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Fantasy Curating: Fantastical Threads; NFTs for Dummies; an Update on Estate Planning with Hal Bromm
 
When news about NFTs (non-fungible tokens) first began ricocheting around the Internet—specifically the auction at Christie’s of a piece by an unknown digital artist named Mike Winkelmann, aka Beeple, for $69 million—I simply wanted to crawl back in bed and throw the covers over my head. I just hoped this was one of those art-world phenomena, like Neo Geo and Appropriation Art, that would quickly have its moment and then go away. Well, we’re still hearing about NFTs several months later and when artist and long-time V21 member Sandra Filippucci announced she was entering the blockchain brouhaha by creating her very own NFTs, I was more than a little curious.

“Write about it! Tell us why!” I commanded in my best editorial imperative.

And so she has, in a multi-part series (we’re not sure how many as yet) that will cover her entry into the netherworld of NFTs, why she’s doing it and what she hopes to achieve (money and control, for one). Here is Part One of her report, and I think you will find it quite a lively and readable introduction.


 
Sandra Filippucci, The Red Queen, an NFT-in-progress from the “Chess Series”
 
The latest in our ongoing adventures in fantasy curations comes from Adria Arch, a Boston-based artist who has written for the site before about The Other Art Fair and who has been a wonderful source for posts about pop-up shows and the Golden Artists Program. Here she focuses on artists who use fiber and fabric, including well-known innovators like Nari Ward and Shinique Smith, but most of her choices are under the radar, often in her own back yard. Check out “Fantastical Threads” here.


Jodi Colella, Poke (2017), found patches, wool flannel shirt, buckram, threads, 35 by 16 by 16 inches

And now on to news from our members….
 
Two Vasari21 artists, Marietta Leis and Heidi Jung, are part of a group show called “Arboretum” at Michael Warren Contemporary in Denver, CO, June 1-July 3. “Arboretum is an exhibit by gallery artists working in a variety of media to convey aspects of the woodland ecosystem ranging from water cycles, new growth, blowdown, fire and regeneration,” says the press release. “Heidi Jung uses her devotion to botany to fully understand her illustration of plants. Her quasi-photographic depictions of trees are rendered with Sumi ink on mylar. Jung hones the surface of her paintings, using solvents to wash away excess ink and eventually burnishing the surface of each work with charcoal rubbed in by hand. Marietta Patricia Leis is a mixed-media artist whose work always evokes memory of place. Often thought of as a minimalist because her aesthetic is so very precise, she is more of a reductivist. She pares down each work, editing each work to what she thinks of as a core essence of memory.”


Marietta Patricia Leis, Seed 27 (2018), oil, wood, spruce wood, gold leaf, 7.5 by 5 feet


Heidi Jung, Espalier, Sumi ink, charcoal and pastel on Mylar on panel, 60 by 40 by 2 inches


Through May, 2022, Julio Valdez will be showing six works from his series “I Can’t Breathe” on the fences of White Park on East 106th Street in upper Manhattan. The photo-printed drawings are scanned onto aluminum panels, which measure 40 by 60 inches each, and are inspired by the images of racial injustice that have collectively entered our minds through the media this past year. “The drawings take on a transparency of almost impressionistic quality rendered with grey tones and fluid circular lines,” says the proposal for the project. “This allover imagery reminds us of the importance of not only reacting to news of injustices, but also to reflect and remember that as a community we can overcome and reveal the creative potential in all of us, the human family….The artist selected this site not only because it is next door to his studio in East Harlem but as a fitting tribute to civil-rights activist Walter Francis White, who was an outspoken critic of racial injustice in America.” Below, an installation shot.


 

Long-time V21 supporter Kate Petley has curated a show called “The Stubborn Influence of Painting” for the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art in Boulder, CO, that brings together “a diverse group of nine artists from across the U.S. and London,” says the announcement. The exhibition (June 10 to September 6) “examines “how the history of painting acts as a silent collaborator in the work of artists who create in other mediums.” The artists include Philip V. Augustin, Peter Campus, Naomi Cohn, Steven Frost, Alexandra Hedison, Mikolai Ischchuk, Garry Noland, Altoon Sultan, and Vasari21 member Gelah Penn.


