To Show or Not to Show: That is the Question by Ellen Fisch

As an artist, I am always tempted to show my work: any of my work. I work very hard to perfect my art and I want and need approval for my efforts. Then, too, I am producing visual creations. The main reasons for creating my art are to express myself through my art and to have others view the work. The question is what do I show? To whom do I show it? When do I show it? Where do I show it? And the answer, I suspect, lies in what I expect to gain from showing my work. I have always known the questions and the answer, but it has taken me a long time to refine and define. Recently, a wonderfully insightful photographer told me to focus solely on my objective and the rest will come. I do believe he is right.
So much of my energy in the past has been centered on proving myself via my art. I am now focusing on creating art and as my friend says: the rest will come - or maybe it won't, but I'm giving it my best shot. For too long I've been concerned with "making it," thus producing work that the public would like and ultimately buy. To that end, I was sometimes showing work that was not the art that I wanted to produce or be involved with creating in venues in which I was not comfortable. I have had success along this route, but not enough to justify the energy I have expended trying to please. Along the way, I worked on projects that were draining and were not concerned with any of the ideas that I, as an artist, wanted to communicate.


Ellen Fisch on 06.30.08 @ 09:08 AM EST [Read more and comment...] [18 Comments]

Picasso comes to Abu Dhabi by Valerie Grove

At the Emirates Palace hotel in Abu Dhabi until September is the Arab world's first public exhibition of works by Pablo Picasso. Borrowed from the collection at the Musée National Picasso in Paris, the retrospective show features examples of all styles and periods and features 186 paintings, sculptures and works on paper,.

I have not really through about Picasso for years. The fact that I can still visualize most of the well known pieces from various periods has resulted in a smug assumption of familiarity that almost meant I didn't bother going to this show. This would have been criminal because this show was an absolute revelation. Seeing such a range of work mostly unfamiliar to me was like seeing a completely different artist and given my own accumulation of years the way in which I perceived the work was also completely different.



Valerie Grove on 06.26.08 @ 08:24 AM EST [Read more and comment...] [5 Comments]

Shake-Down Cruise I by Walter King

My trip to Argentina last year nearly bankrupted me. Besides the financial cost which, because of inflation in Argentina had been nearly one third higher by the time I was done, I lost all the artwork on my way out of town. Blogs I wrote last August explain it all. But I still had one thing I had to do. Since I’d received a small faculty grant from the college to cover some things related to possible student and cultural exchange I was to do an exhibition upon my return of the work I’d done while in-country. The college would have let me off the hook since the work was probably floating down the Rio Primiero but I felt a need to rise above the whole experience and reprise, or at least revisit the work I’d done there so I could put up a good show.


Walter King on 06.23.08 @ 11:13 AM EST [Read more and comment...] [12 Comments]

Less is less, more is more, that’s all by Alice Cavender

The new exhibition at the CAPC museum of contemporary art of Bordeaux, France, opened last Friday, and is in place until the 14th of September.
The Bordeaux-based artist collective Présence Panchounette are at the starting point of this artistic proposal. Active from 1969 to 1990, the group’s art is a mix of humour and rebellion against the modernist society. Using whatever they could get their hands on, transforming all that they touched into ironic and satirical parodies of the world, the group revelled in the provocation and scandal they created. As soon as they started to become “fashionable”, they parted and went their own separate ways.
In Bordeaux at the time, they were seen as the little rebellious group, shadowed by the ever-growing immensity of Jean-Louis Froment’s CAPC (Centre of Contemporary Plastic Arts). A kind-of David against Goliath. Always refusing to put their art works in any kind of institution. Thirty years on, their promise has still been kept, as their humorous installations and witty objects are being displayed outside of the CAPC, all throughout the summer in fourteen different spots in Bordeaux.


Alice Cavender on 06.19.08 @ 08:24 AM EST [Read more and comment...] [1 Comment]

Ship of Hope... On a Sea of Fools. by Jose Freitas Cruz

The image you see here is something Rui, Fernando and I worked on together and shipped off to Australia for an exhibition at the Yarra Sculpture Centre in Melbourne. I mention this because it is one of the things I find challenging about these new internet times: the new forms and possibilities of interaction between artists.

The way I see it, more and more, these are hard times for individual shows but favourable for artists to come together and organize interesting things, sharing the costs, burdens and laurels. Times for being artists for the love of art, in the hope that we attract some attention to what we are doing; and that eventually one or two things will sell and we can move on to the next project.


Jose Freitas Cruz on 06.16.08 @ 10:01 AM EST [Read more and comment...] [9 Comments]

Has the Time Come for Convergent Media? by Barney Davey

Brad Michael Moore gave us an up close impassioned personal portrayal of how he has evolved as an artist in the digital age. He is to be commended for the courage to follow his instincts at the expense of leaving a comfortable more certain existence behind. Brad refers to himself as a Digital Artifact Artist.

It has been noted movements in the arts portend the future. Artists being highly sensitized to their environment often create work signaling social change. For instance, Impressionism with its fluidity and spontaneity was in retrospect seen as a reaction to the Industrial Age from which the first precisely manufactured mass produced objects the world had known came.

A century later, I see the work by Brad and other visual artists working digitally forecasting change again. Admittedly, due to the advancement of technology, the pace of change is greater and faster than 100 years ago in the age of Impressionism. And through a purely arbitrary observation on my part, I sense the shift towards digital art as a model or mirror for the evolution of global business, politics, entertainment and art. In this case however, rather than being a polar reaction as Impressionism was to the Industrial Age, I see digitally rendered art as an amalgamation of traditional art, photography, software, computer-generated and manipulated art and printing.




Barney Davey on 06.13.08 @ 08:38 AM EST [Read more and comment...] [7 Comments]

Reception hosted by The Supreme Court of Ohio-"Ohio: The Law, the Land and the People" by Ron Anderson

On Tuesday, June 3rd 2008, The Supreme Court of Ohio hosted a Reception, titled "Ohio: The Law, the Land and the People", from 5:00-7:00 p.m. to acknowledge and celebrate the contributors and contemporary artists whose work is at the Ohio Judicial Center. In a statement issued by the Public Information Office of The Supreme Court of Ohio,

"The Reception marked the official launch of an effort to raise awareness of the art, and thank the collection's benefactors."

Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer invited me to make comments on behalf of the artists as a part of the planned activities for the event. I arrived at 4:30 p.m. and met several of the contemporary artists who have work in the Supreme Court Building. We each posed for a photograph with Chief Justice Moyer in the Courtroom.


Ron Anderson on 06.09.08 @ 09:30 AM EST [Read more and comment...] [12 Comments]