Ritratto, Spring, 2006, Dimensions: Height 24in., Materials: wood, iron

Mantra, Spring, 2006, Dimensions: 8′x2′x6″, Materials: wood, iron

I can see why Mantra was named as it was. one could meditate by the rhythm, the non rhythm within it and the different surfaces caused by natural wear.

To my sensabilities, this is taking beauty and displaying it, in such away that brings to light already existing traits, as apposed to taking material, and turning it into something completely different.

Cincinnati Art Snob posted an interesting interview with Alton Falcone - hop over and read.

Sometimes Master craftsmanship stops me in my tracks as much as expressive art does, and when the two of them meet, it is even better.

This is the case with Kathleen Dustin’s work. Kathleen’s chosen media is polymere clay (which is quite an unusual choice of media for an artist, since it is usually associated with kids crafts, bead making and so on.) You can read more about her background and see more of her work on her site.

From the Stone Series.

These purse are just beautiful. Something about the roughness vs Fragility makes me sigh.

This has less efect on me emotionally, but the craftsmanship is killing me :-)

Via Blue Lantern

Most artists/designers/artisans have had to deal with the originality question on a daily basis, I know that I visit that issue on a daily basis for sure.

Where did I get the idea for this from, has anyone else ever done this, and how? In the end, I think its all about interpretation and execution. Those two elements are what makes a piece original and ours.

Over the years I have stopped fretting over it, realizing that even if someone else has made or will make a piece similar to mine, or with the same source of inspiration, it will still be differ from my work.

Recently,( I won’t mention names here) I ran into the work of an artist that I had never heard of before, and she was dealing with the same subject matter that I was in the early ninties, and came up with pretty similar results. We live on opposite sides of the globe, and in pre internet conditions, it is very unlikely that we has seen each others work before.

Anyway,I have been rambling on because I wanted to tell you about an exhibition by Jonathan Monk, that is happening at the Casy Kaplan Gallery

Jonathan has dealt widely with the issue of originality and his philosophy seems to be “If you can beat them, Join them”

A blurb from the gallery’s press release

“Appropriation is something I have used or worked with in my art since starting art school in 1987. At this time (and still now)
I realised that being original was almost impossible, so I tried using what was already available as source material for my own
work. By doing this I think I also created something original and certainly something very different to what I was representing.
I always think that art is about ideas, and surely the idea of an original and a copy of an original are two very
different things.” - Jonathan Monk, 2009

Casey Kaplan is pleased to present new work by artist, Jonathan Monk (b. 1969 in Leicester, England, lives and
works in Berlin, Germany), in his sixth solo exhibition with the gallery, The Inflated Deflated. Previously, Monk has taken
on artists such as John Baldessari, Chris Burden, Sol LeWitt, Ed Ruscha, and Lawrence Weiner, as source material
for his own artwork. For this exhibition, Monk turns his attention to the artist, Jeff Koons. By employing his own
intrinsic artistic strategies, appropriation and recontextualization, Monk presents an exhibition that appends art history
with a narrative of his own interplay between the objects and ideas of the past and his newly conceived reincarnations.

Its quite an interesting concept, one that hadn’t occurred to me before, but one that I will probably dwell on for quite some time.

Via The Art Life

Ever since childhood, Art Gallery’s and museums were a solemn place. A quite place. A place of respect and contemplation.

I have never questioned that, and I would be hesitant to take my toddlers to an art museum (unless it was curated for kids) for fear of them disrupting that silence.

The thing is - maybe that whole attitude is not really necessary, or is resulting in a lose of part of the art experience.

Art, arouses reactions and emotions, and if it doesn’t - its not very good.

Without disrespecting the art and the other visitors, shouldn’t it be OK to express some of those feeling, even in a little way, in a museum?

would that necessarily make us disrespectful, or is joy less appreciated and appreciative than somberness?

I am asking all of this since I ran into a blog Called Jumping in Art Museums, which is full of people from all over the world doing just that.

I understand why You need to “behave yourself” in art museums and galleries, so as not to disturb the other viewers, and not to go overboard and harm the art… But the question I am asking here is more philosophical - Why, once again, do joy and happiness get the back seat while somberness seriousness and a touch of sadness get to lead once again.

Photo credit creative commons license tais

The United States Botanical Garden Has just opened a show called Flora: Growing Inspirations, that will be showing through October 12th on East Gallery and Conservatory Terrace.

a Blurb from their site

This exhibit features a series of highly stylized garden rooms on the Conservatory Terrace that immerse the visitor in a vibrant, albeit slow, form of performance art. Within the rooms and in an adjoining gallery are featured original sculptures inspired by plants. The sculptures, selected by a jury from a national competition, celebrate the symbolic and aesthetic role of plants in culture. Contemporary artists have drawn on the diversity of plant form and the fundamental strength of plants’ life force for powerful metaphors that comment on the state of modern society and individual human existence

via Painterly Visions