beautiful landscape paintings, his Artist Statement, a biography, and links to his Website and galleries.
It is a sweet moment to remember, even in the midst of sadness,
[but racism] is as alive today as it was then. . .
[and] my soul cannot rest.
~ Ruby Sales on Being Saved by Daniels*
Tomorrow, August 20, marks the 50th anniversary of the death of Episcopal seminarian and civil rights activist and martyr Jonathan Daniels (March 20, 1939 - August 20, 1965). This past Sunday, my own small parish joined other Episcopal churches throughout the United States in remembering him (his feast day is August 14), sparking my curiosity about Daniels.
Having heard and responded to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's call to students and clergy in the North to join the march for voting rights in Selma, Alabama [see my post of August 5, 2015], Daniels decided to embrace the cause and struggle for civil rights in the state, living with a black family and sharing his life with theirs. He continued agitating for rights for African Americans, including putting an end to segregation in a local Episcopal church. Months after Selma, he participated in a protest demonstration in Ft. Deposit, Alabama, where on August 14, 1965, he and more than two dozen others were arrested and consigned to a deplorable county jail in Hayneville, in Lowndes County. (Daniels shared his cell with Kwame Ture a.k.a. Stokely Carmichael (1941-1998) of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.) Six days later, following an unexpected and unexplained release from jail, Daniels walked to a nearby store with 17-year-old African-American Ruby Sales, another rights worker and marcher, 19-year-old Joyce Bailey, and Roman Catholic priest Douglas Morrisroe, at 26 the same age as Daniels. The four, wanting only to buy something cold to quench their thirst, were met at the store entrance by Tom Coleman, a deputy sheriff who, cursing, raised his shotgun to Sales, who was in front of her colleagues, and ordered them off the property. In seconds, Coleman fired his gun, hitting Daniels and killing him instantly. Daniels, having attempted to save Sales's life, had pushed her aside; she fell to the ground. Coleman fired again, shooting Morrisroe in the back; severely wounded, he survived. Sales managed to crawl to Bailey and both were able to get away. The details of the murder and what happened afterward — an all-white jury acquitted Coleman of manslaughter charges — are set out in the recent feature "Remembering Jonathan Daniels" from Episcopal News Service (August 13, 2015); the video below, describing that day in 1965, accompanies the article:
In 1966, Episcopal Theological School (now Episcopal Divinity School), the Cambridge, Massachusetts, seminary in which Daniels was enrolled, established a fellowship in Daniels's name. Decades later, in 1991, Daniels's seminary class of 1966 created a memorial lectureship to honor him, and The Episcopal Church added Daniels to its annual commemorations calendar. Subsequently, Daniels was officially designated a martyr of the church. Other acts that pay homage to Daniels's sacrifice and legacy are noted in the article cited above. (Also see the resources below.)
Daniels also is the subject of the excellent documentary Here Am I, Send Me: The Story of Jonathan Daniels, produced in 1999 by Lawrence Benaquist and William Sullivan. I've embedded below the 57:24-minute documentary, which I have watched.
Sadly, the social justice and other issues that Daniel confronted in 1965 and for which he gave his life remain with us today. We still have so much to learn and do.
* After creating this post on August 16, my hometown newspaper The Washington Post published in its print edition the next morning Michael E. Ruane's interesting article "Black Civil Rights Activist Recalls White Ally Who Took a Shotgun Blast for Her". It is from this article that I took Sales's quote that appears above this post.
Whether you're an established writer or an aspiring author, you needn't restrict your tools of the trade to the traditional pen and paper. Below is a selection of apps, some designed especially for writers, including short story writers, novelists, poets, script writers, even freelancers, who don't mind venturing into technological waters.
✦ You've heard of mind-mapping? There's an app for that: MindNode, which you can use to keep your plots and characters straight. The more ideas you have to jot down, the larger your virtual canvas can become. And don't worry about tracking relationships; this tool allows you to cross-connect. The app's available for iPhone, iPad, and Mac, plus Apple Watch.
✦ Story Tracker, available for Mac and PC, is an organizational tool that lets you track your submissions (they need not be limited to stories or articles), check submission statuses, see total income earned for any poem, story, or article, store details (e.g., word counts) and guidelines for the markets to which you submit, view your submission history, and much more. See a preview in iTunes.
✦ If you use the inexpensive WordBook, a combination English dictionary and thesaurus from TranCreative Software, you'll have no excuse for incorrect usage, origin, or spelling. The app, which uses human voice pronunciations, is compatible with iPhone, iPad, iPad touch, and Apple Watch. See the iTunes preview.
✦ With GoodReader®, organizing, reading, editing, annotating, and even signing manuscripts converted to pdfs are possible on the go. Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch and promoted as a tool for teachers, among others, the app will even turn pages for you—a bonus for musicians trying to follow page after page of sheet music. View the app in iTunes.
✦ Designed for iPhone and iPad, Writer's Studio from miSoft facilitates the layout of your ebook's text, art, and graphics to which you may add narration or other sound, then share your work via YouTube, email .mov or pdf, or save to Photo Roll and display on Apple TV. See the iTunes preview.
