#artinthetimeofcorona interview with Bob Nugent

This is a one of a series of interviews with our customers to see how they are adapting to the COVID-19 world.

Bob Nugent lives in Healdsburg, CA and has been a customer for over 20 years. Brazil and the Amazon River Basin are the subject and inspiration for his work.

This is his #artinthetimeofcorona story.

 

2020-08-03_13-23-16

bobnugentstudio.com

How was Healdsburg and northern California affected by the COVID-19 virus? How have you been affected personally?

The virus is here, but we live outside the small town of Healdsburg among the vines. When I go into town it seems the locals have adapted very well and they are all wearing masks. Most of the fatalities here in wine country have been in senior facilities. Normally there would be many tourists in town, but of course most are not traveling these days, myself included. I am normally in Brazil at this time of year, doing research for my work. I travel a lot during the year and have cancelled four trips this year myself. And we have the fires to contend with again this year. We were lucky to make it through the first round, but there are still two more months to go. Don’t let anyone tell you there is no climate change. The whole country is feeling it and will continue to suffer from it. 
 
Professionally not much has changed for me. We are fortunate to live in the wine country and my studio is at the back of our property. I work everyday, even when I don’t feel like painting I go to the studio and clean-up, sweep and look at the work, absorbing it while I am doing other things. I also have a 1947 Chevy Fleetmaster Woodie I am restoring which is a good diversion.

Do you have a daily routine that keeps you grounded these days? 

My routine has managed to stay the same. I get up, drink coffee, read two newspapers, and then answer emails. I must have all of that out of the way before I cross the garden to the studio. My assistant Kara comes into her office at 10 am and we discuss the chores for the day. She keeps track of inventories with dealers, correspondence and helps me when I need her for other things. Her office is in the studio, but we are still social distancing. I paint until about 4pm when Kara goes home. It is a routine I have had for many years.

Are you reading, cooking, streaming, or doing any activity that is helping you cope?

I am doing much more reading about the Amazon and keeping up with current articles about the situation there since I cannot be there myself. I have been working with friends and trying to protect the indigenous people throughout the region for the last 35 years. I make paintings about the destruction going on with the strip mining and deforestation. To unwind I cook dinner almost every night. My wife cleans up. It is a good arrangement.

With museums and galleries closed are you seeing a shift to the internet for viewing/selling art?  How is this affecting you?

This year I was to have two major solo shows of my work; one in Santa Clara, California at the Triton Museum of Art and the other in Brazil at the Museu de Arte Contemporânea de Sorocaba. A new publication was produced in conjunction with these planned shows. Both exhibitions have been postponed until next year. In addition, all my dealers are closed so there are no sales.  I’ve never tried selling my work online. I have found that if someone wants a painting with a fairly healthy price tag they want to see it in person, not on a small screen. In my early years I learned to budget my sales over a five year period buying supplies and frames with extra cash, so that when times are lean I can continue to live and work. It has served me well. I now have enough supplies to continue to paint for five years without any sales. It also helps to have a patron or two that continue to support you during these times. 

Do you see any positive changes for artists in a post pandemic world?

Artists are always the first to go into a recession and the last to come out. I believe we must just keep working and painting about things that cannot be expressed in words. And when the world gets rid of this virus, people will celebrate with us again.




Being There: Photographs by James P. Blair at Middlebury College Museum of Art

This exhibition takes an intimate look at the work of renowned photographer James P. Blair, who for more than thirty-five years traveled the world for the National Geographic Society. His images not only transport us to places most of us will never visit, the best of them have become part of our visual lexicon and remind us that the world is a varied and stimulating place, sometimes breathtaking in its beauty and at other times heartbreaking in its degradation.

Ketelie Regis and her baby, Haiti, 1987. Photo: © James P. Blair.
Ketelie Regis and her baby, Haiti, 1987. Photo: © James P. Blair.
Coal Miner, South Africa, 1976. Photo: © James P. Blair.
Coal Miner, South Africa, 1976. Photo: © James P. Blair.
Wild Goose and Kili Monastery, Russia, 1991. Photo: © James P. Blair.
Wild Goose and Kili Monastery, Russia, 1991. Photo: © James P. Blair.

