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Art Market prepares students for professional selling experience after graduation

By in Art World News

Art Market prepares students for professional selling experience after graduation

Shepherd University senior Margaret Orlando, left, chats with Art Market sellers Elliana Blevins and Kimberly Workman, right, in Evolve on Friday afternoon. Tabitha Johnston

SHEPHERDSTOWN — The Shepherd University Department of Contemporary Art and Theater’s annual Art Market came back to life last week, as students who took Professor of Art Sonya Evanisko’s Art Market class filled Evolve with a vibrant array of artistic designs.

For graphic design student Japheth Whitmore, participating in the class and market was an opportunity to learn how to create unique art and market it to a paying audience.

“The idea behind this, is that in the graphic design student group that I’m with, I used to bring up Mothman a couple times,” Whitmore said, referring to one of a number of cryptids that he had featured on laser-engraved wooden ornaments and coasters. “When Art Market came around, I thought, ‘How I could market this?’ Selling cryptid merchandise is a fun thing to do. I ended up expanding it into a bunch of cryptid designs, so that I have two from each state in the surrounding area.”

Whitmore said that, after receiving an overwhelmingly positive response at the market to his cryptids, which also included characters like Bigfoot, Snallygaster, the Flatwoods monster and Chessie, he plans to open up an Etsy shop selling similar merchandise.

Many other Art Market sellers had similar plans to use what they had learned through this class to sell art, both at in-person events similar to the Art Market and on online platforms.

Shepherd University Professor of Art Sonya Evanisko, left, chats with Assistant Professor of Business Administration James Dovel and College of Business Dean Ben Martz outside of the Art Market on Friday afternoon. Tabitha Johnston

“I’ve enjoyed this so much, I think I’m going to continue it as a business — at least during the summers, when I’m not in school 24/7,” said painting major Elliana Blevins, noting “BookTok” or book-related TikToks, inspired her multi-media art in the market. “Sonya encouraged me to take the class. It’s been very stressful, but once everything started coming together, it’s been really cool!”

The students in the Art Market may be getting a helping hand in actualizing their art business dreams from their fellow students in the College of Business, according to College of Business Dean Ben Martz.

“We have embedded in the business program, a capstone class. We usually bundle three or four or five students into a capstone project together every semester, who then create a business plan for an actual business. The possibility exists to have an artist ask for a capstone project to be focused on their business idea,” Martz said, after taking a walk through the Art Market on Friday afternoon.

Community members gaze at the work of Shepherd University art students in this year’s Art Market at Evolve on Friday. Tabitha Johnston

Feast your eyes on the 2023 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards winners

By in Photography

Feast your eyes on the 2023 Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards winners

Fans of funny animal photos, prepare to cheer: Here are this year’s winners of the Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards.

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The judges of the UK-based Comedy Wildlife Photo Awards, a contest which showcases the best of wildlife photography, while also calling to attention the threats faced by the wildlife around us, have studied 5,300 entries submitted from 85 countries.

And the 2023 winner is…

A kangaroo striking an air guitar pose.

The picture of a female western grey kangaroo, titled ‘Air Guitar Roo’, was taken by photographer Jason Moore, in the suburbs of Perth, Australia.

“Not many people know that kangaroo are normally fairly docile and even a bit boring most of the time, if I’m honest,” Moore explained. “However, when I saw this roo striking the air guitar pose, it immediately brought a smile to my face and I knew that I had captured something special.”

The other category winners included young photographerJacek Stankiewicz who scooped the Junior Award with his shot of a young greenfinch getting an almighty bollocking, titled ‘Dispute’.

The Underwater category winner was a picture of a ballerina-esque otter, taken by the fantastically named Singaporean photographer Otter Kwek.

Here are the 2023 winners:

Overall winner and Creatures of the Land winner

Creatures of the Air winner

Junior category and People’s choice Award winner

Underwater category winner

Portfolio winners

The awards, founded in 2015 by professional photographers Paul Joynson-Hicks and Tom Sullam, also promote wildlife conservation.

This year’s competition supports Whitley Fund for Nature, a UK charity that helps fund conservationists around the world.

A passion for photography & a cell phone: Fargo woman starts photo print business

By in Photography

A passion for photography & a cell phone: Fargo woman starts photo print business

43 minutes ago

FARGO, N.D. (KVRR) – A Fargo woman with a phone and a passion for photography begins to make her dream a reality.

