2011年4月28日星期四

This Guy Will Frame You

I can't remember what Eli Wilner pulled out first—the DVD of the Morley Safer story that ran on CBS Sunday Morning about Mr. Wilner's reframing of Emanuel Leutze's monumental "Washington Crossing the Delaware" for the Metropolitan Museum—or the childhood drawing, not bad for a 9-year-old, of a potted plant. In any case, I got the sneaking suspicion I wasn't the first journalist upon whom Mr. Wilner had bestowed these artifacts.

"I gave my uncle my pastels and oil paintings," Mr. Wilner recalled, of a relative in the art business. "He'd hang them next to Modigliani and Chagall. I was certain I was the next Michelangelo or Rembrandt. There was no doubt. I thought I'd be hanging in museums." He paused for dramatic effect. "My frames are in museums."

I suppose it would be preferable to have one's paintings on the walls of the Met than ones' frames. But Mr. Wilner, who was born in Israel and moved to the U.S. when he was 6, has certainly made the best of his limitations: He's one of America's great framers (at least the employees in his Long Island City studio are; Mr. Wilner doesn't touch the carving tools himself), his work not only at the Met but ubiquitous and on loan at Sotheby's—"It's a really good way for me to market," Mr. Wilner confided—and in some of the world's most important private collections.

It's a Wilner frame embellishing Picasso's "Nude, Green Leaves and Bust," at $106.5 million one of the most expensive paintings ever sold at auction. The asking price on the frame was $65,000. "I think the auction house ended up buying it," for the client, Mr. Wilner recalled, referring to Christie's. And there are 28 Wilner frames hanging in the White House.

But perhaps my favorite is the $22,000 copy of a Stanford White frame made for a client's flat-screen TV at his York Avenue gallery. "A lot of my clients are extremely wealthy," Mr. Wilner said. "It's dizzying."

Work at Mr. Wilner's studio to burnish frame headed for the Met.

The framer isn't doing so bad himself, if his lifestyle is any indication. He keeps a small apartment in Manhattan but divides his time between homes in Montauk, N.Y., and Palm Beach, Fla., where he lives with his wife, "energy healer" and author Barbara Brennan. That's when he's not on the road trying to open new markets for his frames in places like China and Taiwan. American Express also has used his image and company to promote its credit cards at trade shows. He travels around town in a chauffeur-driven Escalade and is a regular at the Mark Hotel's Jean-Georges Vongerichten restaurant, where I joined him for lunch and he suggested I order the puree of green peas, followed by the veal Milanese.

It would be easy to dismiss the craft of framing, or at least regard it as inferior to that of creating the art that resides within its borders. Except for one thing. It's amazing what the right frame can do for a painting. It's almost unfair to the artist. You'd think a Picasso ought to be able to stand on its own. But with rare exceptions—Mr. Wilner counts abstract expressionists such as Rothko and Barnett Newman among them because their art generally demands you be able to see the surface's edge—the appropriate frame can make a mediocre painting look decent, a good painting great, and a great painting sublime.

Mr. Wilner, 55, describes his talent as one of understanding, even empathy for artists long gone, bolstered by the extensive study of frames from the periods when they painted. While he owns a large collection of antique frames, he said he prefers not to sell them but to use them as models to build replicas.

"I had this gift," he remembers of his first job in the late '70s as a framer for the Shepherd Gallery. Actually it was his second job. He started his career as an art restorer but quit after a couple of years when the fumes from the chemicals gave him splitting headaches. "It was just another art form," he said of framing. "It was like creating. I saw no difference between painting and framing.

"The year I left I was making $100,000 at 27," he went on. "Everyone told me I was insane to leave the company."

But in the next breath, or maybe it was the previous one (I was distracted by my soup, which was great), he told me that he had only $6,000 when he went into business on his own. Where did the rest of the money go? "I was a kid," he said. "I spent the money as fast as I made it."

Did I mention that Mr. Wilner recently framed what he described as "the most valuable tiny painting of all time"? It was a Lucian Freud self-portrait, according to the framer, measuring 5 inches by 3 inches, that sold for $5 million in London in February. He couldn't reveal what he charged the Met for reframing "Washington Crossing The Delaware," which will make it's debut when the museum's renovated American Wing reopens next year, except to say that if a private collector wanted a copy of the 23-foot-by-12-foot, 3,000-pound structure (the golden hand-carved eagle crest atop it alone measures 12 feet across) would cost approximately $1.4 million.

We returned to the Escalade for the ride across the 59th Street Bridge to Mr. Wilner's studio. On the way, he pulled out his iPad and showed me a picture-framing app he'd created. It was kind of neat. You can take an image of your kids or your cat and slap a Rembrandt frame around it, or if you prefer, something similar to the frame Mr. Wilner's workshop was gilding for another Met painting when we arrived—Frederic Church's magnificent "Heart of the Andes."

"I spent an inordinate amount of money making this," he explained. "They're going to love the random button. We're going to also work with Kodak so you can frame T-shirts and coffee mugs."

I was about to ask, why bother? When you're creating museum-quality frames don't you run the risk of diminishing your brand? But Mr. Wilner, perhaps anticipating my question, answered it himself. And in the process revealed perhaps his greatest gift of all. "I think I would have enjoyed marketing, if not what I'm doing. Getting the word out. I get a lot of pleasure out of it. I think selling is a higher calling."

2011年4月26日星期二

A master journalist's guide to a vibrant old age

In Never Too Late, A 90-Year Old's Pursuit of a Whirlwind Life, Roy Rowan pictures old age not as sedentary geezerdom, but as a journey of discovery, recalling his own wondrous trips aboard the world's fabled railroads. Call it an Orient Express of the mind. Rowan wants the oldsters to keep chugging ever forward towards a new destination -- meaning the goals you set for yourself, and Rowan likes them challenging.

The marvelous course of Never Too Late winds back and forth between primer and memoir. The primer part offers lessons for living a fruitful, exciting life in the post-retirement years. Rowan's main message is to maintain a kind of aerobic high by staying extremely busy. For him, life is all about passion, and he advocates finding something you simply adore doing as your ticket to retirement express, even if it's far removed from the job you recently left. "Learn to play a musical instrument, master a foreign language, take up sketching or painting, or enroll in a course in gourmet cooking," intones Rowan.

Never Too Late Roy RowanThat advice may sound familiar, but the book's main inspiration -- as I'll later attest, since Rowan is an old friend and mentor -- is the full, adventurous, rollicking life story of the author himself, whose ardor for journalism keeps him extraordinarily productive at age 91. Rowan enjoyed one of the most illustrious careers in the history of Henry Luce's magazine empire, Time Inc., which publishes Fortune.

He covered the fall of China and the Korean War for Life, the legendary photo weekly, and America's doomed mission in Vietnam for Time, escaping on the last helicopter from a rooftop in Saigon. In his sixties, Rowan was a star at Fortune, where he chronicled everything from the inside story of the Hunt brothers' epic speculation in silver to the rebirth of capitalism in China, returning after half a century to the provincial cities where he'd transported supplies for the United Nations, and watched the civil war unfold from such close range that a bullet pierced the windshield of his jeep.

