Laurie Frick opens an exhibit at the Marfa Contemporary Gallery “Walking, Eating, Sleeping” and it takes an obsessive, quantitative look at daily life, drawing on Frick’s background in engineering and technology.The artwork of Laurie Frick explores the intersection of technology and creativity as the artist herself adopts a daily regimen of self-tracking that measures her activities and body. In doing so, she shapes a vocabulary of pattern used to construct her intricately hand- built works and installations. Her quantifiable patterns, like her heart rate, the duration of her sleep or body weight are some of the metrics that inspire her colorful and complex works. “Numbers are abstract concepts but we recognize pattern intuitively. I’m experimenting with wall size patterns that anticipate the condition of our daily-selves. Very soon walls and spaces we occupy will be filled with easy to decode patterns – a visual record of how we feel, stress level, mood, bio-function captured, digitally recorded and physically produced using 3D printers and lasercutters. Human data portraits transcribed as pattern from the all the sensor data collected about us.Will it kill the mystery of being human, simply magnify our defects or will sensors and a mass of measurements acknowledge and present patterns of self-examination that lure us into a future of self-quantification that is irresistible?” Laurie Frick is a TED Award winner.

Laurie Frick: Walking, Eating, Sleeping
September 10 – Janaury 3, 2014
Artist Talk Sunday Oct 13 at 11.30 am
Marfa Contemporary
Marfa, TX 79843

FRAMING SPECIFICATIONS AND ADVICE

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Thin Profile: 114
Type: Thin Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: Unfinished Ash Wood Frame
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame with contrasting splines
Framing Advice: fitting gallery frames

The Bell Museum will debut Audubon and the Art of Birds, an exhibition that explores the human fascination with birds, and showcases one of the museum’s most valuable treasures: a double-elephant folio edition of John James Audubon’s Birds of America. The rare collection of hand-colored engravings was donated to the Bell Museum in 1928.

John James Audubon (1785-1851) is one of the most enduring figures in American art and culture. His biography reads like a romantic novel. Born the illegitimate son of a French sea captain in what is now Haiti, he was raised in France during the years of revolution. As a young man he came to America to seek his fortune on the western frontier. After years of struggle and business failure, Audubon decided to devote his life on his true passion, the painting of birds. In 1820, at age 35, he set out to paint every bird in America, life-size and in color.

Today, Audubon is synonymous with birds and the conservation of nature. His images revolutionized the way we view birds and the natural world. Before Audubon, artists depicted animals either as allegorical figures, or as stiff, dead specimens. Audubon’s birds are not only technically superb, with every feather and scale delineated, they reveal birds as living, dynamic creatures whose intrinsic beauty and vitality are worthy of study and preservation. Today, artists and naturalists continue to find inspiration in his work and life, and his prints are as popular as ever.

This exhibition focuses on the masterwork of American art, science and conservation – Audubon’s the Birds of America. Organized around a series of themes, the show compares the naive drawings of early naturalists such as Mark Catesby and Alexander Wilson, to the brilliant colors of Francois Levaillant’s engravings and the lavish publications by John Gould. During the 20^th Century artists such as Louis Agassiz Fuertes, Francis Lee Jaques, and Roger Tory Peterson took bird art in new directions. The human fascination with birds continues today, and the show includes works by a select group of living artists, such as Lars Jonsson and Walton Ford, whose work is inspired by Audubon’s example.

The exhibition assembles over 100 prints, drawings and paintings; including a selection of newly conserved original double-elephant folio engravings from the Birds of America, and 60 to 70 works by other artists from the 1500s to the present day. The artworks are complimented with displays of antique illustrated books, specimens and artifacts, interpretive panels, hands-on exhibits and activities on bird biology. The exhibition draws upon the collections of the Bell Museum, University of Minnesota Libraries, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Woodson Art Museum, Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology, Academy of Natural Sciences, National Museum of Wildlife Art and individual collectors and artists.

