About

Posts by :

John Fielder’s lifetime of Colorado photography can now be viewed online

By in Photography

John Fielder’s lifetime of Colorado photography can now be viewed online
image

Anyone at home can now view the vast and varied beauty of Colorado through the eyes of the state’s most celebrated landscape photographer.

History Colorado on Tuesday announced it had finished digitizing, cataloging and organizing a repository of more than 6,500 images of John Fielder’s illustrious career spanning close to 50 years. History Colorado had previously announced Fielder donating his life’s work in hopes of inspiring an appreciation of nature and climate action.

The photos found on the John Fielder’s Colorado Collection webpage can be pulled for private and commercial use. The site includes curated lists for viewers to explore the mountains and plains of every county in the state just as Fielder did.

For decades, the photos have been seen in coffee table books and across walls of homes and offices everywhere. That includes the office of Gov. Jared Polis.

“This photograph is a constant reminder of the natural wonders found in our state, which generations of conservationists, lawmakers and everyday people have fought to protect for the enjoyment of future generations,” Polis said in a news release. “This collection, and the exhibitions that will come from it, are a chance for us to celebrate John and all he has accomplished, but more importantly, to honor the legacy he has created and the gift he is giving to the people of Colorado.”

Later this summer, History Colorado expects to open an exhibit at its downtown Denver center affording a more intimate journey through Fielder’s career. Much of that career has been dedicated to conservation; Fielder has always sought lands and waters to photograph and show to lawmakers in charge of protection.

The collection “is a profound opportunity for Coloradans to see the breathtaking vistas that define the Centennial State,” History Colorado Executive Director Dawn DiPrince said in the news release, “and evaluate if the relationship we have with the land will allow for our grandchildren to experience the same wonders.”

Upon the announcement of his donation, Fielder in an interview explained how he had seen landscapes change since he started photographing in the 1970s. In a life that saw him lose his wife to illness and son to suicide, Fielder described the loss of nature as heartbreaking as well.

“It’s like losing a wife and son, you think about them every day,” he said. “So too do I think about the impact humans have on Earth and what it’s going to be like here.”

In preparation for the donation, sifting through tens of thousands of files from his pre- and post-digital camera days gave him that reflection. It has been a deep time of reflection for Fielder, 72.

After months of quietly battling pancreatic cancer, he recently went public with the diagnosis.

One “incredible asset to (organizing the collection) is I revisited all these places that have defined my life, the most sublime places in Colorado,” Fielder said in a previous Gazette interview. “That was an incredible treat.”

He thought back to his father from his North Carolina childhood. He remembered the man for volunteering and raising money for charitable causes.

“He was a man who believed you have to give back to your community,” Fielder said. “I’ve been able to give back to my community, and I feel like no matter what happens to me, I’ve achieved all of my goals.”

Botanical Photography by Jeri Eisenberg

By in Photography

Botanical Photography by Jeri Eisenberg
image

Jeri Eisenberg works primarily with non-traditional and alternative photo-based techniques. She subverts traditional photography’s emphasis on the representational qualities of the medium, and emphasizes instead the medium’s expressive nature.

Digital captures of flowers, foliage, clouds and shorelines track the four seasons. Compositions are printed on Japanese Kozo paper before it is coated with a thin layer of encuastic (beeswax). There is a strong sense of materiality and seductive surfaces in her work to evoke sense memories and visceral connections. Eisenberg’s photographs steadfastly serve as an affirmation of beauty in the everyday natural world, but is tinged with the bittersweet – a reminder of the temporal condition and an elegy for life.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

GNWT takes action to improve progress on NWT Arts Strategy | Government of Northwest Territories

By in Art World News

GNWT takes action to improve progress on NWT Arts Strategy | Government of Northwest Territories

The Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT) has released its response to the recommendations of the Arts Program Review.