About the photographer

James Blair prepared for a photographic future by studying with Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind for a bachelor of science degree in photography at the Institute of Design of the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago. Between semesters he also photographed for Roy E. Stryker (director of the Farm Security Administration Photographic Documentation of the Depression) at the Pittsburgh Photographic Library. After graduation in 1954, he spent two years as a lieutenant (j.g.) in the Navy, part of that time assisting refugees from North Vietnam in Operation Passage to Freedom. He joined WIIC-TV in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1958 as a reporter and film photographer.

As a freelance photographer, Blair had commissions from the U.S. Information Agency, TimeLife, and National Geographic magazine. He also put together a one-man show at Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, and co-authored Listen With the Eye, a book of photographs and poems, with Samuel Hazo.

Success with National Geographic assignments brought him to the staff of the magazine in 1962. He has had more than 45 stories published in the magazine, including major coverages of Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ethiopia, West Africa, Iran, Russia, and Greece, and various parts of the United States, as well as articles on agriculture, coal, astronomy, and uses of photography in science. He covered southeast China for the book Journey Into China, published in 1982. He was the chief photographer for the National Geographic book on environment, As We Live and Breathe, and then continued his special interest in the environment with coverage of the disappearing rain forest, environmental pollution, and World Heritage sites.

There have been one-man shows of his work in Teheran, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, and Washington, D.C., and he has been included in group shows in Atlanta and Washington. He is represented in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery (Washington D.C.), Canegie Mellon Museum (Pittsburgh), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), and the Portland Museum of Art (Maine). National Geographic’s 1988 Centennial Exhibit “Odyssey” included several of his photographs. Blair is a regular instructor at the Maine Photographic Workshops, the Smithsonian Institution, and numerous other workshops, and has taught at the International Center of Photogarphy, New York. He was the first Distinguished Visiting Professor of Photojournalism at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism for the year 1992

Being There: Photographs by James P. Blair
May 24, 2019 – August 11, 2019
Middlebury College Museum of Art
Middlebury, VT

Framing Specifications

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wood & finish: maple frame with clear water base finish
purchasing option: joined wood frame
custom wood strainer: 1/2″ wood strainer
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custom frame acrylic: 1/8″ UV acrylic
Custom frame backing boards: 1/8″ archival coroplast

 




Roman Verostko and the Cloud of Unknowing

Verostko install Title Wall
Verostko install overall_main floor
Verostko_Cultural Exchange_2
Verostko exhibition shot
Verostko_Art and Logic_Honoring Alice his partner

This retrospective exhibition includes over seventy original works by Verostko, encompassing his pre-algorist work, algorithmic pen and brush plotter drawings, early screen/video pieces, electronic machines, mural projects, artist books, and newer editioned prints. One of the artist’s pen plotters will be featured, as will selections from his archives of detailed notes, equations, and codes. Rather than a strict chronological retrospective, the exhibition is organized around major themes that appear throughout Verostko’s work, such as his search for pure form, his interest in logic, his merging of eastern and western aesthetics and philosophy, and his understanding of his home “Pathway Studio” as a modern day electronic scriptorium.

St. Thomas Model-w

Model of Epigenesis: the Growth of Form, a permanent installation, 40 feet in length located at the University of St. Thomas, Frei Science and Engineering Center, Owens Hall, St Paul, MN. Pen, brush & ink, 11 units 3 by 6 ft each with stained white oak panels, 1997.

About the artist

Roman Verostko, born 1929, maintains an experimental studio in Minneapolis where he has developed original algorithmic procedures for creating his art. A year after graduating from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh (1949) he entered monastic life at St Vincent Archabbey where he studied philosophy & theology, was ordained a priest, and followed post graduate studies in New York &

Paris. He taught at St. Vincent College and served as Staff Editor for Art & Architecture for the first edition of the New Catholic Encyclopedia (McGraw Hill, 1967).

He departed from monastic life in 1968, married Alice Wagstaff, and joined the humanities faculty at the Minneapolis School of Art now known as the Minneapolis College of Art & Design. Aware of the awesome power of algorithmic procedure he began experimenting with code and exhibited his first coded art program, the Magic Hand of Chance in 1982. In 1987 he modified his software with interactive routines to drive paint brushes mounted on a pen plotter drawing arm.

