The Artist's Magazine

How to get your press release noticed

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:55:34 GMT

We get hundreds of press releases and gallery opening notices every week at The Artist's Magazine, and most of them get recycled or deleted. A lot of them just aren't pertinent, or they're happening too soon in the future for us to do anything with them (see some tips that I mentioned earlier about creating great press releases). And sometimes, the press release doesn't look that great—like if it's just a black-and-white photocopy that doesn't include any images of the art. Or, even worse, if there are tiny black-and-white reproductions of the art that don't tell me anything.

But some mailings grab my attention fast—ones that include good color photos, that are simple and to-the-point or, my personal favorite, ones that have a handmade touch. Some of these mailings end up tacked to my wall long after the event has passed. Like the ones above from the Tilton Gallery in New York. I've never been to the Tilton Gallery, but I am totally collecting their gallery show promos (shown above). Each mailer is a simple, thick white card with a one- or two-color letterpress design.

Another came just last week, a promo for the 1000 Journals Project at the San Francisco MOMA you can see at right. On the front is an image from one of the artists, along with a screenprinted logo and stitching along the bottom. It's so precious I couldn't bear to toss it!

Below you can see a closeup of the back, which shows with a check which artist the image on the front side is by, and a closeup of the embossed SFMOMA logo. Awesome!

Trees on canvas

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:16:25 GMT

Myoung Ho Lee separates his subject—trees—from the surrounding landscape by suspending a canvas behind them. The resulting photographs are really striking. See the Morning News and Lens Culture to read more.

At right, Tree #2 by Myoung Ho Lee (archival ink-jet print on paper, 125x100cm, 2006)

PS: It's probably obvious by now, but I'm back at the helm of the blog! I helped the new guy over at ArtistsNetwork.TV transition into the job, and things are rolling along well there! (In fact, a little birdie told me that they filmed some new videos yesterday...)

I've also been working on a new series for The Artist's Magazine that's starting in the March 2009 issue called Mediapedia. They're four-page, in-depth, brand-free guides to art media that you can clip and save for in-studio reference. The first one is on acrylics, so watch for that issue when it comes out in February!

Free Seattle art show

Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:51:44 GMT

If you're in the Pacific Northwest, check this out! The Women Painters of Washington have partnered with the city of Seattle's Restore our Waters Initiative to create an art show focusing on the importance of healthy urban waterways.

Thirty artists are showing their work in Waters Alive! and donating a protion of their commissions to ecology-focused nonprofits. Waters Alive! runs through Jan. 30 at the Columbia Center, 701 Fifth Ave., Seattle, WA 98104.

Studio tour with New Yorker cartoonist

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:09:33 GMT

Like one-liners and knick-knacks? In the video above, The New Yorker cartoonist Mick Stevens gives a tour of his home studio in Florida. You can read more about the magazine's cartoonists on its blog.

And I'm reminded of that episode of Seinfeld where the gang tries to determine the meaning of a New Yorker cartoon.

Elaine: Come on, we're two intelligent people here. We can figure this out. Now we got a dog and a cat in an office.

Jerry: It looks like my accountant's office but there's no pets working there.

Elaine: The cat is saying, "I've enjoyed reading your e-mail."

George: Maybe it's got something to do with that 42 in the corner.

Elaine: It's a page number.

George: Well, I can't crack this one.

Elaine: Aahh! this has got to be a mistake.

The Washington Post did a story on the magazine's enigmatic cartoons in 2006; you can read it here.

CD giveaway winners!

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 15:05:16 GMT

Remember the survey/CD giveaway we did? These are the 10 randomly selected winners!

Bart Healy, Collingswood NJ
Don Bronson, Clearfield UT
Tracy Leuth, Bettendorf IA
Linda Freund, Simi Valley CA
Marilyn Doerter, Elida OH
Kurt Jacobson, Anchorage AK
Loisanne Kelle, Tucson AZ
April Lopez, Kennewick WA
Susan Genge, Crawford CO
Crysteelaurie Abrams

(If you are Crysteelaurie Abrams, check your e-mail! I have a CD with your name on it...)

For animal lovers

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 22:17:53 GMT

I'll see your painting a day and raise you painting a dog a day! Kimberly Kelly Santini has completed more than 500 pet paintings since she started the project and has raised more than $3,000 for animal welfare this year. Learn more here.