Wendy Gerlach is a serial entrepreneur with a passion for photography.

Wendy would casually post photos online taken from her cell phone which caught the eye of people from Fargo’s Essentia Health who asked for her art to be displayed in their buildings.

Fast forward and now her artwork is in businesses and homes all across the country

She will also begin teaching “phone-tography” classes starting in December.

But through it all, her passion is what keeps her going.

“No matter what the obstacles are that you’re faced with. No matter how difficult things seem. Look for the beauty that’s around it because there’s beauty everywhere, no matter how hard life is. Look for the beautiful things and that’s what I want to do to continue to find the beauty,” said Gerlach.

To purchase Wendy’s work and learn more about her upcoming classes, visit the link here.

 

See the photos that made National Geographic’s ‘Pictures of the Year’

By in Photography

See the photos that made National Geographic’s ‘Pictures of the Year’
CNBC Travel

Some 165 photographers working on assignment for National Geographic shot more than 2.1 million images in 2023.

Now, 29 are featured in its annual “Pictures of the Year” retrospective.

The feature — published in the magazine’s December issue and online in November — contains “stunning photographs that unearth remarkable, rarely seen moments,” according to National Geographic.

The full collection shows moments of joy and silence, celebrations of tradition and science, and the exploration of Earth and outer space.

National Geographic's 'Pictures of the Year' for 2023

Here are several images from that collection.

‘Fun’ but deadly

The highly prized cover photo shows a close encounter with a sea krait, a highly venomous snake, snapped by photographer Kiliii Yuyan.

Cover shot by Kiliii Yuyan

CNBC Travel spoke to Yuyan about this photo, taken near the Rock Islands Southern Lagoon in Palau, an island state between the Philippines and Papua New Guinea.

“The krait is more curious than anything, often coming straight at me to investigate around me,” he said. “They are such fun, energetic and curious animals.”

Despite the risks, Yuyan said he wasn’t afraid of being bitten.

“They are extremely venomous but not aggressive,” he said. “There are lots of ways to go in this world, and death by sea snake at least gives my family a good story to tell.”

‘Incredibly hard’

Photographer Louie Palu shot this image at a military facility north of the Arctic Circle, showing Finnish and U.S. soldiers training, on skis, for winter warfare.

Louie Palu

The training was conducted in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to National Geographic. This photo was taken shortly before Finland joined NATO, it said. Finland became an official member of the NATO military alliance on April 4, 2023.

The United States is increasing its military winter readiness as areas of the Arctic become more strategically important, according to the national security website Defense One. Troops learn to operate in snow and mountains, and use equipment in sub-zero temperatures, it said.

In an article on Defense One, First Lt. Liam Burke said working in the cold is “incredibly hard.”

“We thought a five-kilometer movement would take us three hours,” he told Defense One. “But on skis with your gear … it took us almost double that time.”

The twilight of life

“Queen of the Arctic Seas” and “alien flower.”

Both are names that marine biologist Alexander Semenov has used to refer to the lion’s mane jellyfish, one of the largest species of jellyfish.

Alexander Semenov

He photographed this one in its “final stage of life,” according to National Geographic — after it had reproduced and lost hundreds of tentacles, which are said to resemble a lion’s mane.

The jellyfish is listed as an “extreme jellyfish” on the Smithsonian’s Ocean Portal website, which states that the largest known specimen measured 120 feet from top to bottom.

A journey home

This harrowing photograph by Renan Ozturk — a former National Geographic “Adventurer of the Year” — captures a journey home.

Renan Ozturk

A group of volcanologists and mountaineers are returning after weeks of exploring Mount Michael — a 2,765-foot active volcano in the Atlantic Ocean’s South Sandwich Islands.

The peak contains one of eight known lava lakes in the world, a rare geographic occurrence in which magma is held above the Earth’s surface inside a volcanic crater or depression.

A medical breakthrough

In 2019, Yale University neuroscientist Nenad Sestan discovered a way to partially resuscitate a pig’s brain hours after the pig had died.

Max Aguilera-Hellweg

Today, researchers at Yale use concentrated hemoglobin (in red) and a solution known as OrganEx (in blue) to restore organ functions shortly after the host has died, according to Yale. The procedure slows cell death, which researchers say could bring new hope to people awaiting organ transplants.  

