The First Thursday Art Walk in the historic Pioneer Square neighborhood is a popular Seattle institution. The first Thursday of every month, museums and galleries downtown keep their doors open late, admission fees are waived and studios welcome throngs of art enthusiasts. It’s a popular time for shows to open, and last Thursday was no different. ...more...
Arts America Blog
Saving Humanity One Dance At A Time
February 8, 2012 by
Pablo Malco, choreographer and director of The Hip Hop Symphony, the dance performance extravaganza hosted by the Broward Center for the Performing Arts on January 29, 2012, tells us about how he got into dance, the making of The Hip Hop Symphony and the dance company turned foundation (www.pablomalcofoundation.org) that brings the art of dance into the community. ...more...
The Art of Self Tracking: An Artist Talk with Laurie Frick
February 1, 2012 by
“I’m convinced the way we unconsciously slice our time reflects the underlying structure of our mind,” Frick says in a statement. “I began self-tracking as a way to measure and then reverse engineer the unique pattern of ourselves. I believe there is something comforting and compelling about human metrics and realized I was not alone. Many, many people measure something about themselves every day.” ...more...
Explore “The Common Object” at MICA
January 30, 2012 by
The Common Object is an exhibition of over 60 still life paintings created by 31 Zeuxis artists and their associates. It is now on display at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Zeuxis (named after a prominent painter in ancient Greece) is a group of painters work to continue to explore still life painting as many contemporary artists disregard it. The Common Object is on tour and the fourth and last stop is here in Baltimore. It originally opened at the Prince Street Gallery in New York City in October 2010. ...more...
First, Last or All
January 28, 2012 by
Many cities set aside one day a month where art galleries are either open late or have a special event to encourage the public to come see their shows. Last year marked the 25th anniversary of Portland, Oregon’s First Thursday, by now a venerable institution in Downtown and the Northwest Portland Pearl District.
When condominiums replaced dilapidated warehouse and industrial buildings in Northwest Portland, many artists and galleries were priced out …more…
“Moving Right Along” Entertains Baltimore Travelers
January 26, 2012 by
Credit: C. A. Mezensky
As train travelers hurry to their destination this winter, they have an engaging new exhibit to greet them at Baltimore’s Penn Station. “Moving Right Along” is a small show in a vacant store in the station’s lobby. The three pieces included are a sculpture, an animation and an interactive painting.
“Walls of Love” by Artemis Herber is a set of bright red cylindrical cardboard sculptures. They are …more…
The Visual Arts Center at The University of Texas Celebrates the New Year with an Open Invitation to the Public
January 25, 2012 by
Diana Al-Hadid, Gradiva’s Fourth Wall, 2011, polymer gypsum, wood, fiberglass, paint
On Friday, January 27th, from 6:00pm – 9:00pm, The University of Texas at Austin’s Visual Arts Center cordially invites the public to a free, spectacular reception honoring the first four exhibitions of the 2012 season. There will be plenty of refreshments, enticing art, and knowledgeable art folk there with which to mingle.
The first artist to be featured in the …more…
The Olympic Sculpture Park Celebrates Its 5th Anniversary
January 23, 2012 by
“Does anyone have a business card?” our docent asks.
Ripping the offered card carefully and expanding it to a rough Z shape, the docent explains how the project designers, Weiss/Manfredi of New York, came up with the Olympic Sculpture Park’s unusual layout. Voilà! ...more...
“World Beats: Global Contemporary Art” at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts
January 21, 2012 by
River Escape Panel
Currently showing at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, “World Beats: Global Contemporary Art” is an eclectic mix of paintings, painted photographs, sculpture and found-object art by eight artists whose works range from the glib to the ironic to the poignant.
My choice for most dramatic impact is an arrangement of nine panels—from a larger group of 50—by Cy Thao, a Hmong-American whose family fled Laos in 1975, when …more…
Man oh Man!
January 20, 2012 by
I walked into the BCA (Burlington City Arts) firehouse gallery shaking from the frigid Burlington air. I had ventured out into the cold to see Adam Putnam’s “magic lanterns” exhibit. Maybe my brain was still frozen, but for some reason I wasn’t too excited about the exhibit and haphazardly walked upstairs to the second exhibit. On the second floor photographer Evie Lovett’s exhibit, “Backstage at the rainbow Cattle Co.” caught …more…
With The Etch A Sketch, Play Can Be Art
January 14, 2012 by
Imagine creating an elaborate etched image without ever lifting the stylus from the surface. This is exactly what three Etch A Sketch artists from Portland, Oregon do. Rather than adding material to a surface to make a drawing, etchings are made by taking material away, requiring artists to think in terms of negative space.
I wonder if the toy’s inventor, André Cassagnes of France, ever imagined that artists would use it …more…
An Interview with Isaac Layman: A Seattle Artist Finding Paradise in His Own Home
January 11, 2012 by
Isaac Layman. Untitled, 2011. Photographic construction, ink-jet on paper. 95" X 59".
