Sunday, May 24, 2009

More on Artists of Hawaii

Artists of Hawaii 2009 opened May 13 , with 86 pieces by 64 artists selected from a field of over 900 submissions. HPR's Noe Tanigawa spoke with this year's juror, Laura Hoptman, when she was in Honolulu for the final jurying. The link to the interview is here: HPR Interview.

Also, the Academy of Arts has a link for the show: Academy Site. If you go to the "Artists" page and click on a name, you'll see that artist's work.

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Shows, Calls for Artists, Workshops, etc.

[Note: For further information on any of the items, click on the link and you will be taken to the AHA Bulletin Board post. If you are not a member of the AHA, you will have to register and be accepted by a moderator.

Items for this page should be sent to the AHA Bulletin Board manager, Chieko Higuchi, at higuchic002@hawaii.rr.com.]

Calls for Artists:

  1. Call for Artists for "Da Kine: Local Perspectives" by David Behlke & Associates (June 6)
  2. Hawaii Watercolor Society (HWS) Annual "Small Kine Show" (May 31; must be member)
  3. Call To Artists Assistance for Next Honolulu Country Club (HCC) ArtShow (June 28)
Happening Now:
  1. "Ancestral Reflections 1", photo by Osvaldo Flores, through May 28
  2. "Serenity" and "Embrace", photos by Osvaldo Flores, through June 26
  3. "Artists of Hawaii 2009," with works from AHA members: Virginia Carabelli, Winner of The Reuben Tam Award for Painting, Francisco Clemente, Margo Cook, Douglas Ing, Charlotte Maxwell, Dennis McGeary, Vernon Miyamoto, Roy Okano, Frank Oliva, Jacquelene Watson, through August 16
  4. "A Geisha's World", a mixed media collage show by Warren Stenberg at Honolulu Club, 5th Floor, through June 27
  5. "Art.....Exercising Emotions" by Ed Furuike at Honolulu Club, 7th Floor, through July 4
Coming Up:
  1. Schaefer Portrait Challenge Exhibit, May 29 - September 11
  2. "Analytical Cubism;" a drawing class with master artist Harry Tsuchidana, October 18

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Just for fun

Ignore the subtitles . . . identify the image . . .




Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Getting "The Message!"

[Editor's Note: Here's an interesting take on portraiture that showed at the National Portrait Gallery. The exhibition "RECOGNIZE! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture" ran February 8, 2008 to October 26, 2008. Kehinde Wiley was one of the artists in the exhibition.]

Artist's Statement: Kehinde Wiley

Kehinde Wiley’s portraits of African American men collate modern culture with the influence of Old Masters. Incorporating a range of vernaculars culled from art historical references, Wiley’s work melds a fluid concept of modern culture, ranging from French Rococo to today’s urban landscape. By collapsing history and style into a unique contemporary vision, Wiley interrogates the notion of master painter, “making it at once critical and complicit.” Vividly colorful and often adorned with ornate gilded frames, Wiley’s large-scale figurative paintings, which are illuminated with a barrage of baroque or rococo decorative patterns, posit young black men, fashioned in urban attire, within the field of power reminiscent of Renaissance artists such as Tiepolo and Titian.

[Visit the webpage here and here.]

Texas museum acquires Michelangelo's 1st painting

(From Yahoo! News)

FORT WORTH, Texas – The Kimbell Art Museum will soon be the only U.S. museum to display a Michelangelo painting after acquiring his earliest known work, a rare treasure that was tucked away and doubted as authentic for more than a century.

The museum declined to disclose how much it paid for "The Torment of Saint Anthony," a 15th-century oil and tempera painting on a wood panel that depicts scaly, horned, winged demons trying to pull the saint out of the sky. Experts believe he painted it when he was only 12 or 13 years old.

And only four such works — including this one — by the artist exist, and two of them are unfinished. Most of his paintings are frescos, the famous scenes on the ceiling and wall of Rome's Sistine Chapel.

"This is one of the greatest rediscoveries in the history of art," Eric M. Lee, the Fort Worth museum's director, told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "The evidence could not be stronger. It's like a detective story, like a mystery, and it involves one of the greatest artists of all time."

The painting was exhibited as late as 1874 in Paris. But some questions about its authenticity had surfaced through the years, and after a London family acquired it in the 1900s, the painting was kept privately and largely forgotten in the art world, Lee said.

Last summer an art dealer bought it for nearly $2 million at a Sotheby's auction and then took it to New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, where one department chairman shared his hunch that it was the work of the Renaissance artist, Lee said.

Experts in the Met's paintings conservation department carefully cleaned it by removing decades of dirt, as well as paint layers that art restorers had applied through the ages to fill in chips or dull areas, Lee said.

When they examined the painting further using X-rays and infrared technology, they were able to see how the artist made certain brush strokes, scraped paint layers to achieve detail and even changed elements of the painting before the final version, Lee said.

Museum experts said they determined it not only was Michelangelo's — based on similarities to his other works and the artist's stories of the piece as told to biographers — but also that it was his earliest work — based on its age and details in the painting. The confirmation came a few months ago, and then the Kimbell decided to buy it, Lee said.

The generations of dirt and paint buildup had obscured the painting's identity, and some doubted its authenticity because a similar painting existed, Lee said. But an art expert who extensively studied both paintings said the other was done in the 17th century.

Michelangelo's piece has previously been known as "The Temptation of Saint Anthony" because he was inspired by a similar engraving of that name while learning to be an artist. But after the Kimbell acquired the oil painting, Lee decided to change its name because that engraving depicts a different scene, he said.