Notable Items: SIGGRAPH ACADEMY (Aug, 2018); “Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement (SIGGRAPH, 2009), Golden Plotter Award, 1994 (Germany). Invitationals: “Digital Pioneers”, V&A, London, 2009; “The Algorithmic Revolution” (ZKM, Karlsruhe, 2005), “Code: the language of our time” (2003, Linz, Austria), Artec 1995, Nagoya, Japan) and “Genetic Art-Artificial Life” (1993, Linz, Austria).

Roman Verostko and the Cloud of Unknowing
A Retrospective Exhibition

January 22, 2019 – February 24, 2019
Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD)
Minneapolis, MN

Framing Specifications

green cloud

Verostko, Algorithmic Poetry: Green Cloud, 2011, algorithmic pen and ink plotter drawing, 23 x 27 in.

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“Metamorphoses: Ovid According to Wally Reinhardt” at Grey Art Gallery at NYU

For centuries, Greek and Roman myths have inspired artists. New York University’s Grey Art Gallery is pleased to present a solo museum exhibition of the New York–based octogenarian artist Wally Reinhardt, who continues in this time-honored tradition. The exhibit features some 50 watercolor, gouache, and colored pencil illustrations from a series that numbers nearly 200. Reinhardt, who began working on this project in 1984, has focused solely on interpreting Ovid’s most acclaimed work of Latin poetry, Metamorphoses. Spanning 15 books, this oft-cited magnum opus from 8 CE has provided rich source material for Reinhardt’s witty and whimsical series, titled Pages from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Installed roughly in the same order that Ovid recounted his myths, Reinhardt’s graphic interpretations provoke a reconsideration of art making itself as a form of metamorphosis.

Ovid Crowned with Immortality

Wally Reinhardt “Theseus Slays the Minotaur”, 2003 Watercolor, gouache, Prismacolor colored pencil, graphite, and tape on prepared Arches paper, 18 x 22 in. New York University Art Collection. Gift of the artist, 2018.2.30

Wally Reinhardt "Joves makes Hercules a God"

Wally Reinhardt “Joves Makes Hercules a God”, 2013, Watercolor, gouache, Prismacolor colored pencil, graphite, and tape on prepared Arches paper, 18 x 33 in. New York University Art Collection. Gift of the artist, 2018.2.62

Wally Reinhardt
Mercury Never Tells Argus the Story of Syrinx and Pan, 1993
Prismacolor colored pencil and gouache on prepared Arches paper, 11 x 15 in.
New York University Art Collection. Gift of the artist, 2018.2.18

Wally Reinhardt “Mercury Never Tells Argus the Story of Syrinx and Pan”, 1993, Prismacolor colored pencil and gouache on prepared Arches paper, 11 x 15 in. New York University Art Collection. Gift of the artist, 2018.2.18

About the artist

Born in Washington Heights in 1935, Wally Reinhardt only began making art seriously at age 49. His fascination with Ovid’s monumental fifteen books of poetry, however, was ignited during the previous decade. While living in Rome in the 1970s with his late partner Robert Keyser, a Philadelphia-based painter who also taught at Temple University Rome, Reinhardt consistently encountered the city’s artistic interpretations of Ovid’s work. A patron of opera and ballet as well as an admirer of Renaissance and Baroque artists like Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Luca della Robbia, and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, Reinhardt began studying Ovidian-inspired artworks. Having never had formal art training, the artist acknowledges that the museums and the city of Rome itself were marvelous teachers.

Metamorphoses: Ovid According to Wally Reinhardt

January 9, 2019 – April 6, 2019

Grey Art Gallery at New York University

New York, NY

Metamorphoses: Ovid According to Wally Reinhardt Grey Art Gallery at NYU
Metamorphoses: Ovid According to Wally Reinhardt Grey Art Gallery at NYU
Metamorphoses: Ovid According to Wally Reinhardt Grey Art Gallery at NYU
Metamorphoses: Ovid According to Wally Reinhardt Grey Art Gallery at NYU
reinhardt framed image

Framing Specifications

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Michael Patrick O’Brien “Familiar Address” at University of New Orleans

Michael Patrick O’Brien “Familiar Address” at University of New Orleans

In his photographs of family members and familial spaces, O’Brien translates the family’s lineage and spaces as sites of both repetition and evolution. Genetics are inherited, body postures are echoed, the formality of interiors is mimicked, values are passed down, death is present, children appear, religious customs are passed down, and family traditions persist and transform. With a photographer’s formal rigor, O’Brien’s starting point is an attention to color and light, yet scale shifts, the articulation of architectural spaces, and an alternation between flatness and depth all provide narrative potential within the photographs and between them. Some pictures depict an immediate, often intimate moment, while others do not seem to be rooted in a moment but instead suggest open-ended stillness and quiet.