Major Warhol show in Columbus

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:48:23 GMT

I hope to be able to visit this awesome show, but if I can't make it, the video tour above will just have to suffice. (Not sure if the Velvet Underground soundtrack is included in the admission fee.) Andy Warhol: Other Voices, Other Rooms "sheds new light on the celebrated pop artist and focuses on the ideas at the heart of his work: embracing consumer culture, exploring sexual identity, challenging social conventions, and erasing distinctions between high and low culture."

The exhibit runs through February 15, 2009, at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. Tickets cost $8 for adults, or $5 for visitors ages 13-17 or older than 65. Free to Wexner Center and Warhol Club members, college students with ID, visitors younger than 12, and free to all visitors every Thursday evening and first Sunday of each month.

Urban sketching

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 21:34:28 GMT

Drawing of a San Francisco polling place by Samantha Zaza

This is a really rad new blog. Urban Sketchers includes artists from around the world who draw the people and places where they live and travel to. The blog's an offshoot of a Flickr group started by Seattle journalist and illustrator Gabi Campanario, who has his own blog, Seattle Sketcher. You can see a list of all the correspondents here, and join the Flickr group Urban Sketchers here.

Remember to vote!

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:34:17 GMT

Cool poster via HOW.

DIY Polaroids

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 20:38:43 GMT

Already mourning the death of Polaroid instant film? You can make your own vintage-looking shots with Poladroid, a free software program.

After installation, all you have to do is drag-and-drop your photos and wait for the mini-Polaroid to pop out. (The pictures show up as a muddy brown for a minute or two before the picture comes through—cute feature!) The final products show up in your Pictures folder as JPGs.

Right now, the software's only available for Macs, but a Windows version is coming soon. You can see a bunch of other people's Poladroids on Flickr.

Here's one I did, with the original picture:

And the Poladroid version:

Israeli Photographer Dovrat Amsily-Barak

Fri, 31 Oct 2008 20:13:25 GMT

Everyday at The Artist's Magazine we receive a cascade of mail. Readers compliment and sometimes complain; artists send queries or postcards announcing shows; publishers send review copies of books; societies and galleries send catalogues, etc. The other day, however, I received a disc of images and an accompanying artist's statement that were extraordinary.

Dovrat Amsily-Barak describes her work as "staged photographs of scenes that are déja vu fantasies." Actually a mother, she portrays one in her photographs; the settings evoke the austerity of institutions like clinics, orphanages, and convents; the light is precise and penetrating, reminiscent of Vermeer’s and Chardin’s.

The light is natural light, what Dovrat Amsily-Barak describes as "of the universe only." She says, "I am shedding light on the figure as an individual and illuminating the sacredness of its doings."

Photographs by Amsily-Barak;
used by permission

Picasso, larger than life

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:34:16 GMT

Who's that hanging out on Cooper Union's Foundation Building in New York's East Village? Why, it's a gigantic Picasso portrait of Stalin!

The banner is part of a free exhibition by Norwegian artist Lene Berg, "Stalin by Picasso or Portrait of Woman with Moustache," which explores the personal, political, artistic and media implications of Picasso's simple drawing of Stalin.

The portrait was commissioned for a French Communist newspaper, Les Lettres Francaises, to memorialize Stalin's death on the front page of the newspaper. Picasso's drawing was considered unflattering and led to his expulsion from the party.

"Stalin by Picasso or Portrait of Woman with Moustache" runs through December 6.

Photos above and below by Bryan Zimmerman.

Make art from Starbucks trash

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 17:13:48 GMT

Wired is having a contest: Create things out of all the stuff you get at Starbucks—stirrers, sugar packets, napkins, cups, chairs that aren't bolted down, anything.

The example to go by is the Star Wars fighter ship (at right) that a Wired contributor created out of coffee boxes, 50 cups and 216 stirrers.

Build your dream, take pictures, upload the instructions to the Create Wiki page, and your work could be featured in an online slideshow.

Just 3 days left to win a CD!

Tue, 28 Oct 2008 13:38:58 GMT

We're giving away copies of The Artist's Magazine 2007 Annual CD to 10 lucky people who take our editorial survey! Anyone who takes the survey by this Friday, October 31, will be automatically entered into the drawing. (Due to international laws, the drawing is limited to U.S. residents only.)

