Mission Hill artist Marilyn Jan Casey

Mission Hill artist Marilyn Jan Casey came close to losing the use of her right hand, but that wouldn’t have stopped her from drawing and painting. The 57-year-old artist said she would’ve learned to draw and paint with her teeth if she had to.After being shot in the back at 34 by a former boyfriend, Casey has been forced to spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair due to a spinal cord injury.

But the disability didn’t stop Casey from earning a degree at Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2008 and it didn’t stop her from working to have her art displayed in multiple solo exhibitions in Boston.“I valued life more after I got hurt because I could’ve been gone,” Casey said. “I was grateful for God saving my life so I decided to share my gift that he gave me.”
Casey’s most recent exhibit is on display at the Parker Hill Library in Mission Hill, where a crowd gathered last month for her artist’s reception.Casey was able to display her work through her membership in the Mission Hill Artists Collective (MHAC). MHAC focuses on providing opportunities for artists to display their work in the community.

The exhibit, Modern Spiritual Expressions: Past Present Future, will run until Sept. 2 and features 24 colorful paintings and oil painting reproduction, white and gray drawings inspired by Casey’s family and black history.“I don’t think we have enough [artwork covering black history]. When I was going to college, they would send me to the museum, but I never [saw] black art, so I decided to do black art,” Casey said.

Casey described her work as “filled with love,” and said she hoped the crowd could feel that love as they viewed her work at the Parker Hill Library.Eleven pieces, including one divided into two images showing two females as children and then adults, hang in the front desk area. These images represent the theme of past, present and future and tell individual stories, Casey said.

The 13 drawings in the adult room take viewers through a history lesson from pre-slavery to post-slavery.The story starts with two images of members of an African tribe and ends with a painting of Casey’s family, including her parents, twin brothers and twin sister.MHAC member Luanne Witkowski liked the idea of having paintings and drawings that tell stories hang in a space filled with books.“It’s perfect,” Witkowski said.

For Cecilia Mendez, director of Massart’s Center for Art and Community Partnerships (CACP), Casey’s use of color to offset tense moments in black history was impressive.Some of Casey’s images seem lighthearted, like the one that depicts three giggling girls at a sleepover. Others present heavy topics, like the image of three women picking cotton.The image of the women picking cotton is one of Casey’s favorites. It’s on display in her bedroom and is usually the first thing she sees in the morning.“Every morning I look at it and it brightens my day,” Casey said. “It gets me motivated and wanting to do more art.”

The exhibit covers more than a decade of work from Casey, who said she was satisfied with the turnout at the reception and excited to have another opportunity to share her work with the public.MHAC partnered with number of community organizations to execute the exhibition, including the CACP, which curated the exhibit.

Within a pastime often seen as a mode of escape, McIver found a route to her truest self. Similarly in her artwork, the North Carolina-based painter depicts the overlap of disguise and authenticity through her autobiographical depictions.

Whether depicting her own naked torso, her intimate circles or public figures like Bill T. Jones, McIver brings inner turmoil and light to the surface with her signature, densely packed flesh. McIver's paintings are so grounded in truth they're nearly confessional, yet her subjects' tangible emotions appear almost mask-like when translated onto skin.

Well, I had always wanted to have breast surgery because my breasts have always been really large. Around a year and a half ago I finally did it and it was liberating. They removed six pounds from my chest -- three from each breast and it was wonderful. It was great to paint about that experience, very liberating, and there are so many women that struggle with really large breasts.

I've been a long time admirer of Cindy Sherman's work. When she dressed up like a clown that was especially appealing to me because I wanted to be a clown when I was younger, like in Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey. But I just didn't get accepted into clown college. I think what she has done in terms of women's issues -- in terms of breaking down boundaries for women -- is quite fabulous.

I was part of a clown club in my high school, which was a predominately white high school, and to participate you had to be in white face. So my sister and I had to put on white face even though, of course, we were black. I did parades and birthday parties and then when I went to undergraduate I continued on my own doing clown things.

It was liberating to dress up in white face and to escape being black and poor and living on welfare. People either love clowns or they hate them, and the people who hate clowns stay away from them. So I received a lot of positive feedback!

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Susan Winter’s “Connecting Impressions” Opens

Winter was born on a large farm in rural Monmouth County where she had few playmates outside of her family. And yet her paintings, even her landscapes, invariably include human figures. “I suppose it is this lonely background that lends itself to the themes of most of my work; I enjoy painting people either interacting with others or in quiet reflection” she says.
Now living in Hightstown, where, since 1983, she’s part of the Art Station Studio, which she describes as “a wonderful studio setting where other artists are available for both critique and oil painting reproduction.” A certified teacher, she has taught art at the Peddie School, at Artworks in Trenton, and elsewhere throughout central New Jersey for over 35 years.

Her influences derive from Master Classes with Nelson Shanks and studies with Daniel Greene, Robert Sakson, Rhoda Yanow, Richard Pionk, Christina DeBarry, and Stephen Kennedy. One of her paintings was chosen to be included as part of the White House Collection and her painting “Ole Freehold” is owned by Bruce Springsteen

Inspired also by Mary Cassatt and John Singer Sargent, and, she says, awed by “their genius and value to the art community,” she is a charter member of the New Jersey Pastel Painters Society and a member of numerous galleries and arts councils including the West Windsor Arts Council.Her recent exhibitions include works on paper at the Philadelphia Sketch Club, and one-woman shows at Bordentown’s Farnsworth Gallery, Trenton’s Gallery on Lafayette, and Princeton’s Triumph Brewery.

Interviewed by phone, the artist shared her excitement at this new exhibition, titled “Connecting Impressions.” “The Plainsboro show is a perfect opportunity for me to express my love of people, and let my viewers see how important my personal connections with humanity are to me,” she says.

The artist’s rural upbringing figures heavily in her art, and although she works predominantly with landscapes, people play a critical role in the theme of each piece. But it wasn’t always so. From 1985 to 1996, she worked as a freelance artist with Greater Media Newspapers. “For 10 years I did nothing but paint portraits of houses; after that I did landscapes because that’s what galleries were interested in, but now I include people in my paintings and that’s what excites me about this show,” she says.

“Connecting Impressions” will feature oils, oil/collages, and pastels, paintings of seemingly ordinary scenes that are awash with light and color. Look for her lively park scene, Girl with the Yellow Balloon and The Washing, her rendering of women washing clothes in the Ganges.

In a statement of her artistic philosophy, Ms. Winter says: “I try to capture the beauty of my life: impossible; to try to capture the beauty in each extraordinary moment is only possible through the artist’s eye and imagination. This is my goal with each new painting.”

Combining photography and oil painting, Triburgo captures stirring portraits of transgender men. He poses his subjects with their chins held high -- a marker of 19th century portraiture, creating heroic depictions that demonstrate just how far-reaching the spectrum of masculinity can be.

The project centers around the concept of socially constructed ideals, particularly notions of shared gender identities. To enforce this idea, Triburgo painted decadent landscape backdrops to accompany his stark models. Using instructions from Ross' "The Joy of Painting," he points out that even our ideas of nature are constructed.

"The photographs represent my personal relationship to gender and photography, drawing a parallel between the (mis)perception of the 'photographic record' devoid of social construct and gender," Triburgo writes in his artist statement. "In 'Transportraits' I invite the viewer to question the construct of portraiture (and masculinity) while simultaneously depicting a sincere heroism."

Taken together, the resulting photographs are a visual journey through diverse transgender experiences. It took Triburgo four years to complete and ended with over 30 portraits of volunteer individuals.

“I'm so grateful I could find men who were interested in being out and interested in being photographed," Triburgo explained to Slate. "As a trans man myself, I don't have to be out. I could go my whole life and never tell anyone, but for me it's important to be out and create imagery that creates positive representations of trans men."

First commissioned to decorate the sacristy ceiling, the 27-year-old Veronese so impressed his patrons that he was turned loose on the entire church. He filled the space, lining the apse with stories from the life and martyrdom of the church's titular saint. (A captain of the Praetorian Guard, Sebastian was tied to a tree and shot full of arrows during Diocletian's persecution of Christians; rescued and nursed back to health by Irene and her handmaiden, he then berated the emperor personally, resulting, not surprisingly, in his being bludgeoned to death.) Veronese expanded on the story on the walls of the church, in frescoes and tempera paintings, now being worked on. On one side, archers aim their arrows across the nave. Opposite, Sebastian stands before Diocletian, boasting of his survival.

Save Venice, which earlier funded structural repairs, hopes eventually to restore the entire church, including the facade and floor. We'll have to wait for that, and for the conservation team to complete its work and remove the scaffolding in the nave, to revel in the full splendor and complexity of the decoration. But in the meantime, since San Sebastiano remains open during the restoration, we can study the radiant, recently cleaned ceiling.

There, elaborately carved, gilded and painted coffers frame large scenes from the story of Esther, with smaller panels of garlands and putti, monochrome Virtues, and "bronze" Winged Victories. Why Esther? Because she intervened to save the Jewish people, she was seen as a precursor of the Virgin Mary. (Sebastian's return to life after being shot with arrows was seen as a parallel of the Resurrection.) But the iconography of the glowing ceiling is unusual. The story of Esther's discovery and revelation of the evil counselor Haman's plot to destroy the Jews is collapsed into three rather peripheral scenes: the banishment of the Persian king Ahasuerus's first wife, Vashti, whom Esther replaced; the crowning of Esther by Ahasuerus; and the triumph of Esther's uncle Mordechai, celebrating the defeat of Haman.

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New Art Association of Harrisburg exhibit

There's an exhibition of works from the organization's permanent collection is currently on display, with art that translates into a visual catalog of the personalities, influences and styles that have been a part of AAH since its early days.Donors have been giving works of art to the Association since the organization was founded in 1926. It wasn't until the association fortuitously acquired its headquarters in the Governor Findlay mansion on Front Street that the permanent collection has been of significant size.

