Past Imperfect: Parisa Ghaderi & Ebrahim Soltani at YES!

Tue, 06/13/2017 - 1:00pm by christopherporter

Photographs are haunting; they are aching evidences of our relations with those who are gone. However, through photographs, we do not remember the past: we invent the past.”
--Parisa Ghaderi & Ebrahim Soltani

For the month of June, YES!, an experimental gallery located at 8 North Washington St. in Ypsilanti, will host Waiting for the Past, an installation of videos and photographs created by visual artist Parisa Ghaderi in collaboration with social scientist, writer, and photographer Ebrahim Soltani. The exhibition is sponsored by the Ann Arbor Awesome Foundation and will provide the space with permanent sound and lighting equipment to support future public art projects at the gallery.

Waiting for the Past is the first collaboration of this creative team. Asked if they plan to work together in the future, Soltani replies with an enthusiastic “Absolutely!” They say they particularly enjoyed writing the poetry that dots the wall of the gallery and they hope to continue to create work for a publication.

Video Snapshot: First Fridays, Ypsi Pride, and Ebrahim Soltani & Parisa Ghaderi at YES!

Fri, 06/09/2017 - 1:00pm by christopherporter

Downloads:
➥ 720p video, 480p video or 240p video

Ypsilanti was poppin' last Friday. With YES! Experimental Space celebrating its new exhibition, "Waiting for the Past: Ebrahim Soltani & Parisa Ghaderi," Ypsi Pride holding its first annual festival, and the ongoing monthly throwdown First Fridays in full effect, Ypsi was full of people enjoying the city.

Donald Harrison, who runs YES!, 7 Cylinders Studio, and is making the documentary Commie High: The Film, ran his camera and captured the sights and sounds going down in Ypsilanti on June 2, 2017.

Soul Nourishers: Kathleen Alfonso's "Quiet Spaces" at Kerrytown Concert House

Thu, 06/08/2017 - 12:00pm by amy

Kathleen Alfonso’s Quiet Spaces paintings are biomorphic abstractions. Her art hums with a quiet spiritual conviction and it has turned Kerrytown Concert House into a meditative setting for leisurely contemplation.

As Alfonso tells us in her gallery statement: “Let us join together in celebration of the beautiful natural world we have around us; the ever-changing landscape that delights and nourishes our soul.” She says her work is meant to “fulfill a need in our human nature to connect with the natural world," and to give word to Alfonso’s imaginative color-field configurations she uses the examples of “the intrinsic design of a plant leaf so full of variety and life; light shining and creating shadows into a space; or the current of water flowing and creating ripples and reflection."

Ultimately, she wisely concludes, art is “complex; but simply viewed, causing us to respond.”

We do respond because Alfonso’s work invites a personal response as long as the viewer is willing to surrender to her compositions, which seek to reveal internal discoveries in the eyes of beholders as much as they are formal works of creativity.

Alfonso’s statement, therefore, reflects a keen awareness of what it is she is striving to do with her varied mediums of pencil and graphite, pastel, mixed-media/collage, mixed-media paintings, and acrylic pigments. Her “quiet spaces” -- like the spiritual balance they artfully depict -- are not weighted too heavily by one form over or against another. Instead, this exhibit is designed to sweep viewers along with Alfonso’s reverie.

Whether using a post-painterly wash to brush across her working surface or to construct a more directed tactile graphing of organic imagery to suggest nature, Alfonso’s deft facture enlivens her compositions through these delimited strategies. Her works are disciplined and nuanced examples that less is often more when it comes to art.

For instance, Alfonso’s 20x26 inch pigmented Misty Evening is an abstracted landscape that’s crafted through four distinct visual planes: running from a pensive, near-diaphanous cloudy background through roughly textured earthen midground to an equally rich blue waterscape foreground. Alfonso’s pigments efficiently bleed from ground to ground to craft a serene yet nearly undetectable distant shore. All is inferred, nothing is stated.

On the other hand, the oversized 26x25 inch Cultivating Truth finds Alfonso more assertively handling her compositional elements through acrylic gesture. In this work, she uses a patterned blue and purple background that’s abetted by a foreground curvilinear organic pattern whose vertical swirling anchors the whole. Phonology meets mute articulation in this handsome painting.