New work from Sharon Sprung

Fri, 24 Oct 2008 19:34:38 GMT

Sharon Sprung, one of our ArtistsNetwork.TV artists, sent us an image of her latest work, a portrait of a federal judge. The painting of the Honorable Judge John Keenan, US Federal Court, First District, will be unveiled at Federal Plaza in New York City next month. Stunning, as always!

Online art paper sale

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:24:03 GMT

It's no secret that I love the bookbinding supply store Hollander's. The Ann Arbor, Michigan, shop has an astounding array of decorative and artist paper. (And I am utterly addicted to chiyogami, such as Orange, Olive, & Yellow Mountain at right.)

Until Sunday, Oct. 26, you can get 10 percent off anything in the store, and an additional 5 percent off all orders over $250. (If you order more than $100 of materials, you get a $10 UPS shipping credit, too.) See all the details on the ordering page.

Maria Lassnig at the Contemporary Arts Center

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 12:55:43 GMT

A show that originated at the Serpentine Gallery in London has come to Cincinnati, under the direction of Raphaela Platow, the newest head of the Contemporary Art Center. Beautifully installed, it is Maria Lassnig’s first in the USA, though she had a 1977 retrospective in Paris and has been the star of several Venice Biennales. Born in Vienna in 1919 and descending from the German Expressionist tradition, Lassnig often paints herself in ways that are both aggressively painful (with a gun aimed at her head in one hand and a gun aimed at the viewer in the other) and wryly comic (the artist with a frying pan on her head). The pictures are bold, visceral, and unrelenting. Lassnig has said she paints the body from the inside. Often her wildly colorful figures are grotesque—monstrous infants without arms or with distorted heads and mutilated torsos. Her recurrent theme is the complexity of feeling. The most recent pictures are lusciously painted and strangely lyrical. I especially loved Madonna of the Pastries, which shows the nude artist in front of an array of painterly (vaguely reminiscent of Wayne Thiebaud's) cakes.

Lassnig is a filmmaker as well as a painter. The one that was playing while I was at the gallery, Couples, is a visually delightful sequence that is playful in tone. In a wonderful filmed interview that is part of the show, Lassnig, who looks terrific, by the way, answers questions with wit and joy.

This is the work of a true artist; it is the best show that the CAC has launched since it moved to Zaha Hadid's building, and I look forward to more challenging shows that Platow will bring to a newly lustrous CAC.

Note: Accompanying the Lassnig show is Carlos Amorales's Discarded Spider, a vibrant and interesting exhibition and a particularly apt pairing, since his spiders recall Louise Bourgeois's. (The brilliant sculptor Bourgeois is 98 years old.) The Lassnig show will be up until January 11, 2009; the Amorales show will come down on March 7, 2009.

Photos: Tony Walsh. Top: Installation view at the Contemporary Arts Center in the Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art. Below: Madonna of the Pastries (2002, oil, 150x200cm) Courtesy of Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati and Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York.

Genius theories

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 13:30:38 GMT

Pablo Picasso came onto the art scene with a bang when he was 20, with the masterpiece Evocation: The Burial of Casagemas. On the other hand, Paul Cézanne's later work is generally considered his greatest.

Malcolm Gladwell (one of my favorite writers) asks in the New Yorker: Why do we associate genius with youth?

Gladwell posits that it's not necessarily better to be a prodigy than a late bloomer. In fact, the way each approaches his or her craft is entirely different. It comes easier to a prodigy, perhaps, but the payoff for a late bloomer—someone who has to really work at it—can be just as great. In the article, he explores various fields, looking at the work styles of both a wunderkind and someone who paid his dues, sometimes for decades. It's really interesting reading.

(And just for fun: in this episode of "This American Life", Gladwell tells a tall tale about his first job and a "perverse and often baffling" competition he and a coworker created.)

Travel Channel will give you an art attack

Mon, 20 Oct 2008 13:55:53 GMT

This sounds pretty cool: "Art Attack with Lee Sandstead" takes you inside the world's greatest art museums, where the art historian singles out the top five must-see pieces in a fast-paced format. The first season will air on the Travel Channel starting Nov. 30.

You can watch a preview below that describes Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party, an installation piece in the Brooklyn Museum.

Quick Link: Artist a Day

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 20:38:14 GMT

Get art delivered to you daily at Artist A Day. Every morning, the website highlights an artist's work and includes biographical information and links. You can get it delivered any way you like: Sign up for the RSS feed, iGoogle gadget or Facebook application. You can even nominate yourself.