The painting will be displayed at the Kimbell starting this fall after a summer exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Lee said he may loan the painting to other museums later for traveling exhibits.

"This could not be a rarer object," Lee said. "That's why this is such an extraordinary opportunity."

___

On the Net:

Kimbell Art Museum: http://www.kimbellart.org

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Art student's car vanishing act

From BBC News:

A design student made a battered old Skoda "disappear" by painting it to merge with the surrounding car park.

Sara Watson, who is studying drawing at the University of Central Lancashire (Uclan), took three weeks to transform the car's appearance.

She created the illusion in the car park outside her studio at Uclan's Hanover Building in Preston.

The car is now being used for advertising by the local recycling firm that donated the vehicle.

'Just amazing'

Ms Watson, a second year student, said: "I was experimenting with the whole concept of illusion but needed something a bit more physical to make a real impact."

She was given the Skoda Fabia from the breaker's yard at local firm Recycling Lives.

Owner Steve Jackson described her work as "amazing".

"When I first saw the photos I was convinced it was something which had been done on the computer," said Mr Jackson.

"But when you look more closely you see the effort and attention to detail she has put into it. It is just amazing."

2009 Water Conservation Week Poster and Poetry Contest

Nearly 3,500 posters and more than 200 poems were entered in the 2009 Water Conservation Week Poster and Poetry Contest! The entries are currently being reviewed and the winners will be announced in early April.

Lots of entries. Staff sort and layout entries for judging.

To see a short video news story of the poster contest judging, click here. Click on individual photos to view larger images.


The judges deliberate.
Judges Alison Ibara-Kawabe, Anthony Randall and Arthur Aiu review poster contest entries.

The contests are held annually to teach Oahu's keiki about the importance of water conservation. The poster contest is open to Oahu students in kindergarten through the 6th grade, and the brand-new poetry contest is open to Oahu students in grades 7 through 12. The winning and honorable mention posters and poems will be showcased in the 2010 Water Conservation Calendar, which will be available in December 2009.


Entries galore. Staff sort and organize entries post-judging.

Click here to download and print the 2009 Water Conservation Calendar.

For more information about these annual contests or calendar, click here, call 748-5041, or email contactus@hbws.org.

Thousands of Entries Received for the 2009 Water Conservation Week Poster & Poetry Contests
Privacy Policy | Publications | Bids & Proposals | Contact Us | Calendar | Home
© Copyright 2004 Board of Water Supply, City & County of Honolulu. All Rights Reserved..

Lego Torture Scenes Protest Media Censorship

From Wired Online:

By Jim Merithew and Keith Axline Write to the Author
05.04.09

A few weeks ago, the Obama administration released controversial memos from the Justice Department describing torturous techniques used by CIA agents while interrogating terror suspects. Since then, media and news outlets have been saturated in moral discussions: Should the CIA have tortured the detainees? Should Obama have released the memos?

But few have questioned the media's self-censorship in reporting on these techniques while they were in use.

Flickr user Legofesto (who prefers to remain anonymous) was fed up with news outlets refusing to publish images depicting torture due to their graphic nature. So he recreated the images and first-hand accounts using Legos to protest what he saw as irresponsible censorship.

[Click here for slideshow. Be advised that it's somewhat disturbing. You've been warned.]

The use of children's toys is at once sanitizing and horrifying and many of the images have received thousands of views. We post selections from Legofesto's series here as a gallery, accompanied by remarks from the artist.

Photo © Legofesto

Mission Impossible: The Code Even the CIA Can't Crack

From Wired

By Steven Levy
Email 04.20.09

The most celebrated inscription at the Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters in Langley, Virginia, used to be the biblical phrase chiseled into marble in the main lobby: "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." But in recent years, another text has been the subject of intense scrutiny inside the Company and out: 865 characters of seeming gibberish, punched out of half-inch-thick copper in a courtyard.

It's part of a sculpture called Kryptos, created by DC artist James Sanborn. He got the commission in 1988, when the CIA was constructing a new building behind its original headquarters. The agency wanted an outdoor installation for the area between the two buildings, so a solicitation went out for a piece of public art that the general public would never see. Sanborn named his proposal after the Greek word for hidden. The work is a meditation on the nature of secrecy and the elusiveness of truth, its message written entirely in code.

Almost 20 years after its dedication, the text has yet to be fully deciphered. A bleary-eyed global community of self-styled cryptanalysts—along with some of the agency's own staffers—has seen three of its four sections solved, revealing evocative prose that only makes the puzzle more confusing. Still uncracked are the 97 characters of the fourth part (known as K4 in Kryptos-speak). And the longer the deadlock continues, the crazier people get.

Whether or not our top spooks intended it, the persistent opaqueness of Kryptos subversively embodies the nature of the CIA itself—and serves as a reminder of why secrecy and subterfuge so fascinate us. "The whole thing is about the power of secrecy," Sanborn tells me when I visit his studio, a barnlike structure on Jimmy Island in Chesapeake Bay (population: 2). He is 6'7", bearded, and looks a bit younger than his 63 years. Looming behind him is his latest work in progress, a 28-foot-high re-creation of the world's first particle accelerator, surrounded by some of the original hardware from the Manhattan Project. The atomic gear fits nicely with the thrust of Sanborn's oeuvre, which centers on what he calls invisible forces.

[Read the complete story . . . here . . .]