Never Too Late is filled with priceless anecdotes. There is a description of the million-man battle of Huai-Hai in late 1948 between the Chinese Communists and Nationalists that sealed Chiang's fate, with Rowan watching from a hilltop alongside the Nationalist commander who watched his artillery with pride, certain of his superior firepower. He gives an account of Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa minutes after reading Rowan's less-than-flattering profile in Life, and threatening enigmatically, "Just because I keep a gun in the drawer doesn't mean I'll use it."

Rowan also offers a vivid portrait of his boss Henry Luce, whom he describes as intensely curious and constantly brimming with questions, and intensely opinionated as well, lecturing Rowan on how Chiang -- a close friend whom Luce tirelessly championed -- would triumph in China's civil war. Rowan risked his job by telling his employer that the warfare he witnessed first hand showed that Chiang was doomed.

Nor was Luce above bullying. Rowan relates that during his stint as an editor at Life, it was an open secret among the staff that Luce had virtually chosen another editor, and a close friend of Rowan's, for the top editorial job. Yet Luce took Rowan to lunch and ordered him to develop a competing template for the weekly. The boss pledged that if he liked it, he'd anoint Rowan to run Life. Realizing he'd fatally antagonize the editor he was destined to work for, with no real hope of getting the job for himself, Rowan simply ignored Luce's request -- and considers himself fortunate that Luce never renewed it.

Rowan extols what he calls "the three E's" for success in life and retirement: enthusiasm, exertion and energy. Perhaps he should add a fourth quality, talent, which Rowan showed in abundance while in China working for the U.N. As an aspiring journalist, he sharpened his eye for color and detail by recording vignettes in a notebook he kept for more than 60 years, and mined for his recent memoir of China, Chasing the Dragon. Read this account of driving a jeep on China's rough roads, full of Hemingway-esque color and clarity:

    For a few months, I had driven cautiously easing my jeep in and out of craters and humps. Patience and care gradually gave way to masochism. Now I stomped on the accelerator, holding tight to the steering wheel as the jeep smashed into holes or took off in the air. Still the engine kept whirring while I sucked in mouthfuls of red dust and cursed every jolt. Lurking in the back of my mind was the hope with the next solid whack my battered jeep might may finally lay down and die. Then I could walk as intended on these ancient roads of China.

The power of positive thinking

I'm particularly drawn to two pieces of advice in Never Too Late, since I've witnessed first-hand how much Rowan has benefited from practicing them. The first is nurturing old friendships. His guide is 18th century sage Dr. Samuel Johnson, who declared, "Keep friendships in constant repair." Rowan relates how staying in touch with a photographer who became Gerald Ford's confidant and personal White House photographer gave Rowan the entrée he needed to do a long, exclusive interview with Ford for his book Four Days of Mayaguez, an account of how the cargo ship was attacked at sea by Cambodian gunboats and how Ford­­­­ -- as he told Rowan in the Oval Office­­ -- orchestrated its rescue.

The second is his belief in the power of optimism. Rowan confesses, or rather boasts, that he's "loony on positive thinking." It's not that he ignores the facts when they spell an inevitable failure, just the blindness he witnessed in Chiang and his generals. It's the mental exercise of "framing" or anticipating that you'll get the story, or the date, or the job that you crave. Rowan swears that visualizing success can make it happen.

I had the pleasure of witnessing that boundless optimism in action. In 1980, I had just joined Fortune as reporter. In those days, reporters seldom wrote stories. Instead, they were assigned to work for seasoned writers, taking notes in longhand during interviews, and then typing them up on IBM (IBM) "Selectrics," using plenty of white-out. The job may sound menial, but I got an amazing education from watching how a master like Roy Rowan absorbed telling details and searched for the right metaphor to weave into his stories.

Most of all, I learned that journalism has an entrepreneurial side. Writers need to double as convincing sales people to win the confidence of wary sources, and no one could sell himself better than Roy Rowan.

Here's a tale that Roy doesn't relate in his book. When I was assigned to Roy, he'd just written two extremely critical stories about the Hunt brothers of Dallas, who had just careened from gigantic gains to multi-billion dollar losses in the silver market. But somehow, Roy talked the Hunts into "telling their own story, in their own words."

So on a Friday, we were sitting across from Bunker and Herbert Hunt in their Dallas offices. Herbert asked how much time we needed. Roy didn't just request a couple of hours. He said we'd need most of the weekend, a request I thought was so brazen it was bound to fail. But they agreed, and Roy spent the next morning jogging with Herbert, who then cooked him a "truck driver's breakfast" at his house. We got a tour of Herbert's paintings, with Herbert commenting that he often bought them for the frames instead of what artwork inside. We proceeded to lunch at a Mexican eatery, then to Big Bunker's manse, where the silver and oil magnate dropped one memorable line after another. Asked how he liked Paris -- he'd just returned from the City of Light -- Bunker quipped, "Sure is tough to get a bad meal in Paris. Sure is tough to get a cheap one, too." Followed by, "When I paid my bill at the Ritz, I thought I'd bought the place."

Roy found a memorable metaphor for our weekend with the Hunts. He called it "A moveable journalistic feast," from Herbert scurrying around the kitchen to the news-breaking revelation that the Hunts had pledged a still-astounding $9 billion in collateral to the banks on their silver loans.

Then, Roy was just 60, and he brought the same passion to Dallas he'd shown in his early, vivid accounts of the Chinese civil war. At 91, he's rounding still another bend into a new landscape, working with producer The Film Group of China to bring Chasing the Dragon to the screen.

The main lesson from Never Too Late is that you can keep excelling at something you love for a long, long time. Roy Rowan was lucky indeed to find what he was put on this earth to do from early on. His message is that you can find it at any age. So think with your heart, pick a romantic destination, and get on that train.

Learning How To Paint Clouds With Oil Paints

Having a hard time painting realistic-looking clouds with oil paints? Howard Rose, a plein air artist from Woodbury, showed the artists present at the Art League of Nassau County's Friday evening demonstration at Clinton G. Martin's recreation center how to do so.

“Clouds are amorphic and landscapes are freer than portraits [to paint]," Rose said. “With a person’s portrait you have to get a likeness, but with landscapes you have more flexibility.”

Rose suggested that one way to combat the elusiveness of clouds is to take photographs of them.  He uses Canon G-10 and Lumix Panasonic cameras.  He showed how he collected photos and magazine pictures and put them into special binders. He takes many photos himself, but he also collects copies of his favorite artists’ works, such as those of Calvin Liang.

Using a photo he took of dunes and clouds down at Tobay Beach as a reference, Rose painted a small oil on a board toned with a blue ground.  He showed how to achieve luminosity in the clouds.  Some tips Rose suggested were to use a limited palette of ultramarine blue, cadmium yellow and alizarin crimson.  Also, keep individual colors on the canvas or board clean until you decide to blend at the end so you don’t have “mud."

