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Posts Tagged ‘artist’

Artist Edmonia Lewis

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on July 26, 2026| 2 Comments »

Photo: Henry Rocher/Harvard Art Museums Fogg Museum.
“Edmonia Lewis 1845-1907” (circa 1870).

Having just learned of an order to post signs outside the Smithsonian saying that the history inside is false, I’m sharing — in the interest of holding on to history based on facts — the kind of information you can still find at the Smithsonian.

Sháńdíín Brown has an article at Hyperallergic about black indigenous sculptor Edmonia Lewis and the exhibit about her in Massachusetts.

” ‘Sometimes the times were dark and the outlook was lonesome, but where there is a will, there is a way,’ the Black and Indigenous sculptor Edmonia Lewis once said. The quotation, now printed and spotlit on a dark blue wall in the exhibition ‘Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone,’ continues, ‘That is what I tell my people whenever I meet them, that they must not be discouraged, but work ahead until the world is bound to respect them for what they have accomplished.’

“Lewis — who was born in Greenbush, New York, in 1844 and died in London in 1907 — is paid such respect in her first major retrospective at the Peabody Essex Museum [Salem, Massachusetts] held over a century after the artist’s death.

“Co-organized by the Peabody Essex Museum and the Georgia Museum of Art, the extensively researched exhibition tells an expansive narrative of the artist’s sculpture practice and legacy, displaying 30 of Lewis’s Neoclassical white marble sculptures alongside a plethora of archival materials and works by other artists.

“One of the strongest elements of ‘Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone’ is that the curatorial framework allows for Lewis to be understood simultaneously as a Black and Indigenous artist without conflating the two identities. Indeed, each quite literally occupies its own space in the exhibition: Four thematic rooms — ‘Antislavery and Emancipation,’ ‘Indigenous Artistic Worlds, ‘the Studios of Rome,’ and ‘Religion, Mythology, Transcendence’ — are in conversation with one another and designated by different colors of wall paint. Through collaboration with Black and Native scholars, the groundbreaking exhibition is the first of its kind to present Lewis’s work in dialogue with both of her ancestries. …

“In 1865, Lewis moved from Boston to Rome — a premier hub for American Neoclassical sculptors from the late 1820s to the mid-1870s — and worked there as a sculptor until the early 1890s, when she moved to London. The exhibition informs visitors that within a few years of her arrival in Italy, Lewis was the first woman artist of Black and Indigenous descent to achieve widespread international acclaim. ”I was practically driven to Rome,’ Lewis explained, because ‘the land of liberty had no room for a colored sculptor.’ …

“While abroad, Lewis’s practice did not shy away from activism; her work commented on current American political events. The first carved marble sculpture by Lewis that exhibition-goers encounter is ‘Forever Free’ (1867), in which a man stands upright and looks up with his fist in the air. Broken shackles hang from his arm as a woman kneels beside him with clasped hands, also looking upward. ‘Forever Free’ was the first sculpture by a Black American artist to celebrate Emancipation.

“Made in Rome, the composition borrows visual elements from ancient Greco-Roman marble statuary. Throughout her work, Lewis used the language of Neoclassical sculpture to spread her message while also borrowing imagery from her own time. For example, the exhibition links the kneeling woman in ‘Forever Free’ to a similar image printed on the copper token ‘Am I Not a Woman & A Sister,‘ produced by the American Anti-Slavery Society, and a 1863 newspaper printing of the Emancipation Proclamation. 

“Displayed alongside 18th-century, 19th-century, and contemporary Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe art, ‘Hiawatha’s Marriage’ (modeled 1866, carved 1870) is displayed in another room. In response to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s popular poem of 1855, ‘The Song of Hiawatha,’ Lewis carved the union of Dakota woman Minnehaha and Ojibwe warrior Hiawatha. …

“The exhibition closes by demonstrating Lewis’s legacy in a powerful work by Gisela Torres, a London-based interdisciplinary artist of Afro-Cuban descent who feels a deep ‘psychic connection’ with the sculptor. In a video work titled ‘Reverie and Slumber’ (2020), Torres dreams of Lewis. Video footage of Rome is projected on plaster casts of Torres’s head, overlaid with audio of the artist singing Peggy Lee’s 1969 song ‘Is That All There Is?’ and whispering names of other Black women sculptors. … ‘Reverie and Slumber’ is from Torres’s ongoing reclamation series Looking for Edmonia (Self-Portrait) (2018–present), which began after she read an article about the discovery of Lewis’s unmarked grave in a London cemetery where she regularly walked. 

” ‘Edmonia Lewis: Said in Stone’ [contributes] not just in its carefully curated presentation of her artworks, but also in its critical research on the artist and her life, demonstrating how her legacy was carried forward by the Black community. It is deeply moving. I imagine that, as the exhibition travels to two other museums, it will reach other contemporary artists who, like Torres, follow in Lewis’s footsteps. “

More at Hyperallergic, here.

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Homeless Writers in Asheville

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 23, 2026| 6 Comments »

Photo: David Conrads.
Leslee Johnson is the editor of the Intersection, a newspaper produced in Asheville, North Carolina, mostly by writers and artists experiencing extreme poverty. Johnson is a lecturer at the Asheville campus of the University of North Carolina.

When I was commuting to Boston, I often bought the Homeless Empowerment Project’s newspaper, Spare Change News, which was a way for unhoused people to make a little money while looking to get housed.

David Conrads writes about something similar at the Christian Science Monitor.

“Every Saturday, 12 Baskets Café in Asheville, North Carolina, becomes a newsroom. Writers spread out around the large dining room tables – some typing on laptops, others working old-school on pads of paper.

“On a recent weekend, Melissa Mayes is finishing an article on women experiencing poverty and homelessness in the city. Though she has never had to live on the street, Ms. Mayes, a retired nurse, is disabled, has difficulty affording groceries, and spent five years sleeping on friends’ couches before finally moving into her own federally subsidized apartment. The subject of women struggling to obtain food and housing is close to her heart.

“ ‘I see these beautiful souls,’ she wrote in the Intersection, a broadsheet newspaper produced by the group of writers and artists who come to the café, most of whom are homeless or living in extreme poverty. ‘I have come to know certainties of who they are: brave, relentless, hopeful. Also, broken, yet always healing. They make me laugh with their keen observations, cry with their disappointments.’

“That passage is from Ms. Mayes’ article, headlined ‘Have You Seen Her?’ in the April/May issue of the Intersection. … The publication is sponsored by the nonprofit Asheville Poverty Initiative (API), which also runs the café. The Intersection covers a wide range of topics and includes community news items, profiles, opinion pieces, poetry, and artwork.

“The force behind the paper is Leslee Johnson, a poet, essayist, and lecturer in English on the Asheville campus of the University of North Carolina (UNCA) who began having lunch at 12 Baskets four years ago. … She says, ‘IIt was a place where I felt more comfortable and present than in some areas of my life.’

“After learning she was a writer, some of the regular patrons opened up about their own writing projects. Ms. Johnson started a creative writing group, playfully dubbed the Moonlight Cheese Alliance, in which more than a dozen or so people meet at the café every Friday after lunch. …

“The seed to expand to a newspaper was planted when Ms. Johnson attended the Conference on Community Writing, a national gathering aimed at exploring writing as a tool for social change. She learned of a newspaper in Cincinnati written and sold by homeless and formerly homeless people. …

“ ‘We were doing something pretty close to the Cincinnati paper,’ she says. ‘There was energy around expanding from literature and poetry to news and opinions and games and humor.’

“But the true spark that brought the Intersection to life was a 2025 ordinance passed by the Asheville City Council extending restrictions on panhandling.

“ ‘When the panhandling ordinance was extended down Haywood Road, directly impacting a number of folks we serve every day, we knew we needed to step up and offer the paper,’ says Ben Williamson, executive director of API.

