A Farewell Festival is being held until Sunday, where a brand new sculpture will be unveiled.
Bristol Unicornfest sculptures go on display for final time
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Brenda Blethyn unveils North Shields’ Herring Girl statue
A sculpture honouring the role women played in the fishing industry is unveiled in North Shields.
National photography contest open to all K-12 students
CHARLESTON — Eligible students in grades K–12 nationwide can submit their art to be judged by professional photographers for a chance to win prize packages valued up to $1,200, thanks to a contest hosted by K12 Competitions.
This year’s theme is “In Focus,” and judges hope to see what students can create with their full imagination and skill set, according to a news release from K12. Categories include DLSR Lens Master, Smartphone Shots and Film Photography.
James Nachtwey: The last of the great photojournalists
BBC/ Jonathan HeadA woman has just discovered the bodies of her husband and brother in her garden in Bucha, a suburb of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.
The bodies are dusted with frost. She lays one hand on her brother, while the fingers of her other hand touch her mouth.
There are two more human hands almost perfectly arranged in the frame, of someone whose face cannot be seen – one resting on the head of a dog, the other playing nervously with her blonde hair.
It presents an unexpectedly peaceful moment, arranged with the near-perfect balance of a classical painting. Except it’s not – it’s a photo from the aftermath of the massacre of civilians in Bucha, taken by the renowned photojournalist James Nachtwey.
“Hands and eyes. I’m concentrating always on hands and eyes. And the detail of the dog. You actually seem to see sympathy in the face of the dog,” says Mr Nachtwey, who has brought his retrospective exhibition Memoria to Bangkok, the only place it is being shown in Asia.
The collection has 126 photographs from some of the worst conflicts and disasters of our times – from Central America in the 1980s to the ongoing war in Ukraine.
A very private, softly-spoken man who prefers to let his images speak for themselves, Mr Nachtwey agreed to be interviewed in Bangkok about his approach to photojournalism, and about the state of the profession in the digital age.
Now 75 years old, Mr Nachtwey just missed being part of the Vietnam War generation of photojournalists, when the profession reached the peak of its influence.
The searing images from that conflict, from photographers like Philip Jones-Griffiths, Don McCullin and Tim Page, helped swing public opinion against involvement in the conflict and force the US withdrawal from it.
But Mr Nachtwey is arguably the greatest of the generation that followed.
Five-times winner of the Robert Capa Gold Medal for courageous overseas photographic reporting, his images are known for both their brutal immediacy and their stunning composition and lighting, rendering his subjects with humanity and warmth.
Even in an information landscape dominated today by video and instant, digital distribution, the greatest still photographs have a unique power, in the split-second moments they capture, to distil the essential themes of a news story, to freeze the action, to invite reflection.
As we looked at a striking photo of a woman with blonde hair emerging from a smashed apartment block on the outskirts of Kyiv in April 2022, just after Russian forces had withdrawn, I asked him how he went about capturing such well-composed shots.
The woman is clutching blankets she has retrieved from her home, and looks casually at the camera as though performing a normal domestic chore, with a vast jumble of pulverised rubble behind her.
Did he just “spray and pray”, hoping to get one good image out of hundreds? A feasible technique in the age of digital cameras, which can take dozens of shots a second.
“Prayer does not enter into it,” he says. “It’s really about years of training, applying what I’ve learned, being persistent. In any given situation, it’s highly unlikely that I’ll make a strong, significant image. But the only way I can ever succeed in doing that is to simply throw myself into the situation. And just keep shooting, and follow my instincts and my intuition, and find a place where a picture might happen.”
Most of the images in Memoria are black-and-white. But that’s not always his preference, he says.
“Early on in my career, before I established myself, I didn’t have much choice. If the editors asked me to do colour then I did colour, and I always tried to use colour in a way so that it didn’t become the subject of the picture. Colour is a very powerful phenomenon. So powerful that it can become the subject, so I tried to keep it under control.”
In some images, though, the colour really stands out. An early photograph from the El Salvador civil war shows a military helicopter evacuating an injured soldier. But it is the three little girls crouching behind a tree in the foreground, their dresses of white, pink and pastel blue standing out in the orange dust cloud, who give the image its haunting loveliness.
Most of Mr Nachtwey’s career has been in the era of film. Digital photography, he says, is “more time consuming”.
“In the days of film, I’d shoot my rolls of film, and that was it. I would write my captions, label the rolls and then I would have an evening to network and talk with people, get information to figure out what I was going to do the next day. Now I have to download all the memory cards, back everything up, do an initial edit.”