Rose’s materials include a portable “Open Box M” wood pochade box to hold his supplies.  Inside he has his Princeton bright (short and flat) brushes in numbers two, four and six with filberts (rounded and flat) in two, four and six.  They are small because his work is not large.  With oil paints, any type is fine for Rose, whether it is Winsor-Newton, Old Holland and Grumbacher.  He also travels with turpentine that hangs in a metal container with a hook underneath the box, paper towels with plastic bag to hold the used ones and an umbrella to protect him from the elements.  The inside of the box is shellacked to use as a palette, but to prevent the oil paint colors from seeping into the wood.

After Rose finished his demonstration painting, the raffle for it was won by Dorothy O’Brien, historian for the ALNC.

“I love it," O'Brien exclaimed. "It’s just so fresh. It speaks to me. I love the shore and the shadows are so beautiful."

Marianne Reamer, refreshments chairperson remarked, “The painting is harmonious and establishes a mood.”

2011年4月24日星期日

Magnetic New Mexico

New Mexico lives up to its nickname "The Land of Enchantment" every time I visit.

A trip to northern New Mexico brings me into a landscape of blue skies and lemon-yellow aspens cascading through evergreen forest. A few miles down the road, juniper and pinon are peppered across sandstone mesas toned in burnt sienna.

Each setting is magnetic. You can't keep yourself away. You don't want to leave.

A driving tour of northern New Mexico usually begins in the high-desert city of Santa Fe and continues through small villages where small houses and stores cluster around a church, sometimes made of stone, but often adobe.

A city with the soul of a village, Santa Fe wears its age beautifully. Narrow streets in Old Town lead to a plaza and the Palace of the Governors. Originally built circa 1609, this long adobe structure housed officials through the Spanish Colonial, Mexican and American territorial periods. Santa Fe continues this 500-year lineage as the seat of government. The New Mexico State Capitol, also called the Roundhouse because of Pueblo Indian architectural influences, almost doubles as an art museum. Its corridors display traditional and contemporary paintings, sculptures and furniture created by New Mexico artists.

Santa Fe claims to be the most Spanish city in the United States. A walk through downtown shows many traces of Spanish heritage, but also reveals other eras. Signposts mark the Santa Fe Trail, the route taken by settlers, gold prospectors and traders. Decades later, they were followed by merchants and railroad men. The La Fonda Hotel bar was a gathering spot for workers on World War II's Manhattan Project in nearby Los Alamos. Artifacts in the New Mexico History Museum give a true sense of the state's rich heritage.

Art museums and galleries decorate the street scene. The Georgia O'Keeffe Museum holds a collection of 1,149 O'Keeffe paintings, drawings and sculptures. Display cases show her worn brown leather paint box, half-empty pigment tubes, pastels, linseed oil and brushes. "The brushes were individually cut and shaped for particular functions," says Carol Kastner, associate curator.

Of the 250 galleries in Santa Fe, about 100 line up along Canyon Road like pretty girls in a beauty contest. This sophisticated arts enclave had humble beginnings. In the 1920s, a quintet of Modernist painters set up studios nearby. "The five little nuts in five adobe huts" — as the locals called them — jolted Santa Fe's status quo. Willard Nash, Jozef Bakos, Will Shuster, Fremont Ellis and Walter Mruk pushed the boundaries on canvas, and the art world has never been the same.

Canyon Road now has nationally recognized galleries, such as Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art, a showcase for Australian Aboriginal art; Morning Star Gallery, displays of American Indian art and artifacts; and Meyer Gallery, indoor and outdoor spaces for figurative bronze sculpture. Museum Hill on the rim of downtown features distinct art experiences in Spanish Colonial, American Indian, and folk art.

Visitors cover themselves with culture when they stay at the Inn of the Turquoise Bear, a rambling adobe house constructed in the Spanish-Pueblo Revival style. When it was a private home, the celebrity guest list included D.H. Lawrence, Willa Cather, Ansel Adams and Igor Stravinsky. History and art are interwoven at Hotel St. Francis, where guest rooms are reminiscent of a Franciscan mission, yet not lacking in any conveniences. Handcrafted furniture exudes simple, pared-down beauty. Its restaurant, Tabla de los Santos, serves Southwestern-style nouvelle cuisine made from fresh, organic, local ingredients. Around the corner, at the Santa Fe School of Cooking, chef Rocky Durham divulges the secrets of tamale-making.

Once you are ready to explore beyond the city limits of Santa Fe, follow the scenic byways to farming communities populated by Hispanos, the descendants of early Spanish settlers, and the ancient lands of American Indians. At Pecos National Historical Park, pathways edged in pinon fan across a ridge topped by the ruins of Spanish missions and a huge pueblo. Pecos Pueblo Indians controlled the trade between the farmers of the Rio Grande and the hunters of the Great Plains. Ceremonial kivas speak of the spirituality of the place. The first mission church was built in the early 1600s; the second church was finished in the early 1700s.

Different cultures — Indian, Hispano and Anglo — intermingle in the region's arts and crafts, particularly weaving. The Hispano farming community of Chimayo is home to the Ortega Family's weaving shop. Wool tapestries at Centinela Traditional Arts feature Chimayo/Rio Grande weaving styles. Weavers Irvin and Lisa Trujillo use natural-dyed, handspun yarns. Museums across the United States, including the Smithsonian Institution, have included the couple's weavings in their exhibitions and collections.

Taos, also a destination soaked in arts and crafts, prominently showcases its unique melded heritage. Beautiful in its simplicity, San Francisco de Asis Mission Church in nearby Ranchos de Taos attracts legions of photographers and artists.

Georgia O'Keeffe found refuge and inspiration at Ghost Ranch, situated in the high-desert country. The reclusive artist came to the dude ranch in the 1930s and painted the red and yellow cliffs, juniper trees and surrounding mountains, particularly her beloved Pedernal. Her intensely colored paintings distilled the essence of the New Mexico landscape. The 21,000-acre ranch is now a retreat and conference center owned by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Guests stay in comfortable dwellings, ride horses, hike trails and take classes. Tours are available to help visitors identify landmarks seen in O'Keeffe's paintings; her residence is not open to the public.

O'Keeffe purchased a second home a few miles away in the village of Abiquiu. Open for tours, this remodeled 18th-century hacienda remains as it was when the artist tended her fruit and vegetable garden and painted the cottonwood trees along the Chamas River. She died in 1986 at age 99.

The grandeur of sandstone mesas resonates not only with artists, but also with outdoor enthusiasts. Hikers, horseback riders, mountain bikers and rock climbers pursue their passions during the four distinct seasons. Fly-fishermen find their sweet spots in pristine rivers. Angel Fire and other resort communities offer a medley of recreational options including world-class golf and snow skiing. Blue-sky days are perfect for jeep tours out of Red River, an old mining town in the heart of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Drivers rumble over gravel roads on the 11,280-foot Greenie Peak in the Wheeler Peak National Wilderness Area to show off panoramas of the undulating mountains.

Train enthusiasts catch a 64-mile ride on the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad. With a clang of couplings, the steam train starts to move up the mountain. It runs through forests of aspen and fir trees, allowing views of steep passes, deep gorges and broad valleys. The train climbs to 10,016 feet at Cumbres Pass and stops at the hamlet of Osier for passengers to have lunch. Then it passes through two tunnels and continues through pinion-juniper forests and sagebrush plains to reach its final destination, Antonito, Colo.

