Blasts from the Past, Member News, and Get Ready for Another Fundraiser!
I was going to hold off till the 21st to send out the newsletter, but the list of members with shows this season is growing apace so I had best make haste while I am full of brisk fall energy.
Yesterday I had breakfast with a good friend who is a marketing maven (I wish I could hire her full time). One of her suggestions for spreading the word about Vasari21 is to compile an anthology of “best of,” to include largely "service" pieces, the term in the magazine trade for articles that have a self-help usefulness. There is a huge trove of information on the site, but a few I would include are “Address the Excess," about the ways in which artists handle storing, selling, or giving away older work. And then there is a two-parter (here and here) about how to hold an open studio, which is no great mystery, but you might get some ideas for banding together with other artists or making it more of a social occasion. I’ve written about how to approach galleries in more than one post, but “Return to Sender” gives some explicit advice on how to make an overture via email (this is generally a long shot, but, says dealer Liliana Bloch in Dallas: “I will respond to an incredible, amazing, different, challenging, and smart body of work.”)
Annell Livingston donated a wall of gouaches to a hospital in Santa Fe, where they can be appreciated by many instead of languishing in storage
And, finally, after a summer of reflection (even if short on rest and recreation), I’ve decided to keep Vasari21 alive with new posts and podcasts coming your way week after week. And so I will hold another fundraiser in a week or two (the last one was in April or May of 2018). Details on that coming your way shortly.
And here are this week’s members in the news….
Through October 26, “Bascha Mon: New Land” continues at the Center for Contemporary Art in Bedminster, NJ. “In this series of 288 paintings, Mon encompasses the entry of new places that are both real and fantasy,” says the center’s website. “They comment and reflect on humanity as individuals and as a whole on current issues involving politics or humanitarianism. Her work is the result of many movements including minimalism, conceptual art, land art, and feminism. It is an outcome of direct experience in friendship, home, children, nature, travel, world events, and working in the studio alone.” Mon invited other artists to participate by designing “flags for a new land,” and among the scores shown are several Vasari21 members: Linda Fay Braun, Diane Englander, Brandon Graving, Mary DeVincentis Herzog, Barbara Marks, Lisa Pressman, Suzan Shutan, and Melissa Stern.
Bascha Mon, Convocation—The First Meeting in the New Land (2015), gouache, oil pastels, pearlescent inks, conte pencil on paper, 8.5 by 12 inches
Some intriguing cross-pollination is happening at the Fitchburg Art Museum in Fitchburg, VA, as Adria Arch meets up with Eleanor Norcross (1854-1923), an accomplished artist and the founder of the museum. “Arch’s recent experimentation with installation—as seen in her ‘hybrid paintings’—combines the artist’s interests in color, pattern, and engaging the audience through fresh ways of seeing and experiencing painting,” says the press for the show. “‘Adria Arch: Reframing Eleanor’ [through November 10] inserts Arch’s new ‘hybrid paintings’ into FAM’s ongoing exhibition ‘Evoking Eleanor,’ which features the work of Norcross. Arch’s installation of colorful shapes painted on lightweight plastic with mixed media slyly references the palette and composition of Norcross’s paintings and collection of decorative objects from the nineteenth to early twentieth century. Arch also imagines Norcross’s era through visual suggestions of the period’s fashion: cut velvet, antique hat netting, and brocaded fabric. The accompanying sound designed by composer and musician Ken Field enhances Arch’s playful interpretation. Visitors will be invited to move through 'Reframing Eleanor' and to touch Arch’s suspended artworks, which are inspired by both the formal properties of painting and spatial considerations of sculpture.”
Adria Arch, Eleanor 5 (2018), acrylic on PVC, plus fabric and netting, dimensions variable
Susan Schwalb is in fine company as part of “Pushing Paper: Contemporary Drawing from 1970” at the British Museum in London (through January 12, 2020). The show illustrates how artists experiment with the power of paper to express their ideas, pushing the medium in new directions, [highlighting] the breadth and quality of the Museum’s collection of modern art, as well as its global scope,” writes the museum’s marketing manager. “Amongst the oldest forms of human creativity, drawing is experiencing a resurgence in popularity as artists increasingly choose the medium as a means to examine the modern world, with topics ranging from explorations of gender and political activism to questions of belonging and human sexuality. The exhibition of 56 works will showcase the astonishing diversity of contemporary drawing over the last fifty years, with graphic work by artists such as David Hockney, Rachel Whiteread, Sol LeWitt, Anish Kapoor, Tracey Emin and Grayson Perry, as well as exciting works by emerging artists like Hamid Sulaiman and Rachel Duckhouse.”
