ARTISTS ALERT!!!
You don’t have to be a local artist to participate in

East Hampton’s Guild Hall Members’ Shows
But the application deadline to participate is March 3

(that’s this Monday)

Support Guild Hall by becoming a Guild Hall member (individual - $45)

and pay additional $40 to be included in Guild Hall’s 70th Artist Member's Show.
You may join online or call 631-324-0806 and pay with a credit card. These links will connect you to Guild Hall membership and registration pdf forms

MARCH 29 - APRIL 26 70th ANNUAL ARTIST MEMBER'S EXHIBITION (LAST NAMES M – Z)

MAY 10 - JUNE 07 70th ANNUAL ARTIST MEMBER'S SHOW (LAST NAMES A-L)
This the oldest non-juried exhibition remaining on Long Island. It eanbles Guild Hall to directly connect with the artistic community which supports and inspire our arts institution all year long. For 2008, the show has been organized into two parts due to the restoration of the John Drew Theater and less gallery space. However, it means more opportunity for artists since there will be two of every prize awarded. Exhibition organized by Michelle Vertucci, Curatorial Assistant/Registrar.

The Awards Juror is Linda Yablonsky, art critic for Bloomburg News and feature writer for the New York Times, Art and Auction, Art News and Elle Décor and has a regular presence in “Scene and Herd” in Artforum.com. She will select award winners for all categories as well as the top honor awards which will receive solo exhibitions.

Although this is a non-juried exhibition, the level of the artwork is high. Many NY curators and collectors attend the show. I urge you to participate.

Art Daily has been added to the list of links to the right under the "Art Periodicals" heading.

Despite a Weak dollar and Only 30% of Sales

Attributed to American Collectors,

Sotheby's Contemporary Art Auction

Achieved Record Sales Last Night.

LONDON—With three of £10 million-plus lots, Sotheby’s scored its highest-ever contemporary sale in Europe Wednesday evening, tallying £95,030,000 ($189,423,299). The total number surpassed the previous high, set in June 2007 at £72.4 million, and quelled doubts of a market going soft. The final figure was particularly impressive as the pre-sale estimate was £72–105.

Fifty-six of the 70 offered lots found buyers, translating to a 20 percent buy-in rate by lot and just 6 percent unsold by value. Only three of the 14 buy-ins were works by Chinese artists, indicating the catapult rise of that market may have hit its plateau.

Europeans, including those from Russia and the U.K., dominated the sale, accounting for 64 percent of the lots sold. With the dollar registered its lowest-ever value against the surging Euro on the day of the auction, Americans represented only 30 percent of the buyers. The remainder was comprised of Asian buyers and “other”.

Your March issue of ArtReview: Digital is available now, FREE:
CLICK HERE TO GET THE ISSUE

There is still time to view the work
of Sag Harbor artist, Jesse Pasca,
My Heart as a Stock Market

at
Mehr Gallery
436 West 18th Street New York, NY 10011

Thru March 8th

Jesse Pasca is a working artist- splitting his time between New York City and the East End of Long Island. The duality of his work and personal life is mirrored in his artwork. He finds it necessary to balance both urban and rural velocities-(steeping himself in both the landscapes of human density and the natural world) as well as act as an arts educator to balance the solitary work done in the studio. As an arts educator he has worked in public and private schools as well as the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art in their School and Family Programs divisions. The work Jesse has done as an educator connects directly to the work he does as an artist. His work is in many private collections in both the U.S. and the U.K.

JOHN CHAMBERLAIN'S HEAVY METAL

By DANIEL KUNITZ for The NY Sun February 21, 2008

The five large pieces in his new show at PaceWildenstein Gallery suggest that the sculptor John Chamberlain (b. 1927) of Shelter Island, now in his 81st year, has lost none of the playfulness and verve that have long characterized his efforts. And yet his methods continue to change. Best-known for polychrome sculptures constructed from crushed automobile parts, he has, in fact, worked in many media, from steel pipes to foam, foil, paper bags, and Plexiglas. The stainless steel from which the five new pieces have been made marks a relatively new material direction. For Complete go to the NY Sun Link in the ART CRITIC section in the right column and click on "Daniel Kunitz". Click to see Mark Borghi Fine Art inventory: John Chamberlain at MBFA

