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Kristen Cliffel, The Navigator, 2019
One of my favorite Cleveland area artists ( and there are many) is Kristen Cliffel. Her ceramic work is so clever and visually stunning that I recognize it on sight. She comes by her talent naturally, her mother Martha Cliffel is also amazing.
As a result of the COVID-19 virus museums and galleries have shut their doors to the public in order to encourage social distancing, however, they also have very active and interesting websites full of images and information to explore and fill your time.
This is just a partial list of all of the museums and galleries all over the world available for a virtual visit:
The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City
The Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha, Nebraska
The American Museum of Natural History in New York City
Exekias, Ajax and Achilles Playing a Board Game, 540-530 BCE, Greece
This Greek Black Figure pottery vase portrays Trojan War heroes Ajax and Achilles taking time to play a broad game while on a break from the battle.
John William Waterhouse, The Decameron , 1916, The Lady Lever Art Gallery, Port Sunlight
The subjects for John William Waterhouse’s paintings The Decameron and The Enchanted Garden are drawn from a book by 14th century Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio who tells the tales of seven young women and three young men secluded outside the city of Florence during the time of the Black Plague.
Both of these artworks are owned by the Lady Lever Art Gallery in Port Sunlight (an early “planned” community outside of Liverpool) a small and delightful museum to visit.
Thomas Moran, Grand Canyon, 1909, Seattle Art Museum
I went last year to see the Grand Canyon in person and it does live up to the hype. There were a lot of people in the park and lines of cars to enter but once you got down to the edge of it and looked out without being able to see where it ends, nature suddenly got very large and civilization sudden got very small. Manifest Destiny
Dali never knew his bother who died of a stomach aliment at three years old, nine months before Salvador was born. Dali’s parents told him he was the reincarnation of his brother and he always felt they were like Castor and Pollux. From the Dali Museum: Dalí wrote a brief, elusive description of this work when it was first exhibited. “The Vulture, according to the Egyptians and Freud, represents my mother’s portrait. The cherries represent the molecules, the dark cherries create the visage of my dead brother, the sun-lighted cherries create the image of Salvador living thus repeating the great myth of the Dioscures Castor and Pollux.”
Primavera by Sandro Botticelli, circa 1470-1480, Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.
This is a painting depicting a personification of the beginning of the spring season by an Italian artist named Sandro Botticelli. He lived during the 15th century in the city of Florence. Primavera is Italian for Spring. The painting the re-newel and the reappearance of the leaves on the trees and the flowers by depicting them in human form. As Italy endures the outbreak of the Corona virus we need to appreciate all they have given the world, some of the most beautiful art and music humans have ever created. Seek out people on Social Media and send them good wishes.
Are you struggling as you try to teach your kids at home? Stop by for a daily dose of art at all levels.
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Yesterday I saw a Twitter post by @m_tisserand that said “we are all edward hopper paintings now” and it struck me as so true. We are isolated and unsure of what lies ahead but somehow not without hope. This painting is owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and is called Office in a Small City from 1953. There is also an extremely disheartening piece in the New York Times today about museums not being able to weather this situation and that many will close their doors for good as a result. If you can, a donation might help. They have to contend with ongoing costs like utilities and insurance, not to mention payroll, even if their doors are closed to the public.
Your Daily Art Jewelry is my handmade line of jewelry. I have been metal smithing for about four years and before that I created beaded jewelry.
After seeing the Soleri show at MOCA Scottsdale, we went over to Cosanti in Paradise Valley, AZ to buy a couple of bells for ourselves.
My family was fortunate to have another trip to Michigan's Mackinac Island again this year. We stayed at the Grand Hotel, whose legendary front porch and beautiful surroundings are a treat unto themselves. I wandered into the gallery area in the main Parlor which exhibits paintings from the world renowned Manoogian Collection. The Manoogians have exhibited over 400 paintings from their collection at the hotel for the past 25 years. Here is a sample of some of the pieces on display this summer.
Fairy Hordes Attacking a Bat, John Fitzgerald, British, 1832-1906
The works on display include 19th and 20th century examples of many different types of painting genres and by a large collection of artists.
Rabbits, 1878 by Charlotte Mount Brock Schreiber, Canadian, 1834-1922
The George R. Rich Family Having Afternoon Coffee at the Villa Quisisana Overlooking Oresund, Skodsborg, Strandvej (Denmark), 1885 by Wenzel Ulrik Tornoe, Danish, 1844-1907
A Liberated Woman by John G. Brown, American, 1831-1913.
My assumption is that the cigarette and the way she looks down at the viewer indicate her liberated status.
Statue of Liberty Celebration by Frederick Rondel, American, 1826-1892.
This is just a small sample of the artwork on display, there are many fine examples of portraiture, tromp l'oeil, landscapes, still lifes, etc. The art on display makes an already worthwhile trip all the more special.
I participated in Cleveland Rooms to Let 2016 where curated a room that will feature the dinnerware designs of Cleveland Artist, Designer and CIA professor, Viktor Schreckengost. The installation will be called Everyday Dishes and is based on an exhibition I curated in 2004 at the Northern Clay Studio in Minneapolis called The Dinnerware Legacy of Viktor Schreckengost. The dishes Viktor designed when he worked for Salem China and American Limoges in Sebring, OH in the early part of the 20th century, were the dishes that people used to eat their daily meals and would have bought at stores like J C Penny, Sears and Montgomery Ward. They were not the good dishes that only came out a couple of times a year, but the ones that they grabbed for their morning toast and set their dinner tables with. The Rooms to Let Cleveland event will took place on May 21 & 22, 2016.
With many ongoing building projects in the works, archaeologists in London are quite busy as remnants of Roman occupation, the Bedlam cemetery, and other yet to be determined sites are uncovered during construction. They have found many skeletons and are doing DNA testing to determine cause of death, background, etc. It is hard to believe that such a busy modern city is also a very active archaeological site.
Shovels by Cal Lane
Artist Cal Lane uses metal as her palette and a torch as her brush. She creates amazingly intricate designs in found metal objects. Tools, pieces of old cars, etc anything rusty that she can transform into her lace-like creations.
The Nelson-Atkins and the St. Louis Art Museum have loaned their Waterlilies by Monet to the CMA so that the three images could be joined together again.
The Cleveland Museum of Art is hosting an exhibition entitled Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse now through January 5, 2016. The exhibition, organized by CMA and the Royal Academy of Arts in London, looks at the role of gardens to artists such as Claude Monet, who was also a horticulturist.
Spotted during the set-up for the exhibition, did the man himself drop by?
Timelines by Christine Mauersberger, 2015
The exhibition Beyond Materials: Woven Values . The show features artwork that reflects the history of fiber work (which has traditionally been viewed as a "craft") as textile based art moves forward as an ever evolving, viable art medium. The exhibition is up until October 3, 2015.
Kehinde Wiley,
Napoleon Leading the Army Over the Alps (Self-Portrait),
Oil on canvas, 2005
Artist
will speak at
Cleveland Museum of Art's Gartner Auditorium, Saturday August 29th
at 2:00. His beautiful work harks back to an earlier style while creating very modern portraits. Wiley's recent one man exhibition at the
was very well received by the art world and the public, alike. The Cleveland lecture is part of the
Cleveland Public Library's The Lockwood Thompson Dialogues
.
Kehinde Wiley
Triple Portrait of Charles I
, oil and enamel on canvas. Triptych, 2007,