The GNWT agrees with all the report’s recommendations and has started to make operational changes based on the recommendations and feedback gathered from the arts and creative sector during engagement session for the NWT Arts Strategy and during the program review. This will include:

  • Updating departmental arts mandates to clearly show what each department will work to accomplish regarding the arts.
  • Implementing ongoing monitoring and assessment of arts programs to ensure they are continually improved.
  • Improving how artists can find and learn about the arts programs and funding available to them to inform them of funding opportunities.
  • Improving arts funding program eligibility requirements and distribution to increase access in small communities.

The Government Response to the Arts Program Review provides a list of the planned changes that the GNWT will be making and expected completion dates to meet the needs of artists, craftspeople, and creatives who rely on its programs and funding.

Quote(s)

“We have heard the concerns voiced by our artists and agree with all the Reviews’ recommendations.  We now have the important insight we needed to make changes to GNWT arts funding. We are committed to making meaningful changes to government arts funding to help establish a strong and valued arts and creative sector which will benefit everyone living in the NWT.”

– R.J. Simpson, Minister of Education, Culture and Employment

“The arts contribute to a strong economy and enhance shared community identity and belonging. In response to the recommendations of the review, we are working closely with our colleagues at ECE to collaborate on improving programs and services to the NWT creative sector. With a focus on fostering the economic aspirations of NWT art stakeholders, ITI will continue to develop and seek out new marketing and business development opportunities for northern artists that will empower them to improve their presence in the NWT creative economy.”

– Caroline Wawzonek, Minister of Industry, Tourism and Investment

Quick facts

  • The NWT Arts Strategy released in 2021 sets out a vision for how the GNWT will help to support the arts and creative sector for the next 10 years.
  • The release the Arts Program Review in November 2022 was the first key action item of the NWT Arts Strategy to be completed.
  • View the NWT Arts Strategy Progress Tracker for an overview of the progress of all actions and deliverables of the plan.

Related links

For media requests, please contact:

Briony Grabke

Manager, Public Affairs and Communications

Department of Education, Culture and Employment

Government of the Northwest Territories

briony_grabke@gov.nt.ca

867-767-9352 Ext. 71073

Drew Williams

Asst. Director, Strategic Communications

Industry, Tourism and Investment

Government of the Northwest Territories

drew_williams@gov.nt.ca

867-767-9202 Ext. 63037

Summit quakes helped this photographer capture start of Kilauea’s fiery eruption

By in Photography

Summit quakes helped this photographer capture start of Kilauea’s fiery eruption

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Photographer John Tarson was in the right place, at the right time when he captured Kilauea’s fiery eruption early Wednesday morning.

Tarson owns Epic Lava Tours and he lives about five minutes away.

He said the earthquakes woke him up overnight and just had a feeling the volcano was ready to erupt.

Tarson lugged his camera gear about a mile to get in position for the shot and started recording just a second or two after the first fountain shot through the crater floor.

“You started hearing all the ground cracking, and it just exploded out of the ground, and probably went in the neighborhood of about 200 feet in the air really briefly for maybe like 15 seconds or something like that,” he recalled.

From there, Tarson said vents began to form in the crater ground.

“I felt everything start to shake. So I just backed away from the cliff just not wanting to become a casualty if it fell in.”

The USGS says the initial eruption shot as high as 200 feet and added more than 30 feet of fresh lava to the crater floor, which covers about 370 acres.

Scientists say they knew the eruption was imminent because it was preceded by flurry of strong earthquakes that woke people up around the Big Island, just like Tarson.

For more coverage on Kilauea’s latest eruption, click here.

Copyright 2023 Hawaii News Now. All rights reserved.

Cushman & Wakefield Exclusively Marketing Three Automated Parking Garages Totaling 43,000 SF for Sale | United States

By in Art World News

Cushman & Wakefield Exclusively Marketing Three Automated Parking Garages Totaling 43,000 SF for Sale | United States

With your permission we and our partners would like to use cookies in order to access and record information and process personal data, such as unique identifiers and standard information sent by a device to ensure our website performs as expected, to develop and improve our products, and for advertising and insight purposes.

