Weather-Eye Launched

I am very excited to announce the launch of Weather-Eye!

Weather-Eye is a book of poems, drawings and paintings by two brothers from Long Island. James (the artist) and Peter (the poet) grew up on the south shore, spending their summers working at the family business and exploring the waters and beaches of the Great South Bay.

After many travels, education and varied pursuits, we have both returned to our native shores with renewed interest in this place and the personal resonance it holds for us.

This book is the result of our collaborative efforts to document, through our respective arts, the practice of a deepening awareness of the physical and metaphysical environments we grew up in.

This book will release in early summer and you can be apart of the project by pledging a donation to our Kickstarter page: Weather-Eye

Below is an excerpt from the book of Peter Vanderberg's poem Splice:

Splice


Father & three sons in a sailboat,
minds’ eyes in four directions
until drawn in to a rope turned line
by his word & the bay beneath us.

Difference between a knot & tangle
is the knot will hold & easily untie. Tangles
can't be trusted or undone. He began
to work the line. You should know

the bowline. I watched, waiting
my turn, his son turned father turned son.
One gesture looped & threaded
the free-end, like a card trick.

We all test the knot, eager to learn something
useful, something that proves itself, that lasts.

Three MUST See Shows

Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield
June 24–October 17, 2010
@ The Whitney Museum of American Art

Charles Burchfield was nothing to me a year ago, but after seeing this exhibition I am an apostle. Imagine Hopper on acid. Creepy and fantastic landscapes all or mostly all in watercolor. This guy was doing large scale water color in the 1940-50;s. Imagine that? Abstract Expressionism is all over the place, Pollock is changing the way we consider painting and Burchfield is focusing entirely on a medium considered fragile, secondary and for Sunday Painters. Burchfield proves otehrwise with work so strong, powerful and psychologically moving that it really stands toe to toe with the best of the New York School of that era.

This show closes on the 17th so there is plenty of time to get to the Whitney and see it. Highlights are the room of wallpaper and the gallery of doodles.

http://whitney.org/Exhibitions/CharlesBurchfield


Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913–1917

July 18–October 11, 2010
MEMBER PREVIEWS ON NOW
@ MOMA sixth floor

Not much I can say about Matisse that wouldn't just be balls out praise. He is easily my favorite painter of all time because he was always a painter's painter. it was always really just about the painting in a pure sense. This shows is almost overwhelming in its breadth, but it really tries to take apart his working method which I found very revealing. Get there in the next week before it goes down. Big shows of masters like this don't come around all that often.

http://moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/969

Coming Soon:

Abstract Expressionist New York

October 3, 2010–April 25, 2011

There will be plenty of time to queue up and see this show between now and April, and queue up you will. ABEX:NY promises to be a block buster exhibition and I already have my tickets for Monday. The review in the NYTIMES was not over the moon, but I am not really expecting huge jumps on ABEX theory from the curators at MoMA. What I am looking forward to is seeing all this work installed in those beautiful galleries all at one time. It really needs to be see that way so you can take in the scale and the art historical movement for what it was as Roberta Smith wrote, "art movements are really messy, edgeless things that should only become more so with age..." People think they know ABEX and that it is all figured out. i am looking forward to this exhibition because i always find new inspiration and new ways of looking at these paintings. This work is so fresh still and has so much room to become even messier and expansive as more people are exposed to it.

http://moma.org/visit/calendar/exhibitions/1098

The Great South Bay PROJECT

Working with Ghost Bird on a project to get at source material mined from The Great South Bay of Long Island. To start we took a sail and made a list:

Amityville Cut
anchor
Atlantic Ocean
barnacle
bay snail
beach glass
buoy
Canadian geese
Captree Island
Cedar Beach
channel
clam
cormorant
Cow Island
crab
cumulus
dragon fly
driftwood
ducks
dunes
Elder Island
engine
Fire Island
Fox Creek
Garbage Cove
Gilgo Beach
green fly
hawk
Hemlock's Cove
hermit crab
heron
high / low tide
horizon line
horse shoe crab
hot sand
inlet
Japanese Pine
jellyfish
laughing gull
lighthouse
Lion's Mane
mast
mosquito
mussels
nimbus
No Wake!
North / South Wind
oar
Ocean Parkway
Old Sol
oyster
piping plover
poison ivy
razor clam
Red Boat
reeds
rip-tide
Robert Moses Bridge
sailboat
Sailor's Haven
sand bar
sandpipers
sea weed
shoal
Snake Channel
stratus
string ray egg
tern
tide mark
under-tow
Watch Hill
waves
weather -eye

