seal of approval

this seal is so cute. he makes everything better.


this painting isn't finished, maybe it needs a seal. YES!


this one isn't finished either, but the seal likes it. i love you, seal of approval!

don't hate, nominate!

Nominate someone for a Pollak Prize by June 30th!!! It is easy! Cut and paste the category list, e-mail it with your nominations to Richmond Magazine (harryk@richmag.com). A nomination is not a selection, just a list of people to consider. Nominators are ANONYMOUS, you can nominate yourself, it doesn't matter - nobody is keeping track of who nominates who.

fine artist (painting,printmaking, or sculpture) - ?
photographer or filmmaker - ?
emerging artists - ?
lifetime achiever - ?

Trawick Prize

From Adrian via Kriston, the Trawick Prize finalists are:

Christine Buckton Tillman (Baltimore, MD)
Caryl Burtner (Richmond, VA)
Eric Dyer (Baltimore, MD)
Suzanna Fields (Richmond, VA)
Adam Fowler (Washington, DC)
Kristin Holder (Washington, DC)
Kirsten Kindler (Richmond, VA)
Maxwell MacKenzie (Washington, DC)
Robert Mellor, Chatham, VA
James Rieck (Baltimore, MD)
Jo Smail (Baltimore, MD)
Molly Springfield (Washington, DC)
Georgianne Stinnett (Richmond, VA)
Jason Zimmerman (Washington, DC)

Four Richmonders, all women, only two of whom I am familiar with.

(i have to get out on the river now, but i will update this later.... if i survive)

Oura, Mickael, and Rats

Here are some images of other favorite work from the Gallery5 show that just closed -


Oura Sananikone. Oura makes some good paintings, and other things. He and Phil Barbato also made a big mess on a wall.


Mickael Elliot Broth. This is the artist who went to prison for his REFUSE tags. He showed clean complex drawings, and his tagging templates. Read Mikael's statement of contrition in the current RVA.


RATS. Rats is across the street. Go RATS. Rats is the word.

RELATED: Timothy Sean Johnston

Mike Martin in the new RVA! ...PLUS!

Timothy Michael Martin is featured in the current issue of RVA!

Do you know RVA? Maybe some of you (most of you?) are not Richmonders; RVA stands for Richmond VA, and RVA is a small magazine that spotlights local art and culture. The current issue also features Mickael Broth, another favorite from the current Gallery5 show, and a good article by Don Harrison. Local artists and writers are ENCOURAGED to submit work for consideration.

Mike is not in Richmond anymore; he's moved back to Tennessee and is starting a gallery in Knoxville. He got a big basement storefront - like Nonesuch, a basement place with windows and doors on the street - to use as a studio space and is going to use the front as an exhibition space. The first show at The Basement Gallery will be Kaleidoscope, a group show, opening July 7th. I'm in it!

The Basement's in-progress website has a Featured Artist page. Not sure if these are artists he will show or just art he likes, but the first one to be featured is Hedwig Brouckaert. I met Hedwig maybe in 2002 at Vermont Studio Center, and Mike met her earlier this year at a residency at Virginia Center For The Creative Arts. Libby and Roberta know her too, her work is the first eight pictures of this set, from her current show at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, where I also had a show once*. It is a small small small art world**.


My Mike Martin painting.

* i mean twice! i forgot i showed there in 1991. five big Humbertos.

**Duh! It is even smaller. I just remembered that Hedwig and I showed together at Tadashi Moriyama's Freeform space in 2004. I am only at a quarter-career and forgetting everything already. I got a good review from Roberta (before we subsequently met).

streetheart

streetheart.

secrets of james

Secrets of James Won't Get Out of Bed....


Breugel, Death of the Virgin, 1564.


That chair is the same barely noticeable chair in the foreground of the Breugel painting. The soft blanket on his bed is washi, Japanese paper, that I made myself at a four-day papermaking workshop in Gifu, Japan - we did everything from scratch; pick the mulberry, boil it, grind it.


Not sure who the artist is right now, but saw it in a show in Japan, I think. I'll check the postcard info and update later. The open window is used in the image below, Death lurks everywhere.


The open window above the sleeping boy is the same as the open window over the sleeping old man (in the previous image). The cat chasing the mouse across the bed was inspired by a creepy Victorian image - I have since lost - of a sleeping girl whose bed is covered with scampering mice. I had a cat that looked like that when I was a boy. Shout out to Mittens!!