Tudor home show-off its attitude in style

FLINT — Mary Ryan saw the house for the first time when she was a teenager out for a drive with her parents. She noticed the large, round window and told them, “I’m going to live in that house some day.”

Years later, she heard the house was for sale. She and her husband, Dan, contacted the owners, Mary and Walter Solomon, and bought it before a for sale sign went up in the yard. They moved into it in May 1987.

The English Tudor house sits on a rise surrounded by gardens. Built in 1938 by Theodore and Pearl Curtis, owners of Curtis Flowers, the house had casement windows, four bedrooms, five bathrooms and a solarium.

The Ryans updated the house but kept its integrity. Mary added color, carefully chosen antiques and comfortable new furnishings to create a warm atmosphere throughout the house.

“I enjoy interior design very much,” Mary Ryan said. “I chose the colors, the fabrics, the wallpaper and the paint. The 73-year-old house is quite amazing. We wanted it to be warm, cozy and inviting, and we wanted to use all the rooms.”

The previous owners painted everything white, which was very boring, she said. The house now glows with color, with green walls in the living room, red in the dining room, yellow and white stripes in the foyer and earth tones in the solarium.

“I would not use black, brown or gray in my home,” she stated. “Michigan is much too gloomy.”

They replaced the metal casement windows with energy-efficient double and triple-paned windows. Magnetic storm windows mount inside the leaded windows in Dan’s bathroom and in the solarium.

“It’s so cozy,” Mary said. “We take them down in the spring. This made a significant difference in our energy bill.”

Patterned valances above the windows add color without blocking light. Narrow blinds underneath pull down easily and have no hanging cords.

They replaced the worn kitchen floor with Brazilian cherry and put Brazilian teak in the living room. When they removed carpet from the stairs, they found walnut beneath and had it refinished.

Original mahogany paneling covers one living room wall, behind the walnut fireplace surround. Several oil paintings hang on this wall, centered with a wide framed picture of a canal in Venice. Two comfortable couches flank the fireplace with a large upholstered ottoman between them.

Four of the five bathrooms have the original tile, intact and in pleasing colors. She put in new sinks and countertops. Upstairs, Dan’s bathroom has turquoise tile, faux-painted chocolate walls, and a new glass shower door. His light fixtures came from Restoration Hardware in Troy, where she also purchased train racks to hold towels in the full baths.

A small sitting room has a little Italian chandelier and a dressing table and stool from Barbara Koegel. Mary’s bathroom includes soft green and coral tiles. She added glass cabinets for decorative items, an Art Deco light over the sink and a Swarovski crystal chandelier.

“I’ve always wanted a chandelier in my bathroom,” she explained.

The master bedroom, painted red, overlooks the garden. The walnut marble dresser dates from 1880 and an armoire holds the television.

A guest bathroom has black-and-white tile and Parisian accents. Here Mary hung a sleek black and Swarovski crystal chandelier, with Lalique glass above the sink.

The guest room holds Mary’s collection of Maxfield Parrish prints dating from the early 1970s. Recessed lighting accents the prints, which show the artist’s brilliant use of the color blue.

Dan, an ophthalmologist, uses the fourth bedroom as an office and music room. He plays acoustic and electric guitar and sings with Flint Master Singers. He and Mary are part of the upcoming Flint Community Theater production “Jesus Christ Superstar.”

But the house is a work in progress, Mary said. Two years ago, they created a 10-by-20-foot walk-in closet in an attic space on the second floor. Last year, they painted the dining room red with one wall papered in white-flowered wallpaper.

They renovated the cramped kitchen four years ago, a process that took four months. They gutted four small rooms, creating a bar/office space, a charming breakfast room, and a large modern kitchen. Light pours in through the window above the sink and colorful dishes are displayed in hardwood cabinets.

“I wanted it to look like furniture,” Mary said. “I love the glass doors. With two people, you don’t have to worry about having dishes out of place.”

A frosted glass panel on a side door reads, “Wine Cellar,” and opens to the basement stairs. Another frosted door marked “Laundry” leads to the laundry room and a half-bath.

“I’m a collector,” Mary admitted, leading the way to her extensive collection of Coca-Cola memorabilia in the recreation room. All of the objects are retro, not reproductions. Starting years ago with one colorful tray, she now has clocks, carriers, and large button signs kids once used as sleds. With persistence, she found the right “Coca-Cola red” fabric for the couches in this room.

“I worked hard on the placement of everything,” she said, adding, “I’m through collecting.”

With an artist’s eye and ingenuity, Mary turned the stately English Tudor into a delightfully warm home. She also developed the landscape with her gardening skills. She is active in the Flint Antiques Club, The Art Club and National Women’s Farm and Garden Club.

The couple will share their garden with the public June 2, hosting a fundraiser dinner to support “Growing Up Artfully.” The program, directed by Linda Moxim, allows underprivileged children to attend events at the cultural center.

“This will be the eighth annual fund raiser in the neighborhood,” Mary said. “Last year, our neighbors raised $40,000. We are hoping we can do more.”

2011年4月21日星期四

Arts Around: Rollin almost ready for big book sale

Saturday, April 30 is your last chance to donate gently used books and jigsaw puzzles for the arts council’s annual book sale. Still wanted are mysteries, self-help, childcare and art and design.

Please drop off your donations to the Rollin Art Centre, inside under the staircase in the wooden bin. We would appreciate if you could check the books for torn pages, mould and mildew, as we cannot sell books in these conditions.  Thank you for your support.

Art deadline approaching

The deadline for visual artists in all mediums to submit an application to exhibit their work in the Rollin Art Centre Gallery during the 2012 calendar year is Saturday, April 30.

Application forms are available at the Rollin Art Centre, on the corner of Eighth Avenue and Argyle Street.

Stewart exhibit wrapping up

Cathy Stewart’s exhibit of oil and acrylic paintings at the Rollin Art Centre Gallery, This Land is Your Land, will end on Wednesday, April 27.

The Rollin Art Centre is open Tuesday to Saturday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. The gallery will be closed Good Friday, April 22.

Easter Sunday youth concert

Net proceeds from the Greater Victoria Youth Orchestra performance at the Trinity Anglican Lutheran Church on Easter Sunday will benefit the Community Arts Council, Trinity Organ Fund and Trinity Neighbourhood Outreach.

The symphonic celebration begins at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $15 for adults and seniors, $5 for students and children and are available at the Rollin Art Centre and Trinity Church.

Open Mike moving location

Open Mike Night is moving to Char’s Landing, a larger venue where the acoustics are great and the room spacious. There will be a fee of $5 to cover the cost of coffee or tea and a cookie.

This month’s featured reader will be Vicki Drybrough on Wednesday, April 27 at 7 p.m.

Rollin gardens look awesome

The Community Arts Council would like to thank its members, the Arrowsmith Rotary Club and the Coastal Community Credit Union for their help during the garden work bee held April 9. The gardens look amazing!

Studio tour draw winners

During Days With The Arts many artists had studio prizes to win. Congratulations to the winners, who have all been notified, and a big thank you to the donating artists.