At the heart of the project is the pull between being an individual while also being a member of a family, and the competing feelings of loneliness and belonging that ensue. The photographs lie between distance and intimacy. Within a family, one can observe with an outsider’s eye while possessing an insider’s knowledge.

 

Michael Patrick O'Brien "Papa" 2016
inkjet print, 32" x 40 "
Michael Patrick O’Brien “Papa” 2016
inkjet print, 32″ x 40 ”
Michael Patrick O'Brien "Papa’s Room After He Died" 2016/2017 inkjet print
32" x 40"
Michael Patrick O’Brien “Papa’s Room After He Died” 2016/2017 inkjet print
32″ x 40″
Michael Patrick O'Brien "Charlie" 2016
inkjet print,
32" x 40"
Michael Patrick O’Brien “Charlie” 2016
inkjet print,
32″ x 40″

About the artist

A photographer of things, people, and spaces who owes as much to the practitioners large format photography as to representational painters such as Catherine Murphy, John Singer Sargent, and Fairfield Porter, Michael Patrick O’Brien images people and places known to him, primarily family, in an ongoing and open ended body of color photographs. This image-by-image engagement with familiar people and places forms a consistent practice within his broader work as an artist.

Michael Patrick O’Brien (b. 1988, Houston, TX) earned his BA from Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA (2010). Recent exhibitions include Memoir, Bank of America Center, Houston (2018); Thanks in Advance, Bill’s Junk, Houston (2018); and The Big Show, Lawndale Art Center, Houston (2017). O’Brien lives and works in Houston, TX.

install 01
install 16

Michael Patrick O’Brien “Familiar Address” 

December 8, 2018 – January 5, 2019

St. Claude Gallery University of New Orleans

New Orleans, LA

Framing Specifications

install 24
Painted white gallery frame with spacer and strainer
Painted white gallery frame with spacer and strainer

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Profile: 101
Type: Standard Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: maple frame with painted white finish
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame
Custom Wood Spacer: 1/2″ wood frame spacer
Custom Wood Strainer: 3/4″ wood frame strainer
Custom Frame Acrylic: 1/8″ UV acrylic cut to size
Custom Frame Backing Board:  1/4″ archival coroplast cut to size




Art To Live With for students at the University of Chicago

students with art

The Smart Museum provides an art loan program, exclusively for University of Chicago students so they can become acquainted with and appreciate art.

Each fall, students living in the University of Chicago’s residence halls have the unique opportunity to borrow original works of art to live with in their dorm rooms. Students are able to select from 150 specially designated artworks in the Smart Museum’s Art to Live With collection. The program is open to current UChicago students living in College Housing. Works will be loaned at no cost for the duration of the academic year. The following are examples of some of the artwork available for loan.

Max Kahn, ‘Ride by the Black Moon, 1953, edition of 12, color lithograph.⠀
Max Kahn, ‘Ride by the Black Moon, 1953, edition of 12, color lithograph.⠀
Sam Francis, ‘Cloud Rock (left)/Kayo 4 Years Old (right),’ 1964, from the portfolio ‘1 Cent Life,’ ed. 911/2000, color lithograph.⠀

Sam Francis, ‘Cloud Rock (left)/Kayo 4 Years Old (right),’ 1964, from the portfolio ‘1 Cent Life,’ ed. 911/2000, color lithograph.⠀

Roberto Matta Echaurren (called Matta), ‘Cosmicstrip IV,’ 1959, from the series ‘Cosmicstrip,’ plate 4, ed. 13/50, color etching.⠀

Roberto Matta Echaurren (called Matta), ‘Cosmicstrip IV,’ 1959, from the series ‘Cosmicstrip,’ plate 4, ed. 13/50, color etching.⠀

“The best way to become acquainted with art—and to appreciate it—is to live with it.”