Alternatively click on More Options and select your preferences before providing or refusing consent. Some processing of your personal data may not require your consent, but you have a right to object to such processing.

You can change your preferences at any time by returning to this site or clicking on 
Cookies

These cookies ensure that our website performs as expected,for example website traffic load is balanced across our servers to prevent our website from crashing during particularly high usage.

These cookies allow our website to remember choices you make (such as your user name, language or the region you are in) and provide enhanced features. These cookies do not gather any information about you that could be used for advertising or remember where you have been on the internet.

These cookies allow us to work with our marketing partners to understand which ads or links you have clicked on before arriving on our website or to help us make our advertising more relevant to you.

A New Video Reveals How a Traditional Japanese Noh Mask Emerges from a Block of Cypress

By in Art World News

A New Video Reveals How a Traditional Japanese Noh Mask Emerges from a Block of Cypress

Noh is the earliest theatrical art form in Japan and is still performed today. Developed in the 14th century, it often focuses on tales in which a supernatural being has transformed into a human and is narrated from the hero’s perspective. A core facet of the costumes is highly stylized Noh masks, which represent characters like deities, ghosts, and other figures, subtly emphasizing expression and emotion as their wearers turn in the light. A short documentary by Process X explores how the craft of carving the props by hand is kept alive by artisans like Mitsue Nakamura.

Starting with a block of Japanese cypress, Nakamura chisels the round face, eyes, nose, and teeth. Coated with a lacquer traditionally derived from crushed seashells mixed with glue, the form is then dried before being pierced on each side with a hot awl to tie strings through. The artist mixes pigments by hand to add color to the features, including blackening the teeth in a practice known as ohaguro, a fashion that was popular in Japan during the Heian period.

For some families and institutions, Noh carries a timeless and important legacy, and many historically significant and valuable masks, such as those made by the 15th-century Konparu school, are preserved in collections. “The term ‘face like a Noh mask’ is often used as a metaphor for expressionlessness, but the major characteristic of the world of Noh is that it expresses human feelings and inner thoughts rather than storytelling,” says Nakamura in a statement. “The better the mask is, the more the expression changes with a slight difference in angle.”

Process X frequently goes behind the scenes with makers and artisans, including in this video documenting the making of artistic manhole covers in Japan. (via Kottke)

 

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article A New Video Reveals How a Traditional Japanese Noh Mask Emerges from a Block of Cypress appeared first on Colossal.

Latin American Artists Reinvent Their Histories

By in Native

Latin American Artists Reinvent Their Histories
image

Our critic says “Chosen Memories” at MoMA is one of the most stirring recent collection shows. The theme of change and instability is a binding thread.

The land of the brave and home of the free has always been bearish about borders, about who gets in, who stays out. Politically we’re feeling that tension hugely now. And it’s always been evident culturally in, for example, the kind of art our museums have brought through the door.

The Museum of Modern Art’s long but sporadic pattern of collecting 20th century Latin American art offers a constructive gauge. Early in it favored art that it seemed to view as a species of exotica: folkloric, surreal, evidence that south of the border was wild, barely-modern terrain.

After World War II, with cultural exchange increasingly used as a diplomatic tool, MoMA wanted further engagement with new Latin American art, but now art of a kind that looked to be made by “people like us” — that is, work that appeared to carry clear evidence of European DNA, like geometric abstraction.

Then, in the 1970s came the global recession. Art markets went bust. And in the confusion, walls began to come down as the permission-giving shake-up called multiculturalism — pro-diversity, anti-essentialist — arrived.

More and more, as that initiating episode of what is sometimes called postmodernism recedes into history, it looks to be one of 20th century art’s finest, most germinative hours. MoMA has taken a long time — decades — to get on board with this, but is well along to judge by “Chosen Memories: Contemporary Latin American Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift and Beyond,” one the most stirring museum collection shows I’ve seen in New York in a while.

