The NFT Adventure Continues plus Lots of Member News
As mentioned in the newsletter two weeks ago, I’ve been polishing off a book proposal (finally out to publishers) and writing a book review for The Wall Street Journal (one has to grab these opportunities when and where one can).
But the intrepid and stalwart Sandra Filippucci, even in the midst of buying a new studio and home in Connecticut, offers part two of her “blockhead” adventures in blockchain art, an easy step-by-step guide about how she’s approaching the NFT phenomenon. And she has some stunning new visuals from her “Chess Series.” Check it out hereand stay tuned for Part Three.
And now on to updates from our esteemed membership
I was delighted to attend the opening of my friend Michelle Cooke’s exhibition at Bareiss Gallery in Taos, NM, on Saturday, but because I have a new cell phone, Verizon “disappeared” all the installation shots I’d taken a couple of days earlier. No matter. Two of her works are below. The current exhibition at Bareiss, as I noted in a press release, offers a mini-overview of this artist’s restless pursuit to exploit the potential of light. Her “relief” sculptures composed of glass slides transform this humble staple of science labs everywhere into magical, ethereal compositions in which cast shadows account for much of the impact. Using nothing more than ink or graphite pencils—and though rigorously abstract—her drawings nonetheless conjure with the play of light and shadow in the natural world. And Kimono, only one of a series of fanciful and impractical garments Cooke has made over the years, is constructed of steel, plaster, and copper but when suspended in space can appear to be nearly weightless, capturing the light across its lacelike surface. If you’re in northern New Mexico in the next few weekends (the show closes June 27), you can drop by between 1 and 5 on Saturdays, or make an appointment to see the work: 575-776-2284).
Michelle Cooke, Kimono (2012), steel, copper, plaster, emeralds, coral, 70 by 58 by 6 inches
Michelle Cooke, Horizon 19 (2019), pencil on Arches, 30 by 40 inches
If you need more good reason to visit Taos, there’s a terrific members show at the Taos Ceramics Center, on the south side of town, which offers works from 26 artists, ranging from practical to comical to fanciful. If you’d like more details, you can check out my report in Southwest Contemporary on this ambitious new gallery, which opened in the fall and offers a full complement of classes in addition to the handsome exhibition space. Below, an installation shot and a work by AnnaBush Crews.
AnnaBush Crews, The Black Feather (2021), ceramic, 20 by 8 by 8 inches
If I could have teleported myself to the East Coast, another opening I would have dearly loved to attend was held on Friday at the Lockwood Gallery in Kingston, NY, for Melissa Stern’s 20-year retrospective “Stronger Than Dirt.” Notes the press release: The show is “not only a record of Melissa Stern’s zig-zagging, gutsy career, but a time capsule of pop culture, advertising fads, and visual icons hailing back from the artist’s youth. Bittersweet parfaits of visual and verbal puns, found media, and physical technique, Stern’s work grapples with individual identity and the never-ending attempt to reconcile our place amongst the norm. Whether clay, encaustic, oil stick, or graphite, the strength and athleticism of Stern’s hand, and ever-present dark humor, asserts its presence in the kaleidoscope of her artworks. In the same way that her gestures dance with figures lifted from backdated Life magazines or vintage toys, Melissa’s artwork inserts itself into the greater cultural conversation, flirting and winking all the while.” (Through July 11). For more about the artist, visit my profile from a few years back.
Melissa Stern, KO in Three (2017), oil stick, graphite, charcoal, collage on wood, 28 by 16by 2.5 inches.
Melissa Stern, Pink Leg (2018), clay, wood, oil paint, encaustic, 24.5 by 11 by 5 inches
Through July 10, Brenda Goodman is part of a show at Anat Ebgi Mid-Wilshire in Los Angeles called “Kick Ass Painting: New York Women,” featuring the work of Goodman, along with Carrie Moyer and Louise Fishman (it is no overstatement that the press release refers to this trio as “heavyweights”). Goodman’s “multilayered paintings throb and crack with a primal palette, provoking thoughts of the irreparably damaged and disfigured body,” notes the announcement. “The rapturous combination of anthropomorphic forms (biological) and geometric shapes (conceptual) contort and coalesce in unexpected ways, revealing internal logic that points to the idiosyncrasies and dualities of the human soul. Aside from their obvious shared affinity for experimental, over-the-top, and sometimes high-camp tableau, the exhibition also pays tribute to these artists and their political spirit of feminism.” (Through July 10.)
