(This article recently ran in the Brooklyn Rail. To see it there, here’s the link:

http://bit.ly/ntApKP )

With all the talk about the disappearance of bees lately, I thought I’d head off to see a modern hive of another sort. This weekend brought me to Fotan,  a section of Kowloon, just North of Kowloon Tong, to ‘one of the most important creative clusters’ (as the catalog introduction says) in Hong Kong.

Two weekends in January featured open studios in which the public could visit artist studios and galleries of  ten industrial buildings all within walking distance from eachother. In a limited amount of time before the studios opened to the public, I made it to the building #1: The Wah Luen Industrial Center.

While the sun basked the outdoors in a piercing white light, it was dark and frigid in these hallways and a stank perfume spanked you at the entrance from the fish ball factory next door.  I felt a little funny venturing as a lone female into an empty pink accordian-doored elevator wide enough to safely accommodate me and the contents of my entire apartment.   Thirteen floors, but the elevator only takes you to the tenth. I climbed the remaining three, immediately aware of the building’s  history.  Before most Hong Kong factories made financially necessary retreats back across the border into China, the steel worker, the seamstress, the toymaker were the original worker bees here. Now these thirteen parallel honeycombs have been white washed and replaced by the contemporary artist: worker bee by choice.

I was pleased to see the sculpture of Danny Lee Chin-Fai at his 12th floor workshop.  Danny is one of the most successful sculptors in Hong Kong and his Dance of Clouds and Rain sculpture is a permanent fixture in the lobby of the Macau Grand Hyatt. Three life-size motorcycles lined the floor of his studio in various stages of completion, it seemed. Edges smoothed and rounded, one was in stone, another appeared to have been dipped like a strawberry in a flawless coating of molten silver. In the back of his workshop, a large mercury-like ‘droplet’ rang distant bells with Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate. He was preparing for a solo show “Reconstructing Landscape” at the Hong Kong Art Center and the imminent publication by AsiaOne of a plush 230-page book covering two decades of work.

On the 10th floor, it wasn’t just Chow Chun Fai’s charisma that drew a crowd.  Chun-Fai works with several different mediums that all seem to feed off of eachother: paintings of  old Chinese movie scenes (every English subtitle written along the bottom carrying a double entendre), photos of paintings, video stills of old movies, painting of Hong Kong street scenes and the beloved Hong Kong taxi (he used to drive one). Perhaps most successful was the image on the ceiling of the artist’s studio, The Creation of Adam (2006), a mocking recreation of a little something you might see in the Sistene Chapel. 340cm high by 740cm wide, the image is, in effect, a collage like piecing-together of 3×5” photographs. Upon closer inspection, one sees that both God the Father and Adam are self portraits of the artist, which seem to speak to the artist’s ability as creator to reproduce, replicate oneself through art. As Chow Chun Fai relates, “In contemporary art, the artist precedes the art” and thus his perpetual use of self-portrait in all of his work is perhaps his best calling card.  Adam’s body has been reconfigured with a highly polished plastic musculature of a doll and equally as striking, once winged angels encircling God have now been replaced by plastic doll faces. This piece breathes “Made in China” and his references to fabric and dolls are a direct retelling of China’s position and role in global commerce as a place where the rest of the world comes to have things made– as well as a reference to an awareness of his immediate surroundings and their  history– the warehouse where he comes to work every day.

Chances are, if you had New England relatives, there was a ‘Frank Vining Smith’  in the house somewhere. Seems like I’ve spoken to more that one New England man in the last few weeks with a clear recollection of a Frank Vining Smith print in their childhood bedroom.  Much like Norman Rockwell or Andrew Wyeth,  the word on Frank Vining Smith  just keeps gaining momentum and his work is enjoying a new generation’s admiration. (The mounting auction prices say it all.)
So, here it is, hot off  the presses: the new, complete, definitive, comprehensive survey of the works of Frank Vining Smith. The publication coincides with a major exhibit of his work at the Heritage Museum and Gardens this summer (2010) in Sandwich, MA. I’m also lining up a bunch of lectures for author James Craig (from the opening of the exhibit at the Heritage Museum and Gardens to the Rockport Library, the Mariner’s Museum, the Hingham Historical Society with more to come).
Smith has great childhood ties to Hingham, Massachusetts and this rugged, untouched New England shoreline helped to inspire Smith’s palette and imagination on canvas. To support his painting, Smith worked as an illustrator for magazines such as Field and Stream and Outdoors and his illustrations  really set the tone for defining that post world-war, peace-time pastime of leisure. Frank Vining Smith was able to enjoy critical and financial success in his lifetime, but it wasn’t until he was 47 that he actually felt comfortable enough to leave his day job and pursue painting full-time.
If I can figure out how to do it, I’ll feature a couple of interior spreads by designer Michelle Quigley here, in  a couple of days.

