NYC Public Art- Hank Willis Thomas- “Unity” in Brooklyn (and artist talk at The Broad)

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, Installation Art, Los Angeles Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, Los Angeles Events, Public Art, Sculptors / Sculpture
Sep 182022
 

Unity, was created by Hank Willis Thomas in 2019 as part of the Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for Art Program. The 22.5 foot sculpture is a replica of NBA player Joel Embiid’s right arm.

From the artist on the work (via Downtown Brooklyn)-

“The sculpture is an homage to and celebration of the unique and multi-faceted character of the borough of Brooklyn. The spirit of Brooklyn has always been about upward mobility and connection to roots. The large-scale sculpture of a bronze arm pointing toward the sky is intended to convey to a wide audience a myriad of ideas about individual and collective identity, ambition, and perseverance”.

Thomas will be speaking with UCLA professor and author Robin D.G. Kelley today (9/18/22) at 2pm The Broad Museum about his art practice, his activism, and his piece in the museum’s current exhibition, This is Not America’s Flag.

The program will be live-streamed on The Broad’s website and their Facebook page.

Carol Mickett and Robert Stackhouse- “Balance of Water” at Leepa Rattner Museum of Art

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, Florida Art Shows, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters
Aug 262022
 

There/Here: A Cry For Help, 2008/2011/2020

Three Carbon Catchers, 2021

The two works above are from Balance of Water, an exhibition of collaborative work by Carol Mickett and Robert Stackhouse,  at Leepa-Rattner Museum of Art in Tarpon Springs, Florida.

Information from the museum about the first image-

There/Here: A Cry For Help, 2008/2011/2020, is a map of the Gulf of Mexico with an overlay of a map of all the world’s water currents. It is meant to indicate that the world waters, as the world itself, is all connected. The Tarpon, representing all life in our waters, is encountering the effects of global warming.

For the second image-

Three Carbon Catchers, 2021- The Mangrove is a major absorber of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide, if left in the atmosphere or in our waters is one of the main contributors to global warming. This painting honors the mangrove.

Mangroves thrive in saltwater environments where most plants cannot. They protect our shorelines from erosion and flooding. Worldwide, mangroves absorb about 24 million metric tons of carbon in the soil each year.

From LRMA’s website about the exhibition-

Balance of Water highlights contemporary artists Carol Mickett and Robert Stackhouse whose collaborative work raises awareness of the effects of climate change on our waterways. As this delicate ecosystem nears a tipping point, they explore ways to alleviate the warming of our waters and reveal the consequences of the rapidly changing climate with a sense of mindfulness and urgency. Since relocating from St. Petersburg to Tarpon Springs in 2017, Mickett and Stackhouse unveil their work to their recently adopted community in north Pinellas County for the first time with a series of monumental paintings that tell the overarching story of the effects of global warming.

This exhibition closes on 8/28/22.

 

Virginia Derryberry at Center for Craft in Asheville, North Carolina 2021

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Asheville, Conceptual Art, Mixed Media, North Carolina Art Shows, Painting / Painters
Aug 192022
 

Celo, 2015

Celo, 2015 (detail)

 

The World is Too Much With Us, 2021

The work above is from artist and retired UNC-Asheville Professor of Art Virginia Derryberry. It was part of the 2021 group exhibition FABRICated at Center for Craft. She curated the show with fellow artist Marcia Goldstein, whose work is included along with five emerging artists.

From the Center for Craft’s website-

FABRICated presents an intergenerational look at new boundaries in art and craft through works that merge fiber-based processes with other media, like painting, sculpture, and blacksmithing. Each of the seven artists explores ideas of the body, identity, and their unique, personal stories by using a medium with a rich history of craft. Stitching, in and of itself, is slow and methodical and invites the audience to slow down and look carefully at the physicality of the thread, the textures of the fabric, and the paint and the found objects that are introduced into the mix. The result is an exhibition that questions the nature of what constitutes women’s work, the relationship of fine art and craft, and how these elements can come together to form a new kind of community conversation.

And from Derryberry’s website about her work-

Virginia Derryberry’s current work includes large scale oil on canvas figure paintings along with fabric/costume constructions, that blend narrative elements from mythology and alchemy, the forerunner of modern science. The intent is to suggest multiple interpretations rather than straightforward illustration of a specific narrative. At first glance, it seems that a “real” space is being defined, but in fact, the painted images are constructed from multiple viewpoints and lighting systems. Passages of volumetric rendering set next to more abstract, painterly areas result in the creation of a virtual, shifting world where nothing is quite what it seems.