Brenda Goodman, Surprise (2018), oil on wood, 54 by 60 inches
“The Hyde Collection in Glens Falls, New York recently installed ‘Summer Bomb Pop: Collections in Dialogue,’” writes Grace DeGennaro. “This exhibition features contemporary abstract paintings from the Tang Teaching Museum collection along with modern works from the Hyde’s Feibes & Schmitt Collection. I am thrilled that one of my large paintings in the Tang collection, Northway, is installed in between works by Alfred Jensen and Rashid Johnson—both artists that I greatly admire!” (through October). She adds that one of the paintings from her “Unfolding” series can be seen at a show at Cove Street Arts in Portland, ME, celebrating artists supported by the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, the only private foundation in Maine that delivers support directly to the artists (through June 19).
Grace DeGennaro, Northway (center), oil on linen, 96 by 60 inches, at the Hyde Collection
Jeannie Motherwell is part of a four-person show called “Reflections” at the Clippership Wharf in East Boston, MA, in collaboration with Atlantic Works Gallery (through October 2). “The large paintings in ‘Reflection’ embrace Boston light; each in their own way,” says the announcement. “Katherine Miller's expansive and fearless brush strokes burst like evening flashes that reveal beauty. Jeannie Motherwell's paintings roll cascades of color, harkening storms, bliss, and power. Wendy Prellwitz's work shimmers, feeds the soul and glides into the heart. Diane Teubner's careful series painting looks at light's mathematical and sequential rhythm. The paintings collected in East Boston's newest waterfront gallery speak to each other, to viewers, and to the sea and city outside and beyond the gallery's windows.”
Jeannie Motherwell, Praxis, acrylic on four clay board panels, 60 by 60 by 2 inches
Elisa D’Arrigo’s solo “Materializing” at Elizabeth Harris Gallery in New York continues through July 30 and “explores the possibilities for integrating painting, drawing, improvisational process and animated sculptural form within the context of the glazed ceramic vessel,” says the announcement. The show’s title “refers to D’Arrigo’s spontaneous approach and penchant for intuitive decisions, yielding forms that seem surprising, yet oddly familiar, as they allude to the body in a gestural and even visceral manner. Unexpected asymmetries merge with densely glazed surfaces. The artist is compelled by the way we inhabit and imagine our bodies from the inside out, and how abstract form can communicate meaning, emotion and even humor.” D’Arrigo also has three works in a show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art called “Shapes from Out of Nowhere: Ceramics from the Collection of A. Ellison, Jr.” (through August). The show “celebrates an extraordinary gift of 125 modern and contemporary ceramics from Robert A. Ellison Jr., made to the Met in honor of the Museum’s 150th anniversary.”
Elisa D’Arrigo, Do Look Back (2021),glazed and hand-built ceramics, 7 by 6.5 by 5.5 inches
Gina Telcocci is part of “Material Matters,” the eighth annual exhibition of material-based art at Seager/Gray Gallery in Mill Valley, CA (through June 27). “The focus is on artists who interact with their materials in original ways, often pushing the boundaries of what their medium can achieve,” says the announcement for the show. “This year’s exhibition features 24 artists working in graphite, paint, wood, weaving, fabric, thread, shredded money, blown glass, clay, wire, book pages, paper, mica, leather and steel.”
Gina Telcocci, For Esmé, with Love and Squalor (2016), reed and plaster, 22 inches in diameter by 17 inches long
“Earthscapes: Emergng to a Brighter World” is the title of Pamela Casper’s solo show at Wisner House in Summit, NJ (through October 31). The survey “spans over twelve years, traversing the breadth of the artist's compelling inquiry into our natural environment and the nuance of humanity's uneasy relationship with nature,” says the press release. Included are watercolors painted en plein air; images from the “Tornado” series, which “reveal the impact of human waste and pollution on natural cycles such as pollination and water habitats”; paintings and watercolors from her “Gothic Underground” series; and sculptures made from barbed wire and wood, offering a site-specific installation that “probes aspects of nature we rarely engage with.” The gallery is part of a country estate encompassing a Colonial Revival mansion and impressive grounds and gardens. Click here for more information.
Pamela Casper, The Good Earth (2021), oil on canvas, 30 by 40 inches
Pamela Casper, Frack Water, watercolor on paper, copper pipe, 37 by 30 inches
Cora Jane Glasser is part of “Made in NY: 2021” at the Schweinfurth Art Center in Auburn, NY. The juried show, now in its 25th year, encompasses 74 pieces by 69 artists who are New York State residents and features artworks in all media, including painting, photography, fiber art, ceramics, sculpture, and more (through August 7). “The series ‘Holding Patterns’ derives imagery from patterns and marks left on the sides of buildings when an adjoining building has been torn away,” writes Glasser. “These raw facades remain as ghosts of windows, staircases, and bits of painted rooms, waiting to be covered or themselves torn away.”
