The Walkmen- Wake Up
Going a little further back today for this song from The Walkmen’s 2009 album, Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me Is Gone.
The band are returning to Los Angeles for their first headline shows in over 10 years. They will be at The Fonda Theatre for three nights- 10/2- 10/4/23.
Christina Bothwell, “Spirit Animal”, 2014, Cast glass, ceramic, oil paint
Christina Bothwell and Robert Bender “Cloud Pillow”, 2016, Cast glass, ceramic, oil paint
Karen LaMonte, “Etude 11”, Cast glass
Leah Wingfield and Steve Clements, “Low Winter Sun, Shadow III”, 2016, Cast glass
K. William LeQuier, “Synergy 2”, 2017, Cut and sandblasted glass
Above are some of the amazing glass works from a 2021 visit to Imagine Museum in St. Pete, Florida. For more work by artists Christina Bothwell, Robert Bender, Karen LaMonte, Leah Wingfield, Steve Clements, and K. William LeQuier, head to the links in this post.
This weekend (9/30 and 10/1) you can visit the museum for $5 (normally $15).
With all of the recent Sarasota posts, I thought I’d put up this fun painting, Spirit of Sarasota by Asa Cassidy, for “Throwback Thursday” this week. The painting was part of Tampa Museum of Art’s 2022 exhibition, Poetry in Paint: The Artists of Old Tampa Bay.
From the museum about the painting-
Asa Cassidy was a New York City lithographer who, in 1924, sold his lithography interests and moved to Sarasota to devote his life to painting. Cassidy loved the beauty of Sarasota Bay and built a home on Bay Island. His painting “Spirit of Sarasota”, depicting a 1920’s bathing beauty riding a tarpon in Sarasota Bay, hung in Sarasota City Hall for years.
“Ripening Shadows”, 2023, Colored pencil on toned paper
It was great to see Lauren Mann’s drawings again, this time at Art Center Sarasota for her exhibition The Ephemerality of Being. Her work was previously part of 2022’s emerging artist exhibition Fresh Squeezed 6 at Morean Arts Center, in St. Petersburg, Florida.
The artist’s statement about the show-
Growing up and getting older is seeing time pass and recognizing you can’t do anything but try to take in every moment. It’s exhausting. It’s taking a deep labored breath and deciding to rest in the peaceful aftermath of the realization that your time on earth is finite.
This work combines delicate portraiture with the rich symbolism of inanimate objects to create new, contemporary still lives. Bright, sanguine memento moris. By carefully veiling these reminders of humanity’s brittle ephemerality behind the facade of beautiful and nuanced illustrations of ordinary characteristics and relationships found in everyday life, it compels the viewer to reflect on their own lived experiences and feelings towards mortality, comparatively to those conveyed in these works.
This exhibition closes 9/30/23.
“System of (architecture)” 2023, (black) and “System of (emotion)”, 2023, (pink), Stoneware and glazes
“Line, Dot, Squiggle (a search for something more)”, 2022, Micron, colored pencil, silver leaf, vellum and colored porcelain on paper
“Line, Dot, Squiggle (a search for something more)”, 2022, (detail)
Pictured above are some of the works from Iren Tete’s exhibition systems of (entanglement) at Art Center Sarasota. These engaging sculptures (and one mixed media work) explore the various systems that surround and influence our daily lives.
The artist’s statement about the exhibition-
things fold and unfold
meander, bend, and twist
until they become other things
We make deliberate and accidental choices which result in further deliberate and accidental choices. This evolves into a network of choices, a system leading from present to future, defined by scientific reasoning yet clouded by emotional irrationality.
Systems surround us, and perhaps even define us. Systems of (entanglement) navigates, questions, and tenderly accepts these systems –
systems of thought
systems of architecture
systems of gravity
systems of language
systems of emotion
systems of logic
systems of history
systems of memory
systems of time
systems of
I engage with these numerous systems while making. My thoughts oscillate between those of simple actions – pinch, coil, squeeze- to those of things that are infinitely complex and a part of something else – such as time. These separate systems interconnect and grow into something bigger that is a part of the entangled network of systems where one thing becomes another.
