Friday, August 29, 2014

All Art Friday

All Art Friday

All Art Friday Spotlights

✦ One look at the work of freelance illustrators (and twins) Anna and Elena Balbusso, and I think you'll agree that these artists are outstanding. Profoundly inspired by art and with a deep knowledge of art history, they create painterly illustrations that are beautiful, surreal, and dream-like. Read about their multi-stage creative process and then view the portfolios of their magnificent work, which includes illustrations for a wide range of magazines, numerous corporations, and children's books. They have illustrated Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, Beowulf, Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and numerous fairy tales and legends. (My thanks to Hannah Stephenson for an introduction to the artists' work.)

Anna and Elena Balbusso on FaceBook

✦ Have you seen International Arts Movement's Tumblr site? Art submission opportunities, IAM exhibits, jobs in the arts fields, arts scholarships, and internship opportunities are just a few of the features you'll find there.

✦ California's Tom Killion, who has a fascinating background, is a terrific wood-cut artist. His printmaking process, which he jokingly calls "faux ukiyo-e", was spotlighted in the PBS documentary Craft in America: Process, and his studio in Pt. Reyes is the subject of In the Make. His prints are all in limited editions and signed and numbered. They are exquisite. His handprinted books are particularly fine. A large selection of Killion's original wood-cuts and large Iris prints are on show at Book Passage Gallery through the end of this year. For the 50th anniversary of the death of poet Robinson Jeffers, Killion created a broadside, in a limited edition of 50 prints, featuring Jeffers's home Tor House in snow and the poem "In the Evening the Dusk". (An image of the broadside is shown on the main page for Tor House.)

✦ Don't miss the portraiture (other images) of Annemarie Busschers of The Netherlands. A BP Portrait Award winner in 2008, the artist exhibited work earlier this summer in Scope Basel 2014 and at Groninger Museum. Bisschers's marvelous artistry also can be seen at Escape Into Life.

✦ Commissioned for a celebration of Mandela Day, on July 18, 2014, "Mandela Day Shorts", below, comprises three moving-image artworks from six emerging South African and British visual artists, animators, and musicians. The three are "The World Is Flat", "Pied Piper's Voyage", and "Vividism".  Also see this post at The Space, which includes a curator's introduction and statements from artist Kent Andreasen and musicians Auntie Flo and Esa Williams. My thanks to the British Council for making the videos available.



Exhibitions Here and There

✭ In Roanoke, Virginia, Taubman Museum of Art continues through September 6 "Jennifer D. Anderson: Resolute Understandings of Fragile Things", a mural that features Anderson's hand-cut stencils, inspired by objects around the museum, that have been printed on a retaining wall. Anderson is an associate professor of art at Hollins University who works in printmaking, paper-cutting, and drawing. See an image of the mural.

Jennifer D. Anderson on FaceBook 

On September 13, the museum opens "Between Two Worlds: Annette Nancarrow in Mexico and America". Running through January 17, 2015, the exhibition will present more than 40 works spanning nearly 30 years, highlighting Nancarrow's artistic development and achievements. Nancarrow's painting Watermelons is in the collection of the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.


Annette Nancarrow, Self-Portrait, Undated
Oil on Canvas, 23" x 19"
Image Courtesy Collection of Luis and Karen Stephens

Taubman Museum on FaceBook and Twitter

✭ In Texas, The Contemporary Austin presents "Do Ho Suh" from September 20 to January 11, 2015. The exhibition will feature a multi-part installation that includes architectural structures, documentary films, and drawings. Images are available at the exhibition link.

Do Ho Suh at Lehmann Maupin Gallery and Art21

Do Ho Suh on FaceBook

The Contemporary Austin on FaceBook, Twitter, and Vimeo

✭ Continuing through September 7 at Maine's Portland Museum of Art is "Richard Estes's Realism", co-organized with the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C., where the show will be on view beginning October 10. The first solo exhibition of Estes's work in the United States in more than two decades, "Richard Estes's Realism" showcases 50 of Estes's paintings, including those of New York City facades in the late 1960s and the woods of Mount Desert Island, where Estes spends time every year. A catalogue accompanies the show.


Catalogue Cover

Richard Estes at Malborough Gallery

PMA on FaceBook and Twitter


Virginia Museum of Fine Arts continues through October 19 "Ryan McGinness: Studio Visit", a look at the contemporary artist's creative process for VMFA's commissioned work by McGinness, Art History Is Not Linear (2009), a 16-panel, 32-foot-long painting with 200 icons inspired by works in the museum's collection. The exhibition comprises three parts: studio practice, objects from the collection and McGinness's sketches and final images, and early works by the artist created while growing up in Virginia Beach. 


Ryan McGuinness Lecture (February 2014)

Ryan McGuinness Studios on FaceBook

VMFA on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube

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