Art and Design blog
A workshop in New London will help artists develop their portraiture skills.
Participants will work with elements of line, mark, shape, light, value, proportion and perspective. Anatomical structure
and forms in relationship will be emphasized. Click for complete details of the workshop.
This is an intermediate level course led by instructor Qimin Liu of Eastern Connecticut State University.
Conspirators 2 by Richard Taddei, featured in the 2011 SameSex show at City Lights Gallery
City Lights Gallery is issuing a “call for artists” to particpate in its second “SameSex” show, a gay art exhibit scheduled for late spring.
Which, of course, begs the perennial question, What is gay art?
That’s up to the artist.
“We are intentionally not providing a specific description of this theme, thus encouraging artists who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or otherwise supportive of this community to offer their interpretation,” City Lights program director Suzanne Kachmar’s call states. Anyone who went to the first SameSex show can tell you that the jury (which I am on) is not concerned with frightening the horses.
“SameSex” is scheduled to open the last week of May, with an artists’ reception in June.
Submissions in jpeg form are due by April 6. For more info email clgallerybpt@gmail.com.
kHhyal™ — that’s small k, big H, with a trademark sign at the end — is a Black Rock artist who you could describe in film terms: Character driven.
And it’s in Hollywood where her own artistic development took place.
As a young child of three or so, my imagination conjured up a series of characters that appeared in my realities. The earliest ones were quick circling lassos of hair that would wake me up in bed and follow me down the hall. Later, they became colorful combinations of transparent orbs with lively faces that popped up behind the living room furniture when no one else was around. Once I was in middle school, they only joined me in my sketchbook when I would draw them from memory and other unknown places.
When I was 20 years old, I moved to Los Angeles – a big, bold, bright city – that inspired me to create large, colorful canvases with a new cast of characters. In 1985, I received my first public art commission – a character painting in Rustoleum on a dumpster at a Beverly Hills gallery. I was commissioned to do another one at Newspace Gallery next to Paramount Studios, then a series of similar private client commissions through Ankrum Gallery on stainless steel trash cans.
The work has snowballed from there – and the character development continues. (It’s probably no surprise that my favorite artist is Dr. Seuss.)
See kHhyal™ and her characters at the Bridgeport Arts and Cultural Council at an opening reception Thursday, Feb. 23. The show will be on view until March 29, when a brown-bag lunch with the artist is planned at 12:30.
Herm Freeman (ringleader) and Lori Pechers
We have more news about tomorrow’s opening at Knowlton Street, and a sneak peek image.
In the past year the Artist of 305 Knowlton street have amassed a body of work individually and as a group. The collective that has formed organically here in the building has put together a strong show of mostly recent works. Expect imaginative landscapes by Herm Freeman, selected works of light and color by Joe Malf, installed drawings by Austin Seigert, mother and daughter works by Emily and Janet Habansky, jewelry by Jackie Podlaski, collages by Lori Petchers, figurative work by Allan Wittert, painting by Becca Schwartz, and works on canvass by E.S .Barraza.
Be there at 4 and encourage this group of artists.
Photo: Herm Freeman (ringleader) and Lori Petchers
For the first time in its history the Cherokee Nation has more than one font to express its native language in written form, thanks to design help from Gary Munch, an award-winning letterpress designer who teaches at University of Bridgeport Shintaro Akatsu School of Design.
Munch’s contributions, unveiled recently and now being put to use in Cherokee schools, are the key to preserving their native language, say tribe elders.
“Native languages across the world are disappearing and Cherokee is at risk of being lost, even with all the successful programs we have had. ” says Joseph Erb, of language technology and education services at the Cherokee Nation. “How do you excite your community about your language again? Beautiful fonts are one of the answers. As we continue to grow our language back in the youth, they demand quality technology from our language. Fonts are a very key part of that.”
Until Munch unveiled his designs, the Cherokee only had one font in which to properly express their language in writing, and it had been designed in the 1820s. Other fonts for Cherokee had been “designed by people who did not speak or write Cherokee and had characters that were not correct,” Erb says. “Think about a world with only one font.”
Without the Garamonds, Times New Romans, and Bodonis that color the printed world of English and other romance languages, things look pretty dull. Crisp and modern—or curlicued and rooted in tradition—fonts’ structure and appearance send strong subliminal messages about text, content, and image. Show one of Coca-Cola’s cursive C’s or the dromedary-like arches of the McDonald’s golden M to consumers in the farthest reaches of the world, and odds are, they’ll instantly match the fonts to company brands.
With that in mind, Erb attended a design conference called Typecon 2011, searching for help. It was there he met Munch from the University of Bridgeport.
The original Cherokee font, says Munch, “had formalized letters had similarly shaped but differently sounded letters in Latin, Greek or Cyrillic, with a very high contrast of weight on strokes and very thin on horizontals. This was fashionable the early nineteenth century, but the Nation wanted a selection of typefaces that were different, expressive, even fun—just as anyone else who uses typefaces looks for just the right one for a variety of messages.”
Munch produced three new options: Chancery Modern ProCherokee, a sleek sans serif semi-cursive font; a multipurpose “workhorse” design that he dubbed Neogrotesk Cherokee; and finally, the so-called Munch Chancery Cherokee, a calligraphic font that resembles handwriting, and, says Erb, “is beautiful to look at.” In fact, the Nation is using Munch Chancery at its Cherokee Immersion School and by some of the translation staff.