Barkley choir celebrating

The Barkley Sounds Community Choir is celebrating their 10-year anniversary with the concert “Come To The Music” on Sunday, May 1, 2:30 p.m. at the Arrowsmith Baptist Church. Two guest choirs will also be performing: The Village Voices from Qualicum and the Sooke Community Choir. Tickets $10 are available at the Rollin Art Centre or from choir members.

New craft market at quay

Starting May 1 a new craft market will run on Sundays through to October from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Harbour Quay.  Come down to the quay and support our local crafters.

Time for yearly choral fest

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is holding its ninth annual Festival of Choirs featuring adult and children’s choirs from local churches, the Barkley Sounds Choir and Phil’s Harmonics String Orchestra. The event takes place on Friday, May 6 at 7 p.m. Free of charge, followed by refreshments.

2011年4月20日星期三

Kuhl paintings to adorn library

Ceramics students at Augusta State University are showing their creations under the tent near the main entrance on Walton Way today and Friday. The annual Mad Potters Show and Sale takes place from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. both days. While you're on campus, venture over to Washington Hall to check out the artwork by graduating seniors in the Mary S. Byrd Gallery .

THURSDAY NIGHT at the Morris Museum of Art , abstract expressionist painter Laura Spong , whose work represents a personal spiritual quest, and Alex Mabe , professor and clinical psychologist at Georgia Health Sciences University, will be featured in a program called Art as a Window to the Mind: The Art of Finding Yourself. The program will explore the psychological implications behind the artist's painting, with a focus on finding one's identity through the process of creating art.

FRIDAY NIGHT, artist Justin Van Leuvan will be at Tire City Potters on 10th Street from 6:30 to 10 p.m. to chat about his exhibit of paintings, not pots. (See gallery owner Shishir Chokshi 's pots next door). Van Leuvan is showing oil paintings from his new series: Peacock, Roots, Windows and Stages. He works in a nonfigurative abstract expressionist style exploring color variations and optical illusion.

The Sacred Heart Garden Festival has added a mid-week event with the Nola Falcone Lecture Series. Landscape architects Mary Palmer Dargan and Hugh Dargan will discuss Timeless Design on Tuesday, and Ryan Gainey will present From the Garden to the Table on Wednesday. The garden festival gets under way with a patrons' preview party and live auction April 28, followed by three days of landscape and garden exhibits and tours of private gardens.

At the Aiken Center for the Arts , Australian pianist Gil Sullivan will perform in a benefit concert April 30. Sponsor tickets cost $75 and include a preview party from 6 to 8 p.m. Concert-only tickets cost $25.

Art by Cynthia Cox will open at the center May 1, with the annual Aiken Artist Guild juried exhibition beginning mid-May.

MAY DAY EVENTS: Former Augustan Christopher Kuhl will open an exhibit at the new Augusta Library on May 1. He will be on hand from 1 to 2 p.m. to talk about his work.

Born in Tacoma, Wash., Kuhl moved to Augusta in 1969 when his father was stationed at Fort Gordon. After graduating from Aquinas High School, he went on to earn a Bachelor of Arts from Notre Dame University and is now based in Marietta, Ga.

A painter and photographer, Kuhl has traveled extensively and draws on his experiences to create works that express the sense of sacredness attached to specific geographic locations ranging from North Africa to South Carolina. He has exhibited in the United States and abroad, including France, Japan, Canada, Spain and the United Arab Emirates.

His work has been commissioned by the New Yorker magazine and Atlantic Monthly , and his cultural writing has been published by Art Papers, Bloomsbury, Horizon and Americas , among others. His exhibit at the Augusta Library is his first in Augusta. He describes the show, Walk-About, as "a collection of paintings on canvas, wood panel and paper from various years -- a sentimental journey to the present."

- The same afternoon, Social Canvas returns to the Morris Museum of Art . Augusta artists will create original artwork inspired by live music from 1 to 4 p.m.

2011年4月19日星期二

Art Show & Sale to Feature Works by F.C. Artists

The City of Falls Church Recreation and Parks Division will present its annual art show and sale April 29-30, featuring original artwork by art students, City residents and employees.

The opening reception for this free event will be held at the Falls Church Community Center, 223 Little Falls St., on Friday, April 29 from 5 - 7 p.m. On Saturday, April 30, beginning at noon, a verbal critique will be provided of the winning pieces, followed at 1 p.m. by a ceremony honoring longtime watercolor instructor Carolyn Gawarecki. The art show and sale will be open to the public on Saturday from noon - 4 p.m. Entrance is free.

City residents of all ages and employees are invited to submit original artwork to the show (limit three submissions per person). Photography, paintings (watercolor, oil, or acrylic), and drawings (pencil or pastel) of any size will be accepted.

Submissions can be framed or unframed. All artwork may be submitted to the Community Center beginning Monday, April 25 and no later than noon on Friday, April 29. Artists must include their name, phone number, and selling price (if interested in selling the artwork) on the back of each entry. Submissions from children K-12 must also include their grade and age.

2011年4月18日星期一

Kid Artists Spread Wings and Fly

The artwork and all else in the whole store is for the birds at a charming specialty shop where nearly 20 young art students are exhibiting their portraits of our feathered friends.

Work by 18 kids, two from Palos Verdes and others from throughout L.A. County and the South Bay, hangs at Wild Birds Unlimited in Torrance through the end of April.

Idalis Trejo, 9, of Rancho Palos Verdes, used soft pastels in her portrait of a penguin on an exceedingly small ice floe. He looks quite angry, though penguins are by nature mellow fellows.

Sonia Reza, 16, of Palos Verdes Estates, did her proud peacock in oils, of luscious blues and greens with the majestic bird's characteristic plumage covered with "eyes" giving a mystical touch.

"I teach in private homes, one on one, or in groups. My students range in age from three years to 65," said Bobbi Rich, the Santa Monica painter-instructor who believes the truism that an artist is never too young or too old.

Just follow the lilting songbird sounds to Wild Birds Unlimited, where you might be surprised to find not a single living bird inside. This perhaps accounts for the sour expression of Maggie, the calico cat in residence. The merry music of many feathered species is only recorded.

Owner Bob Shanman, in business there 16 years, stocks everything under the sun to attract, feed and house birds, plus books and videos to help identify myriad species, found from backyards of older urban tract homes to woodland hilltop mansions and beaches or harbors.

Bird fancier and noted artist herself, Rich assigned a springtime project to students to paint birds and Shanman was happy to offer gallery space to display them. She also has two small oil paintings of vivid hummingbirds bordered in gold leaf in the show.

Exhibitors range in age from five to 16, and so their techniques reflect talent, well, still in development, ranging up—with age and practice—to near-professional quality. Little kids worked on 4x4 inch canvases, with larger works by the older artists.

These younger children are essaying to paint with oils on stretched canvas, far more demanding than a box of crayons.

Some works are marked not for sale. A few are $10 and $25, with another listed at $101.50, while a handsomely framed oil painting of quite lifelike Canada geese flying over a family of bears on a wave-lashed island has a $526 price tag.

