Tag: Daily Art Moment

Categories
Connect Discover Learn

Daily Art Moment: Edward Penfield

Image description: Harper’s June 1895, Edward Penfield, color lithograph, 18 ¾ x 12 13/16 inches. A portrait-oriented poster showing a male figure dressed in a black graduation cap and gown, holding a book while smoking a pipe under the tomato red words: “Harper’s June”. “Harper’s” is stretched across the top of the print and the word “June” sits under it to the left on the pale tan background. The figure is shown from the knee up at right. He is turned to the left, has peach-colored skin and yellow, short hair under his mortar board. He smokes a small brown pipe and holds up an orange book as if reading. A white shirt, black tie and blue vest are seen under the robe. He holds a tan rectangular object in his left hand by his side. The lower left holds five large rose blossoms on long, pale green stems with leaves. One flower overlaps the figure’s black gown. The artist’s signature appears in orange at left of the roses.
Edward Penfield (American, 1866–1925), Harper's June, 1895. Color lithograph. Gift of Daniel Bergsvik and Donald Hastler, 2020.42.31

Congratulations to the Class of 2021! This charming poster, advertising the June edition of Harper’s Magazine, gives a nod to the graduates of 1895. Artist Edward Penfield is credited with inventing the American publishing poster, a boom that thrived in the 1890s. Each month, Penfield created a lithograph to promote the magazine. He drew on…  Read more

Categories
Discover Learn

Daily Art Moment: Samantha Wall

“The shadow is both a part of our identity and apart from it. It is our counterpart and sometimes the truer part.” —Samantha Wall, 2021 Flayed is a drawing from Samantha Wall’s series titled, Shame on Me, hauntingly rendered as a self-portrait silhouette and shadow. Though much of the figure’s details are unknown, Wall beautifully…  Read more

Categories
Discover Learn

Daily Art Moment: Cowlitz artist

Image description: Basket, Cowlitz artist, cedar root, beargrass and dyed beargrass, 7 ¾ x 10 x 9 ¼ inches. 1. A round woven basket featuring a chevron pattern rendered in three tones of materials: light beige, medium brown, and dark brown. The basket has a wide mouth and gently narrows to a small base. It is tightly woven using the medium brown tone as a background on which the light beige and dark brown are used to create pattern. The dark brown and pale beige combine to repeat a double chevron pattern around the basket in an upper and lower row. At the center of each chevron at the top is a small, inverted triangle shape.

Plateau basketry traditions encompass several techniques including coiling which we see with this delightful Cowlitz basket. The vibrant design of this sturdy and well-balanced basket is a wonderful example of the decorative use of imbrication. This process transformed a basket of plain appearance (as seen on the inside) with the addition of different colors of…  Read more

Categories
Discover Learn

Daily Art Moment: Minami Keiko

[Image description: Arbre (Tree), Minami Keiko, 11 7/16 x 11 7/16 inches, color etching and aquatint on paper. A square print depicting a highly stylized landscape featuring a large tree, a cloud, and a partial sun. The large tree begins at center bottom, its thick trunk rising and splitting into a wide V shape. The black bark is depicted as short vertical dashes grouped and layered at the trunk’s sides to convey depth. In the space left by the V-shaped branches are three oversized leaves placed side by side. The one in the middle has a pointed top while the other two have rounded tops. They are larger than the tree’s trunk and are composed of a multitude of smaller etched leaves over vertical dashes. Enveloping the large leaves and the upper branches is a muted green shape resembling a circle with the top edge depressed into itself. The circle contains more vertical black dashes. A line drawing of a bird is perched on the top right of the green shape. Above, a thin cloud composed of horizontal dashes appears. Just off center at upper left, a half circle resembling a partial sun is composed of concentric dashes. The background is a pale gray and resembles woven fabric.]

Minami Keiko’s etchings offer the magic of fairy tale-like, narrative settings. Her fine touches on the printing plate and understated colors result in delicate, sometimes whimsical scenes. For me, she is often sweet without being cloying. Yet some prints hint at a deeper and more mysterious sense of ennui, loneliness, or alienation. Minami was orphaned…  Read more

Categories
Connect Discover

Daily Art Moment: Peri Schwartz

[Image description: Bottle and Jars, Peri Schwartz, sheet: 22 x 30 1/8 inches, color spit bite etching on paper. A landscape-oriented work depicting a grouping of over a dozen bottles and jars seen lined up on a shelf or ledge against a cream background. Jars of various heights are filled with different colored contents ranging from rust, terracotta, pale green, slate blue, burgundy and clear. There are at least three bottles interspersed among the jars. Two are at the left end of the row and contain rust and burgundy contents. A slate blue filled bottle features at the right of the display. The lids and caps on the vessels are depicted as flat black lines or black squares. The bottles and jars sit on a shelf or ledge that reflects their shapes and colors making them appear taller and elongated. The fore edge of the shelf is highlighted with the rectangular front facing part depicted as a long horizontal rectangle in deep gray. Just below this starting at far left is the handwritten series number “19/30”, at center is the work’s title “Bottles and Jars III” and at far right the artist’s signature and year, “Peri Schwartz 2015”.]