“Poverty and homelessness are major concerns in this city of about 95,000. … It is also one of the most expensive housing rental markets in the country. For Ms. Johnson, the Intersection is one tool to help the city address these concerns.

“ ‘As part of Asheville Poverty Initiative, our umbrella organization, we exist to build community and educate about the realities of poverty,’ she says. ‘Specifically, the street paper reduces fear and dismantles stereotypes by publishing news, opinion, and creative work by those living in deep poverty and homelessness.’ …

“Sellers wear blue vests and lanyards identifying them as official vendors of the Intersection. API offers vendors, many of whom are also contributors, an initial 10 copies of the paper at no charge and subsequent copies for $1 each. Vendors sell the papers for $4 apiece. …

“Emily Witherspoon is a contributor and vendor for the Intersection. Formerly homeless for two years, she now lives in an apartment and works several part-time jobs. She enjoys selling the paper and appreciates the opportunity to earn extra money.

“ ‘It’s fun, and it’s legal,’ she says. ‘You don’t have to stand there worrying about getting arrested.’ …

“In addition to her work with the Intersection and the Moonlight Cheese Alliance, Ms. Johnson directs UNCA’s Prison Education Program and has coordinated college-level classes and academic programming at Buncombe County Detention Facility in Asheville. …

“ ‘There is a lot of creativity and brilliance that goes unheard,’ Ms. Johnson says. ‘If I’m in a position to create a space to shine light on that, I feel like that’s an obligation.’ ”

More at the Monitor, here. “12 Baskets Café”! Gotta love the imagination that goes into the naming of coffee shops in general. Why is that, I wonder?

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Moomintroll Video Game

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on June 29, 2026| 7 Comments »

Photo: Hyper Games.
Finnish artist and writer Tove Jansson created the happy/sad Moomintroll children’s books. Hyper Games is using the stories in video games.

I’m always surprised to learn that there are people who never heard of Moomintroll or his multitalented Finnish-Swedish creator, Tove Jansson. I knew about the Moomin cartoons even before I met my Swedish son-in-law. (What I didn’t know was that Jansson wrote books for adults, too, including a novel I discovered recently concerning retirees in Florida. It was translated by someone I once worked with.)

The topic today is about what a video game company is doing with Moomintroll and his family. It could almost lure me into gaming.

Lewis Gordon writes at the Guardian, “Sleepy, happy-sad, and imbued with the mildest peril, Tove Jansson’s Moomin stories may seem an unlikely fit for the action-heavy medium of video games. Rather than embark on swashbuckling adventures, these milk-white, hippo-esque creatures prefer to potter about Moominvalley, only venturing further if the weather conditions are just right.

“Yet a small Norwegian video game studio, Hyper Games, is now on its second exquisitely charming Jansson adaptation. The first, 2024’s ‘Snufkin: Melody of Moomin Valley,’ put players in control of the wily free spirit Snufkin as he dismantled overly ordered nature parks (and evaded authority-loving wardens). The latest, ‘Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth,’ sees young Moomintroll wake up at night in the dead of winter. With his parents still hibernating, the creature is all alone, thrust into a cold and unfamiliar world.

“On this lonesome journey, Moomintroll must reckon with the idea that his snoozing parents won’t be around for ever. ‘[It is] a brush with mortality,’ says lead writer David Skaufjord, who sees the premise, an adaptation of the 1957 novel Moominland Midwinter as emblematic of a franchise which dares to challenge its younger audience with loss, grief, melancholy and nostalgia. ‘Children’s television can be soft-handed,’ he says. ‘The Moomin stories aren’t.’

“In the first 20 minutes of the game, the freezing temperatures claim the life of a squirrel. But Too-Ticky, the androgynous woman who lives by herself in Moominpappa’s boathouse, takes a philosophical outlook on the animal’s passing. ‘Death is a part of life,’ she says serenely. ‘Something is always changing.’

“So much of Jansson’s work, Moomin or otherwise, finds meaning in life’s transitions: humid summer to crisp autumn; sweltering afternoon to cool evening; the still moments that arrive after a storm. Jansson, a writer, illustrator, and political cartoonist, spent many years on the small islands scattered across the Gulf of Finland, folding these experiences into crystalline descriptions and illustrations of the natural world, which the Moomins live in harmony with.

“Though Hyper Games is based in Norway rather than Jansson’s Finland, its Scandi developers were able to draw on a similarly deep relationship with nature. ‘We have all grown up in a country where there’s six to seven months of winter,’ says Skaufjord, “’nd if you don’t learn to enjoy winter, you basically have a bad time half of the year.’ Like these game makers, the summer-loving Moomintroll must undergo his own snowy acclimatization: in doing so, there is a lesson for him and players – of adapting to, and accepting, one’s new circumstances.

“But ‘Moomintroll: Winter’s Warmth’ makes enjoying such a chilly time of the year easy: you can fling snowballs and create pathways in knee-high drifts. Even shoveling snow is fun, accompanied by satisfying audio-visual puffs of powdery white stuff. There are many more light and breezy interactions like this, carefully calibrated for both non-gamers and young children alike. …

“I’ve been playing ‘Winter’s Warmth’ with my three-year-old daughter: she sits on my lap as I point at things on the screen, her tiny thumb directing Moomintroll about the enchanting world. ‘That’s how it’s supposed to be played,’ says Skaufjord. ‘That’s how I wrote it.’ …

“It may look like an effortless translation, but the approval process with Moomin Characters Ltd, the company whose job it is to oversee Jansson’s original creations, is rigorous, says the game’s art director Marcus Kjeldsen. … For the previous Snufkin game, Skaufjord wrote that the abrasive teenager Little My should react gleefully about getting rich. But, as the approvals team stressed, capitalism is a construct that has not yet graced the bucolic Moominvalley, so the line was tweaked. …

“There is a reason these stories continue to resonate. They have an anti-fascist bent in their unusual and non-traditional configurations of people and family. But there is also a disquieting sense that the unspoiled Moominvalley sits on the brink of great change. Both games deftly capture these timely aspects of Jansson’s treasured work.”

More at the Guardian, here. Please look at the art.

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Secret Mall Apartment

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 25, 2026| 3 Comments »

Photo: Michael Townsend.
The documentary Secret Mall Apartment includes real-life footage from an early-2000s experiment in which eight artists secretly created a living area in Providence Place mall in Rhode Island.

My husband and I recently saw a fascinating documentary — rough on production values because the camera was mostly handheld, but utterly fascinating. It’s about a mall in Providence that I got to know pretty well in the off hours when I needed a sheltered place for my early walk, when the only other people around might be shop employees or panhandlers and there was nothing to buy but coffee.

At Ocean State Media, Pamela Watts wrote about what else was going on at the mall.

“It’s one of the most improbable episodes ever to come out of Rhode Island,” she wrote, “and now it’s a documentary playing at movie theaters nationwide. The film, Secret Mall Apartment, reveals how a local artist and seven friends lived inside Providence Place Mall, undetected, for years.

“Rhode Island art teacher Michael Townsend is the mastermind behind the outrageous plot to reclaim empty industrial space and turn it into a clandestine clubhouse.

“Townsend was living in artist studio apartments near Providence Place in 2003 when developers informed residents their mill residences would be torn down as part of a revitalization plan for the capital city.

“ ‘We lost a home. We gained the home, but in the act of gaining the home, we had to do a little bit of trespassing. OK, a lot of trespassing,’ admits Townsend.

“ ‘When the mall was being built, I saw a space where I could not figure out what it would be used for, and we went looking for that anomaly in the architecture, snuck ourselves in, took out our flashlights and there it was,’ said Townsend.

“He said they gained access through an unlocked door at the back of the mall. Inside, the urban explorers discovered stairwells and crevices all leading them from the mall to their hideout. They smuggled in furniture and the space was equipped with electricity via an extension cord plugged into the mall.