Other exhibitors are Brianna Bruggerman, Jada D'Oyen, Kaitlynn D'Oyen, Grace Figueroa, Sandra Le, Madeline MacMillan, Kalista Magana, Kennedy Magana, Kaitlln McWilliams, Vanessa Mona, Lily Ruggiero, Alejandro Trejo, Jaime Savitz, Katherine Shanahan, Kindra Soto, Jasmine Torres, Kares Yee and Jade Ashley Hollingsworth.

2011年4月17日星期日

Disabled artists create paintings with foot and mouth

Physically challenged people are demonstrating their understanding of arts through a painting exhibition held in Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality. The show has proved that these artists may lack certain abilities, but are certainly not lacking in artistic sensibility.

From exquisitely portrayed buildings of China's ethnic groups in ink and wash, to lavishly decorated peony flowers with oil pigments, can you image that all of these paintings were created by physically challenged artists?

On display are more than one hundred pieces by nine painters and calligraphers from across China. All of them unfortunately lost their arms due to childhood disease or accidents.

41-year old Huang Guofu, one of the participating artist, lost both of his arms in an electric shock accident at the tender age of 4. Deciding to buffet his way against the fate, Huang started to learn painting with his feet and mouth at age 12.

Huang Guofu, Artist said "In the beginning, the items I drew did not look anything like I intended. It took time, and gradually I became better and better. Sometimes I even stayed up all night just to practice, practice, and practice."

Huang's skills have grown mature over the decades, and his painstaking efforts are given due recognition. His pictures are now sought after by dealers and art lovers around the world.

Huang Guofu said "God might have closed my door. But my window was left open, allowing me to make a living and even feel happy and content. I'd say I still appreciate what God has given me."

Huang adds that he will join his artist friends for a charity event during the upcoming May Day holiday season. He plans to create works on location. All the income from the sale of paintings will be donated to physically challenged people.

2011年4月14日星期四

Art takes over St. George arena

Bright colours, oil paintings and an array of different mediums will line the walls at St. George Arena this Sunday.

The St. George Art Show and Sale will display watercolours, oil paintings, glass stained creations and other mediums from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

"As artists, we're always looking for a place to show what we've been working on, so this is a great opportunity to do that," said organizer Helen Mulligan.

Eight local artists from Brantford, Brant County and Guelph have been confirmed for the viewing.

"It's an opportunity to meet the artists. There will be a large variety in method, subject and medium."

All items will be for sale at varied prices determined by the artists. Mulligan adds that this show may be the beginning for future spring art shows in St. George.

"We're hoping that this will be well attended and very popular. If so, it would be nice to bring back an annual spring art show to St. George," said Mulligan.

The organizers are expecting the new St. George Arena to be an ideal location for this show and others with its natural light and large open space.

Mulligan's been painting watercolours and oils for years now. She's always been a painter, but her passion took a back seat some time ago.

"I didn't want to leave and stop doing it. But, I have the time to do it now. I paint first and do everything else later," she said.

As a child, Mulligan's aunt motivated her painting, but she'd always had an interest in art. She used to teach ceramics.

"Inspiration is something in you. I'm always doing something creative."

The art show will take place in the upstairs banquet hall at the St. George Arena and admission is free.

2011年4月13日星期三

SSCC plans April 21 artist reception for Joanne Edwards

An exhibition featuring "plein air" artist Joanne Edwards is currently on display in the Learning Resources Center (LRC) of Southern State Community College's South Campus, 12681 U.S. Route 62, near Sardinia.

The exhibition will be available for viewing throughout spring quarter. The art term "plein air" refers to a style of painting produced outdoors in natural light.

A meet-the-artist reception will be held 6-8 p.m. Thursday, April 21, in the LRC. The event is free to the community and refreshments will be served.

Edwards was born in the Chicago area and didn't begin her formative art training until she relocated to the Art Academy of Cincinnati (AAC) in 1984. Her early works were inspired by Mary Cassatt, and she received numerous portrait commissions. Edwards won a First-Year Scholarship from AAC and earned her BFA in 1993, graduating magna cum laude and as class valedictorian.

Later she concentrated on Impressionist painting, studying the styles of Monet, Van Gogh and Matisse. Her paintings traveled for several years with the Cinergy Collection and she had works on display in Sen. Mike DeWine's offices. Edwards' artwork is held in many private collections and has been exhibited in numerous solo and group shows. Her oil paintings have been exhibited and sold in numerous art galleries, including Masterpiece Gallery in Oakley, Closson's of Cincinnati, Guenther Gallery & Design in Itasca, Ill., and River's Edge Gallery at the Cincinnati Airport.

Edwards has been a member of the Cincinnati Art club, the Queen City Art Club and the Indiana Plein Air Society, and has been a member of the Ohio Plein Air Society for the past six years. She recently moved to Lake Waynoka in Sardinia and displays her work for sale in the Lake Waynoka Restaurant.

From 2009-10, Edwards wanted to experiment with a new medium and decided to take classes in watercolor at Southern State Community College with instructor James "Skip" Werline.

2011年4月11日星期一

Three-day showing of Wayne Thiebaud paintings in Los Angeles

Before they go up for sale at Sotheby's New York in May, 11 canvases and works on paper by Wayne Thiebaud are traveling to Northern and Southern California to go on public display and -- Thiebaud's specialty -- whet collectors' appetites. The highlights include assorted oil paintings of pies and cakes as well as a candy-colored pinball machine rendered by the artist, who has lived in the Bay Area for decades.

"These works will be a revelation to many people who have seen them in book reproductions but haven't seen them in the flesh," promises Anthony Grant, Sotheby's senior international contemporary art specialist, based in New York.

The artworks belonged to New York dealer Allan Stone, who gave Thiebaud his first solo show there in 1962 and died in 2006. According to New York Times critic Roberta Smith, Stone was "legendary in the New York art world for his obsessive collecting .... At one point he owned untold numbers of De Koonings and nearly 30 Bugatti automobiles."

Thiebaud.pinball Now Sotheby's is preparing to sell works from Stone's collection estimated together to be worth more than $30 million on May 9 in New York. The most valuable work from the group is expected to be a 1947 De Kooning, "Event in a  Barn," a busy abstraction with echoes of Gorky and Miró estimated at $5 million to $7 million.

The most valuable Thiebaud, of a total of 20 owned by Stone going up for sale, is expected to be Pies, 1961, featuring a bakery-style display of slices of pumpkin pie, cherry pie, lemon meringue and more. The oil on canvas (it's tempting to say meringue on canvas) is estimated to bring $2.5 million to $3.5 million.

But for now, anyway, the Thiebaud works can be seen for free. The Thiebauds will appear at the San Francisco Art Institute this Monday and Tuesday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Wednesday from 10 a.m. to noon. They will then go on display at Sotheby's Los Angeles office, 9200 Sunset Boulevard, Suite 170, from 1 to 5 p.m. Friday through Sunday.

Canton Art Association Annual Spring Show and Sale Lights Up the Library

The composer Robert Schumann once said, “To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist.”

The Canton Art Association Spring Show and Sale opened at the Canton Public Library on Saturday and the library was truly bursting with light, color and brightness.