The masterwork in this display is the 27x37 inch Windows to Soul. This dramatically oversized artwork melds the varied elements of Alfonso’s abstract artistry into a single striking composition. Her penchant for pattern is proportionately met by her restless exploration of chromaticity as the work’s recurrent design serves as the foundational basis of the painting. She opens the painting’s objective projection to introspective inspection, crafting a horizontal Rorschachesque internal tension through her repetitive blue pigments coupled with the understated yet dramatically nuanced saturation of her paper.

As Alfonso tells us in the conclusion of her gallery statement, “Connecting the natural world with the inner spiritual world is the essence of my work. It is the serenity of the place or a complexity of the moment which has been caught in my piece.”

John Carlos Cantú has written on our community's visual arts in a number of different periodicals.

Kerrytown Concert House: “Kathleen Alfonso: Quiet Spaces” runs through June 28, at Kerrytown Concert House, 525 S. State Street. The exhibit is available Monday-Friday, 10:30 am–4 pm as well as during public concerts and by appointment. A free reception will be held Friday, June 15, from 5-7 pm. For information, call 734-769-2999 or visit kerrytownconcerthouse.com.

Full STEAM Ahead: Intermitten highlights the intersection of art and tech

Mon, 06/05/2017 - 9:35am by christopherporter

A lot of folks blame the influx of tech companies in Ann Arbor as a prime reason for the rising rents that have gradually pushed portions of the creative community out of downtown. The Intermitten conference returns June 8 and 9 to remind us that artistic adventure and modern business success don't need to be mutually exclusive or adversarial (even if there's no immediate solution to the rent situation).

Now in its second year, Intermitten brings together speakers to discuss how "how creativity in both art and technology helps us add value to our home, work, and global communities," as stated on intermitten.org. "We're technology people with creative prowess and artistic people powered by tech, and we unite to discover the many ways in which working together and thinking creatively can help us accomplish our goals."

Trevor Scott Mays, co-founder of Intermitten and director of support operations for Duo Security, walked us through the event's brief history, current focus, and bright future.

Q: Who are the principals behind Intermitten and how did you end up banding together to do the conference?
A: The core organizer group of Intermitten is comprised of four individuals from local Ann Arbor startups Duo Security and FarmLogs. We were all involved in the Ann Arbor Customer Experience Meetup, and following one of those events, were at a local coffee shop brainstorming how so many tech conferences were bad and all the same. As so many of us had diverse creative backgrounds -- dance, poetry, podcasting, DJing, etc. -- we were determined to showcase how Ann Arbor is one of the KEY places where those two lifestyles mesh so well.

We spent a lot of time trying to figure out the correlation between the creative and tech communities, only to realize that we were mistaken in trying to correlate them when they are so often the exact same kind of people. So many of our coworkers in tech were involved in passion projects writing books and designing new products, and so many of our friends and colleagues in the arts were adapting and including the latest technologies into their creative process.

After seeing so much friction between the creative and tech communities in places like San Francisco, we really wanted to showcase a community like Ann Arbor where that relationship is more harmonious and collaborative. As a result, the community tends to prosper and benefit from the output, both fiscally with new business, and culturally, with invigorated energy driven by the art scene.

Q: What are the biggest changes from last year to this year and why?
A: We surveyed our attendees last year, and some of the biggest changes include more time for attendees to ask questions of our speakers, as well as bring in speakers from a wider array of backgrounds. This year, we have authors, designers, hackers, CEOs, poets, inspirational speakers, comedians, artists, founders, producers, editors, and even an elementary school principal! I think some of our learning lessons from last year were to slow things down a little bit and allow some breathing room for the event to just happen. Working at tech startups in Ann Arbor, there can be a tendency to go, go, go. We took a lot of feedback in and are ensuring that attendees this year get a really good chance to absorb and engage, rather than get bombarded with knowledge!

