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 Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Competition deadline draws near!
This is a public service announcement: Have you entered The Artist's Magazine's Annual Art Competition yet? Act fast—the 2008 deadline is May 1! Click here for all the details! You can compete in five categories to win more than $25,000 in cash prizes, but here are some of the prizes you can't put a price tag on: • Winners will be featured and finalists' names will be published in the December 2008 issue of The Artist's Magazine
• 13 finalists will be included in The Artist's Magazine's 2009 calendar
• A number of finalists will be featured in the magazine's Competition Spotlight column
• 12 more will be featured as the 2009 Artists of the Month on our website
Can't win if you don't try, right?
By Grace Dobush | News
4/15/2008 5:24:04 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00) 
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Monday, April 14, 2008
My guide to Portland's Alberta Arts District
Portland, Oregon, always treats me well. It's developed a reputation for being a hipster haven—the rental market has been totally saturated because of all the refugee Californians and creative Midwesterners flocking to the city. (Moving to Portland might just beat out going to grad school as the preferred adulthood escape route for my generation.)
One of my favorite areas to explore is the Alberta Arts District, which stretches out over 15-20 blocks of NE Alberta Street. Amid the plentiful clothing boutiques and taquerías are a lot of great galleries and stores that feature a lot of local work. Here are a few of my faves:
REDBIRD STUDIO
I visited Redbird Studio last year and loved it immediately. This year, I happened to stop by on the studio’s second birthday, which meant free cupcakes!
Owners Paul Evans and Melissa Rau make a lot of the stuff for sale in the shop, which includes lots of stationery and cards, handmade accessories and screenprinted T-shirts and baby things.
I really loved the large-scale portraits by Kevin Noonan of political figures that were on display in the back of the store, which is a whole other gallery called Haiku. Melissa told me Kevin intentionally puts very affordable prices on his paintings. They were so low I seriously considered buying one and toting it home on the plane with me.
And if you’re in the neighborhood, right next door are HiiH Gallery, which sells beautiful handmade paper lanterns, and Guardino Gallery, which displays contemporary art and crafts.
Redbird Studio, 2927 NE Alberta St., 503/593-0833
TOGETHER GALLERY
Together Gallery popped up since my last trip to Portland. I arrived just in time to see "The Color of Nature," an exhibit featuring work from local artists Seth Neefus, Amy Ruppel, and Jill Bliss. Together also has a healthy offering of zines and small press publications, which I’m a big fan of.
Together Gallery, 2314 NE Alberta St., 503/288-8879
OFFICE PDX
Anybody who loves industrial-strength work supplies has a one-way ticket to heaven at OFFICE. The décor and the goods are heavy on the Americana, with a hearty dose of Japanese utility.
I got to check out Jill Bliss and Brittany Kate Powell's kooky "Califoregon" collection while I was there. And, like I always do, I spent too much money on letterpressed cards.
OFFICE PDX, 2204 NE Alberta St., 888/355-7467
Advice | By Grace Dobush | Exhibits
4/14/2008 1:18:27 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Friday, April 11, 2008
Friday Flowers: White Tulips
 Watercolor artist
Birgit O'Connor shares her strategy for painting glorious white tulips in the latest installment in our Friday Flowers series.
As she shows you how she painted White Tulips (watercolor, 40x30), O'Connor offers this advice:
Treat a white flower like any other flower, only with much less paint, letting the white of the paper represent the brightest hues. The principal idea in the latter method is to paint the lines that imply the shape and let the white of the paper represent the flower.
Click here to see all nine steps and her palette, and click here to see last week's demonstration, Radiant Reds. And be sure to check back next Friday for the next step-by-step demonstration!
By Grace Dobush | Notable Artists | Projects | Tips
4/11/2008 1:12:28 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Thursday, April 10, 2008
Online image editing options
For the July issue of The Artist's Magazine, I edited a feature on the best software for artists, including everything from inventory trackers to model manipulators. As far as image editing goes, the gold standard is Photoshop. (If you haven't used the full-blown version, you've likely come across its less expensive sibling, Photoshop Elements.)
Now, a free version of the software is available online, with 2 GB of storage thrown in. Adobe Photoshop Express offers many of the features included with Elements, such as cropping, color correction and some fun filter and distortion options. (Be aware, though, that agreeing to the terms of service gives other users the rights to display, print and distribute your shared images. If you don't want your pictures to go public, don't opt to share them through the site.)
Photo sharing site Flickr also recently rolled out photo editing abilities in partnership with Picnik. All Flickr users can access the basic editing options, and becoming a premium member unlocks more features. Both Picnik and Photoshop Express have some integrated functionality with other websites, like Facebook and Picasa.
Both Photoshop Express and Flickr are good options for artists who don't want to put down a big chunk of change for a program they'll use only to resize or crop their pictures.
(And speaking of pictures, I'll be uploading photos from my trip soon—promise!)
Via Craftzine.com blog
By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites | Tips
4/10/2008 3:05:02 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Wednesday, April 09, 2008
Hello again!