According to the World Health Organization, many donated organs don’t reach their intended targets in time, and thus are unused.

Isolation and memories

New Delhi-based photographer Chinky Shukla captured this nighttime photograph of Taj Mohammad standing with his sheep and goats.

Chinky Shukla

Mohammad lives in rural Rajasthan in northern India. He spoke of his memories — of the ground shaking and huge clouds filling the sky — when India tested its nuclear weaponry in the nearby municipality of Pokhran in 1998.  

Today India celebrates “National Technology Day” annually on May 11 to commemorate the 1998 tests.  

A billion butterflies

These are not leaves on trees — they are butterflies.

Jaime Rojo

Branches sag under the weight of monarch butterflies at El Rosario Sanctuary, one of many colonies in Mexico’s Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Jaime Rojo, a senior fellow at the International League of Conservation Photographers, took this photo shortly before sunset, outside of the sanctuary’s normal operating hours, according to Nat Geo.

Every year, up to a billion monarch butterflies migrate to the reserve, before departing for Eastern Canada in the spring, according to UNESCO.

“During [this] time, four successive generations are born and die,” states UNESCO. “How they find their way back … remains a mystery.”

To see all 29 photographs, visit NatGeo.com.

Native American storytellers enjoying a rare spotlight, a moment they hope can be more than that

By in Native

Native American storytellers enjoying a rare spotlight, a moment they hope can be more than that

NEW YORK (AP) — The financial crisis of 2008 hit Mary Kathryn Nagle differently. As a playwright and a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, she saw parallels to events that negatively impacted Indigenous people centuries ago.

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Her play “Manahatta” juxtaposes the recent mortgage meltdown when thousands lost their homes to predatory lenders with the shady 17th-century Dutch who swindled and violently pushed Native Americans off their ancestral lands.

“A lot of times history does repeat itself,” Nagle says. “I’m really interested in the ways in which we can connect to our past, carry it with us, learn from it, and maybe change outcomes so that we’re not just doomed to repeat the past in the present.”

Nagle’s 2018 play has landed in New York City at the prestigious Public Theater this winter and it’s just the latest in a flowering of Native storytelling. From “Reservation Dogs,” “Dark Winds” and “Rutherford Falls” on TV to “Prey” on the big screen and Larissa FastHorse becoming the first Indigenous female playwright on Broadway, barriers are being broken.

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“I hope it’s not a moment. I hope it’s the beginning of an era,” says FastHorse, a member of the Sicangu Lakota Nation and a 2020 MacArthur Fellow. “We stand on the shoulders of so many folks that came before us.”

In 2020, the University of California, Los Angeles published a diversity report that examined media content from 2018-2019 and found Native representation to be between 0.3%–0.5% in film. In television or on stage, Native representation was virtually nonexistent. ( According to the Census, 9.7 million Americans claimed some Indigenous heritage in 2020, or 2.9% of the total U.S. population.)

“The truth was most theaters had never produced a single play by a Native playwright. Most Hollywood film studios had never produced any content actually written or produced by Natives. It may have been about some Native people, but it was not written by Native people. And we’ve just seen that flipped on its head,” Nagle said.

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Non-Native storytellers are also exploring the history of white atrocities on Native Americans with Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” telling the story of the Reign of Terror in Oklahoma, and documentary-maker Ken Burns examining an animal central to the Great Plains with “The American Buffalo.”

Nagle recalls moving to New York in 2010 and asking artistic directors of theaters why they weren’t producing Native work. They would answer that they didn’t know any Native playwrights or that there weren’t enough Native audiences to power ticket sales.

“Good storytelling is good storytelling, whether the protagonist is white, Black, Asian, LGBTQ — it doesn’t matter,” said Nagle, who is on the board of IllumiNative, a nonprofit working to deal with the erasure of Native people.

“There’s a lot of projects out there that are changing the narrative and that are proving that our stories are powerful and that non-Natives are really moved by them because they’re good stories.”

Madeline Sayet, a playwright and professor at Arizona State University who also runs the Yale Indigenous Performing Arts Program, sees the contemporary Native theater movement flowing from the Civil Rights Movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s and an increase in awareness of Indigenous issues ever since Native people won the right to legally practice their culture, art and religion.

She connects the Wounded Knee occupation of 1973 to the Standing Rock standoff over the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 to Ned Blackhawk’s “The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S History” winning the National Book Award this year.