” ‘I had a habit that whenever we were there for any amount of time and we knew we were using electricity, I would always go to where the mall offices were. And I would put a $20 bill in an envelope that said, “Thank you for the resources.” And I would slide under the door,’ Townsend said.

“For four years, even with security cameras, they never got caught. ‘We spent a lot of time in the mall, so we understood the rhythms of where people were walking, where the cameras were. Most of our actions always happen in broad daylight. That’s the best time to do things because that’s when crime doesn’t happen,’ Townsend said.

“But in 2007, their crime was uncovered by two young security guards, who actually used the mall apartment a few times before informing their superiors. ‘I will say the Providence Police did find it hilarious, they were deeply amused by it,’ said Townsend.

“He was charged with misdemeanor trespassing, received a suspended sentence and was banned from ever entering the mall again. Now, eighteen years later the documentary using video footage Townsend recorded of their escapade is the basis for the new film. And Providence Place allowed Townsend back in, to receive a hero’s welcome at the mall’s cinema for the premiere.”

More at Ocean State Media, here, at Architectural Digest, here, and the Providence Journal, here.

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Writing with Light

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on April 23, 2026| 2 Comments »

Photo: Karim Jabbari.
Karim Jabbari uses long-exposure photography to capture words written with handheld lights. 

There’s an amazing kind of calligraphy that involves writing with light. For Karim Jabbari, it started as a way to connect with his heritage.

Alissa Greenberg reports at the Nova Newsletter (PBS), “Karim Jabbari still remembers how painful it was to walk down the street with his family as a child and see his neighbors turn away. ‘No one was willing to talk to us in public,’ he says. Jabbari’s father was a political prisoner, an activist and ‘public enemy’ of the dictatorship that then ruled Tunisia. …

“Ten-year-old Jabbari, lonely and missing his father, looked for other ways to fill his time. What he found was his father’s trove of 400-year-old religious texts, inherited from an ancestor who had been a renowned scholar of Islam. The books were written in an old form of North African calligraphy known as Maghrebi script. ‘It’s an art form that speaks to your soul, even if you don’t understand the message. … I saw my father, his smile.’

“Before long, he was obsessed, copying what he saw in the books over and over until the arcs and lines settled into his muscles. That obsession only grew once he left his hometown of Kasserine to go to boarding school, and his new skill attracted friends—the one thing he’d never had.

“Today, Jabbari, now 42, is a full-time artist based in Canada and the U.S., using murals, graffiti, and specialized technology to bring traditional Arabic calligraphy to an international audience. He worries that a craft that prizes meditative concentration and lengthy training will be lost in an era so focused on agility and speed. …

“Calligraphy—and calligraphers—have resisted new technologies for centuries. For starters, Arabic and its sibling, Persian, used non-Latin alphabets that made them difficult to adapt for use in printing technology developed in the West, says Behrooz Parhami, an engineer who has studied how Arabic and Persian scripts have evolved alongside technology. Physical typefaces built for Persian and Arabic’s connected letters are more fragile, prone to chipping and cracking. And if they aren’t perfectly made, white spaces appear between letters that shouldn’t be there.

“The scripts also included letters with elements stacked on top of neighboring letters, which was impossible to recreate using the separate blocks of moveable type. And they varied in height and width much more than Latin characters, meaning that the common printing practice of adjusting typefaces to make letters about the same size would render words illegible. …

“It therefore makes sense that in Persia and the Arab world, words simply remained handwritten for centuries longer than in Europe, Parhami says. … Still, Parhami attributes this delay not just to the technical challenges but also to the hallowed role of the written word in these societies. In the Arab world, calligraphy provided an intimate connection to God through handwritten copying of the Quran and other religious texts. …

” ‘You can be a beautiful, amazing, well-known, traditional calligraphy artist, but your art isn’t speaking to the younger generations,’ [Jabbari] says. Refusing to try new things or embrace new technology leaves young people out, he argues, and puts the entire tradition at risk. ‘ “Your art is dying with you,” I said to them. I have nothing but respect for you, but I’m taking calligraphy to the streets.’

“Although Jabbari also paints murals that incorporate written elements, ‘taking calligraphy to the streets’ usually means light painting: a combination of long-exposure photography and perfectly calibrated movements of a handheld light that captures the loops and swirls of Maghrebi Arabic in thin air. In 2011, after Jabbari’s uncle was shot and killed along with 28 other young men during the beginning of the Arab Spring, he returned to Kasserine to do just such a performance piece. ‘I wanted to write his name in light painting, the same place where he died,’ he says. After he finished honoring his uncle, he gave other families in the area the opportunity to do the same, allowing them to write their loved ones’ names in space—a fleeting memorial fixed on film.

“Light calligraphy is a challenging medium. ‘You need to know the limits of the camera, what space it’s covering,’ he says. ‘You have all of that space to explore, so you end up using your body as reference: making a line at chest level, or one at hip level.’ …

“Jabbari has collaborated with dancers and musicians. … He recently hired two software developers to create a program that projects his movements in short near-real-time loops onto skyscrapers, a kind of ephemeral graffiti. …

“Calligraphy has taught him that ‘we are the sum of all the knowledge our ancestors transmitted to one another,’ he says. That’s how the art of calligraphy has been passed down—from master to student, who then becomes the next master—and also what calligraphy was for: recording history and wisdom to be shared with the next generation.

“Jabbari hopes his work will inspire the traditionalists to try out something new and the modernists to remember the value of tradition, reminding them what writing can be: a form of escape, an adventure in memory.”

More at PBS, here. Gorgeous photos.

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Rainy Day Sidewalk Art

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on April 2, 2026| 9 Comments »

Photo: Rainworks.
Peregrine Church is shown working with a stencil on a sunny day in frequently rainy Seattle. When finished, his sidewalk art will appear only when wet.

John was the one who sent me today’s topic, suggesting it might be blog-worthy. If I used categories, I guess I’d have to file this one under Don’t You Love the Way Artists Think?

Maggie Penman writes at the Washington Post, “Artist Peregrine Church has always struggled with the gloomy weather in the Pacific Northwest.

“ ‘It doesn’t rain so much as it just gets wet,’ he said of the weather in his home city of Seattle, which famously has a near-constant drizzle in the winter.

“Church, 33, a former magician, wanted to come up with new ways to surprise and delight people, in part to help improve his own mood in the dark days of winter.

“He developed an invisible spray that can be used to make sidewalk art that can last for up to four months. The solution is nontoxic and water-based, which means it isn’t flammable and is safe for the environment as it degrades. Most importantly? It ensures his artwork appears only when wet.

“ ‘There are pieces of art out there that give people a reason to look forward to the rainy days,’ Church said. ‘And that’s sort of the mission.’ …

“Church got the idea from a viral video, in which clothes were sprayed with a hydrophobic coating, a substance that protects surfaces from getting wet. A person poured red wine and ketchup on the clothes, but the protective coating caused them to roll right off.

“ ‘I was like, oh that’s really cool. But what if you stenciled that onto something?’ he recalled thinking.

“Church bought various hydrophobic coatings, but none were invisible when dry the way that he was hoping.

He posted about his experiments on Reddit, and a chemical manufacturer reached out to him, asking to partner in making something new.

“After trial and error, they hit on the right formula for Church’s sidewalk art, and he founded his company Rainworks. It’s ‘still a very niche art form,’ Church said. He is the only full-time employee, though he does hire help and supports himself with the small business. …

“Church has worked with schools and universities, such as Indiana University; nonprofits like the Kimball Arts Center in Park City, Utah; and public transit authorities and parks departments in Washington state to create fun distractions for people waiting for a bus or walking down the street on a dreary day. He’s made a maze near a bus stop, an environmental message in a park, an ode to rain on the sidewalk.