This exhibition will close on 9/30/23
This mural by Diske Uno in Sarasota, Florida, was created as part of PINCfest, organized by PINC Experience.
“Paolo and the Bomb”, 2023, Assemblage of diverse materials
“Lions Escape from the Zoo or Portrait of Andy Kaufman”, 2023, Assemblage of diverse materials
Center work- “Hive, Helmet, and Butter Brick”, 2023, Assemblage of Diverse Materials
“Colossus in Repose”, 2023, Assemblage of diverse materials
“All Their Friends Are Rabbits”, 2023, Assemblage of diverse materials
After visiting Ry McCullough in his studio back in May to see what he was working on, I was very excited to finally see his exhibition SUPERPOSITIONS at Art Center Sarasota. His mixed media sculptures capture the imagination as the viewer imagines the connections between the objects in the work. The titles provide often humorous clues, but make sure to check out his Instagram for more background on his inspirations.
About the work from the center-
McCullough’s practice engages the fields of printmaking, creative writing, drawing, sound, and sculpture to create unique systems that probe the margins and boundaries of how art crafts language and communicates meaning. Using these systems of making as a guide for a range of media processes, they articulate parameters that can expand or collapse, generating opportunities for discovery in thematic investigations of the philosophical, abstract, and fluid state of being across time and space. SUPERPOSITIONS is inspired by an affection for the traditions of still life, modernist abstraction, and humor.
Artist Statement-
The SUPERPOSITIONS project comprises works of collage, sculpture, and wall-bound hybrids that exist between two-dimensional and three-dimensional space. The tension between these two spatial expressions is celebrated within this project through the playful application of collage. More than a tradition of material operations, McCullough views collage as a bundle of behaviors, a toolbox, and a signifier of fragmentation that forms an ethos of revision and reorganization.
McCullough is attracted to humble materials such as plywood and paper, concrete and plaster, foam and found things, essential stuff that requires intervention to establish meaningful presence through the relations it forms to other components in each work. The formal language is idiosyncratic; combinations of hard and soft edges, geometric and organic form, and a buffet of color with a penchant for balance. These works are propelled by the forces of potential change, by the energies of process, and by developing a poetic and clumsy status of unfinishedness.
This exhibition closes on Saturday, 9/30/23.
Charlie Havenick- Sprinkler Song
This song is from Charlie Havenick’s 2023 album, Best Boy Electric.
She is playing on Thursday (9/28/23) at Permanent Records Roadhouse in Los Angeles with Plum, Finnish Postcard, and PIERRE.
Yves Tumor- Heaven Surrounds Us Like A Hood
Every month I listen to the majority of bands/singers/musicians/artists who are playing in Los Angeles and select some for a monthly playlist. It includes a variety of genres and usually newer work by the artist.
The song above is from Yves Tumor’s 2023 album, Praise A Lord Who Chews But Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds).
Below is the playlist for August 2023.
Nuestro Andar Florece by artist, muralist, arts educator and filmmaker Michelle Angela Ortiz, is located on the wall of Mixteca Organization in Brooklyn, NY. Mixteca is a community-based organization established by “a group of concerned community members to address critical needs in health, education, social and legal issues facing the burgeoning Mexican and Latin American immigrant community in Brooklyn”.
About the mural from the artist’s website-
Nuestro Andar Florece (Our Journey Blooms), celebrates the stories of Mexican immigrant women that have planted their roots in Brooklyn, New York. As part of the Barrio Roots Festival that took place in late October 2016, I led this mural project along with artist Federico Zuvire. The project was supported by Habitajes. They offered a series of creative workshops at Mixteca Organization with women that shared their immigration stories. The women are mothers, students, educators, and some survivors of domestic violence that found a new home in New York. The women decided on the messages that are conveyed in the mural. For three weeks, the artists, workshop participants, local Brooklyn artists, and neighbors participated in the creation of the mural.