The Gideon Stein Gallery New to Bridgehampton

About the Artist in Residence and Gallery Director, Gideon Stein:

Gideon Stein has devoted his life to producing a body of art and music. He began playing guitar when he was eight years old, and immediately fell in love with the instrument. In his early years, Sheila Lamb, who led the art department at the Dalton School was his mentor. At 17, his work was included in a Dalton student art show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was his first show. During these formative years, aside from the instruction at the Dalton School, he took studio art courses at Don Stacy Studios while attending City-As-School, and studied sculpture and color theory with Jon Batdorff at Goddard College, VT. “Painting, sculpture and music have always been woven together for me.” Said Stein.

His first serious exposure to Jazz was while interning in the art department of GRP Records in New York City in 1987. He then studied with guitar master Howard Morgen at the New School. Following which he played with post-punk and alt-rock bands on the lower east side in the early ‘90’s. He contributed guitar tracks to a Lisa Lisa album in 1993 entitled “LL77”. While earning a living as a musician, his interest and development in visual art grew concurrently. In 1993 his mural “Universal Harmony”, strongly influenced by jazz, was exhibited at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.

During 1995 he traveled throughout Central Java and Bali, Indonesia at which time he took a sabbatical from painting. Far from his urban roots, the light, color and lifestyle of these primitive places lead to a renewed enthusiasm and a breakthrough for Stein as a visual artist. This was a pivotal point at which he decided to study painting intensively with Emily Mason and printmaking with Vincent Longo at Hunter College. He became a member of the Salmagundi Club, NYC In 1998. Following in 1999, another journey abroad, this time to Morocco, where he traveled from Casablanca through Marrakech to the High Atlas Mountains presented even further inspiration.

When Stein returned to America, he moved to Woodstock, NY to assist the painter Al Held. While assisting Held, he continued to explore his own work. In 2002, Stein’s love of music and art synchronized in his mobile “Guitar Sculpture”, which was featured in the Woodstock art communities’ centennial event. In 2003, he immersed himself in a four-year music and art intensive in Brooklyn’s Park Slope, where he recorded music, participated in group shows, displayed his work in local venues, and performed at area clubs. In 2006 he participated in the Park Slope Artist Studio tour following which he relocated to Bridgehampton, NY to open the Gideon Stein Gallery in 2007. On August 19th he launched the gallery’s inaugural show, a retrospective of his own pieces of mixed media works on paper, canvas, wood and shoes. Proceeds from this inaugural show benefited the Peconic Land Trust and the Nassau Land Trust.

An Artist-in-Residence in Bridgehampton, Mr. Stein seeks to focus his energy on private, site-specific murals and sculpture, while providing exposure for both established and emerging artists. He is currently working on the roster for exhibitions for the summer season.

http://www.gidstein.com/

AUDUBON - Watercolors at the NY Historical Society through March 16

STALKING THE ELUSIVE WATERCOLOR

By FRANCIS MORRONE The New York Sun

Violence was a daily fact of life in the world of John James Audubon (1785–1851). Animal slaughter, disease, the rigors of backwoods life, and travel all made up close and personal varying levels of violence from which modernity insulates us.

Even though Audubon set out with a gun to shoot birds in order to be able to pose them for their portraits, a large part of his life was consumed by tender dreams of birds, which appeared to him in his sleep and fired his imagination with an obsessive force.
Many noble heads of birds grace the walls at the New-York Historical Society, which, through March 16, offers the latest in its extraordinary sequence of exhibitions, which draw from the society's collection of the original watercolors painted for the double-elephant folio print edition of Audubon's "Birds of America" (1827–38). (see complete article in the New York Sun)

LEAVING THE HAMPTONS - VIRTUALLY!

If like me, you were not at the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art and the Wharton School at Penn featuring Jerry Saltz/Jeffery Deitch lecturing on the business of art, here is a link to Fallon and Rosof's latest blog post which recaps the session artblog.