Hello, blog readers! I've returned to my cube here at The Artist's Magazine. Thanks to Skybus, I ended up with an extra day on the West Coast, and I loved having more time in San Francisco. In the coming days I'll write about a hot art neighborhood in Portland, Oregon, and a few notable San Francisco sights.
(Above photo of me in the Pacific Ocean by Leslie Stroope.)
By Grace Dobush | News | Random Thoughts
4/9/2008 2:03:14 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Rising Sun, Indiana
Last Friday, my younger daughter Margaret and I drove to Rising Sun, Indiana, in order to make the opening of the 2008 Second Annual Juried Exhibition at the Pendleton Art Center. Vera Curnow, the director, had planned a lovely evening: live music, a lavish spread, etc, and, of course, the show. Since I was the juror, it seems self-serving to praise the works, which were beautifully installed (by Vera, who is herself a fine artist), but they were objectively impressive: high in quality and diverse in media and style. It was lovely for me to meet the artists; here are some pictures of the festive evening.
Below: Maureen with Jackie Braden (Best of Show) in front of Jackie's painting.
By Maureen Bloomfield | Exhibits | Shows and Events
4/9/2008 1:39:17 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Thursday, April 03, 2008
Friday Flowers for April
 Every Friday this month, The Artist's Magazine is bringing you a step-by-step flower painting demonstration on our website, www.artistmagazine.com. Today watercolor artist Birgit O'Connor shares "Painting Flowers Step by Step: Radiant Reds" for painting gorgeous red tulips. She explains step by step how to achieve a vibrant, clean red and the
right value contrasts to make your tulips blossom beautifully. See her finished piece, Parrot Tulips (at right; watercolor, 30x22). Don't miss more flower painting demos the next three Fridays in April! (OK, Grace, enough galavanting on the West Coast! Time to come back and tell us all about it!)
By Chris McHugh | Notable Artists | Projects
4/3/2008 8:17:36 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Wednesday, April 02, 2008
On Poets and Painters
"April is the cruelest month," and perhaps not incidentally, National Poetry Month. You can find the entire text of T.S. Eliot's Waste Land (whose opening lines describe April as "breeding/ lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/memory and desire...") at the marvelous site of the Academy of American Poets. Edna St. Vincent Millay's " Spring," actually addresses April: "To what purpose, April, do you appear again?" And, of course, it was in April that Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims, in a far more convivial spirit, convened for their pilgrimauge. Poets and painters are natural allies. I recently saw a beautiful show at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery of paintings by Jane Freilicher, who was a friend of the poets of the New York School (of the four most prominent—Frank O'Hara, James Schyler, Kenneth Koch, and John Ashbery, sadly only Ashbery is still alive). Freilicher often made appearances in Frank O'Hara's poems, as did other painters like Larry Rivers and Mike Goldberg. A lovely and jovial poem on the painter's and poet's art is " Why I am not a Painter." An art critic and curator as well as a poet, Frank O'Hara (1922-66) worked at the front desk of the Museum of Modern Art and famously wrote poems while walking around the city during his lunch hour. His tragic death in a freak accident on Fire Island has inspired several elegaic pictures. Jasper Johns has an homage to O'Hara currently on view ( Jasper Johns:Gray) at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. To read more about Frank O'Hara and the New York School of Poets, take a look at David Lehman's Last Avant-Garde: The Making of the New York School of Poets (Anchor Books, 1999). Sign up to receive a poem a day during April in your inbox at www.poets.org./poemADay.php.
Still Life Before a Window (below, 2007. oil on linen, 32x40) by Jane Freilicher. Photo courtesy of Tibor de Nagy Gallery. . 
By Maureen Bloomfield | Notable Artists | Random Thoughts | Shows and Events
4/2/2008 11:06:18 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Sunday, March 30, 2008
On hiatus!
Hello from half-sunny, half-rainy Portland! I was just checking to see if there were any new comments on the blog (I can't stay away!) and realized I never wrote a see-you-in-two-weeks post! So, my esteemed colleagues have promised to post once in a while when I'm gone, but I will return, rested and rejuvenated, on April 8. See you then!
By Grace Dobush | News | Random Thoughts
3/30/2008 9:29:43 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Wednesday, March 26, 2008 Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Now online: Ask the Experts archive!
The latest exciting addition to our new website is the archive of Ask the Experts questions from The Artist's Magazine and Watercolor Artist! We're continually adding more content to this Q-and-A category, where you can find information like this: Q. I normally paint on stretched canvas or
gesso-primed Masonite panels. I've noticed a growing number of artists
in my area are gluing canvas to Masonite and I'd like to try this
myself. What type of glue would you recommend for this process?
A. If you’re going to glue canvas—either preprimed
or primed after attachment—to a panel, I'd recommend using a panel of
Luan plywood, birch plywood or Masonite. All of these create very
sturdy, durable supports.
Read the whole answer here. ( And you can click here to see all Ask the Experts questions with their categories showing to browse according to your interests.) If you've got a burning question, log in to the Ask the Experts forum and post it there, or send us an e-mail, or write to us at The Artist's Magazine, "Ask the Experts," 4700 E. Galbraith Road, Cincinnati, OH 45236. (Unfortunately, we can't respond to all letters personally.)
