artWorks show: Truth & Tranquility

This show features work by ART 108 students.

Gather: A Textile Event

The Arts Council of the Valley's Darrin-McHone Gallery presents

Gather: A Textile Event
New works by JMU Fiber Arts Students

Opening Reception:
Darrin-McHone Gallery, 311 South Main St., Harrisonburg
Friday, February 3, 2012, 5-7 p.m.
Exhibition continues until March 8, 2012

Augusta Free Press article about the exhibit

Conversations with Artists - D.C.

Today I learned of some great artists coming to D.C. in the next few months, through the Phillips Collection's Experiment Station blog. The Conversations with Artists series is sponsored by The Phillips Collection Center for the Study of Modern Art and cosponsored by The George Washington University.

• Anthony McCall, February 15, 6:00 p.m.
• Janine Antoni, March 28, 6:00 p.m.
• William Pope. L, April 4, 6:00 p.m.

Conversations with Artists programs are $10, and reservations should be made far in advance. If you are interested, reserve your spot!

Janine Antoni, "Inhabit," Digital C-print, 2009

Tanja Alexia Hollander

I found this cool project this afternoon while I was researching for a class presentation on technology in art education...

Tanja Alexia Hollander's social media portrait project: Are You Really My Friend?

Hollander explores the meaning of friendship as she travels around to the homes of all of her Facebook friends.

Siri Kaur & Troy Morgan with Claude the dog, Los Angeles, California

2010, Archival pigment print,12x12"

Art House 201 Film Festival - Feb. 2-4

***An upcoming event happening in our community. Consider supporting our local arts!

Harrisonburg, VA – The Arts Council of the Valley (ACV) announces Art House 201, the second annual film festival celebrating the visual and performing arts. The event will take place February 2 – 4, 2012 at Court Square Theater (CST), 61 Graham Street. The three featured films are My Kid Could Paint That, Young at Heart, and A Rehearsal for a Sicilian Tragedy to be shown at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. each evening in a rotating schedule. Tickets are $6 per film. Movie attendees are invited to enter a raffle for a free DVD copy of each of the three featured films.

The purpose of Art House 201 is two-fold. First, this is a celebration of the arts in its diverse forms. ACV believes the arts are foundational to a vibrant community and want to encourage the public to consider the role of art in their lives. Second, this festival provides an opportunity to educate the community on the mission of CST. CST is an intimate art house that celebrates the independent and foreign films as well as unique theater, music, and dance.

The featured films:

My Kid Could Paint That:  Does modern art look more like a paint store exploded to you? How can such seemingly haphazard swirls fetch prices that would purchase a home? This movie follows the early artistic career of Marla Olmstead, a young girl from from a small New York town who gains fame first as a child prodigy painter of abstract art, and then becomes the subject of controversy concerning whether she truly completed the paintings herself or did so with her parents’ assistance and/or direction. Watch, and decide for yourself if she’s a genius, a puppet, or merely a kid fingerpainting.

Young at Heart:  If you’re only as old as you feel, then these senior citizens still have a lot of rocking to do. Join the final weeks of rehearsal for the Young at Heart Chorus in Northampton, MA, whose average age is 81, and many of whom must overcome health adversities to participate. Their music is unexpected, going against the stereotype of their age group, performing songs, for example, by James Brown, and Sonic Youth. Although they have toured Europe and sang for royalty, this account focuses on preparing new songs, not an easy endeavor, for a concert in their home town, which succeeds in spite of several real heart breaking events. Come learn why “Rock ‘N Roll will never die.”

Rehearsal for a Sicilian Tragedy:  The American actor John Turturro is known for creating slice of life characters with instant rapport. Several years ago he traveled to Sicily in order to work on a motion picture and promptly fell in love with the land of his ancestors. He had never been to the birthplace of his grandparents before, and since that film shoot he’s made it almost a second home. Experience Sicily alongside Turturro as he brings us along on his working vacation. This colorful, informative travelogue and a touching portrait of a gifted artist’s delight in embracing his family roots also explores the puppetry tradition and its high status in pre-cinematic entertainment.