What is there to say about Jerry that hasn’t already been said — or that he hasn’t already said himself?  Jerry’s got his finger on the pulse of the NY art scene ( and I think it extends a little further afield than that) — but he’s also extremely down to earth.  He loves what he does, and maybe loves coffee a little bit more!  This book has you chuckling the whole way through. I just had to break out my laptop to google all of the artwork. It was like my own private tutorial. We’ve put together some great engagements for him from X-initative (for the book launch) to the New York Foundation of the Arts that hosted him at Barnes & Noble on 86th Street.  He’ll be visting the Southwest in just a few weeks — Site Santa Fe will be hosting him on June 29th and then it’s on to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art in October.  In between, he’s been given an honorary PhD by New York Academy of Fine Arts, and has also made his break into TV as ‘THE’ art critic for the latest in a long line of reality shows: “A Work of Art: The Next Great Artist.” Don’t miss it on Bravo starting June 9th. (That’s Jerry reclining.)

c. E.Agostini/ Associated Press

This is, by far, one of the most stunning  books Hard Press Editions has produced.  Kenneth Snelson is so multi-faceted — he’s at once, photographer, sculptor, engineer, physicist artist and inventor. Forces Made Visible explores 5 decades of his work. The publication coincided with an exhibit at the Marlborough Gallery in NYC.

Easel at Killick River, Pangnirtung, Canada. All images courtesy of the artist.

I didn’t actually work on the production of this book ( I was with newborn at the time) but I’ve been working with Mike a lot since this baby was born. If you aren’t familiar with his painting, I’d suggest it’s  time to get acquainted. Mike Glier is represented by Gerald Peters gallery in New York and Santa Fe. He is also a professor of art at Williams College, which, I guess, allows him to trapse off into these swaths of landscape for extended periods of time (something not all of us can do). Just picture yourself with an easel, your laptop, and a giant backpack — oh, let’s say, in the Amazon jungle of Ecuador, or next to wildlife in Botswana. 

The interesting thing is these are not just stand alone, pretty travel images that have no correlation to one another. These works are the basis of an ongoing project using the web of geography as a connection between canvases. In Along A Long Line (which Hard Press Editions turned into a book) Glier was curious about the longitudinal line (70th) that sits under his studio.  He got out a map and followed that line to see what else was on it, and then, a project was born: the Antarctic, New York City, the Amazon and St. Johns Virgin Islands all sit in close relativity to that line. With weekly reports from the front lines, Glier was putting together canvases, doing sketches for some he’s work on later on metal, and taking photos. The connections and variations on landscape, vegetation insects made for an explosive color palette and a 21st century artist’s perspective on a very Darwinian approach to planet earth. After you look at the book, and Glier’s paintings, you not only have a different take on the planet earth, you also appreciate the uniqueness of its diversity.

(And right now, all I can think about is BP and those millions of barrels  of crude oil pouring into the ocean,ravishing the eco-system for years to come.  Mike Glier’s paintings take on a whole new meaning, now. Talk about accelerated environmental changes.)

This summer,  Mike Glier is in Hawaii — the second segment of his current project entitled Antipodes. The antipode for Hawaii is Botswana, where he spent several weeks last summer. You can see weekly updates here:

http://www.antipodes.us/

It’s an amazing diary and complement to the paintings that are produced simultaneously.  He’ll be in a group show in September at the Cue Foundation in NYC: That is Then. This is Now. He’ll be signing copies of Along A Long Line at the opening reception, September 9th at 6PM. I hope you can make it.

Since the publication of this book, Mike Glier has been featured on NPR’s Here and Now and also in Bomb Magazine, just to name a few.

http://www.hereandnow.org/2010/01/rundown-120/

http://bombsite.com/issues/999/articles/3440

One of Jon Gam’s greatest passions was the Mission Critical Series: THE avenue for contemporary art critics to publish current thought and debate about art.

The mission critical series evolved out of his relationship in particular with art critic and professor Raphael Rubinstein.  Jon edited Raphael’s poetry in the 90′s (it’s amazing how many critics are poets under their skin) and then collaborated on several art criticism and monograph titles together. Rubinstein then became the Mission Critical Series editor, — the latest in the series being Seeing Out Louder  by Jerry Saltz.

Hard Press Editions was approached by a private collector and admirer of George Stengel to catalogue his collection.  Stengel was an American painter taken with the French Impressionists, who returned to Pennsylvania and imitated their technique on American soil. The results are colorful snapshots of a time in American history when Industry greets pristine nature — waterways a-buzzing.  Stengel’s eye for his surroundings comes together in this book to present a well-rounded portrait of Northeast landscape.

 Every once in a while at Hard Press Editions, we have the chance to bring someone’s work back to center stage. Marjorie Strider was a female pop artist exhbiting with some of the biggest artists at the time;  working with rubber and producing some pretty exciting three dimensional larger than life art such as a giant unraveling orange peel.

The cover of this book is so eye-catching — it just, well, pops.  Marjorie’s beautiful bombshell is poised rather That’s a three dimensional radish in the mouth of Marjorie’s bombshell! With those red lips,  blue eyes and thick eye lashes (that also extend from the canvas), you just can’t take your eyes off her!

donofrioart.com

I was introduced to Raffaele D’Onofrio by Jon Gams and was instantly taken by his artwork that explores science, nature and the human connection to our botanical and biological surroundings.  His work is made up of a series of fine dots and strokes. At times, you think you spot a DNA helix or an amoeba floating, hobbling over the canvas.

He asked me to help him design his website. Together, we designed a portfolio of images incorporating the major fundamental themes in his work and peppered the site with his thoughts and writings and some stellar  criticism and reviews of his work. Raffaele D’Onofrio lives and works in Brooklyn, N.Y. and I hope you will look at his website but also take the time to see his work in person.

Foraging for Light