The University of Chicago’s Art to Live With student loan program began in the fall quarter of 1958. It was “the product of conversations between artist-dean of students Harold Haydon and alumnus-art collector Joseph Randall Shapiro,” reported the University of Chicago Magazine. Shapiro, who would become the founding president of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, first loaned and then donated works on paper by modern European and local Chicago artists to the University. It was one of the country’s first university art rental programs.

Student browsing Art to Live With collection in 1959

Shapiro hoped the program “would acquaint students with the experience of having an original work of art to live with.” At the beginning of each quarter, students would select works in Ida Noyes Hall, securing the loan with a payment of 50¢ to $1 for insurance.

In the 1980s, however, the loan program was discontinued and works put in storage. In the 1990s, the collection was transferred to the Smart Museum. Under the Smart Museum, works associated with the program were conserved and installed in University buildings and residential common spaces for students and others to enjoy. In fall 2017, the program returned and works from the Art to Live With collection were once again made available for loan to students.

Student Advisory Committee

art at smart

Members of the Student Advisory Committee get the opportunity to visit artists all around Chicago. This past year, the SAC visited Orkideh Torabi in her studio. She was commissioned to create an original work that will be available for loan from the Art to Live program.

student selection smart

This past year, the Smart’s Student Advisory Committee (SAC) worked to expand the Art to Live With collection. Nine of the new acquisitions were proposed and voted on by these students! SAC member and rising second-year Caroline said, “As someone considering curation as a career prospect, it offered an incredibly exciting and unique opportunity to undergo actual curation work as an undergraduate. We were able to choose a piece to propose, research it, and write and present an acquisition proposal.

Framing Specifications

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Brian Dailey WORDS at American University Museum

KAG-01

Brian Dailey’s towering, multi – screen video installation WORDS — the creative summation of an odyssey that took him to nearly ninety countries over the course of six years — is the artist’s investigation into the impact of globalization on the interrelation between language, culture, and environment. While offering a contemporary turn on primordial stories such as the Tower of Babel, the kaleidoscopic, cacophonous, and mesmerizing structure is rooted in the present and seeks to elucidate through this inventive vehicle how languages, and the words upon which they are built, shape our global realities. A powerful visual expression of the challenges faced in communicating across linguistic boundaries and national borders in today’s world , WORDS also reveals the captivating dynamism of humanity in the expressive, physical presence of the range of personalities who come to life on the flickering screens.

Against the backdrop of an international geopolitical landscape undergoing tumultuous and historic changes, Dailey created a list of thirteen words that spoke to larger philosophical concerns facing humanity and found international resonance: Peace, war, love, environment, freedom, religion, democracy, government, happiness, socialism, capitalism, future, and United States. He visited public and private venues on all seven continents, set up his camera and green – screen backdrop in various locales, and invited passersby to be interviewed. A local facilitator presented each of the thirteen words in the participants’ native language and invited them to express — in a single word —the first impression each of the nouns evoked.

Brian Dailey "WAR", 2018 Inkjet on Photo Museum Etching paper 18 x 22 in

Brian Dailey “WAR”, 2018 Inkjet on Photo Museum Etching paper 18 x 22 in

Most frequent responses from around the world: Peace, Death, Destruction

Brian Dailey "DEMOCRACY" 2018 Inkjet on Photo Museum Etching paper 18 x 22 in

Brian Dailey “DEMOCRACY” 2018 Inkjet on Photo Museum Etching paper 18 x 22 in

Most frequent responses from around the world: Freedom, Politics, Liberty

GOVERNMENT

Brian Dailey “GOVERNMENT” 2018 Inkjet on Photo Museum Etching paper 18 x 22 in
Most frequent responses from around the world: Corruption, Power, Good

Brian Dailey "FREEDOM" 2018 Inkjet on Photo Museum Etching paper 18 x 22 in

Brian Dailey “FREEDOM” 2018 Inkjet on Photo

Most frequent responses from around the world: Peace, Happiness, Life

KAG-02

Words about WORDS
Represented in these prints is every word uttered by the nearly 2,000 participants who responded to the thirteen prompts propelling this project. Giving voice to each and every individual who engaged in the WORDS endeavor, the various responses were calibrated and scaled to reflect the frequency in which they were articulated. The textual array manifest in this print series silently mirrors the poetic elements emanating from the towering installation while visually mapping the same territory.

