Symbiosis, Contemporary Artists of Tucson Exhibit

Symbiosis: A Group Show presented by Contemporary Artists of Tucson--Opening reception July 1, 6-9 p.m., Steinfeld Building, 101 W. 6th Street, Tucson, AZ. Together with Greta Ward, Kathryn Wilde, Jack McLain, Nancy Drigotas, I am exhibiting with Contemporary Artists of Tucson. The “Symbiosis” show will run from July 1 through 9, 2017 with an opening reception First Saturday, July 1 from 6-9:00 p.m., at the Steinfeld Building, 101 W. 6th Street at 9th Avenue, Tucson, AZ.

I'll be showing my series Cri de Coeur, watercolors on panels featuring large splashes of color.

Please come on by.

AND ONE MORE THING...

With the assistance of Jack Kulawik, my photographer, and Emily Rapport, my web advisor, my website has been updated. Please take a look at the latest series Long Short.

Long Short Series No. 21, 11″x30″, graphite pencil, conte, prismacolor, erasure, pencil shavings and smudge on 90# Stonehenge – created 2017

News From Rounder Studio. . .

First of all, a reminder that Rounder Studio is now in Tucson, as I have pulled an Agnes Martin and decamped to the southwest. You can see some photos of my walks with my dog Samwise Gamgee at my Facebook IOS album.

In Chicago, good things. The ARC is having its 40th Anniversary show, they are the second oldest continuing artist cooperative in the country. I won't be there but my painting Realization 5216 will.

ARC Gallery, 2156 N. Damen Ave., Chicago, IL 60647, 773/252-2232

• Exhibition Dates, September 25--October 19, 2013
• Gallery Hours, Wednesday through Saturday, 12--6pm and Sunday, 12--4pm
• Opening Reception, Friday, September 27, 6--9pm
• Panel Discussion, Saturday, September 28, 3--4:30pm, including our founding sister, Gerda Meyer Bernstein

You can see my work and the work of other fine artists (including Agnes Martin) at The Nevica Project, under the good auspices of Jayson Lawfer, in the Ravenswood neighborhood in Chicago, just a short 2-block walk from my former studio at the Cornelia Arts Building. Note that Jayson Lawfer is encouraging all of you who are attending the Art Expo in Chicago (September 19 – 22, 2013) this weekend to get to the showroom at

The Nevica Project, 3717 N. Ravenswood, Unit 115W, Chicago, IL, 60613, 406/360-0164

And then, the Cornelia Arts Building is having an Open Studio, Friday, October 4th from 6--10pm, you should go. My studio mates and friends will be there, Randi Russo, Scott Simons, Emily Roynesdal, Doug Birkenheuer, Doug Frohman, Kevin Swallow, Jason Messinger, Darrell Roberts, over 40 artists!

Nancy Charak Art at Seasons Restaurant Washington DC

Under the good auspices of Eaton Fine Art of Austin, Texas, five of my paintings are hanging at the Seasons Restaurant in Washington DC. In these pictures taken from publicity photos you can see four of them on the pillars with the gallery lights shining down on them. Nice.

[gallery link="file" columns="6" orderby="rand"]

Gangway Chicago

[caption id="attachment_1011" align="alignleft" width="360" caption="Gangway, Chicago"][/caption]

Princess Club

[caption id="attachment_1004" align="alignleft" width="360" caption="Princess Club"][/caption]

Magnolias in my 'Hood

[caption id="attachment_993" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Corner of Barry & Pine Grove in Chicago Tuesday March 20 2012"][/caption]

I voted in the Illinois primary today, pleased to vote for Gail Morse as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, for Mike Quigley, Sara Feigenholtz and Tom Tunney as my various representatives. Even more pleasing is that I have, as a voter, met, shaken hands and talked to all of them.

 

Adler and Sullivan, Targeted in Chicago

State Street Chicago.

St. Louis is Where to See Richard Serra, Lots

[caption id="attachment_966" align="alignleft" width="600" caption="Serra in Bilbao"][/caption]

Thanks to Tyler Green in Modern Art Notes who gives a pithy description of how one can see Richard Serra's constructions all over Germany and The Netherlands, but answers the question of where in the US can more be seen. The answer is not far from my home city, Chicago, in St. Louis, Missouri.

My nephew and I travelled to the Guggenheim in Bilbao last April to see this ensemble.