I was saddened to learn of the death of artist Peri Schwartz on May 7. I first met Ms. Schwartz in 2016, and was captivated by her paintings and prints that focused on the studio life. She took the humble material around her—stretched canvases, paint brushes, and jars of paint and ink—as the starting point…  Read more

Categories
Discover Learn

Daily Art Moment: Marian Wood Kolisch

Ansel Adams, Marian Wood Kolisch. A photograph of Ansel Adams posing as two individuals take photographs of him in front of an enormous tree trunk. This portrait-oriented photo shows the figure of Ansel Adams standing at lower right and two photographers positioned at lower left and lower center. The photo is dominated by the huge trunk of a tree that dwarfs the figures. It sweeps from lower left across the photo and upwards to the upper right, displaying craggy, highly textured bark. At left in the background, evergreen trees in a forest setting are seen. Adams, an older white man with glasses and a white beard, stands at the base of the tree wearing a cowboy hat, light colored jacket and shirt with dark trousers and boots. He stands with his right hand in pocket and his other hand resting on his left knee. He has a camera on a strap around his neck and holds another in his left hand. At right, we see two photographers; the one at far left has short dark hair and a beard wearing a long sleeved top and pants. The figure is adjusting a camera on a tripod. At lower center, another photographer is seen from the back wearing a jean jacket and jeans, seemingly bent over a camera and tripod.

Education was a central component of Ansel Adams’s photographic practice. He established the fine art photography program at the San Francisco Art Institute in 1946, the first of its kind in the country. Six years prior, in 1940, he started teaching photography workshops. These group educational experiences, often held in Yosemite National Park, became yearly…  Read more

Categories
Discover Learn

Daily Art Moment: Anne Appleby

[Image description: Requiem for a Ponderosa Pine, Anne Appleby, each panel 44 x 44 inches; overall: 90 x 90 inches, oil and wax on canvas. Four square panels, each a different color, grouped to form one larger square. The panels are arranged two over two. At top left, the first panel is a deep green and at top right the panel is reddish-purple. Bottom left contains the blackish-brown panel next to the faded orange or cantaloupe colored one at bottom right. The squares are hung so they are separated by narrow strips of the wall behind them. The panels appear to be solid blocks of color but closer inspection reveals subtle variations of shades and depth of color.]

Living in the Elkhorn Mountains in Montana, Anne Appleby has spent years closely studying the ecology, and more specifically, the trees that surround her land. Known for her “grid” paintings, Appleby paints the changing colors of trees that define their characteristics through seasons. Requiem for a Ponderosa Pine examines the variations of colors of a…  Read more

Categories
Discover Learn

Daily Art Moment: Cheyenne Blanket

[Image description: Cheyenne artist, Blanket, 73 ¾ x 55 ½ inches, wool, glass beads. A rectangular, leaf green blanket with a narrow strip of beading running lengthwise along the middle. The blanket shows some discoloration where the fabric has faded and its edges are frayed where the stitched binding has come away. Stretching across the work, a narrow strip of white beading is punctuated by five blue beaded squares that are flanked on either side by slim yellow and red stripes and rows of blue beaded triangle shapes. Four round white beaded circles with blue crosses are interspersed between the squares. Pairs of long beige cords emanate from the circle centers, some lay stretched across the beading, some are coiled.]

Green is a color infrequently seen in most collections of Plains material, which makes this beaded trade blanket all the more striking. The wool blanket, probably received from a trader in exchange for other goods, was embellished in the same manner as a tanned animal hide: a long, beaded strip was attached along the middle,…  Read more

Categories
Discover Learn

Daily Art Moment: Derrick Adams

Boy on Swan Float, Derrick Adams, 31 x 45 inches, woodblock and screen print with fabric collage on Rives BFK paper. A young boy with brown skin and black hair sits in a large inflatable swan against a blue background, seen from the side. The large swan is shown in whites and gray, each tone a separate shape placed to depict the inflatable’s contours. The swan has a black mask around the eyes and the bright, orange beak. The boy sits between the swan’s wings facing left. He is depicted in the same manner as the swan with brown, tan, and grey shapes making up his figure. A triangle of bright green and white polka dots suggests the boy’s swimsuit. His toes peep out from the end of the float at left. The background is a flat sky blue.

As warmer weather approaches, we are all dreaming of lazy summer days. This recent acquisition by Derrick Adams captures the pleasures and poignancy of timeless summer afternoons. Using 68 puzzle-cut woodblocks, seven runs of screenprint, and fabric collage, Adams depicts a young boy resting on a gigantic inflatable swan in an expanse of blue water.…  Read more

Categories
Discover Learn

Daily Art Moment: Arnold Kemp

Day Dream Nation, Arnold Kemp, 9 3/8 x 9 ½ inches, graphite and Flashe on Chinese paper. An almost square work showing two upright rectangles, one black and one white, side by side. They are depicted on creamy, off-white ground that both separates and surrounds the two shapes. The black rectangle at left has slightly uneven, rough edges. Specks of white paper show through the graphite throughout the body. At right, the white rectangle is the same height as the black but is narrower and has sharper edges. The shapes are outlined faintly in a thin gray pencil line. The lines connect the two rectangles across the off-white background strip between the two.

Years previously to making this work, I met Lee Ranaldo and Kim Gordon of the band Sonic Youth. Ranaldo introduced his music to me by inviting me to a concert the band was giving in Boston. The band’s 1988 album “Daydream Nation” became a beautiful, resolute, and illuminating source of inspiration. I sought to sustain…  Read more