Mixed Media

Funding opportunity for local artists

SOS, a project of the New York Foundation for the Arts, working in collaboration with arts councils and cultural organizations across New York State, is designed to help individual artists of all disciplines take advantage of unique opportunities that will significantly benefit their work or career development. Participating counties in our region include: Broome, Chemung, Schuyler, Stueben, Tioga and Tompkins.

Artists working in all disciplines (including literature, media arts, visual arts, music, and theater) may request support ranging from $100 to $600 for specific, forthcoming opportunities. These do not include works-in-progress.

The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes will work with artists individually to help them learn to write the best possible grant application. The ARTS provides technical assistance guiding artists through the funding program and offers suggestions for other funding.

 Applications must be received by 5:00 pm on May 28, 2009 for opportunities in July-October 2009. This is NOT a postmark deadline.

Who can apply?

• Artists 18 years of age or older.

• Artist must be a full-time resident for the past year from date of application deadline in one of the participating counties. All recipients must show proof of residency status before receiving award money.

Who cannot apply?

• Any past SOS recipient who has outstanding final reports or retains unused award money.

• A graduate or undergraduate student enrolled in any degree program at the time of application, including highschool students.

• A recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship award in the previous year.

Applications should be submitted to:
The ARTS Council of the Southern Finger Lakes
32 West Market Street
Corning, NY 14830

You can download copies of this application and find more information about SOS here.

CMOG offers new exhibit of contemporary glass

A new survey of one of the largest collections of contemporary studio glass in the United States will open at The Corning Museum of Glass on May 16, 2009. Part of a year-long series of contemporary glass exhibitions and programming at the Museum, Voices of Contemporary Glass: The Heineman Collection, will present 240 works in glass by 87 international artists.

Voices of Contemporary Glass will showcase the collection donated to the Museum in 2006 by Ben W.  Heineman, Sr. and his wife, Natalie G. Heineman. Mr. Heineman collected with a discerning eye, thoughtfully assembling a grouping of works that represents the full breadth of a defining period in contemporary glassmaking. He was intrigued by the extraordinary potential of the material to take on a broad range of expressions and forms. Although interested in all kinds of art in glass, he was drawn primarily to works that explored abstraction and color.

The exhibition features video interviews with a selection of artists represented in the Heineman Collection, exploring their individual ideas, or “voices,” in glass. This multitude of voices and perspectives celebrates the infinite possibilities of glass as a medium for contemporary vessels and sculpture, and documents the ongoing process of discovery and innovation that has shaped the story of the Studio Glass movement.

“The Heineman Collection reflects the remarkable achievements made in studio glass over the past 35 years,” said David Whitehouse, the Corning Museum’s executive director. “The collection is distinguished by its in-depth focus on a key group of individuals whose work has been influential to artists working in glass worldwide. The exhibition explores the appeal of glass and its essence as a creative medium for artists of all backgrounds. At the Museum, visitors can always experience the energy of artists at work but, this year, the artists will be even more present.”

Throughout the summer, Museum visitors will be able to participate in gallery tours led by artists who teach at the Museum’s glassmaking school, The Studio, such as Paul Stankard, Amy Rueffert and Gianni Toso. Daily live demonstrations by Corning Museum glassmakers will help visitors understand many of the techniques behind the works on view in Voices of Contemporary Glass, and guests will be able to make their own glass in hands-on experiences.

 “This extensive collection allows us to present the story of studio glassmaking, and to examine the variety of ways in which artists have used glass to find their artistic voices,” said Tina Oldknow, curator of modern glass and of the exhibition. “The exceptional compilation of objects displayed in the exhibition documents a remarkable material and a deeply introspective process of working that helps to explain the often indefinable, but always captivating, allure of glass.”

The Heineman Collection nearly completely documents the chronology of the American Studio Glass movement, with objects dating from 1969 to 2005, and it presents the work of several artists over the course of their careers. Highlights of the exhibition include:

• Architectonic sculptures by Thomas Patti, who pioneered the exploration of industrial and architectural glass as a sculptural medium.

• Blown vessels by Lino Tagliapietra, considered to be the world’s foremost glassblower and one whose influence has had a lasting impact on American studio glass.

• Glass sculptures evoking elements of architecture and industry by Howard Ben Tré, who led the way in the use of cast glass as a sculptural medium in the United States.

• A rare group of “Navajo Blanket” cylinders blown in the mid-1970s by the internationally recognized artist, Dale Chihuly.