Sayet, a member of the Mohegan Tribe who became the first Native playwright produced at the Public when her “Where We Belong” made it in 2020, said keeping Indigenous stories being produced depends on changing funding structures and getting long-term commitments from theaters and programs like Young Native Playwrights Contest.

“Part of what’s really helping right now is us all creating more opportunities for each other instead of in competition with each other,” she said.

FastHorse, who made history on Broadway in 2023 with her satirical comedy “The Thanksgiving Play,” which follows white liberals trying to devise a culturally sensitive Thanksgiving play, has since turned her attention to helping rewrite some classic stage musicals to be more culturally sensitive.

“Native people have been exotified in a way that keeps us othered and separate, sometimes in a negative way, as in, ‘We just kill all the Indians’ and sometimes in a ‘positive’ way where they’re this special, magical thing.”

She has recently reworked the book for an upcoming touring musical revival of the 1954 classic “Peter Pan,” which was adapted by Jerome Robbins and has a score by Moose Charlap-Carolyn Leigh and additional songs by Jule Styne, Betty Comden and Adolph Green.

FastHorse found the character of Peter Pan complex, the pirates funny, the music enchanting but the depictions of Indigenous people and women appalling. There were references to “redskins” throughout, a nonsense song called “Ugh-A-Wug” and Tiger Lily fends off randy braves “with a hatchet.”

“I was like, ‘What? We’re having little kids read this? This is just rape culture written out, exoticized with a Native person to boot,” she said. “This is what makes you a good woman? If you fight hard enough to keep the men away?”

FastHorse widened the concept of Native in the musical to encompass members of several under-pressure Indigenous cultures from all over the globe — Africa, Japan and Eastern Europe, among them — who have retreated to Neverland to preserve their culture until they can find a way back.

The playwright said one of her guiding principles in the reworking was to make sure a little Native girl in South Dakota could see herself and celebrate. “Then we’ve done our job and she can join the magic instead of having to armor herself against the magic.”

Nagle is enjoying making her debut at the Public Theater — her play runs through Dec. 23 — but is realistic that no one play is going to teach everyone every single lesson they need to know about Native people after hundreds of years of misinformation.

“I think one thing I’m just hoping that people take away from this play is like, ‘Wow, Native stories are really compelling. Native people are incredible. They’re incredibly resilient. They’re incredibly brilliant. Yes, there’s tragedy, but they have such incredible senses of humor,’” she said.

“I want them to love my characters the way I love them. I want them to feel the heartache. I want them to feel the laughter. I want them to feel the love,” she said. “And I want them to leave the theater just wanting to know more about our tribal nations and our Native people.”

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Marketing Art Director at EPAM Systems Inc

By in Art World News

Marketing Art Director at EPAM Systems Inc

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Amid a weak economy and political pressures, Artbo nurtures Colombia’s nascent contemporary art market

By in Art World News

Amid a weak economy and political pressures, Artbo nurtures Colombia’s nascent contemporary art market

Artbo in Bogotá, Colombia’s premier art fair (until 25 November), opened its 19th edition in a new location and on a new date. Visitors at the VIP preview yesterday (22 November) perused stands spread across five stories of the sprawling Ágora Bogotá convention centre, with panoramic views of the city and the surrounding Andes Mountain Range in the background.

Despite the falling value of the Colombian peso and political unease over recent elections, dealers approached by The Art Newspaper reported plenty of buyer interest as well as some sales. Leon Tovar, who founded his gallery in 1991 in Bogotá before relocating to New York in 2012, placed a small untitled work by the Colombian artist Santiago Cárdenas for $30,150 and a large wooden sculpture from the Peruvian artist Jaime Miranda-Bambarén’s Seeds series for $55,000. Examples of the latter were dotted throughout the lobby near the entrance of the fair. Tovar represents both artists.

Seed sculptures by Jaime Miranda-Bambarén in the lobby of the Ágora Bogotá convention center. Courtesy Artbo

“I was a little surprised, because the political situations in Latin America are extreme sometimes,” Tovar says. “But they’re very positive here, we got some sales in the early hours.”

Among the most popular works at Artbo are Sergio Ferro’s handmade ceramic soup cans at Bogotá gallery Salón Comunal’s stand. A Colombian twist on the Warholian Campbell classic, Ferro paints the names of local varieties of the dish, like “sopa de lentejas”, onto small vases. The soup cans, priced at around $60 each, were nearly sold out within hours of the fair’s opening.