If you have not had a chance to see Jasper Johns exhibit at the Met go to Jasper Johns Video at the Met for an overview. The exhibit feature a vast number of his work in grey. For more videos be sure to reference the "New Art TV" link in the the right hand column

Above is an ambient light show video featuring music by Steve Reich. Different Trains from America - Before The War Kronos Quartet: David Harrington on violin, John Sherba on violin, Hank Duff on viola, Joan Jeanreanaud on cello.

Reich http://www.stevereich.com/ is unafraid of the big themes of politics and history. One of his most influential pieces is Different Trains (1988) - a haunting work juxtaposing sounds of his childhood train journeys between New York and Los Angeles, alongside those made by Europe's Jews to the gas chambers - it uses the real voices of eye-witnesses.

Different Trains, marked a new compositional method, rooted in It's Gonna Rain and Come Out, in which speech recordings generate the musical material for musical instruments. The New York Times hailed Different Trains as "a work of such astonishing originality that breakthrough seems the only possible description....possesses an absolutely harrowing emotional impact." In 1990, Mr. Reich received a Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Composition for Different Trains as recorded by the Kronos Quartet on the Nonesuch label.

Rittenhouse Satellite Gallery

210 W. Rittenhouse Square

Third Floor

Deep: New Paintings by Vincent Romaniello

http://www.vincentromaniello.com/

Vincent Romaniello’s paintings draw inspiration from images culled from spacecraft and satellites that illustrate human activity on the planet. It is these images of the surface of the earth from great distances that influence the formal aesthetics of his abstract paintings. Due to the method Romaniello uses to achieve the textural appearance of his pieces, they resemble both painting and sculpture. The surfaces of his work have such deep furrows and are highly structured that they change as the viewer approaches the work from different angles.

The Satellite Gallery is not your typical white cube. And unlike most shows people commented about the space and how the paintings were intergrated into it. Some people thought I made the work specifically for the space. Others said they really liked having separate spaces for each painting. When I first visited the gallery I thought of it as a chapel for art. The idea of art as object and how architecture and art were once integrated is touched on in Vittorio Colaizzi's essay. The lighting is low and rakes across the surfaces which creates a mood that is deep (only kidding). The exhibition will be up through May 18. Here are the details. Also on view at the first and second floor galleries across the street at 251 South 18th Street is Gijs Bakker and Jewelry.

SURFACE LIBRARY GALLERY - SRINGS, EAST HAMPTON

Bob's President's Day Pottery Sale

Tonight 5-9pm bowls, platters, cups, teapots, sushi plates, chopstix,
bowls, vases, sake sets, plates, pitchers
and "I'm not quite sure what it's for" pots.......
Bob Bachler S U R F A C E L I B R A R Y

845 Springs Fireplace Rd East Hampton, NY 11937

631.291.9061

http://www.surfacelibrary.com/

Opening Reception Tonight - February 16th

from 4-8pm at Applied Arts.

Drawing in the Age of Information
with Artist Roz Dimon

The reception will include a demonstration on

Wacom’s Digital Pen Tablet at 6pm.

The Exhibition will include ten limited edition digitally

drawn pigment prints of the figure.
5 free training demonstrations will follow:
Monday, February 18th & 25th from 6-6:30pm
Thursday, February 28th & 20th from 5-6pm
Saturday, March 8th from 11am-12pm

http://www.appliedartsschool.com/appliedarts.html.

Roz Dimon’s Matrix
Creating Multi-Sensory Art For the Web

By Elizabeth Fasolino - East Hampton Star

Dimon at her studio on Shelter Island (2/13/2008). If the first known artists, who painted in the caves of Lascaux in southwestern France nearly 18,000 years ago, were to come back to life in the 21st century, they could walk into any art supply store and be back to work in no time. Sure, there have been a few innovations since 15,000 B.C. — oil and acrylic paints, pencils, and Magik Markers, to name a few — but the basic enterprise of painting and drawing has remained the same: Smear some kind of pigment on some kind of surface in some more or less meaningful pattern, and call it art.