In the 1970s Patricia Phelps de Cisneros, a native of Venezuela and a longtime MoMA trustee, was already interested in Latin American art over a broad spectrum: Indigenous art; 19th-century work made by Europeans traveling there; hybrid colonial artifacts; and modernist painting and sculpture. In 2016, she gave the museum more than 100 modernist works, and there was a show. But already by then she had turned her attention to new art and in 2019 there was an even larger gift, this one of contemporary work, including photography and video.

In the “Catherwood Series,” Leandro Katz photographs himself holding up original images from Frederic Catherwood’s first look at ancient monuments, which established a romanticized vision of the “New World,” in front of the Maya monuments they depict. Leandro Katz

Some three dozen examples, most dating from the past three decades and supplemented by loans, make up the current show. And together they reflect — and critically reflect on — all the categories of Latin American art that interested her from the start.

For example, the complex history of colonialism, largely expunged from modernist abstraction, is brought into play in one of the exhibition’s earliest entries, “The Catherwood Project” by the Argentine artist Leandro Katz.

In the 1840s, the English artist Frederick Catherwood traveled twice to Central America and made drawings of Maya ruins there. Published as prints, his images gave the European public a first look at these ancient monuments and established a romanticized vision of the “New World” that persists into the tour-bus present. In his “Catherwood” series. Katz considers the accuracy of those images through on-the-spot comparisons: He photographs himself holding up the illustrator’s images in front of the Maya monuments they depict. Katz notes Catherwood’s manipulations, but also understands that he is inevitably adding his own distorting 20th-century view to a layered perceptual history.

Laura Anderson Barbata’s “Autorretrato,” from her series “Intercambios, Amazonas Venezuela (Exchanges, Amazonas Venezuela),” 1996–98, at MoMA. The Mexican-born artist learned from Yanomami people in the Venezuelan Amazon rainforest how they created canoes. In exchange she taught them papermaking. Laura Anderson Barbata

Indigenous culture, crucial to but underacknowledged by European modernism, is referred to repeatedly in the show. In 1996, the Mexican-born artist Laura Anderson Barbata spent time with Yanomami people in the Venezuelan Amazon rainforest learning, hands on, how they created their graceful canoes. In exchange for this instruction, she taught them papermaking. We see the fruits of reciprocity in the show: in a photograph, that Barbata has titled “Self-portrait,” of a hand-carved boat standing upright as if it had a life of its own; and in lissome drawings of Amazonian fauna and flora by the Yanomami artist Sheroanawe Hakihiiwe, all done on handmade fiber paper.

Some artists make a deft, playful thing of tradition. The Mexican artist Gabriel Kuri toys with notions of value, labor and consumer culture in his loom-woven image of a supermarket receipt. So does the Puerto Rico collective called “Las Nietas de Nonó,” composed of two sisters (Mulowayi Iyaye Nonó and Mapenzi Chibale Nonó) who, isolated during the pandemic, turned their daily life into a kind of back-to-basics hunter-gather picnic.

Gabriel Kuri’s “Untitled (Superama II),” 2005, a loom-woven image of a supermarket receipt, critiques ideas of labor and value, tradition and consumer culture.Gabriel Kuri

What’s taken seriously is something that most mainstream Western art doesn’t know what to do with anymore, but which multiculturism notably respected: spirituality. In a 2020 painting by the Dominican-born artist Firelei Báez, a powerful Afro-Caribbean female deity dances across and dominates a 16th-century European map of the Atlantic Ocean.

And in pencil drawings, the Colombian-Korean artist Gala Porras-Kim documents hundreds of textile fragment left, centuries ago, as temple offerings to the Mayan rain god and now preserved in an ethnological museum at Harvard University. Included in the show is a letter the artist wrote to the museum’s director asking her to release the offerings from their archival prison and permit them to turn to dust as their givers intended. Their perishability, she argues, is what made them powerful.