Susan Schwalb, Untitled (1980), metalpoint with graphite and burn marks on prepared paper, each 6.5 by 4.5 inches
Carole Kunstadt has four shows in the works this month and next. “Speechless,” through November 9 at Brush & Reed Fine Art Calligraphy Company in Kingston, NY, explores the quality of silence “through which all communication must pass,” says the press for the show. “Works here each have a deep listening within them, an impossible kind of speech. They ask that we rethink not just the nature of language, but the tools and vessels of communication themselves.” The exhibition called “SALLY” at The Old Stone House, Artpoetica Project Space and Gowanus Dredgers Boathouse in Brooklyn, NY, “explores how artists confront myriad issues of agency, and use community and collaboration to undercut the status quo, and construct lives of integrity and purpose.” Kunstadt is also part of “In God We Trust: Relections on Religion in America" (Hera Gallery, Wakefield, RI, through November 16) and “On a Different Page” at the Mikhail Zakin Gallery at the Art School at Old Church (Demarest, NJ, with an artist talk on October 18). And October 19, 3 to 5 p.m., marks the closing party for “Freed Formats: The Book Reconsidered” at Five Points Gallery in Torrington, CT, the final location of a traveling exhibition of book art.
Carole Kunstadt, from the show “SALLY,” Pressing On, Homage to Hannah More, No. 19, No. 21, No. 24 (2017), antique sad irons, scorched linen thread, textiles and paper, pages by Hannah More 1791, dimensions variable
Through November 9, my neighbor Hank Saxe is part of a two-person show (with Sam Scott) at William Havu Gallery in Denver, CO. Says Hank in the press release for the show: “A fascination with natural sciences led me to ceramics, an original meeting ground of art and technology. Starting out, I didn’t know how clays and minerals worked, but I thought I’d better figure out how to use that stuff. Still working on figuring that out, my sculptures are outcomes of investigation into process and materials and experimental interactions of form, color and texture.” I’ve seen several of his shows since moving to Taos eight years ago, and each is better than the last. I hope to do a profile of him soon.
Hank Saxe, Olmeca (2014), ceramic, 12 by 8 by 7 inches
Judith Kruger’s show “Drawing Ground” is at the Marie Louise Trichet Gallery, part of the Wisdom House Retreat and Conference Center in Litchfield, CT, through November 17. “My works are made, destroyed, oxidized and washed over from layers of natural matter over prolonged periods of time until a certain organic, alchemical, weathered depth is achieved,” says Kruger. “At this stage, I impose an ordering system, which can include various processes (drawing, stitching, piercing, gilding, collaging). The paintings in this exhibition represent a new exploration in building surfaces with Connecticut quartz collected from mines around my studio. Over the past year, I had a ball mill built so that I would have the ability to pulverize hard minerals for my work. I am physically ‘drawing ground’ from the earth and, in some cases, the foundational grounds of the work build in such a way to reveal surfaces that appear to look ‘drawn’ when covered with another layer of a different pigment.”
Judith Kruger, Drawing Ground 1 (2019), minerals, cochineal, gold, silver on linen, 40” by 40 inches
Through November 10, Elisa Jensen is part of a show called “Refuge” at the Green Door Gallery in Brooklyn. The 11 artists on view here offer paintings and collages that “create a portal, a way of entering a spiritual, psychological, philosophical or aesthetic space—a space without boundaries,” writes curator Jackie Shatz. “The sculptures in the exhibit activate the space around them, creating a force field in which it is possible to access other realities. Formally, there is a shared ambiguity as the artists ride the edge between ‘reality’ and abstraction.” About the subject of her painting, Jensen writes: “The Sunhorse is a character from Norse Myths, described in the Poetic Edda. It is a horse that pulls the sun through the sky during the day and gives it to a snake at night to take it through the sea, on a ship. It’s then returned the next morning to the horses again. I have seen many Bronze Age depictions of sun horses in museums in Denmark; this painting was inspired by those and by Viking metalwork.” The gallery is open Saturday and Sunday between 2 and 6 p.m. or call for an appointment (845-499-0972).