The current exhibit is a history of the artistic life of the association, said Terrie Hosey, AAH's curator. Some works were donated by people who were forced to downsize, or in memory of a deceased artist. Others were part of an estate or bequest. A few were donated from benefactors who helped an artist by accepting paintings in exchange for art supplies or transportation.

The permanent collection resides in the fourth floor of AAH's historic building, stored on racks that make it difficult to know exactly what's up there. There's not a lot of storage space, and some really excellent works aren't framed yet, Hosey said.Once she selected the works for the exhibit, she hauled them down several flights of stairs, carefully cleaned each item and decided how best to display the oil painting reproduction.

One beautiful old oil painting had a small tear in the canvas that couldn't be seen in the storage space. It's hardly noticeable on the wall. These works can be as fragile as living creatures. 

What can you see in the exhibit? On the main ground floor room there are colorful works in different styles by Lorenzo Ayala, Clyde McGeary, Brian Rogers and Kathleen Piunti, among other artists. Other familiar names include the late watercolorist Nick Ruggieri and Wanda Macomber.There are a couple of erotic photographs by Lancaster-based Bruce Fry and some intriguing book illustrations by Alden Turner. A three-dimensional shaped canvas in yellow and green by Gary Jurysta immediately evokes the 1960s.

On the way upstairs, there's a portrait of a vaguely familiar face on the landing. It's Dave Miner's "Johnnie Johnson." At one time, Johnson was the night watchman at the Art Association, and a fixture at exhibition openings. Continue on your way, and you'll end up in the Charles "Li" Hidley room, dedicated to works by him and his students. Hidley was an outstandingly important artist and teacher at AAH from 1966 until his death in 2003. He served as the organization's idiosyncratic curator and receptionist. He was also responsible for the acquisition of many of the works that are included in AAH's permanent collection.
Incubus.jpg'Incubus with a Lily' by Li HidleyTerrie Hosey

AAH president Carrie Wissler-Thomas was once a student of his, and she said that the room illustrates the transforming influence Hidley had on many fine artists, not just those who painted in his expressionist style. "He burst upon the scene in the mid '60s," she said, "and he dedicated himself to freeing his students from the constrictions of the past."

Wissler-Thomas is currently working on a book about the vivid history of the AAH, and she portrayed one of its founders, Mrs. Gertrude McCormick, in Open Stage of Harrisburg's recent production. It's McCormick's massive and elegant portrait that greets you when you walk in the front door of the historic building.

“Spengler’s Ominous Prophecy” is explored in depth a read-the-whole-thing essay by Robert W. Merry in the National Interest. Originally published at the start of the year, Power Line linked to Merry’s article on Sunday, and it’s definitely worth revisiting. ”A question haunts America: Is it in decline on the world scene?” Merry writes, before noting that “an analysis of Western decline must lead to Oswald Spengler.”

Spengler’s The Decline of the West was published in 1918; but Spengler* wrote it assuming that Germany would win World War I, and thus rule over of an increasingly exhausted and nihilistic Europe. Well, he got it half right — and when Germany lost the war, the title and thesis of his book was taken as a prophetic, and it became hugely influential in his native country. Spengler lived in the era that was post-Nietzsche and the rest of the 19th century “bearded God killers,” as religious scholar Martin E. Marty memorably dubbed them, but died in 1936, before seeing World War II, and the Allies’ victory of National Socialism, followed by their Cold War struggle against International Socialism.

As for Western science, it wasn’t accidental that the telescope was a Western invention or that human flight first occurred in the West. Likewise, with drama, particularly tragedy, the West developed a penetrating “biographical” approach, as opposed to the Greeks’ “anecdotal” outlook. One deals with the entirety of a life, the other with a single moment. Asks Spengler, “What relation . . . has the entire inward past of Oedipus or Orestes to the shattering event that suddenly meets him on his way?” On the other hand, “There is not the smallest trait in the past existence of Othello—that masterpiece of psychological analysis—that has not some bearing on the catastrophe.” Western artistic expression probed deeply into the psychology of life and ultimately found its way to a preoccupation with the individual—the dawning of that personality idea that later was to create the sacrament of contrition and personal absolution.

    If, in fine, we look at the whole picture—the expansion of the Copernican world into that aspect of stellar space that we possess today; the development of Columbus’s discovery into a worldwide command of the earth’s surface by the West; the perspective of oil-painting and the theatre; the passion of our Civilization for swift transit, the conquest of the air, the exploration of the Polar regions and the climbing of almost impossible mountain-peaks—we see, emerging everywhere, the prime symbol of the Faustian soul, Limitless Space. And those specially Western creations of the soul-myth called “Will,” “Force,” and “Deed” must be regarded as derivatives of this prime symbol.

But, concluded Spengler, all that yearning, probing, exploration and artistic expression was finished in the West of a century ago. Signs of the new civilizational phase, he wrote, were evident in the new pseudoartistic expression that no longer celebrated the West’s fundamental cultural ideas but rather assaulted them; in the rise of impersonal world-cities whose cosmopolitanism overwhelmed the folk traditions of old; in the preoccupation with the money culture; in declining birthrates and the rise of the Ibsen woman who belongs to herself; and finally in the death struggle that had emerged between the democratic state of England with its ethic of success and the socialist state of Germany with its ethic of duty.

Simply put, the digitization of social interaction, economic transaction, the political process and everything in between is decentralizing the world, moving it in the opposite direction of the massive centralization of Obamacare. But nobody needs a federal bureaucrat to tell him what health insurance to buy when anybody with an Internet connection can simultaneously solicit bids from dozens of competing providers, pay the winner via electronic fund transfer, manage the claims process with a laptop, consult with physicians and other medical specialists via email, and even be operated on remotely by surgeons on the other side of the globe. Rather than imposing a top-down, command-economy, welfare-state health care model with roots in Otto von Bismarck‘s Germany of 1881, a 21st century government would ask what is needed to apply to health care access the Internet’s boundless capacity to empower individual choice.

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Oil painting of GR in 1836 on display

Believed to be one of the earliest images of Grand Rapids, according to a Monday release, the painting can now be seen in the Newcomers exhibit at the museum.The image shows Grand Rapids as remembered by painter Aaron Turner, who was 13 when he first came to the area around 1836. It is believed to have been painted in the 1880s.

The painting looks east over the Grand River from Island Number One. Three structures shown are on the land that is now home to the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel, McKay Tower and Rosa Parks Circle.The painting is signed "Renrut," or "Turner" in reverse.Turner was an early Grand Rapids pioneer. He was a newspaper editor and Grand Rapids' first city clerk. In addition, he designed the city seal that Grand Rapids still uses.

The painting was given to the Public Museum in 2012 by the Harold Garter estate after being privately owned for 100 years."We are fortunate to have such an early depiction of the city decades prior to the advent of photography," Tom Dilley, Chair of the Collections Committee of the Museum, said in a statement, also saying the painting is "essential" to the museum's collection.

“They are amazing. They are something you keep forever after the horse has died,” Pink Ribbon Classic show organizer Erica Lackey said. “Oh, you are going to make me cry.”And she almost did as she talked about the paintings she has of her departed horses.In the short history of the oil painting reproduction, top prize has traditionally been a 12-by-6-inch portrait done by an artist with a very long history of painting equines in the Valley.

On Saturday morning, artist Shirley Dickerson cheerfully arrived carrying two samples of her work. Then she carefully set them beside other prizes, which were horse tack and a second-place prize that was a set of pink zebra-striped luggage.“We do travel a lot,” Lackey said, adding that the vast majority of contestants are women.

The third annual Pink Ribbon Classic, which took place at the Walla Walla County Fairgrounds this weekend, raises money for the Providence St. Mary Cancer Center Special Needs Fund. Last year it included 65 horses and riders and raised $9,000.On Saturday by noon, the number of horses entered had already reached last year’s total. By the end of the weekend, 85 horses and riders would compete in a variety of English and Western riding and showing competitions, all of them vying for top horse, top rider and top prize.

But the prize they were after was not a lump of cash, colorful ribbon or flashy saddle. What the top junior and adult riders did win were items that they will most likely treasure long after their winning horses have gone out to celestial pastures.Horse owners often have a strong bond to their horses. And for the past 60 years, Dickerson has made a small business of that bond, though she actually started with photography.

Back in the 1950s, she was in her early 20s and worked at a Milton-Freewater newspaper. On the side, she would photograph horse shows and competitions. She did it the old fashion way with film. She even had her own darkroom. And she relied on a primitive form of correspondence.As word go out, she began getting more requests for oil paintings, though she still photographed shows for a number of years.“And I don’t have a digital (camera) yet,” she said. She has her eye on one; it’s just to pricey.

As for her paintings, over the years Dickerson switched from oils to pastels. The finished product takes her up to 30 hours to complete. Cost is around $150, not including the frame. She also paints dogs and is known for her paintings of local police dogs.Besides her painting career and the 10-year stint with the newspaper, Dickerson said most of her life has been spent as a farmer’s wife.

She and her husband used to grow beets and other crops. They also raised cattle. And she was pretty handy on a horse and used to enter barrel races.

A Professor Emeritus of Speech and Hearing Science at UMass Amherst who retired 11 years ago to paint full time, Mr. Seymour, who is self-taught, works primarily with egg tempera, scratch painting, and pastels. His work depicts scenes of African-American life on-Island and elsewhere. Two of his works hang in the collection at the Martha's Vineyard Hospital. He has devoted one corner of his new studio to a display of work representing President Barak Obama and his family.

"One of the reasons I've done so many pieces on them is the magnitude of the achievement," he said. "I keep returning to the theme." A news photo he saw of the Obama family at a food bank inspired "In the Eyes of Children." In it, black schoolchildren hold up a sign reading "We love our Prez!"

"For me, it's a special piece," Mr. Seymour said. "When I was in school, we really didn't have any black figure to look up to. The images in our textbooks were white people. I saw how those little faces were beaming with pride." Another work, "Obama's Little Patriots," represents the kind of coalition that put the President in office. Mr. Seymour chose children to convey a sense of innocence and included many flags because he felt they offer so many different meanings to people. Both of these paintings combine scratch painting with pastels.

