Student Drawing of Guernica

For our final in-class project, I had the students each take a section of Picasso’s great 1937 painting, Guernica, and draw it using charcoal. We then put them all together to form the large reproduction of the masterpiece. Throughout the quarter, we investigated many artists and styles, including DeKooning, Dali, and Chuck Close to gain a better understanding of their styles and approaches to art making.

PRESS RELEASE
Although the MCKEE GALLERY has mounted many PHILIP GUSTON shows over the last 35 years, it has never exhibited the small oil panels together as a group. The early figurative acrylic panels were begun in 1968, but the date of the first smaller oils is undetermined. The dated oil panels begin in 1969 and the last ones in 1973. Many are undated.

Shoe (Untitled)

These small oils, ranging in size from 9 x 10 to 12 x 16 inches, have always been special. Their diminutive size does not diminish their pictorial strength, whether as complex compositions of hooded figures in conversation, studio interiors, still-lifes or as paintings of single objects, such as a green shade, a cup, a nail or an umbrella. They are not studies or fragments of larger works.

Guston painted these small oils for a period of 5 years, while going through the first hooded figure series and the Roma period, and then he stopped. They have a unity to them that belies the span of time during which they were done. The panels are all very painterly, not flat, and exude a care and intensity of focus that convey the painter’s passion in making them.

The exhibition will include 45 works, mostly loans, and will open Thursday, November 5, continuing on until December 31, 2009.

View the show

The Herd, 2009, Pastel and Spray paint.

I first saw this scene in the movie, ‘The New York School’. It was one of those movies I watched over and over again in the library screening rooms at Moorhead State. All of the artist banter and Abstract Expressionist one-liner’s are priceless. It was here that I first heard Pollock’s famous retort to Hans Hoffman, “I am Nature”.

The Sundance channel is running a marvelous documentary about the Frenchman, Philippe Petit, who, in 1974, walked across a wire between the World Trade Towers, in NYC. What an engaging meditation on so many things, beauty, dreams, risk, mystery…the Towers… Petit was immediately arrested after making 8 crossings on his walk, and people demanded to know WHY anyone (he) would do such a thing, he said, “there is no why”. He couldn’t understand such a reaction to what he described simply as a “beautiful and mysterious thing”.

Here’s the original news report on the event: Click here

I asked my Advanced Typography students to visually “animate” this poem by Billy Collins, expecting to see 2D typographical layouts, but Nick Garcia produced this great start for a video animation of the poem.

A friend and former classmate at Moorhead State University, Anne Greenwood, opens a show at the Pendleton Center for the Arts on July 17, 2009. Her recent work titled, ‘Winter Count’, features embroidered pictographs of stunning originality. In her artists’ statement, Anne says that the work is deeply autobiographical and connected to her background as a naturalist. She is interested in culture and tradition. Her inspiration lies in the interaction of the past with the present and exploring cultural tradition.

With the criteria of a one day drive, this years’ summer vacation took us to the Black Hills. Custer State Park is simply great for hiking. There is a lot of elevation, but the views are amazing. Here is one of the hikes we made listed on Backpacker.

This is a summer with no particular goal in mind, other than EXPLORATION. Try new things, fail a lot, and look for a kernel of something interesting in my exploration. So far, stencils and spray paint have worked their way into a few drawings…and I’m drawing outside the lines. Any ideas?