See the book on the Breugel chair? The chair in Breugel's painting also has a book on the seat. The book in my picture is The Kuddle Kittens, by S. Sheldon, the unpublished comic of an old Philadelphia friend, Steve Sheldon.

Look how tiny my cut-paper mouse is!

RELATED: my washi teacher was also a Noh master, and gave an impromptu outdoor fireside performance. it was INTENSE!!!

they are coming

They are coming! July 13th.

nominate someone!

Not much time left to nominate someone for a Pollak Prize. Only one commenter has left suggestions. I hope some of you are e-mailing your nominations to Harry Kollatz at Richmond Magazine (harryk@richmag.com).

I've made a big set of most of my Richmond photos, maybe that will help jog some thoughts?

on goest

Last week I posted that people often leave good comments on old posts. I also get many e-mails about posts. Here are some nice thoughts on the recent goest post -

"ah, such a great tagger.... 'where thou goest, I will go' comes to mind when I see his tags, it makes me smile, not being religious, but that I appreciate the irony that although, he may not be a religious man, he was exposed to the sunday morning rituals of church in his childhood. I love that. and, its like the opposite---where ever I go, he was there first. before me. how can that NOT bring a smile to the face. its like twisted, subtle urban religion."

some good comments

People often leave comments after a post is no longer *new*. Here are a couple recent posts to which good comments have been added -

Steve Jones with two comments here.

Vittorio Colaizzi responds with a smart comment here. Much more even-tempered than I could be. Vittorio is responding to a commenter who calls his work crappy and says that I am "every artist's bitch". Exciting! Vittorio's comment also includes a thoughtful look at Ryan Mclennan's current show at Nonesuch.

Thanks Steve and Vic and angry young commenter.

(vittorio colaizzi in style weekly here)

the phantom

From yesterday's Richmond Times-Dispatch -

"Richmond's graffiti vandals are getting a one-time-only amnesty offer. Clean up your mess, and you won't go to jail. City prosecutors invite all local aerosol-paint artists to attend a meeting Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. at 1103 W. Marshall St. There, vandals will be asked to identify everything -- homes, buildings, bridges, schools, tunnels, streets they've illegally spray painted, or "tagged." Then, they'll be put to work cleaning up their own messes. In exchange for fessing up, vandals will not be prosecuted."

This is a good chance to gain some instant notoriety for very little effort. You can go and claim to be Goest!! You would be maybe a hero! They would write articles about you! People would whisper "there goes Goest" as you passed. The "real" Goest might continue, but he would just be copying you.














No Goest! Also, NO Playing or maybe Praying!

That would be so funny, for someone to come out and steal Goest's thunder. How frustrating for Goest, perhaps.

Robert Rainey

Robert Rainey, my Richmond friend now living in Albuquerque, is showing at the Chicago Cultural Center through August 6th. An exhibition of about thirty of Nick Cave's Soundsuits is showing concurrently, through July 9th. Nick Cave showed at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond a few years ago and those suits are amazing.

Robert was my Art Basel Miami best friend. He partied very very late every night. It was tough to get him going in the morning.


wake up, robert!! it is time to see art basel!!

GURSKY!!! Read this if you haven't seen it yet, we laughed so hard.

Sandra Luckett

Sandra Luckett's magical little landscape on a turntable; it spins around. The inside cover has a reflective gold foil, small mirror balls are suspended above (you can see their shadows on the wall). The goal was to create a shimmering aurora borealis on the wall, which she does.

This is part of her show at ADA, closing soon.

skyspace

Timothy Sean Johnston

Timothy Sean Johnston is one of the artists included in Gallery5's current exhibition of graffiti and graffiti-ish work. I think a number of these artists are taggers and better known to many by their tags. Can't match names with tags here, they are all wanted.

The opening was fun - the gallery erected a big wall out front for anybody to paint on, good bands, the police, beer, and good art. Timothy Sean Johnston (more work below) was one of my favorites, along with Oura Sananikone. I'll post more artists later.

This is an excellent show and the second-best graffiti show in town. The best is here. Does anybody have a name or alias for this artist? I am a huge fan.

UPDATE 6/4/07: the mystery artist linked to above is known as Judith Supine, now "famous" in New York.