The show, greeted by spectacular spring temperatures and radiant sunshine, was comprised of nearly 50 works by members of the Canton Art Association.  The pieces were in multiple mediums from oil paint to photography, and were created by Art Association member artists from Canton and surrounding communities.

“We hadn’t had a show for awhile,” said Ellen McHugo, President of the Association. “It was time for a member show for the public and we hope to do it again.”

Karen Hawkins, Hospitality Chairperson, agreed.

This was a judged show, and the Association enlisted the services of local artist David Sturtevant to judge the entries.

Patch spoke to the First Place Winner, Laura Lee Zanghetti, whose oil painting entitled “Just Leave a Message on the Board” captures the essence of relaxing at the beach.  

“I have worked in most mediums,” she said, “but in the last five years, I have focused on oil. You have to stick with them when you start to work with oil paint.”  She said that she has painted four paintings with this same winning subject, two of which have been sold.

Also in the top three were Mona Podgurski, whose “Cone Flowers Watercolor” took second place, and Helen Zubrin, who placed third for her “Remembering Watercolor."

2011年4月7日星期四

the more its genius reveals itself

Christie's announced its upcoming Impressionist and Modern Art Evening Sale on May 4 will include Pierre Bonnard's Le petit dejeuner, an important interior scene from the artist's last decade, a significant period of modernist innovation for the artist. Previously featured in museum retrospectives of the artist's work at the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, among others, this radiant 1936 painting has been in the private collection of the late arts patron Evelyn Annenberg Jaffe Hall since it was acquired more than sixty years ago.


Conor Jordan, Head of Impressionist and Modern Art at Christie's New York, commented, "Bonnard's free and expressive use of color and pervading sense of atmosphere lend a timeless quality to these meditations on domestic life. Le petit dejeuner in particular is prescient of modernist painting innovations to come – from the compressed sense of space to the ghostlike figure of Marthe at the periphery. The more you look at this work, the more its genius reveals itself."

Executed in 1936, when the artist was approaching his 70th birthday, the painting depicts the second-floor sitting room of the small stucco house in Le Cannet, where Bonnard had retired with his wife Marthe. With his career in Paris as a member of the Nabis behind him, Bonnard's style became more thoroughly individualistic, employing bolder and more creative experimentations with color and pattern. The result is a significant group of vivid domestic scenes, most often featuring Marthe seated at the breakfast table, with the verdant hills of Southern France visible through the window. In Le petit dejeuner, a second figure, possibly Bonnard himself, looks out directly at the viewer, his face captured in the mirror behind Marthe. This added autobiographical element is both curious and deliberate, having been repeated in two other views of the sitting room from the same period.

Known as a deeply introspective and private individual, Bonnard moved fluidly between styles and movements over the course of his career, defying easy categorization. He first gained fame in the late 1880s as a founder of the Nabi movement ("prophets" in Hebrew) alongside Edouard Vuillard and Paul Serusier, and experimented with flattened perspectives and decorative patterns of pure color. After splitting from the group to forge his own path, Bonnard explored drawing and painting from nature, taking on a more Impressionist style. He also looked to his own wife for inspiration, producing close to 400 paintings with Marthe as the focal point. By the mid-1920s, Bonnard had settled in Le Cannet and began to focus almost exclusively on his immediate surroundings, reducing his view of the world to nature seen through the window from within his small house. Among his preferred motifs was the small sitting room and the view beyond, which became the subject of more than 20 luminous oil paintings, including the magnificent Le petit dejeuner.

2011年4月6日星期三

Spring in Paris, next year in Beirut

BEIRUT: The broad strokes of this story sound vaguely familiar. A young man is born in a mountain town northeast of Beirut. He grows up steeped in a storytelling culture. His grandmother is the local hakawati. Travelers pass through the village carrying wooden boxes with painted scrolls, illuminating the travelers' tales like primordial cinema.

His father sends him to Beirut to study engineering, a sturdy profession. But the young man rebels, drops out and goes to art school. The academy is new, a creative hothouse. He studies alongside men and women who will become the foremost artists of their generation.

Still he feels hemmed in. So he leaves Lebanon altogether and lights out for a distant city jostling with artistic vitality. His work changes there. When he returns to Beirut for a homecoming exhibition, he is widely celebrated but at the same time accused of abandoning his native heritage for an uprooted international language of artistic expression.

The duality dogs him for decades as he experiments with vastly different media. In time, he becomes a kind of father figure, immensely respected if not always thoroughly understood. In the end, he insists that all of his art, no matter how foreign or contemporary, comes back to the storytelling traditions of his childhood.

It's a narrative that could accommodate any number of Lebanese artists born in the 1960s, 70s or 80s. The distant city could be New York, London, Amsterdam or Berlin, but the story would follow the same lines, and hinge on the same tensions.

Except that the artist here is Shafic Abboud, the distant city is Paris, and the debate back in Beirut is a mid-20th-century chestnut about figurative versus abstract painting.

For anyone quick to criticize contemporary artists in Lebanon for making work too attuned to globalization, the biennial circuit or the international art market, it's worth looking back on Abboud to see how old that story is.

Sixty years ago, Abboud rehearsed a rift  stubbornly relevant to this day. Perhaps for that reason, the first comprehensive retrospective of his work – currently on view at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, and accompanied by a handsome, hardbound catalogue – casts a decidedly contemporary eye on the art of a modernist master.

"Shafic Abboud: Rétrospective" features 190 paintings from public and private collections across the world. Tracing out the impressive arc of Abboud's career, the works range from early figurative oil paintings on wood and panel to the later, large-scale abstractions for which the artist is best known.

In addition to his lively studies of light and texture – in which gestural brushstrokes, abstract forms and riotous colors are used to capture memories, moments in time, encounters in a landscape or experiences of daily life – the exhibition includes moody and mysterious nocturnes and a playful series that riffs, almost musically, on dresses worn by Abboud's urbane female friends.

Curated by Claude Lemand, the show makes good on a pledge Lemand made to Abboud two months before the artist's death, at the age of 77, in 2004.

A Parisian dealer of Lebanese origin, Lemand opened his first gallery in 1988. Abboud had been in Paris for nearly 40 years by that point and at the time he was working with Galerie Faris. But he used to drop by Lemand's space whenever an exhibition of Arab artists from the diaspora was on display.

Galerie Faris closed in 1990. Abboud joined another gallery, where he was reportedly unhappy. In 1997, Lemand asked Abboud to join him. That same year, the artist suffered the first of several strokes. Lemand was concerned.

"He had heart problems, but he was very enthusiastic and dynamic in his studio. He told me: ‘Don't worry about me. I am bringing spring to your gallery!' I welcomed him and did my best during his last seven years," Lemand says.

"The paintings from those years are really magnificent, full of color and light. I was full of emotion each time I hung his new paintings for an exhibition. I used to tell him they made me so euphoric that I began humming Arabic songs from my childhood."

When Abboud's health deteriorated, Lemand recalls, "I promised to publish his first monograph and organize his first retrospective in Paris."

The monograph, a gorgeous tome published in both English and French editions, was completed in 2006, after two painstaking years of research. The retrospective required another 12 months of work, and serious help from Abboud's estate, which offered 38 paintings on loan, and sold three more to raise funds for the exhibition.

