October 2013, Pattern/Texture/Pattern/Color

My studio concerns as of late are hinging around notions of pattern, texture and materiality.  To this end, this quarterly is devoted to some of the artists I am looking at recently. I'm not going to write a lot about it, as it might cloud my head in terms of my current studio pursuits.  Also, you might be able to see my current work soon (in the next few months) up in Nashville. More to come on that...

Also, these are all paintings, not digital images, so this post is basically worthless.  Need to see the real things.

marty cormand

not afraid to make non-archival work, this marty.  

also love this installation view.

mary heliman

major painter, can see an Art 21 video on her too. Shows at Hauser and Wirth.  Color, color color.

amy sillman

i posted a status quoting helen molesworth, curator of sillman's ICA Boston's retrospective (up now!). 

"“It’s the older model,” Ms. Molesworth said. “You went to school and then you worked alone, hard, until you got good.”

sharon horvath

love her iconography.

July 2013

Jodi Hays, Center, 9 x 12, oil on panel, 2013

Beth Galston

You might recall a mention of the art collection at the new Music City Center from my own art update a few months ago.     This quarter's visual art roundup is centered around the art and artists in our home town collection housed in the new massive building.  Nashville showed an increasingly frequent and incredibly cosmopolitan side when it made this collection a priority.  Two top notch curators worked tirelessly to see works from artists across the country, and focused some of the funds for Nashville-based (let's not use the word "local" please) artists.  Considering the huge budget of the building (5 billion?), a 1.5 million dollar budget for art is nothing, but it is WAY more that usual for this, or most cities.   I might be biased (they selected two of my pieces), but the collection is impressive.  Any of the artists below would be worth the research and live RIGHT HERE in the South, so open up your pocketbooks for their work in your collection.

Terry Thacker

One of my favorite painters, thinkers and educators.  Happy to call him a friend.

Alicia Henry

Teaches at Fisk, her work easily transcends the often democratic and populist feel of most commissioned public works.

Whitney Wood Bailey

She used to show her work at Tinney (?) but is based out of Atlanta.

Mary Addison Hacket

Important artist with a great blog.

Brady Haston

I loves his work, and might have accidentally made a "Haston" in my studio the other day.

Visual Art Quarterly (a couple of weeks late), April 2013

The Artists of Pace

This quarterly I am focusing my efforts on one big blue chip gallery, Pace.  They are a powerhouse gallery, showing established artists in a space that feels like the best church on earth (given the right exhibition of course).  If you guys have an hour in Chelsea, take your time here.


Tara Donovan

She was one of the first artists I saw who effectively used household products as transcendent material. I think I might have reviewed her work here once before, but its worth repeating. She makes huge installations with nothing but plastic cup or scotch tape, but the material tranforms into snowy landscapes or a desolate desert. She got a McArthur genius grant.  Big deal gal.  But all of Pace's artists are, or they would not be there.

above, untitled, Styrofoam cups

Robert Irwin

He is more of a state of mind. Minimalist.  There is a book about him called Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing that One Sees, good good read. Pioneer of the California light art movement. 

Thomas Nozkowski

I am really excited about his abstraction, have been for a few years.  Right up there with Luc Tuymans in my book, but more of a "painter's painter".  Decided in 1984 to only paint on store-bought pre-stretched canvases that are 16 x 20.  Radical, considering that in the 80's everything in the glut of the art market was selling--and the bigger the better.

Isamu Noguchi

This is kind of a shameless plug for our coffee table, and to the Eames oeuvre.  Noguchi died in the 80's and made stunning sculpture before.  He was convinced of art's social role so made a lot of public sculpture.

Michal Rovner

Possible the creepiest and most arresting (without being loud or huge) piece I have ever seen was by this artist at Pace circa 2004(5?).  The work is a video of shrouded figures (several repeated) dancing/moving slightly and projected on a stone tablet.  I first read the figures are language, then noticed that they were figures.  She is Israeli, and that informs her work.

Richard Tuttle

My best inside art joke ever was inspired by Richard Tuttle and his lecture at Lipscomb a few years back.  I love his work, in the same way I love Nozkowski, Ryman, Twombly--they make arresting abstraction yet also kind of stand for a male macho-ness to me (kind of taking the Ab-Ex baton that Pollock and DeKooning handed off).  His lecture was hilarious, and all about his work without at all being able to follow.  

January 2013-Coop Gallery

In this installment I will highlight some of the best artists that we, at Coop Gallery (the arcade downtown, a gallery space i have helped run since 2010) have shown.  We have openings every first Saturday of the month, along with a ton of other galleries.

http://www.coopgallery.org/previous-exhibitions/

Coming next month in February we will be showing Jane Fox Hipple, who has been in a quarterly.  

Nikki Painter

http://nikkipainter.com

This was an installation that should NOT have worked, but did.  Picture fake plants spray painted neon, cardboard.  Now picture that as beautiful.

Peter Froslie-September 2011

http://www.froslie.net/

This guy I brought in, good stuff, amazing actually, the best in my opinion that we have ever hosted.

Elizabeth Ferrill-Spril 2012

http://elizabethferrill.com/home.html

ps- 10.13, i now OWN this above work!  yay!

Love these little cardboard macquettes of store fronts.  Love.  They are smallish, fetish like, at once fragile but serious.