Q: Why do you think people, in general, are paying more attention to the intersection of arts and technology?
A: I wholeheartedly believe people are looking beyond the norms and rules that have traditionally dictated their lines of work. People want something to differentiate the work they do, and there is so much out there that can not only enhance one's work but also accelerate it beyond a natural cadence. I can attest that many of the individuals working in tech substantiate their frantic work life with hobbies and interests that round them out. Others are holding down their jobs in tech until they can sustain themselves professionally with their craft. Sustainability is a big deal to us, and I think that artists and techies alike benefit from the symbiotic relationship that courses between the two archetypes.

Q: What can you tell us about some of the free events and art installations at the Ann Arbor Art Center and the Mayor's Green Fair?
A: The Ann Arbor Art Center will be featuring a special music performance by Coffee Cup Sessions, which in my opinion is perfect music to peruse and take in an art gallery. We're also working with the Art Center and ICON Interactive to set up a special exhibit which lives right at the heart of high-tech and creativity. Intermitten speakers Christina York and Marty Shea will be showing off their projects -- SpellBound and CollabFeature, respectively -- at the event, which should be a really cool way for attendees to see tangible output from our speakers this year.

At the Mayor's Green Fair, we're bringing in a bicycle-powered DJ soundstage where local DJ Roman Martinez will be spinning hot fire. Of course, we'll need volunteers to be spinning the pedals to keep the music going! We're bringing some special art projects as well that locals may recognize from other annual events like FestiFools. You'll have to go to find out!

Q: What do you hope people do with the information they gather at the conference? Are you aware of anyone taking what they learned last year and applying it to projects?
A: One of my core goals with Intermitten has, and will always be, to help attendees integrate and give back to their own respective communities. Our speakers' collective knowledge alone should be enough to inspire and motivate our attendees, but we've seen it go a step further in the past and watched collaborative projects blossom from attendees who met at the conference. A great example of this was the collaborative work between Ghostly International DJ Shigeto and startup ICON Interactive. They put together a VR exhibit where Shigeto's music altered the world within the VR headset. Since the event, the collaboration has continued and I know Zach (Saginaw, aka Shigeto) is still working with VR actively on several projects to date.

We've seen attendees from the event placed at new jobs in Ann Arbor, particularly in the startup scene. Attendees from our event have also sought out volunteer opportunities with organizations who presented or sponsored. As our conference progresses into year two, we anticipate a whole lot more collaboration and connectivity within our community, as we continue to drive our initiatives forward and expose individuals to all that makes Ann Arbor unique.

Christopher Porter is a library technician and the editor of Pulp.

Intermitten 2017 runs all day Thursday, June 8, and Friday, June 9 at The Ark; the full schedule is here. Tickets are $70 to $120 from eventbright.com. The free pop-in event at Ann Arbor Art Center runs 6-9 pm on June 8. Finally, the Intermitten crew of musicians and artists will participate in the ​​17th annual Mayor's Green Fair on June 9; the free event runs 6-9 pm on Main Street in Ann Arbor. Related: Read our wrap-up of Intermitten 2016 here.

Painted Drawings: Nora Venturelli's "Vice Versa" at WSG Gallery

Wed, 05/31/2017 - 8:00am by christopherporter

Nora Venturelli has maintained a significant interest in figure drawing and painting throughout her career, and specialized in studying the human form in college. Her work addresses themes of movement, shadow, and the body in its relation to interior thought processes. These concerns are evident in her most recent work on display at WSG Gallery in an exhibit titled Vice Versa, which runs through June 10. In addition to her series on the human figure, Venturelli has worked with a number of other subjects, including landscapes and still life.

Venturelli was born in Rosario, Argentina, and emigrated to California in 1968 after graduating high school. Today, she teaches both drawing and painting at Eastern Michigan University and University of Michigan STAMPS School of Art & Design, and lives in both the United States and Argentina. She is active in the arts community, showing her work locally and internationally.

The selected pieces for Vice Versa include large-scale mixed-media paintings of the human figure in motion, with gestural lines and overlapping forms suggesting the trajectory of the body through space. Line and color combine to examine the physical body’s relation to human emotion. Also on display are charcoal figure-study drawings that employ similar gestural yet controlled line work to suggest dynamism, even if the figures are seated. Venturelli’s choice to show drawings and paintings alongside one another illustrate her growing concern with an integrated artistic approach in her work.