Roz Dimon, 54, a Shelter Island artist, is an exception. For the last 20 years she has been making art on a computer, and more recently has begun to work on an amazing new device called a Wacom tablet, which allows artists to draw and paint on their computer screens. She is one of a handful of early adapters who believes the tablet will become an increasingly popular way of synthesizing technology into the creative process. Only time will tell if artists will embrace the technology, or if the Wacom tablet will go the route of the Segway.

“I’m trying to connect the Web to the wall,” she said last month at her modest house, which, because it is built into a small hill, opens onto a surprising panorama of nearby woodland. “I plug in the way other people take out their charcoal.” Her digital paintings, which she calls “Dimonscapes,” are layered collages of information that are sourced and footnoted like a well-researched academic paper or an official biography.

“It’s taking complexity,” Ms. Dimon said, “and making it simple. We’re in an information world where people want to make sense of things. We’re on the cusp of a new age and it’s not enough to just express yourself anymore. It has to make sense. I’m ready to take things on. People write blogs. Are they writers? There are no rules anymore. I feel we need vehicles to navigate the plethora of visual images.”

Last Chance to Catch This!

CHERYL HAZAN GALLERY

35 NORTH MOORE STREET

NEW YORK, NY 10013

212.343.8964
CURRENT EXHIBIT

'BETWEEN THE LINES'

MALCOLM BRAY

JAN 17, 2008 - FEB 17, 2008

VITA PETERSEN AT MARK BORGHI FINE ART

Vita Petersen was born in 1915. She began her fine art studies at the Berlin Academy with Carl Hofer and the Munich School of Fine Arts. Upon her move to the US in 1938, Petersen continued studying at the world-renowned Hoffman School. Like Hoffman, Petersen has come into her own to produce her most compelling and mature works in the past decade. Using Hoffman’s “push and pull” theory, she creates a visual tension between the dominant and secondary forms in her compositions. Her painting are alive with color and movemement.
Petersen experienced the method of “all over painting” during daily interactions with Jackson Pollock while summering in Springs, East Hampton in 1948 and 1949. Pollock opened her yes to a new way of seeing and changed her way of experiencing and creating art. While exhibiting at Betty Parsons Gallery in the late 1960’s and ‘70’s, she was known to work representationally often depicting figures in a crowd or still life. She later returned to her non-objective style.
“The paintings take over, and I follow.” says petersen.

Vita Petersen has taught painting and drawing at the Spence School in Manhattan and she has exhibited her works at the Betty Parsons and Tanager Galleries. Her works are included in the collections of Mrs. Blanche Rockefeller, the Joseph Hirschhorn Collection, The Corcoran Museum, The Weatherspoon Gallery, First National bank in Chicago and others.

She is one of few remaining artists from the golden age of American Abstract Painting who remains working today. A selection of Petersen’s works from the past two years is on exhibit at Mark Borghi Fine Art in Bridgehampton, NY.

See SlowArt Limner Gallery Call for Entry exhibition prospectus.

I don't know if this farm fact from Japan is art or not but I'm classifying it as such so here is is in my blog. Farmers in the southern Japanese town of Zentsuji are growing a space saving square watermelons. While the fruit is growing on the vine, these ingenious growers are inserting the melons into square, tempered glass cases which force the fruit into the unatural square shape.

A normal watermelon takes up alot of space in the refrigerator as well as in shipping. The size and shape have been calculated to fit perfectly into the Japanese refrigerator. This altered fruit costs about 10,000 yen (about $82) which is nearly four times the cost of a conventional watermelon.

The University of Pennsylvania Graduate Humanities Forum is presenting the exhibition “In the Beginning: Exploring Origins in Contemporary Art” which is centered around the theme of Origins. The show runs from February 4-29, with a the closing reception to be held on Friday, February 29, from 5-7.

"Body" a suspended sculpture by Tanya Bell is on exhibition. I met Tanya last summer when I currated an exhibition in Southampton, NY at Gallery 848.

BELL’S WORK: Bell was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and immigrated to the United States in 1988. Spending the earlier part of her life in a society permeated with injustice gave her a unique outlook on social problems in an extreme situation. Reflecting on her disdain for a dysfunctional social structure (from a humanitarian perspective) has been instrumental shaping her ideals and has facilitated a more intimate relationship with God. The predominant theme she broaches through her art work is the conflict between the spiritual and physical realm. She contrasts the physical realm by incorporating the brutality of fire arm use, gouging, scraping and burning and using found objects like rusty nails and weathered wood which are distressed with the spiritual realm represented by the luminescent ethereal metal leaf.

