Coming Up and Closing Soon

At Rice University Art Gallery you can see El Anatsui's Gli (Wall). The exhibition runs through 14 March 2010. ( The photo below is from Rice Gallery's website. )

This Thursday evening, Feb 25, Nicholas Gardner, Rice University Senior, Art History and Visual Arts, is giving a lecture entitled “El Anatsui: Fabricating Identity”
The lecture is at 7:00 pm in Sewall Hall 309. (adjacent to Rice Gallery)
I haven't seen the show yet. This weekend, I hope. You can read more about this artist and his exhibition in New York on Nancy Natale's blog, Art in the Studio.
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At Darke Gallery located at 5321 Feagan @ Detering, you can still see Darke/Read Group Exhibition up through end of February.

I liked the concept of this show and beyond that, the informality of the presentation. All the work presented was pinned to the wall unframed. Prices were affordable, none higher than eight hundred dollars. Many were sold by the time I visited.

The works by Ann Resnick and Kevin Mullins are two of my favorites in the show.

Ann Resnick's work below titled The Long Goodbye is a lino print and burnt paper, size 12 x 24 inches. The piece floats away from the wall. The white of the flowers are burnt out shapes so that you see a fleeting version in shadow on the wall.

Kevin Mullins six piece series are screen prints made with beet juice. Each piece is individually titled. Top row: Red Herring, Red Handed, and Red Headed. Bottom row: Red Rum, Seeing Red and David Reed. Up close, each print is more than just the color. Small circular shapes seem to be stamped into the papers, pattern-like in various placements on each piece, along with a bit of hand written text. Just a word or two is all. Click the image or here to bring up a larger photo to see in more detail.

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Coming up in March you can see new work by Lydia Balahutrak. Hide and Seek is the title of her exhibition at Nau-haus Art Space, 223 E 11th in the Heights. Mar 6 is the reception date.

Above: Lydia in her studio with some of the paintings in this exhibition.

Above: Hedge, 60 x 65 inches, charcoal, chalks, acrylic, collage on canvas

Lydia says, "The vines and berries, the flocks of birds, and the tangles of trees and branches in my art work are not exotic nor enchanted, but ever-present and close to home. Life grows out of the layered ground and spreads out over images of war and suffering as well as those of joy and jubilation."
She speaks of our human need for both order and disorder. She also acknowledges our desire for harmony and calm. The undercurrent of imagery in her these pieces, clippings from newspaper and magazine articles, many of a political nature about war and destruction, and political disharmony and dishonesty, is overlaid and woven together with the beautiful renderings of the tangles of trees and vines and nature.
The work being exhibited has been several years in the making and references some of the dark historical moments of the G. Bush era through the present time. Tragedy, despair, distrust, and disgust, along with patience and hope for better times.

Click here to revisit a previous post on this blog at Lydia's studio.
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I will miss Lydia's reception however because I will be in Tucson for the 5th Annual Encaustic Invitational at Conrad Wilde Gallery. Below is the postcard announcement and below that is my painting in the exhibition. The reception is scheduled Saturday, March 6th.
Click here for more information about the artists in the exhibition.
Title: Tracking, 16 x 8 x 2 inches, Encaustic Collage on panel (encaustic, handmade Asian paper-burned, oil bar)

Did You See This? At Sikkema Jenkins & Co, New York

Wow! Wish I could have seen this in person. See Nancy Natale's post about Drew's work at Sekima Jenkins & Co. in New York and my earlier post about his exhibition at the Blaffer Gallery in Houston. Drew's web site as well.
Birth. Death. Decay. Regeneration. And more.

Brenda Mallory

I love the way Brenda Mallory relates her very abstract forms to the natural world. They a beautiful and strange at the same time. The piece below is part of an installation titled Offcuts.

About this work she explains:
"A nearly bottomless supply of cloth pieces in the shape of an elongated oval known in geometry and religion as the vesica pisces are stacked in my studio. For Offcuts, I set myself two parameters: one was to use only these pieces as a base; the second was to adhere to a basic law of physics which states “matter cannot be created or destroyed, but can only change its form”. If I cut apart a piece of fabric I had to form something else with what remained. Nothing went into the trashcan. What I did to the shapes was not restricted in any other way. They were variously burned, waxed, sewn, bolted, rolled, stretched, crushed and combined with other materials."

The work above is a snippet of her Porous Borders, an installation piece in collaboration at the Portland Building with Toronto artist Fei Disbrow. Regarding this work she says, "Porous Borders deals with the fears and paranoia that dominate post 911 culture. The work creates is a feeling of discomfort and a lack of ease, even evoking repulsion by using forms that almost seem natural, but are actually deeply strange and offputting."

Below is a detail of work from another installation piece titled Biophilia.

Brenda is one of the featured artists in the Luminous Layers, Exploring Contemporary Encaustic curated exhibition at Lake Oswego, Oregon opening in late June.