In fact, Venturelli set out to find an intersection between the gestural and linear qualities of her drawings and the style she had employed in her paintings. To do this, she began to incorporate these techniques by drawing with paint. Venturelli writes, “My approach to drawing with paint was triggered a few years ago when I realized that my drawings and paintings were not integrated. … This initiated a progressive morphing of my drawings into paintings with the objective that my paintings manifest the same gestural and linear characteristics as my drawing, and vice versa.”

In some works, it is unclear whether we see the same figure repeated in space, or if there are various bodies moving, or standing, together. This can be seen in the work Vice Versa, No. 43. In this example, two of three figures remain ambiguous with abstracted faces and bodies.

Throughout her work, Venturelli creates transparency where the modeled figure overlaps gestural sketches, disrupting the continuity of form. This common theme of forms overlapping other, finished figures is executed expertly in the piece Vice Versa, No. 35. In this work, a single female clearly repeats across the 6-foot canvas. The woman strikes a pose, and Venturelli captures it from different angles, using dimension, color, gesture, and layers.

Venturelli writes that a goal of her work is to show “human dynamics -- how we move, communicate, interact, and display ourselves, exposing and suppressing the layers and intricacies of our character. In this extensive body of work I document the passages of time, the fleeting moment.” Many of the fleeting moments represented are still, pensive, and others capture the figure in dynamic motion, representing the subject dancing across the canvas.

Venturelli’s figurative work recalls ideas presented in early modernism, such as in works by artists such as Marcel Duchamp, particularly Nude Descending a Staircase (No. 2). The exploration of time and space also seems to reference early photographic studies in motion, such as those by Eadweard Muybridge in 1872. However, her work goes beyond the study of movement and time, and creates intimate portraits of her subjects, capturing varying facial expressions and emotions. These emotive subjects contrast to the ambiguous, unfinished figures that surround and overlap the realistically-rendered focal points of the works.

Elizabeth Smith is an AADL staff member and is interested in art history and visual culture.

“Nora Venturelli: Vice Versa” runs through June 10 at WSG Gallery, 306 S. Main St. Exhibit hours are Tuesday-Wednesday, noon–6 pm; Thursday, noon to 9 pm; Friday and Saturday, noon-10 pm; and Sunday, noon–5 pm. For information, call 734-761-2287 or visit wsg-art.com/gallery.

Everyday Objects: "Text/Image" at Ann Arbor Art Center

Tue, 05/23/2017 - 12:30pm by christopherporter

We live in a hyper-literate age of endless imagery and short attention spans.

We seldom pause -- and really, when do we have time? -- to consider the process by which we create meaning for ourselves from the constant interaction of words and pictures in books, magazines, on television and the web, on our phones.

In Text/Image now on view until June 3 in Ann Arbor Art Center’s Gallery 117, Detroit-based artist/curator Jack O. Summers has thoughtfully collected for our consideration some artworks that refer to everyday objects whose meanings “are enhanced or subverted by the multi-dimensional interplay of text and images.” The exhibit concentrates on still imagery, leaving aside the more kinetic treatments of text and image interaction such as video and animation.

There are several artists represented in Text/Image who are well known in Detroit for their absurdist take on the news and pop culture, using the vocabulary of comics and newspapers to communicate their points of view. Ryan Standfest, gifted printmaker, founder of the Rotland Press and trickster artist, composes headlines for his imaginary tabloid newspaper the Modern Vulgarian (#1) that raise more questions than they answer and classified ads that go gleefully off the rails.

William Schudlich, illustrator and self-proclaimed “social zoologist,” is clearly a kindred spirit. Schudlich’s images employ the visual vocabulary of disposable print media such as comic strips and have the look of early- to mid-20th-century comics. He approaches visual challenges, he says, “with a dark sense of humor whenever possible.” Tom Carey’s large relief prints, while ostensibly mining the same classic content as Schudlich and Standfest, project a more modern effect with their vivid colors and lively compositions. The small wooden mutoscopes (flipbooks in wooden boxes operated by pushbutton) created by Andy Malone also fit comfortably with the sensibilities of Schudlich and Standfest by appropriating of a vintage craft and repurposing it to make a modern statement.