Here's the link to the full article, The best American city for Richard Serras.

Major Serras abound across St. Louis, including:

Untitled (1968), an early cast rubber-and-liquitex piece;

Pulitzer Piece: Stepped Elevations (1970-71);

Joplin (1971);

Twain (1974-82);

To Encircle Base Plate Hexagram, Right Angles Inverted (1970); and

Joe (2000, above right, collection of the Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts).

That’s not just a lot of Serra, that’s a lot of great and important Serra.

 

Gorgeous Publicity Berliner Philharmonic

Stunning views from the inside of instruments, the violin one is especially precious; now I've got a new blog and blogger to follow. Colossal Art and Design,   Inside Instruments. And I'm really fond of his header on the site, it's clearly Marina Towers, which I used to look at every day through the windows of my day job. And I must give the artist, art director credit, Bjorn Ewers.

 

 

Lucian Freud, Rembrandt and Turner

What do these three artists have in common? That as they became aged and aging artists they became much more interested in paint and its physicality, sometimes to the point of obscuring what they were depicting.

See this article from Prospect Magazine entitled The Skin We Live In by Sebastian Smee. He says as follows:  "In the 1990s and 2000s, he takes this still further, introducing layers of painted reinforcement. A spiky quality that goes beyond mere representation appears in many of his best pictures. As with late Rembrandt, the paint is applied in ways that disrupt or interfere with the viewer’s easy access to the image. Something extra is conveyed—an awkwardness, but also a sense of deepening interest, thickening emotion, urgency."

Avoid These Pay to Play Art Galleries & Venues

Avoid These Pay to Play Art Galleries & Venues

Artists often find out about these offers through various forms of advertising, particularly mass emailings. The more agressive senders relentlessly bombard artists with emails and sometimes even contact them directly by phone. Costs to participate can range anywhere from under $100 to thousands of dollars, especially if you factor in incidental expenses like shipping, travel, insurance or accomodations. Whatever the circumstance, make sure you are aware of all costs and potential benefits or drawbacks in advance. Does everyone benefit... or is it more like you pay, they play? Here is a partial list, in no particular order, of publications, venues, and other situations where you have to pay to expose your art, and that you should fully research-- before you pay-- in order to understand exactly what you're getting for your money:

GENERAL RULE, don't pay to exhibit, exceptions quality juried shows at recognized venues, and shared rentals at established venues.

h/t Matt Gleason

from Art Business dot com

* Agora Gallery, New York City (related solicitations: Chelsea International Fine Art Competition)

* Florence Biennale

* Gallery Gora, Montreal, Canada

* Artists Wanted (related solicitations: The Power of Self, Art Takes London, 3rd Ward Open Call, Art Interview Online Magazine, One Life - An International Photography Competition, Art Takes Miami)

* World Art Media (related solicitations: NY Arts Magazine, APW Gallery, Arts Hotline, Art Fairs Newspaper, Annual Artists' Web Directory, Beijing Arts Space, NY Arts Beijing, The Broadway Gallery NYC, Art Fairs International)

* Artoteque (related solicitations: Artists of Today - 100 Contemporary Artists, iBIENNIAL 2011 2012)

* Masters of Today (related solicitations: Art Addiction, World of Art Magazine, Creative Genius, Art in Vogue, Art Connoisseurs, Female Artist's Art Annual, Artist's World - 100 Contemporary Artists, Nude de Nude online art annual, Bibliophile Limited Edition art book)

* World Wide Art Books (related solicitations: International Contemporary Masters, International Masters of Photography)

* World Art Foundation (Umbrella Publishing, Jojo Marengo)

* Amsterdam Whitney Gallery, New York City

* International Contemporary Artists

* Art & Beyond Publications (online Magazine)

* Palm Art Award

* World Art Vision (related solicitations: Open Art Code)

* Everythingisart.cc Magazine

* Contemporary Art Network (CAN), New York City

* Ico (aka Icosahedron) Gallery, Chelsea, New York City

* Art-Exchange (.com)

* RAW - Natural Born Artists

* American Art Awards

* Artist Portfolio Magazine (related solicitations: MyArtContest.com)

* The Artists' Alley, San Francisco, CA (also known as Galiaria)

* American Art Collector published by Alcove Books

* NY Art Marathon

* Artspecifier (related solicitations: Photospecifier)

* A. Jain Marunouchi Gallery, New York City

* Artists Haven Gallery, Ft. Lauderdale, FL

* The Brick Lane Gallery, London, UK

* Printspace Gallery, London, UK

* Queen Gallery, Toronto, ON

* Working Artist Org.