"There's probably no one else in the world working in the methods I am," he said. Scratch painting, or sgraffito, entails scratching an image onto Masonite boards covered with white clay and a layer of black ink.

Mr. Seymour's technique entails a sophisticated process. He uses special microscopic medical pins that allow him a precision not possible with conventional tips on scrape pens. Many of his works combine pan and wax pastels with traditional scratchboard materials, and the specialized tools he's developed allow him to create tonal effects not otherwise possible.

"The method evolved out of my allergies," Mr. Seymour explained. "I've always been sensitive to smells. I can't tolerate perfumes or fingernail polish. They affect my nervous system." Oil, acrylic, and watercolor paints affect him the same way. After someone suggested trying egg tempera, he fell in love with the medium, which dominated European art up to the 15th century. "It preceded oil painting," he continued. "The thought that something could last that long intrigued me."

Egg tempura is exactly what it sounds like: a fast-drying medium that is mixed with a binder such as egg yolks. The precision possible with egg tempera also appealed to him, but in keeping with his interest in experimentation, he has worked to create impressionistic effects not usually associated with that medium. Mr. Seymour cut off the tops of his brushes to make a ball, so he could pat on the medium instead of stroking it on, for a less linear effect. In a small image of a dinghy, "Ready to Go," Mr. Seymour used a palette knife, not usually considered possible with egg tempera. By protecting himself with a mask and gloves, Mr. Seymour is able to work in egg tempera, scratch painting, and pastels without developing allergic reactions.

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Homeless animals will benefit from 'eclectic' garage sale

Throughout 60-some years of living and conducting business in McCook, Otto and Frances Nilsson collected the usual items -- dishes, lamps, linens -- but then there are also some items that are not so common.The uncommon list includes: Marble countertops with and without sink-holes cut out and a lighted marble company sign; a wall-mount white porcelain drinking fountain and a small wall-mount sink equipped with a drinking fountain; a sky-blue round bathroom sink; an adjustable hair dresser's chair; a medical examination table.

For those handy in "repurposing," there are two console televisions that can be transformed into storage cupboards and/or doggie beds; there's a wooden hutch (shingled in blue) that some creative person can turn into a head board for a bed. Some items are "one of," and include a screen window, a glass window, a tip-out pantry drawer, a set of dusty-blue/gray-painted sliding cupboard doors; bumper carrying mounts for a motorcycle.There is flooring, sheets of pegboard and a set of wooden, louvered swinging saloon-type doors, three adjustable draftsman's tables and T-squares.A small artist's easel ... a huge artist's easel.There is an antique scythe, antique kerosene lamps; lamp chimneys, lighting fixtures and lamp shades.There's one 5x5-inch "Made in America" "Small Fry" cast iron skillet. There are porcelain bathroom soap and toothbrush holders.

For those whose garages are just as, if not more, important than their kitchens, there are collectible shop signs and pegboard organizers from Otto's automotive business -- United Delco, Stanadyne Diesel, Roosa Master, Robert Bosch Alignment Kits, Wagner Lockheed, Motorcraft, Autolite, Weatherhead, Red Tip Partshop.For shoppers/homeowners looking to rebuild or redecorate, there are doors -- screen doors, interior doors, exterior doors, oil painting reproduction, commercial doors.Rolls and rolls of classy flocked wallpaper.

There is signed original artwork -- a couple framed oil paintings by untrained "sidewalk" folk artists. An oil painting by an artist named "Van Lowe." A couple of framed unsigned pencil drawings of country scenes. There are large gold-colored, ornate frames.The sale will be Friday, Aug. 2, from 6 p.m. until 9 p.m., and Saturday, Aug. 3, from 9 a.m. until 5 p.m.Early birds pay double.

Enter the Rutt Building through the blue doors on the north side of the building, in the alley between West B and West C ... or a half-block east of McCook Christian Church ... or a half-block southeast of the new McCook city offices, fire and police department ... or a half block west of the Kugler Company and American Electric ... or across B Street north of the former Automotive Sales and Service building and in the alley on the north.

There are some other inscriptions present and one of them, from the Danish philosopher S?ren Kierkeg?rd, is in Danish. Translated, it reads: "The person who never leaves reason never reaches a connection with God." Another Kierkeg?rd quote enhances the allegory of the voyage as a spiritual quest: "The believer lies always above the deep; he has 70,000 leagues of water under him." Paul Anderson notes that "There is a wonderful interplay between high culture, pop culture and spirituality in Nebeker's works. Most have spiritual themes without being overtly religious."

Nebeker, who has Norwegian ancestry and has lived in Norway, has been asked "Why do you write on your paintings in Norwegian, Japanese and English?" His answer is: "I don't like the way English looks, it is so blatant. It is too easy to take literally, too easy to see what it means. I don't intentionally obscure meaning, but I distrust clarity." For that reason, looking at a Nebeker can be like listening to an opera in a foreign language: the emotion comes through even if the words can't all be deciphered.

Norway is often the setting for his paintings -- Nebeker says he dreams about Norway -- and the works of the Norwegian master Edvard Munch have exerted a major influence on him as well. In 1972 Royal received a grant to live in Munch's studio and living quarters in Ekley where he read the artist's journals and also helped organize the artist's archive of prints. At the time, Munch's work was out of favor in Norway, but Nebeker was very moved by his direct experience of the artist's environment and archives. Royal's interest in imbuing his paintings with psychological motivations and the inclusion of writing in his works both began with this crucial engagement.

Nebeker's 2013 oil The Blue Bike certainly feels quite a bit like a Munch painting: it is a deeply felt moment shaded by memory. The painting is centers on the silhouttes of Royal and his father facing each other across an isthmus in a nocturnal dreamscape. The Blue Bike distills Nebeker's recollection of the disappointment he felt as a boy when he received an inexpensive green bicycle from his father after hoping for a top of the line blue Schwinn. The canvas also alludes to Nebeker's mature, guilty realization that his father had been a man with limited resources he did all he could for his son.

"They stand so awkwardly," observes Paul Anderson of the two silhouettes; "two people who don't quite understand each other." The image of the father and son carries a very strong emotional charge: it makes the resulting painting nostalgic, apologetic and cathartic. Like many of Nebeker's strongest works, The Blue Bike is about human relationships, their emotions clarified and magnified through the filter of dreams.

Nebeker's very commanding vertical canvas When We Awaken which derives its title from a play by Henrik Ibsen, portrays a trio of figures rising from a tomb. The central figure is a woman who throws off her burial shroud as another open-mouthed figure to her right rises skyward. A third, transparent figure stands to her left, wearing a belt that is covered with numbers representing earthly knowledge. A collaged poster -- in French -- advertises a concert with an image of the Louvre's Hellenistic "Winged Victory" who serves as a sister image to the resurrected figures. At the bottom of the canvas is a line from Ibsen's play, a despairing, dreamlike drama that was originally called The Resurrection:"What shall we then see?" We find that we have never lived."

Although resurrection has certainly been a theme used by many artists for hundreds of years, the idiosyncratic nature of Nebeker's painting demonstrates how Nebeker has come to the theme on his own terms. There is a paradox at the heart of Nebeker's art that goes like this: by presenting his personal dream world, infused with cultural references and anecdotes that mean something to him he causes his viewers to think more deeply about universal themes. Not all of us have read or seen the works of Ibsen, but at some deep level we can all connect with the universal human craving to reawaken to life's beauties and deeper meanings.

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How to Catch an Art Thief When the Evidence Has Been Torched

Stolen art is tough to get rid of. A collector doesn’t want to invest in a painting that will be turned over to the authorities. In the mid-nineties, outside Philadelphia, three crooks broke into the country home of William Penn and snagged around fifty artifacts; when the theft made the papers, they threw the art in plastic bags and dumped them into the Delaware River. Three years ago, five paintings were stolen from the Musée d’Art Moderne, in Paris, and the burglar decided to stash them in a dumpster. Just his luck: the bin was picked up by a trash compactor, which munched thoughtlessly on Picasso, Matisse, and Modigliani, with Braque and Léger for dessert.

Last October, seven works of art were swiped from the Kunsthal museum, in Rotterdam: Picasso and Matisse, again, plus two Monets, a Gauguin, a Meyer de Haan, and a Lucian Freud. The entry set off an alarm, but when police arrived at the scene, the culprit had already vanished. This past January, investigators arrested a Romanian man named Radu Dogaru on charges of carrying out the heist.

His mother, Olga Dogaru, was understandably upset. She began to think of things that other mothers of art thieves have considered in the name of protecting their sons. In 2001, Mireille Breitwieser, the mother of the notorious French art thief Stéphane Breitwieser, dispensed with her son’s stolen goods by tossing them in the Rhine-Rh?ne canal, chopping them up into pieces, and incinerating a few items. In February, Olga Dogaru told the police that she had put the evidence of her son’s crime in the stove, and set it aflame.

One month later, forensic specialists collected the ashes from her house. Romanian scientists began sifting through charred refuse from Olga Dogaru’s stove using optical and electronic microscopy—a “screening process, essentially,” to recover tiny particles of oil painting reproduction, said Tom Tague, a chemist at Bruker Optics and a member of the advisory board of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “There has been such an awakening in the art community to use this kind of analysis,” which has existed since 1990 or so, he explained.

Upon arrival at a crime scene, if investigators were to find nothing more than black ash, analyzing any of it would be impossible. “But fortunately, that’s never really the case,” Tague said. “If things are charred, then you can typically identify which artist would have generated the art.”

It’s a delicate process. The eye can only see something as small as seventy-five microns, or about the width of a strand of hair. “You’re looking for particles much smaller than that,” Tague said. “So it’s tedious, really tedious. And you don’t want to disturb a crime scene. So it could take weeks or months just to recover the particles.” Even just two or three microns of dust could be the key to identifying the signature of Picasso.

