Tag: Daily Art Moment

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Daily Art Moment: Kirsten Furlong

Promise and Purpose, the Ancestor’s Dream, Kirsten Furlong, 60 x 60 inches, collage, ink, graphite and colored pencil on paper. A square black, white and gray work depicting a wood stork with outstretched wings and a long bill, a patterned snake and large sweet potato. The black wood stork, shown from the side and facing right, occupies the left half of the work with its wings and legs extended as if in the act of landing. It has a small smooth head with a long bill and feet and its surface is pattern in geometric and organic shapes. The stork’s form is segmented into four pieces that have been collaged together. To the lower right is a large sweet potato sprouting leaves and other partially obscured sweet potatoes. Underneath the potato is the black snake with curlicue patterned head and scaly body. The background is divided into areas of various patterns rendered in soft gray within sections that radiate from different points on the work.

“Promise and Purpose, the Ancestor’s Dream” was informed by multiple visits over the last twenty years to Lowndes County, Alabama (where my partner’s parents live) and my conflicted feelings experiencing the flora and fauna of their land while also considering the violent history of Lowndes as a mixed-race (Black and white) individual. The title of…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Zhao Zongzao

Penglai Hermit, from the series Yellow Mountain, Zhao Zongzao, 18 5/8 x 15 ¾ inches, woodblock print on paper. A vertical rectangular print depicting a stylized mountain scene. Thin, elongated shapes in shades of taupe and gray jut upwards on cream ground and seem to float in the space. Each have different wood grain texture with darker irregular shapes decorating the tops, simulating vegetation. The edges around the shapes are soft and blurred where the ink has bled into the surrounding paper. The effect is a soft hazy view of steep mountains in the mist. Along the bottom edge is a handwritten line of text that includes the edition, the series title, the date and artist's signature, all in Roman numerals and Chinese.

Zhao Zongzao’s mist-shrouded mountain landscape has reminded me of the foggy scenes of Oregon these last weeks. Zhao’s subject is the natural scenic area around Mount Huangshan (Yellow Mountain), south of the Yangtze River. One dramatic site is named for the celestial Mount Penglai, legendary island of the immortals. Here, the artist evokes the soaring…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Honoré Daumier

Le Ventre législatif: Aspect des bancs ministériels de la chambre inprostituée de 1834 (The Legislative Belly: Aspects of the Prostituted Ministerial Benches of 1834), Honoré Daumier, 11 1/8 in x 17 1/8 inches, Lithograph on wove paper. A horizontal, rectangular black and white print showing rows of men sitting in curved, tiered seating. The four rows are stacked one upon another showing how each row is higher than the one below it. Each row is packed with between seven to ten older men, most having narrow shoulders and broad middles, dressed in dark coats and the high white collars of the time. The waist high railing allows only their upper bodies to be visible. Some confer with heads together or are turned to speak to each other, some appear to be dozing. At lower right, one large man dressed in black with shaggy hair stands in front of the bottom railing turned to the left, his arm resting on the railing. At left, a top hat and a book also rest on the railing.

When it comes to skewering politicians, Honoré Daumier is unmatched. The French caricaturist was born in Marseille in 1808 and moved to Paris in 1816. He was largely self-taught as an artist, making sketches at the Louvre and learning lithography while still a teenager. He developed into a brilliant draughtsman, capturing his subjects with a…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Brenda Mallory

Proximate Parcels, Brenda Mallory, 70 x 34 x 4 inches, deconstructed thread spools and cores. A work composed of interlocking trapezoid shapes fitted together to form a vertical rectangle with six vertical rows of dark charcoal colored “stitching” running lengthwise. The trapezoid shapes are made up of red fibers, appear fluffy and vary in shades of deep red to tomato red. The edges of the work are uneven and undulate slightly with the shape of the trapezoids. The stitches embellish the trapezoid shapes but do not actually join them together.

The act of cutting something apart down to its core, effectively destroying its original function, but then reforming into a beautiful lush object reflects my interest in how things that are broken or disrupted are often still viable and lively. —Brenda Mallory, 2019 Brenda Mallory’s mixed media work, Proximate Parcels, is striking in many ways.…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Don Unrau

From the portfolio War Story: Vietnam Veterans, Don Unrau, 13 5/16 x 14 1/8 inches, pigment print. A horizontal, rectangular, black and white photo positioned on the top half of a vertical white rectangle. The photo shows a white man sitting in an armchair, facing the viewer with legs crossed at the knee. He looks directly at the viewer with a neutral expression. He has dark hair and full beard, wears a white shirt and jeans. Behind him is the interior of a home with plants, dining room table and chairs and a kitchen seen through a doorway. Below the photo is a poem in the man’s own handwriting. It reads: Nam means loss. Nam means terror. /Nam means pride. Nam means courage. / Nam means rejection. Nam means betrayal. / “Coming home” means tears. “Coming home” means grief. / “Coming home” means sadness. “Coming home” means relief. / All will continue to be lived & to be remembered. / Forgiveness is the final battle!