About the artist

Perhaps no word better characterizes Brian Dailey (b. 1951) than polytropos, the first adjective Homer applies to Odysseus in the Odyssey. Translated from the Greek as “well traveled,” “much wandering,” and, in a more metaphorical sense, as “the man of many twists and turns,” polytropos suitably describes Dailey’s life journey and its many peregrinations. As a student at Otis Art Institute (MFA, 1975) and in his ensuing art career in Los Angeles, Dailey participated in the pioneering creative experimentation defining the prolific artistic milieu in California in this era. His early career launched him on a path that—before bringing him full circle back to his roots as an artist—took him through a twenty-year interlude working on arms control and international security. These unusual experiences, which he approached with the same curiosity that has driven his art, provide a fertile source of inspiration in his idiosyncratic creative practice. As the artist states:

There is art in politics and politics in art. Throughout my life two passions stimulated my curiosity: art and international politics. The tension between two interests generated my intense inquiry into these seemingly diametrically opposed professional fields. In the context of my career, the wanderings through a labyrinth of artistic and intellectual encounters provided a lifetime of eclectic experiences, which, in turn, supplied a bounty of material for my art.

Based in the Washington DC metropolitan area, Dailey is an artist whose work in a range of media, including photography, film, installations, and painting, draws on his multifaceted life experiences. His conceptual and performance based art expands the parameters of the mediums in which he works, defying easy categorization. Engaging with the social, political, and cultural issues of our times, his work is informed by his unusual background and unconventional evolution as an artist.

See more information about the artist and this project: http://www.briandaileyart.com/words/

Brian Dailey WORDS

January 27 – March 11, 2018

American University Museum

Washington, D.C.

Framing Specifications

Painted maple frame with dolphin finish, matching spacer, and strainer
Painted maple frame with dolphin finish, matching spacer, and strainer

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Profile: 101 Type: Floating Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: maple frame with painted dolphin finish
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame
custom wood spacer: 1/2″ matching wood frame spacer
Custom wood strainer: 3/4″ wood frame strainer
Custom frame acrylic: 1/8″ regular acrylic cut to size
Custom frame backing board: 1/8″ acid free foamboard cut to size




James Grubola “The Friday (and Thursday) Sessions”

This exhibition marks a returning to my first love – figure drawing. In  August 1975 I began teaching drawing in the Department of Fine Arts at the University of Louisville with a special emphasis on figure drawing.  Over the next forty-two years I worked with hundreds of students, scores of models, and set up innumerable poses ranging from the simple and straight-forward to complex or unusual scenes to inspire students and models alike. 

Once I was primarily a figurative artist myself. With the exception of my very first semester, my classes always took place Monday through Thursday.  Fridays were set aside for me to work on my artwork.  Many of these Fridays revolved around hiring a model for a three-hour drawing session in the empty drawing studios on campus.   

James Grubola - The Friday Sessions: “Prelude to a Pose” III
silverpoint 9.5 x 12
James Grubola – The Friday Sessions: “Prelude to a Pose” III
silverpoint 9.5 x 12

After the pose has been set, my figure drawings all begin the same.  Working life-size (or slightly smaller to fit the full figure on the page) I begin by marking the limits of the body on the page with an empty hand.  Just as a ballet dancer “marks” steps in a combination through a series hand gestures to help make a muscle memory, I move over the page trying to visualize key landmarks and measuring distances with my hand creating a muscle memory between my hand and eye of figure before me and the graphic construction to come.  When I finally pick up graphite my first marks make visible these usually anatomical, cardinal points.  Once this gesture locates the key structural lines and positions the figure on the page, the process turns to “fleshing” out the shapes, adding volume and form.

James Grubola - The Friday Sessions: Sunburn Feet graphite 35 x 45
James Grubola – The Friday Sessions: Sunburn Feet graphite 35 x 45

After that first mark violates the blank paper, each drawing reflects my struggle between the image and the drawing itself. For me observational drawing involves subject and object, perception and representation, the hand and body, and most importantly the eye and the mind. Drawing can be the least encumbered and the most intimate of media, but drawing also demands the full attention of the artist and the viewer.  It has been called the diary of the hand because it records the slightest changes of pressure; whether the mark is assured or tentative, made quickly or with slow determination. 