“Recently, the Seattle Department of Transportation brought in Rainworks to make temporary, rain-activated artworks near a bus stop and sidewalk outside of a middle school. It was covered by the Seattle Times. …

“The middle-school students in particular have really responded to the rain art [the department’s Allison Schwartz] said. ‘You could just see their faces light up,’ she said.

“In nearby Kirkland, the city is using rain art to create messages about pollution prevention.

“ ‘Lake Washington starts here,’ reads one of Church’s artworks in a park near the lake. ‘Don’t pollute. Protect our fish.’ …

“In addition to being commissioned by cities and schools, Church also sells the spray and stencils so people can make their own rainworks. He’s seen his product used for rain-activated surprises, such as marriage proposals, gender reveals and graduation messages.

“The only challenge is timing. The ground needs to be dry enough to make the art and then wet enough for it to show up.

“Church said he hopes he can inspire others in a way that ‘breaks people out of their day-to-day monotony.’

“ ‘The whole goal is to make people smile when it rains,’ he said.”

More at the Post, here. Great photos.

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The Artists Behind the Lion Dance

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on April 1, 2026| 4 Comments »

Photo: Jake Michaels.
In a San Francisco garage, Corey Chan and his team create giant, spectacular lions that lead the Lunar New Year festivities.

I’ve been thinking about how every culture has a tradition to ward off evil spirits. People have always had a sense that some things are just plain wrong. If they don’t know who to blame, they may invent monsters. And after they invent monsters, they need spirits that fight monsters.

Take, for example, the lions that scare off evil at Lunar New Year all around Asia.

This year, I enjoyed reading Miya Lee’s story at the New York Times about the artists who construct the fierce protector lions.

“Corey Chan’s San Francisco home looks like any other in the elevated neighborhood of Anza Vista: simple, two-storied, with large windows to let in sweeping views of the skyline and glimmering bay below.

“But when Chan, 63, opens his two-car garage, it’s like a portal to another world. Chinese lion heads of seemingly every color, size and style hang from the walls and ceiling. A five-foot tall dragon head, its fanged mouth agape, sits where one would expect a car. Brilliant pompoms, fake peaches and real spears, swords and axes rest near drying laundry.

“Chan grew up watching Chinese lion dances during Lunar New Year, and committed himself to learn each part of the craft, from the construction and repair of lions to the accurate performance of each move.  …

“ ‘I was hungry to learn,’ Chan said of the tradition, steeped in roughly a millennium of history and mythology. …

“Amiable and unassuming, Chan presents himself as a humble scholar, but he is also a deeply respected and knowledgeable teacher. He is the heritage director at Cameron House, a longstanding nonprofit in San Francisco’s Chinatown that serves the low-income and immigrant Asian American community. He is also the director of Kei Lun Martial Arts, which he joined at 18. Through his practice, he met the men who would come to make up his crew: Jeff Lee, Travis Lum and Thomas Chun. …

“Because information about lion dancing in English is scarce, Chan led a group of Kei Lun Martial Arts members on a research trip to China in 2000. They studied with skilled craftspeople in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hong Kong. …

“There, they learned the five-part process of making lion heads: building a bamboo skeleton, pasting on papier-mâché skin, painting, adding symbolic accouterments and, finally, bringing the lion to life through ceremony.

“In order to construct a lion frame, Chan and his crew cut bamboo into long, thin strips, which they heat with a candle or hot air gun to make pliable. They then bind the bent strips with about a thousand knots of paper tape. Building the bamboo skeleton is often the most difficult step. …

“Through their side business, Of Course Lion Source, which Chan likens to ‘a hobby that kind of went out of control,’ people from across the country send them Chinese lions and dragons to repair. They’ve also salvaged a severely dilapidated lion they found abandoned in a park in Oakland. (Both lions and dragons are meant to bring good fortune and ward off evil spirits; dragons are longer and require more performers.)

“ ‘Anybody that makes these things, prepares these things, they’re putting not just their time, they’re putting in their soul,’ Chan said. ‘A little bit of me goes into this.’ …

“The art form is tricky to make profitable. When asked about their business, the group laughed. With their commissions, which can range from $300 to $2,000, depending on a piece’s condition and customer specifications, they mostly break even in terms of labor and supply costs. …

“Before a Chinese lion can perform its first dance, it must be brought to life, or consecrated, through an eye-dotting ritual. The Rescue Squad uses a calligraphy brush dipped in muddy red cinnabar to awaken the lion’s sense organs.

“They dot the nose for smell, the tongue for taste, the ears for hearing, and place one on the horn and seven along the length of the lion’s body, representing the seven stars of the Big Dipper.

“The lion is then nearly ready to perform its public duty: scaring away evil spirits and jumping and retrieving red envelopes tied to heads of lettuce, bringing prosperity.”

More at the Times, here, including wonderful photos and videos.

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Revival of Handpainted Signs

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on February 2, 2026| 4 Comments »

Photo: Gerry Hadden/The World.
The art of hand-painted gold leaf signs, like this one by artist Victor Bert, is enjoying a renaissance in France.

I love listening to radio show The World because they find international stories I don’t usually hear on US radio. Recently there was one I liked about the resurgence of handpainted signs in France. Gerry Hadden had the story.

“Victor Bert rummaged through an old wooden tackle box filled with brushes, paints, and emulsions. His assignment,” Hadden reports, “was simple. He needed to paint three words onto a wall: ‘Men,’ ‘Women,’ and ‘Shoes.’

“They’d be on display at the hip Parisian clothing store Asphalte. The project would likely take all day. As an artisanal letter painter, Bert was tasked with handpainting each letter in gold leaf. But that didn’t seem to bother him.

“ ‘This is my passion,’ Bert said. ‘I could spend my life doing this.’

France is known for its quaint and classy handpainted signage on storefronts and hotels. The art form dates back to the early 19th century and was almost wiped out by cheaper high-tech alternatives that emerged in the 1980s. But today it’s enjoying a renaissance and artisans are busier than ever.

“The technique requires a lot of dedication and patience. Instead of painting in cut-out letters, like in traditional stenciling, Bert explained that he makes hundreds of pinholes following the contours of each paper letter.

“After tapping and rubbing the paper against the wall with a special talcum powder dispenser that passes the powder through the tiny holes, the outline of the words appear as little dots that can then be painted over by hand. Like calligraphy, it’s one-stroke work.

“Bert, 32, has been practicing this craft for 11 years, and there are a dozen or so other artisans like himself in Paris.

“When machines started taking over in the ‘80s, the appeal was that it was cheaper and faster to print stickers, decals, and plastic printouts that could be stuck directly onto windows or walls. … But those products turned out to not be very durable. Stickers became unstuck. Vinyl decals cracked, and the ones exposed to the sun aged badly.

“Just when people started souring on decals, the COVID-19 pandemic struck. And when Parisians emerged from lockdown seven long weeks later, artisans like Bert became stars of sorts.

“ ‘Everyone was just dying to get back outside and do stuff,’ he said. …

“ ‘What Bert does, it’s part of the history of stores in Paris,’ said Jonathan Gauthier, the store manager who hired him. ‘It was important for us to embrace this. Plus, we wanted to give the shop a little caché. Gold leaf lettering enriches our image.’

“There’s not much room for error in this process. Bert once had to make tiny inscriptions on $5,000 bottles of wine.

Any mistake, and the artisan has to start from scratch.

“ ‘I’ve only messed up once,’ Bert said. ‘I ruined a $200 bottle of men’s perfume,’ which he then had to pay for. …

But, he’s done other jobs where you simply cannot err. He was tasked with etching the engraving on the tombstone of late French Prime Minister Michel Rocard.

“The inscription read: ‘Happiness to the artisans of peace.’ ”

More at The World, here. And you may recall a previous post, here, about Trader Joe’s hiring artists for handmade signs.

