Words and Pictures

Here are some links to art-related portals on the internet. You could read essays on art, culture, interviews with artists and critical reviews of various shows.

Cara Barer

Cara Barer's photographs are taken of books that are discarded and abandoned: the Houston yellow pages, or Windows 95, for example. These books whose contents can now be acquired so easily online are still precious in their physical being as an object, and Cara's work is a celebration of the beauty found in the sculptural qualities of these offcast findings from thrift stores. According to Cara, each book's physical state at the time she acquires it shapes the journey of the book into the object to be photographed, taking consideration of its contents, material quality, and even state of disrepair.

Natalie Capannelli

I always did like the idea of a closed door but open window. How the idea of a big bang, violent explosion, was the birth of our solar system. An end is also a beginning in that an explosion known for its destructive connotation is what started this whole thing spinning.

Artist Natalie Capannelli explores just that notion. Her large paintings on yupo paper (plastic based sheets) are ambiguous. They vacillate between chaos and control and the nebulous primordial fluids swirling and mixing in an mysterious alchemy of creation or the exploding or our habitat, total destruction and apocalypse. Her materials and handling play up this idea by mixing the randomness of poured pigment and meticulously painted abstract details like chunks of matter and atoms or cells or body parts.

The works are big and stunning to examine. They carry the energy in which they try to convey.

Natalie holds a degrees from Kent State and Pratt and now resides in South Korea as part of the Seoul Arts Collective. She has work up now in Cleveland at the Asterisk Gallery.

-brandon

Sandra Mack-Valencia

I have always had eyes for Sandra's work, ever since I spied her delicious layered mylar scrolls suspended from the ceiling at Hunter's MFA show a couple years back. Guys and dolls, fantastical circus and marine creatures, haute couture of dreams, and the relationships between the stage actresses (and their lovers) of the subconscious all enter her repertoire, to create a delicious and sinful, dreamlike play of nightmares and hopes. In her statement, Ms. Mack-Valencia writes:

It took me a few years to realize that besides political, social or moralizing work, it was also possible to make art with a strong aesthetic component, work that obeys impulses and sensations. It is not senseless, since it comes from a process of thought like every creative act; but instead of trying to illustrate a concept or idea, it is the idea, it is the concept that comes through the hand in the form of a stroke, a color, a drip, a smudge.

To see her latest piece entitled "Domesticated Medusa", check out an upcoming tArt women's collective exhibition entitled Model Home and curated by Nico Wheadon.

The opening reception is on Wednesday July 28th from 5:30-8:30 pm at the Roger Smith Hotel Gallery on the 16th Floor 501 Lexington Avenue in NYC. The show is on view until August 13, 2010.

Getting By with a Little Help from the Friends

So we've made some changes to the blog recently and the best one is that we now have two more bloggers helping us out! We're hoping this will help us be a little more consistant with the posts and will bring a little more range to what we post. Soooo... by means of introduction, help us say hello and THANK YOU to Brandon and Masha....

Brandon Juhasz (Cleveland, OH) of Hello My Name is Art. Check out his painting and photography, and the shows he is currently a part of at Spaces and Asterisk galleries in Cleveland.

Masha Stenina (New York, NY) of FreeRangeWords edits and publishes a paperless collaborative publication of words and images by creative women for creative women. Feed your freerange soul at FreeRangeWords.com.

Bovey Lee

I stumbled upon Bovey Lee and her mindblowing paper cutout work by chance while looking for an unrelated artists' work (and the quest still continues...). I couldn't help the gasp when I saw it. Ms. Lee has mastered (painstakingly) this traditional Chinese folk art, has studied its history and works to preserve its craft and cultural value by using this traditional art to create rather contemporary pieces. For more on this way of working (and some delicious books), check out her blog.