We are looking at his photographs from Afghanistan. Incredibly strong, stark images, not taken recently but in 1996, from when Kabul was reduced to a shattered moonscape by the battles between competing warlords.
In one, a woman in a light-coloured burqa seems to float like a ghost through the black ruins. In another a woman on her knees reaches out with a ringed hand to hold the rough-hewn gravestone of her brother, killed by a Taliban rocket. She is surrounded by dozens more of these hastily-dug graves.
“This is the final stage of the Afghan Civil War, when Kabul was surrounded and besieged by the Taliban,” he recalls. “They were shelling and rocketing the city every day. The NGOs had left, with the exception of the ICRC. Virtually all the foreign journalists had left. The editor-in-chief I was working with at that time, he had no interest in the story. But I did.”
He has arranged this section right next to the dramatic shots he took of the 9/11 attacks in New York, to make the connection.
“We are in a totally interconnected world. The siege of Kabul was one of the last battles of the 20th Century. And once the Taliban took over, it set the stage for the wars of the 21st Century. Today you can’t pretend that things that happen on one side of the world will not affect you. Because in this day and age, they invariably do.”
I put to him a point made by his famous colleague Don McCullin, 12 years his senior, that digital photography is so easily manipulated that it can no longer be trusted.
“I don’t agree with that assessment,” Mr Nachtwey says. “The credibility of the person who’s making the picture and putting it out is very important. So, yes, some people might manipulate falsely a digital image, but they could do that with film as well in the darkroom.”
But we live in a sceptical age, where so many no longer believe in the impartiality of the established media which has given Nachtwey his greatest exposure. Does that trouble him?
“I think it’s fine to be asked if we have agendas and biases, I think that’s a very good question. And I think we should be ready with a good answer. We should have thought about that and understood it ourselves. I’ve rarely covered a war where I don’t have a very strong opinion about who’s the aggressor and who’s the victim, and where right and wrong plays out. That doesn’t mean I’m going to create propaganda for anyone, it doesn’t mean I’m going to falsify my images.”
Is the heroic age of the photojournalist, though, coming to an end? Especially at a time when people are bombarded daily by a tsunami of digital images, and when the first, and often most dramatic, photos of an event are usually taken by citizen journalists with their phones?
I suggested that the heyday of photojournalists was probably the pre-digital era of the Sunday colour supplements of newspapers, and influential, image-rich magazines like Time, where millions would see powerful photos from the world’s trouble spots for the first and only time.
But Mr Nachtwey remains an optimist – about his profession, and about humanity, whose darkest sides he has spent his life chronicling.
“The fact that people are using their phones in situations where journalists might not be present is I think very useful. Journalists can’t be everywhere. But the two are not mutually exclusive. We still need trained journalists and photographers who are not just making random shots, who were actually trained and have insight, experience, and talent. Because that counts for something. It’s not only the message – it’s the quality of the message, which speaks to people.”
At the far end of the exhibition is a photograph, printed very large, of a young Vietnamese woman damaged from birth by the effects of the chemical herbicide Agent Orange.
Her mother holds up her thin arms, for exercise, in an almost balletic pose. Behind her lies her sister, similarly afflicted, and the rough texture of her simple home. Your eye is drawn to the dazzling, filigree lace around the neck of the young woman. And the closed-eyes, seraphic expression on her face.
It is an achingly beautiful image, which for just a moment, makes us forget all the suffering that lies behind it.
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Thinking About Nonmemory: Mike Kelley’s Work In Dialogue With Artists Curated By Jay Ezra Nayssan At Hauser & Wirth DTLA
Mike Kelley was a much beloved California artist who explored issues of memory and architectural space before his untimely death in 2012 by suicide, at age 57. Particularly in the latter part of his career, Kelley created works that explored his memory of specific places he had encountered as well as creating imagined fantastical cityscapes and landscapes. “Nonmemory” is an expression Kelley used to negotiate the relationships between place, memory, and identity.
LOS ANGELES, CA – NOVEMBER 05: Jay Ezra Nayssan attends the COS x Snarkitecture Los Angeles Pop Up … [+]
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Jay Ezra Nayssan is a very thoughtful curator, writer and the founder of Del Vaz Projects, an arts nonprofit, who I first met during Frieze LA when he staged an event at the Thomas Mann House and then a show in his own home in Santa Monica (the former one-time childhood home of Shirley Temple).
