Jered Sprecher (new paintings up)

Images from his upcoming show at Steven Zevitas Gallery--and a great way to start the day if you are a painter...at least a painter like me.  Welcome first year grads!

UNCG MFA show at Christina Ray Gallery

UNCG MFA show at Christina Ray Gallery, a set on Flickr.

It was a great opening in Soho last Thursday. We had solid turnout and a lot of interest in the work. Congratulations to the artists.

Painting Reality

Link to a blurb: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/16/public-art-project-painti_n_899343.html

Venice Biennale 2011

Biennale, a set on Flickr.

A totally unorganized and only partly captioned set of photos from the MFA trip to Venice.

Annie Lapin 2

I posted about Annie Lapin earlier this year--she's an interesting, not-so-long-out-of-UCLA painter.  So here is the second New American Paintings video/good studio boost.  Hope the summer is productive for you guys....

Iva Gueorguieva

New American Paintings has a couple great videos of artists in their studios--love this one and found it an energizing boost to my own studio day.

Kevin Everson's Films at the Whitney

Kevin Jerome Everson (b. 1965) works in film, painting, sculpture, and photography. His filmic fables, the focus of this exhibition, articulate the profound within the ordinariness of everyday life. Everson, who was born in the working-class community of Mansfield, Ohio, depicts details in the lives of people living and working in similar American communities: a mechanic repairing an old car in a backyard, a black beauty queen in a segregated pageant, men boxing, snowplow operators in winter, young men walking into a courtroom, the aftermath of a murder.

 Some of Everson’s films are constructed from appropriated news and film footage, uncovering forgotten details of African-American life in the 1960s and 70s. In other films, the artist explores the waxing and waning of a community’s sense of itself and the migration of black people from the South to the North in order to find work. Everson, whose work was included in the 2008 Whitney Biennial, approaches race, sexuality, and economic circumstances with a poetic yet unflinching eye.

Eric Kniss at CUE Foundation

UNCG alum Eric Kniss (2010) will have his work featured in the Joan Mitchell Foundation 2010 MFA Grant Recipient exhibition at the CUE Art Foundation, 511 West 25th Street, New York City. The show runs June 9th - July 30th, and the opening is June 9, 6-8pm. Eric was one of just fifteen MFA students from a national pool of nominees to be awarded this very prestigious grant. If you're in Manhattan on the 9th, stop by and congratulate Eric and the other grantees.

Elsewhere

Since it's the end of the school year, I thought you all might be interested in a link to this site of work by this year's MFA graduates from Columbia. It's always good to see what your peers are up to; the little gem above is by Matthew Fischer.

Well Put...

John Berryman Interview

For anyone looking for some more insight into Homage to Mistress Bradstreet and his other work, this 1970 interview with Berryman from the Paris Review is a great discussion.

Book pictures

All you painters and plumbers might find inspiration for your GoodReads list in this post about artists' bookshelves over at Lisa Pressman's blog. Below is a photo of my library book stack. The most relevant title might be "Aesthetics and Its Discontents."

Art Professor teaching "class" on Squatting

(Photo of one of the most notorious artists squats in L.E.S, ABC NO RIO)

"My biggest goal in this is to activate people with political beliefs who aren't actually engaging and get them to cross a boundary....Basically, we don't know what we are doing, but we have this impetus that we are going to make it happen."Says SUNY art professor Chris Robbins.

Check out the article here, from my favorite rag, the New York Post! I believe this is also the the website of the professor, Christopher Robbins.

Rochelle Feinstein

Thanks to Two Coats of Paints for bringing Rochelle Feinstein's recent show to my attention. 

Her exhibition is a great example of how limitations just might unleash all kinds of favorable and unforeseen outcomes, AND for those of you who will be heading out into the world soon--having to think anew how work will get made without the environment of school and ready space--Feinstein's low budget experiment is interesting to see.

Some of her constraints, as described on her gallery's website:

In making The Estate, Feinstein 1) would not spend any additional money on this work, 2) would use any and all supplies as “assets,” and 3) would use maximal material and minimal gesture.

Decadent painter footage below

I've loved Fiona Rae forever and came upon this video for the second time today.  It's just such a luscious inside look at a painter's studio--look at those eight foot palettes, look at that brush table!!!

Christopher Baker talk

For anyone that missed Christopher Baker's talk a few weeks ago, he will be back on campus this Monday for an Ashby Dialog talk in Jarrell Lecture Hall at 4pm.

Here is a "Prescription For A Healthy Art Scene" by Renny Pritikin (SF). He is a cool guy.

Lane Cooper

Lane Cooper from the Cleveland Institute of Art will be here on the 7th. Her lecture is at 3 in 201 Gatewood. I hope you all can make it!