"Compared to the historic and aesthetic importance of his work, only a few museums and institutions have collected Abboud," says Lemand. "But every month I discover interesting works in collections I had not heard about four years ago, when I published the monograph, or even four months ago, when I published the catalogue for the retrospective."

It comes as something of a shock, then, when Lemand says he is categorically against the Paris retrospective traveling anywhere else, including Beirut (there hasn't been a solo exhibition of Abboud's work in Lebanon since his last show at Galerie Janine Rubeiz in 1999).

"I am opposed to the idea of the retrospective traveling," he says. "The number of available, important or interesting pieces by Abboud is enough to prepare an original retrospective for each new city."

The first of those cities, of course, is Beirut. A year from now, Lemand, in collaboration with Nadine Begdache and Saleh Barakat, will unveil a new retrospective, complete with a new catalogue, at the Beirut Exhibition Center.

If that weren't enough, Lemand is also planning further exhibitions and publications on different aspects of Abboud's oeuvre, such as his ceramics and artist's books. Famously willing to experiment, Abboud also produced carpets, tapestries, lithographs, posters and terracotta totem poles.

Once, he even made a wooden storyteller's box, a sandouq al-firji, for his daughter, Christine. But Abboud's most generous critics never really bought his argument about the narrative roots of his work. In a 1994 review for L'Orient-Le Jour, the writer Joseph Tarrab remarked: "We don't give a damn about Abboud's stories: It is the timbre of his voice that matters to us, and enchants us."

2011年4月5日星期二

The Spring Fling Art and Craft Sale is taking place at the Unitarian Fellowship on April 8-9

This is the fourth year the event will be held at the Unitarian Fellowship in Fredericton and, as in past years, a wide array of artisans and craftspeople will be taking part.

"It's quite a nice event. This year we've got a really nice lineup of craftspeople," says Janet Crawford, one of the event organizers.

Giving the event a bit of a different feel than other crafts shows, the vendors are spread out in rooms throughout the fellowship.

"And we have a kitchen on the go during (the event) and provide lunch for the vendors and then we have coffee and muffins for people," she says. "We sell them because this is a fundraiser."

Those who come out find the event welcoming, says Crawford.

"The craftspeople really enjoy being there, too, because it's quite homey."

This helps to set this craft fair apart.

"The other thing is, it's smaller, but at the same time we have a real selection of excellent craftspeople," she says.

"Some of the people who are in it are probably members of the crafts council, and then others are doing home crafts. There is a nice variety."

As part of the sale, there will also be a room of "new to you" quality items.

Those who come out will find jewelry, fine photography, hand-crafted glass works, crafts and clothes from India, Africa and Iran, woodworking, wax paintings, ink and watercolour drawings, oil paintings, pottery, homemade jams, jellies and baked goods, collages, quilting, ribbon wear, ceramic ware and more.

The event is also a great opportunity to meet the artists, says Crawford.

"People tend to stay quite awhile. They tend to enjoy roaming through the fellowship," she says. "It's a lovely old home."

Not only is Crawford one of the organizers, she is also one of the vendors. She is the owner and photographer behind Lightcatcher Photography, specializing in nature and garden photography.

"(My friends) seem to really enjoy dropping into this small venue," she says.

"I really enjoy the contact with the other craftspeople. Every year I find it is a happy atmosphere and it's really great to meet some other people doing the same thing."

The smaller venue allows them to be closer together, and to have a chance to see what the other vendors are doing.

"The camaraderie is really, really nice," says Crawford.

That is part of the appeal for Joanne Keezer of Jewels by Joanne. This is her third year with the sale.

"They're great hosts. They're very welcoming and it's a nice relaxed atmosphere," she says.

It is fun to reconnect with other crafters and artisans year after year.

"This time, I know there are another two jewelers that are going to be there, but we all do different things," says Keezer.

If she doesn't have something a customer is looking for, she is happy to send that person to another one of the jewelry vendors.

"I find that's the atmosphere (there), whether it's because you're in a home or if it's just the people who are there," she says. "It's not like when you walk through a big craft fair - it's much cosier."

Keezer works full-time and does jewelry on the side. She began seven years ago and has taken a number of different classes.

She works with Swarovski crystals, freshwater pearls, glass, gemstones, shells and lamp work beds, all crafted with sterling silver.

"It's a great sale, it's my first sale of the year usually and I look forward to it," says Keezer.

Amber Cober of Cober Glass is taking part in the Spring Fling Art and Craft Sale for the second year.

"This one's a little bit different. I'm used to some of the larger ones. This one is a little bit more quaint and it's also well organized. The ladies put a lot of effort into making it nice and cute," she says.

"A lot of the bigger shows are just an in-and-out for a lot of people. This one, you linger."

Cober doesn't blow glass, instead using a lesser known method called fusing.

"I use a kiln to heat up the glass and it gets manipulated in that. I also do the traditional method, but more contemporary, in the abstract form," she says.

This is the kind of craft show that would appeal to everybody, she says, as there really is something there for everyone.

Pat Kennedy will be at the show with her original oil painting. She mainly paints landscapes and flowers, but in the past has also done paintings of her two golden retrievers. This is her third year taking part and she says she is really looking forward to it.

"They are so hospitable. The congregation at the Unitarian church is just so friendly and warm - it's like being welcomed into someone's home," she says. "It just sets an atmosphere that is very warm and friendly."

She enjoys having the opportunity to chat with the visitors who come through the sale, as well as the other vendors.

"It's kind of a way of networking and meeting new friends," says Kennedy. "It's a lovely group of people, both the ones who are hosting it and the ones who are taking part."

The Spring Fling Art and Craft Sale is taking place on Friday, April 8, from noon to 7 p.m. and on Saturday, April 9, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. There is no admission and everyone is welcome to come and browse.

2011年4月1日星期五

Drummond artist sells wears to Wisconsin

Three landscape oil paintings by Diana Randolph, Drummond, were recently purchased by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation and installed at the Waukesha Division of Motor Vehicles in Pewaukee, Wis., in the Percent for Art direct purchase program.

In 1980, the Wisconsin Legislature enacted a statue asserting that at least two-tenths of one percent of the total construction costs for eligible state building projects be allocated to acquire works of art incorporated into the structure or displayed inside or on the grounds of those buildings. The Wisconsin Arts Board acts as a liaison between the artist and the state agency purchasing the artwork.

Through this program, pastel paintings by Randolph have also been purchased and are on permanent display at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Health Enhancement Center, the chapel at the Department of Veteran's Affairs in Union Grove and UW-Wisconsin Trout Lake Station's Frost House in Boulder Junction.

"I am grateful for the Percent for Art program," said Diana Randolph, a professional artist for 30 years. "Not only do the works by artists enhance buildings throughout our state, but the sales add to our income, which go back into our communities."

Recently, three additional paintings — one oil and two pastels — by Randolph were selected for the UW-Oshkosh Elmwood Center.

"I hope the sale does indeed go through," she said, noting that the arts face cuts under Gov. Scott Walker's budget proposal. "It gives me great pleasure to serve the wider world by providing artwork to state facilities through the Percent for Art Program."