RELATED: building as painting, broad street robot dance, rats is the word, goest, Curious, on local graffiti, in-between alley, pretty landscape. Good comments on many of those posts.

p and d

Two things to see if you will be escaping the city heat this summer, Pollock in Williamstown and Da Vinci in Glens Falls -


Jackson Pollock at the Williams College Museum of Art, in Williamstown MA. The show features Number 2, 1949, from the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute Museum of Art; Number 13A, 1948: Arabesque, from the Yale University Art Gallery; and Number 7, 1950, from MoMA. I haven't been yet, but my mom went and was very very impressed.

Pictured above is an installation view of Number 2, 1949 on a free standing plinth; they have it displayed like this so you can walk around and see the back.


looks like a little Joe Fig doll.


The Hyde Collection is taking out that Mona Lisa drawing I talked about once before -

"The Hyde is a small house museum like the Gardener and the Barnes - I think the Hydes were actually inspired to think about making their home public after a visit to the Gardener - but much further off the beaten track way up in Glens Falls, NY.

On my visit last week they had out at least one piece each by Rubens, Ingres (I think there were three out), Tintoretto, Homer, Hassam, Eakins, Renoir, Bierstadt, Courbet, Pisarro, Picasso, Whistler, Rembrandt, Vedder, Ryder, El Greco, Seurat, Ruisdael,Tiepolo, Bellows and more. The Da Vinci is not currently on display but the small Botticelli is sitting on the same table as last time. You would not believe how close you can get to these works, it really does feel like you are in someone's home. This is a stately home but small and intimate by the standards of many of today's new homes. My favorites this time were the Ingres linked to above and this little piece by John Frederick Peto - that mug is much crustier and clumpier in real life. Or maybe my favorite was Rubens' Man in Armor or Cranach the Elder's St. Helena with the True Cross, on loan from another museum in exchange for yet another Rubens. Too Much!!!"

GO!!

James Won't Get Out Of Bed, 15 - THE END.

and the next day, was cured!

1,2,3 here - 4,5,6,7 here - 8,9,10 here - 11, 12, 13 here - 14 here.
View the flickr set here.

Nominate Someone for the 2006 Pollak Prizes

Theresa Pollak

Richmond Magazine is accepting nominations for the 2006 Pollak Prizes. The nominees are recommended to a panel of selectors, who then choose the honorees. I don't know if the selectors have to actually choose from among the nominees or not, and the selectors are usually the previous year's winner in each category - 2004's Heide Trepanier chose 2005's Nick Kuszyk, 2004's Richard Roth selected 2005's Elizabeth King.

Categories are:

writer or poet
actor or director
vocalist or instrumentalist
ensemble (vocal or instrumental)
dance
fine artist (painting,printmaking, or sculpture)
photographer or filmmaker
emerging artists
lifetime achiever - i guess this is in whatever art form?

Who will you nominate??? Say so in the comments. I need to think about it, but I'll update this post later with some names. The DEADLINE for nominations is June 30, 2006.

E-mail your nominations to Harry Kollatz at harryk@richmag.com, or post to 2201 W. Broad St, Richmond VA, 23220.

Nominees must be Richmonders, but I don't think you need to be a Richmonder to nominate.

2006 Richmond Outdoor Sculpture

The Richmond Outdoor Sculpture Thing has announced the 2006 artists. I'm glad they are doing this a second year.

Margery Albertini
Allison Andrews
Beq and James Parker
Chris P. Bolduc - i know his work, he might do something good.
Martin Bromirski - i am including myself as an honorary participant. read why below.
Andrew Campbell
Frederick Chiriboga
Paul DiPasquale - this is the artist who did the Arthur Ashe Monument!?!? I hope he puts some weird monument down there. Something bizarre. That Arthur Ashe thing is Freaky.
Andrea Ernest
Susan Vander Eb Greene - do i have this name right?
Carolyn Henne - YES! she is excellent.
Ed Holten - he had my one of my favorite pieces in last year's show.
Mackie MacMillan
John Meola
Katie Whelan
Megan Witherspoon
Claire Zitzow

(if any of the artists above have something they would like me to link to, just e-mail me)

I made fun of them last year for having fourteen artists and only one woman, and notice that this year's list of seventeen artists includes (at least) nine women! Maybe I made some social sculpture???? Definitely. They should put my name on the list of participating artists. Actually, I will update the list above right now and include myself.

RELATED: 2005 Sculpture Invitational posts - here, here, here, and here - and the 2005 Sculpture Invitational website is here.

Eric Sall

Eric Sall has a show opening this week in NYC, at ATM.

James Won't Get Out Of Bed, 14

James slept.. in the gold room...