BELL’S EDUCATION: Bell began her BFA degree in South Africa, at the University of the Witwatersrand, before coming to New York. She completed her undergraduate work at Hunter College, and graduate work at Pratt Institute. While at Hunter College she received a scholarship to the Ecole Des Beaux Arts in Paris. It was during this period that her focus turned to sculpture and her developed to reflect social and spiritual concerns.

ARTIST’S STATEMENT: In my work I explore the relationship between violent destructive impulses in the world and the power of spirituality through art to overcome them. I feel that there is a delicate balance between the natural forces, human impulse (destructive and constructive), and an underlying spiritual presence in the world which assists in turning destructive aspects of our behavior into peaceful ones, the outcome being beauty and harmony. This struggle is manifested and presented in its final form in the finished piece of art work. Each piece that I make, whether it is a sculpture, painting or drawing on wood, is a result of this process. I begin with a choice of material- a piece of acrylic, a found piece of drift wood, a sheet of gold and silver leaf. I take this raw material and begin to manipulate it in accordance with its characteristics. I do not look to transform these characteristics, but rather to work with them to produce effects that are integral to and highlight their natural beauty. It is the beauty that intrigues me- the power of the art-making process to create- a process also reliant on spiritual intervention. It is Art’s power to connect with the spiritual realm that fascinates me, as it was portrayed throughout history, particularly during the Middle Ages.The panels of wood with silver leaf deal with religious subject matter, drawing iconography by analogy from Early Christian and Byzantine texts. In these texts, gold and silver leaf are used to embellish the subject matter and glorify it by sheer beauty and value. The luminous quality of the material also flattens the surface, emphasizing its two-dimensional quality and at the same time reflect it, creating the illusion of depth or dimension. The effect is literally meant to represent the spiritual world. My panels deal with this idea, breaking away from depicting these subjects in a figurative form. The shimmering surface of the material creates an illusion, an ambiguity as to the exact position of tangible surface of the panel. It is conceptual in the way that it questions the meaning of space as a physical, tangible form, and challenges our experience of perception from the physical to the spiritual.Against the silver leaf, which is cool and ethereal, I contrast the marked, darkened and more expressive raw quality of the wood itself. The methods of application are applied by scratching into the surface, slashing, gouging or applying dark smudged color to reassert the tactile quality of the surface. Sometimes these marks have been made by burning out holes in the wood with fire, or shooting through acrylic with a gun. The cool unmarked quality of the surface lies in contrast to the raw physicality of the mark making. The marks express raw emotion, pain and also suffering. They remind us of our humanity and that we ourselves are often imperfect and broken. It is through creating these visual “prayers” that I aim to overcome these feelings and tendencies in my own life and seek peace and healing through their expression.

This is a blog I have created for the benefit of artists and fine art enthusiasts. I recommend http://www.blogger.com/ to anyone looking to create a forum which is how I was able to start this blog in very few steps. For artists this Google blog development tool is an intuitive easy way to begin to market your artwork with little or no techinical ability. Over the course of time I hope this blog will be as equally interesting to artists as it will be to art collectors. I will continually update with new feature videos, articles and resources.

My first featured video of Jackson Pollock will change shortly as well as the feature article about the controversial Pollock paintings found in the Matter storage facility in Wainscott, NY.
The dealer for the noted Pollock and Matter works is Mark Borghi. You may peruse a signifigant collection of mid-century American Modernism at http://www.borghi.org/.

The resources in the right column will grow over time. Right now I want to point out http://www.websiteforartists.com/ is a site design company owned and operated by an artist. She offers site hosting as well as a selection of templates from which to work. She also creates custom sites.

Jackson Pollock Paints and Speaks About His Work

Even as Exhibit Opens, Pollock Controversy Simmers
Saturday, September 01, 2007
By: Steven Litt, Plain Dealer Art Critic

Real or not? That's the question about a trove of hitherto-unknown works attributed to Jackson Pollock by Case Western Reserve University art historian Ellen Landau two years ago.