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Kosovo Artist Gives Back

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on December 6, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Hyla Skoptiz.
The spiral bronze sculptures of Nasher prize-winning Kosovar artist Petrit Halilaj draw inspiration from doodles he saw carved into desks of primary schools across the Balkans. 

Today’s story is about more than an art prize, although that is important in itself. It’s about people uniting against the bad things that happen in the world.

In one instance, the article notes how people came together after ancient Balkan hatreds burned up props for a Kosovo opera. In another we see how funders, sometimes folks under the radar like us, are rising up to protect the independent journalism exemplified by the story itself.

But let’s start with the prize. From Uwa Ede-Osifo at the Dallas Morning News (via KERA in North Texas), we learn about the most recent recipient of an award for excellence in contemporary sculpture.

“Kosovar artist Petrit Halilaj, whose work often contrasts the innocence of youth with the sober realities of war, has been named the winner of the 2027 Nasher Prize.

“At 39, Halilaj is the youngest recipient of the award, according to [an] announcement from the Nasher Sculpture Center.

“In a phone call from his Berlin home, Halilaj said history molds his art. He came of age in Kosovo in the 1990s amid a bloody conflict between ethnic Albanians and Serbians. He was 13 when he and his family, who are Albanian, had their house burned down by Serbian forces.

Later, at a refugee camp, a psychologist encouraged Halilaj to draw his fears and dreams.

“The drawings, among which Halilaj depicted vibrant birds and trees (suggesting a utopia of sorts), would inspire a 2021 exhibition at the Tate St. Ives in England. ‘Whatever we live [through], it makes [us] who we are,’ he said. …

“Other works by Halilaj that recall history and childhood include a series of bronze sculptures based on scribbles found on generations of school children’s desks in the Balkans. These sculptures were shown in 2024 on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

“Most recently, Halilaj staged Syrigana, an interdisciplinary opera based on a local legend, in the namesake Kosovar village.

“He learned of his Nasher win shortly after the opera’s June debut. It was a hectic time. A few days before the premiere, several props — ‘months and months of work and preparation’ he said — were set ablaze. They had been stored in locked containers.

“The culprit was not found, but Halilaj suspected the fire was related to Kosovo’s history of ethnic tensions. Still, he was undeterred and rallied a fleet of artists to re-create the destroyed materials. The collective dream we have to bring culture back,’ he said, is ‘way bigger than this attack.’

“Halilaj sees the Nasher Prize as supporting this dream. He plans to use the prize money — $100,000 — to support the Hajde! Foundation, a nonprofit he founded with his sister in 2014 to promote the arts in Kosovo. The organization has provided artists with spaces to present their work and revitalized cultural institutions that fell into disrepair amid the conflict.

“In partnership with Kosovo’s Ministry of Culture, Hajde! has mounted a restoration of an arts center in Halilaj’s hometown. Called the House of Culture, it was a beacon for artists until its closure around the late ‘80s. Halilaj estimates it will reopen in 2027. … Halilaj [wants] to invite both ethnic Albanians and Serbians as well as minority groups into the space.

“Halilaj’s art offers hope, said Carlos Basualdo, director of the Nasher Sculpture Center. ‘Works like this tell you about what art can do,’ Basualdo said, noting it can bring people together.

“In the decade since the Nasher Prize was established, it has become one of the art world’s most prestigious honors. Recent laureates have hailed from countries around the world, including Nigeria (Otobong Nkanga), the U.S. (Senga Nengudi) and Iran (Nairy Baghramian). Winners are selected by a jury of museum directors, curators, art historians and artists. …

“The prize began as an annual award in 2015 before switching to a biennial basis in 2023 to allow recipients more time to collaborate with the museum. Plans for programming around Halilaj’s work in 2027 will be announced.” More here.

I don’t usually include all the funders of an article, but today I’m feeling I really want to thank to anyone who contributes to the cost of independent journalism:

“Arts Access is an arts journalism collaboration powered by The Dallas Morning News and KERA. This community-funded journalism initiative is funded by the Better Together Fund, Carol & Don Glendenning, City of Dallas OAC, The University of Texas at Dallas, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Eugene McDermott Foundation, James & Gayle Halperin Foundation, Jennifer & Peter Altabef and The Meadows Foundation. The News and KERA retain full editorial control of Arts Access’ journalism.“

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20th C Nordic Welcome to Black Artists

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on January 23, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Debra Brehmer/Hyperallergic.
Installation view of Nordic Utopia? African Americans in the 20th Century at the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison, Wisconsin, showing the suitcase owned by classical pianist Eugene Haynes.

Looks like there was a good show last fall in Madison, Wisconsin, at the Chazen Museum of Art. Since it’s come and gone, I won’t be able to see it, but I was interested to learn about it from Debra Brehmer at Hyperallergic. I hadn’t known about the warm welcome that Nordic countries gave to African American artists in the last century.

Brehmer wrote, “An old suitcase with a small leather handle summons the presence of the person who once carried it across oceans and nations. Surrounding it in a display case are a pair of shoes, gloves, a hat, and a Bible, all owned by the Julliard-trained Black classical pianist Eugene Haynes. The suitcase symbolizes the flight of Black artists to European countries during the civil rights era and beyond. Although Paris was a well-known hotbed of artistic expats, Nordic Utopia? African Americans in the 20th Century at the Chazen Museum of Art zeroes in on a far less charted corner of Black history: the artists who ventured north.

“Haynes spent summers and winters in Denmark from 1952 to 1962 while he performed across Europe. … Even the most accomplished Black artists found the Jim Crow conditions untenable — the US wasn’t only segregated, it was dangerous. 

“At this time, the Nordic countries of Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark held the promise of racial equality, despite primarily White populations. And slowly, word spread. While many Black artists found solace in the Parisian avant-garde (Josephine Baker, James Baldwin, and Langston Hughes, among others), the Nordic regions, according to poet Gregory Pardlo, quoted in the exhibition catalog, were ‘hipper … for black intellectuals escaping the stifling air pollution of American racism.’ 

“One could get lost in the details of this research-heavy presentation, but an overall theme emerges: the need to get away, not just from an inhospitable place, but from the weight of always being defined by race. Distance from US discriminatory politics gave these artists room to experiment, to make art that wasn’t about being Black or the entrenched problems of their homeland. After he ventured to Scandinavia, the artist William H. Johnson painted van Gogh-influenced portraits, expressionistic sunrises, street scenes, and boats in a harbor. He had married Danish textile artist Holcha Krake. When he returned to the US in 1938, his art underwent a major stylistic shift as he produced folk art-influenced paintings that centered on Black life in Harlem and portraits of Black global activists, for which he is best recognized. …

“Harlem-born painter Herbert Gentry, who first spent five postwar years in Paris and then moved to Copenhagen and later Stockholm, chose cities with thriving jazz scenes as well as international art communities. Gentry often made abstract paintings on unstretched canvas that he could fold into suitcases for easy transport. Ronald Burns, who relocated to Denmark in 1965, pursued a Surrealist style of complex dreamlike compositions. Howard Smith, an artist and designer who arrived in Finland in 1962, worked across media with paper-cutting, laser-cut steel forms, porcelain sculpture, and collage. …

“Being in Europe, most of the artists absorbed the prevalent modernist influences, seeing themselves as part of a broader and more open public consciousness, an environment particularly supportive of Black swing and jazz musicians. … A brilliant documentary, Dancing Prophet (1971), shows dancer/choreographer Doug Crutchfield back home in Cincinnati in earnest conversation with his Baptist minister father about why he needs to leave the USA to pursue his dancing career.

To its credit, the exhibition does not offer simple conclusions.