1,2,3 here - 4,5,6,7 here - 8,9,10 here - 11, 12, 13 here.

Bruce Wilhelm

Bruce Wilhelm is showing new work at ADA Gallery through May 27.


This one is very nice. The Japanese looking pine tree is what first caught my attention, and later I noticed the ghostly robed figure in the reeds on the left, and the ghost shadow shape in the foreground. I love my little ghost house painting he did... and of course everything Japanese pine trees is good.


This one is so much like Hasegawa Tohaku's famous screens, and seems so different for Bruce. Where is the absurdity? Where are the characters? This is one of two restrained forest scenes in the show, the other doesn't have the strong Japanese feel. I like this one a lot.


Hasegawa Tohaku. I'm guessing Bruce must have looked at this, the similarities are so strong. It is interesting to see Bruce's probable reinterpretation so soon after Chris Ashley's posting of our own Tao-Chi mountain re-dos.


This one is closer to what we expect from Bruce. I was looking at Breugel today was reminded of Bruce and his work. The bare trees, the palette, odd figures outside engaged in the everday alongside the unfamiliar. Something Breugel about Bruce's work, for me.

Bruce is one of the artists representing ADA at the Affordable Art Fair and Scope-Hamptons, the bastard.

Vittorio Colaizzi

Vittorio Colaizzi is showing at Eric Schindler Gallery through June 6th. This image has been scanned from the postcard announcement; didn't notice before how much rosier it is on the left - is that the way it really is, or just the postcard? Looks good either way.

Elizabeth King and Barbara Tisserat - Reviews

Elizabeth King and Barbara Tisserat reviews. Elizabeth's for her show at Kent Gallery in NYC and Barbara for her show here in Richmond at the Hand. I visited that Barbara Tisserat show, at least twice, and am pissed at myself for not ever posting on it. It was excellent.

That happens more than I would like, especially with shows at the Hand. Just realized that the Judith Schaecter and Jack Wax shows have closed, and before that was Carrie Mae Weems. I visited all of these shows more than once, and they were all good!

I know it is not called the Hand Workshop anymore, I just don't like typing out the long and bland not-so-new anymore name - The Visual Arts Center of Richmond. Don't let my strange Hand block keep you away, Ashley Kistler consistently organizes some of the best shows in town.


Elizabeth King reviewed by Nancy Princenthal, Art in America, May 2006. CLICK HERE to read it.


Barbara Tisserat reviewed by Paul Ryan, Art Papers, May/June 2006. This is the first part, CLICK HERE to read the rest.

I wish it wasn't Paul Ryan. One painting department faculty member reviewing another is... not good.

a) The editors will not consider submissions in which a writer: writes about his/her work, the work of someone with whom the writer has a personal relationship, the work of someone with whom the writer has a financial relationship, any gallery that represents his/her work, any relative, any gallery institutionally related to the organization employing the writer or a colleague in the institution employing the writer.

Navid Nuur

Navid Nuur is showing a tight collection of polaroids at ADA Gallery, part of a show curated by artists Derek Cote and John Henry Blatter, from the pages of their Daily Constitutional.

These twenty-eight polaroids are propped on tiny nails, and all show the same corner of what is probably the artist's studio, in The Netherlands. The placement of the camera doesn't change, so the lines of the floor and walls remain fixed within the white-bordered grid of photos. Also fixed are some of the elements within each photo, most prominently what looks like an up-ended metal table or shelf thing; the black lines of this thing are the internal skeleton of each picture. The other elements in the corner, mostly unrecognizable industrial stuff, are rearranged in each photo: stacked on the floor, leaning against the wall or shelf-thing, on top or below or within. Like twenty-eight little temporary sculptures. One of the elements is a flourescent light fixture, so the light of each photo is a bit different with the lights on or off, or leaning against the wall or shining on the corner. The center grouping of photos glows green, with the light reflecting off something green in the corner and the rest of the lights in the room turned off.

I love the scale of this piece, it feels like a miniature, like a dollhouse. A few of the photos include more recognizable objects - a skateboard, a broom - which shift the reading and sense of scale.

Very nice.

Ryan Mulligan is also in this show with some funny and paranoid drawings, sketches of homes turned fortresses, with lists and notes explaining the new protective features. Number two on the check-list for Extreme Compound Modification is "establish fail-safe plan". Other notes-to-self include "store extra lumber in cut and debarked form" and "maintain morale at all costs".

