Art and Design blog
Pei's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame museum
The Society for News Design just approved a 2012 location for its annual conference.
It’s Cleveland. The Plain Dealer will be host. I couldn’t be more pleased.
This city makes sense for us. Its international airport makes it easy to get to, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (where our opening reception will be held), and a TV show with Valerie Bertinelli. What more could you ask for?
Update: Here’s their website.
Those of you who know me know that I thrive on the joys of the hunt.
In the winter, pickings are slim for bargain hunters, but there are still some places you can go to satisfy your craving for “a find.”
This is my latest find. It’s acrylic, on board, about 9-1/2 inches square, with a slightly battered but perfectly presentable frame. It cost $2. It’s sitting handsomely on my bookcase, and we’re staring back at each other as I sit across the room.
This is not my first super bargain art find, but it’s rare to find something this good so cheap. I hate to admit this, but even though I really love this work, I probably would have walked away if it were $10, and possibly regretted it later. It’s an ongoing effort to seize on a real bargain and not to walk away when I find one. [Read more...]
BACC's inaugural poster by Jargonboy
Arts councils are notoriously contentious, but sometimes some clarification really is in order.
The Bridgeport Arts & Cultural Council is holding a public meeting to “discuss the BACC mission and solicit ideas and concerns from artists and the community.”
Whether or not this is a direct reacton, this meeting follows some criticism from a Black Rock artist, going under the name “Phineas T Barnum” on Facebook, who is unhappy that their signage and website design, and now their Heroes poster series, has been handed to a designer who lives in neighboring Fairfield. [Read more...]
The Cathedral of San Ildefonso on the main plaza.
Here’s my little contribution to the Post’s Sunday travel page — and I think also appearing in our sister dailies. Whenever I travel, I always swear I’ll write up something that’s a little more substantial than a blog post. So here I am, cramming thousands of years of history into 35 column inches, and ironically only mentioning in passing the fact of its fabulous art gallery scene:
By Lee Steele
Staff Writer
In Mexico, it helps to go inland to take in the country’s history and culture.
Mérida, a huge, cosmopolitan city near the Gulf coast, contrasts greatly with its nearest large city, Cancún, about 200 miles away. Never destined to be a Spring Break zone, landlocked Mérida instead offers a richer experience.
Mixing the Belle Epoque and Spanish colonial architecture, its historic center has been a movie stand-in for Havana, Cuba, for obvious reasons. It is a vibrant but unpretentious cultural center, with museums, modern art galleries, active theaters and a symphony orchestra. [Read more...]
An art exhibit celebrating Black History and inspired by the African-American baseball players of the Negro Leagues will come to Channel 1 in New Haven, 6-9 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 4.
The Negro Leagues were all-black baseball teams that operated before Jackie Robinson and racial integration of Major League Baseball at mid-century. (The history is a lot more complicated than that, but this is the gist.)
Jay Cusano spend most of his twenties in prison. Now at 30, he seems to be trying to make up for lost time.
The West Haven artist been breathtakingly active in the art world since his release from prison, a situation he’s disarmingly up-front about.
Susan Campbell wrote about Mr. Cusano in the Hartford Courant about three years ago. The whole sad story is there — Mr. Cusano was driving drunk and ended up responsible for the death of his friend in 2002. He ended up with a 10-year sentence, suspended after seven. It was in prison where he discovered his artistic gifts, teaching himself drawing and, using what tools were available, soap sculpture — all in the context of tragic circumstances.
“I needed a way to express my past,” Cusano told Campbell. “Most of my feelings were about my friend. If this hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t know I had any talents, but the conflict is that I took a life to get here. Something really bad happened for this. Every time I do art, a little bit more of it goes away.” [Read more...]
We're better than that!
U.S. rep. Jim Himes, who is in a tough battle for re-election, is running a campaign commercial with a fake Connecticut Post front page showing my newspaper going all gooey over the freshman Congressman.
Worse, it defames me as its design editor. Our front pages look sooo much better than that.
And really, who puts out papers with all-upper-case, three-deck screaming banner headlines anymore?
More more than the implied story placement, it’s the mockup’s design execution that gets me in the gut. [Read more...]
It's gay, and it's art, but is it gay art?
Two terms that defy definition don’t get any cleared when paired. But at City Lights Gallery, I was invited to join a discussion on just what “gay art” is and how to exhibit it.
Yesterday I talked with the gallery’s director, Suzanne Kachmar; local artist Ricky Mestre, whose public access show showed off his comedic skills before most of us knew he could seriously paint; and Mike Falcigno, who works at the gallery and is, like Ricky, an amazing artist.
So would a gay art show be about gay artists, gay topics, gay artists’ reflections of gay life? Does saying “gay” imply only men? If we call it an LGBTQ show, are we sounding kind of political? Should it matter? [Read more...]
I’ve been meaning to share this little vignette from my Provincetown trip last month.
I usually pack a book to read when I leave home for more than a weekend, so this time I happen to take with me “Role Models,” a series of interviews with people, famous and otherwise, by John Waters, the auteur film director of “Pink Flamingos” and “Hairspray” fame.
We soon find that Mr. Waters, who lives in Provincetown and who [Read more...]
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