Mary Cassatt at Boca Raton Museum

Also at the Boca Museum is an interesting exhibit of Mary Cassatt's Works on Paper. Many of the pieces in the exhibit were "counterproofs."

M.C. Escher at the Boca Raton Museum

I traveled to south Florida this weekend to celebrate my father's birthday. We headed to a M.C. Escher exhibit at the Boca Raton Museum of Art on Saturday and were mesmerized by Escher's magical world.

Waxing Poetic

"Wondering"

Beeswax collage

"Waxing Poetic"

Beeswax collage

I treated myself to a beeswax collage art class today in Raleigh taught by the always fabulous, Claudine Hellmuth. There is nothing better than working with melted beeswax, paper, oil pastels and crayons for 7 solid hours!

Extraordinary Exhibition!

El Greco to Valazquez: Art During the Reign of Philip III

Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University

Exhibition dates: August 21-November 9, 2008

Blowing Rock and Ben Long

fresco at St. Mary's Episcopal Church in West Jefferson

I drove from Gatlinburg to Blowing Rock on Saturday to join portions of my family for a relaxing few days at Chetola. Yesterday, we went to see Ben Long's frescoes in West Jefferson county. I had seen the frescoes last fall with my students, but enjoyed them even more during a second viewing. The frescoes are magnificent!

"Paint Like Pollock Day"

"Untitled (Green Silver)," 1949

"The paper in 'Untitled (Green, Silver)' is completely covered with enamel and aluminum paint, a pulsating tangle of pigment. Each vestige of paint has its own characteristics, particularly in relation to the others. A universe of life teems within, and yet it is brilliantly devoid of human pathos," writes Susan Yung, a writer for the Downtown Express, about the 2006 Guggenheim exhibition titled "No Limits, Just Edges: Jackson Pollock Paintings on Paper."

Friday is "Paint Like Pollock Day" for my 8th grade students. In its' third year, this day is both wonderful and exhausting. The students are eager to display their interpretation of "pulsating tangles of pigments!"

The Color Revolution

ZOBOP!

vinyl tape floor installation

2006 Jim Lambie

Color Chart: Reinventing Color, 1950 to Today

Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art (MoMA)

March 2-May 12, 2008

In an article titled, "Paint by Numbers" in the New York Times Style Magazine yesterday, Li Edelkoort surveys the contemporary color pallette with regard to the current MoMa exhibition. Edelkoort writes,"In a way, the color chart of the 21st century very much resembles the Book of Genesis, with its beginning of light, the water and earth dividing, the arrival of green--strangely enough, before the arrival of the moon, stars and sun--the colors of fish and birds (the best brights yet to be studied), the endless neutral shades of animal fur and, last but not least, the color of man, our skins their own fashion spectrum."

Blossom

I love this image by Ana Juan!

Simple Style, Clean Lines, Minimal Design

As it often the case, I spend early Sunday mornings captivated by The New York Times and CBS Sunday Morning. It is on these lazy mornings that I frequently learn about an artist or an exhibition that piques my interest and obsession! Today on CBS Sunday Morning, I was introduced to the work of Charles Harper via Todd Oldham, designer. Wonderful, just wonderful.

Reflection

Elizabeth Murray

Sol LeWitt

The contemporary art world was saddened this year by the deaths of Sol LeWitt and Elizabeth Murray.

Welcome Holy Child

Titian, The Holy Family and a Shepherd

I love color and texture! I love abstract modern art! I can "disappear" in a Rothko with ease and great pleasure and return groggily to the "real world." I also love the works of the Italian Renaissance Old Masters. There is something magical about Titian and his use of color in the 16Th century. Until last week, I considered my loves very different and completely disconnected in any obvious way. I tend to have wacky taste in many areas of my life, including art.

However, last Saturday, I was browsing 2nd ed. Booksellers, a used bookstore in the RDU airport, and responded to a book calling my name: Matt's Old Masters. David Sylvester, the late British art critic and curator said of Matthew Collings:

"One of Collings' great strengths is his insistence that
in art things are not either/or but both/and."

Matt's Old Masters focuses on Titian, Rubens, Velazquez, and Hogarth. I found myself fascinated by Collings writings about Titian during a short airline flight, followed by a LONG drive in a tiny rental car to my husband's family home in Montezuma, GA. Collings adeptly makes a connection for me between Italian Renaissance and modern abstract art as follows:

"Titian-style color isn't just bright colour,
which is what people usually think 'colour' means in art.
It's colour worked and organised and constructed,
so it's doing something more than you would get
if a modern designer chose some colours from a colour chart.
It's producing something symphonic and harmonious
out of a lot of differences so
there's a sensation of surprise and delight.
This description would fit a Paul Klee or a Matisse,
or a Pollock or a Rothko--which is right,
because that kind of modern art, small like Klee or vast like Pollock,
harks back to the sparkle and suavity of Venetian painting."

Ahhhh, sparkle and suavity; my kind of art!

The Shaped Painting and Elizabeth Murray

I first became aware of Elizabeth Murray's work nearly two years ago while taking a class at Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass, Colorado. Inspiring work. And to think that she was a high school art teacher. There is hope for all of us!

Making Art from "Nothing"

Last Thursday, I had the opportunity to view the work of Dan and Lia Perjovschi at the Nasher Museum and to see and hear a slide lecture by curator of the exhibit and Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, Department of Art, Art History and Visual Studies at Duke, Kristine Stiles. WOW! I am now momentarily obsessed with making art from "nothing." I have SO MANY OTHER projects that I should be working on and yet, I am tearing apart an index book from 1970 and am making a mess if nothing else.

States of Mind: Dan and Lia Perjovschi is a mid-career retrospective of the work of these Romanian artists. The exhibit hangs through January 6, 2008. It is a powerful exhibit!