• Iconic sculptures by the acknowledged “fathers” of American studio glass, Harvey K. Littleton and Dominick Labino, who, in 1962, introduced the first studio-sized glass furnace that enabled glassworking to move outside of a factory environment, launching the American Studio Glass movement.

Voices of Contemporary Glass, which runs through January 3, 2010, will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog of the collection by Tina Oldknow. As part of a year-long celebration of contemporary glass at the Museum, it is complemented by the exhibitions, Favorites from the Contemporary Glass Collection, and Masters of Studio Glass: Richard Craig Meitner.

The installation, designed by Paul and Barbara Haigh, is inspired by the Heinemans’ Chicago residence in which the collection was originally displayed. The exhibition design transforms the large and open spaces of the Museum into a more intimate setting, reminiscent of domestic interiors, with the objects arranged primarily by artist, rather than by artistic theme, chronology, or technique. 

 

Lecture discusses controversial photos of the Spanish Civil War

Sally Stein, a specialist in 1930s American photography and media, will examine the continuing debate  over Robert Capa’s “Falling Soldier” (1936) in her talk “Close-ups from Afar: The Still-Contested Framings of the Spanish Civil War, 1936” at 5 p.m., April 6, in Lewis Auditorium in Goldwin Smith Hall on the Cornell University campus.  The event is free and open to the public.

Her lecture will offer a new explanation for what is seen and missed in the historic shot, which is considered the most famous photograph from the Spanish Civil War.  She also will show how media coverage strategies of the 1930s were prototypes for coverage of global conflict today.  While the U.S. government took a public position of neutrality during the Spanish Civil War, emerging forms of U.S. photojournalism quickly devised graphic strategies to defend the causes of the rebels.

This event is part of the Findley Lecture Series offered by the Department of the History of Art in Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences.

Edvard Munch's Love and Pain goes on sale in November

After remaining in private hands for 70 years, Edvard Munch's landmark 1894 painting Love and Pain, known as Vampire, will go on sale at Sotheby's New York in November. The work depicts a man being kissed by a vampire and created a scandal when it was first shown in Berlin in 1902. Some believed it was a reference to Munch's visits to prostitutes; others thought it was a fantasy about the death of his favorite sister.

The painting was part of the artist's 20-work series "The Frieze of Life," which included The Scream. It is the most significant of four Vampires that he created between 1893 and 1894 and the only one to remain in private hands.

Sold to regular Munch collector John Anker in 1903, the painting was acquired by a private collection in 1934 and has remained there since. The collection had it on loan to the Metropolitan Museum of Art for more than 10 years.

"There have been past Munch works to be sold in recent times...but this one is a real, knock 'em dead masterpiece," said Simon Shaw, the head of Impressionist and modern art at Sotheby's New York. "Vampire caused a sensation when it was unveiled, touching on...turn-of-the-century fears about women's liberation. Some critics were outraged by its perverse, almost sado-masochistic depiction of passion."

The work is estimated to bring in more than $35 million at Sotheby's, which would beat the current $31 million auction record for a Munch. Vampire will go on view in London from October 3 to 7 and Moscow from October 16 to 19 before being be sold in New York on November 3.

From ArtInfo.

Jazzed about art: American Artistic Renaissance Symposium

By Daniel Aloi - Cornell News Service

In the 1970s, painter Frederick J. Brown's studio loft in downtown Manhattan attracted many young artists, musicians, dancers and writers to collaborate and experiment.

The American Artistic Renaissance Symposium, Sept. 22-24 at Cornell University, will reunite Brown and many major players from that scene, including jazz greats Charlie Haden, Henry Threadgill,  

Stanley Crouch and Sam Rivers. Three panel discussions will explore the confluence of visual and performance art, dance and experimental jazz at the time; and the Hans Bethe House lawn on Cornell's West Campus will host a live jam session Sept. 23 at 9 p.m. Participants also will visit classrooms and hold master classes.

"This is an unusual and historical reunion of a large number of towering figures of American art and culture of the last quarter of the 20th century," said Bethe House Dean Porus Olpadwala, formerly dean of Architecture, Art and Planning (AAP).

Brown, whose daughter Sebastienne graduated from AAP this year, donated his "Triptich Portrait of Harriet Tubman" to Cornell's Africana Studies and Research Center in 2006, and four paintings to Bethe House after a visit with Threadgill in October 2007. After enjoying interactions with faculty and students, the two artists discussed bringing a group of their friends and collaborators to Cornell.                                                                                        

Brown is well-known for the colorful, vivid portraits of musicians in his "Jazz and Blues" series, and depictions of presidents, artists, folk heroes and Native Americans. His large-scale works include "The History of Art," consisting of 110 interlocking canvases. His influences encompass abstract expressionism and African, religious and folk art.

