Shreveport Artist Rachel Stuart-Haas

During a recent conference in Shreveport, LA I surveyed the local art scene. Shreveport has an art museum, a weekly outdoor art market, and a few little art galleries. Many of the buildings are also covered in original murals. Despite this, I found that most of the downtown area seemed abandoned, and I only managed to locate one gallery. That gallery (Artspace, linked here) was featuring an exhibition by Rachel Stuart-Haas. The postcard from her show is pictured below.

Stuart-Hass described her work as drawing on her emotions and experiences of being a woman. Her artist statement added that many of the pieces exhibited were based on thoughts and feelings she had while becoming a new mother.

To that, I would add that her paintings definitely have a sense of mystery to them. I have also noticed how she has drawn inspiration from other artists including Michelangelo and Gaugun. I have included three of my favorites, in no particular order.

I enjoyed the work of Stuart-Hass. I liked how she composed her images and used her space. Many of the images were flattened, but I think this added to the overall feelings derived from the content presented. The pen and ink images were smaller and somewhat playful, which contrasted nicely with the larger paintings that dealt with heavier concepts. What was presented was a nice body of work, and a very talented artist.

I think it is important to support artists and galleries at any level. I know an artist who once remarked that "...artists are a dime a dozen." And while it's true that there are artists everywhere, if we do not support their efforts and build a community the responds to artistic endeavors, artistic expressions will be lost.

Progress of a painting

This week's post is going to be more visual than textual. I recently completed a painting, and I documented the progress that I made with each wash. I work mostly with watercolor these days, and before I added each layer I photographed the previous layer when it was dry. I was surprised to learn that, for this image, I only went over it eight times. I would have thought it was more.

Wash 1

Wash 2

Wash 3

Wash 4

Wash 5

Wash 6

Wash 7

Wash 8

Arts Fest and Frank Lloyd Wright

Image courtesy of the artist


For those of you who do not know me personally, I am the fine arts librarian at a community college in south Louisiana. This week the college kicks off Arts Fest 2012. This is an annual event where the campus hosts a variety of art related activities, exhibitions, and shows for the next two weeks. We in the library have been receiving calls every day asking the location of the gallery. This is where a display of student paintings, prints, and drawings will be exhibited (they were setting it up on Saturday afternoon), and based on the number of calls people are very excited about this. Arts fest is also going to feature a visit by Louisiana artist Kathryn Hunter. An example of her instaltion art is pictured above. The full schedule of events can be read here.

Arts Fest is a celebration of all art forms. There's to be theater performances, music recitals, dance demonstrations, movies screened, and of course visual art. I enjoy the collaborative efforts to combine all the arts. Too often, particularly in academic settings, I believe there is an effort to compartmentalize the arts by discipline. However, when these forms of human expression are brought together the results are usually amazing, more so than when presented individually.

For example, I have provided the following video link:(link removed from internet, hopefully it will be replaced later)



This was a collaborative effort between Los Angeles singer Simone White, and her friend Hideyuki Katsumata. It was created as a response to the terrible earthquake that hit Japan one year ago. I find the images and the singing to be a haunting reminder of the power of nature. And I think the execution of this piece, with both music and printed animation, adds a great deal to what is being communicated.

Finally, I wanted to include a story and link about a dog house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, even though it doesn't really fit with the theme of this post. The article can be found here. I enjoy this story. It's too bad Eddie never got to enjoy the house that was designed for him.

Art Show

This past Saturday I went to a one-night all-night art show. To have the exhibition at night for one night only, added to the experience of the art. The painting above is an example of the art shown, created by William G Osborne III.

Osborne wrote, in his artist statement, that his art was meant to be experienced as it was. The works were not meant to be complicated depictions, but full representations of optical imagery. He stated that each image was based on something he had seen/experienced but that it was not important for viewers to know what. By exhibiting them for one night at night, the artist created an environment in which to focus solely on that art. If one were to step right outside the gallery, darkness and solitude would envelop.

The view up the street:

The view down the street:

There was little else going on.

I found the concept of the show interesting, but I was not terribly impressed by the art as it stood alone. I think that had this show been open during normal gallery hours, the impact of the work would not be as effective. In this case the exhibition was less of a show and more an installation piece.

Some upcoming shows that I might attend are below.

Encaustic Printmaking Exhibition March 10-April 6
Reception Saturday March 24

LSU Art Faculty Exhibition March 7-30
Reception Friday, March 9

New Mona Lisa

Joaquín


Recently the art world was sent all a twitter by the discovery of a new Mona Lisa copy. Unlike previous copies though, it appears that this one was created along side the original in Leonardo's studio. The full article on this discovery can be read here.

Martin Bailey, the author, stated that there could have been any number of reasons for this to have occurred. He also stated that the work was most likely completed by a student studying under Leonardo, and that the close examination of this copy would shed new light on how Leonardo composed this famous painting.