“It would be very difficult to describe how nice fonts of different kinds are in a language that has so few,” Erb concludes. “Gary did amazing work. He may not have the ability to read and write our language, but he has very good instincts and ability to work with suggestions to create something new and exciting. He heard our plea for a better written word and used his talents to make our written world better. That is something special.”
Courtesy of Leslie Geary at University of Bridgeport
Architect Sir Peter Cook, Royal Academy of Arts, London, who delivered the keynote address. Photo by Susan Surface.
Hundreds attended at the Yale School of Architecture’s symposium, “Is Drawing Dead?” Was it because everyone loves a funeral? Let’s hope not.
The symposium consisted of a mix of presentations and debates regarding the historic significance of drawing; its visceral effect on author and viewer; its potential to make unimagined realms of experience accessible; and even its neuropsychological underpinnings.
The symposium reached beyond the simplistic battle lines often struck between digital and manual drawing, seeking instead to clarify drawing’s place in contemporary practice and education, according to a Yale spokesperson.
In his keynote address, Sir Peter Cook spoke in defense of drawing irrespective of medium, concluding that “drawing may really be about creatively searching for the sublime.”
The diverse roster of symposium participants included Preston Scott Cohen, chair, Harvard Graduate School of Design; Michael Graves, Robert Schirmer Professor of Architecture, Emeritus, Princeton University; Greg Lynn, founder, Greg Lynn FORM, Davenport Visiting Professor of architecture, Yale; Deanna Petherbridge, CBE, visiting professor of drawing, University of the Arts, London; and Patrik Schumacher, director, Zaha Hadid Architects.
Setting the stage for the symposium was an exhibition of work by noted Italian architect, painter, and designer Massimo Scolari, entitled Massimo Scolari: The Representation of Architecture. This exhibition, which includes about 160 paintings, drawings, and watercolors, inspired Mr. Graves’s reply to a question about the importance of composition and form-making in drawing and architecture: “How could you look at the work [in the exhibition] and not see the importance of drawing?”
Mixed-media collage by Guilford, Conn., artist Rex Prescott Walden
Guilford artist Rex Prescott Walden’s solo show, “To Italy,” evokes not just landscape, but the country’s maritime past. Walden’s collage from maps, charts and found objects does the trick.
Walden hopes to “set the viewer off on a journey, maybe to a place he or she has never been before,” he told Pulse. “I like to make them think beyond the two dimensions of the piece.”
His inspiration for the show at the Fernando Luis Alvarez Gallery has been Connecticut’s shoreline, but this time he took his vision across the Atlantic.
“Sometimes, as an artist, you have to push yourself to make new marks,” he said.
Alexa Gerrity, Let’s Call it Valencia (video still), 2009
“Heavy Rotation,” a three-week showcase of emerging trends in contemporary video art is under way at Franklin Street Works.
Beginning on Friday, Feb. 24 and closing on March 16, this ambitious project consists of four “mini exhibitions,” each lasting four days, and each reflecting different themes.
Through multiple, short-lived shows, Heavy Rotation aims to provide an adrenaline rush of shifting contexts, fresh curatorial perspectives, and highly varied technologies. The show’s fluctuating structure also asks us to imagine the exhibition as a series of changing visual events, rather than a static installation.
One grouping includes artists who harness specific elements from nature (including rocks, water, snow, and a snail) as imagery to foreground unique approaches to “process” in the act of art making. Love and interpersonal relationships inform another show, which explores romantic exchanges, desires, and miscommunications via a variety of platforms and situations (including Chat Roulette, Craigslist singles ads, and public displays of affection). A third installation explores “psychological landscapes,” whose narratives are situated within imaginative, culturally specific, and often geographically peripheral environments. Finally, New York-based curator Anthony Thornton rounds out the schedule with a selection of videos that explore the public inevitability of private performance within our increasingly connected world.
Participating artists/curators include: Robert Chirila, Petra Cortright, Keith Edmier,Lindsey Eskind, Don Evans, Jesse Fleming, T. Foley, Alexa Gerrity, Matteo Giordano, Ilana Halperin, Seth Kelly, Karsten Krejcarek, Camille Laurelli, Jillian Mayer, David O’Reilly, Ariana Page-Russell, John Pilson, Cheryl Pope, Joshua Seidner, Rbt. Sps., Brent Stewart, Anthony Thornton, and Grant Worth.
A reception for the exhibition is 5-7 p.m. Thursday, March 1.
In the past year the artists of 305 Knowlton Street have been very busy!
They have amassed a body of work individually and as a group.
The collective that has formed organically in the building has put together a strong show of mostly recent works.
Among them: Imaginative landscapes by Herm Freeman, selected works of light and color by Joe Malf, installed drawings by Austin Seigert, mother-and-daughter works by Emily and Janet Habansky, jewelry by Jackie Podlaski, collages by Lori Petchers, figurative work by Allan Wittert, painting by Becca Schwartz, and canvasses by ES Barraza.
The show opens 4-7 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 18. at Gallery 305K.
Not so hard to find.
Comments and Discussion