About the artist

James Grubola joined the Department of Fine Arts and the completing his MFA at Indiana University Bloomington where he worked with Distinguished Professor Rudy Pozzatti. A native Detroiter, Grubola earned his BFA from Wayne State University in both printmaking and drawing.

It was during this time that Grubola first began work with the medieval drawing technique of silverpoint. Although he continues to work in a number of different media and techniques including printmaking, his true passion over the years has been for drawing. 

Grubola has maintained an active exhibition record highlighted by several one and two person exhibitions including “30 Years of Silverpoint Drawing” at Nazareth Gallery in Nazareth,  Kentucky and “Lines on the Landscape” an exhibition in the University’s Hite Galleries / Belknap  and a one-person show and artist-in-residency at the Evansville Museum of Art and Science.  Grubola’s work has also been exhibited in numerous invitational and traveling exhibitions and represented in the permanent collections of the Speed Art Museum, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art, and corporate collections of Bristol Myers Squibb, Eastman Kodak, and McGraw Hill Inc.

In 2015 he was named Distinguished Teaching Professor at the University of Louisville.  Grubola also served as Chair of the Department of Fine Arts and Director of the Hite Art Institute for 17 years. 

James Grubola: “The Friday (and Thursday) Sessions”

January 19th – February 24th 2018

Cressman Center for Visual Art

Hite Art Institute, University of Louisville

sitting women pose 1000

FRAMING SPECIFICATIONS

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METRO GALLERY FRAME
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Type: Floating Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: maple frame with clear finish
Custom wood spacer: 1/2″ wood frame spacer
Purchasing Option: unjoined wood frame cut to size with wedges
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Framing Advice: fitting gallery frames

 

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METRO GALLERY FRAMES
Profile: 101
Type: Floating Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: maple frame with pickled white finish
Custom wood spacer: 1/2″ wood frame spacer
Purchasing Option: unjoined wood frame cut to size with wedges
Framing Advice: joining gallery frames
Framing Advice: fitting gallery frames

 




Heidi Jensen at Ball State University

Sit Comfortably in a Darkened Room and Think of Nothing: Recent Drawings by Heidi Jensen

In Claude Cahun’s monologue “Helen the Rebel”, the narrative of Helen of Troy is reimagined and retold. Rather than existing as a passive object of desire, Cahun’s Helen collaborates with her husband Menelaus to orchestrate the Trojan War. Her renowned beauty is the result of a training process. Helen relates instructions from Menelaus on how to become beautiful: “. . . sit comfortably in a darkened room and think of nothing. Just that, every day, for a few minutes – gradually and indefinitely increasing the time”. The work in this exhibition casts an oblique eye at subjects homely and humble, extravagant and decorative, and to the biological forces that create transformation in organic life forms.

A thread running throughout my work is confusion of the animate and inanimate, an approach to form leading back to the Surrealists. Brushes, the subjects of many of these drawings, are humble objects that carry suggestions of utility and service. They are tools, used to clear away unwanted matter and ward off compromising, unruly elements. These anthropomorphic forms hover between the male and female, they contain tongue-in-cheek references to physical anatomy. They act without the guidance of a hand, like the endlessly toiling, enchanted marching brooms in Disney’s Fantasia. Drawn with toilet brushes and dusters in mind, these brushes remain unrepentantly bristly, hairy and lowly, while ensnared or beset by decorative ruffles. The drawings are made on rough, dyed paper with gouache, a medium chosen for its flat, opaque qualities. Graphic line is employed to invoke subtle humor and comics.
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Blusher, Gouache, Charcoal and Pastel on Khadi paper, 30″ x 22″, 2016
Images copyright of Heidi Jensen, 2016
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Double Scrub, Gouache and Pastel on Khadi paper, 30″ x 22″, 2016
Images copyright of Heidi Jensen, 2016
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Scrubber, Gouache and Pastel on Khadi paper, 30″ x 22″, 2016
Images copyright of Heidi Jensen, 2016
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Girlie, Gouache, Charcoal and Pastel on Khadi paper, 30″ x 22″, 2016
Images copyright of Heidi Jensen, 2016
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Flee, Gouache and Charcoal on Khadi paper, 30″ x 22″, 2016
Images copyright of Heidi Jensen, 2016

