art : February 2009

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Bill Davenport: Giant Mushrooms

Giant Mushrooms in Austin for the Texas Biennial

Auditorium Shores Park, near the train bridge.

Friday, February 27, 2009

Tracy Hicks: Installation photos from Tuscon Museum of Art

Courtesy of Tracy Hicks

Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Liz Lurie

Liz Laurie

Recent Works

UNT: Cora Stafford Gallery

March 9-13, 2009

Workshop

March 12 & 13

Monday, February 23, 2009

Helen Altman installation photos from DCKT

Photos from DCKT Contemporary Art in New York.

Friday, February 20, 2009

Helen Altman at DCKT, New York

DCKT Contemporary presents HELEN ALTMAN’s solo exhibition of mixed media works. ALTMAN explores notions of reality versus artificiality in everyday life. Her interest in mimicry and replicas results in objects that are convincing and sincere while simultaneously absurd in their obvious artificiality. ALTMAN's Goldfish is a 45 gallon aquarium filled with a multitude of individual cast plastic fish. The faux goldfish in the “feeder tank,” as well as several goldfish bowls on view, address concepts of individuality, loss of identity, overcrowding, separation and loneliness.

Lotus Bed consists of lotus leaf skulls on top of a chenille bedspread with cocoons sewn on. The skulls resemble something an insect would make and the cocoons mimic wasp eggs sometimes laid on living caterpillars that serve as the host for the growing wasp larvae. Here, the bedspread itself (“chenille” translates from French as “caterpillar”) serves as host. The bed becomes a victim and the stand-in for the absent sleeper. With Weeping Iron, a dialogue between an inanimate object and the missing user is created. A clothes iron sits in an empty laundry basket atop a pile of wrinkled clothing. The iron is in fact a working fountain, weeping as if trapped and overwhelmed by an extraordinary task which it cannot complete.

Also on view will be a selection of ALTMAN’s torch drawings and wire birds.

ALTMAN’s work is included in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Dallas Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Recent solo exhibitions include the Galveston Arts Center, Dunn and Brown Contemporary (Dallas) and Moody Gallery (Houston). Recent group exhibitions include Walter Maciel Gallery (Los Angeles), University of North Texas Art Gallery (Denton) and the Chelsea Art Museum (New York).
The exhibition will be on view at

DCKT Contemporary, 195 Bowery (at Spring Street).

Hours are Tuesday through Friday, 11am – 6pm; Saturday, noon – 6pm; Sunday, noon – 5pm.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Tracy Hicks: Trouble in Paradise

Tucson Museum of Art
Trouble in Paradise: Examining Discord between Nature and Society
February 28, 2009 - June 28, 2009

Artists are looking at the beauty and the terror in the forces of nature through their honest and emotional portrayals, while sending urgent messages to pay attention to the ravages society inflicts on the land through war and waste. This exhibition will examine a range of art in a variety of media that addresses extreme forces of nature in two basic categories: nature-based discord, such as lightning, tornadoes, volcanoes, hurricanes, and fire; and human-caused environmental discord such as pollution, over-population, global warming, oil field fires, atomic fallout, and destruction of land. The debate about how much of nature’s wrath is the result of human impact and interference is ongoing, but questions are posed through stunning visuals about the seemingly unstoppable cycle of cause and effect.Many of the artists in this exhibition, including Edward Burtynsky, Richard Misrach, William T. Wiley, Mark Dion, and Joel Peter Witkin, imbue their work with haunting messages while objectively documenting the reality before them. Others exalt in the awesome beauty of the power of nature without judgment of its genesis or its conclusion. While offering a selected survey of powerful works that address the forces of nature, this exhibition is far from a “doom and gloom” portrayal of earth’s and society’s current situation, nor does it attempt to solve environmental problems. What emerges from these works is not only a revelation of the pressing environmental problems of our times, but how artists see the world and share that message with stunning beauty and poetic resonance.

Sid Richardson Collection of Western

Stacey and I stopped by the Sid Richardson Museum of Western Art today. Once you made it past the trinket shop up front the museum was a treat. I'm not a big western art fan but my favorite was "The Luckless Hunter" by Remington and Stacey's was "The Cow Puncher" also by Remington.

Friday, February 13, 2009

Sweetness

Mixed media on paper by Margaret Meehan

Saturday, February 7, 2009

Dallas Art Fair: the art, part II

There were more David Bates paintings, sculptures, and prints than you could ever image. This was at Dunn and Brown.

Fred Stonehouse and Sati Zech at Howard Scott Gallery

Richard Thompson at William Campbell

Do I even need to say who these artists are??

Jasper Johns and Cy Twombly at Thomas Segal Gallery

Kiki Smith at Pace Prints

Dallas Art Fair: the art

I took as many pictures as I could of the art.

The Art Guys at McClain Gallery

Jay Kelly sculptures at Jim Kempner Fine Art, NY

One of my favorite artists, Bernar Venet at William Shearburn Gallery

John Alexander at McClain Gallery

Richard Prince at McClain Gallery

Dallas Art Fair: the art galleries

I attended the first Dallas Art Fair today and had a pretty good time. First - this art fair should have been called the "David Bates Dallas Art Fair". There must have been 6 to 10 different galleries with his work displayed. 2nd there was a lot of Donald Sultan - I thought he fell out of favore more than 10 years ago. I still like his work. Where else could we have gone today and visited 40 galleries from around the US in one building? My favorite galleries were Arthouse from Austin, McClain Gallery from Houston, Thomas Segal Gallery from Baltimore and Lora Reynolds from Austin.