Billy Childish at Lehmann Maupin NYC

 Art, Art Shows by Location, British Art Shows, New York Art Shows
Aug 112022
 

cave, 2019, from Billy Childish’s 2020 exhibition remember all the / high and exalted things / remember all the low / and broken things at Lehmann Maupin’s NYC gallery.

From the press release-

For his fifth exhibition with the gallery Childish has created a body of work emblematic of his “radical traditionalist” approach. Pulling from themes found throughout art history—the bather, a lone figure in a landscape, a sunset—Childish presents intensely personal vignettes that feel archetypical, vibrating with the kinetic energy of a moment lived…

While working in a state of flow is essential to the creative process of any artist, for Childish this state represents the entirety of artistic production. Working intuitively and quickly, most of his highly gestural paintings are created in a single session without any revision. Childish is also an adept woodblock printer and he produces satirical and activist imagery with his London art cooperative, L-13 Light Industrial Workshop. His material approach to printmaking extends to Childish’s painting practice where color and line are emphasized through a flattening of each composition. His style is often compared to the expressionist painters of the early 20th century, such as Vincent Van Gogh, Kurt Schwitters, or Edvard Munch, however, for Childish, it is the embodiment of these artists’ roles within society that is most compelling. An unabashed universalist, Childish considers artistry to be the inheritance of every human being, a method to capture the expressive impulse and visualize the powerful lure of beauty.

Utterly unironic and vividly familiar, a Childish painting can be interpreted the way one might interpret a dream. In one painting, a woman swimming underwater may represent the unconscious, while in another painting, a woman wading out to a cave could represent the dark entry into the unknown. For the artist, the conceptual should never replace the humanistic—Childish states “I make a picture in the same way a child does—something ‘out there’ interests me. Making a painting of that ‘something’ then joins me with the universal creator/creation in a more intent way than just being an observer.”

Childish is currently showing new work at Lehmann Maupin’s London location until 9/3/22.

 

Vicki Smith at Bau-Xi Gallery in Vancouver

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Canadian Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Photographers / Photography, Vancouver
Jul 292022
 

Buoyant, by Canadian artist Vicki Smith, from a 2018 exhibition at Bau-Xi Gallery in Vancouver. Smith is currently in the two person show Swimmers with photographer Joshua Jensen-Nagle at Pendulum Gallery.

Rona Pondick at Zevitas Marcus, 2019

 Art, Artists, Los Angeles Art Shows, Mixed Media, Sculptors / Sculpture
Jul 012022
 

Magenta Swimming in Yellow, 2015-7, by Rona Pondick from her solo exhibition at Zevitas Marcus. The sculpture was created using pigmented resin and acrylic.

From the Zevitas Marcus press release–

In 2013, Pondick began an intensive period of experimentation with materials that were new to her practice: resins and acrylics. Over a period of five years, she developed complex methods of working with these materials and came to understand their sculptural potential. This exhibition is the first time this body of work has been seen on the West Coast.

Since her career began in 1984, Rona’s work has consistently referenced the body, in both a metaphorical and literal sense. Her sculptural practice has been no less defined by her ceaseless exploration of new materials and methods. Stainless-steel was Rona’s primary medium for the better part of a decade beginning in 1998. Her newest works are made from resins, acrylics and modeling compound.While thematically related to Rona’s earlier work, these new sculptures are notable for their extraordinary use of color and the way in which the artist’s hand is ever present, elements which heighten the sense of fragility and humanity that have always been achingly present in her work.

Also worth checking out- this ODDA magazine interview with the Pondrick from this year (2022) and her Instagram.

Sam Gilliam (1933-2022)

 Art, Artists, Conceptual Art, Florida Art Shows, Mixed Media, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters
Jun 282022
 

Crystal and Counter Light, 1994 at The Ringling

The Mississippi “Shake Rag”, 2020 at Pace

The Mississippi “Shake Rag”, 2020 (detail)

Abstract artist Sam Gilliam passed away last weekend at the age of 88. The innovative artist had an extensive body of work that encapsulated numerous styles and techniques. I was lucky enough to see his work at Pace gallery in NYC in 2020 and at The Ringling in Sarasota, Florida, in 2021.

The Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. is currently showing his final solo exhibition, Sam Gilliam: Full Circle, until 9/21/22.

ARTNews has a good profile on Gilliam, as does The Washington Post, and under this Smithsonian tribute are numerous examples of his work from their collection.

St. Pete Art Shows- Sam McCoy and Sheherazade Thenard in “Fresh Squeezed 6” at Morean Arts Center

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Florida Art Shows, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters
Jun 202022
 

Florida Roadside- Gatorland, 2020

Dusk Pines, 2020 (left) and Pinelands, 2020

Artists Sam McCoy (works above) and Sheherazade Thenard (work below) were both part of the recent exhibition Fresh Squeezed 6: Emerging Artists in Florida at Morean Arts Center in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Information on Sam McCoy from her website–

Sam McCoy was born and raised in Orlando, Florida in the 90s. She is a contemporary painter who focuses on the boundaries between natural and hyperreal landscapes of Florida. She pulls her inspirations from a place where spectacles and roadside attractions dominate America’s tourism capital. Between eco-tourism destinations and constructed gardens, McCoy explores the contradictions of her experiences in these places. By pulling back the metaphorical curtain on a carefully crafted image of Florida, McCoy’s ideas of disenchantment and re-enchantment are enacted in each painting. The viewer can still find meaning in the shadier discordant corners of the State.

Magnolia, 2020

From Sheherazade Thenard’s information page–

For me, a landscape painting is not merely a visual representation of the world. It is a metaphor for the human condition. I paint to try to make sense of the fragility of our world, the passing of time, and our shared experiences of light, color, and space. The incorporation of figures within my paintings are often swallowed or hidden by their constructed lush surroundings. Painting the land and its inhabitants continues to be a way of engaging with the strangeness of being here.

The undercurrent themes of mysticism, escapism and fantasy are reoccurring within my pieces. Through these works, I aim to create psychological spaces paired with hidden symbolism integral to the understanding of each painting.

Check out both of their websites to see more of their excellent work.

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye at Jack Shainman Gallery NYC

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters
Apr 152022
 

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s 2018 painting, The Ever Exacting, from her 2019 exhibition, In Lieu of a Louder Love at Jack Shainman Gallery in NYC.

This poem, written by the artist, was included with the press release for the show-

In Lieu Of A Louder Love

In the Shade of Hooded Cove,

In Debt to the Dead Oak.

In Range of a Twelve Gauge,

On Embers over Smoke.

At Pains to Hold the Wanton,

At Home to all who Knock.

At Prayer on Prickly Hearth Rug,

An Eye upon the Clock.

In the Parlance of the Pilgrim,

In Hallelujah Coat and Tie.

In Soul so Black Beguiling,

That the Ravens do Carp and Cry.

In Memory of A Cipher,

At Peace beside resting Dove.

In Light of Care and Kindness,

In Lieu of A Louder Love.

The information below is from the gallery’s artist biography, and gives some added insight on her paintings.

Lynette Yiadom-Boakye’s oil paintings focus on fictional figures that exist outside of specific times and places. In an interview with Nadine Rubin Nathan in the New York Times Magazine, Yiadom-Boakye described her compositions as “suggestions of people…They don’t share our concerns or anxieties. They are somewhere else altogether.” This lack of a fixed narrative leaves her work open to the projected imagination of the viewer.

Her paintings are rooted in traditional formal considerations such as line, color, and scale, and can be self-reflexive about the medium itself, but the subjects and the way in which the paint is handled is decidedly contemporary. Her predominantly black cast of characters often attracts attention. In an interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist in Kaleidoscope, she explained “People are tempted to politicize the fact that I paint black figures, and the complexity of this is an essential part of the work. But my starting point is always the language of painting itself and how that relates to the subject matter.”

The New Yorker published a wonderful portrait of Yiadom-Boakye by Zadie Smith in 2017, that is well worth a read as well.

Sharon Norwood at McColl Center 2021

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, Mixed Media, North Carolina Art Shows, Sculptors / Sculpture
Mar 102022
 

Sharon Norwood’s Polite Conversation, 2019, part of Spaces Between, the 2021 artist-in residence group show at McColl Center in Charlotte, North Carolina.

She currently has a solo show at Washington and Lee University Museums in Lexington, Virginia, running until May 28th, 2022.

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