Nayssan, in cooperation with the Mike Kelley Foundation, has brought together works by Kelley as well as seven other contemporary artists whose works engage with the locus of memory: Kelly Akashi, Meriem Bennani, Beatriz Cortez, Raúl de Nieves, Olivia Erlanger, Lauren Halsey and Max Hooper Schneider. For this exhibition, Nayssan began reading Mike Kelley’s texts until, he said at the press preview, “he could hear Mike’s voice.”
Like the other current shows at Hauser & Wirth DTLA from Stefan Brüggemann and Harmony Korine, the beauty and the intelligence of this show won’t be apparent from a cursory walkthrough. It very much deepens the experience to understand what you are looking at – and to know the intentions of the artists and curator involved.
Mike Kelley, Kandor 16 © Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts. All Rights Reserved / VAGA at ARS, NY … [+]
© Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts. All Rights Reserved / VAGA at ARS, NY Photo: Fredrik Nilsen
On exhibit are works by Kelley that map out one of his former schools; distinguishing among what he does and doesn’t remember about the layout and buildings; as well as a sculpture that features his “city on a hill,” an imagined city perhaps on Superman’s native Krypton.
The artists whose works Nayssan has selected interact with Kelley’s work in spirit. So, for example, Moroccan-born Brooklyn-based artist Meriem Bennani created an installation that invites one to view video that is a combination of documentary and animation. The video explores the legacy of Morrocco’s past as a French colony, and the way in which her own education at a French Lycée in Morrocco affected her and the identities of students there.
Meriem Bennani Ponytail 2019 Aluminum, steel, corrugated plastic, rubber coating, automotive pa int, … [+]
© Meriem Bennani Courtesy the artist, C L E A R I N G, and Hauser & Wirth Photo: Keith Lubow
Olivia Elander’s work resonates with Kelley’s as it juxtaposes shapes, forms, and objects in ways that, in the words of the press release, “investigate the mythology behind American social mobility and its fraught relationship to gender and class.”
Nayssan has chosen the work of Raúl de Nieves and Max Hooper Schneider to highlight another aspect of Kelley’s artistic practice, the use of found objects that as Nayssan put it make “the familiar… de-familiar.” De Nieves incorporates everyday found items in a process of “accumulation and adornment” that makes the ordinary into the unimaginable. In this exhibition, De Nieves uses in his map-like work that chart his migration from Michoacán, Mexico to the United States.
Hooper Schneider takes this approach even further with works that are constantly in flux, as the objects he gathers into shapes and forms degrade over time. As the amalgams take on a shape of their own. they look like cousins to Mike Kelley’s Memory Ware Flat #16, exhibited in the show.
Los Angeles based artists Kelly Akashi and Beatriz Cortez both create sculptural works from geologic forms in ways that speak Kelley’s use of rocks and boulders as plinths and artworks in of themselves.
lauren Halsey dat fuss wuz us 2023 White cement, fiberglass, and mixed media
© Lauren Halsey Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth Photo: Keith Lubow
Finally, Nayssan chose a work by Lauren Halsey that is part of her efforts “to archive and preserve the unique, hybrid culture of South-Central LA into the future,” to be in dialogue with Kelley’s “Mobile Homestead.” These works are meant to engage one in thinking about public art and, as the press release states, to underscore “the complexities of navigating between institutional and non-institutional space.”
In conjunction with the exhibition, Del Vaz Projects and Hauser & Wirth Publishers have co-published a book on the exhibition with text by Nayssan and reproductions of works in the show as well as important works by Kelley and his original essay on “Architectural Non-memory Replaced with Psychic Reality.” There is also a full complement of public programming including a panel discussion among artists featured in the exhibition, as well as performances (for more information see hauserwirth.com/events).
Like much of Kelley’s work, Nonmemory is a journey from the remembered, the found, the junk, the everyday, to the assembled, the created, the fabricated that asks us to consider What is Art and of what is it made.
Meet Umi, the ‘powerful’ sculpture by a world-famous artist that now sits in a suburban Colorado field
The Aurora Highlands community is very much a work in progress, but its most famous resident is a fully-finished public art installation. Hear the story behind Umi, by Daniel Popper.
Monmouth County Clerk’s Annual Archives and History Day Photography Contest is Open to County High School Students
originally published: 09/23/2023
(FREEHOLD, NJ) — Monmouth County Clerk Christine Giordano Hanlon is inviting all Monmouth County high school students to enter the County Clerk’s Annual Archives and History Day Photography Contest. The theme of this year’s contest and Archives and History Day focuses on business and industry in Monmouth County.