Two notable Detroit photographers, Christopher Schneider and Bruce Giffen, appear in Text/Image. In Schneider’s Underdog, the word “Hamtramck” printed on the young football player’s jersey adds context and pathos to the inward-looking figure, isolated as his teammate looks away toward the light and movement of the game. His fellow photographer Bruce Giffen, whose sharp and poetic eye is trained on Detroit at all times and in all seasons, juxtaposes text with context for special resonance in his photo Stay in School.

Taurus Burns, Dencel Deneau, Jaye Schlesinger, and Amy Fell all engage in the reification of the ordinary, each one observing with care and archiving with skill the unglamorous objects and often unsightly minutiae of the urban landscape. Deneau’s small glass mosaics, in particular, are improbably lovely memorials to fleeting moments in the life of a city.

Moving from the grittily observational to the poetic, Scott Northrup’s gauzy collages are cinematic and nostalgia-soaked. Self-Portrait With Fruit by John Gutoskey is somehow both cheerful and sad, and recalls the innocence and the pain of a young boy growing up gay in the Midwest. Like Gutoskey’s quasi-installation, Believers by Catherine Peet hardly needs text to make its point, harking back to medieval altars of a pre-literate age.

Before the printing press and universal literacy, the visual impact of letters was as important as the narrative meaning. Randy Asplund creates contemporary works using the same methods as medieval illuminators; the pigments, grounds, text and image are all carefully chosen for their symbolic resonance, each re-enforcing the meaning of the other elements. Taking the opposite tack, Alvey Jones subverts the meaning of text in Language Text and Circuit Board. Each element of the artwork is designed to be unintelligible -- the book is (literally) Greek to us, the circuit board holds its meaning in a code we are unable to penetrate.

Barbara Brown, eminent Ann Arbor book artist and curator of a yearly survey of all things art and book-related, entitled Beyond Words, here uses her collection of handmade building blocks, Metropolis, to think playfully about the way reordering words or letters can alter narrative.

Text/Image can be understood best as a survey featuring a cast of accomplished artists, any one of whom could fill the gallery with well-crafted and well-thought-out work. The art in this exhibit thoughtfully uses language and image together to address a variety of themes from autobiography to social commentary, and while curator Jack O. Summers has put together an interesting and beautiful exhibit, the subject is far from exhausted and possibly never can be.

K.A. Letts is an artist and art blogger. She has shown her work regionally and nationally and in 2015 won the Toledo Federation of Art Societies Purchase Award while participating in the TAAE95 Exhibit at the Toledo Museum of Art. You can find more of her work at RustbeltArts.com.

"Text/Image" is at the Ann Arbor Art Center’s Gallery 117, 117 W. Liberty St., through June 3. For more information, go here. This review was originally published on RustbeltArts.com.

Motion Lights: UMMA's "Moving Image: Performance"

Mon, 05/22/2017 - 11:00am by amy

The art of motion is currently on display in the University of Michigan Museum of Art’s spirited Moving Images: Performance.

The second of UMMA's three presentations drawn from Istanbul, Turkey's Borusan Contemporary museum, Moving Images: Performance illustrates the subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) relationship of performance and moving-image media that’s been fostered by the advent of the portable video camera.

The exhibit complements the concurrent UMMA installation Rafael Lozano-Hemmer: Wavefunction, Subsculpture 9, which is a subject we’ll get to in a forthcoming review. But for the time being, the four short videos in this exhibit stand as prime examples of experimental filmmaking.

Typically classified cinematically as short subjects, these sorts of films have a long history going back to the origin of motion pictures. Indeed, these kinds of works -- experimental independent films with nontraditional narratives -- make up a significant chunk of the Ann Arbor Film Festival.

The four films in the exhibit are Kalliope Lemos’ At the Centre of the World; Elena Kovylina’s Equality; Roman Signer’s 56 Kleine Helikopter; and the Universal Everything group’s Presence 4. Each film features a different aspect of performance-based moving-image media.

Kalliope Lemos’ 2015 16mm black and white film with sound At the Centre of the World (running eight minutes, 29 seconds) is perhaps the most challenging short subject to watch in this exhibit's cinematic tetralogy.