Elisa Jensen, Alsvid Sunhorse (2019), oil and sand on linen, 18 by 24 inches
From October 24 to 27, Jeannie Motherwell is showing works at the 23rd Annual Boston International Fine Art Show held in the Cyclorama at the Boston Center for the Arts. This yearly fine-art expo, featuring work of more than 40 galleries from the U.S. and Europe, will launch a special "Emerge" section featuring individual artists and galleries specializing in emerging and mid-career artists. “When Motherwell works on Yupo paper, which offers a slicker surface than clayboard with no absorbency at all, she seems to be thinking more in terms of drawing, giving more priority to line than to color,” as I wrote in a recent catalogue essay for her show at M Fine Arts. “There’s a greater sense of the wrist at work, while still delighting in accident and exploiting the possibilities of a limited palette.”
Jeannie Motherwell, Smothered Sighs (2019), acrylic on Yupo paper, 40 by 26 inches
Arlene Rush has two shows on the docket this month. “Overlap: Life Tapestries,” curated by Vida Sabbaghi, at Pen + Brush (29 East 22nd Street in Manhattan) from October 24 to December 14 “brings together a group of self-identified women artists whose artistic practices are richly charged in their realization that discrimination is characterized and informed by national origin, race, social position, and historical forces.” (V21 member Judy Gelles will also be on hand, but I haven’t received info from her as yet.) On October 18-20, Rush is also participating in “Art in Odd Places: Invisible,” which will take place along 14th Street and present artists 60 years and older “with various forms of intergenerational collaborations.” Rush’s project,"Evidence of Being," is described as “an interactive installation using existing rejection letters from her 30-plus year career. Letters that she has accumulated throughout her life in art are posted outside of a phone booth, and people are invited to add their own rejection letters to the installation. Speakers play a series of recorded narrative sentences of typical rejection letters from galleries, curators, grants, etc.” You can catch it at the SE corner of 14th Street and 7th Avenue this weekend.
Arlene Rush, Final Rejection Red Wall (2016), mixed media, dimensions variable
Barbara Lubliner is also participating in Art in Odd Places as part of the Saturday and Sunday Promenade “in which performers and artists saunter and stroll the entire length of the 14th Street from east to west,” she says. As Ms. Muscle (see below), the artist will be on hand to celebrate strength, age, and stylish gloves.
Lubliner and fellow V21 member Linda Stillman are taking part in "A Book About Death" (ABAD) , an ongoing international mail-art project exploring aspects of death. “This ‘edition,’ curated by LuAnn Palazzo, celebrates the 10-year anniversary of the original show in New York and the birth of the ABAD project inspired by Ray Johnson, the father of mail art,” says the announcement. Lubliner is participating with a postcard about her yearlong performance of "going gray,” along with a video that, she says, “offers reflections about aging, authenticity, and mortality.” Stillman’s contribution includes postcard reproductions of her work “Elms for Ray.” The show can be seen at the Islip Art Museum in East Islip, NY, through November 2, and will then travel to Budapest, Paris, Washington DC, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and other venues.
Linda Stillman, Elms for Ray (2019), ink and leaves on paper, 8.75 by 6 inches
Barbara Lubliner, No More Dy(e)ing (2019), front and back of postcard
Karin Batten will be part of the "Open House/Open Studios—Westbeth Studios" on Saturday and Sunday, October 19 and 20, from 12 to 4 p.m. in the I Building at 163 Bank Street, Studio #217. This is a chance to visit one of the largest artists’ communities in the U.S., and an opportunity to see Batten’s paintings from her Costa Rican retreat. “My studio is in the mountains so it’s cool in the summers,” she writes. “The place is surrounded by endless greenery and hundreds of birds that chirp and greet the morning.”
Karin Batten, Colony #12 (2019), mixed media, mixed media on banana paper (which the artist says is available only in the village where she stays) 20 by 15 inches
And if that’s not enough visual stimulation for you for one week, I’d suggest you get yourself over to the new expanded MoMA. Or you might check out George W. Bush’s portraits at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC. Or how about Las Vegas as an art destination? The Daily Beast claims it’s the “country’s hottest art city in America.” Who knew?
Till next week,
Top: Hank Saxe, Oracle of La Brea (2014), stoneware, glaze and slip, 14.5 by 8.5 by 8 inches. At William Havu Gallery in Denver, CO.
