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Friday, June 30th
Nall
 ‘Nall’ is the pen name used by an artist from Troy, Alabama, who I’d never heard of until this past weekend. Neither had anyone else here in Pietrasanta, in this quaint little center of artistic production concentrating primarily on sculpture. The first thing we all saw was a poster, saying that the president of Italy and the Prince of Monaco were sponsoring Violata Pax, a show to open less than three days from the date it was put up. And it was put up everywhere.
Two days passed, and then the cranes started bringing blocks of uncarved marble into the main piazza, a nine foot bronze dove, and what looked like an enormous bronze picture frame, its elements made to look like pieces of a dozen different frames all put together as one.
Andrew Wielawski on 06.30.06 @ 08:18 AM EST [more..]
Wednesday, June 28th
Jean Sabrier
 The French artist Jean Sabrier is symbolic of the art community of Bordeaux: discreet and underground yet with an intense creativity and a will to push back the limits of art as we know it, to explore new aspects of the world and to incorporate these into an «ensemble» called artwork.
Born in 1951 in a small suburb of Bordeaux, Jean Sabrier doesn’t have an artistic education as such. What he knows he learnt throught looking at the world with wide open eyes and through the different contacts and friendships he has had through his life. His interest in art grew as his general curiosity did, giving him ideas and inspiration for his own personal research and his own art work.
Alice Cavender on 06.28.06 @ 09:01 AM EST [more..]
Friday, June 23rd
THE $135 MILLION PAINTING
Most artists would probably drop at his feet and he's certainly the "art
collector's" collector.
Have you heard? Ronald S. Lauder (yes, one of Estee's boys) just dropped a
record $135 million on a painting! Okay, let's break this down. First of
all, if you can shell out $135 million for ANYTHING, let alone a painting,
you're set for life. But what actually makes a painting (or anything else)
worth $135 million? More on that in a moment.
I've just finished reading a New York Times article (June 19, 2006) about
the masterpiece in question, "Adele Bloch-Bauer I," which journalist Carol
Vogel describes as "a dazzling gold-flecked 1907 portrait" by Gustav Klimt.
Michael Corbin on 06.23.06 @ 09:29 AM EST [more..]
Wednesday, June 21st
Dealing with Charity Art Auctions
 All right, it’s late in the evening, you’re exhausted after working your day job, and now you’re working your real job–your art. The phone rings, and some well-meaning dilettante on the other end wants you to donate a work of art to their School Auction, Public Television Auction, or some other kind of auction. They promise you great exposure, enhanced collectorship, and career advancement if you agree. Should you do it? No.
At least, don’t do it without establishing the following guidelines:
1) You set the minimum bid price, meaning that if the piece sells for $1000 on the retail market, it sells for no less at auction (unless you warrant a 10% discount). If no one meets the minimum price, the piece doesn’t sell.
Paul Dorrell on 06.21.06 @ 10:22 AM EST [more..]
Monday, June 19th
The Awe of Drawing
 A funny thing happened on the way to writing this blog for June 2006.
I started to work on an old painting of Cassandra of the Taiowa Tribe, the heroine of my two published novels of the Cassandra's Tear Trilogy.
I used to set myself up to paint by taking a nap, falling asleep by visualizing the painting I was going to work on when I woke up. In fact I was so focused that when I awoke if I tripped over the vacuum I would end up cleaning not painting.
Now what is remarkable about this incident is that I was suddenly overcome with a vision of the figure in which the desert landscape is imposed. In the books the Taiowa, mythical remainders of an Australopithecene group that survived in the isolated and imaginary Desert of Ran, practice their arts which are dedicated to evolution.
Hyacinthe Baron on 06.19.06 @ 09:53 AM EST [more..]
Friday, June 16th
Waiting
 All is quiet on the art centre front and I’m at the studio, waiting. A good deal of time goes by waiting: waiting for the acrylics to dry on paintings that lie scattered about the studio; waiting for the next move to emerge in my mind’s eye from the dialogue I hold with them; waiting for the moment when the peak is reached inside me – the one that rescues me from my fear of destroying everything I’ve done up to now and execute the gesture I had a preview of and practiced in my head while I waited.
Quite often, irrelevant ideas pop up in my mind in those apparently idle moments. Mundane worries calling for a solution and inclusion in my schedule, echoes of a conversation with friends and the ensuing mental dialogue of things imagined and left unsaid. Here at the studio most everything gets solved and nothing is left unsaid, while I wait.
Jose Freitas Cruz on 06.16.06 @ 11:49 AM EST [more..]