* Manu Sol Publications

* Art LA (.com)

* James Gray Gallery, Santa Monica, CA (Art LA)

* Laguna Art (.com)

* Townley Gallery, Laguna Beach, CA (Laguna Art)

* Fine Art Connoisseur (related solicitations: Artist Advocate Magazine, PleinAir Magazine, American Forum for Realism, Plein Air Convention)

* Art Show Productions, Rochester & Pittsford, NY (related solicitations: Artisan Direct, ARTISANworks)

Dido & Aeneas

I received an email via my website contact page from a student from Belgium who for her course of Latin has to talk about an artwork about Dido & Aeneas. She asked me the following several questions:

• I would like to learn more about your series.


• You say that the paintings represent the feeling of Aeneas when he's leaving the city.


• What is then the difference between each painting of the serie?


• Why did you chose the topic of Dido and Aeneas?


• What's your vision on the topic of DIdo and Aeneas?


• Is there something symbolic in the paintings?

I answered her questions this way:

Thank you very much for looking at and enjoying my work.

I have done some reading, in English, of the classics because they are great stories with universal impact.

Dido's story is a woman's struggle; at Tyre her brother kills her husband, she escapes to Carthage, founds the city, cleverly lays out its walls, builds a home for her people and is judged to be a wise ruler.

So even though the Aeneid is the story of the founding myth of Rome and thus of Aeneas' wanderings, at its heart is Dido's lament and the pyre she builds to immolate herself.

Stanley Lombardo's translation, in Book 4, at lines 689-708:

"O God!" she said. "Will he get away,

Will this interloper make a mockery of us?

To arms, the whole city after him!

Launch the fleet! Bring fire, man the oars!

What am I saying? Where am I?

What has come over me? Oh, Dido, only now

Do you feel your guilt? Better to have felt it

When you gave away your crown. Behold

The pledge, the loyalty of the man they say

Bears his ancestral gods, bore on his shoulders

His age-worn father! Could I not have torn him

Limb from limb and fed him to the fishes?

Murdered his friends? Minced Ascanius himself

And served him up as a meal to his father?

The battle could have gone either way: What of it?

Doomed to die, whom did I have to fear?

I should have torched his camp with my own hands,

And thrown myself on top of the conflagration.

So, I see these images and the story, as not so much of Trojan Aeneas' journey to Rome and glory as the founder of a successful patriarchal dynasty, but more of Dido's lament and her funeral pyre. She immolated herself out of deep regret, guilt at giving herself to his ambitions, and the realization that she'd let down her people.

Is there a difference between each painting of the series? There basically is no difference between the paintings, they are variations on a theme.

You ask is there something symbolic in the paintings? If there's any overt symbolism is the bits of red paint scattered into the black. Could be that red is the fire and black is the soot and ashes. I prefer not to overstate symbolism in my work, but let the viewer do their own thinking.

Once again, thank you ever so much for looking at my work, enjoying it, and for giving me the opportunity to do some thinking and explication of it. Hopefully, this makes sense to you.

I wish you continued success in your studies.

Minimalism at Woman Made Bare Essentials

Nice, very nice, my work and the work of these other fine artists juried into Woman Made Gallery's Bare Essentials Minimalism in the 21st Century, by Ingrid Fassbender.

Note that I have made bold not only my name in the list but my fellow exhibitors in the "Marks In Time" group. We exhibit together as a three-fer, email us at marksintime@gmail.com

Bare Essentials: Minimalism in the 21st Century

We thank Ingrid Fassbender for jurying entries for the "Bare Essentials: Minimalism in the 21st Century" exhibition on display from November 4 to to December 22, 2011. After reviewing 276 artworks, she selected the work of 26 artists.

We congratulate Grazyna Adamska-Jarecka, Salwa Aleryani, ATYL, Carrie M. Becker, Jan Blythe, Marian Carow, Nancy Charak, Patricia Schnall Gutierrez, Jeanne Heifetz, Martha Hopkins, Carrie Johnson, Katie Kehoe, Pauline Kochanski, Lindsey Landfried, Diane McGregor, Elizabeth Mead, Anna E. Mikiolay, Amanda Damico, Phuong Pham, Ulli Rooney, Mary Rork-Watson, Lisa Flowers Ross, Yvette Kaiser Smith, Sharon Swidler, Asha Tamirisa, and Erwina Ziomkowska.