Isaac Layman has taken the art world by storm with his evocative, large-scale photographic constructions, which transform the banal into the hyper-realistic, haunting and enigmatic. Drinking glasses, used tissues, heating vents: Any object in Layman’s Seattle home can become the object of an intense visual meditation, captured over and over from subtly different angles by the artist’s high-resolution, …more…
Art for Everyone in 2012!
January 4, 2012 by
Museums and galleries in Minneapolis and St. Paul are offering great exhibits throughout 2012. From plein air to modern to contemporary, there’s something for everyone’s taste. Here’s a short list of some major events happening this month. ...more...
Anchorage Museum: Cool Stuff Made Of “Weird” Animal Parts
December 31, 2011 by
It’s a great week to visit the Anchorage Museum: over the next eight days, the museum will be closing four special exhibits to make way for three new ones, opening in February. Since its expansion in 2010, the Anchorage Museum is now large enough that you can easily miss the great stuff. Here are my suggestions on what to see over the next week. ...more...
Aphrodite and the Gods of Love at The Museum Of Fine Arts, Boston
December 30, 2011 by
On view at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston through February 20, 2012, Aphrodite and the Gods of Love. is the first museum exhibition of classical works devoted solely to Aphrodite. Known as Venus to the Romans, the show celebrates her likeness as the first female nude in western art history. Now that the holiday season is over, all of us can switch gears to questions of love and romance, and what better way than meditating on Aphrodite herself? Featuring160 works from the MFA’s Greek and Roman collection, the exhibition also includes 13—9 of which are from Rome and Naples—including Sleeping Hermaphrodite, which has left Italy only once prior to this show. ...more...
Walters to display large gift of Russian enamels
December 29, 2011 by
Baltimoreans will soon have a chance to view enameled Russian silver that dates from the 17th to the early 20th centuries. Art collector Jean Montgomery Riddell bequeathed over 250 pieces to the Walters Art Museum. This generous gift came to the museum after she died last year at age 100. ...more...
First Thursday in Santa Barbara
December 28, 2011 by
In the early evening on the first Thursday of this month, a small group of art enthusiasts congregated at Wall Space Gallery, a homey little venue on west Ortega Street, and the only gallery in Santa Barbara dedicated solely to photography, and waited, some looking at the exhibit within, some sitting on the stoop (yes, there’s a stoop) without, for the arrival of Nathan Vonk, curator of sculpture at Sullivan …more…
Five Hot Seattle Art Shows to Catch This Year End
December 27, 2011 by
Time is running out for 2011, as it is for a number of top-notch Seattle-area exhibitions. If you’re yearning for a little culture fix to fill your holiday leisure hours, here are five shows to catch in the next few weeks: ...more...
Will Work For Art
December 22, 2011 by
Fundraising for arts organizations can be a challenge even in a strong economy. In Portland, Oregon the Work for Art program helps to support the arts by facilitating employee-giving campaigns at public and private workplaces throughout Oregon and SW Washington. Some of the participating employers even provide matching funds.
These Work for Art donations are then re-directed back to the community, with 100% of the funds that are raised benefiting arts …more…
Las Vegas Architecture- Frank Gehry’s Lou Ruvo Center
December 20, 2011 by
The Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health is the collaborative project between Larry Ruvo, the owner of the largest distributor of wine and spirits in Las Vegas and Frank Gehry, the California based, Toronto born architect. Together they have created a world renowned institute for brain research and health, officially the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health. It is hard to miss this impressive structure located in just off the …more…
New Orleans Museum of Art turns 100 with a party
December 15, 2011 by
In most any other major North American city an art museum would commemorate an anniversary with a dry, stuffy affair consisting of a string quartet quietly playing Haydn or Brahms while hor d’oeuvres would be passed along to attendees by a wait staff in thick-starched black and white uniforms.
New Orleans Museum of Art (Photo courtesy of NOCVB)
But this is New Orleans and when the New Orleans Museum of Art …more…
Through the Looking Glass
December 14, 2011 by
Once again the Portland Art Museum (PAM) in Oregon has delved into its permanent collection to mount an exhibition. This time, the Museum is mining its photographic print archive of approximately 5,000 images produced throughout the 19th and 20th century. The exhibit, titled “Through the Looking Glass: Photography’s Use of Windows, Doorways, and Mirrors,” runs through the end of February 2012 and includes over sixty photographs in which these objects play a dominant role. ...more...
Philadelphia’s Space 1026’s Week of Events, culminating Friday 9 December 2011!
December 3, 2011 by
Philadelphia’s Space 1026 is hosting a week’s worth of events leading up to their annual art auction! Space 1026 is, as they explain themselves as a “fourteen-year-old experiment”: it is a member-run gallery collaborating to construct a creative venue.
There’s a whole range of events planned for the week. Ever wonder what an artist’s studio actually looks like? On Sunday 4 December, Space 1026 is opening up its studios to the public. Studio …more…
The Right Brain Initiative
November 22, 2011 by
Rather than bemoan the loss of school arts programs due to budget cuts, arts supporters in Portland, Oregon have developed an innovative program that weaves the arts into required school curriculum. Since 2008, the Right Brain Initiative has given teachers tools for integrating the arts into their teaching of core education subjects. When the creative process is merged with learning, students are more engaged with the subject matter, and it …more…