Beach Grass
Blue Claw
Bay Side/Ocean Side
Clam Digger
Cherrystone
Chowder Clam
Keel
Mermaid's Purse
Red Right Return
Red Boat
Squaw Island
The Four Corners
Tanner Park
Tick
ToBay
West Gilgo

Check out the original posted at Ghost Bird

Local Color: Four Fordham Alumnae

I am curating a show of Alumni work at Fordham University:

Local Color: Four Fordham Alumnae.
June 10th, to August 9th, 2010

The Center Gallery
Fordham University
Lincoln Center Campus
113 Columbus Ave



The featured artists are Teresa Baker, FCLC ’08, Martha Clippinger, FCRH ’05, Amie Cunat, FCLC ’08, and Lauren Portada, FCLC ‘00

Bill Jensen: New Work

Bill Jensen: New Work
Feb 18th-March 27th, 2010
@ Cheim & Read
547 West 25th Street
NY, NY

Bill Jensen was the first contemporary abstract painter that really made me re-think painting. His approach, color and process opened up new ways of thinking for me and really helped me understand the psychological content of abstraction.

A great part of the show that I revisited many times was a small front room of drawings. Done mostly on antique paper with ink, water and brush these drawings open up a world of beautiful value, mark making and direct experience. His "Drunken Brush" series from a few years ago is also worth looking at. An excellent catalog and introduction essay by David Hinton adds not to the "understanding" of Jensen's work but to the appreciation of his source material and working method.





Images of a Floating World
LUOHAN (RED PIE), 2008
Time After Time
PASSARE DA BERNARDO XXXVIII, 2009

It is an absolute shame that I posted this so late and now the show is down. I would love to tell everyone to go see this show, but unfortunately it is down. Go to the website to see some decent images of the installation.

*All images from Cheim & Read Website

Continuing Color Abstraction

Hello Everyone,

I will have work in a group show opening on Thursday night at The Painting Center in Chelsea. I am very excited about it and I am proud to hang in such good company. The details and invitation are posted as well.

The Painting Center
547 West 27th Street
5th Floor
New York, NY 10001

Opening Reception

Thursday April 15th, 2010

6-8PM

Roxy Paine on the Roof: Maelstrom

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden
April 28, 2009–November 29, 2009 (weather permitting)


I teach an art course for undergraduates at Fordham University in the Bronx, NY. The class is primarily a studio class, but I try to infuse as much art history into the lessons as I can. My students are extremely bright, and catch on to concepts very quickly. However, when it comes to basic art history they always seem one step behind. I guess I can't blame them, I don't recall knowing all that much about Willem de Kooning and Clifford Still when I was their age and I have always been an artist. So whenever I get the chance I drag my class to the local museums in New York and we get an eye full. I always believed that you could never really "get" these concepts until you saw the real thing. You can paint your whole life, but if you never stand in front or a Rembrandt, you will never see how much color you can put into dark spaces. If you never sit and stare at a Monet, you will never appreciate how much you can do with color and light.

Last week we went on a field trip to see the Modern and Contemporary wings of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I won't bore anyone with the play by play of how my students reacted to the work there. All I will say is that I think the majority of them really enjoyed themselves and got a lot out of it. Something that was unexpected and truly wonderful was the exhibit on the roof of the Met: Roxy Paine on the Roof: Maelstrom. The work surprised us all and we ended up spending most of our time enjoying the beautiful fall weather, the spectacular view of Central Park and the exciting and sublime work of Roxy Paine.



The exhibition consists of a large, multi-part sculpture made out of stainless steel piping and bars. The piece is 130 feet long and 45 feet wide and evokes the root system of plants, tree limbs or other organic life. This juxtaposed with the highly polished stainless steel materials and the view of the park creates an interesting dialogue with the urban environment, natural forms and the history of landscape painting, sculpture and installation. The work comes alive as you walk through, each angle and passageway between the "branches" unveiling new ways of seeing the work. Before I knew it I was deep inside it, tangled in it and looking at the world outside it in a new way. Some straggling limbs shoot out off the roof beyond the wall and seem to stretch longingly towards the park below. Like the tin toy of a tree wishing it could run and play with its real live brothers and sisters below. Other parts of the sculpture sit heavy and anchored to the roof floor, ominous, powerful and unwilling to let go of their perch.



The work is up until late November and I think it would be worth it to see the sculpture in different times of year. See it against the back drop of the full green park and then as the trees change color and finally drop their leaves. Paine's piece remains unchanging against this ever-changing environment; an organic shape cast in steel. Catch it now before the winter chill comes and the roof closes.

The roof of the Met also has a great bar. Enjoy a cocktail while enjoying the art and the view.

All photos by Jessica Guerrette