The iconic LOVE sculpture by artist Robert Indiana is back on display in NYC.
LOVE sculpture returns to NYC
This Viral Print Vending Machine Will Give You a Work of Art for Four Quarters
When the coin shortage and a raging pandemic made laundry harder than ever, Maine printmaker Ana Inciardi thought of a whole new way to sell her art.
Black-led mural festival builds community while helping beautify Detroit with new art
(CBS DETROIT) – If you’re driving down Woodward Avenue this week, you may notice a few muralists adding some color to brick buildings throughout the city of Detroit and Highland Park.
It’s all a part of the BLKOUT Walls Street Art Festival, a bi-annual Black-led festival first held in Detroit in 2021.
“This is the city of blackness, and [it] feels so right and fitting that it’s here,” Sydney G. James said.
The festival was co-founded by James, a native Detroit Artist, Thomas “Detour” Evans of Denver, Colorado, and Max Sansing of Chicago, Illinois, as a direct response to their shared history of participating in mural festivals throughout the country, where participating artists aren’t compensated, and there’s limited racial diversity among the artists represented.
The purpose of BLKOUT Walls is to celebrate art and community while helping beautify the city.
“BLKOUT Walls is full of artists that actually are from here, live here, and spaces similar too,” James said.
“So, it’s nuances we understand. We get the culture, and that’s what we’re giving the people. We’re giving the people us but on a main stage.”
James says she’s using the street art festival to breathe life into some of the city’s bleaker areas, and she has a team of muralists, many like Ijania Cortez, creating in their own backyard.
“It’s right up the street from my house,” Cortez said. “It’s right around where I grew up. So, it meant a lot for me to do this.”
Others, like Ghanaian artist Mohammed Awudu, traveled thousands of miles to help bring the vision of BLKOUT Walls to life.
“I feel like home, trust me,” Awudu said. “I want to come back here and paint all the time.”
The festival showcases monumental murals that send a message, some of hope, some of heroism, and some that simply help us feel whole.
“I want people to walk about feeling something, this piece especially,” local artist Bakpak Durden said. “I want them to feel at home.”
2-day Joplin Arts Fest in offing
The ninth annual Joplin Arts Fest will be held from 5 to 9 p.m. Friday and from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday at the Cornell Complex, 212 W. Seventh
2,000-year-old Roman sculpture found buried next to the A2 in Kent
The unique stone statue depicts Triton – a merman with the torso of a man and the tail of a fish – riding on a sea monster. In Roman mythology, Triton was the son of Neptune, the god of the sea.
iPhone 15 proves the key battleground in smartphone photography is character
Apple’s iPhone 15 and 15 Pro lineup debuted on Tuesday, and both feature big improvements to the camera systems they boast. Apple has been putting a lot of focus on photography for the past few iterations of its main moneymakers, likely because changes in other aspects of the devices are relatively modest year-over-year.
The cameras on both the iPhone 15 and the higher-end 15 Pro line both got better this year, as expected, but Apple also introduced new features and options that highlight another trend which I’d anticipate all camera makers lean into even more in future: Photographic character. There aren’t any flagship smartphones from major manufacturers that take bad photos anymore, and even among mid-range phones, high quality cameras are increasingly becoming a given. Differentiation, then, lies in lateral moves and creativity – and more than ever, in making sure users can create a look that’s at least somewhat unique to them.
New to this year’s iPhone lineup is the ability to set a default focal length for the main camera on the 15 Pro, choosing from between 24mm, 28mm and 35mm equivalents. Photographers will recognize those as the most commonly preferred focal lengths for fixed lens cameras aimed at general use and street photography. They translate to a fairly wide-angle view, all the way to a tighter focal length typically associated with print photojournalism and documentary capture.
The ability to set these as the default is yet another step Apple has taken to make it possible to venture away from what the company chooses as the best ‘standard defaults’ for the built-in Camera app. Already, you can create your own photographic style by tweaking things like contrast and color to apply an instant visual effect to everything you take, and you can also opt to have the camera default to a RAW format that allows for much greater editing flexibility after the fact. New this year is an option to capture photos in Apple’s default HEIF high-efficiency format but at the max 48 MP resolution the sensor is capable of capturing, too.
A default focal length option might not seem like much, but changing the framing of your shot changes a lot about its character – in a way that’s less obvious than futzing with things like contrast and saturation, but that actually has just as much potential to give your photos a hard-to-quantify ‘quality’ that others can identify and associate with you over time.
Photos for many people are just ways to freeze a moment they want to be able to look back and and recall, but the quality of memory is not static, nor is it neutral or uncolored by personality and perspective. Making it possible to inject photo capture with individuality and identifiable character is not just a nice-to-have for smartphone camera systems going forward – it’s where the majority of differentiation will occur, and could become the biggest selling point in a market where many of the other technical and performance problems are long-solved.