“Instead it provides multiple perspectives on issues of expatriation, including the fact that racism also existed overseas. … Dexter Gordon expresses one attitude, quoted in wall text: ‘Since I’ve been over here, I felt that I could breathe, you know, and just be more or less a human being, without being white or black, green or yellow, whatever. Actually it’s very seldom that I’m conscious of color here in Europe.’ Artist Howard Smith, who lived in Finland for 14 years, suggests a different condition: ‘I got lonesome there … I need the spiritual input, I guess, of being around Black people.’ …

“Walter Williams first ventured to Denmark in 1955 on a fellowship. He previously earned recognition for his New York City urban scenes. The new landscapes of Denmark stirred him to paint sun-infused pastoral imagery. ‘Southern Landscape’ (1977–78) portrays a young Black girl in the foreground, standing in a field of blooming sunflowers. A bouquet of flowers sprouts from her shoulders. Butterflies surround her. In the background, another Black girl appears to be picking cotton in a field with a shanty behind her.”

“The exhibition was organized by the National Nordic Museum, Seattle.”

More at Hyperallergic, here. No firewall. Subscriptions encouraged.

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A Model for What an Artist Can Be

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on January 12, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Photo: Alex Barber/Contemporary Arts Museum Houston/Theaster Gates Studio.
“We Will Save Ourselves” (2024), a painting by Theaster Gates made with roofing materials.

I have blogged before about the unusual urban planner and artist Theaster Gates. Now the New York Times has done a deep dive on the many surprising facets of his work.

Siddhartha Mitter writes, “Theaster Gates is the kind of artist whose work is perpetually on view somewhere in the world. When we met for the first time, in May at his studio in Chicago’s Greater Grand Crossing neighborhood, he had just returned from opening exhibitions at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo and the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston. …

“He is known for installations that use supplies and furnishings from old buildings, paying tribute to their past lives — as homes, stores, churches. These installations serve double or even triple duty: They are works of art in themselves, but they can also become venues for parties or performances. His sculptures and paintings employ construction materials like wood, rubber and roofing tar. He’s a master ceramist and a musician and singer who performs with his experimental group, the Black Monks, in which he’s known as the Abbot.

“For years, Gates has acquired archives, and he sees their stewardship as integral to his work. Many preserve Black American cultural memory, like the roughly 20,000-volume library that once belonged to the Johnson Publishing Company, publisher of Ebony and Jet, and the 5,000-record vinyl collection of Frankie Knuckles, the Chicago D.J. at whose late ’70s parties house music was born.

“He is currently advising an arts-led redevelopment project in Philadelphia and an initiative to preserve Houston’s Freedmen’s Town, a historically Black district in the city’s Fourth Ward. He chairs the diversity council at Prada, where he runs a mentorship program for designers of color, and he is developing partnerships in Japan with small family-owned businesses to produce incense and sake. …

“In his hometown, Gates is recognized as an entrepreneur who buys and restores properties on Chicago’s South Side. He puts these properties to unusual, sometimes less than practical use. The core of his holdings is a quiet half-mile stretch of South Dorchester Avenue, where he started acquiring run-down houses in 2006. He filled some with archives — thousands of art books purchased from a shuttered bookshop; LPs from a defunct record store. One house became his residence. …

“Salvage from the buildings goes into his art installations; proceeds from his art sales fund his building renovations and community programs. But they also stem from shared soil — his upbringing as the son of a roofer on Chicago’s West Side, his training as an urban planner — and commingle in his projects to the point where it would be artificial to separate them. …

“He rebuffs categories like ‘social practice’ — jargon for participative art with civic goals — but cites predecessors like Donald Judd, who made furniture as well as geometric objects, and the Fluxus movement, with its interest in everyday materials and spontaneous performances. He’s an inheritor of the legacy of Marcel Duchamp and his readymades, mass-produced and utilitarian objects that the French artist displayed as art. …

Gates sees himself as helping Chicago to ‘hold its Black self together.’

“A bureaucrat before he was ever an artist, Gates worked as an art planner for the Chicago Transit Authority from 2000 to 2005. After that, he began investing in Grand Crossing when he moved to the South Side to become an arts administrator at the University of Chicago, where he’s now a professor.

“ ‘The neighborhood had stigma, but the people were great and interesting,’ he said. He recognized the terrain: Black neighborhoods that faced disinvestment and crime but were once self-contained and self-possessed — places where, he said, ‘the Black doctor and lawyer and bus driver and maid were all on the same block, and they all went to the same church.’ By revitalizing these quotidian spaces — homes, a bank, a school, hardware stores that he has bought, often with their contents, when they were going out of business — he is summoning a kind of utopian memory in the service of new functions. … Through his investments in Grand Crossing — even when they take unconventional forms — Gates sees himself as helping Chicago to ‘hold its Black self together.’

“He took me down a side street edged by commuter rail tracks where in 2021 he opened Kenwood Gardens, a sanctuary with lawns, wildflowers and a pavilion that hosts house-music parties in the summer. It occupies 13 lots that were in decline — notorious, he said, for burned-out cars and prostitution. A wall encircling the garden is made partly from bricks that he saved from St. Laurence Catholic Church, a neighborhood anchor that the archdiocese sold and that was razed in 2014.

“ ‘When I built the perimeter wall, I didn’t own the property,’ Gates said. ‘I built the wall to stop the bad stuff.’ He then bought the lots, many loaded with tax arrears. ‘The city was quite happy to help us negotiate the land sales,’ he said, ‘because they would finally have a steward.’ Building his unauthorized wall, Gates said, was a case of tactical urbanism, as citizen initiatives that bypass city bureaucracy or goad it to action are called in the planning business. …

“[Gates] is too obviously sincere, even earnest, to come across as an operator. And yet he has both an aptitude and an appetite for policy and negotiations. In a famous deal, he purchased the former Stony Island State Savings Bank, a 1920s edifice facing demolition, from the city in 2012 for $1 and the commitment to restore it — which he funded in part by selling salvaged marble slabs at Art Basel for $5,000 each. …

“Romi Crawford, 58, a professor of visual and critical studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, described how Gates enfolds transactions into his art as ‘contract aesthetics.’ Gates has fielded periodic criticism that he is too amenable to the rich and powerful. He rejects this. … ‘If you’re talking about protesting, there are people who are better protesters,’ he said. ‘If you’re talking about getting [things] done in the city, I can do it better than most artists. I can do it better than most developers.’ …

“But despite the busy world Gates has built for himself, its center is paradoxically calm. At the studio in Chicago, I’d been struck by the quiet. His operation has downsized, he said — from 65 employees at its peak, around 2016, which he admitted overwhelmed him, to just 15.

“Next to go might be his collection of buildings, though it could take a while. ‘I did not attempt to amass a real estate holdings situation,’ he said. ‘I was simply trying to prove the point that artists can change a place.’ “

For the the rest of the long profile, click here.

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Long-Lost Artist

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on January 3, 2025| 2 Comments »

Photo: Joanna Hawkins/BBC.
Artist David Taylor spotted this early 20th Century by Canadian impressionist Helen McNicoll at a UK auction house. It is valued at 150 times what it cost.

Let’s start 2025 with another fun story of a rediscovered treasure. The person who found it wasn’t just some guy. He was an artist who knew quality when he saw it and was willing to pay a large amount for it — just not as large an amount as it turned out to be worth.

David McKenna writes at the BBC, “A painting bought for just over £2,000 [~$2500] has been authenticated as a long-lost masterpiece worth £300,000 [~$374,000].

“The buyer, [Lincolnshire] artist David Taylor, said he had been ‘bowled over’ by the artwork while browsing a sale at a regional auction house.

“Experts on the BBC’s Fake of Fortune? were able to prove the painting, known as ‘The Bean Harvest’ and depicting a scene of women in a field, was a piece from the early 20th Century by Canadian impressionist Helen McNicoll. …

“McNicoll is one of Canada’s most celebrated female artists, achieving considerable international success during her career.

“Deaf from the age of two, McNicoll was known for her impressionist representations of rural landscapes.

“In 1915, her career was cut short when she developed complications from diabetes and died at the age of 35.