“From a forensic standpoint, for evidence, you’re going to be looking for specific components of a painting,” said Robert Wittman, who joined the F.B.I. in 1988 and helped start the bureau’s Art Crime Team. Wittman says he has recovered three hundred million dollars worth of art in his career, which he describes in a book, “Priceless: How I Went Undercover to Rescue the World’s Stolen Treasures.” He told me, “In an oven, you’re going to be looking for things like metal, fasteners, nails, trace elements of the paints. There were some early paints that had lead in them. There was toxic yellow paint that French Impressionists used that had arsenic in it, and arsenic is a compound that doesn’t break down in a fire.” Dr. Ernest Oberlander-Tarnoveanu, the director of Romania’s National History Museum, said that analysts found “small fragments of painting primer, the remains of canvas, the remains of paint,” as well as copper and steel nails, according to the Associated Press. He told me by e-mail that they also found “fragments of painting with imprints of the canvas.” Gheorghe Niculescu, the head of the team from Romania’s National Research Investigation Center in Physics and Chemistry, told Reuters that they uncovered “Prussian Blue, a paint pigment discovered around 1715 and used on a large scale by painters from around 1750.”

After sorting out the relevant particles, the Romanian team used X-ray-fluorescence and X-ray-diffraction techniques to identify which elements the fragments contained. This isn’t ideal for organic materials, but it’s a common first step for forensic analysis, Tague said, and “it could work reasonably well because many of the pigments are inorganic-based.”

“You can visually see what is there,” he went on, “but you don’t know what it is without doing spectroscopy.” Infrared and Raman microspectroscopy, which study the way molecules interact with light, are used for the purpose of authentication. By collecting both the infrared and Raman spectrums of a painting, an analyst can compare the molecules of the evidence to original works from the same period. “No two molecules interact with light the same way, so it’s really specific,” Tague said. “These are common tools in every art institute and forensics lab.”

On Monday, Olga Dogaru appeared before the court in Romania, alongside her son, and told a panel of three judges that, actually, she did not burn the art. According to the New York Times, she testified that it had all been a lie: “I believed that what I said before was the best thing at the moment, that this was the right thing to do.”

Meanwhile, Niculescu, of the Romanian investigative team, assured Reuters that they had “gathered overwhelming evidence that three (of the seven) paintings were destroyed by fire.” But he could not say which of the stolen paintings they had identified, or how he could be certain that these were the works lifted from the Kunsthal museum, which declined to comment on the police investigation. The forensic scientists are continuing to complete their report, and the Dogarus’ trial is set for next month. “Our task was to establish if the ash samples provided by the public prosecutor [contained] traces of substances and implements used to make paintings—for example, nails used to fix the canvas on chassis, substances used to prepare the painting primes, and pigments used by professional painters to prepare the oil colors,” Oberlander-Tarnoveanu told me. “So far, we were not asked to do authentications.” The museum confirmed to me that “the expertise just aims to establish if remains which may originate from nineteenth-to-twentieth-century paintings were identified in the investigated material.”

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Voi painter with a Midas touch

A few years ago when Andrew Omenda Were a.k.a Madolla was asked by a traffic police officer to travel with him to Malindi to go and make paintings for the officer’s bar in Malindi, little did he know that a window of vast opportunity was about to open for him.The painter says he made very impressive artwork of different wildlife species on the walls of the bar, which aroused the interest of tourists who visited the pub.

“Tourists liked my paintings of wildlife which they said were lifelike and quite attractive. From there my artwork opened more opportunities in Malindi and I had to stay longer than I had initially planned,” says the painter.He says after completing the artwork at the pub some tourists asked him to make oil paintings for them largely on wildlife and landscapes.

“I was very lucky because at that time another Italian investor by the name Angelo who loved my artwork very much gave me free art materials, including oil paints, solvents and canvas,” recalls Madolla exuberantly. “I set out to make canvas paintings of different wildlife species especially the big five — lion, leopard, rhino, buffalo, and elephant. In total I made 25 canvas paintings.”

Hopper was born in Nyack, New York to a strict Baptist family. He is said to have developed a talent in drawing at the age of five, as well as a love of French and Russian culture. Encouraged by his parents, the young artist explored the media of pen-and-ink, charcoal, watercolor and oil, depicting scenes of nature as well as creating his own humorous political cartoons. Around the age of 18, he moved from his conservative home on the Hudson River to study at the New York Institute of Art Design, where he began working with live models and painting in the style of Edouard Manet and Edgar Degas.

In 1905, Hopper began working for an advertising agency to earn money, designing magazine covers despite his dislike for illustrations. It was during this time that he was able to travel to Europe to study artists like Rembrandt and the Impressionists. Briefly inspired by the soft palettes of the French painters, Hopper eventually settled into the dark color scheme he would become known for, painting urban scenes of street crowds and cafes through his signature shadowy lens. After returning from abroad, Hopper reluctantly continued to work in illustrations, and it wasn't until 1913 that he was able to sell his first painting, "Sailing," at the Armory Show in New York.

Hopper turned to etching urban scenes of Paris and New York while living in Greenwich Village. In 1923, he met his future wife, Josephine Nivison, the woman who would serve as his manager, oil painting reproduction, and lifelong partner. From there, his career began to rise, showing newly created oil paintings and prints throughout New York.

After a brief period of inactivity during the late 1940s, Hopper continued to create works throughout the next two decades, focusing on quintessential American themes like gas stations, motels, railroads and restaurants. Hopper lived through a series of artistic movements in the United States, but his style remained consistent, incorporating saturated colors and heightened contrasts to create dark, cinematic moods straight out of film noir. It shouldn't be a surprise, then, that Alfred Hitchcock and Sam Mendes frequently cited him as an influence.

On May 15th, 1967, Hopper passed away in his studio near Washington Square in New York City, shortly followed by his devoted wife ten months later. His body of work was donated to the Whitney Museum of American Art, with some famous pieces finding permanent homes in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, The Des Moines Art Center, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Works by Picasso, Monet, Matisse, Gauguin and Lucian Freud were stolen from Rotterdam's Kunsthal gallery in 2012. Three Romanian suspects were arrested in January, but the paintings have not been found. Instead, one of the suspect’s mothers told the police that she had burned the stolen works in a wood-burning stove in an attempt to free her son from prosecution due to lack of evidence.

These works, which include Waterloo Bridge, London, painted by Monet in 1901, are now among hundreds of valuable missing paintings. Once a painting has been stolen, it can stay underground or undiscovered for years or even decades, making the crime even harder to solve, as leads become less tangible and ownership is passed down through generations.

While she won't name many of her clients, Ray does reveal that DJ Bruno Brookes and chef Marco Pierre White rank among them. She was once commissioned to do a copy of Van Gogh's Vase with Gladioli for Dame Edna Everage. Gladioli-accessorising miserabilist Morrissey would probably like a copy of that, too, but he's out of luck: Ray doesn't do duplicates, as a matter of principle.

But isn't this forgery? Isn't Ray's whole oeuvre that of a cynical charlatan? "I'm not a forger," she says, arguing that she's different from, say, the notorious cockney forger Tom Keating, who avoided jail even after admitting to painting 2,000 fakes of old masters. On the back of each copy, Ray signs her name. Real forgers don't do that. That said, she tells me some of her clients have passed off her copies as the real thing, if not to make money then to show off to dinner guests. One household name (whose identity I can't reveal) loves to boast about his Claude Monet – when it's really his Susie Ray. But isn't Ray facilitating such grubby behaviour? "A lot of famous people pass off my copies as original," she says. "That's up to them."

You could have been a lot richer, I add, had you followed Keating's path. "In jail more likely," she retorts. "Tom Keating wasn't a very good forger. The only reason he got away with it is that he was copying in an era when the reproductions weren't very good. People didn't know how unlike the originals his versions were. I don't have that luxury."

I've spent two hours trying to replicate Manet's Asparagus, the simplest impressionist masterpiece Ray could find for me to copy. The original, in the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, is a cute art-world joke: in 1880, Manet sold collector Charles Ephrussi A Bunch of Asparagus for 800 francs. Ephrussi sent him 1,000 francs, so Manet painted this extra stalk and sent it off with a note: "There was one missing from your bunch."

My shambles contrasts sharply with the technical mastery of the canvas hanging on the wall behind me: Ray's copy of a painting from Monet's series Cabane des douaniers, effet d'après-midi. "The title sounds better in French," she says. "Customs shack in the afternoon doesn't have quite the same ring." I wonder how much a Monet copy would shift for, but this customs shack's not for sale.

I'm working from three coloured prints Ray has sourced, each one tonally very different from the other, with one cropping out the asparagus altogether. Ray has done a rough sketch and helps me mix some paints. I've never painted in oils before and am on a steep learning curve, but what I'm mostly acquiring is a profound appreciation of Manet. Just look at the illusion of solidity he creates at one end of the spear with just two brushstrokes. Damn him. My version is hopeless. It's starting to look like a seagull.

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African American Victor Hall Discovers

Hall says that he has discovered a signed painting worth millions of dollars at a local flea market. He blames corruption within the art world for the fact that art galleries familiar with the work of the artist, Martin Johnson Heade, refuse to authenticate the find. He has submitted the painting to a well-known art restoration and conservation center in Atlanta which confirmed that it is an original oil painting and that several features of the work are consistent with works known to have been created by Heade.

Hall said, "The painting is the epitome of pre-Raphael works and shows the influence of John Ruskin throughout. It is unquestionably a masterpiece with direct historical connections to John J. Audubon's, The Seaside Finch." Hall says that this may be the greatest of all Heade's works, as it is stunning and "the essence of who this great artist was. The work is of iconic importance to American art history, yet it is stagnated by a fickle authentication system that disregards the forensic science that supports its authenticity. The work is signed, and there is a comparative signature circa 1900 available."