Exhibition Dates: November 4 - December 22, 2011

Opening Reception: November 4, 2011 / 6-9pm

Greatest Artist Ever?

I want to dive into this one. Who is the greatest visual artist ever and why? I invite artists and thinkers to offer up their opinions on this.

My nominee is Goya.

It is a much overused trope, especially in this modern era of the artists' statement, that art is about truth. Goya tells the truth about war, disaster and misery, to which he had a front seat.

"Goya’s Los Desastres de la Guerra, a series of eighty prints depicting the consequences of the nineteenth-century Spanish War for Independence are unbearable, but they are not meant to simply document atrocities. The real paradox of horrors transformed into painting or sculpture or print is that art does not let the savagery have the last word."  —Stephen Vincent Kobasa is a writer and activist who contributes occasional essays on art and society to the New Haven Advocate.


Goya started his art career by making "cartoons" for tapestries that depicted idyllic happy dancing scenes. After the images were converted to fabric, the oil paintings were rolled up and set aside. All this to our benefit as those paintings now grace the Prado.

Goya became a court painter to the Hapsburgs that ruled Spain, managing to depict them despite their pendulous jaws and unhandsome looks with some flattery. He also made devotional paintings that grace cathedrals in Spain.

Events in Spain, however, gave him a front row seat on horror and treachery. The Hapsburgs were lured out of Spain to France by Napoleon Bonaparte, who then installed his brother Joseph on the throne. An uprising by common Spaniards ensued with horrible massacres by mercenaries loyal to France. A monstrous civil war ensued. Eventually, the Spanish patriots succeeded, the Hapsburgs and the church prelates came back to rule Spain with an even harsher hand, giving no gratitude to the populists for saving the country. The argument can be made, not really germane to this discussion of Goya, that stable government did not exist in Spain until after the death of Franco (1975).

To sum it up, Goya's career spanned the 19th century, he moved from the depiction of idyllic country scenes, flattering royal portraits, devotional paintings, the Caprichos, the Disasters of War, ending with the Black Paintings.

As survivors of the hapless 20th century, after Auschwitz, Dachau, Cambodia, Somalia, Goya tells us about our darkest, deepest human selves.

I Learned a Museum Lesson

I took myself to the Art Institute of Chicago the other day. I have a usual path that I take, prints and drawings, then American paintings, then the modern wing. This means that I walk past China, Japan and quickstep through South Asian art in the railroad bridge to get to what I am in a hurry to see. However, finding myself in the place last week and having seen prints, drawings, American, modern several times this summer, I decided that I would go to China and Japan.br /Part of the reason I would seemingly rush past is that the Art Institute puts the older more traditional art at the front of the gallery. Thus I almost missed this amazing bamboo basket. To call this a basket is potentially a serious mistake, it's a sculpture, it's an amazing piece of art.

[caption id="attachment_453" align="aligncenter" width="320" caption="Knot, 2007, by Homma Hideaki"][/caption]

Furthermore, it's a mistake on my part to assume that if it's old it's boring. This is one of my favoritest pieces in the China exhibit. It's a clay model of a pigsty and latrine from the Han dynasty era. It is about 12"x12"by 8", in the center is a sow suckling her piglets.

[caption id="attachment_454" align="aligncenter" width="320" caption="Han Dynasty"][/caption]

Lesson, slow down, look.

Helen Frankenthaler is My Lodestar

[caption id="attachment_460" align="aligncenter" width="320" caption="Cri de Coeur 5951, © Nancy Charak, 2010, watercolor, prismacolor pencil on unfinished fabricated birchwood panel, 18”x24”"][/caption]

I can honestly say that there’s a very real sense in which I have never not known about Helen Frankenthaler and her work. My mother was a great admirer of Helen’s art, returned from a vacation in New York gushing about what she had seen when I was still in grammar school. To my sorrow that catalogue has disappeared. A good friend from junior and senior high school had Frankenthaler’s work in her house, along with Picassos and Kandinskys.