Thank you to our event sponsor, the Virginia Commission for the Arts.

For a detailed schedule and to learn more about the films, visit www.CourtSquareTheater.com or www.ValleyArts.org.

Since opening its doors in 2002, the Arts Council of the Valley and its Court Square Theater have emerged as a dynamic force in the cultural, economic, and educational life of our community. It produces, manages, and promotes the visual and performing arts from its two locations: the Smith House and Court Square Theater. Art openings occur the first Friday of the month from 5-7 p.m. and are open to the public. For more information on the Arts Council visit www.valleyarts.org or call (540)-801-8779.

Themes in art

To follow up on Thursday's lecture, here is some good information on human commonalities and enduring ideas that can assist in starting to develop / choose your theme to focus on for the semester.

Universal human commonalities —We all:
• Experience the life cycles
• Work
• Use symbols
• Know time and place
• Search for a larger purpose
• Have an aesthetic response
• Seek social bonding
• Have a connection to nature

Enduring ideas:
• Identity
• Survival
• Conflict
• Spirituality
• Fantasy
• Power
• Rites of passage
• Change
• Ritual
• Celebration
• Heroes
• Ancestory

If one of these enduring ideas appeals to you, how can you focus in more? Start to become more specific. Put your enduring idea in context.

The above lists are credited to:

Sharon Warwick, National Art Consultant, Davis Publications. Adapted from “Educating in a Multicultural World,” a speech by Ernest Boyer; as found in the Summer 1992 Newsletter for The American forum for Global Education and the Alliance for Education in Global and International Studies.

Marilyn Stewart and Eldon Katter, Explorations in Art, Worcester, MA: Davis Publications, ©2008

Marilyn Stewart and Eldon Katter, Explorations in Art- A Personal Journey, Worcester, MA: Davis Publications, ©2008 Marilyn G. Stewart and Sidney R. Walker, Rethinking the Curriculum in Art, Worcester, MA: Davis Publications, ©2005




P.S.--Since we are referencing work by Marilyn Stewart, some of you may be interested to know that she was on JMU's campus last spring 2011. She is a Professor of Art Education at Kutztown University in Pennsylvania. In the picture below, she was leading a discussion with ART 304 art criticism students at artWorks.

Art21 themes

Click here for the Art21 season 6 trailer.

Contemporary artists featured this season include:

Marina Abramovic, Ai Weiwei, David Altmejd, El Anatsui, assume vivid astro focus, Lynda Benglis, Rackstraw Downes, Glenn Ligon, Robert Mangold, Catherine Opie, Mary Reid Kelley, Sarah Sze, and Tabaimo.

To view past seasons of Art in the Twenty-First Century, click here.

Themes explored in past seasons include:
Season 1 (2001): consumption, identity, place, spirituality
Season 2 (2003): humor, loss & desire, stories, time
Season 3 (2005): memory, play, power, structures
Season 4 (2007): ecology, paradox, protest, romance
Season 5 (2009): compassion, fantasy, systems, transformation
Season 6 (April 2012): change, balance, history, boundaries

First artWorks show

The opening for this exhibit will be Monday, January 16, from 5:00 - 7:00 p.m.
Due to the MLK, Jr. holiday, there will also be an opening for the show on Tuesday, January 17, 5:00 - 7:00 p.m. Come out and support JMU student artists!

Dheepan Rhamanan
Dheepan Rhamanan creates works through pen and ink as well as paintings which are a representation of combined mental processes of physical phenomena and the creative imagination. These works are part of a mental process seeking to better understand the world, personal identity, as to arrive at a conception of truth.

Sharon Ke
The ceramic, sculpture, print and painting work displayed by Yi Hsuan (Sharon) Ke represent her explorations of self, family, and nationality. Her vision for her artwork is sourced from her journey with her family from Taiwan to the United States

Emilia LeBlanc
Emilia LeBlanc explores themes of vulnerability and human emotion through painting and drawing. She aims to capture the expressive moment in a time that solely belongs to the individual.