Audobon and Art of Birds
October 5, 2013 to January 19, 2014
and February 1 to June 8, 2014*
Bell Museum of Natural History ,
University of Minnesota

October 4, 2014 – Jan. 4, 2015
National Museum of Wildlife Art
Jackson, WY

May 15 – July 26, 2015
Sam Noble Museum 
Univ. of Oklahoma, Norman, OK

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METRO GALLERY FRAME

Standard Profile: 106
Type: Standard Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: cherry wood frame with natural cherry finish
Purchasing Options: joined wood frame
Framing Advice: fitting gallery frames

Kenneth Josephson has been a tireless pioneer of conceptual art photography since the late 1950s. He is the product of a rigorous education that began with the inspiration of the visionary Minor White at the Rochester Institute of Technology and culminating with his graduate studies under the renown teaching team of Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind at the fabled Institute of Design, Chicago. At a time when photography was just beginning to be considered seriously by the art world and the art market, Josephson was working ahead of the curve, busy laying the groundwork for conceptual approaches to the medium that would later subvert many long held notions about the place and purpose of pictorial representation.

Josephson’s early visual experiments ran the gamut of imaginative approaches and were rooted in the highest technical standards of his craft. Before others he employed the conceits of images within images and posed questions such as what is the importance and reality of the photograph itself as a physical object. In addition, Kenneth Josephson imbued his work with a signature sensibility of humor – an application that came naturally and added dimension to the artist’s highly intentioned works. There is no mistaking Kenneth Josephson artworks for those by his other conceptually driven peers and contemporaries, such as Edward Ruscha, John Baldessari and Robert Heinecken, who were content to use photographic material, often incorporated with other media, for the production of their final works. But this appropriation of imagery was peripheral to the notion of the pure photographic process – it was Josephson’s obsession with the inherent and endless possibilities within the medium that makes him unique among them, and positions him as a master.

Kenneth Josephson Colorado 1959 | Gelatin silver print | 6 x 9 in. 1959 print. Signed, dated and annotated ´59-2-9-7´ in pencil by artist on print verso

Kenneth Josephson Wisconsin 1965 | Gelatin silver print | 4.69 x 6.63 in. C. 1965 print. Signed, titled, dated and annotated ’65-5-1-2′ in pencil by artist on print verso.

Kenneth Josephson Chicago 1962 | Gelatin silver print | 4.25 x 9.06 in. c. 1962 print. Signed, titled, dated and annotated ’62-2-1-11′ in pencil by artist on print verso.

Been There. Done That.
September 6 – November 30, 2013
Stephen Daiter Gallery
Chicago, IL

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METRO GALLERY FRAME

Standard Profile: 106
Type: Standard Gallery Frames
Wood & Finish: walnut wood frame with ebony finish
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Objects of Desire by Michael Beck opens the fall season at the Paul Thiebaud Gallery in San Francisco.  Though not necessarily depictions of items coveted by the masses, they are a curious group of subjects— sailboats, cars, trucks, amusement park rides, and dolls—all antique toys, desired at certain ages and in certain eras. Beck’s explores and elevates these “junk” objects, now discarded, time- worn, or rendered obsolete with regard to use in today’s age—the detritus of the past. To Beck, they are items of nostalgia; he sources material from flea markets, especially in Alameda.
This series began in the late 1990s, when the painter turned to single, solitary objects and their complicated shadow patterns produced through the use of multiple light sources. By depicting the objects in their actual sizes, Beck wished to engage the viewer as if the objects were truly present in the round and in real time. As he explained, “ . . . making it smaller creates a preciousness, making it larger creates an issue that goes beyond what the actual object is (i.e. Rosenquist, Oldenburg, etc.).”

Beck received an MFA in Painting with High Distinction from the California College of the Arts and Crafts (now the California College of the Arts), Oakland, California in 1984. He lives and works in Oakland, California.

Objects of Desire
September 10 – October 26, 2013
Paul Thiebaud Gallery
San Francisco, CA

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METRO FLOATING FRAME

Deep Floating Profile: 121
Type: Floating Frame for 1-1/2″ deep canvas paintings
Wood & Finish: ash wood frame with black lacquer finish
Purchasing Options: joined wood frame
Framing Advice: fitting floating frames