Art & Artifacts: "Unrecorded: Reimagining Artist Identities in Africa" at UMMA

Thu, 06/07/2018 - 9:45am by christopherporter

Altering the Landscape: "Written Into Rock" at Ann Arbor Art Center

Thu, 04/26/2018 - 2:00pm by christopherporter

Ann Arbor Art Center’s current exhibition, Written Into Rock, explores imagery associated with the Earth, geology, and human impact on the environment. Curated by Gina Iacobelli, the exhibition features the works of seven artists dispersed throughout the gallery instead of placing works by each artist together.

U-M Gifts of Art spring exhibitions aim to revitalize and renew

Mon, 04/09/2018 - 1:30pm by christopherporter

Michigan Medicine’s Gifts of Art program regularly supports artists while working to “revitalize and enrich lives” of patients and visitors. The latest Gifts of Art series on display in various parts of University Hospital is available to view through June 10. The eight small exhibits in Gifts of Art's nine galleries feature the works of artists Tina West, Richard Light, John Dempsey, Mary Brodbeck, Aimee Lee, Re Kielar, f8collective, and WCC faculty, staff, and students.

UMMA's "Exercising the Eye" shows how Gertrude Kasle expanded the Midwest art scene in the 1950s

Fri, 04/06/2018 - 12:00am by christopherporter

The University of Michigan Museum of Art’s exhibition Exercising the Eye: The Gertrude Kasle Collection presents an array of works by influential artists of the 20th century. Many of these artists, as pointed out by the exhibition organizers, were, in part, brought to prominence in the Midwest by Gertrude Kasle’s (1917-2016) promotion of their works. 

"Labors of Love and Loss" exhibition explores race, gender, and class with mixed media

Wed, 03/28/2018 - 8:25am by christopherporter

The U-M Institute for Research on Women and Gender and the Department of Women’s Studies exhibition Labors of Love and Loss is a collection of mixed-media pieces exploring gender and race and "considers the intertwined lives of caregivers, their dependents and charges.” The exhibition presents the works of Marianetta Porter and Lisa Olson, featuring processes such as letterpress combined with found objects. Though Porter and Olson’s works differ in some respects, they create a cohesive, important dialogue about the history of women’s work and the intersections between race, gender, and class, expertly portrayed through text and object. 

Joyce Brienza's "Floating Points" exhibit explores dichotomous realities

Tue, 03/13/2018 - 8:00am by christopherporter

Dalia Reyes' "Rainbow Body" exhibit explores cosmic lightness

Tue, 03/13/2018 - 7:45am by christopherporter

Dalia Reyes is a Detroit-based artist and arts administrator with an undergraduate degree from the College for Creative Studies. In her artist statement for the exhibition Rainbow Body at the Connections Gallery in U-M's North Campus Research Complex, Reyes suggests her work “focuses on pushing fantasy into everyday scenery; where plants have names and all that glitters is definitely gold.”

Ann Arbor Art Center's "Art Now: Drawing" leaps off the page

Tue, 02/27/2018 - 1:00pm by christopherporter

What is drawing now?

UMMA's "Aftermath: Landscapes of Devastation" ponders our relationship to disaster images

Thu, 02/15/2018 - 10:30am by christopherporter

Aftermath: Landscapes of Devastation is a small, excellently curated photo exhibition at UMMA that addresses the relationship between disasters, their images, and viewers. Chronicling an immense range of historical disasters, the exhibit is comprised of shots from the beginning days of photography that have captured remnants of destruction.

Two Stamps exhibitions explore the intersection of the political and the personal

Wed, 02/07/2018 - 10:45am by christopherporter

Two complementary exhibitions at Stamps Gallery engage in themes of social and political progress through photography and graphic design.

Celebrate People’s History posters, a project organized by Josh MacPhee since 1998, is “rooted in the do-it-yourself tradition of mass-produced and distributed political propaganda,” according to the Stamps website. Furthermore, “in dark times, it’s rare that a political poster is celebratory, and when it is, it almost always focuses on a small canon of male individuals: MLK, Gandhi, Che, or Mandela.”