A mixed-media and mixed-medium artwork, At the Centre of the World features a woman who is trapped within a body-sized iron-sphere sculpture crafted by Lemos. The video is that simple -- and it’s that complicated as we watch the woman roll about her studio, increasingly frustrated in her attempt to maneuver around the room.

Presumably a visual metaphor for being trapped in one’s world, the video does a good job of unsettling the viewer with its relentlessly swaying hand-held camerawork, which is as disconcerting as the model’s increasingly frantic and unsuccessful attempts to balance herself in the studio that serves as the center of her world.

The moving image of Elena Kovylina’s Equality is easily the most heroic -- as well as politically pungent -- in this exhibit. A 2014 single-channel video with a running time of seven minutes, 59 seconds, Equality follows a procession of participants, each holding a stool before him or her, walking in a single row and standing in solidarity at Palace Square in St. Petersburg, Russia.

We like to think this activity would be something like an art prank in our country. But in Russia, where democratic institutions and traditions are under severe stress, participating in such an installation could have legal and political consequences. Yet Kovylina’s performance art is so deceptively passive and so formally nonviolent, it’s up to the viewer to determine its meaning.

Our only clues are that the footstools have been cut at such a height that the many participants standing on them are superficially equal. Despite their obvious differences in gender, age, ethnicity, and occupational standing, the people stand hand-in-hand looking forward, ostensibly symbolizing the social equality that democracy fosters. Kovylina’s video (like her performance art) questions what is real and what is only apparent in contemporary Russian society.

Sometimes art is seemingly really no more than it appears to be. Swiss artist Roman Signer’s 56 kleine Helikopter, a 2008 high-definition color video that runs three minutes, 14 seconds, is just as its title says: 56 small helicopters let loose to riot and buzz around in an enclosed studio space.

It's possible the video illustrates the futility of range and motion in our current state of social and political affairs. But it looks to me like it’s more of a really cool idea to crash and burn a bunch of drones. Admittedly, it’s fun to watch these little copters repetitively slam into each other in a sort of miniature death race, with only a small number of them surviving the aerial mayhem.

Finally, Sheffield, England-based design consortium Universal Everything’s 2013 stereo, two-channel digital video Presence 4 (two minutes running time) turns a dancer's movement into colorful digital abstraction. The undulating curvilinear image of Presence 4 flows seamlessly in and out of an abstract whip and tide, with the dancing figure coming in and out of focus.

There’s not much commercial potential in this sort of filmmaking, but Presence 4 displays the ongoing value of experimental cinema in our postmodern era. As this short blissfully shows us through dance, adventurous video will thrive despite market restrictions -- and the art of filmmaking is so much better for it.

John Carlos Cantú has written on our community's visual arts in a number of different periodicals.

“Moving Images: Performance” runs through July 24 at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, 525 S. State St. The museum is open Tuesday-Saturday, 11 am-5 pm, and Sunday, 12-5 pm. For information, call 734-764-0395 or visit umma.umich.edu.

Rooted in the Community: Westside Art Hop

Tue, 05/09/2017 - 11:00am by christopherporter

What is the Westside Art Hop? Is it an art fair? A historic home tour? A block party?

Well, it’s all of those things plus a nice stroll, and it’s scheduled for Saturday, May 13, from 10 am to 5 pm on the streets and in the homes, garages, porches, and artists’ studios of Ann Arbor’s historic Old West Side.

The district’s resident artists, friends, and neighbors will be showing off -- and offering for sale -- a broad array of paintings, ceramics, blown glass, photography, and assorted fine crafts. On hand to greet visitors and converse will be the artists themselves. Organizers of the free event describe Art Hop as “artists supporting artists … rooted in the local community. We present high-quality art and hand-made crafts for sale to the public in a festive atmosphere.”

Art Hop will provide visitors a unique opportunity to talk to artists about their work in an informal and friendly setting. At the artists’ discretion, Art Hoppers may be invited to visit an art studio or to walk into a charming back yard to see their creations in an intimate domestic setting very different from the more formal atmosphere of a gallery.