Heather Merckle-Paintings

I can best describe the new paintings by Heather Merckle by trying to remember the lyrics to Simon and Garfunkel's seminal classic The Sound of Silence: "Hello darkness my old friend, I've come to talk to you again...." Her miniature canvas's, many not exceeding a foot in either direction, are minimalist in imagery but filled with moody, dark and poetic inferences. Each piece hints at isolation, being alone, surrounded by the night and left with only your thoughts. In one painting the predominately black canvas shows the brake lights of a car on a dark 2 lane highway as it drives away. The view is left to feel like an abandoned pet cast off and confused as its once owner peels away into the darkness. In another piece we see 3 lone spot lights illuminating an empty stage. No other life is present. Closing time and everyone has gone home except for the viewer. We are left to contemplate the silence after the show, perhaps alone. Other paintings too show someone on the outside looking in. Seeing the lights of a city glowing like a warm beacon in the distance as the viewer is out in the cold dark outskirts. Maybe running away maybe trying to get to the light of the city where there is comfort and people. No matter what the interpretation, Heathers paintings are like a lemonhead. An economy of size and detail but pack a serious jolt of literary and poetic flavor. Right? That analogy was bad, I know, but come on, you get it. The paintings are good and they open a lot of questions about identity and place. Check em out. -brandon

KY Anderson

Ky Anderson's abstracted landscapes have a dramatic effect on the viewer. Upon entering a room of this work, one simultaniously feels a wash of tranquility and curiosity. There is a particular color palette, repeating shapes and honest, vulnerable linework that creates a distinct feeling of balance and beauty without being boring.

A solo exhibition of Ky's work is currently on view at Kansas City's Dolphin Gallery through September 4, 2010.

Carrie Scanga

Carrie Scanga's work is an amalgam of drawing, printmaking and sculpture. The drawings are sparse and focused on (what appears to be) specific private psychological moments or memory fragments. Though simple, her compositions are very controlled and deliberate. The color is delicate, jewel-like. Scanga's sculptural work takes on a shape of architectural environments and are built out of stitched and printed or painted paper. There is sense of both fragility and strength that emanates from the work. The structures seem to uphold space or act as a barrier but are ready to disintegrate at any moment.

http://www.carriescanga.com/

CALL FOR ENTRY : PAGES @ Paragraph Gallery

Urban Culture Project and guest curator Amy Kligman are soliciting work for an upcoming exhibition. This show will include book related work, ranging widely in format and purpose. The hope is to present to the community the book as an opportunity- the book as entry point to ones own art practice, as catalyst to new and evolved work, and as an unpredictable format that can be taken far beyond the bound signatures we are most familiar with.

We will be looking specifically for work that exemplifies best the following categories (see examples below of pre-selected work fo the show)

1.) Books inspiring new media projects (projection, film, digital)
2.) Wall pieces that are inspired by the book format or convey the impression of “pages”
3.) Sketchbooks, Process Books
4.) Artist Books (small run limited edition or original books only, not mass produced)
5.) Books demonstrating the Zine or Magazine format
6.) Altered books and/or books as sculptural object
7.) Work demonstrating collaboration between artists and writers, poets, journalists, academics

call for entry deadline: August 15, 2010

Exhibition Dates: November 19th, 2010 - warly January 2011
Exhibition Location: Paragraph Gallery (an Urban Culture Project Space). 23 East 12th Street, KCMO Kansas City, MO

Submission Checklist:

• low res (72 dpi) jpeg format of either work you wish to submit or images related to a proposed project piece to be created specifically for the show OR link to website where images of work is available.
• written description of the work, include conceptual description, title, dimensions, media, and date.
• abbreviated (1 pg) CV
• description of all display needs associated with work. Please let us know ahead of time if your work is "touchable" or not. (some books are meant for browsing..some just for display. Please establish this for us ahead of time).
• please indicate if you are interested in participation if this show travels beyond its initial venue (Paragraph Gallery, Kansas City, MO)

send entries to: amy@amykligman.com by AUGUST 15, 2010. Please make sure to enter "PAGES SUBMISSION" in the subject line.

Brian Dettmer

Brian Dettmer's work seems very concentrated in making something more of a discarded, or little noticed object...for example: books, videotape, cassettes, maps. Its interesting that his media of choice is "media"...forms of communication that have either gone completely out of use or have experienced some sort of loss in popularity..and in some instances he's referring back to this "death" of the media in the objects he creates: skulls, funeral flowers, empty shell-like figures. Or in the titles or act of carving them, such as in his book pieces, one series titled "book autopsies".

Brian might be most well known for his altered book work, in which he attempts to bring a new life to a book by revealing the depths within it in a new way, revealing layers of text and imagery in a manner that morphs the book into a mysterious, captivating object that once again intrigues its audience with secrets within.