Matthew Tiemann
Matthew Tiemann creates character driven narrative painting work that seeks to reach out into the environment that it inhabits, blurring the lines between art and reality.

Spring 2012 shows in Sawhill Gallery

Dates / artists for exhibits in Sawhill Gallery this semester are as follows:

February 20 - March 1, 2012: Carrie Spencer
March 12 - March 22, 2012: Colleen Pendry
March 26 - April 5, 2012: Dymph DeWild
April 9 - 19, 2012: Jason Anderson

These artists are all current JMU MFA graduate students.

Divergent Visions show

***Potential Gallery Review Opportunity...

Support your JMU studio professors at an exhibit of their work at the Staunton Augusta Art Center.
The show is entitled Divergent Visions: The Graduate Art Faculty of James Madison University. It will run January 13-February 19, 2012.

The opening reception is Friday, January 13, from 5-7 p.m.

Professors whose work is included in the exhibit are:
Sukjin Choi
Corinne Diop 
Gary Freeburg 
Rebecca Silberman
Greg Stewart 
Ken Szmagaj
Allyson Mellberg Taylor 
Lisa Tubach 
Cole Welter 
Susan Zurbrigg

Gallery Review: Tristin Lowe's Mocha Dick

As I perused the VMFA website for current and upcoming shows, I ran across an image of a large-scale white whale sculpture by Tristin Lowe, entitled Mocha Dick. I was intrigued, and since we were driving through Richmond on the way to VA Beach for the holidays, I decided to pay a visit to Mocha Dick. My husband and I hadn’t been to VMFA since its reconstruction project, so we enjoyed walking around the outside gardens prior to entering the museum. 

Mocha Dick was constructed in 2009. It is a 52 foot life size model of a sperm whale. The work was made of industrial wool felt, an inflatable armature, vinyl-coated fabric, with an internal fan. It was created in collaboration with the Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia, and on loan from the West Collection, Philadelphia. The wall text for the piece informs viewers that Lowe stitched clusters of barnacles on the whale’s body, as well as surface zigzag stitching, giving the appearance of scarring on the body. The details given to the stitching creates a narrative, showing the harsh reality of navigating the sea.

The gallery space that contained Mocha Dick was busting at the seams with the oversized whale sculpture. Walking down the hallway toward the exhibit, the first glimpse of Mocha Dick was catching sight of a small section of his tail. Once arriving at the tail, it was clear that the intention was for visitors to walk around Mocha Dick and view from all sides. It was really difficult to keep from touching the giant whale. Obviously, this was assumed, and the museum had a sample piece of Mocha Dick’s “skin” posted on the wall for visitors to touch. There were two guards assigned to Mocha Dick, which my husband referred to as “the keepers of the whale.”

Mocha Dick appears to be a realization of the description of the giant creature from Melville’s 1851 novel, Moby Dick. The scale of the massive creature is overwhelming; standing next to it, one cannot help but feel tiny and contemplate the fragility of life. I also found myself feeling sorry for the whale, viewing him as a specimen in a museum. Perhaps the artist wants to convey to his audience the magnitude, resilience and beauty of the whale through this artistic representation, and encourage viewers to connect the work to the literature from which he based his art.

I feel that Mocha Dick is successful for many reasons. Lowe chose a subject matter that is accessible to the public because of its connection to the classic literature. The ways in which the artist manipulated the material and put so much care into the outer stitching creates a sort of empathy and emotional connection with the viewer. This piece could be utilized for educational connections between art, language arts, and science. Audiences that might particularly appreciate this work would be fabric artists, educators, and those that are interested in marine biology. It seems that Mocha Dick would excite new audiences if exhibited in science centers and aquariums.

Tristin Lowe: Mocha Dick

Virginia Museum of Fine Art, Richmond, VA

Dates of exhibit: through January 29, 2012

Date visited: December 23, 2011