“It was revealed [in an October 2024] episode of Fake or Fortune? that the artwork had been exhibited in Canada five times between 1912 and 1913, but its whereabouts had since been unknown.

“During the episode, the show’s team — including presenters Fiona Bruce and Philip Mould — helped Mr Taylor to prove its authenticity.

” ‘I’d not heard of Helen McNicoll before we started investigating this painting,’ Bruce said. ‘But what a pioneer she was — a woman at that time, the early 20th Century, traveling abroad with her easel while profoundly deaf. I’m so glad we’ve been able to bring her name to wider attention.’ …

“Co-host Mould described the find as a ‘once-in-a-lifetime discovery,’ adding there was a massive desire on both sides of the Atlantic for the work of high-quality women artists.

“Canadian philanthropist Pierre Lassonde, a major collector of McNicoll’s work, flew over to London to see the painting in person. During the show, he said: ‘For a painting that has been missing for 110 years, I think it’s fantastic… I wouldn’t mind adding one more piece to my collection.’

“Mr Taylor described the experience as ‘an absolute adventure.’ “

More at the BBC, here. Find out more about the artist at Sotheby’s, where her painting was offered for sale in November.

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A Nation of Muralists

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 27, 2024| 1 Comment »

Photo: Tamara Merino/The Guardian.
Chilean muralist Alejandro ‘El Mono’ González compares the dimensions between his mock-up and a recent mural. 

For a long time, I’ve been curious about murals and street art. (Search on those terms at the top of this blog if you are interested.) Whether the art is shared openly or under cover of darkness, it seems to convey messages we don’t usually hear from smaller, less public works.

At the Guardian recently, John Bartlett wrote that “in Chile, walls and public buildings are blank canvases to express dissent, frustration and hope.” Blogger and friend of Chile Rebecca will know all about that.

“Bridges across dry riverbeds in the Atacama desert,” Bartlett continues, “are daubed with slogans demanding the equitable distribution of Chile’s water, and graffiti on rural bus stops demand the restitution of Indigenous lands from forestry companies. Every inch of the bohemian port city Valparaíso is plastered with paint and posters. …

“One renowned street artist in paint-spattered jeans spent two weeks transforming a water tower at the country’s national stadium into a powerful symbol of Chile’s battle to remember its past.

“ ‘I have always had a strong social conscience,’ Alejandro ‘Mono’ González exclaims brightly. ‘The fight was born inside me, it just didn’t have an escape. There’s so much you can say with paint and a blank surface.’

“González, 77, has painted across Latin America and Europe, and his murals adorn hotels and public buildings in China, Cuba and Vietnam.

“González’s giant creations combine bright petals of color, separated by thick black lines, and resemble stained-glass windows.

“ ‘I wouldn’t say it’s cheerful, but they’re hopeful colors, which go beyond victimhood, pain and sadness,’ he said.

“The stadium was one of Chile’s most notorious detention centers, where thousands were held after Gen Augusto Pinochet’s 1973 coup d’état. …

“González talks animatedly about how colors vibrate and interact. … His approach reflects a selfless view of the collective.

“ ‘In the streets, anonymity is important,’ he says, ‘The individual isn’t, it’s the message that is interpreted by the viewer that I care about.’

“González was born in the city of Curicó, 120 miles (193km) south of Santiago, in 1947, the son of a laborer and a rural worker. At primary school, his friends named their energetic classmate ‘Mono’ – monkey. …

“After dark, González would go out painting with his parents, both committed members of Chile’s Communist party. In art, he found a release for his burning social conscience. González joined the communist youth ranks in 1965 to develop its propaganda activities, and painted his first mural at the age of 17 during socialist candidate Salvador Allende’s presidential campaign.

“He was among the founders of the Brigada Ramona Parra, a street art and propaganda collective named after a murdered activist, during the heady days of the Allende campaigns. ‘We’d go out every night, sometimes to paint murals, sometimes just to write ‘Allende’ on any blank surface,’ he remembers.

“After Allende won the presidency in 1970, a sinister black spider began to appear on walls, sprayed by the adherents of a fascist paramilitary group. A battle for the streets began, and it has never truly died away.

“In 2019, protesters thronged the streets of Chile’s cities demanding a host of improvements to their lives and an end to the country’s entrenched inequalities. … Those protesters included members of Todas, a collective of more than 100 female muralists who mobilized in a WhatsApp chat.

“ ‘We organized ourselves so we could occupy the walls,’ said Paula Godoy, 34, an artist and muralist from a southern Santiago suburb. ‘We were talking all the time – “Where is there a wall free? Where do we need to get this message across?” – it was a really beautiful period.’ …

“Half a century earlier, González was 24 when Pinochet seized power on 11 September 1973, deposing Allende. … González slipped into the shadows. He stopped wearing his glasses, shaved off his mustache, and went by the name Marcelo as he worked as a set designer in the Municipal Theatre in Santiago.

“When the end of the dictatorship neared, González helped design the most famous campaign in Chile’s political history, the NO campaign against Pinochet’s continued rule in a 1988 plebiscite. …

“ ‘Chile is very conservative and reactionary – we advance, and then we go backwards,’ he says, stepping back from the water tower and shielding his eyes. ‘But memory is the one constant. The most important thing is having a lasting effect. This will still be here in 50 years’ time, and people will still have their memory.’ ”

More at the Guardian, here. No firewall. Donations solicited.

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Best-Selling Artist from Africa

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on July 21, 2024| 6 Comments »

Photo: Larkin Durey.
Aboudia’s work has been shown in exhibitions held in Abidjan, London, New York and Tel Aviv. Hiscox Artist Top 100 says he sold more than even Banksy in one year.

The art world is becoming more international, and that’s a good thing. For too long, people have used their own world’s cultural references to judge the quality of art. And how can only one culture be the only worthy measure?

Wedaeli Chibelushi reports at the BBC about an African that is currently making a big splash internationally.

“Back in September, global art experts were taken aback by the name topping a fresh list of the world’s best-selling artists.

“Aboudia, a graffiti-inspired artist from Ivory Coast, had beaten well-known names, like Damien Hirst and Banksy, to sell the most pieces at auction the previous year.

“According to the Hiscox Artist Top 100, Aboudia, real name Abdoulaye Diarrassouba, had flogged 75 lots. One of these canvasses had gone for £504,000 ($640,000).

“Leading online marketplace Artsy called Aboudia’s triumph ‘striking,’ while The Guardian said market experts were ‘blindsided by the ranking.

“Months later, sitting in a London gallery plastered with his paintings, Aboudia tells me the survey results were no surprise to him. ‘Because if you work hard, the success is going to come,’ he says. …

“Aboudia’s mellow disposition clashes with the art surrounding him – his vividly colored, heavily layered canvases feature a cast of cartoon-like figures plucked from the streets of Abidjan, Ivory Coast’s largest city. Through a blend of oil sticks, acrylic paints and recycled materials like newspapers, Aboudia depicts the hardships of life in downtown Abidjan.

He particularly focuses on the children who live and work on the city’s streets.

“His eyewitness portrayals of Ivory Coast’s 2011 civil war are equally arresting. Figures gaze at the viewer with vacant eyes, while armed soldiers and skulls crank up the intensity. …

“Aboudia was born in 1983, in Abengourou, a small town around [124 miles] from Abidjan. In a 2012 essay, the artist said he was kicked out of his home aged 15 after telling his father he wanted to paint for a living.

“After being cast out, the young Aboudia pressed on and enrolled in art school. Due to a lack of financial support, he slept in his classroom after the other students went home for the day. These uncomfortable nights paid off — after graduating in 2003 the soon-to-be-star was accepted into Ivory Coast’s leading art school, École des Beaux-Arts.