The theme of change and instability, here often framed as loss, is one of the show’s binding threads, and a complicated one. Historically, loss can be violent, as suggested in a fierce work by the always astonishing, go-for-broke Guatemalan performance artist Regina José Galindo. For a 2010 work called “Looting,” which addresses the extractive depredations of European colonialism on her mineral-rich homeland, she had a dentist in Guatemala fit eight of her teeth with fillings made of locally mined gold, and then asked a second dentist, in Europe, to remove the fillings, which are displayed as art in a vitrine.

Still from Paulo Nazareth’s video “Antropologia do Negro II (Black Anthropology II),” 2014, in which the artist lies half-buried under the remains of prisoners that he found stored in a police museum.Paulo Nazareth

Several works about loss are, like hers, politically loaded. A short video titled “Black Anthropology II” from 2014 by Paulo Nazareth is one. In it, the artist lies half-buried under piles of human skulls and bones, the remains of Afro-Brazilian prisoners that he found stored in a police museum in Bahia.

In a 1989 photograph titled “The Two Fridas,” the Chilean gay activists Francisco Casas Silva and Pedro Mardones Lemebel (1952-2015), pose, bare-chested and skirted, their bodies connected by IV tubing, in an AIDS-era riff on Kahlo’s famed double self-portrait.

Their picture can be read as a tribute to partnership, artistic, or affectional, or both. So can a jaunty little sculpture assembled from a music stand, a pair of garden shears, and a single rose, dedicated to a friend — a lover? — by the elusive Venezuelan polymath Claudio Perna (1938-1997).

There’s a memorial vibe to this piece, as there is to a 2009 video that was actually conceived as a gesture of mourning-in-advance by the Uruguayan artist Alejandro Cesarco. Titled “Present Memory” (2010) it’s a silent filmed portrait of Cesarco’s father, a doctor, made soon after he’d received a diagnosis of terminal lung cancer. We see the older man, with his elegant suit and extravagant mustache, sitting impassively in his office and being viewed repeatedly from various angles, as if to fix his features in our minds. Then the camera travels round the room, now empty. He’s gone.

Regina José Galindo’s “Looting,” 2010, eight gold fillings. The artist had a dentist in Guatemala fit eight of her teeth with fillings made of locally mined gold, and then asked a second dentist, in Europe, to extract the fillings.Regina Jose Galindo

Some fundamental tone of the show — organized by Inés Katzenstein, curator of Latin American Art at MoMA, and director of the Cisneros Research Institute, and Julia Detchon, a curatorial assistant — is distilled here: a kind of uneasy, ironic, reality-check melancholy that feels very different from the utopianism often attributed to Latin American art on the basis of the geometric abstract painting that has, until recently, defined it in many North American museum collections.

Actually, geometric abstraction has a presence, though an ambiguous one, in “Chosen Memories,” in the form of a site-specific mural painting by the Brazilian artist Iran do Espírito Santo. Composed entirely of vertical lines in subtly varying shades of gray, the painting is hard to see it first, like a passing shadow, or a dark smudge. It seems both to soil the white gallery wall and to dissolve it, to be either a meditational aid or a mistake. Titled “En Passant” and commissioned for the occasion, it will physically disappear when the show is done, but stay vivid as an idea, like much of the rest of what’s here.

Chosen Memories: Contemporary Latin American Art from the Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Gift and Beyond

Through Sept. 9, Museum of Modern Art, 11 East 53rd Street, (212) 708-9400; moma.org.

‘A very kind man with a big heart’: Community remembers University photographer Dan Sears

By in Photography

‘A very kind man with a big heart’: Community remembers University photographer Dan Sears

The walls of Karen Moon’s home are covered in photographs gifted to her by Dan Sears, a UNC alumnus, North Carolina native, former University photographer and photojournalist. 