Hall said that a prominent art dealer in New York City did contact him with an offer of a huge amount of money but nowhere close to the true value, which was puzzling as to such a proposal in light of stagnation. "I have been researching and reading about the art market for many years now and have come to a conclusion that it is a place of great corruption, filled dogmatic elites that dominate it as despots do in contradiction with American values," stated Hall.

"I have also come to believe that this great work by Martin Johnson Heade may cause problems for the art markets in his hummingbird line as it is the only known work of the great American-only Dusky Seaside Sparrow and trumps all others intellectually and in beauty, thus problematic and at the sacrifice of true American art history," added Hall. "This is an American disgrace and certainly not the American way. There was a time in this country when virtue was better than gold, but it now appears to be about egos and greed."

Hall said, "There is much to be learned in accepting forensic science as the main focus in authenticating art as we should not be remiss in our recognition of a new book on forgeries that is on the market that provides examples of Heade's work which have been successfully forged!"

Hall plans to continue publishing articles and keeping the press informed about the status of this Martin Johnson Heade masterpiece, possibly his greatest work of a now extinct species that now seems to be caught in market that it intimidates.

Hall, as well as many he has spoken with on this oil painting reproduction, have come to realize that federal regulatory is a must in order to save national treasures from being exploited and caught up in a place where second markets are pervasive at the denial of history. "This painting will one day find its way into the great American halls of art and justice."

"I know that the painting was upside down, so I did the upside-down dance," Nina said. "The grass is upside down."Nina was among those taking part recently in the first week of Lively Spaces, an art, poetry and dance camp for children at Colby's museum. The dance portion of the camp is conducted this year in front of two large paintings by Alex Katz in the museum's Schupf Wing.One of the oil-on-canvas paintings, "Black Brook," was completed in 1995 and is a gift to the museum by the artist.

After viewing the painting, Nina proceeded to demonstrate her dance -- an inverted, arms akimbo, twist that goes in several directions at once to the finale.The dance instructor is Jeni Frazee, a Waterville elementary school teacher.Lauren Lessing, Colby's Mirken curator of education, said Nina's observation was right.

"The image is reversed by the fact that it's reflected," Lessing said. "She's perceiving something there about orientation that I think is really central about this composition. It's exactly what we're hoping that kids learn from this program."Lessing said children are learning to look and see and to understand art by responding creatively to what they see.She said this kind of learning, which is slowly being eliminated in public schools as funding to the arts is cut, is crucial to creativity, problem solving and language skills.

"We're hoping with programs like this we can come in and supplement what the schools are losing," Lessing said.Matt Timme, Mirken education and public program coordinator at the museum, said the summer camp for youngsters in second to fifth grades was started by Lessing seven years ago. He said it was cobbled together with discretionary funding the first couple of years, then began to take shape in its third year with a partnership grant from the Maine Arts Commission.

For the past three years, the summer camp has been funded by Karen and Jeff Packman, both members of the Colby Museum Board of Governors. The camp runs five days a week on about $12,000, which includes staff, art supplies and busing for children at the childcare program at the George J. Mitchell school.

There is room for about 30 students for the three-week camp, which closes with a big performance for family and friends Friday, Aug. 2, at the museum. Enrollment is first-come, first-served."Everything is free," Timme said. "All our educational programs are completely free, including this camp."

He said the 30 students split into small groups for poetry, dance and drawing so every student can receive attention.The drawing class concentrated on a scattered pile of summer shoes and the children were asked to draw the outline of the pile without taking their colored pens off the paper. The poetry class was based on objects the children observed in sculptures they saw at the museum.Frazee said the dance program this year is based on the two Katz paintings, "Black Brook" -- the one that appears to be upside down -- and "Tan Woods."

"They had amazing ideas about them; they were noticing patterns," Frazee said. "They were noticing words like straight, curved, square, reflections, so they are going to use those words in their dance. I'm guiding their ideas."

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A crafty way for mothers and their toddlers

A new addition to the numerous programs and services that the Centre hosts for the Westman community is Mom & Tots Crafty Mornings. Held every Tuesday from 10:30 a.m. until noon throughout the summer, Crafty Mornings has mothers and toddlers building a new craft each week. For example, some upcoming
crafts include milk-jug sailboats, magic wands and play dough.“We’re trying to give women an opportunity to do something a little more social but in a safe and comfortable environment,” says Kathleen Barteaux, program coordinator for the Women’s Resource Centre.

The idea for Crafty Mornings started last summer when the Centre held a couple of small craft projects that went over very well. “We have all of these craft supplies left over from various programs over the years, so we’d really like to utilize them. We figured this would be a good way to do that while bringing a fun and easy program to women in the community,” recollects Barteaux.

“Moms need an opportunity to create and share something with their kids – to make something special. We’re going to try to give them an opportunity to do that,” adds the program coordinator.Other than helping mothers connect with their tots, Barteaux says that her favourite part of Crafty Mornings has been researching the crafts and getting input from the Resource Centre’s volunteers and staff about them. John Beer started collecting William Morris work when he was a teenager whilst working at Hilles House in Stroud and now at the age of 49 has opened a William Morris museum in Christ Church, Painswick.

John, had been looking for a museum location for a while when he discovered a hidden treasure at the church in Gloucester Street, Painswick almost 18 months ago.  "As soon as I saw the window I knew the building was the perfect place for the museum and I began to orchestrate a plan to purchase the building," said John who owns over 2,000 pieces of furniture inspired by the Arts and Crafts movement.

John, who buys and sells art through his own company Osborn and Mercer, wrote to the owners of the church outlining his plans and within 30 minutes of the purchase deadline he had was invited to make an offer.

The museum opened on Sunday, May 12 and is now filled with the work of designers such as C R Ashbee, Ernest Barnsley and Gordon Russell and at the back of the church behind the alter is a room filled entirely with work of oil painting reproduction.

"This idea has been in the pipeline for many years and it is so great to see the museum open and visitors coming in to enjoy the pieces which I have spent all my life collecting," he said. “If you don’t have a good reason to start a business, you won’t succeed,” said Sasha Popkov, who just graduated from eighth grade at Livonia’s Clarenceville Middle School where she helped supervise the school’s student credit union sponsored by Co-op Services Credit Union. She is also an experienced entrepreneur who knows what she’s talking about.

Popkov and her mom decided to combine their skills to create “Crafts 4 the Cure,” a business that makes and sells duct tape crafts including wallets, purses, flowers, glass cases, I.D. holders and many other items.It’s clear that the younger Popkov is in charge though she has recruited her mom, grandmother and two brothers for production operations.

She knows firsthand that running a business is not easy and said that it takes a lot of effort and dedication. “It’s fun and cool – a lot of people my age don’t think about this,” said Popkov, adding that volunteering at the student credit union helped her sort out her money better and become more organized.With the exception of purchasing materials for the business, all proceeds are donated to the American Cancer Society. Popkov currently serves on the committee team and survivorship recruitment committee for the Relay for Life of Ann Arbor.

“It’s very rewarding to watch someone like Sasha use her amazing drive and volunteer experience at our student credit union to start a business at such a young age,” said Jeremy Cybulski, youth and community development coordinator for Co-op Services Credit Union.Popkov reported that Co-op Services was the only financial institution that would let her open a business checking account for her company.

In the fall, Popkov will attend Clarenceville High School and plans to continue her business “forever” or perhaps until she achieves her next goal, which is to become an attorney.

BDP Furniture manufactured and upholstered all the fitted seating within the venue. Established last year the company operates from its Glasgow base, manufacturing bespoke furniture for the hospitality sector. Director, Pat Macleod said: “We have been growing healthily since we began trading last year. Work went well on the Pizza Express in Morningside and it was a pleasure working with Mark and the other designers involved.”

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Napa's Grande Dame

It was 2009 and Mrs. Mondavi's husband, famed vintner Robert Mondavi, had died the year before. After 25 years of living in a storied Napa Valley estate, in an 11,500-square-foot home best known for the swimming pool in its living room, she was ready to downsize.

The Ruin was the first house her real-estate agent showed her. Mrs. Mondavi recalls the 3,000-square-foot, four-bedroom, five-bathroom house as being dark, with a roof that leaked and walls that blocked the views. That was before she looked at 25 other listings, which she describes as "horrors"; she decided to return to the Ruin a second time. On her third visit, she brought along friend and architect Howard Backen to ask his opinion of the house and 9 acres that sit off a narrow, winding road on a hillside overlooking the Napa Valley.

"He said 'Take it, I'll do it, you'll never get a view like that,' " she remembers. And so she took it, on the condition that Mr. Backen, whose clients have included Robert Redford, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Steve Jobs and numerous Napa wineries, would design the house.

"Margrit said, 'Can you make this beautiful?' and I said, 'You can make anything beautiful, but—' and she turned to the real-estate lady and said, 'I'll take it because he can make it beautiful.' I had a 'but' there, but she cut me off. I didn't finish the sentence and then I was committed," he says.

Mr. Backen can now elaborate on his "but": The windows were wrong. The space was too broken up. There was no connection between the house and the view or the outdoor space. Mrs. Mondavi wanted a pool off of her bedroom, but that meant building it 15 feet off the ground.

Originally from Switzerland, Mrs. Mondavi met her future husband in 1967 while working as a tour guide at the winery that he founded in 1966 and turned into an iconic brand. She went on to become director of public relations, starting programs such as the winery's summer music festival, which has brought artists like Ella Fitzgerald and Harry Belafonte to Napa.

Mr. and Mrs. Mondavi were married for 28 years and beyond the winery—which Constellation Brands acquired in 2004—were well-known philanthropists, donating $35 million to the University of California at Davis to establish the Robert and Margrit Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts and the Robert Mondavi Institute for Wine and Food Science. Their Wappo Hill home was known as a place that brought together a who's who of wine, food and art.

Wappo Hill, which was originally asking $25 million, sold for an undisclosed amount in 2011 to Jean-Charles Boisset, proprietor of Boisset Family Estates, which owns a collection of wineries in France and California, and his wife, Gina Gallo, a winemaker at her family's E. & J. Gallo Winery. Mr. Boisset says they weren't just attracted to the architecture of the Cliff May-designed home, but also the property's history, oil painting reproduction.