Wednesday, June 14th
Traditions
 Having been around long enough to catch the tail end of the changes that followed the abstract movement of the 40’s and 50’s and the state of flux visual art has been in since I find it a very interesting time to be alive. If you hang around long enough you’ll see everything, and see it repeated, inside and out, backwards and forwards. I was born in 52. Matisse died about year later. One of the comments I remember reading by Matisse when I was in art school was something like (and I paraphrase because I can‘t find the quote at the moment) “younger artists will try to begin where I left off without understanding the preparatory research required to get where I am.” In short he said they would think it a simple thing to paint abstractly, expressively yet it is most complicated and took Matisse quite a lot of study from traditional painting to modern.
Walter King on 06.14.06 @ 10:06 AM EST [more..]
Friday, June 9th
The Gallery Consignment System
 When I opened my gallery, in 1991, I was naive about the art business, three inches above broke, with little capital and no experience. What little capital I did have, I'd saved from running a tree service for eight years. Why a tree service? Because I had to remain free to write my novels, which I never could have done if I'd been scribbling promotional copy for corporations—though the money would have been better.
So I opened the business, my capital was gone in three months, and my spiral into debt and near-bankruptcy began. I'd always worked long hours in the tree business; now 70-hour weeks became the standard. It was either that or file, and I wasn't going to file. Not until seven years later did we start to turn a reasonable profit.
Paul Dorrell on 06.09.06 @ 08:16 AM EST [more..]
Wednesday, June 7th
Rising Star Ruben Morales Captures Essence of Zccalo Life
MORELIA, Mexico -- Artist Ruben Morales, long a familiar figure selling his paintings on Sunday on the  Plaza de los Matires (Plaza of the Martyrs) in this picturesque Central Mexican city, has been winning attention and fans north of the border as well as throughout his native country,.
"The men are bent, faceless. Many of the rebozo-clad women kneel in supplication, sometimes to a pot of flowers, but also to pure white space, their God left to the immagination," wrote Judy Wiley recently in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
"I'm embarrassed to ask how much one costs. It seems an insult to his dignity, to ask Morales to put a price on works that are such a part of him he cannot name a favorite."
Morales looks like an artist. Fiftiish. Glasses hangimng from a cord around his neck. His facial features are classic Mexican. He has dark curly hair that tumbles over his forehead, dark skin and a broad swipe of a mustache against a somewhat prominent nose. Added to this is the knowing, sensitive look common to those who portray life in the stroke of a brush or the swipe of a pen.
Ron Butler on 06.07.06 @ 09:07 AM EST [more..]
Monday, June 5th
Advantages of the Midwest and the Arts
 The best thing about living in the Midwest is the easy access one has to neighboring cities, provide one owns a car. Even with skyrocketing gas prices, one can visit multiple cities for the same cost as a round-trip ticket to any of these cities. Whether one drives 60 or 600 miles, one will discover art somewhere. If one has the stamina to drive 100 miles, one might as well keep going. You'd be surprised how much ground you can cover in a long weekend.
Columbus/Indianapolis
When a friend recommended we drive to Columbus for a day, I didn't hesitate. After visiting Rebecca Ibel Gallery to see two painting exhibitions, we had lunch with Rebecca across the street at Bodega, a super-festive sandwich/salad joint. We then headed to the Wexner, where we spent far more time than we had planned, eventually receiving a parking ticket. Nonetheless, we really enjoyed the "Extreme Textile" exhibition, which featured all sorts of unimaginable synthetic fabric applications (bicycle tires, astronaut underwear, pipelines, prosthetics).
Sue Spaid on 06.05.06 @ 01:18 PM EST [more..]
Thursday, June 1st
THEORYLAND...an epic poem
Our ambitious hero soared to success in Canto III; had a nervous breakdown
in Canto IV; now, in the concluding Canto, he's dazed and confused....
Canto V: DIRT
Another tea, and I see the pity
for me. The Dean stares into space,
anywhere but at my face.
Some try to be polite and formal
but all can tell I'm merely normal,
not a god, not a gorilla,
in Theory's rainbow, barely vanilla.
I could not possibly prove two equals one.
No, not a god at all and, God knows, no fun.
Glance and stammer, stammer and glance,
I apologize in advance
that I have traveled to Theory's dark heart
and come back a defective part.
Well, now that it's done
I dimly recall it was lots of fun
kicking colleagues down the slopes,
Bruce Price on 06.01.06 @ 09:04 PM EST [more..]
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