All Art Friday

All Art Friday

All Art Friday Spotlights

✦ Heroes and villains and light shows, oh my! This year, to mark the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, the Root1066 International Festival, described on the Hastings Borough Council Website as "a contemporary, multi-art-form festival", will take place September 10 through October 2. Festival organizers are lining up local, national, and international artists for "creative collisions and collaborations", such as these open-call funded proposals. Among participating artists are Marcus Harvey, Fiona Banner, and Chris Levine. The festival's aims, themes, and locations are detailed at the first link above. Visit the festival's Root1066 Website.

Root1066 on FaceBook, Twitter, and Instagram

✦ Congratulations to Mona Hatoum, winner of the 10th Hiroshima Art Prize.

✦ The Portland Fine Print Fair, hosted by Oregon's Portland Art Museum, takes place January 30 and 31. It's the only such fair in the Northwest. Among participants are The Annex Galleries (Santa Rosa, California), The Art of Japan (Medina, Washington), Augen Gallery (Portland), Azuma Gallery (Seattle), Conrad R. Graeber Fine Art (Riderwood, Maryland), Crow's Shadow Institute of the Arts (Pendleton, Oregon), Davidson Galleries (Seattle), Egenolf Gallery (Burbank, California), and 10 other galleries, print dealers, or presses, including Stoney Road Press (Dublin, Ireland). 

✦ New from Princeton University Press is Lynn Gamwell's Mathematics and Art: A Cultural History. Gamwell, a lecturer in the history of art, science, and mathematics at New York's School of Visual Arts, examines philosophical ideas about and the practice of mathematics, from antiquity to the present, and how artists such as Aleksandr Rodchenko, Henry Moore, and Jasper Johns express mathematical concepts in their work. See a trailer for the book at the link above and read the first chapter (pdf).

✦ The Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin has broken ground for Ellsworth Kelly's Austin, expected to open in late 2016 or early 2017. The only building designed by the late artist (1923-2015), Austin will be a 2,715-square-foot stone structure featuring luminous colored-glass windows, a wood sculpture, and 14 black-and-white stone panels in marble. (Read the press release (pdf).) A fundraising project to see Austin through to completion is underway. Expect the Blanton to become a destination.

Blanton Museum on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

Blanton Blog

✦ Now on the platform of the National Gallery of Art, The History of the Accademia di San Luca, c. 1590-1635: Documents from the Archivio di Stato di Roma can be searched by names, keywords, document types, places, notaries, and year dates. The site is a project of the NGA's Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts (CASVA).

✦ Well-known local painter Matt Sesow, who lives in Washington, D.C., is the subject of Join Hands: The Life & Art of Matt Sesow (Snowflake Video Productions), a documentary by Leslye Abbey.  The film was released last year.

Sesow in 2013 was featured on one of six postage stamps on the theme "Breaking Barriers". This spring, his work goes on view in the solo show "Matt Sesow: Shock & Awe" at Baltimore's not-to-be-missed American Visionary Museum. The exhibition will run through spring 2017.

Here's the trailer for the film, which is on DVD and available at Amazon and Snowflake Video Productions:

Documentary's Page on Matt Sesow Website

Read Debra Bruno's "The Saga of Matt Sesow: How a One-Handed Artist Is Seizing D.C.'s Art World", The Washington Post, January 1, 2016; it's a good introduction to the artist.

Matt Sesow on FaceBook and at Union of Concerned Artists

Exhibitions Here and There

✭ New York City's Thomas Erben Gallery is presenting "Aditi Singh: All that is left behind". Singh's paper, ink, graphite, and charcoal drawings, are on view through February 13. Singh, of Mumbai, India, shows internationally in solo and group exhibitions. She is represented by Chemould Prescott Road Gallery in Mumbai.

Aditi Singh, Untitled, 2014-15

Graphite and Ink on Arches Paper

35" x 45"

Aditi Singh at ArtSpace, Chemould Prescott Road, and Ocula

Thomas Erben Gallery on FaceBook

✭ Opening January 22 at The Drawing Center, New York City, is "Louise Despont: Energy Scaffolds and Information Architecture". The first solo museum exhibition for Despont, the show offers a site-specific architectural installation and a number of series of large drawings influenced by Despont's recent relocation to Bali. Images of Despont's intricate colored-pencil-and-graphite works on pages from antique ledger books may be viewed at the exhibition link above. Accompanying the show is a publication featuring images of all the works in the exhibition and of the installation, an interview with Despont, and an essay by Raymond Foye. The exhibition may be seen through March 20.

Louise Despont Website

The Drawing Center on FaceBook and Twitter

The Bottom Line, The Drawing Center Blog

✭ The exhibition "Mothers' Arms: Kathe Kollwitz's Women and War" opens January 29 at Smith College Museum of Art. On view through May 29, the show takes a look at Kollwitz's portrayals of women as mothers, wives, social revolutionaries, breadwinners, victims, and mourners of war dead. In a series of related programs, noted printmaker and illustrator Barry Moser shares his insights into Kollwitz's work (February 5) and curator Henriette Kets de Vries discusses Kollwitz's diaries to place the artist's work in historical context (April 1); a film series and lectures also are offered. View images from the exhibition. The selections include lithographs, etchings, and Kollwitz's moving Pieta, a cast of zinc alloy.

Kathe Kollwitz, Die Mutter (The Mothers), Plate VI from Krieg (War) Series

Woodcut Printed in Black on Japan Paper, 1922-23

Purchase, Smith College Museum of Art, 1958:55-6

Kathe Kollwitz Museum, Berlin, Germany

Smith College Museum of Art on FaceBook and YouTube

✭ In Tennessee, Knoxville Museum of Art opens January 29 an exhibition featuring the work of the so-called "Knoxville Seven": C. Kermit ("Buck") Ewing (for whom the Ewing Gallery of Art at the University of Tennessee is named), Carl Sublett, Walter Stevens, Robert Birdwell, Joanna Higgs Ross, Richard Clarke, and Walter Stevens. The group of progressive artists is considered to have created what may be the first abstract paintings in the state, helping establish modern art's foothold in the region. The show, which continues through April 17,  marks the first time the history and legacy of these artists have been presented in an exhibition. The works on view come from the museum's holdings and loans from collectors in the region. (For brief biographies of the artists, see the page for the museum's ongoing exhibition "Higher Ground".)

Knoxville Museum on FaceBook and Twitter

Knoxville Museum Blog

✭ The Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, is presenting through April 3 "Alchemy of the Soul: Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons", comprising a collaboration between the artist and her husband, musician-composer Neil Leonard. Described as "multi-sensory", the multi-media exhibition showcases large blown-glass sculptures, paintings, photographs, and soundscapes, all inspired by abandoned sugar mills and rum factories in Cuba. 

Read "Ghost Hunting in Cuba with Magda" at Connected, the PEM blog.

Accompanying the exhibition is a print publication and a digital publication with artist interviews, audio and video components, and an essay by curator Josh Basseches.

Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons at Schneider Gallery, Chicago

PEM on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

Artist Maria Magdalena Compos-Pons on "Sugar: Bittersweet" on YouTube (This is from the artist's exhibition "Sugar" at Smith College Museum of Art, 2010-2011.)