Mrs. Mondavi declines to say what she paid for her home or how much she spent on the renovation. Agi Smith, a real-estate agent with Pacific Union International-Christie's International Real Estate, who saw the property before it was redone, says a home like this would go for at least $4.5 million. Nearby, a 5,000-square-foot home on 5? acres with a pool is listed for $6 million.

If Mrs. Mondavi was ready to downsize, it doesn't mean she was ready to slow down. She starts each day with a 50-minute workout in the solar-heated, salt water infinity pool just off the master bedroom, as she had envisioned. She still regularly goes to her office at the winery some 35 minutes away in her convertible.

With two bedrooms and 2? baths, the modern, one-level house has been kept simple. The floor is a neutral travertine. The walls and ceilings are Backen White (Mr. Backen's personal formula, which he describes as a "warm white"). The entrance hall disappeared to enlarge the living room.

Mr. Backen eliminated as many walls as possible. On the west side of the house, facing the view of the valley, he added walls of glass doors out onto the terrace. On the east side of the house, glass doors open onto the garden.

To create a connection between indoors and out, landscape designer Claudia Schmidt and Mr. Backen created a "Zen garden" off the dining room, which includes a seating area and a dining area on a raised terrace. The Chinese pistache tree shades the area from the sun and Ms. Schmidt added a small fountain. It is now a favorite spot of Mrs. Mondavi's and is easily accessible from the kitchen, where she spends much of her time.

Ms. Schmidt also created the "laundry garden." The house came with a clothesline that Mrs. Mondavi wanted to keep (she uses it), but Ms. Schmidt surrounded it with Mrs. Mondavi's cutting and vegetable garden. Mrs. Mondavi chose the cutting roses. As with the interiors, Ms. Schmidt describes the palette of the garden as "subtle and calming" with shades of gray, green, white, purple and blue throughout.

Mrs. Mondavi replaced the lawn surrounding the entrance with gravel and olive trees. Nestled there are 90 stone mushrooms, eight to 12 inches tall, made by a local artist. She gave them to her husband for his 90th birthday. "What are you going to give a man who has everything?" she asks.

For the interiors, Mrs. Mondavi brought in Thomas Bartlett, a designer in Napa who has known her for more than 40 years and advised on her previous home. They used much of the furniture from that home, including the living room sofas that Mrs. Mondavi had made up 18 years ago in heavy, cream colored cotton. "She had virtually everything and I spent a number of days pushing and pulling until everything felt right," says Mr. Bartlett.

For the interiors, Mrs. Mondavi brought in Thomas Bartlett, a designer in Napa who has known her for more than 40 years and advised on her previous home. They used much of the furniture from that home, including the living room sofas that Mrs. Mondavi had made up 18 years ago in heavy, cream colored cotton. "She had virtually everything and I spent a number of days pushing and pulling until everything felt right," says Mr. Bartlett.

Echoing the home's neutral palette of fabrics, Mrs. Mondavi's closet also tends toward muted colors. "I don't look good anymore in prints. I wear black, brown, navy. Color ages you."

Inside the house, the neutral background serves as a gallery for works by Picasso, Giacometti, Diebenkorn, Frankenthaler, Tamayo, Oliveira and Mrs. Mondavi's friend Wayne Thiebaud. There are also oil lamps from Jerusalem, betel-nut boxes from Myanmar and masks from Africa. There are Russian icons, Roman glass and antiques from Laos and Morocco.

The heart of the home is the kitchen, where Mrs. Mondavi likes to paint so she can hear her soups cooking. She stands at the marble counter with her brushes, her watercolors and a large pad of watercolor paper. She used to do oils, but grew tired of carrying around all the accouterments that go with oil painting. Her dog, Luce, a Bichon Frise who has only one eye after an unfortunate run-in with a bigger dog, sleeps in a flower-shaped bed at the end of the counter.

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A Night in the Museum

I arrived at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History last Wednesday afternoon, carrying a sleeping bag and the cushion from the bright orange loveseat I scored for free on Craigslist last year. Along with several museum professionals and artists from around the world, I was going to be spending the night at the museum as part of Hack the Museum Camp, the brainchild of Nina Simon, executive director of the MAH who describes it thus: “What happens when you give 75 people 48 hours to make an exhibit that challenges museum convention?”

The plan was to work in teams of four or five to create exhibits around artifacts from the museum’s permanent collection that are not currently on display. This is the first time Simon has ever tried anything like this, and despite her reputation for risk-taking, she was well aware of the stakes. “This is creative risk for everyone. We’re giving you our biggest gallery, and whatever you guys make is going to be up for six weeks,” she told the campers.

On Wednesday afternoon, they participated in a white elephant game to choose which artifacts they would be working with. And they were not afraid to boo when they did not like what they saw.

Delighted “oohs” and “aahs” had been emerging from campers’ lips for a while, as teams chose sealed boxes and then opened them to reveal descriptions of things like the first-ever baseball pitching machine, a gravestone and 1960’s Boardwalk tickets. But then one team picked a box with a printout of an oil painting reproduction . The entire group of 75 collectively booed. They did not come here to hang oil paintings on walls.

All told, three groups wound up with paintings and most of the other twelve groups got 3D art objects or historical artifacts. Sarah Margerum of Boston, whose group got a painting of William F. Cooper, Santa Cruz’s first mayor, sat cross-legged on the ground staring into the portrait’s eyes for 10 solid minutes that first night. I caught up with her at around 9pm, but after three hours of brainstorming, her group was still stumped on how to best display Mr. Mayor.

“I think honestly museums haven’t really mastered how to help people look at portraits in a traditional way,” said Margerum. “I don’t think they’re that good at the inside of the box way. I think what I’m struggling with is how can I do it really well inside the box and then go beyond that.” Her teammate, Lauren Paullin from Richmond, Virginia added, “it’s hard to imagine something you’ve never experienced.”

They had fair points. Many of the other groups with less traditional artifacts already had a ton of ideas. The group that got a stack of 1960s roller coaster tickets had zeroed in on their thesis and skipped off to the Boardwalk to ride the Giant Dipper for themselves, recording the sound of the creaking wooden ride, plus their screaming, to use in their exhibit.

Back at the MAH, they sat around a table planning the big red stripes they were going to paint on the wall behind their exhibit. “We can give ourselves permission to be more garish than other people. Which is exciting. Because I love garish,” said Joel Parsons, who is from Memphis, Tennessee.

At the end of day one, each group had picked a space in the museum’s second floor gallery and committed to having something show-worthy in time for the exhibit’s soft opening on Friday night, in just a day and a half. While some campers made their way back to hotels, many of the younger campers opted to sleep over in the museum to save money.

I spent the evening meandering about chatting with people, and in typical reporter fashion, blatantly eavesdropping. On the stage, MAH staff had set up a tent with an iPad in which people could record confessional-style experiences about their time at Museum Camp. Around 11:30pm on that first night, two young women commandeered it for a good half hour, giggling about who was “cute and not married.”

Upstairs in the outdoor sculpture garden a group of campers—two from Philadelphia and one from North Carolina—talked about how to make people care about museums. If only they could engage adults the way that little kids are passionately engaged in memorizing dinosaur facts, they mused over paper cups of red wine.

Eventually, I made my way downstairs and crawled into a corner in an otherwise empty room housing an exhibit on the Soquel baseball team. I lied down on my couch cushion and listened to the sounds of the other campers echoing through the museum. I heard laughter from the group up on the sculpture garden, and the noise of something falling and hitting the floor.

Unlike sleeping alone in a deserted museum, which I can imagine would be a kind of otherworldly and creepy, this just kind of felt like crashing out on a friend’s floor after a house party. I suppose a couch cushion in the corner of an exhibit room isn’t that much weirder than the time my high school friend Zach curled up under a kitchen floor mat to sleep off his New Years’ Eve buzz.

By afternoon the next day, the campers were ready to prototype. They’d set up the framework of their exhibits with cardboard, paper and painters’ tape, and the ground in the exhibit room was covered in scraps of paper and supplies. One team was soliciting answers to the prompt, “what’s the most painful thing you’ve done for beauty?” with Post-It notes. The team with the portrait of Mayor Cooper had spent the day on the street with the portrait, asking passersby to share their reactions. They recorded audio they were planning on using as a way of bringing Cooper into the 21st century streets of his town.

And the roller coaster ticket group had stripped things down significantly, hoping to provide a space that, compared to the rest of the room, would be “conspicuously clean and clear” to provide an opportunity for reflection, said Parsons. Rather than garish red stripes, they opted instead for a simple text headline that reads, “Will You Remember This?” They’ll be giving everyone who enters the exhibit a hand-drawn ticket and the option to either throw it away or keep it, challenging them to think about experiences—including this one—in a new way. “Will you keep this as a memento? Is it a memory thing? Is this valuable to you, and why are we making these decisions?” he asks.

Elizabeth Spavento, whose group explored questions about beauty in their exhibit centering around a historic Miss California scepter, said the overall experience of Hack the Museum camp was unlike anything she’s experienced in her museum career. “I’m used to working with people that are like, ‘Oh that’ll never work,’ or ‘That’ll never pass code,’” she says. “So it’s nice to hear, ‘Wow, I’m listening to your idea. And I like it.’”

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New BYU exhibit featuring artwork

To the right of a spacious lobby filled with paintings of the Nativity and sculptures of biblical figures hangs an iconic painting of a humble carpenter healing a man near a pool called Bethesda.For Dawn Pheysey, head curator at the BYU Museum of Art, this is where it all began.

In 2010, the BYU Museum of Art hosted more than 306,000 visitors in an exhibit featuring the life of Christ through 19th century Danish artist Carl Bloch's paintings. The exhibit was titled "Carl Bloch: The Master's Hand."Beginning in November, the BYU Museum of Art will open a new exhibit featuring the works of Carl Bloch and other 19th century painters called "Sacred Gifts: The Religious Art of Carl Bloch, Heinrich Hofmann, and Frans Schwartz."