✦ Dubbed "a keyboard with imagination", the "predictive" Creative Writer is, well, for writers who need a little creative help with their sentences, verses, or rhymes. The app's designers at Resonanca IT claim it has "hundreds of uses", from story- and poetry writing, to speech writing, to recipe writing, when you're trying to compose a little something that needs to go beyond your every-day vocabulary. The app, which recently was released for iPad and iPhone, offers context-sensitive, interactively generated sentences for your consideration. Below is a demonstration of how the app works, depending on your choice of desired vocabulary. View the app in iTunes.
✦ Calling carving and sculpting his passion, Lundy Cupp of Kingston Springs, Tennessee, is no mere wood carver. Cupp's award-winning work is made-to-order in natural wood. Be sure to take a look at his carved books, pumpkin carvings, and walking sticks and canes.
Here's a profile of Cupp from Tennessee Crossroads:
(My thanks to the Fine Books blog for the introduction to Cupp's work.)
✦ A collaboration between Sundance Institute and Women in Film Los Angeles as well as allied organizations, the Female Filmmakers Initiative Resource Map is a database of opportunities and programs for U.S.-based women who are filmmakers. The site can be browsed by resource type, platforms, location, and artist type. Its objectives are to provide support to artists, improve women's access to film financing, raise awareness of research and public programs, and promote networking industry-wide.
✦ More than 22,000 images of collection materials have been released by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin as part of Project REVEAL. Included are a First World War digital collection of posters, the Alfred Junge Film Collection, the center's Julia Margaret Cameron Photography Collection, the Frank Reaugh Art Collection (see exhibition noted below), and the Elliott Erwitt Master Print Collection. Read the news release about the images and their use and future initiatives to remove restrictions on other materials.
✦ The digital publication Rights & Reproductions: The Handbook for Cultural Institutions (Indianapolis Museum of Art/American Alliance of Museums) is due out by September. Its format will allow the handbook to be updated as necessary to stay current with copyright trends and best practices. Its content represents a collaboration among professionals from libraries, museums, arts organizations, and law firms. Browse a preview of the handbook. Read the press release.
Handbook Cover
✦ Gifted fine art photographer Diane Epstein is a pioneer of fresco photography. Her images of cityscapes, statuary, monuments, and natural scenes are gorgeous. New York-born, Epstein lives in Rome. Her archival pigment prints, which are published in small editions, are carried by Susan Calloway Art in Washington, D.C.; Garald Bland in New York City; and Panopticon Gallery in Boston. See Epstein's beautiful installations at Stanford University and elsewhere.
✭ At the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona at Tucson, you'll find "The Pure Products of America Go Crazy". On view through September 13, the exhibition, whose title derives from a 1923 William Carlos Williams poem, presents work by Lucas Blalock, Owen Kydd, and John Lehr. The center describes it as "a running dialogue between photographic images—past and present—that take as their subject the accumulated byproducts of an American way of life." Featured alongside the trio's images are works by Ansel Adams, Harry Callahan, Walker Evans, Lee Friedlander, Aaron Siskind, Edward Weston, and other well-known photographers.
✭ In Houston, Texas, The Menil Collection continues through November 8 "Affecting Presence and the Pursuit of Delicious Experiences", comprising a selection of objects from Menil's holdings that highlight abstraction "as an artistic means used across time, place, and culture [to] shape human experiences." The work on view includes sculptures, paintings, and works on paper by such artists as Max Ernst, Constantin Brancusi, Sam Gilliam, Eduardo Chillida, and other 20th Century abstract artists, as well as ancient bronzes, a Mali headdress, a 19th Century feathered cloak, and objects used in indigenous performance or making visual references to the natural world.
✭ Time is the subject of "Local Time", continuing through September 13 at Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis. Five Twin Cities-based artists—Pritika Chowdhry (Silent Waters), Sam Gould (The Radical Domestic), Alexandros Lindsay (an installation using water from the Mississippi River), Marcus Young (Keep This Forever Forgetting Here), and Morgan Thorson (Still Life)—address time as subject and practice through reference and metaphor and in physical, aesthetic, and philosophical terms. Descriptions of each of the artist's projects and images are found at the exhibition link above.
✭ August 4 marked the opening of "Frank Reaugh: Landscapes of Texas and the American West" at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. Drawn from the center's Reaugh collection and public and private collections in Texas, the exhibition presents more than 100 artworks by Reaugh (pronounced "Ray") (1860-1945) that showcase his approach to landscape painting and his mastery of pastels. In addition to being an artist, Reaugh was a naturalist, inventor, and educator.
✭ Australia's Tarrawarra Museum of Art opens "Pierre Huyghe: Tarrawarra International 2015" on August 29. Marking the first solo show in Australia by the contemporary French artist, the exhibition will offer a look at Huyghe's major early works as well as more recent projects, including A Journey that Wasn't (2005), Umwelt (2011), and A Way in Untilled (2012). Using film and other media to examine time and temporality, Huyghe will launch the exhibition with a journey through ancient fossilized amber, visit Antarctica in a search for a mythical creature, and conclude with a compost heap in a park. Spiders, black ants, and other living creatures will inhabit the galleries. According to the exhibition description, the artist's projects for the museum may be seen "as a series of temporal excavations, highlighting art's potential to generate science-fictional time zones and develop alternate chronological platforms." The show will be on view through November 22.
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