Leaping rabbit... and other public art

Lawrence Argent's Red Rabbit

Landing at the airport in Sacramento, California this week, I was surprised to be exiting my flight into a new-to-me terminal with lots of public art. I've just finished reading an extensive article about the new art pieces that have been installed. Lots of great photos and information compiled by David M. Roth, the editor and publisher of Squarecylinder, is available for perusing here. I'm looking forward to further exploration later this week when I fly out of Sacramento to return home!

Crazy-wonderful thankfulness (with turkeys)

I'm thinking today of all I have to be grateful for and the list is long and crazy-wonderful, from great big things to fortuitous little details. There remain struggles and challenges but overall, wow, life is good.

High on my list is how thankful I am to be surrounded by a creative and supportive family of wonderful characters. Case in point: at Thanksgiving, the entire family looks forward to seeing the results of a turkey-themed watercolor tradition that my husband and stepdaughter have managed to keep alive through the years, and now, across the miles.

The turkey saga usually incorporates world or family events, particularly travel, and the potential subject matter is a much discussed topic. Last year the turkeys explored Costa Rica...

 

Thanksgiving watercolor: turkey zipline in Costa Rica. © 2010, Jim Leggitt and Gretchen Leggitt. 

The earlier series of 15 can be seen here. Or come by to see the watercolors festooned around the dining room! Can't wait to see what they'll come up with this year. An article from Jim's blog about the tradition and process is here: Thanksgiving Watercolors: A 15-year Family Tradition.

Hope you and yours will enjoy your Thanksgiving rituals and traditions, whatever they may be! 

Contemporary collage "changing like a chameleon..."

"One of the exciting things about collage is its primary use of discarded paper media which ultimately keeps it in motion, constantly changing like a chameleon. A quick look at the diversity of styles, concepts and technique found in contemporary collage proves it’s moved well beyond simply cut paper and glue.

I suspect many artists find it alluring for not only its immediacy but its unique and inherent nature to reinvent the familiar into something mysteriously new. Collage also has a long history of integrating itself in to political and cultural movements so it seems natural there’s a collage revival happening in these uncertain times."

— from an interview with "All That Remains" exhibition curator Charles Wilkin, posted to the Hyperallergic blog by Hrag Vartanian.

I couldn't agree more with the thoughts expressed in the interview. Opportunities to look at collage are increasing in galleries, museums -- and wonderfully, also online. 

Collage works from the "All That Remains" show are available for viewing here. The exhibition is an international one, curated by Wilkin, and on view at Picture Farm in Brooklyn, New York through November 19, 2011.

To peruse even more collage, consider visiting the 27th Annual National Collage Society exhibition site, viewable online here. (I have one in there somewhere...)

Image above, included for its chameleon-like coloration, is: "Composure," collage on paper, 10 x 8." © 2001, Janice McDonald.

Enthusiastic about "Reclamation"

As you might imagine, I have a penchant for artwork that incorporates recycled and repurposed materials.

After having it on my "must see" list for most of the summer, I finally got to the "Reclamation" exhibition at Metro State College of Denver's Center for Visual Art. If you are local, it's on view through August 13th (2011) and worth a visit. If you're farther afield, and are interested in artwork created from reclaimed materials, you may want to explore the work of some these artists online. They are: Sabin Aell, Brian Cavanaugh, Terry Maker, Jon Rietfors, Yumi Janairo Roth, and Ann Weber.

It's a very engaging and impressive exhibition -- fascinating to see what materials each artist employs and to what effect. While the art is wonderful enough from a distance, to truly appreciate its derivation and the creative re-use of materials requires close inspection. (And those kind of photos were unfortunately not allowed.) 

Among my favorite pieces were the sculptures by Ann Weber which were fashioned from strips of used cardboard, stapled together, to form organic shapes that often took advantage of the printed graphics and die cut slots/openings of the original boxes. A video about her work is helpful in understanding the her thinking, process, and scale. The large pieces in these photos are 8-12 feet tall. 

I was thrilled by the textural wonderment in many of the pieces in the show. Layering of materials becomes very compelling when small bits and pieces are able to take on entirely new forms in combination and through repetition. While I consider these works to be primarily sculpture and assemblage, the thinking behind them certainly was inspiring and has strong parallels to the realm of collage.