A Thematic Office Plays up the Company’s Line of Business
When tasked with designing a new office for a staff of 70 young and dynamic employees at Esalco Logistics, Istanbul-based OSO Architecture wanted the design to reflect the characteristics of the office’s inhabitants. Using color and a touch of playfulness, the office floor plan encourages in-office communication and interaction with spaces carved out for games, sport, entertainment, and impromptu meetings. Thematic signage and elements found throughout reflect the company’s line of business in the logistics sector, creating a connection between the office and the corporate identity.
Employees and visitors are greeted by the front desk designed to resemble a shipping container. On the floor and throughout the office, road markings convey a sense of direction in a playful way.
A yellow beam holds various elements for both play and productivity, including a set of swings, a bell, signage with the company’s name, a small desk, and a punching bag. This “median strip” is also outlined in the road markings below.
Colored glass visually separates the various meeting rooms, all of which feature logistical elements like road markings, walls that look like containers, and thematic writings.
A communal room continues the same color palette and offers a reprieve from the day’s work.
Photography by Gürkan Akay.
CFCC’s Wilma W Daniels Gallery to host printmaking exhibition
The exhibition and reception are open to the public and free to attend.
Stephanie Shih Wedges Mass Culture Against Loss in ‘American Gothic’
All photos by Robert Bredvad, courtesy of Harkawik, shared with permission
In a world saturated with logos, branding, and advertisements, is it possible to find comfort in commercial objects? By reconnecting with fragments of her childhood, ceramicist Stephanie Shih replicates domestic items from the ’80s and ’90s, portraying mundane goods with potent emotion.
Molding each sculpture by hand, the Brooklyn-based artist uses stoneware clay to create hollow forms. She paints each with underglaze and adds a clear layer to some, achieving a finish similar to plastic or glass packaging. Extensive lettering appears in the form of logos, ingredients, nutrition facts, and even newspaper articles, all done freehand.
The artist’s forthcoming solo exhibition, American Gothic, borrows its name from Grant Wood’s prominent Great Depression painting. Referencing an artwork identifiable with American culture, Shih directs viewers toward the dissonance between Asian immigrants and their children when generational identities become intertwined with consumer goods. Viewing her sculptures as “stuck in time,” she focuses on uplifting the evocative qualities of obsolete objects, in contrast to their fleeting existence in the real world.
Shih explains that while personal reflections are welcome, “the work isn’t exactly about nostalgia. Whereas nostalgia implies sentimentality and longing, for me, these objects gesture toward a sense of loss: lost time, lost usefulness, meanings lost in translation, lost selves.”
American Gothic opens at Harkawik Los Angeles on September 16. See more on Shih’s Instagram and website.
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‘Fighting for culture, not culture wars’: new Labour culture secretary Thangam Debbonaire addresses the art world
Thangam Debbonaire, the newly appointed UK shadow culture secretary, told an audience at the Art Business Conference in London (12 September) that a Labour government will put the creative arts at the heart of the school curriculum. “What matters is that cultural education starts as young as possible,” she said at a talk with The Art Newspaper‘s editor, Alison Cole, asking: “Where is the next generation of artists going to come from?” She also stressed the “joy” the arts bring as well as how vital they are to the country’s economy.
Debbonaire was appointed the UK’s shadow secretary of state for culture, media and sport as part of a reshuffle carried out earlier this month by Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition Labour party. Prior to becoming an MP, Debbonaire was a professional cellist, revealing that she is part of a musical “parliamentary quartet” known as the Statutory Instruments, which includes the broadcaster Cathy Newman and Emily Benn, a councillor in the City of London.
In a comment piece for The Art Newspaper earlier this year, the former shadow culture secretary, Lucy Powell, wrote that “creative subjects have been squeezed out of the curriculum, with philistine Ministers devaluing their importance”. According to the Guardian, the number of students taking arts GCSEs has fallen by 40% since 2010. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport was contacted for comment. In a direct swap, Powell took Debbonaire’s role of shadow leader of the Commons.
Debbonaire said at the conference that “access and excellence have been posted as binary opposites and they’re not”. Contributing to the economy via the arts is not “dirty, it’s a great thing … I will always champion London but I want a lad in Wigan to [be able] to work in the creative industries”. She also highlighted the achievements of Jennie Lee, the late legendary Labour minister for the arts who published the key white paper “A Policy for the Arts” in 1965 and was “instrumental in the foundation of the Open University”, according to the university’s website.
Debbonaire also railed against the Conservative government, saying that the current administration is not “fighting for culture, but fighting culture wars”, and said that “a secretary of state writing to museum directors is monstrous” (in 2020, the then culture secretary Oliver Dowden told institutions they should be more “commercially minded”).
• The Art Newspaper is a media partner to the Art Business Conference, which is organised by Art Market Minds
UPDATE: A Department for Education spokesperson said: “We are clear that all pupils should be taught a broad and ambitious curriculum that includes the arts. Over half of pupils in state-funded schools entered for an approved arts qualification at Key Stage 4 over the past four years.” The department is continuing to invest around £115m annually in cultural education to 2025, through music, arts and heritage programmes.