The painting that inspired it all, the BYU-owned "Christ Healing the Sick at Bethesda" by Bloch, which was on display in the 2010 exhibit, will be featured in the new collection as well.BYU obtained the painting, which has become an icon for many Christians, after what Pheysey calls a series of fortuitous events — because becoming the sole proprietor of an original 1883 canvas oil painting is no easy feat.

"It took several hoops in order to get permission to purchase it," Pheysey said.The transaction acted as a springboard for Pheysey's dream —an exhibition of Bloch and other artists' religious paintings."We began going over to Denmark every year and building relationships with people there in the churches," Pheysey said.

That friendship paved the way for what Pheysey called some presumptuous requests — four altar paintings, the centerpiece of many churches in Denmark, and eight paintings from the Frederiksborg Castle in Denmark.While the process for borrowing paintings from other museums is easy, Pheysey said this was a particularly steep request because both the altarpieces and the paintings from the castle are permanent fixtures.

"And so we ask, and it sinks in for a minute and we tell them about the 306,000 people who came to the last show and how they lined up, and how there were throngs dying to see these works," said museum director Mark Magleby. "And they think, 'We love these works,' but then their altruistic feelings take over and they say, 'We'd like to share them with all of those people.'"

BYU's exhibit in 2010-11, "Carl Bloch: The Master's Hand," featured four of Bloch's altar paintings from churches in Denmark, and the upcoming exhibit, "Sacred Gifts: The Religious Art of oil painting reproduction, Heinrich Hofmann, and Frans Schwartz," which opens Nov. 15, will feature eight paintings from Bloch's "Life of Christ" series, located in the King's Oratory at the Frederiksborg Castle museum.

Though Bloch's paintings will be featured again, Pheysey said visitors can expect a different show."This exhibit is totally new," she said. "This time we were able to borrow all the paintings we were not able to borrow the first time. It's the completion of the exhibit."And this new exhibit is making history.

"These paintings have never before been out of the oratory since they were installed ... in the 1860s-70s, and they will not be loaned again," castle director Mette Skougaard said in a press release.Skougaard said the castle's decision to grant BYU's request came as a result of the great importance Bloch's paintings have to the people of Utah.

The 67 portraits on view explore family relationships and record fashion and furniture, and some of his sitters hold things denoting their occupations. Most of these prosperous folks lived in small towns and on farms in New Jersey from 1815 to 1835. Williams also painted some shipmasters and city folk during his three years in New York City, 1828-30.

The best of Williams’s pastels and oil portraits are intimate and penetrating. He has been classed with such folk artists as Erastus Salisbury Field, Ammi Phillips, John Brewster, and William Matthew Prior, who have left us a painted record of the generation who lived in the first half of the 19th century, before the age of photography.

Micah Williams’s style was recognized before he was identified as the artist. When Mrs. J. Amory (Margaret) Haskell (1864-1942) was amassing the most extensive collection of Americana ever brought together by one person (it took Parke-Bernet Galleries ten sales, 1944-45, to disperse Haskell’s hoards of glass, ceramics, silver, and furniture that she did not give to museums), she bought six portraits by Micah Williams. At that time, they had been identified as by Henry Conover. She gave them to the Monmouth County Historical Association.

“By the late 1950’s Monmouth County Historical Association had amassed the largest public collection of this artist’s work,” writes Bernadette M. Rogoff, curator of the Monmouth County Historical Association’s collections, in the catalog for the exhibition. She said she had been working on this project for 20 years and it was hard to limit the number of portraits to just 67.

Because his style changed little, Rogoff finds it hard to date artworks by Williams. Of the 272 identified portraits by Micah Williams only 11 are inscribed with the month, day, and year of completion, and an additional six with the year of completion. Newspaper sheets used as a secondary support for the paper that Williams used for pastels often help date a work. Rogoff believes Williams had access to books and actual art instruction when he chose the life of an itinerant artist. She cites Archibald Robertson’s instruction book, Elements of Graphic Arts, and notes that Robertson started the first American art school (in New York City), though Rogoff found no record of Williams attending the school.

Williams was immediately successful. Monmouth County, New Jersey, was one of his largest sources of patronage. A successful agricultural area, it was excellent for grazing animals and growing fruit and vegetables for the city markets. The descendants of Dutch and English families (Smock, Smalley, Schenck, Dubois, Van Mater, Conover, Longstreet, and Vanderveder) appear in identified portraits as doctors, horse and dairy farmers, orchardists, politicians, militia officers, storekeepers, potters, silversmiths, carpenters, and their wives and children. According to Rogoff’s count, between 1818 and 1821 Williams produced more than 60 portraits of Monmouth County residents. Williams was recommended from one to another.

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Exhibit by artist battling Parkinson's on display

Gail Paggiola was about 3 years old she met Dona Greaney Winners in preschool. As the two grew up together in Manchester, Paggiola recognized and admired Winners' keen artistic ability."We were in the Craft Club at Manchester High School," said Paggiola. "She would make wonderful jewelry." As an adult, Winners was gifted in quilting, knitting and gardening. But her true flair comes out through her paintings.

Vibrant colors, simple shapes grouped into complex arrangements, shades that sharpen and fade. Each canvas is riotously different, but all are joined by a graceful, unique style. It is all the more remarkable that the artist produced the works while battling Parkinson's disease.Paggiola brought a collection of Winners' works to the South Windsor Public Library, where an exhibit will be on display through the end of July across from the children's section. Winners has resided in Manchester, East Hampton, South Windsor and East Windsor, and now lives in Powhatan, Va.

"She used to be an oil painter until the shaking stopped her," said Paggiola. Winners turned to a new medium: tissue paper oil painting reproduction. Tissues are dyed, allowed to dry, and then torn into shapes which she arranges into floral patterns, animals and other shapes. Browsing through her works reveals that hydrangeas, wisterias, roses and foxgloves are among her floral muses; giraffes, elephants, swans, foxes and hummingbirds are among her animal ones. Some works are 3D, popping off the surface, while in others, the tissue is so flat it appears to be part of the canvas.

Paggiola said that when an art teacher taught Winners tissue paper painting, he was so impressed by her adoption of the method that he urged her to write a book about it, which she did and hopes to publish.Paggiola reports that her friend's case is worsening. "She had deep brain surgery," said Paggiola. "She has tremors on both sides of her brain." Medication once gave her a 20-minute window during which she could do her art. "But now I don't think she even has that," said Paggiola.

The exhibit at the library is a way for Paggiola to recognize Winners' talent. "I'm doing this to validate her as an artist," she said. The art also stands as testimony that those with debilitating illnesses can break free from their restrictions. "Mary [Etter] from the library said it shows that people with Parkinson's don't have to give up everything," Paggiola said.

One shelf displays paintings Winners did for Christmas cards and wedding invitations for family members. Many of the works have special significance to Paggiola, including the occasional inside joke.

Fourteen-year-old Nick Metz says he’s intrigued by art’s ever-changing transformation from one style to the next, referencing the transition from Figurative Impressionism to Abstract art that occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The same can be said about his own work, which has evolved throughout grade school from molding a black-and-brown-spotted gray leopard seal out of clay to sketching Japanese cartoons and "fun, random things."

Nick’s most recent work — and most professional — includes Paul Cezanne-esque still life oil paintings and a pastel, Amedeo Modigliani-inspired self-portrait that won the young artist first place in the Sargent Art Brighter World Art Contest this past spring. The national competition is open to students in Grades K-12 and grants the winning child a trip to New York City art museums with a parent and his or her art teacher.

"I had a lot of fun making it," says the humble artist and Hillsdale resident of the drawing, adding it is his favorite artwork to date, and the victory his first big win. Like many artists who reflect nonchalantly on their award-winning masterpiece, Nick says he was just a seventh-grader in his art class having fun when he depicted himself clad in an orange beret with his hand to his chin — his spectacles magnify his blue eyes.

Nick’s portrait, as well as his other award-winning artworks, will be on display at his first exhibit at the Hillsdale Public Library throughout July, with a meet the artist reception on July 16 at 6:30 p.m.Another artwork in the exhibit is "Still Life Study in Glass and Light," which won Nick the Ridgewood Art Institute’s (RAI) "Instructors’ Scholarship" at the 54th Annual Young Artists Show last month.

"I like how you can express so many different things in so many different ways," says Nick about his interest in art. His influences include Spanish Catalan painter Joan Miró and French pointillist painter Georges-Pierre Seurat.

Nick recently graduated from George G. White Middle School from where he earned the Gold Medal in Art. The first artist in his family after his grandmother — who does china painting — Nick says his artistic talent is innate, and a love that he incorporates into his studies at school. Many of his reports have involved some aspect of art, including a paper he wrote on the start of Modern Art for his Language Arts class, and art and clothing in Japan for a Social Studies paper.

The artist, who is also a member of Hillsdale Boy Scout Troop 109 and the Stonybrook Swim and Dive teams, hones his skills at RAI at which he currently takes oil painting lessons. His painting, "Kettle," is also part of his collection currently on display at the library. The artwork, which, despite something Nick’s father, Al, says was his son’s second attempt at oil painting, won him the Scholastic Art Silver Key in the 90th Annual Scholastic National Art Competition held at a reception at the Montclair Art Museum earlier in the year.

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Nancy Purnell purifies Vineyard landscapes

"I never go anywhere without my sketch pad," painter Nancy Purnell told The Times. Her favorite Island spots are Long Point, Stonewall Beach, Zack's Cliffs, and Moshup's Trail, and they are all represented in her current exhibit, The Preservation of the Island on Canvas, on display at the Vineyard Haven Library through July.

This artist has been coming to the Vineyard since 1970, summering or living year-round at her home in Vineyard Haven from 1978 to 2003. Her attachment to the Island is deep, and while she is now based in New York City and her visits are less frequent, she makes a point of seeking out her favorite Island painting spots when she visits.

