Friday, December 20, 2013

All Art Friday

All Art Friday

All Art Friday Spotlights

✦ The visually arresting narratives of contemporary California painter Marci Washington are the subject of Marci Washington: For Forever I'll Be Here, a new title from Gingko Press (see cover image to left). The images that appear in the monograph, encompassing a collection of paintings (watercolors and gouache on paper) that Washington exhibited at Leeds College of Art in 2011, make up "a world of hidden stories, bloody handwritten letters, ghosts, forest threats, poisoned drinks, haunted manors, barren winters and betrayal", says the publisher. Put them together and you have a deeply dark tale.

A selection of images from Washington's series For Forever I'll Be Here, Dark Mirror, and At Night may be viewed at the artist's Website; images also may be viewed at Rena Bransten Gallery in San Francisco. Washington has a solo show this month at Rena Bransten Gallery, where her work will appear from December 19 through February 15, 2014.

Marci Washington: Selected Works, 2005-Present (Leeds College of Art)

✦ It's not to late to enter a drawing in the "inspired by Matisse" competition sponsored by Indianapolis Museum of Art. Prizes, drawn from a list of products in the "Matisse Life in Color" collection in the museum's store, are awarded. An online submission form is available. Submit by December 31! (See related item in exhibition roundup below.)

✦ New to me are the wonderful paintings of Paula Overbay, a featured artist this past September and October at Art & Science Collaborations. (Read the Q&A.) Take some time to look at the terrific work on Overbay's Website. (My thanks to my friend Deborah Barlow for posting a link to Overbay on FaceBook.)

✦ The lost art of blackboard drawing is the subject of Blackboard Sketching by Frederik Whitney (1858-1949). View the 1909 book at The Public Domain.

✦ My latest Artist Watch feature at Escape Into Life spotlights the paintings of Allison Long Hardy. 

✦ Texas-based photographer Noel Kerns haunts the night world in search of the abandoned. Using a technique he calls "light painting", Kerns restores to life the details we'd otherwise miss as we pass by what's been left to its own decay. Kerns has collected his images in Nightwatch: Painting with Light (Carpet Bombing Culture/Gingko Press, 2013), showing us decommissioned military bases, shells of gas stations, derelict motels whose beds have long been vacant, and eerie industrial complexes. Don't miss the selection of images available at Kerns's Website. I'm especially taken with Kerns's Ghost Towns and a group in Road Trip. Every image has a story to tell.

Noel Kerns on FaceBook and Flickr

✦ Science meets art in extraordinary images by Swiss artist and photographer Fabian Oefner, whose TED Talk was posted in October. (I shared it earlier in other media.) I've watched this talk several times and continue to be thrilled by the visualizations Oefner creates, among them the interaction of crystals with soundwaves. In the video, Oefner demonstrates live how he achieves some of his images.




Exhibitions Here and There

✭ National Geographic, Washington, D.C., is presenting "Women of Vision: National Geographic Photographers on Assignment" through March 9, 2014. The extraordinary photographers represented in the show are Lynsey Addario, Kitra Cahana, Jodi Cobb, Diane Cook, Carolyn Drake, Lynn Johnson, Beverly Joubert, Erika Larsen, Stephanie Sinclair, Maggie Steber, and Amy Toensing. It's worth your time to visit each of the individual Websites.

A book, Women of Vision, featuring the photographers' personal reflections, as well as their images, accompanies the exhibition.

Here's a quick video introduction:


Whitney Richardson, "Women on the Front Lines and Behind the Lens", LENS Blog, The New York Times, October 10, 2010

Anna Russell, "'Women of Vision': National Geographic's Female Photographers", The Wall Street Journal, October 3, 2013

Matisse masterworks from the Cone Collection at Baltimore Museum of Art are on view through January 12, 2014, at Indianapolis Museum of Art. The exhibition, "Matisse: Life in Color", presents more than 100 works — paintings, prints, drawings, sculpture  — that reveal the great painter's stylistic and thematic development and range of subjects, including landscapes, still lifes, interiors, and nudes. The show includes Matisse's marvelous artist book Jazz (1947).


IMA on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

Spencer  Museum of Art at the University of Kansas continues through January 5, 2014, "Rockne Krebs: Drawings for Sculpture You Can Walk Through". The innovative, Kansas City-born Krebs (1938-2011) created transitory works in which he manipulated natural light and laser using mirrors, prisms, and electronic controls; many of his works were large in scale and site-specific, such as The Green Hypotenuse (1983), which incorporated a seven-mile-long laser beam, and The Miami Line, a light installation over the Miami River. The exhibition presents a group of works, including original concept drawings and a Plexiglas sculpture, donated to the museum in 2010, as well as photographic documentation and other supporting materials.

Be sure to visit the Rockne Krebs Website.

Rockne Krebs Obituary, The Washington Post


Oral History Interview with Rockne Krebs, 1990, Archives of American Art

Spencer Museum on FaceBook 

Notable Exhibits Abroad

✭ London's Tate Modern continues through March 9, 2014, "The EY Exhibition: Paul Klee — Making Visible". On view are paintings, drawings, and watercolors from collections around the world that have been arranged as Klee himself showed them; they span three decades: Klee's emergence in Munich in the 1910s, Klee's years of teaching at the Bauhaus in the 1920s, and Klee's final paintings in Bern following the outbreak of World War II. Tickets are required for entry.

A fully illustrated catalogue (available in hard- and paperback; see cover above right) is available and talks and others gallery events are being offered. Visit the Tate blogs for informative exhibition-related posts.

Here's a brief introduction to the exhibition:



Tate on FaceBook, Twitter,  YouTube, and iTunes

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