After a nearly 12-hour day yesterday of working for money, I'm headed into the studio today to continue work on my new series. It's mixed media with encaustic and the encaustic is fused with a heated tool called a shoe (because it looks like a shoe or a boot). I'm excited about it and will be posting images soon.
Meanwhile, I wanted to update you on some of my favorite things.
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| The whole ball of wax via The Encaustic Conference blog |
Where's Joanne?
In case you missed it, Joanne Mattera posted a new comment the other day on my
Where's Joanne? post that related the latest event in the contretemps over Montserrat College of Art touting themselves as "the epicenter of encaustic." A local TV feature that Montserrat regarded as putting them in this position of prominence failed to even mention Joanne's name as the organizer and director of the encaustic conference, yet Montserrat linked to the TV piece and did not try to correct their egregious error. Here's Joanne's comment:
Everyone,
I thought you might like to know that as of today the the college removed the link to the offending video. A number of artists, myself included, had suggested that removal might be a good faith gesture. I'm pleased to see it gone. I think it means we can all move on--they on their own path, we on ours.AUGUST 24, 2010
Joanne is now organizing the next encaustic conference - Number Five - that will take place at a yet-undisclosed location that is not Montserrat. Stay tuned for the big announcement and, meanwhile, get the latest at Joanne Mattera's
The Encaustic Conference blog, where
ARTISTS CHANGE EVERYTHING.
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| Joan Mitchell, Ladybug, 1957, oil on canvas, 6'5" x 9' |
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Abstract Expressionism Makes a Comeback
You know how I like reading about those guys (mainly guys) from the '50s and '60s, well this morning I saw a link that
Mira Schor posted on Facebook to an article from August 17th in Lindsay Pollock's
Art Market Views about a show being curated by Ann Temkin at the Museum of Modern Art this fall. Called The Big Picture: Abstract Expressionist New York, the show will take over MoMA's fourth floor and include 300 works by 40 artists, some well known and some not, but all from MoMA's extensive collection. Check out the link that provides a list of artists and works. This looks like a gotta be there show.
Be Careful When You List the Twinkies
And while I was looking at Mira Schor's link, I found a comment from
Adriane Herman that posted something from the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian. Who knew what stuff they have in there! This is Franz Kline's
grocery list crica 1962.
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| Catherine Carter, work in progress |
A painter's moods
Then I saw a post from Catherine Carter about
how mood influences painting. Oh, yeah. I've been there: the ups, the downs, the doubt, the enthusiasm - all in a day's work.
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| Artist's conception of the new Sperone Westwater building |
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| The actual New Museum of Contemporary Art - right down the street from Sperone Westwater |
Are We Moving Again?
Ever notice how artists precede gentrification? We are the pioneers. Who else would put up with the cheap but crappy places to live and work? But then when the money moves in, the artists get the boot.
O.K.Harris Works of Art on Facebook linked to the Bloomberg story about the 20,000-square-foot, Norman-Foster-designed,
new building that Sperone Westwater Gallery is constructing on the Lower East Side near the
New Museum.
An excerpt: what it is and what it will be:
Most Lower East Side dealers rent modest spaces at prices ranging from $50 a square foot on Delancey Street to $200 a square foot on Bowery.
Excluding Foster’s fee and the $8.5 million Sperone Westwater paid for its narrow lot in May 2008, the building cost about $580 a square foot, or $11.6 million, according to Vincent Vetrano, president of construction consulting firm Wolf & Co. Around the same time, a 27,000-square-foot building in Chelsea was listed for $20 million (it sold in March for $8 million).
The pendulum swings and the focus of history moves on.
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| A work by Leonardo Drew that I photographed in New York last February. Unfortunately I don't have the number/title. |
Thinking About September
It means more than school starting and falling leaves to me. It's also the month when
Leonardo Drew's
Existed exhibition opens at the
DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts (September 18 - January 9). This will be the only venue in the northeast and Drew will be giving an artist talk at the museum on September 25th at 3:00 p.m. (And this week is the last week of the
Chakaia Booker exhibition at DeCordova. It ends this Sunday, August 29th.)
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| San Francisco in 1900 - see it live via the link below |
A Glimpse of Another World
What was San Francisco like in 1905? Take a 7-minute
ride on a trolley car and get a sense of it all.
And now, back to the studio...