Raised on Chicago's South Side, Brown moved to New York in 1970 after college and quickly made connections in the music and art worlds. His musical associates, including high school friend Anthony Braxton, were notable leaders of the free jazz movement and his SoHo loft became a center for avant-garde performance and expression. Brown eventually gave up the loft in the late 1990s, after his family moved to Arizona.

The panel discussions - Sept. 23 at noon in B20 Lincoln Hall, Sept. 24 at noon at the Africana Center, and Sept. 24 at 8:30 p.m. in Barnes Hall - will look at the history and conditions that helped establish the loft scene from the 1960s forward, how new creative directions evolved, effects on culture and the artists who followed, and the prospects for such collaborations to thrive today.

Panelists also include dancer-choreographers Blondell Cummings and Megan Bowman Brown (Brown's wife); poet and community activist Felipe Luciano; artists Anthony Barboza and Gregoire Muller; drummer Jerome Cooper; and James Jordan, Ornette Coleman's baritone saxophonist and manager, who mentored the early SoHo scene and later worked for the New York State Council on the Arts and National Endowment for the Arts.

Cornell professor of music Steven Pond and Brent Edwards, a professor at Columbia University's Center for Jazz Studies, will moderate. Edwards is writing a cultural history of loft jazz in 1970s New York.

Also expected to attend: Playwright Christina Ham, New York Times editor Carla Anne Robbins, Ogden Museum of Southern Art curator David Houston, and filmmaker Mary Kemper Wolf, who profiled Brown's career in her 2002 documentary "120 Wooster Street."

"What I'm looking forward to is getting a sense of not only this critical mass of creativity happening in music at the time, but how it was interwoven with the other arts," Pond said. "SoHo became a magnet for these wildly creative people who had relocated from other cities. Henry Threadgill had been part of the AACM, the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians [in Chicago]. He relocated, as many people did, to New York in the '70s to be closer to this whole scene Š the scene itself became a draw."

The panels and concert are free and open to the public. Supporting sponsors at Cornell include the American Studies Program, Cornell Council for the Arts, Cornell Library, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Departments of Music and Art, the Rose Goldsen Lecture Series, Campus Life, the Society for the Humanities, and several other units across campus.

(Image: Charlie Haden)

Lascaux caves threatened by black fungi

Unesco, the world cultural body, has threatened to humiliate France by placing the Lascaux caves – known as the "Sistine Chapel of prehistory" – on its list of endangered sites of universal importance.

The Unesco world heritage committee, meeting this week in Quebec, has given the French government six months to report on the success of its efforts to save the Lascaux cave paintings in Dordogne from an ugly, and potentially destructive, invasion of grey and black fungi.

At the same time, a scientific committee appointed by the French government has conceded that an elaborate treatment with a new fungicide in January failed to stop the mould advancing through one part of the caves.

An independent pressure group of scientists and historians claims that up to half of the startlingly beautiful, 17,000-year-old images of bison, horses, wild cattle and ibex are now threatened by the fungal invasion – the second of its kind in eight years.

The heritage committee warned France this week that it will consider placing Lascaux on its list of imperilled cultural and natural sites of global significance unless progress is made by next February. The committee requested France to open Lascaux – closed to the public since 1963 – to a visit by independent experts. It also advised France to commission an "impact study" of all past, and possible future, actions in the caves since the first fungal invasion in 2001-02.

There are already 31 sites on the Unesco "List of World Heritage in Danger", including such treasures as the ancient Buddha statues of the Bamiyan valley in Afghanistan, partly destroyed by the Taliban. Only one of the existing, officially threatened sites is in western Europe – the architectural heritage of the Dresden-Elbe valley in eastern Germany, site of a planned motorway. A decision by the Unesco committee to list Lascaux as "endangered" would, therefore, be a severe embarrassment to France. Unesco would, in effect, be telling Paris that it can no longer be trusted to manage one of the world's most important historical and cultural treasures.

Read the full article here.

Elephant Paints Elephant

Even though this is most likely the result of the elephant being trained to do these strokes rather than spontaneously painting the image of an elephant, it's still a pretty awesome example of intelligence in a species other than our own.