Cora Jane Glasser, Holding Pattern #7 (2019), oil on canvas, 24 by 26 inches
“Aggregate Abstractions and the Sea” is the title of Beverly Rippel’s solo at Jane Deering Gallery in Gloucester, MA, through July 5. “I often paint in Lanesville on Cape Ann, Massachusetts, in the same exact place by the sea where throughout many years, my sisters and brothers, children and grandchildren have come to visit, learn to swim in the granite bathtub, and enjoy the beauty of this land,” Rippel says.”The huge rock formations, the scratches and marks on them, and the shadows cast by the sun cascading across their surfaces are nearly the same as I remember when I first laid eyes on this sea sanctuary at five years old. It is exhilarating to paint — with my feet sometimes in the water — as I work just ahead of the incoming or outgoing tide. The wind, the mist, and the sun all get mixed up in the orchestration of the paint’s quickened movement. In turn, the paintings become love poems.”
Beverly Rippel, Rocks at Lanesville, Cape Ann (2013) oil on canvas, 4 by 5 by 1.5 inches
Ellen Pliskin is part of an online exhibition sponsored by the Hammond Museum and Japanese Stroll Garden, through June of 2022. She explains the process behind her work Sol: “A monoprint is a singular image created by the transfer of ink on to a piece of paper by running it through the printing press. The monoprint is that rare item of uniquenesss. It is that singularity that gives the work its wondrous qualities. Sol, or ‘sun,’ captures a sunny doorway in Spain with light reflecting off a white wall. This work was completed at the Creative Arts Workshop Print Studio in New Haven CT.”
Ellen Pliskin, Sol, silk aquatint monoprint, embellished with watercolor and colored pencil, 11 by 14 inches
Paula Roland is offering four live 90-minutes Zoom sessions in “Zen, Big Brush & Expressive Mark Making” on July 7, 14, 21, and 28 from her studio in Santa Fe, NM. During the 90-minute sessions, you will “learn how to get out of your head and into the creative zone, make BOLD and decisive marks, adding rich, varied and expressive movements and developing personal marks and a confident and personal style,” she writes. “This course includes five sections with 10 original video demonstrations, four live, online instructional meetings with Q&A and additional material and three-month access to the recordings of the live sessions and course videos. Additional handouts, exercises and enrichment materials that extend beyond these sessions are also included.”
Though she is a master of encaustic, no encaustic is used in the course, and no special equipment is needed. Tuition for the full package is $525, and you can find more details here. Below are student works by Chris Durham (top) and Laura Seligman. I’ve taken part of one of Paula’s courses in hot wax, and it was a truly engaging and eye-opening experience.
My special thanks to Susan Blackmon for a recent and generous contribution to the site. “My work, since the COVID year, brings some uplift to myself, and also hopefully to the person seeing it. A dose of medicine from art.”
Susan Blackmon, Pink Passes Through (2021), oil stick, synthetic polymer, graphite, ink and collage, 30 by 39 inches
In memoriam: I was saddened to learn of the death of Carol Hepper, from cancer at the way-too-young age of 67, on April 29. I met the artist and profiled her in 2017 and was enchanted by her hybrid sculptures and bold photo composites. As Nancy Princenthal wrote in a tribute to the artist in Hyperallergic, she was a “sculptor who bent stubborn materials to the purposes of art with deceptive ease….She began her career by stretching animal hide over armatures of stripped branches and animal bone, and later turned to copper tubing, fish skins, handblown glass, and raw and milled wood. In her hands, all breathed with the vigor and grace of living things….She welcomed absurdity in her juxtapositions of the organic and the fabricated, and was not afraid to make sculpture that could raise a laugh, or an eyebrow. When furry pelts came into the work, along with forked branches still bearing bark and also curvaceous, irregular globes of pink blown glass, the hint of a frolic was fully intended.”
Carol Hepper with Rough Rider (2016),19 assembled archival digital pigment print images on hahnemuhle photo rag, 67.5 by 64 inches
If I haven’t given you enough to read this week, I urge you to check out a couple of recent pieces from The New York Times by Jason Farrago: an astute and witty review of the two van Gogh spectacles pulling in the restless summer crowds and an analysis of Berthe Morisot’s painting In England (Eugène Manet on the Isle of Wight), “a very rare thing in art history before the 20th century: a painting of the artist’s husband.”
And, of course, there's a new installment of Rotten Romance: "Boris and Sherman: A tale of infatuation, jealousy, and betrayal." I'm pleased to see this series earning rave reviews: "beautiful...touching...moving...funny!" Here's the archive, and if you're not on the mailing list, you can click on any post to subscribe...absolutely for free!
I’ll be back in two weeks with more tricks up my sleeve.
Those of you who are signed up for Hal Bromm’s Zoom talk about estate planning for artists: The date is June 24th at 5:30 p.m. East Coast time. I will be sending out a link next week.
Jolly Cheers,
Top: Sandra Filippucci, Heaven Is Water II, part of a second NFT collection in development, about Joan of Arc protecting the waters