[caption id="attachment_461" align="aligncenter" width="276" caption="Tales of Genii III, Helen Frankenthaler, 1998, fifty-three-color woodcut from 18 woodblocks (17 maple, 1 mahogany) and 2 stencils on gray TGL handmade paper,” 47x42” (119.4x106.7cm), Edition 36, Artist’s proofs 14."][/caption]

I choose Helen Frankenthaler because she is the head of a pantheon of abstract expressionists; to name a few, Agnes Martin, Joan Mitchell, Linda Karshan, Sandra Blow, Vija Celmins and Katherina Grosse. Purity of thought and action on the canvas emanate from Frankenthaler’s work, even if that work is a 53 color woodcut.

The Frankenthaler woodcuts astonish because they continue her pattern of breaking rules and ignoring conventional modes of working art media. She is widely credited with being the first to work with unprimed canvases, allowing oil paint to halo and stain, and in so doing, to influence a number of artists, Jules Olitski and Sam Francis as foremost examples.

Helen Frankenthaler is my lodestar. I keep two quotes from her displayed in my studio, “A really good picture looks as if it’s happened all at once. It’s an immediate image. For my own work when a picture looks labored and you can read in it—well she did this, and then she did that, and then she did that—there is something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me.”[1]

In the description of the exhibit of the woodcuts at the National Gallery of Australia’s website, she is quoted, “There are no rules, that is one thing I say about every medium, every picture. . .that is how art is born, that is how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules, that is what invention is about." [2]

[1]Ibid
[2] http://nga.gov.au/Exhibition/Frankenthaler/

Berlin Museums

A stroll through the Neues Museum and the Pergamon in Berlin, April 2011.

Berlin Museums

Monet Water Lilies

April in Paris at the L'Orangerie, what could be better?

Monet Water Lilies Orangerie

We're Not Going Back. . .

Two of the greatest technological revolutions in the history of the world go largely unheralded, the flour mill powered by electricity and the washing machine also powered by electricity. No other inventions have done more to liberate women, with the possible exception of the birth control pill. And I might add, we’re not going back, no woman I know yearns to get back on her hands and knees and grind corn for five hours a day to feed just five other people, and no woman I know wants to stand over a washtub with a washboard ever again.

Nicola in Edible Geography talks about this liberation, after a lengthy description of the process of grinding the wet maize to make tortillas.

“Mexican women that I have talked to are very explicit about this trade-off. They know it doesn’t taste as good; they don’t care. Because if they want to have time, if they want to work, if they want to send their kids to school, then taste is less important than having that bit of extra money, and moving into the middle class. They have very self-consciously made this decision. In the last ten years, the number of women working in Mexico has gone up from about thirty-three percent to nearly fifty percent. One reason for that—it’s not the only reason, but it is a very important reason—is that we’ve had a revolution in the processing of maize for tortillas.”

Similarly Hans Rosling in a Ted.com video lecture discusses how the washing machine saves so much time and womanly labor that women can now read.

As I've said, we're not going back.

Art Has Power...

[caption id="attachment_474" align="aligncenter" width="550" caption="Judy Taylor, Maine Mural"][/caption]

From Visual Art Source, Weekly Newsletter, April 1, 2011, comments by Editor Bill Lasarow, "We have to go back to the early 1930s for comparable acts taken with similar reasoning.

The whitewashing of David Alfaro Siqueros' "America Tropical" in Los Angeles was prompted by his symbolic representation of a hovering American eagle poised to peck the life out of a crucified Mexican laborer. Diego Rivera clashed with his patrons John D. and Nelson Rockefeller over the content of "Man at the Crossroads," which included a portrait of Russian Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin. The mural was removed from their Rockefeller Center building in New York. After recent controversies over the painting out of a partially completed mural by Blu's in Los Angeles and the removal of a video by the late David Wojnorowicz from an exhibition in Washington, D.C., perhaps it was just a matter of time before elected politicians would begin to interpret their mandates in the spirit of a conquering medieval army. Destroy all signs and symbols of the previous regime, permit only images that proclaim the power and glory of the new ruler.

As Mount Holyoke College (Maine) President Lynn Pasquarella wrote, "... The act of removing images commemorating Maine's history itself conjures thoughts of rewriting history prevalent in totalitarian regimes." The grand historical spirit of barbarism is on the loose in America."

I say to Judy Taylor, YOU ARE IN VERY GOOD COMPANY.