High school students residing in Monmouth County and/or attending a school in Monmouth County are encouraged to submit an original photograph of his/her favorite business or establishment in the County, for example, a favorite coffee spot, restaurant, boutique, etc. Entrants are permitted to be creative with the usage of artistic effects, such as digital and/or special effects or editing.
The submitted photographs will be archived by the Archives Division of the County Clerk’s Office for future generations to one day look back on and to see what local business and industry of Monmouth County was in 2023.
“We are excited to host our Annual Archives and History Day Photography Contest which provides high school students with the opportunity to learn about their local history while showcasing their creativity,” said Clerk Hanlon. “My hope is that this year’s contest will drive a new appreciation for Monmouth County’s rich history amongst high school students across the County.”
The top three (3) photographs will be awarded gift card prizes by Clerk Hanlon at Archives and History Day, which will be held on Saturday, October 28, 2023 at the Robert J. Collins Arena at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft.
Contest entries will be accepted through Friday, October 20, 2023 via email to ClerkContest@co.monmouth.nj.us with the subject “2023 Archives Photography Project.” Within the email, entrants are asked to attach the image with a resolution of a minimum of 1024 pixels wide and a maximum file size of 20mb.
All entries must also include the student’s name, grade, high school, address, phone number, and email address. Additionally, the student must list what business or industry is highlighted in his or her entry, and explain why the particular business or establishment was chosen.
For full contest rules and eligibility, please visit the Monmouth County Clerk’s Office website at MonmouthCountyClerk.com, email ClerkContest@co.monmouth.nj.us, or call 732-431-7324, ext. 8735.
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BYU: Educators, Native American tribal leaders team up to enrich Utah elementary arts programs
Courtesy BYU Video
In this undated photo, Brigham Young University public health student Naloni Felix speaks to children as part of the Native American Curriculum Initiative.
Within Utah, there are eight sovereign Native American nations, each with a vibrant culture. And yet, on her past visits to Utah elementary classrooms, BYU ARTS Partnership facilitator Brenda Beyal would routinely hear teachers express their reluctance to teach Native American materials, fearing to inappropriately portray native cultures.
Now, Beyal, her colleagues and BYU students are seeking to address teachers’ concerns through the Native American Curriculum Initiative. In an unprecedented approach, the NACI team works directly with Utah tribes to produce sample arts lesson plans, cultivate a list of Native American artists who can visit elementary classrooms and craft principles for culturally sensitive pedagogy.
The NACI’s strength comes from the relationships Beyal’s group has developed with Utah’s Native American tribal leaders. “It was important for us to go to each of the eight sovereign nations here in Utah, and we asked them, ‘What would you like the children of Utah to know about your tribe?’” Beyal said. “Every tribal nation said, ‘That we are still here.’”
To emphasize that Native Americans are not just historical people but are living today, the NACI helps arrange for current Native American artists to visit Utah classrooms, drawing on recommendations from the tribes.
“What better way to amplify native voices than through storytelling through the arts?” Beyal said. “Students get to rub shoulders with Native American artists. We tell stories, we have intergenerational connections, there’s laughter, there is just that feeling of inclusion.”
Tribal leaders also wanted teachers to know that although there are five tribal groups in Utah — the Navajo, Paiute, Ute, Goshute and Shoshone — they are divided among eight distinct nations, each recognized by the federal government.
“Each has their own songs, their own dances, their own stories,” said Beyal. “A person from the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation, by the Nevada border, will not identify as a member of the Skull Valley band of Goshute.”
Every NACI lesson plan is carefully crafted to reflect the cultures of these specific nations. For example, the group spent nearly two years working with the Northwestern Tribe of the Shoshone Nation to select the right native vocabulary for a dramatic adaptation of a Shoshone story in one lesson plan. The group has also partnered with BYU’s Living Legends to develop lesson plans that give greater context to the cultural dances students and teachers see performed.
Because of these painstaking efforts, 16 of the 26 Native American lesson plans the NACI has so far developed have the tribes’ official stamp of approval. Knowing that the tribal nations have reviewed the lesson plans word by word gives teachers confidence that they are sharing accurate information.
“I think it really helps kids connect with the stories and the history that native people have,” said BYU public health student Naloni Felix.
The NACI began in 2018, after Beyal helped present a few lesson plans on Native American culture at Art’s Express, the ARTS Partnership’s annual summer workshop, which about 500 teachers attend each year.
