i have never seen a better radioactive spider in my life.
—
“everything you can imagine is real”
-pablo picasso
May7
Tag Archives: artist
Apr19
this time.
even though
it’s mid-april
and the skies
delivered snow today
i thought back to a few days ago
when just like today
i had my sandals on
and came upon
a mother and child
in the sun
taking time
to create art
with simple and happy words
‘have a nice day’
for anyone in the neighborhood
who may come by
needing this message.
—
“this time, like all times, is a very good one, if we but know what to do with it.”
-ralph waldo emerson
Feb11
portrait.
one of the kinder drew this portrait of me in class
and
it is one of my favorite portraits of all time.
—
‘every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”
-oscar wilde
Jan27
art beats.
the kinder drummed on paint while listening to music
creating vibrant, splashy, coloring-bursting art
—
“creativity is intelligence having fun.”
– albert einstein
Jan19
raining popcorn.
popcorn is art and one of my favorite snacks
(though it’s no flamin’ hot cheetos!),
something to consider on national popcorn day.
Raining Popcorn (2001) is a piece commissioned by the Faulconer Gallery of the Grinnell College in Iowa. The commission would take artist, Sandy Skoglund many months to complete. In Skoglund’s art practice, the conceptual subject matter works in conjunction with the physical materials she uses, drawing on historical references, and instilling them with psychologically complex meaning.
Produced in 2001, just before the September 11 attacks, Raining Popcorn references the complex roots of American contemporary culture and overconsumption. The unifying subject throughout the piece is popcorn, so pronounced and repetitive it replaces nature. The popcorn becomes an all-encompassing reality, lining the walls, the floors, the subjects, and alas growing from trees. This obsessive environment constructed by Skoglund derives from the artist’s desire to combine sculptures of animals, live humans, and nature into a space that involves thought and play, as part research and part recreation.
The abundance of Popcorn acts as a reflection of the cultural environment, being noisy, excessive, universal, and part of popular culture. Currently, Americans eat 13 billion quarts of Popcorn a year, produced mostly in the heartland of America, from Illinois to Ohio. The piece is a response to memories and experiences Skoglund felt as a graduate student in Iowa.
The painstakingly handcrafted quality of the endless popcorn creates a fantasy landscape, one that raises questions about climate issues and our surrounding environment, as well as fantasy and reality. In Raining Popcorn, Skoglund’s objects and composite staging have a base in truth; they are not a product of photoshop or digital manipulation. It is critical for the artist that the photographs evidence something genuine. The constructions are explicitly staged to be photographed from one unique viewpoint.
—
“americans love popcorn, and their love doesn’t quit.”
-rosecrans baldwin
—
Credits: Sandy Skoglund, Raining Popcorn – Holden Luntz Gallery
Nov20
land art.
Every fall in Osijek, Croatia – Nikola Faller, academic sculptor and Osijek land artist, creates this magic.
Her drawings are made by raking leaves.
—
“every photographed object is merely the trace left behind by the disappearance of all the rest.
it is an almost perfect crime,
and almost total resolution of the world,
which merely leave the illusion of a particular object shining forth,
the image of which then becomes an impenetrable enigma.”
-jean baudrillard
—
image credits: plava planeta, suzana vida-suz
Nov13
colors.
our latest mural created thanks to a community initiative
Ann Arbor Art Center’s Art in Public Places murals project – a fresh initiative designed to infuse art into our community. To make this dream a reality, they crowdfunded to raise $50,000 for the last two years to pay the artists a living wage and covered other mural expenses like equipment rentals, paint, permits, etc.
Ann Arbor has innumerable large- and small-scale murals already, but they have new company as the result of a crowdfunded project to bring art to walls and alleys around town.
In July, the Ann Arbor Art Center (A2AC) raised more than $50,000 to commission 10 murals around the city. The fundraiser was through Patronicity, and once the goal was met, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) matched the donations to double the money available to the mural artists. At the onset of the project, 10 artists paired with local business owners on the sites of their future murals. In October, two additional murals were announced, raising the total to 12. This initiative is part of the ongoing A2AC Art in Public program that aims to make art “accessible and equitable to everyone,” relying on community-based donations.
Since the Art Center helped crowdfund two other public murals in the recent past, those have been added to the A2AC Murals Map, which features a walking tour of all the works. Currently, 13 murals are finished, with the 14th debuting sometime in 2021.
—
“one can speak poetry just by arranging colors well.”
-vincent van gogh
—
link: https://www.annarborartcenter.org › art-in-public › murals
Apr29
with passion.
going all in.
—
“do it with passion or not at all.”
– Rosa Nouchette Carey- British writer
Feb3
oneself.
my favorite self portrait of the season
looks back at you eye-to-eye
confident and unapologetic
something about it – so open and joyful.
—
“self portraits are a way of revealing something about oneself.”
-eric kandel
Feb1
take art leave art.
WDIV-TV shares a recently discovered local treasure –
When glass artist Shawn Bungo and his wife moved to Ann Arbor from Knoxville, Tennessee six months ago, they knew moving to a new city during a pandemic would be a challenge. No stranger to community collaboration, Bungo decided to engage with locals through virtual scavenger hunts for small glass works he would hide across town — and they were an overnight hit. He originally started the tradition while going on walks with his dog, Leo, in Knoxville.
“Being a glass artist, you have a lot of pieces that don’t come out, so that’s what started that,” said Bungo. “When I moved up here, after the pandemic started, I started doing that again where I would just go around and randomly hide things and put my card with them — typically in downtown Ann Arbor. I really connected with the community with that.”
Nowadays, his items are claimed within hours of his posts — and in some cases the people who find them share a photo of them collecting his works.
On his many walks, Bungo became fascinated with the city’s numerous Little Free Libraries. He shifted his scavenger hunts to showcase the various library boxes around town — which inspired him to relaunch a project he created in Knoxville.
Bungo constructed a Take Art Leave Art box and gallery outside his home on Ann Arbor’s south side. The concept is a free art exchange between community members.
“I just recently put it back up two weeks ago and I shared it with the Ann Arbor Townies group on Facebook,” said Bungo. “As soon as I did that, I almost immediately got people involved in it and it’s been really fun.”
He said he’s received about a dozen miniature paintings and other small items in the 12×12-inch box, some with handwritten notes. “Over the years, I’ve gotten poems, photographs — I’m open to everything,” said Bungo. He said it has served as a fun way to engage with other Ann Arborites during the pandemic.
“With people being so isolated right now, I think it’s the perfect time to do something like this, “ he said. “It allows me to connect with people because we haven’t been able to.” Bungo was supposed to show at the Ann Arbor Art Fair last summer, and with the event being canceled, he felt like he missed out on a true introduction both to Ann Arbor’s art scene and its residents. For now, keep an eye out for his latest adventures with Leo and his front yard gallery. You might just find a tiny treasure — if you look close enough.
story: wdivtv,clickondetroit, meredith bruckner – photos: shawn bungo, bungo glass
“art is too important not to share.”
-romero britto
I didn't have my glasses on.... 