Friday, April 6, 2012

All Art Friday

All Art Friday

All Art Friday Spotlights

✦ The Smithsonian's Freer & Sackler Galleries have launched Hokusai: Mad About Painting, an image-rich, interactive Website that features bibliographic information, a section titled Brush & Block that examines Hokusai's woodblock printing and painting techniques, and sections on composition, innovative use of color, and the enormous number of subjects that captured the painter's attention.

✦ I first learned of the wonderfully creative work of mechanical engineer-turned artist Brian Jewett  from my friend Ann Martin at All  Things Paper. The artist's series of delicate "Film Bowls" using 16mm and 35mm film are beautiful to behold, his "Ticket Bowls" of shaped and sealed rolls of tickets illustrate how much fun art can be to make, and his baskets, made of garden hose, cable ties, and vinyl tubing, show an imaginative use of re-purposed materials.

✦ Save the date! On May 10, the MIT List Visual Arts Center will dedicate Ring Stone by Cai Guo-Qiang in the North Garden at MIT Sloan School of Management in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The artist will present the keynote address at the MIT China Forum at 5:30 p.m., with the public dedication of the commissioned art to follow at 6:30 p.m. The event is free but registration is required; go here for ticket information. 


Cai Guo-Qiang, Ring Stone, 2010
White Granite and Asian Pine

The stone for the installation, the artist's first public artwork for a university campus, was quarried and carved in China. 

✦ The Library of America has published The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard, which includes the complete text of Brainard's I Remember, as well as selections from journals, travel diaries, and essays, poems, and short plays. In addition to being a writer, Brainard (1942-1994) was an artist whose output included oil paintings and works on paper, collages, assemblages, costume and set designs, the Nancy comic strip, and magazine and book covers.  

Joe Brainard Website

LOA/Joe Brainard on FaceBook

✦ If you have a favorite museum that never seems to get the attention it deserves, consider letting "Adopt-a-Museum" know about it. See the About section for details. Institutions adopted to date include the Bicycle Museum of America, the Museum of Broken Relationships, and Museo Geominero. Adopt-a-Museum is a collaborative social media project of Museum 140.

Museum 140 on FaceBook and Twitter

✦ The gorgeous work of book artist Richard Minsky is the subject of My Life in Book Art: The Book Art of Richard Minsky. Minsky is the founder of the Center for Book Arts in New York City.

Richard Minsky Archive at Yale University 

Exhibitions Here and There

✭ The Museum of Contemporary Religious Art at St. Louis University is showing through May 20 "The Papercut Haggadah". The exhibit features 55 handcrafted and framed images that illustrate the Haggadah, which tells the Exodus story of the Seder service during Passover. Privately commissioned, the beautiful images of intricate abstract and geometric shapes are rendered in papercut form by Israeli artist Archie Granot. (Be sure to explore the other informative links on the exhibition's Web page.)


Archie Granot, Page 53, The Papercut Haggadah, 1998-2007
Cut Paper, 15.75" x 22.5" x 1.5"
Collection of Sandra and Max Thurm



"Cutting-Edge Art", St. Louis Jewish Light, February 22, 2012 (This article describes how artwork's creation and includes several images of the artist's work.)

✭ The Brooklyn Museum has mounted "Newspaper Fiction: The New York Journalism of Djuna Barnes, 1913-1919", continuing through August 19. Included in the exhibition are 45 objects, among them documentary photographs, drawings, works on paper, and Barnes's stories in newsprint. Barnes (1892-1982) was a journalist, novelist, playwright, illustrator, poet, and women's rights advocate. Seven images may be viewed on the exhibition page. A Barnes biography, bibliography, photos, and other matter is found here.

Djuna Barnes Papers, Special Collections, University of Maryland Libraries (This collection includes biographical information, family and personal papers, correspondence, manuscripts, printed matters such as clippings and articles about Barnes, photographs, Barnes's library, and other holdings.)

Brooklyn Museum on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube


✭ Award-winning Chinese painter and muralist Hung Liu (b. 1948) is the subject of an exhibition at the di Rosa Gatehouse Gallery in Napa, California. Her work in on view through June 10. 


Hung Liu, Enmity
Mixed Media, Gold Leaf on Panel

A beautiful exhibition of prints, "Hung Liu: (re)Pressed Memory", was held last fall at Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

In this video (9:13 minutes) from KQED, Liu talks about her use of a collection of historic photographs that are the basis of her extraordinary figurative work:


di Rosa on FaceBook, Twitter, Flickr, and YouTube

1 comment:

Ann said...

I always look forward to your All Art Friday posts, Maureen - such a wealth of information! I'm delighted to see you linked to Brian's bowls and baskets, thanks. Have a happy weekend.