"My source of inspiration has always been nature," explained Ms. Purnell, who started painting at age eight. The light, color, inner forms, and spirituality found in the natural world engage the oil painting reproduction. In the past, she has also collaborated three times with this reviewer, a long-time friend, to illustrate three books of Vineyard poetry, and wrote her own, "I Love You So." The latter consists of the painter's love poetry and nude paintings, in which she envisions the nude as landscape.

Over the years, her palette has varied from darker tones to vibrant, saturated blues, oranges, and yellows that celebrate the fecundity of land and water. The current group of paintings reflects a new direction, in which she has moved toward paler, more purified forms, working with yellow ochre, burnt umber, raw sienna, and Delft blue, mixing them with whites and moving toward paler, more purified effects.

"I try to simplify everything so it's almost spiritual," the artist commented. In paintings like "Stonewall Beach" and "Long Point Fog," she concentrated on subtler tones to establish a sense of nostalgia.Two of her more powerful paintings are "Ocean Up-Island I," and "Ocean Up-Island II." The ocean holds a particular fascination for Ms. Purnell, who spends days trying to understand the action of waves and get the forms right. "I want you to feel the movement of the water," she said.

Ms. Purnell enjoys painting plein air, doing small paintings on site, then bringing them back into the studio to expand her ideas onto larger canvases. "Everything comes from drawing or painting on the spot," she asserted. "West Tisbury Junipers," however, is one painting that harks back to her earlier work, using darker shades in a typically confident composition, where the windblown evergreens march left to right like sentinels behind rows of red and green grasses.

Studying at the Chicago Art Institute and earning a BFA from the University of Hartford Art School, Ms. Purnell was influenced by painters from the Josef Albers school. She belongs to the Society of Illustrators, and she draws at their Sketch Nights on a regular basis. She teaches at Cooper Union in a program for inner-city students, and one for senior citizens run by Health Outreach at New York Presbyterian Hospital.

"It's fascinating to follow what they're thinking when they are facing a two-dimension space for the first time," she said of her students. Like their teacher, they have begun to carry sketch pads with them for drawing.

The gleaming glass building of the Colby College Museum of Art not only stands out on campus – surrounded by the red brick, Georgian-style classrooms and dormitories – but now also stands out across Maine.A new addition means the museum now has 38,000 square feet of exhibition space, the largest in the state. The museum’s more than 8,000 works will be on display when it reopens to the public July 14 after more than a year of renovations.

Organizers hope that the revamped museum – along with others like the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Portland Museum of Art and Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland – will put Maine on the map for art lovers across the country.“I think that Colby along with those other institutions and the new addition will raise the profile of the state in terms of being a destination for art experiences,” said Sharon Corwin, the museum’s director and chief curator.

The glass facade of the new Alfond-Lunder Family Pavilion is designed to reflect the surroundings in the sun and allow the art to be seen from the outside at night. It adds 10,000 square feet of exhibition space to the museum’s four wings and serves as the new entrance.

David Hockney was born on July 9, 1937 in Bradford, Yorkshire -- the fourth of five children in a traditional middle class English family. Hockney's father was an accountant an an amateur artist and his mother was a devoted homemaker who instilled in her children a serious work ethic, one that would certainly serve the budding artist well later in life.

After graduating from Bradford School of Art in the late 1950s, Hockney immediately began making waves in the art world. In fact, you can see an illustrated chronology on his website here. He achieved international acclaim through his pool paintings, done on a trip to Southern California where he met Christopher Isherwood and Kenneth E. Tyler, among other like-minded writers and artists. It was here that Hockney met his former boyfriend and painting subject, photographer Peter Schlesinger, who told the Daily Beast that Hockney “taught me that you learn painting by doing it."

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FineArteStore Offers Hand Painted Oil Paintings Reproductions

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If you found Eric March through his paintings, you’d be taken by his lyrical depictions of the city. If you found him through his graphic design, you’d be impressed by his precise eye. And if you found him through his illustrations, you’d be surprised at the wide range of his styles.

Eric March is, not necessarily listed in order of importance, a fine artist, illustrator, art instructor, graphic designer, husband, and new father. Except for his teaching, the rest of this list is centered in March’s Long Island City studio—which is not the stereotypical concrete loft, but a small room in his brownstone apartment. March thinks deeply about the cultural impact of his work and what makes good art. This side of him isn’t always apparent—he comes off as a friendly, earnest man, animated, and quick to laugh.

March seems to experience the world with keen curiosity and good humor, traits that often reveal themselves in his paintings. Some of them celebrate places New Yorkers know and love, some take us to the city’s less-traveled underbelly, and others offer a quirky take on the familiar.Hailing from Libertyville, Ill., March arrived in New York City in 2001, a month before the September 11 attacks. After 9/11, the art world was shocked into a silent spell, March recalls, but that didn’t discourage him.

‘Do you think Bartoli’s dad told her when she was little “you’re never going to be a looker?”’ probed the self-styled oil painting, forcing the BBC into an apology and Inverdale to curl up into an even smaller ball — if, indeed, that is physically possible.He apologised on-air on Sunday for his ‘clumsy’ phraseology and has written to Bartoli, too.

The Frenchwoman responded with intelligence and grace, suggesting if Inverdale saw her dolled up on Sunday's Champions’ Ball ‘he could change his mind’, but his comments remain shockingly crass, insensitive and unacceptable from an experienced broadcaster. It was, though, the patronising tone and the automatic assumption of a divine right to cast judgment on Bartoli’s appearance that was particularly irksome.

Who does Inverdale think he is? Some kind of Simon Cowell Svengali figure for sports stars?Ignore the duo’s shared penchant for dodgy hair, orange skin and high trousers and Inverdale’s comments sound a bit rich, to say the least.

Oh but forgive me. I’ve cast aspersions on the way Inverdale looks and not on his proficiency as a broadcaster. How crushingly insensitive of me. Imagine having to put up with that every time you walk on to a tennis court in front of a worldwide television audience, rather than hiding away in a hovel with a microphone.

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Agriculture exhibit opens at New Visions Gallery

New Visions Gallery invites visitors to experience cultural stories of the agricultural landscape of this beautiful country as told through the eyes of artists at the 27th annual Culture & Agriculture exhibit, opening Sunday.

Artists throughout the United States offer unique and thoughtful interpretations of this rural theme and help us remember the rich culture and diversity that surrounds agricultural life. More than 90 works of art will be on display in New Visions Gallery from July 7 to Aug. 30.An opening reception is scheduled from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday and will feature live music, refreshments and an opportunity to meet represented artists. The event is free and open to the public.

Every Culture & Agriculture exhibit brings a new collection of work by a variety of artists, each of whom brings a fresh interpretation of technique, media, process and subject matter on agricultural themes. Participating artists hail from Idaho to North Carolina and other points throughout the United States, including Wisconsin. Artists offer everything from traditional paintings, fiber creations, classic renderings, breathtaking photography, mixed media sculpture and more. Artwork in the exhibit is selected by a jury.

Participating Marshfield artists include R. Christian Egger — photography and ceramics; Kenneth Flanagan — oil; and Rita M. Hollingsworth — fiber.“Each year, it is so inspiring to see the various interpretations on the agricultural theme,” said Betsy Tanenbaum, New Visions Gallery director, “Every artist’s story is different and, collectively, they comprise the cultural story of this place and time. …These stories will be a glimpse for our children and our children’s children into the agricultural life of 2013.”

The opening reception will include an artist meet and oil painting reproduction, the toe tapping sounds of Brady Perl and the Kinfolk Choir and delicious food and refreshments that celebrate the edible bounty this great state has to offer. The opening reception is free and open for the public to attend — all are invited.

Culture and Agriculture may be viewed from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. New Visions Gallery is in the main lobby of Marshfield Clinic. Admission is free thanks to donations from Art Partners. Exhibit space and other support is donated by Marshfield Clinic.

On Wednesday afternoon Clark County art educator Rebecca Anstine and Washougal art commissioner Janice Ferguson unwrapped and hung a selection of artwork in preparation for the opening of the Clark County: Living the Good Life art exhibit.The 6th Floor Gallery exhibit, which opens Friday, July 5, features the work of three Clark County residents: painter Marilyn Hocking, silkscreen artist Jon Brittingham and textile artist Sally Sellers. Through three different mediums, the artists have interpreted various aspects of life in southwest Washington, from the urban architecture to the rural nature and waterways.

On a quick glance, it might be easy to mistake Marilyn Hocking's paintings for photographs. In fact, she admitted when she does a show she often has to put up a sign to clearly label her works as pastel art.Hocking's pieces are reflective of her hometown, Ridgefield, as well as her southern roots in Louisiana. Stunningly realistic landscape pastels and oil paintings capture snippets of the county's quiet rural lifestyle, summer swims on the Lewis River and the Ridgefield Fourth of July parade.

"I like to do nostalgic pieces that are a nod back to the old city roots of Clark County," Hocking said. "Like the Lewis River swimming people where kids have been going for decades. If that's not Clark County culture then I don't know what is."

She describes her style as realistic yet idealistic. Though photos and memory are typically the basis for her artwork, she likes to take the real and make it into something better and more beautiful. In her depiction of Clark County pastoral life, for example, "there are no power lines, there are no weeds and there are no mole hills."

"Someone once told me that Norman Rockwell used the same idealism technique to make his works balanced and finished," Hocking said. "He never had an ideal life so he painted an ideal life."

It was an event in Hocking's life that pushed her to seriously pursue her passion for painting. A teacher, a mother and a wife, Hocking always planned to explore herinterest in art someday. But when she was diagnosed with breast cancer several years ago, she realized she shouldn't delay her passion any longer.

"Fighting that battle with breast cancer woke me up real fast," Hocking said. "It made me realize not to put things off to someday, because nobody ever knows what their someday might be. Since then I've been painting and painting and painting and I haven't looked back."

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