There is a Cass Brothers lyric, “Something for nothing – tricks for free” that suggests duplicity or cheating and a Rush song saying, “No, you don’t get something for nothing; you can’t have freedom for free…” Love and freedom are, in some ways, opposite concepts that involve other concepts to realize– along with individual energies, consciousness, and behavior. Continue reading
Michael Combs – Hunters
Michael Combs reminds us that, as biologist Marc Bekoff wrote, “enthusiasts often like to hang signs that say ‘Gone Fishin’ or ‘Gone Huntin’’. But what these slogans really mean is ‘Gone Killing.’” Like Bekoff, Combs intimately understands the swagger and posturing motivating today’s huntsman. His family were baymen and decoy carvers in Long Island’s Great South Bay since America since the 17th century yet he decided to apply his knowledge of the hunt to a peaceful purpose. Continue reading
Alejandro Bovo Theiler – Origen
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Licenciado en Escultura por la Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, el artista plástico Alejandro Bovo Theiler, nos ofrece una muestra por demás interesante que nos invita a conectarnos con las raíces más profundas de un universo de arquetipos híbridos que traducen el lenguaje que el artista viene desarrollando en forma sistemática desde 2007 en variadas series. Continue reading
Art Parks: A Tour of America’s Sculpture Parks and Gardens
Francesca Cigola’s new guide to Sculpture parks and gardens in the U.S. (scheduled for publication this June) overlaps a bit with the ISC’s own 2008 Landscapes for Art: Contemporary Sculpture Parks, but the content and strategy of the two books is very different. Art Parks is a genuine guidebook (with a portable but sturdy “flexibind” cover), though arranged thematically more than geographically, with generous photos and short descriptions of each park. Landscapes for Art was not intended to be a guidebook, but instead an exploration of the history and significance of the sculpture park “movement,” told in kaleidoscopic form in 48 short articles that focus on individual parks around the world or tendencies among the parks that emphasize modern and contemporary art. Continue reading
In the Studio with Lika Mutal
Visiting Lika Mutal’s studio for stone sculpture in Villa Salvador near Lima, Peru requires driving south through industrial sections, shantytowns, and great sand dunes. On the day I visit, April 23, a water main has burst and there is flooding on parts of the mud two-lane road. Inside a cement brick walled space, a lush garden of trees, ground cover, and flowering plants fills the sloping clay-sand earth to compliment the vast landscape of stones culled from varied remote locations north and south of Lima. The studio has heavy hoisting machines, but most work is being done with hand tools and by hand. Continue reading
Maya Lin – On Pins and Needles
Here & There – New York. Installation View. Courtesy Pace Gallery
When Maya Lin (American, b. 1959) created “Storm King Wavefield” in 2009, she was in sync with the mores of late 1960s artists including Michael Heizer, Nancy Holt, Dennis Oppenheim and Robert Smithson, each of them prominent in the Earthworks or Land Art movement. Lin’s “Wavefield” is an undulating terrain of grasses rolling across an eleven-acre site within the five hundred-acre sculpture park in Mountainville, New York. Continue reading
Art Marketing 101: An Artist’s Guide to a Succesful Business Plan
Constance Smith’s Art Marketing 101 is now in its 4th edition (just released in March). The book is structured like a workbook, walking the beginning artist through “Business Basics,” “Legal Issues,” “Strategies,” “Networking,” “Exposure,” and “Strategic Planning,” with spaces for the reader’s responses to specific questions and to broader planning suggestions. It leads directly to the same publisher’s Advanced Strategies for Marketing Art, dealing with the subject in more concrete terms, such as where to market. Continue reading