“Abidjan’s École des Beaux-Arts would expose Aboudia to the Ivorian art icons whose influence can be found in his current work. For instance, Aboudia’s focus on his direct surroundings and his use of recycled materials can be traced back to Vohou Vohou, a modernist collective established in the 1970s by artists like Youssouf Bath, Yacouba Touré and Kra N’Guessan.

“Aboudia began to veer away from traditional styles of art, instead using untamed brushstrokes and earthy colors to recreate graffiti produced by Abidjan’s underprivileged children. In Aboudia’s words, these young, de facto street artists ‘draw their dreams on the world.’

“The children are his main influence, he says. …

“After establishing his core style, Aboudia would lug his paintings around the galleries of central Abidjan, hoping for a way in.

” ‘It was very hard. … They’d say: “Are you crazy? What is this work? You better go to London, to United States or Paris, because this work … here it doesn’t make sense,” ‘ Aboudia recalls.

“The adversity did not end there. In 2010, Laurent Gbagbo, the then president of Ivory Coast, refused to step down after losing an election to rival Alassane Ouattara. A civil war broke out, killing 3,000 people and forcing another 500,000 from their homes.

“Throughout the four-month conflict, Aboudia sought refuge in his basement studio, documenting the horrors he saw when venturing above ground.

“The war ended with Mr Gbagbo’s dramatic capture by UN and French-backed troops — and Aboudia emerged from his haven with 21 disconcerting paintings.

“Art-lovers and journalists from Ivory Coast and beyond lauded his work and Aboudia’s ascent to global success began. He was championed by renowned art collectors Charles Saatchi and Jean Pigozzi — and went on to exhibit his work at prestigious venues like Christie’s New York and the Venice Biennale.

“Aboudia’s first solo exhibition was at the setting for this interview, London’s Larkin Durey (then named the Jack Bell gallery). Owner Oliver Durey, who has now known Aboudia for over a decade, tells the BBC: ‘There is something we can all relate to in his paintings; hiding amidst the uncertainty and horror there are balanced moments of strength and beauty.’

“African art expert Henrika Amoafo [notes] reasons for his success … like his ‘authenticity, the really raw emotional power that he’s able to convey, the way that he speaks to urban life, the way that he speaks about conflict and its impact on children.’ …

“Aboudia’s rise also coincides with that of the African art market. In 2021, art analysis firm ArtTactic reported that the auction sales value of contemporary and modern African art surged by 44% to a record high of $72.4m. …

“Aboudia’s rise has led to him splitting his time between his country of birth and New York. When he is back in Ivory Coast, he pours his efforts into the Aboudia Foundation, an organization he launched to support the country’s children and young artists.

“This is yet another example of the star’s drive — but when I ask him if he has any plans lined up for his career, he … says he takes things one day at a time.”

More at the BBC, here. No paywall.

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What Artists Can Bring to Medicine

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on January 11, 2024| 9 Comments »

Photo: James Lee Chiahan/Procedure Press.
“Tone Shift,” by James Lee Chiahan. depicts musician Yoko Sen’s journey from being patient in the hospital to working to improve the sounds of ICU alarms around the world. Chiahan is a Taiwanese-Canadian artist currently working out of Montreal, Canada.

Those of us who have ever had a hospital stay know how difficult it is to get any sleep. Part of the reason is noise. Today’s article suggests that since artists started applying their creativity to the challenge, hospitals have new ways they could improve sounds and doctors have new ways to improve patient interactions.

Mara Gordon at NPR (National Public Radio) begins her story with Emily Peters, who had a rough time with the health care system when her daughter was born. “Peters, who works as a health care brand strategist, decided to work to fix some of what’s broken in the American health care system. Her approach is provocative: she believes art can be a tool to transform medicine.

“Medicine has a ‘creativity problem,’ she says, and too many people working in health care are resigned to the status quo, the dehumanizing bureaucracy. That’s why it’s time to call in the artists, she argues, the people with the skills to envision a radically better future.

“In her new book, Artists Remaking Medicine, Peters collaborated with artists, writers and musicians, including some doctors and public health professionals, to share [ideas] about how creativity might make health care more humane. …

“For example, the book profiles electronic musician and sound designer Yoko Sen, who has created new, gentler sounds for medical monitoring devices in the ICU, where patients are often subjected to endless, harsh beeping.

“It also features an avant-garde art collective called MSCHF (pronounced ‘mischief’). The group produced oil paintings made from medical bills, thousands and thousands of sheets of paper charging patients for things like blood draws and laxatives. They sold the paintings and raised over $73,000 to pay off three people’s medical bills.

“It’s similar to a recent performance art project not profiled in the book: A group of self-described ‘gutter-punk pagans, mostly queer dirt bags’ in Philadelphia burned a giant effigy of a medical billing statement and raised money to cancel $1.6 million in medical debt. …

“There’s very little in the way of policy prescription in this book, but that’s part of the point. The artists’ goal is to inject humanity and creativity into a field mired in apparently intractable systemic problems and plagued by financial toxicity. They turn to puppetry, painting, color theory, and music, seeking to start a much-needed dialogue that could spur deeper change.

“Mara Gordon: What made you want to create this book?
“Emily Peters: I think I’m always very curious why so many people – really the majority of everybody in any way involved in the health care system – feel so powerless. … And so the book came about as thinking about power and change. And then I realized that artists have this unique intersection where they are very powerful, they bring a lot of the things that were missing in health care, trying to build a better future.

“MG: What is it about art that feels like a tool to challenge that feeling of powerlessness?
“EP: The very first person I interviewed for the book was a photographer, Kathleen [Sheffer], who was a heart-lung transplant survivor. She used her camera in the hospital to try to be seen as more powerful, to be seen as a full person by these very fancy transplant surgeons who are whisking in and out of her room, viewing her as just a body. I saw that she had gained that power through being an artist.

“I had another conversation with a physician out of New York, Dr. [Stella] Safo. … She really highlighted that there’s this crisis of imagination. Everybody feels so demoralized that we can’t even imagine what we want to ask for to make it better.

“That’s a creativity problem. And the people who are creative are artists. They are really good at sitting in complexity and paradox, and not wanting everything to be perfect, but being able to imagine. And so that was the hypothesis: Oh, there’s something really interesting at this intersection between art and medicine. …

“MG: My favorite part of the book was the section where there’s a color palette, named for different medical phenomena: pill bottle orange, Viagra blue. … I think a lot of people in health care worry that too much color somehow distracts from the seriousness of medicine.
“EP: So many of these things, somebody chose, and they didn’t do a huge amount of research on it. They just chose it, and we take it as gospel now.

“The white coat ceremony. [I had thought it must have started in] medieval Florence: they were putting white coats on medical students and welcoming them into the guild, it just feels like this ancient tradition. And it’s something that was invented in Chicago in 1989. A professor was complaining that the students weren’t dressing professionally enough. …

“We surveyed a couple hundred people [and published the results online]: ‘What colors would you want to see in the hospital?’ I was expecting those soothing pastel tones. And it was totally different: it was neon purples and oranges and reds. Don’t assume what people want. We have the technology and the capability now to build in systems that give people some control and some agency over things like color. …

“MG: Has anyone told you that they think that health care is too important for art?
“EP: I’ve heard the criticism that this is just about wallpaper on a pig: ‘You’re talking about adding more sculpture gardens and increasing the cost of health care.’

“I did not want it to be a book about creating more luxurious hospitals. We have a crisis of financial toxicity, we have a crisis of outcomes. It’s specifically a book about fighting those things. …

“MG: Do you think medicine takes itself too seriously? Do we need more humor in health care?
“EP: You’re holding somebody’s heart in your hand – this is a very intense job. You’re trying to convince somebody to enter hospice – that is not easy. This is not an easy job. But that seriousness can feel almost like play acting and really inauthentic to people. …

“And that’s such a waste to me, because it is such a beautiful, incredible profession. We, as patients, also want you guys to be humans. We’re on your side.”

More at NPR, here. No paywall.

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