Gelah Penn, Stele #6 (2019), mixed media, 86 by 46 by 6 inches
 
“This is one of the works delivered to the Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk, CT, for the 13th Biennial International Miniature Printmaking 2021 competition,” writes Dorothy Cochran. “As a little history, I won first prize in 2017 with Metropolitan Museum of Art print curator Freyda Spira as juror and was also included in the 2019 show juried by Tomas Vu Daniel. While this has been a challenging year to keep focused on the beauty of creating art, the horizon is now in sight and brings hope with it.” The show will run June 6 to August 29.


Dorothy Cochran, Cascade, silk aquatint, 2.66 by 1.5 inches on 10 x 8 Rives BFK
 
Along with Lily Prince, whose work I posted about previously, Iain Machell is also part of the Albany International Airport’s sprawling show “Sunrise/Sunset” (through August 30) in the airport’s new pre-security gallery. “These two drawings are my response to Sunrise/Sunset,” writes Machell. “The exhibition theme explores beginnings and endings and the space in between, whether literal, visual, or conceptual. It fits well into my current approach to drawing, which is to study the visual power of nature and forms in the landscape.  Both these drawings are on a small scale for me, and it's an interesting challenge to compact the feeling of infinite space and light—as would be found in a sunrise and sunset—on to a tiny paper surface.”


Iain Machell, Sunrise 2 (2021), pencil and ink on paper, 6 by 8 inches


Iain Machell, Sunset 1 (2021), pencil and ink on paper, 3.5 by 8.5 inches
 

Cheryl Gross is part of a one-night-only pop-up show called “Art Attack” on June 4, 3 to 9 p.m., at 411 Monmouth Street, Jersey City, NJ. “Remembrance is valuable because that is what we are left with,” she writes.  “Our work is solitary, but before Covid we were able to enjoy the simple pleasures of life—coffee with a friend, lunch, yoga class on Sundays, etc. Covid put a halt to our quality of life. This in and of itself compelled me to draw on my deepest memories. My time at Eileen Kaminsky Family Foundation allowed me to create a body of work based on a simpler time, as well as address important issues. This exhibition brings us back to our most recent past, taking our ‘new normal’ to the next level: striving to actually get back to normal.”


Cheryl Gross, Kitty Leroy (2021), water-based mixed media on paper, 40 by 26 inches

From June 1 to June 3, Naomi Teppich’s show “Earthly” will be at Rafter’s Tavern, 28 Upper Main Street, Callicoon, NY. Teppich creates ceramic wall sculptures and three-dimensional pieces inspired by organic forms—among them, bark, lichen, fungi, and seashells Sculptures are modeled with both hand and electric tools, and works are fired in several different kilns. “I chose the title ‘Earthly,’” Teppich says, “because of my deep connection and concern for our environment. My intention is to lend a feeling of preciousness to the natural objects I find and sculpt.” She also builds large outdoor ferro-cement sculptures, one of which is displayed in The Nest, the backyard space at Rafter's Tavern.


Naomi Teppich, Raw Bark (2021), glazed stoneware and acrylic, 14 by 14 by 3 inches
 

“I’m happy to announce that The Haywagon and The Wedding Party, recently on view at the Dr. Bernard Heller Museum in New York, will be going into the permanent collection of the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida,” writes Marcia Annenberg. ”Other
early paintings from the series, Babi Yar, Buchenwald, Bosnia: A Postmodern Portrayal, and Babi Yar, Bosnia, will also join them. This series is a narrative description of the influence of the Holocaust on subsequent genocides—for example, the taking of civilian populations to be shot point blank in the woods or ravines. The Wedding Party looks like a traditional family photograph—except for one detail: the yellow stars on the children’s clothes. It asks, what became of the family? Did they survive the genocide?”