I have never been a huge fan, however the Mona Lisa has fascinated other viewers for centuries. When I taught art history and art appreciation, no other single work of art was asked about more regularly than this one. With this new discovery more questions are sure to be raised. What I do find interesting is the hope to learn more about how Leonardo worked. All artists work differently and I think it is interesting to compare strategies and techniques.

Calls to Artists

Petroleum Paradox: For Better or For Worse?
Eligibility: Open to all US self-identified women artists.
About the Exhibition: Petroleum Paradox: For Better or For Worse is a collaborative exhibition with the Women’s Caucus for Art and Denise Bibro Fine Art. Please upload a current Bio and Artist Resume as the Denise Bibro Gallery will be promoting the artists selected and their work.


2012 Sequim Arts Juried Art Show
Sequim Arts, located in Sequim, Washington, is seeking entries for its annual juried art exhibit. Work in both 2D and 3D form will be accepted. Cash and merchandise prizes totaling over $1,500. The show will be hosted at the Museum & Arts Center in the Sequim~Dungeness Valley exhibit space and will run from May 1 to May 28.

Works on PAPER and of CLAY - 22nd Mid-Atlantic
The d'ART Center in Norfolk, VA is holding a Call to Artists for the 22nd Annual Mid-Atlantic Art Exhibition: “Works on PAPER and of CLAY”. This national art exhibition awards $3,200 in prizes! The juried exhibition is held at d'ART Center from April 27 - June 29, 2012.
Entry Deadline: March 6, 2012. Entry Fee: $30 for 5 entries.

2012 Maritime Art Exhibition & Sale' Call for Artists
International Deadline: March 15, 2012 - The Mackinac Arts Council of Mackinac Island, Michigan is pleased to announce an exhibition of maritime themed art to be held at the Mackinac Island Public Library June 30 to July 31, 2012. The submissions will be juried by the Mackinac Arts Council Jury Committee.

First Street Gallery, New York, Call for Artists: 2012 National Juried Exhibition
Eligibilty: Open to U.S. resident artists at least 18 yrs. old. Exception: Artists currently represented by First Street Gallery.

Eligible works include oils, acrylics, watercolors, pastels, drawings, prints and sculpture in any medium. No photography, video, film, installation, or mechanically reproduced artwork (computer, printer, giclees, etc.). The width of work, including the frame, may not exceed 30 inches. No height limit. Maximum weight of sculpture: 50 pounds. No wall hung sculpture. Sculptors must provide floor stand with a maximum footprint of 30″ x 30″. Maximum width or depth for sculpture is 30 inches. No height limit. All work must be suitably framed, wired and ready for hanging. Works on paper must be framed under plexiglass or glass.

Christo Project in Colorado

The environmental artist Christo is working on another big project here in the United States. This time he wants to cover a few miles of the Arkansas River with a fabric canopy. NPR covered some developments in this project, and it is linked here.

Wolfgang Volz/Copyright Christo 2007

The NPR article discusses the major points of this project including the viewpoints of both those in favor of the project, and those against it. The author described how Christo works; creating sketches models and mock-ups of the project and then selling them to raise the funds necessary to put the project in place. Christo was interviewed and he again commented how the entire project is the art, including the people protesting, the permits, and everything associated directly or indirectly with the completion of the project.

I have always had a love/hate relationship with the work of Christo. On the one hand I can see the arguments that it is not art, and more a construction project. On the other, I like how Christo brings issues of land use into the realm of art. One thing is certain: he makes valid arguments in a creative way that really get people to respond, both positively and negatively.

How an artwork develops

The above image is one of several that I sent off for exhibition in New York later this month. For this show I was looking at pipes. Each image is one relating to pipes, and the structures created supporting the movement of liquid though pipes. For this blog entry I could write all about my thoughts on pipes and why I was interested in creating a body of work focused on pipes, but I don't feel like posting that here. Most of that information is included in the artists statement for the exhibition, and I would rather write about how these images came together.

I spent the better half of the last month looking at pipes, thinking about pipes, and sketching pipes. I almost always have my sketch book close at hand, and for this show that frequently meant going out and sketching pipes. An example of these sketches is below.

This was one of the first sketches I made, and therefore one of the first paintings created for this show emerged from this sketch. Is it here.

I think it is interesting that for this project the first paintings nearly matched the sketches. As I got more involved in the the process however, the paintings began to deviate slightly from the sketches. Look at the example below.

This image was derived from the following sketch, but notice how it has slight differences.

From here I moved further into my own interpretations of the sketches I had made. For example this sketch:

helped to inform this image:

Some of the most interesting images, I think, are amalgamations of several sketches:

To be clear, the deviation from the sketches I made to the more imaginative paintings was not something that I conscientiously set out to do. I'm not sure why this happened, but I do think that the more I thought about pipes, the more comfortable I became in creating my own interpretation of their architecture. There were a few images in this set of paintings that I really like, including the one at the opening of this post, which is my favorite. This project has given me a lot to think about, not the least of which is how the more thought I put into an image, the more interesting it becomes.