Category: Art
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Artist a Day Challenge 2016-12: Lakwena
The Friday before a long weekend holds so much promise. I’m counting down the minutes until 5:00, so until then I am living for the work of Lakwena Maciver. Her work combines the bold, geometric lines found in Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings with the colorful graphics of 8 bit video games. Lakwena’s energetic paintings are punctuated with woodblock…
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Artist a Day Challenge 2016-11: Nick Cave
Nick Cave’s soundsuits are wondrously colorful, captivating, sculptural pieces that amplify the beauty of the human body in motion. In 1992 Cave created his first soundsuit out of twigs and discarded items found in a park and conceived the suit in response to police brutality after the Rodney King beatings in Los Angeles. That first soundsuit was a commentary on the detachment between the…
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Artist a Day Challenge 2016-10: Misty Copeland X Degas
The March issue of Bazaar hits newsstands on February 16h and today the magazine released stills of its photoshoot with American Ballet Theatre’s Principal Dancer Misty Copeland. The shoot is a Degas redux bringing some of the artist’s most famous work to life with Copeland wearing Alexander Mc Queen, Valentino, Roberto Cavalli, Alberta Ferretti and Oscar de la Renta. The re-creations…
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Artist a Day Challenge 2016-9: Brandan Odums & Noirlinians Usher in New Wave of Art in NOLA
Laissez le bon temps rouler! I’ve got New Orleans on my mind, so I thought I’d use today’s post to shine a light on the art that’s being made in the Crescent City today. Steeped in tradition, plagued by disaster and portrayed as a crown jewel of urban renewal, New Orleans is a multifaceted and deeply…
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Artist a Day Challenge 2016-8: Brenna Youngblood
Moody Mondays beg for a beautifully moody piece. Brenna Youngblood’s work combines expressionist and textural techniques with her formal background in photography. She takes found pieces of everyday objects like discarded paper bags, tree shaped car fresheners and photographs and applies them to canvas. Her paintings embody that point of collision between color field painting and abstraction. Youngblood’s 2015 Project 50 Series explored…
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Artist a Day Challenge 2016-7: Thornton Dial
Thornton Dial, “Stars of Everything”, 2004. Photo credit: Souls Grown Deep Today I’m highlighting an artist I wrote about for my second site TONDI. TONDI hosts digital exhibitions and explores broader social themes relating to contemporary art, music and design. I recently wrote a piece about Thornton Dial that was a commentary on how arts writers categorized him as an artist, but for…
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Artist a Day Challenge 2016-6: Yashua Klos
In his current exhibition, “How to Hide in the Wind”, Yashua Klos uses collage and printmaking to transform abstracted pieces of printed paper into figurative profiles. His subjects take on a three dimensional quality as they physically emerge through wood blocks revealing one external image while concealing fragments of themselves left behind. This visual representation of code switching demonstrates…
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Artist a Day Challenge 2016-5: Emory Douglas on Creating a Culture of Resistance
The graphics were bold, the symbolism was strong and the messages were provocative. Emory Douglas’ graphic design work became the visual voice of movement dedicated to the fight for civil rights and social justice. As the “Minister of Culture” for the Black Panther Party, Emory Douglas used punchy printmaking to tell captivatingly strong stories that depicted the…
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Artist a Day Challenge 2016-4: James Van Der Zee
James Van Der Zee was a prolific photographer documenting Harlem in the 1920’s and 1930’s with work that earned him the unofficial title of “Photographer of the Harlem Renaissance.” With a mission to highlight middle class life, his work featured portraits of black New Yorkers, showing a side of life that was virtually invisible outside the African American community. He was very…
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Artist a Day Challenge 2016-3: Njideka Akunyili Crosby
“Ask the ‘Why’, it’s not enough to say ‘it’s beautiful.’ “~Njideka Akunyili Crosby “Beautiful” is exactly how I described Crosby’s show at the Hammer in November. There are so many layers to her work it’s hard to focus on one aspect of it. I now realize that in many ways that is the point. On the surface…
Colony Little, Culture Shock Art 