When an under-appreciated woman artist finally gets her due, you know Artblog will be there to cover it! Here Andrea Kirsh tips her hat to the Barnes Foundation and their major retrospective of Berthe Morisot, on view through January 14, 2019. Morisot, who was one of a small number of female artists at the epicenter of the Impressionist movement, was also a true pioneer of form and technique.
Read MoreImani reviews Poorly Watched Girls, a series of multi-media environments created by Suzanne Bocanegra at the Fabric Workshop and Museum. This complex body of work, in turns mournful and playful, will be up through February 17, 2019.
Read MoreToday, we send love and thoughts to friends, family and colleagues who lost their loved ones in November: Victoria Donohoe, Willis (Nomo) Humphrey, and Susan Fenton.
Read MoreSydney Cox gets a visit from one of her favorite up-and-coming fiber artists, Ariel Posh. Here they discuss the recent Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) grad’s “thread paintings” and the age old question of craft’s relationship to gender. Read on and see below for recent examples of Posh’s intricate and often irreverent works. P.S. we’d like to say there’s something amazing in the Baltimore water. Celebrated artist and “MacArthur genius” awardee, Joyce Scott, whose work uses craft techniques (weaving, beading) to discuss serious representation of women and people of color, is a MICA graduate!
Read MoreTo break bread with someone is to forge an intimate bond. Here Logan Cryer interviews local artist and 2018 Leeway grantee, Shreshth Khilani about their participatory performance “Immigrant Kitchen,” which runs through Monday, December 3rd. Part dinner, part coming-out party, this project uses Hindu mythology and South Asian foods to create communion around tradition while opening up the possibility of change. See below for ticket details!
Read MoreAsk Artblog Advisor, Beth Heinly, responds to a question about proposal writing and weighs in saying that artists should build time for proposal writing into their art practice! Have a question about the Art Life for Ask Artblog? Email ask@theartblog.org. Or submit a Google form with your question. The link to the Google form’s at the bottom of the post below. All names kept anonymous.
Read MoreDeb Krieger takes an early tour of The Complicit Eye, lauded ceramicist Kukuli Velarde’s first major solo show of paintings in Philadelphia. This provocative body of work, on view at Taller Puertorriqueño through April 30, 2019, reveals Velarde’s long-standing use of self-portraiture as a mode of intersectional feminist critique.
Read MoreFor over a decade, Massachusetts-based artist, Gina Siepel has been using woodworking and other craft techniques to grapple with the myth of self-reliance and its relationship to both gender and nationalism. Here Levi Bentley speaks with Siepel about “Self-Made,” her current installation of objects, video and documents at Vox Populi, and pens a thoughtful response to the exhibition’s central themes. We can’t recommend this show enough, so read on and catch it before it closes on December 16, 2018.
Read MoreAs we grapple with harrowing images emerging daily from California’s still-raging wildfires, Michael Lieberman turns his attentions towards a local exhibition which addresses humanity’s devastating impact on the land. Not only does “Nature’s Nation — American Art and Environment,” on view through January 6, 2019 at the Princeton University Art Museum, look back at how the visual arts have historically shaped Americans’ understanding of our environment, but it also explores how artists can impact the current climate crisis.
Read MoreOlivia Jia doesn’t just write about art, she is also a painter in her own right who is deeply curious about the fate of contemporary painting and its potential to tell new stories. Here she tells us about a painter and University of the Arts alum, Stephen W. Evans, whose works confound the deeply-rooted nationalism of the American landscape tradition. If there was ever a time to rethink our relationship to history and the land, that time is now!
Read MoreAndrea Kirsh pens an appreciation of Make Me a Summary of the World, Indian-American artist Rina Banerjee’s solo show currently up at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. Densely layered in materials and meaning, this exhibition addresses the legacy of colonialism and the transnational nature of the contemporary art world through sensuous textures and bright colors. Rina Banerjee: Make Me a Summary of the World is on view through March 31, 2019.
Read MoreImani speaks with Philly-bred, Baltimore-based artist Rosa Leff about her chosen medium of cut paper and her affinity for the urban landscape.
Read More“Hale County This Morning, This Evening” is an emotion-charged, poetically non-narrative exploration of stereotypes of African American males in the South. The film, a Sundance favorite with many accolades, is a contemporary look at Hale County, Alabama, chronicled by Walker Evans and James Agee in their book, “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men,” (1941), which in turn inspired Aaron Copeland to write an opera. The film screens, FREE, on Monday, Nov. 12, 2018, at 6:30 PM at the Annenberg Center on the University of Pennsylvania Campus. Registration is at Eventbrite, link in the post.
Read MoreJanyce Glasper offers a poetic reflection of John Dowell’s current exhibition at the African American Museum of Philadelphia, Cotton: The Soft, Dangerous Beauty of the Past. On view through January 21, 2019, this installation of large-scale prints and medium-format digital collages explores slavery, not as a particularly southern phenomenon, but as an institution that haunts our nation from Alabama from Wall Street. What’s more, Dowell uses the symbolic force of cotton to carve out a space for personal reflection and collective celebration.
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