This twice-yearly art walk has proved to be both durable and popular: the May 13 event will be its 10th iteration. Sophie Grillet, one of the founding members of the walk, recalled how the whole thing got going: "Art Hop started when I was looking to participate in the Ann Arbor Gallery Walk about 5 years ago and found it had been discontinued. I spoke to my neighbor, painter Laila Kujala, about doing a neighborhood event and we asked if anyone else wanted to join in."

A core group composed of Susan Major, Lucie and Larry Nissen, along with Grillet and Kujala, organized the first event, which included 11 artists. The rest, as they say, is history.

This spring’s art walk will include over 36 artists and crafts persons, which demonstrates Art Hop is healthy and growing. Many visitors to the event return year after year to catch up with their favorite artists and to purchase additional work.

“Every year I have people coming back to buy glasses for themselves, their family members, and their friends,” said glass artist Larry Nisson. He and his wife, Lucie, an accomplished mosaicist, will be opening their art-filled home, garden, and studio to the public again this year.

Many of the participating artists are friends of the neighborhood residents and will be showing their work alongside them in backyards, porches, and garages, contributing to the festive and friendly atmosphere.

With so many artists represented, it is impossible to single out and describe the work of every individual, but a few caught my eye as promising potential stops along the tour.
Carol Furtado, a prizewinning fiber artist, will be showing her sophisticated wearable art at 705 Mount Pleasant. Sophie Grillet will show her own painterly abstractions and will also share her space at 802 Mount Vernon Avenue with painter Inty Muenala, photographer Todd Marsee, Kara Marsee, and Gary Nola. Art lovers who enjoyed the 2014 ArtPrize Grand winner Intersections by Anila Quayyum Agha, might want to take a close look at Nola’s exquisitely detailed laser-cut lamps.

Whether the goal is finding first-rate art to buy or exploring the domestic architecture of the Old West Side or just taking a pleasant spring walk, Art Hop will satisfy appetites of all kinds for a grassroots Ann Arbor community experience.

K.A. Letts is an artist and art blogger. She has shown her work regionally and nationally and in 2015 won the Toledo Federation of Art Societies Purchase Award while participating in the TAAE95 Exhibit at the Toledo Museum of Art. You can find more of her work at RustbeltArts.com.

The Westside Art Hop happens Saturday, May 13, from 10 am to 5 pm. Download a map here. Click here for a full list of artists and addresses.

Revival: “Whipstitch: The State of Contemporary Textiles" at Ann Arbor Art Center

Mon, 04/24/2017 - 2:30pm by amy

The Ann Arbor Art Center’s “Whipstitch: The State of Contemporary Textiles” does the rather nifty trick of reimagining yesterday’s art today through a conceptualization of what may be the art of tomorrow.

Granted, this notion may sound convoluted, but it’s really quite simple: Fiber, like architecture, can reasonably vie as the oldest of all arts. The reason for this is quite apparent with little consideration.

Yet the art of fiber (like another such ancient art, ceramics) has been essentially aesthetically dormant for millenniums -- and this is also for the same reason already considered. For as a practical artisan regard, fiber’s use has been largely defined rigidly as either being functional or fashionable with little thought outside of this.

Michelle Hegyi's superb sense of spatial balance on display at the WSG

Sun, 04/23/2017 - 8:45am by oldnews

Illustrating the principle that an artful passion can arise from the coolest of mediums, Michelle Hegyi’s “Wild Forest” manages to encapsulate both passion and discipline in a further consolidation of aesthetic strategy.

This is the fifth time I’ve caught Hegyi’s art in her WSG context. There was a streak of exhibits—June 2006’s “The shape of the Sky”; August 2008’s “Gardens of Love and Fire”; August 2010’s “Do You Remember the Shape of Trees…”; and November 2012’s “How the Day Changes with the Light”—where it was possible to chart Hegyi’s growth transitioning from old school printmaking to digital printmaking.

It’s been a privilege to see her work advancing technologically even as she consolidated her print expertise. It’s equally good to note that she’s still as restless in her study as she is in her craft.

In this instance—and working happily in the juncture between abstraction and representation—Hegyi continues to craft a hybrid computer-based painting where her abstraction is comingled with her inspiration.