These made me think of Ryan's room from his Anderson Gallery show last year. I think he is in a show at Art Space opening soon?

Pulse, at 1708 Gallery

VMFA curator John Ravenal, in Rachel Hayes' piece. It cast green shadows on the inside walls. This blog has become The Rachel Hayes Blog; I can't help it, she keeps showing good work in Richmond. Maybe John is thinking something like this would be good to put against that big blank wall and have our group VMFA installation in?

Rachel at Anderson Gallery.
Rachel at ADA Gallery.
Rachel at Sculpture Center.

Chris Ashley is exhibiting an entire year's worth of his daily html drawings, printed out and hung in a big grid on the wall; there are four or five blank sheets that I think represent a week during which he was unable to get to a computer. GO TO HIS BLOG and start following his work. I can't believe he makes/posts these things every day AND that he is able to get so much variety out of them. The recent ones are making me think of Stephen Westfall.

I like these best on the computer, seeing them printed out is sort of like seeing a print of a painting, like I'm not seeing the "real" thing; but looking at an entire year's worth all at once on the wall is also exciting. Seeing how one piece informs the next, and how a group forms, and how that leads to another group.

The prints are being sold for twenty-five dollars apiece, I think they are signed editions of one. You can also buy a CD of all of them, for something like ten bucks. With the CD you can print out as many (unsigned) copies that you want, maybe even different sizes(?).

Steve Karlik and Brad Hampton are both showing paintings. Steve's paintings, on his website, look similar to Chris' html drawings. Weird to consider that on-line you are seeing Chris' stuff as intended and Steve's stuff once removed, while in the gallery it is Steve's work as intended with Chris' work once removed. I find, in the context of both this show and on the net, Chris' work the more absorbing. The paintings were a little dry for me here.

Steve was included in Presentational Painting III at Hunter earlier this year.
Conversation/Interview between Steve Karlik and Chris Ashley.
JT Kirkland intrigued by Brad Hampton.

Annoying Part: This sentence from the curator's statement - we believe the resilience of painting reveals itself through its ability to adapt its fundamental practices to new mediums - and this part from Richard Roth's catalogue essay - the painting-like works expand our notions of painting and reinvigorate painting without having to be painting.

What a burden! Having to be painting! Richard is the most neurotic head of the most neurotic painting department on the planet. So so tired. This is a show of six artists, two of whom are showing paintings.

Get over it! It isn't painting, it's okay!

James Won't Get Out Of Bed, 11-13

This past week I've been busy working and rafting (i took out ridley howard's cousin thursday!), haven't had much of a chance to do anything except check my e-mail and read the other blogs. So please forgive me for posting my own stuff again - I'd really like to talk about Pulse or Bruce Wilhelm or a bunch of other stuff, but this is the quickest thing to do.


They even tried mixing green and pink and purple and orange...


and created...


Gold!

1,2,3 here - 4,5,6,7 here - 8,9,10 here.

a little PULSE

Who is that little kid who has cornered two girls in Rachel Hayes' fort?


It's THE FARTIST!!!!

I took these photos from Pulse co-curator Peter Baldes' Pulse flickr set. I haven't had much opportunity to sit at the computer recently, more Pulse stuff coming soon - hopefully tomorrow.

Style Weekly's Becky Shields had a review of the show last week. She really nailed Peter. I heard that Heide Trepanier was pissed off about it(?) and wrote a letter to Style Weekly, but I didn't see a letter in this week's issue. Maybe next week?

Dawn Latane

Dawn Latane is showing her dream houses at Chop Suey.


Cell Phone Tower House, 2006 - 125. These aren't really her dream houses, but houses she has imagined. Visionary McMansions. This one is at the top of a lopped-off mountain.

I like the watercolors with ink drawing and text, kind of like Blake.


Viagra Mansion, 2005 - 115. Follies.


Siamese Twins House, 2006 - 75.

Artist's Statement - "My images are of domestic buildings (mansions) and other urban sites in which enormous scale and various grand themes greatly outsize the human beings who inhabit or use them. I feel my pictures are in a tradition of poetic, visionary architecture though in the case of this particular body of work, megalomania and irreverence stampede through it at breathtaking speed. If anyone would like to make a workable plan from any of these doodles of mine, then be my guest; I’m curious what you’d come up with. This show is dedicated to all the people of America who literally want a ‘castle’ rather than a home: a building to overwhelm the rest of the neighborhood creating either intense envy or debilitating nausea."