The enthusiastic response prompted the ARTS Partnership to expand the lesson plans into a bigger program to promote culturally sensitive arts teaching, in collaboration with the Utah Division of Arts and Museums. In 2021, the NACI’s efforts were recognized by a prestigious National Endowment for the Arts grant, which awarded the group $20,000 a year to continue their work.
The team decided to begin with Native American cultures because they saw a need to model for teachers how to approach sensitive materials. For instance, they suggest providing a video showing the sacred Mountain Sheep Dance rather than having children reenact the dance themselves.
“You don’t change schools just with lesson plans — you change schools by teaching faculty philosophies of empathy and understanding,” said BYU ARTS Partnership Director Cally Flox. “Professional development for teachers is a huge part of our program because it will help teachers navigate any cultural materials they bring into the classroom.”
The work the NACI is doing is “unprecedented everywhere,” Flox added. “Our commitment to partnering with Native Americans to ensure their voices are truly heard is resulting in improved relationships, improved content and improved practices.”
See sample NACI lesson plans on the BYU ARTS Partnership webpage.
Newsletter
NJCU presents a Panel Discussion: Latin American Art and Politics
(JERSEY CITY, NJ) — New Jersey City University (NJCU) presents a Panel Discussion: Latin American Art and Politics on Tuesday, September 26, 2023 from 5:00pm-7:00pm. The event will take place in the Visual Arts Building Auditorium (100 Culver Avenue in Jersey City) and be available on Zoom as well.
Local winners — Area creators featured in state art exhibit
Photo courtesy of the State Museum of Pennsylvania /
Ebensburg native Brandon Hirt’s piece “You’ve Got a Friend in PA” is featured in the State Museum of Pennsylvania’s Art of the State exhibit.
A Bedford County woodworker has received the State Museum Art Docents’ Choice Award during the Art of the State: Pennsylvania 2023 exhibit.
George Radeschi’s piece, simply named #188, was inspired by the ancient art of Egypt, Greece and Native America. No stains or dyes are used; instead, he works with a combination of light and dark woods, cut in different ways to show off varying grains and wood colors.
“I love working with wood,” Radeschi said in his artist statement. He makes his turnings, bowls and cutting boards/serving trays with woods from all over the world, including rosewood, goncalo alves and bubinga from Brazil and zebra wood from Africa.
“The oak, maple, ash, hickory and walnut I use come from my property,” Radeschi said. “I cut down the trees, cut them on a sawmill and stack them to dry.”
Photo courtesy of the State Museum of Pennsylvania /
Bedford County native George Radeschi’s “#188” won the museum’s Docents’ Choice Award and is featured in the Art of the State exhibit.
A piece by photographer Brandon Hirt of Ebensburg is also included in the Art of the State exhibit. The Art Institute of Colorado graduate’s photo, “You’ve Got a Friend in PA,” features old Volkswagen Beetles under trees on a fall day.
“My luminous landscapes are a way for me to find beauty in our region in the oddest spots,” he said in a statement. “We are filled with tremendous scenery in Western PA, even if some of it might be rust.”
Art of the State is an annual juried exhibition that has showcased the work of Pennsylvania’s artists at The State Museum of Pennsylvania since 1968.
“This year’s Art of the State exhibition continues a 56-year tradition of diversity,” said State Museum Director Angelica Docog. “The artists find inspirations from diverse backgrounds, and each has a unique style. While some artists are deeply rooted in Pennsylvania traditions, others bring inspiration from around the world. Some artists have decades of experience and others are new or returning to creative pursuits. Despite these varied perspectives, all artists seek to engage with viewers. We look forward to sharing these artists’ stories with our visitors.”
Winners were chosen from 86 finalists selected from 1,850 entries representing 29 Pennsylvania counties. Selection jurors reviewed and scored all of the submitted works. Those with the highest ratings in each category are featured in the exhibition. The awards juror then determines the first place, second place and third place winners in each of the categories.
Art of State runs through Jan. 7 at The State Museum of Pennsylvania, adjacent to the State Capitol in Harrisburg.
The museum, at 300 N. St., Harrisburg, is open from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and noon to 4:30 p.m. on Sunday. Admission is $7 for adults, $6 for adults 65 years old and older, $5 for children ages 1-11 and free to active military and their immediate family with a military ID. Retired military personnel are also admitted free with a valid ID.
Planetarium shows are $3 extra.
Metered parking spaces and city parking garages are available within a three-block radius of the museum.
For more information, visit statemuseumpa.org/artofthestate/.