Artbo’s director since 2012, María Paz Gaviria, the daughter of the former Colombian President César Gaviria, says that one of the fair’s strengths is that it has remained distinctively Latin American throughout the years. Around two-thirds of the 33 galleries taking part in Artbo’s main fair section hail from Colombia, with the rest coming from countries like Argentina, Brazil, Chile, the US, Spain and France. The fair typically welcomed around 70 galleries in the years just before the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic (Along with the main art galleries, Artbo hosts separate sections for design, large-scale installations and smaller goods, like zines, posters, tote bags and journals).

Sergio Ferro’s handmade ceramic soup cans at Bogotá gallery Salón Comunal’s stand

Courtesy of Salón Comunal

“Artbo has positioned itself as the fair with the most Latin American content, in terms of its composition, with emerging art, as a place of discovery and as a very boutique fair.” Gaviria says. “For that reason, it has always drawn maybe the most international visitors of fairs in Latin America.”

Those international clients can be a lifeline for dealers in Colombia.

“The art market in Colombia has always been very fragile. So this is a very, very important moment for the local art scene,” says Paula Bossa, the curator and director of operations at Bogotá gallery Casas Riegner. “We’re always expecting international visitors and although the dates are a bit complex, it’s been a nice surprise to see some very interesting visitors.” At Casas Riegner’s stand, ceramics exploring the female form by the Colombian artist Luz Lizarazo range from $600 to $3,000; a drawing by the artist is also being offered, priced at $3,800.

While the VIP preview was well-attended, this year’s iteration of Artbo overlaps with the American Thanksgiving holiday, and very few visitors from the US were present. The fair is typically held in late October, but this year those dates clashed with regional elections in Colombia and the fair’s previous venue, another convention centre near the Ágora Bogotá, serves as one of the country’s largest polling locations.

“Conditions of the market are very much tied to political conditions. That is always the case, of course. And it’s very much the case during Artbo,” Gaviria says. “We just went through a mayoral election here in the city of Bogota and you saw a very dramatic shift a couple of weeks ago in the price of the peso, which of course affects the art market.”

Economic woes

The value of the Colombian peso sank last week after new government figures revealed the country’s economy shrank in the third quarter of the fiscal year, marking Colombia’s first year-on-year economic contraction since 2020 as both high interest rates and inflation continue to curb spending (galleries at Artbo tend to sell works priced in US dollars). Last month, candidates backed by President Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s first leftwing president, were defeated by opposition candidates in regional elections that were widely viewed as a referendum on the president’s first year in office. For decades, Colombia was caught in violence between powerful drug cartels, right-wing paramilitary groups and left-wing guerrilla movements.

Contemporary art is particularly challenging to sell in Colombia, where there’s still a strong taste for traditional art forms, though dealers say there is no shortage of young, talented artists creating groundbreaking work.

“I believe the Modern market is strong, but the contemporary market is just starting, so it’s kind of difficult and tricky for contemporary galleries to keep afloat. We are a new market,” says Katy Hernández, the director of Galería Espacio Continuo in Bogotá. The gallery is offering Ana María Rueda’s Celosía (2023), a textile and plaster hanging, for $9,000. “We have amazing artists here in Colombia, but we need international visibility,” Hernández adds

This is a sentiment echoed by Omayra Alvarado-Jensen, the executive director of Instituto de Visión, which operates galleries in both Bogotá and New York. She says that the gallery has sold works largely to international collectors at Artbo this year, and that its Colombian market is smaller because of the Colombian economy and the value of the peso (Alvarado-Jensen often offers Colombian collectors and institutions special rates, she says).

“We have wonderful artists, very powerful and refreshing practices and people producing from very different backgrounds,” Alvarado-Jensen continues. “When you live in a place like Colombia, where there’s—unfortunately—so much social and political turmoil, that is a place where great art can come from.”

Celebrating UM’s 100th Rhodes Scholar

By in Printmaking

Celebrating UM’s 100th Rhodes Scholar
UM School of Art alum Joel Nichols is one of eleven exceptional students who have just been announced as the 2024 Rhodes Scholars for Canada this year; he is UM’s 100th Rhodes Scholar. Considered one …
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