Friday, October 9, 2015

All Art Friday

All Art Friday

All Art Friday Spotlights

✦ The American Fine Craft Show Washington is a benefit for the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C. Scheduled for October 23-25, the show features more than 185 artists of fine craft and fine art from the United States and Canada. In addition to functional and sculptural pottery and art glass, there will be handmade furniture, paintings, jewelry, leathers, and mixed media work to purchase. This is the event's debut and will be held at the D.C. Armory. See the list of participating artists. A coupon for a discounted entry is available at the Website.

American Art Marketing on FaceBook and Twitter

✦ Mark your calendar for Museum Shop Around at Strathmore Hall Mansion, Rockville, Maryland. This year's event, which is ticketed, takes place November 12-15. Wares from 18 area museums and shops with cultural items, including The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum, The Phillips Collection, National Museum of Women in the Arts, and the Kennedy Center, participate.

✦ On Sunday, October 18, artists, curators, and representatives from auction houses, commercial art galleries, and media gather at National Museum for Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., for "Fresh Talk: Righting the Balance—Can there be gender parity in the arts?" The symposium takes place from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.; a "Sunday Supper" follows the program. See Ticket Information (NMWA members, students, and seniors are eligible for discounted tickets).

✦ Founded as Women's Heritage Museum in 1985, the International Museum of Women, an online museum covering women's issues worldwide, is part of the Global Fund for Women. Its online exhibitions include "Muslima: Muslim Women's Art & Voices" and "Imagining Equality", which examines the art, voices, and stories of women from around the world. A current project is the multimedia "Ignite: Women Fueling Science & Technology".

IMOW on FaceBook

Global Fund for Women on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

Her Blueprint | Art & Ideas for Women Everywhere, IMOW Blog

✦ The video below, from British Council | Arts features David Batchelor's exhibition of drawings, paintings, and "color-based" sculptures: "Flatlands Remix". Part of the council's International Touring  Exhibitions, the solo show also includes Batchelor's digital installation of white rectangular and square panels. This past April, the exhibition traveled to Virginia Commonwealth University's Doha, Qatar, campus. It began touring in 2013, at Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland. A catalogue, Flatlands, including an interview with Batchelor, accompanied the exhibition. View some installation images of Flatlands at Batchelor's Website.



British Council | Arts on FaceBook

Exhibitions Here and There

✭ Berlin-based Rosa Barba's innovative film sculptures, installations, texts, and publications go on view October 23 at MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts. The exhibition, "Rosa Barba: The Color Out of Space", spotlights the artist's experiments involving celluloid and projected light, which examine geological time's relationship to a human lifetime, as well as the relationship among historical record, personal anecdote, and filmic representation. Also included are works over the last 10 years, among them wall works and cinematic large projections focused on natural landscapes and human interventions in the environment. Also featured in the survey is the premiere of Barba's new film, The Color Out of Space (2015), in which Barba has incorporated images of stars and planets recently collected at Hirsch Observatory at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. 


MIT List Visual Arts Center on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

✭ Wisconsin's Madison Museum of Contemporary Art continues through November 8 "Natasha Nicholson: The Artist in Her Museum". Comprising four rooms in the museum's State Street Gallery that represent Nicholson's studio, the exhibition features assemblages, a new series of paintings, sculptures, photographs, books that have influenced Nicholson's art, and various collections of objects "in dialogue" with each other. The rooms are designated "Thinking Room" (the exhibition begins here), "Strata" (standing for Nicholson's sculpture studio and gallery), "Studiolo" (the artist's Cabinet of Curiosities), and "Bead Room" (collections of beads and ethnic jewelry, as well as fabrics and "oddities" that Nicholson uses in her jewelry). Information about each of the rooms and images are available at the exhibition link above.

Accompanying this fascinating show is an illustrated 120-page catalogue, bearing the same title as the exhibit, which provides an art-historical context for Nicholson's work and concentrates on Nicholson's artistic practice. (See image below.) 


Catalogue Cover Art

A number of exhibition-related events are scheduled. Tomorrow, October 10, 6:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m., catalogue essayists Linda R. James, Thomas E.A. Dale, and Joseph R. Goldyne join Nicholson and MMoCA director Stephen Fleischman for a discussion of the artist's work and way of life. On October 15, 1:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m., Nicholson and Dale will talk about Nicholson's work as it relates to medieval European traditions of acquiring and displaying Christian relics. On Friday, November 6, 6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m., the artist will be available on a "drop-in basis" for an informal discussion of her collections and work. (Additional information about these and other planned events is available at the exhibition link.

MMoCA on FaceBook, Twitter, and Vimeo

✭ A solo exhibition of work by sculptor John Bisbee, the first of the artist's in the Southeast, continues through January 3, 2016, at SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, Georgia. The exhibition, "Floresco", is the second of two at SCAD that illustrates Bisbee's artistic approaches to  the use of forged and welded 12-inch bright common spikes. SCAD commissioned a wall piece, Wheel Billows, for the show. That and his other work, including Floresco (2014-2015), are beautifully executed. Don't miss the images of Bisbee's work on his Website. Bisbee's studio is in Brunswick, Maine.

SCAD Museum on FaceBook and Twitter

✭ A notable major retrospective, "Kay WalkingStick: An American Artist", opens November 7 at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C. The exhibition, which will run through September 18, 2016, will feature chronologically and by theme more than 75 of WalkingStick's paintings, drawings, and small sculptures, the diptychs for which she is best known, and notebooks. Also on view will be WalkingStick's recent paintings of monumental landscapes and Native places. WalkingStick, a member of the Cherokee Nation, has enjoyed a remarkably innovative four-decade-long career. Her evocative work, as the exhibition will show, has been consistently inventive and her artistic process constantly evolving. 

Fifteen images of WalkingStick's artworks may be seen at the exhibition link above.


Accompanying the exhibition is a catalogue of the same title (see image below), illustrated with images of more than 200 of her works (165 in color), and including essays by leading scholars, historians, and WalkingStick herself. It, too, provides a chronological orientation to the artist's life and art.


Catalogue Cover Art

NMAI has scheduled on November 5, from 1:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m., a symposium on WalkingStick's art. Titled "Seizing the Sky: Redefining American Art", the event is intended both to celebrate the artist and to examine and discuss how WalkingStick and other contemporary Native artists are "redefining" art in America. A reception and exhibition preview follow. Information about curators and other speakers, seminars and symposia, educator and student programs, and live Webcasts, are at the link in this paragraph.


NMAI on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

Notable Exhibition Abroad

✭ London's Victoria and Albert Museum has mounted a show of "The Fabric of India", on view through January 10, 2016. The ticketed show, part of V&A's India Festival, is the first major exhibition of handmade textiles from India, which cover the 3rd Century to the 21st Century. More than 200 textiles from other art institutions and leading designers are on display, many for the first time, as are examples from the museum's own renowned collection. Check the exhibition link above for related events, articles, materials and products, educational resources, and additional exhibition information.

Below is a video about hand-weaving at the cooperative Rejasthan Khadi Sangh in Kala Dera, Rajasthan. V&A visited the cooperative to watch how cotton is turned into plain-woven cloth.


Also available on Vimeo are videos about embroidery techniques used at the Sankalan embroidery design and production house, Jaipur, Rajasthan; and the inspirations and contemporary work of fashion designer Manish Arora. Many more videos are at YouTube (see link below).

An illustrated catalogue, including details about materials and techniques as well as production centers, patronage, markets, and designs, accompanies the show.

Catalogue Cover Art

Fabric of India Blog

V&A on FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube, and Vimeo

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