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Molt, Gouache, Charcoal and Pastel on Khadi paper, 30″ x 22″, 2016
Images copyright of Heidi Jensen, 2016
Exhibition Shot, Scrubber Mediumb
Exhibition Shot 1 Med

About the artist

Heidi Jensen is an Associate Professor of Art at Ball State University, where she specializes in the instruction of drawing. She earned an MFA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a BFA from the University of Minnesota at Duluth. Recent work has been included in the Great Lakes Drawing Biennial at Eastern Michigan University, in Drawing Never Dies at RedLine Center for Contemporary Art in Denver, CO, in Forms of Adornment: Flesh and the Erotic at Orbit Galleries, Lamar Dodd School of Art, University of Georgia, and in The Base Line: An Exhibition on Drawing at the ARC Gallery and Educational Foundation in Chicago, IL. She is a fellow of several residency programs, including the Millay Colony in New York and La Napoule Foundation in France. Work from this project is featured in the October/November 2017 West edition of New American Paintings. Heidi divides her time between Muncie, Indiana and Salt Lake City, Utah. She collects brushes and dusters of all shapes and sizes. 

Sit Comfortably in a Darkened Room and Think of Nothing: Recent Drawings by Heidi Jensen

November 16 –  November 30, 2017

Atrium Gallery, Ball State University, Muncie IN

FRAMING SPECIFICATIONS AND ADVICE

Capture0047-584 101AH05_SPACER75_700

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Standard Profile: 101
Type: Floating Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: ash frame with pickled white finish
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame with matching splines
Custom Wood Spacer: 3/4″ wood frame spacer
Custom Wood Strainer: 3/4″ wood strainer
Custom Frame Acrylic: regular acrylic cut to size
Framing Advice: fitting gallery frames




Heidi Hogden: Uncertain Terrain

Heidi Hogden: Uncertain Terrain consists of graphite drawings and paper sculptures created by Hogden while she was the Artist-in-Resident at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Through these works, Hogden explores the physical frailty of the natural world and the relationship between place and identity on a symbolic level. This work represents moments of transformation; from setting old drawings ablaze and collecting discarded tree trunks to creating objects of contemplation. Hogden seeks to discover the psychological and emotional terrain in understanding the self and the manner in which place becomes a defining characteristic of identity.

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Heidi Hogden, “Resurgence” , liquid graphite and powdered graphite on paper, 60 x 40 inches, 2016

Heidi Hogden 2

Heidi Hogden “Kindling”,  liquid graphite and powdered graphite on paper,  60 x 40 inches, 2017

Heidi Hogden 3

Heidi Hogden, “Up in Smoke”, liquid graphite and powdered graphite on paper, 40 x 60 inches, 2017

About the artist

Heidi Hogden is a artist and a Assistant Professor of Drawing at Arizona State University. She earned her MFA from School of the Museum of Fine Arts in affiliation with Tufts University (2012) and a BFA in Painting from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (2008). She was formerly a Visiting Professor/Artist-In-Residence at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (2015-2017), a Visiting Assistant Professor of Painting at the University of South Dakota (2014-2015), and Post Graduate Teaching Fellow at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (2011-2014). Hogden received a Professional Development Grant from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock (2015) and an artists grant to attend the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT (2014). Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, at the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock, AR, and at the South Dakota Art Museum in Brookings, SD, among others. Her exhibition record reflects both a dedication to drawing as a creative practice and an intellectual curiosity that connects the practice of drawing to larger fields of inquiry and engagement with service-learning and community building projects.

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Heidi Hogden: Uncertain Terrain

Ann Maners and Alex Pappas Gallery

University of Arkansas at Little Rock

FRAMING SPECIFICATIONS AND ADVICE


Capture0018-431 101MP05

METRO GALLERY FRAME

Standard Profile: 101
Type: Standard Gallery Frame
Wood & Finish: maple frame with pickled white finish
Purchasing Option: joined wood frame
plastic spacer: 1/4″ clear econospace
Custom Wood Strainer: 3/4″ wood frame strainer with crossbar
Custom Cut Matboard: 4 ply white museum matboard
Custom Frame Acrylic:  regular acrylic cut to size
Custom Frame Backing Board:  archival coroplast cut to size
Framing Advice: fitting gallery frames