Advice | By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites | Tips
3/25/2008 9:56:00 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Monday, March 24, 2008
A Gauguin rarity
By Grace Dobush | News | Notable Artists
3/24/2008 4:10:18 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Thursday, March 20, 2008
Art travel tips needed!
Dear blog readers, In just a little more than a week I will be leaving the Queen City behind for a week's vacation in Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco. I have a few favorite spots in Portland from my last visit, but this will be my first time in SFO. If you have any suggestions (for either city) of museums, galleries and other oddities that I must see, please post them in the comments! When I get back, you can bet there'll be boatloads of photos. xo Grace
By Grace Dobush | Random Thoughts | Tips
3/20/2008 4:41:07 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Tuesday, March 18, 2008
Quick link: Color Chart
By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites | Exhibits
3/18/2008 10:09:57 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Monday, March 17, 2008
Poussin's Intense Classicism
Landscape with Calm by Nicholas Poussin. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
"A Provencal Poussin—that would fit me like a glove … like Poussin, I would like to put reason in the grass and tears in the sky"—so wrote Paul Cezanne.
Poussin and Nature: Arcadian Visions now on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art until May 11 is revelatory in the way that's rare. In the first room, the fervid eroticism of the early (influenced by the painter's sojourns in Venice and Rome) works seems almost comic, but as the exhibition proceeds, the pictures grow in serenity and in ambition. By the final room, in front of works that attested to the artist's struggle with failing vision, it was easy to be close to tears; indeed, there were clusters of viewers who lingered, retracing their steps, as if reluctant to leave Poussin's luminous presence.
As a painter, Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665) was incredibly literary; almost every picture refers to or is informed by a text, often by Virgil or Ovid. Nothing was offhand; the artist expected his pictures to be scrutinized with the ardor one devotes to a poem, but these poems were odes, less romantic outburst than systematic meditation. Of the forty paintings on view, quite a number were painted en plein air, an accomplishment that's amazing, given the pictures' complexity. As befits a classical vision, Poussin’s Arcadia is orderly; planes unfold in sequence; the sky is its own terrain of air. The stillness is a characteristic of the vantage point; from far away, catastrophe looks controllable because small. This stately and deeply affecting exhibition puts to rest the notion that classicism is cold. In picture after picture, the trees and figures are equally expressive; often the posture of a figure will find an analogue in the disposition of a tree. Just as often, Arcadia is a backdrop to despair; in the midst of tranquilly the imposition of violent death is another element, not dramatized. Poussin’s landscapes are thus the setting for momentous events; nature is a stage.
Many of the paintings were commissioned, so they were designed to fit over a doorway or to illustrate a moral, for instance, Et Ego in Arcadia (I, Death, am here, even in Arcadia), where shepherds come upon an ancient tomb and read the inscription that informs Poussin's oeuvre. Because death is here, life can be interpreted; like a text or a picture, it can be read. The possibility of meaning is thus a consolation, as is beauty. As Poussin himself observed and vowed: "It is said that the swan sings more sweetly when death approaches; I will try to imitate him and work better than ever."
Poussin and Nature: Arcadian Visions was organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museo de Bellas Artes, Bilbao.
Above right: Arcadian Shepherds or Et in Arcadia Ego by Nicholas Poussin. Devonshire Collection, Chatsworth. Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
By Maureen Bloomfield | Notable Artists | Shows and Events
3/17/2008 9:05:36 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Friday, March 14, 2008
Artists go for the gold
If you're going to be near Western Pennsylvania next month, it'll be worth making a detour to check out the third annual Art Olympic Theatre on April 5 in Pittsburgh.
Picture something along the lines of performance art meets Iron Chef. Over two hours, three teams compete to build the best sculpture out of materials provided at the event, plus one suitcase of stuff they've selected to bring with them. The shebang is masterminded by Tom Sarver, of the Tom Museum, who's got a reputation for wacky puppeteering. The event takes place at the Union Project, which is an awesome community center/cafe/art space.
The details: Art Olympic Theatre III, 6:30 p.m. Saturday, April 5. Union Project (801 N. Negley Ave., Pittsburgh, www.unionproject.org). $10. If you go, tell Pittsburgh I said Hi!
Check out a video of last year's event here:
By Grace Dobush | Shows and Events | Videos
3/14/2008 10:56:30 AM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Art with an expiration date
By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites
3/12/2008 2:53:29 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Tuesday, March 11, 2008
What's new on our website
 We're trying something new here at The Artist's Magazine with the April issue. If you're a reader, you know we include lots of valuable Web links in each article. Unfortunately, our magazines are not yet so high-tech that you can browse the Web on them. But we've come up with the next best thing— a page with all the issue's external links. You get one-click access to everything you read about in the pages of TAM. Also new on our website is the March artist of the month (whose work is at right). Ester Curini was a finalist in last year's competition. Click here to read all about her.
By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites
3/11/2008 12:43:50 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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Monday, March 10, 2008
Quick link: Pencil drawing
By Grace Dobush | Cool Web sites
3/10/2008 4:38:13 PM (Eastern Daylight Time, UTC-04:00)
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