Marcia Annenberg, The Wedding Party (1992), acrylic on canvas, 40 by 56 inches
 

Dana James’s show “Something I Meant To Say” will be at the Hollis Taggart Gallery in New York from June 3 to July 2. “James’s abstract compositions are characterized by their incredible use of light, which shifts fluidly across her brilliant pastel color fields, catching iridescent pigments, and into darker swaths of splotched, recycled canvas,” says the press for the show. “Her acute focus on the light results in works that almost glow, giving her paintings a magical effect that connotes the shimmer of the ocean or the sparkle of childhood memories of enchantment. This emotional impact is at the core of James’s practice, which is grounded in notions of time, memory, selfhood, and the inherent dualities that shape us and our worlds. Contrast is an essential aspect of James’s vision, whether those contrasts are the visual and physical interactions of her many disparate materials or in the conceptual contradictions she evokes between the past and the present, the aesthetics of traditional femininity and perceived symbols of darkness, or between our exterior and interior worlds. For James, these alternations speak to the vast and mysterious nature of life and memory….”


Dana James, Derelict (2021), oil, acrylic, pigment on canvas tarp, 40 by 50 inches
 
Two Vasari21 members are part of online exhibitions curated by the New York Artists Circle and included in the newsletter in previous weeks (I didn’t have the info then; I do now). “One person’s trash is another person’s treasure,” writes Barbara Groh, who is part of “Lost and Found,” a show of 117 artists described in last week’s bulletin. “I photographed hundreds of discarded gloves on Brooklyn streets in a few hours. I ‘found’ the opportunity in my studio to reflect and draw from what was ‘lost’ and document this unique phenomenon.”


Barbara Groh, Bedford Stuyvesant, 4/1/2020, ink and acrylic on paper, 12 by 19 inches
 
Kristin Reed is part of the NYAC’s show “Fragile Earth: Artists Respond to Climate Change,” described on the site as “an artistic call to action from a group of creators who remind us of the reverence and awe unique to the planet.” Says Reed: “To me the most important issue of our time is the precariousness of our home planet Earth. Extinction shows a cross section of what indigenous American cultures refer to as Pachamama (Mother Earth). Assaulted by humans and glowing atomic red, she holds a record of lost species and damaged human cells.”


Kristin Reed, Extinction, acrylic and collage on canvas, 36 by 48 inches
 

Tracy Linder is one of five artists awarded a 2021 Tinworks grant, issued in support of contemporary art and craft in Montana and aimed at nurturing arts professions in the region. “Tinworks Art received 115 applications making the grant highly competitive,” says the website. “Tinworks Art actively seeks to break down barriers that have historically excluded certain artists, art, and audiences from the important conversations that art provokes. This year, the grant focused on supporting indigenous artists, emerging artists, and those working with endangered forms of knowledge.” Congratulations, Tracy!


Tracy Linder, Newborn: Hank, bronze, sisal, beeswax, 19”h x 21.5”w x 10.5”d


In memoriam: I was sad to learn of the death of Peri Schwartz earlier this month. I did not get a chance to meet the artist but was delighted to write a profile of her, via phone interviews, a couple of years ago. Schwartz’s early career concentrated on painting and drawing traditional self-portraits, portraits, and still lifes. In the early 2000s, she began to focus more on her studio as her subject. Her works—many of objects from her studio, windows, and views to the world beyond—are rigorous studies in color or black and white that come across as both sensuous and carefully plotted. Family friend and executive director of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Cody Upton, says of Peri, “She was a dear friend, and I admired her greatly. She will be remembered as an immensely talented painter who reinvented the use of the grid in her paintings, prints, and drawings. Her remarkable sense of color and composition and carefully conceived arrangements were points of departure for dynamic experimentation with abstraction. Her work eschews easy resolution and fascinates endlessly." Below, Peri Schwartz with a selection of her prints.


 
 
The Zoom conference with Hal Broom is now scheduled for June 24th at 5 p.m. East Coast Time. I still have a few spots left, so let me know if you’d like to join us. We’re planning to discuss both his 40-year career as an art dealer and estate planning for artists. Let me know if you have specific questions—or you can ask them yourself!

I will once again be taking a break to finish up this blasted book proposal (topic to be revealed soon) and write a book review for the Wall Street Journal. But the next installment of Sandra Filippucci’s adventures with NFTs will be published in two weeks, along with another newsletter.

A very happy Memorial Day to all. Let us take some time to remember the very awful year we’ve endured, those we’ve lost, and those who have given their lives in the service of their nation.


 
At the top of the newsletter is an image from this week’s fantasy curation: Sonya Clark, Interwoven (2016), American and Confederate flags, cotton
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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