Don Unrau served as a U.S. Army Combat Medic in Vietnam. He made his first photographs during the war, and has concentrated his photographic attention on veterans, conflict, and the aftermath of war ever since. Between 1984 and 1989, he invited Vietnam War veterans to express personal reflections—handwritten thoughts, poems, prayers, and essays about their…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Will Barnet

Waiting, from the Kent Bicentennial Portfolio: Spirit of Independence, Will Barnet, color lithograph and screenprint on paper, 33 x 33 7/8 inches, lithograph and screenprint on paper. A square print depicting six women grouped in twos sitting and standing on a set of exterior staircases. The women sit or stand on the upper, middle and lower portions of a switch back staircase attached on the upper level to a building. At upper right are two women positioned just inside and just outside a doorway to a gray clapboard building. One woman stands at a railing and faces the viewer while the other has her back turned and stands inside the doorway in shadow. A staircase leads down to the left. At middle left is a woman standing with her back turned to the viewer next to a woman sitting on the staircase landing and looking left. At bottom left, a woman sits on the second staircase that leads down. She rests her head on her hand while another woman stands below her leaning against a building post, both looking out to the pale blue sea in the background. The women all wear long black or gray dresses and most wear shawls. The structure and the women are rendered in flat gray tones with skin color being white with minimal line drawing facial features.

“On Monday, curator Grace Kook-Anderson shared Jacob Lawrence’s inspiring image of voters, a screenprint he prepared for the Kent Bicentennial portfolio. As she notes, the commissioned artists were asked to respond to the question, ‘What does independence mean to you?’. Reviewing the portfolio in ‘The New York Times’ in 1976, one critic cited Barnet’s image…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Jacob Lawrence

1920’s…The Migrants Arrive and Cast Their Ballots, Jacob Lawrence, 32 1/16 x 24 7/16 inches, color screenprint on paper. A vertical, rectangular screenprint depicting the interior of a polling place filled with voters. In top third of the print, a brown voting booth is at center with its curtain partially open to reveal a blue clad voter reaching up to pull levers on a gray, white, and black mechanical voting machine. Positioned in front of the booth is a long, tan table with people at three of the sides. At center is a female figure in red with an open book in front of her. A male figure in black at right signs the book and another female figure in blue sits at the left end of the table. Various figures wait in line creating a loose U shape around the table and voting booth. Some read newspapers, some turn to each other, two hold children and a few are seated. A blue wall stretches across the width of the print at top and the brown floor takes up the bottom two thirds of the work. The print contains limited colors, primarily blue, brick red, black, brown, tan and white. Colors are flat and without variation. Details such as facial features and floorboards are picked out in white or tan outlines.

“Jacob Lawrence depicts the African-American experience of citizens in an election from the 1920s. With a complex, angular composition of figures and strikingly primary colors, the scene we see is a moment of humble but powerful action in the act of making a vote. Elders wait patiently in line, a woman comforts her infant child,…  Read more

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Dail Art Moment: Jonathan Calm

Crater Lake Lodge, Jonathan Calm, pigment print. A horizontal rectangular, black-and-white photo of the Crater Lake Lodge buildings and its driveway entrance. The top half of the photo features the lodge seen from one end and running diagonally back and across the photo’s middle ground. The buildings that compose the lodge are faced in light-colored stonework from the ground to just above door height with dark cladding finishing the rest of the structures. Rows of white-paned windows dot the attached buildings that are of varying heights. To the left of the lodge is a rocky hilltop with sparse vegetation and to the right are several evergreen trees. The bottom half of the photo shows the expansive blacktop driveway that extends out from the lodge entrance and to each side. At bottom center is the photographer's shadow, shown from chest up. At center far right, shrubbery backs a wooden sign mounted on a stone platform. The sign reads: ”Crater Lake Lodge”.

“In 2016, Jonathan Calm, artist and Stanford University Assistant Professor of Photography, traveled through the American South by car. He documented many of the locations marked as ‘safe spaces’ in ‘The Negro Motorist Green Book,’ which was published from 1936 through 1966. Recently, Calm began photographing ‘Green Book’ sites located in the American West, including…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Rita Robillard

Coastal Range, Rita Robillard, 36 x 87 inches, screen print and acrylic on panel. A horizontal rectangular work showing a stand of evergreen trees in various shades of green against a background of golden tan. The trees are clustered and overlapped but still show individual branches silhouetted against each other. Deep blue-green, grass green, brownish olive hues layer over the golden tan background. There are 5 vertical lines spaced evenly left to right and indicate the separate panels that comprise the work.

“ Coastal Range was made during Robillard’s residency at Sitka Center in 2013. There the artist worked with scientists studying the Cascade Head Experimental Forest, a Forest Service land that was set aside in 1934 for the study of the forest and its ecosystem. In ‘Coastal Range,’ Robillard evokes Eastern and Western pictorial traditions while…  Read more

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Daily Art Moment: Zig Jackson

Indian Man on the Bus, from the series Indian Man in San Francisco, 16 x 20 inches, gelatin silver print. A horizontal, rectangular, black and white photo of the crowded interior of a bus featuring a man wearing a Native American feather headdress. The view is of the last few rows of the back of the bus showing a group of seated male presenting individuals. At right, a man is seen wearing a large Native American feather headdress composed of dark tipped, white feathers that radiate from a beaded band across the top of the man’s forehead. He wears a neutral expression, dark sunglasses, a jacket, cuffed jeans and high-top sneakers. He is sitting on one of the inward facing bus benches and so faces towards the left. The other figures around him sit in rows: three behind the man in the headdress, across the back wall of the bus, four seated in rows in front of the man and several partially visible figures to the left of the photo. The men, all of whom look past the man in the headdress or out the window, appear to be of varying backgrounds such as White, Hispanic or Asian. A city street scene is visible through large bus windows at right.

“While working on his MFA in photography at the San Francisco Art Institute during the 1990s, Zig Jackson turned the camera on himself. He wryly explored the ways that he, a Native American, moved through a large American West Coast city that was once the land of Indigenous peoples including the Ohlone, Chochenyo, Karkin, Ramaytush,…  Read more