Art Fun: ART NOW

FiberPhiladelphia 2012 was an international biennial and regional festival in 40 locations, now coming to a close. It pushed edges and boundaries in innovative,  exciting, and unexpected ways, redefining and transcending materials.  My Barnes Foundation ART NOW class had the privilege of visiting one its most major exhibits on Art Safari with Roberta Fallon and Libby Rosoff, the women behind http://www.theartblog.org. We heard  from both the Curator and Director of FiberPhiladelphia http://www.fiberphiladelphia.org at this preview before it officially opened.  What an amazing experience!  Watch the video an you'll see for yourself.  

 I love this installation of transparent people that constantly moved and changed from every angle:

ART NOW has given us the back story on so many galleries, museums, and art spaces in Philly.  I will miss the class when it comes to an end in a few weeks.  Its impact will last the rest of my life.

Another highlight of our fourteen week ART NOW class: At Bahdeebahdu I was fascinated with Warren Muller's fantastical sculptures using salvaged repurposed stuff made beautiful and luminous.  Anything and everything can be an art supply! Browsing the website is a treat:  http://bahdeebahdu.com.  After visiting I also now know how to pronounce Bahdeebahdu.  Meeting Warren and his associates, and hearing him talk about his astonishing career that spans so many of the arts was inspiring.  Seeing his inventory of junk, and knowing there was a barn filled with more out in the country, made me feel like my garage sale and flea market habit to gather art supplies is very small potatoes.  Here is one thing not on his website:  the bathroom has a wonderful open shower area, with a wall of assemblage.  If you look carefully, you can see the knob in the center of the most interesting shower wall I have ever seen!

 

Mindfulness and Jurying?

My monotype Genesis is in fact the genesis of my starting to work abstractly for the first time.  It is a joy when I feel the gestural freedom that is possible with monoprinting.  

At the Main Line Art Center's Members show recently, Genesis was awarded the Square One Award.  The Juror was Robert Cozzolino, Senior Curator and Curator of Modern Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.

A few weeks later, it was rejected by the juror for the Artists Equity Association members' exhibit at West Chester University.  What does this mean?

Mindfulness is accepting. It doesn’t label good or bad, right or wrong, beautiful or ugly. The moment is simply the moment.  A behavior is simply a behavior. No judgment.  

I think that means I can't take either event too personally.  But personally, I'm happy to have the prize.

Salt Art Installations!

Japanese artist Yamamoto Motoi creates amazing large scale installations out of salt! He uses a tube to draw with the salt in a similar way to what I have seen watching Tibetan Monks making sand mandalas.  When this exhibition at the Hakone Open-Air Museum in Kanagawa, Japan ended, the public was invited to help dismantle the installation and carry all seven tons of salt back to the ocean.  This too is how the Tibetan Monks return their mandalas to a body of water. 

I am fascinated with impermanence - whether sand castles, snow circles, or salt installations!

Snow Circles - an amazing art form!

Much as I am looking forward to Spring, these snow circles are so beautiful I can't resist sharing them. I love their temporality...the winter equivalent of sand castles that get washed away!


Snow Circles from Beauregard, Steamboat Aerials on Vimeo.

Video Version of Collaborative / 34 Show !

This beautifully filmed video captures the spirit and essence of our Collaborative / 34 show at Muse Gallery, as well as the art itself.  It fully embodies the show! Watch it and enjoy the unique concept unfold.  As one artist says, "it was not so much about each individual artist, as about how we work together..."  When you watch, you become part of the many people taking in this amazing installation.  Enjoy!  In some respects you will see more of the art than if you had been in the press of people that obscured the view.

I didn't know until I watched the video that Muse Gallery had been founded years ago by two women from the Women's Caucus for Art.  Considering how many years I was a member of the San Diego Women's Caucus for Art Chapter, and how much they have influenced my career as an artist, it felt like 'full circle'!

I Didnt Know Corporate Art Could Be So Edgy and Exciting!

Visiting The West Collection was like visiting a cutting-edge contemporary museum or gallery, except it's in the midst of a corporate workplace, SEI.  Art is just part of the employee environment, kind of like having it in your home while you are at work. It's in the snack bar, near your desk, everywhere you randomly go.

I would have never driven for almost an hour in the rain to get there, if it were not part of a class I am taking with the Barnes Foundation, called ART NOW.  Knowing our small group would get a behind the scenes tour from the Director of the collection, I made the trek.

Dining Table, above, by Michael Beitz, is edgy, and both humorous and sad.  We can all relate to not really seeing the person on the other side of the table.

Reading Room by the more established artist Long-Bin Chen is carved from telephone books from Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island.  Because of the setting and our class we were allowed to touch, in a way that we couldn't have in a museum.  It was strange to partially pull out a phone book - a piece of cheek - and be able to touch the pages, feel the softness, and see the names of hundreds of people.  Telephone books are now ancient artifacts, which I think makes Long-Bin Chen's many carved Buddhas and figures all the more of interest!  They capture a moment in time, and also tell us something about waste and the ultimate recycling, as well as being beautiful.

Check it out for yourself!  http://www.westcollection.org

No surprise that the curator of the collection recently gave a talk called "Imagining What Comes After Museums?"

A Reception so successful you could hardly see the art!

The art was almost obscured by the wall-to-wall people at our Artists' Reception last Sunday at MUSE Gallery.  People had to be displaced to push the door open.  At the same time, people were leaking out the door on to the sidewalk just to breathe.  I'm told it was like that the whole afternoon.  I didn't stay long.... claustrophobia got to me.  But I'm glad I was there, if only to witness the phenomenon. Fortunately I had seen the art previously at the Opening party.  It was hard to see at the reception.  Hopefully the reviewer from the Philadelphia Inquirer did see it.  And the videographer was there before the crowds converged.  I'll post the YouTube video once it is up!

My four monotypes are in the vertical row:  two purple on top, then green with red circle, and black and white on the bottom.  For all the shows I have been in, this is the first time I have shown completely abstract work.  I'm enjoying the new direction!