An exhibition opening today at the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College will be the first public opportunity to view the controversial works. The show will include about 20 paintings in Pollock's characteristic drip-and-splatter style, which are smaller than usual for the artist, who liked to work big. If authentic, they would be worth millions of dollars to their owner, Alex Matter, a New York filmmaker whose father, artist and graphic designer Herbert Matter, was a close friend of Pollock's.

If not, the paintings raise fascinating questions about who made them and how they ended up in a Long Island, N.Y., storage unit belonging to Herbert Matter, which is where Alex Matter said he discovered them in late 2002. A note in Herbert Matter's handwriting on a brown paper bundle said the 32 paintings and studies inside were experimental works by Pollock.

Landau said she still believes the evidence points to authenticity. But her attribution came under serious fire last January, when a Harvard University study showed that three of the paintings contained pigments and binding agents that were not available during Pollock's lifetime. Landau said she didn't consider the study conclusive. But she changed the focus of her exhibition at the McMullen to emphasize her research on the relationship between Herbert Matter and Pollock -- not the newly discovered works. The exhibition itself will raise new concerns about authenticity. A scientist who contributed an essay to the exhibition's catalog -- which won't be released until today -- has serious doubts about the paintings.

Richard Newman, head of scientific research at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, said in an interview published in Boston College Magazine this month that, based on the nine works he examined, "It's pretty certain that a fair number of them couldn't have been done by Pollock." Nevertheless, he wouldn't dismiss all of the paintings. (The article is available at http://bcm.bc.edu. Landau declined to comment.) The question of attribution has been complicated by the fact that New York art dealer Ronald Feldman bought some of the paintings from Matter, giving Feldman a financial interest in their authenticity. The Boston College show, meanwhile, also raises questions about whether the owners of artworks can stifle academic debate.

A press release from the McMullen quotes director Nancy Netzer as saying that the exhibition will "present to the public the known evidence concerning the attribution of the newly discovered artworks." But the show's catalog will not include an essay by James Martin of Williamstown, Mass., a widely respected forensic scientist specializing in cultural property, who has performed the most extensive analyses of the Pollock-Matter artworks.

Martin, who first revealed the existence of his research in February to The Plain Dealer, said that Mark Borghi, Matter's art dealer, hired him in 2005 and that he performed more than 350 analyses on 23 paintings. Martin said that even though his contract gives him the right to go public with his findings, he hasn't done so because he's afraid Alex Matter will sue him. Matter's lawyer, Jeremy Epstein, has denied threatening Martin. But in an interview last February, Matter called the issue of a lawsuit "very negotiable," suggesting the threat is real.
The McMullen invited Martin this spring to contribute an essay to the exhibition catalog. Museum director Netzer said in an e-mail that because Martin performed his work for Borghi and Matter, he had to get their permission to publish. Martin's lawyer, Stanley Parese, said Epstein proposed an agreement that would have prohibited Martin from speaking about his work both before and after publication. The college asked other contributors only to remain silent before publication. Parese also said Martin would have had to give up rights in his original contract with Borghi. "As a scientist and a scholar, Martin was not willing to have the owners of the paintings dictate the terms under which he would participate in a scholarly publication," Parese said. "He refused to agree that his analysis would be limited solely to the printed pages of the catalog -- not only up to the time of publication -- but forever." Mark Gottsegen, an associate professor at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, who collaborated with Martin but who hasn't seen Martin's results, said it was "absolutely unconscionable" that Boston College would allow a scientist to be silenced after publishing an article. Netzer and Landau declined to comment. Epstein did not return calls to his office. While Martin doesn't feel free to speak, Newman said in the magazine article that his catalog essay would refer to Martin's work. Other scholars may want to check that reference, leading them back to Martin. When asked how he would respond, Martin declined to comment.

The exhibition is likely to shed new light on the relationship between Herbert Matter and Pollock, and expand the debate over the mysterious paintings brought forward by Alex Matter. It may also illuminate the pressures on a scientist whose research is still under wraps.