Sears and Moon worked together at the University, but, beyond UNC, Sears was her friend.

One of his photographs, depicting fireworks glowing behind the Bell Tower, hangs above a bed in her spare room. She said that Sears gave it to her directly from the walls of his office.

image

Photo courtesy of Dan Sears/UNC-Chapel Hill. Fireworks explode behind the Morehead-Patterson Bell Tower on July 4, 1993.

Along her stairwell are photos he took on the backroads of North Carolina, distributed to friends to be used as postcards and, instead, carefully framed and hung above Moon’s banister.

Sears died on May 25, but his memory is preserved by the pictures he took and the close community he formed.

“Dan never met a stranger,” Jamie Moncrief, a close friend of Sears, said.

When he first met Sears, Moncrief was a student photographer at John T. Hoggard High School on the sidelines of basketball games. Together, they captured shots of a young Michael Jordan as he played for Emsley A. Laney High School. 

Sears captured the most iconic photos of Jordan’s high school basketball career, Moncrief said.

Sears was a photographer for the Wilmington StarNews at the time, though his career took him from The News Reporter in Whiteville, N.C., to the Associated Press, United Press International and UNC.

Sears gave Moncrief his first job after college as a photographer at the Wilmington StarsNews, where Sears was the photo editor.

“The biggest things he taught me as a photographer is be a person first and a photographer second,” Moncrief said. “And be genuinely interested in people and get to know them before you whip out your camera and try to capture their essence.”

Justin Smith is the publisher and editor of The News Reporter in Whiteville, a hometown he shares with Sears.

The two met in 2003, when Smith was Sears’ student assistant for his four years as a UNC student. Smith said that, along with his photography mentorship, Sears helped him feel more comfortable on such a large campus.

Sears engendered respect from those around him, according to Smith.

“You paid attention when Dan started talking,” Jon Gardiner, the current University photographer, said.

Sears had a way of making the subjects of his pictures comfortable, according to Patty Courtright, one of his friends and colleagues at the University Gazette, now called The Well.

He had a unique sense of how to portray people in a way that told their story and showed the best of who they were and what they did, she said.

“He just had such an ability to put people at ease, sometimes it was through humor or sometimes just through conversation,” she said.

One of the first characteristics peers used to describe Sears was his humor.

He was “bigger than life,” with a booming voice and laugh, and was the “king of the one-liners,” according to Moncrief. Still, he noted that Sear’s heart was as big as his personality and stature.

Sears was a volunteer and lifelong ham radio operator, according to Moncrief. 

Mike McFarland, one of Sears’ supervisors at UNC and friend, recalled how Sears and his wife would invite his daughters to come to his house in their Halloween costumes and how his wife made a cross stitch for one of their daughters when she was a baby.

McFarland said that he was “salt of the earth” and a very kind man with a big heart.

“Seeing what everybody else has been saying has made accepting this a little bit easier and joyous to read that so many people have been trying to pay tribute to Dan’s legacy, not just to Carolina, but just as a great human being,” he said.

Editor’s Note: Jon Gardiner, Justin Smith, Jamie Moncrief and Mike McFarland are former staffers of The Daily Tar Heel.

@eliza_benbow | @dailytarheel

university@dailytarheel.com

To get the day’s news and headlines in your inbox each morning, sign up for our email newsletters.

SUBSCRIBE NOW

CTHC launches Free Family Art days

By in Art World News

CTHC launches Free Family Art days

Summer art programs bring kids and families together across the county for creative engagement and this month, the Heritage Center will host its free art days every Monday.

The Chisholm Trail Heritage Center staff and volunteers will continue to engage with families each week to provide their annual Free Family Art Monday (FFAM) program to the community.

The FFAM program, which launched on June 5, is a free come and go event each Monday in June at the Heritage Center and is open to everyone.

The next FFAM will take place on June 12.

Each week of the program, all supplies are provided and families can complete a variety of art projects along with brief instructions.

Event and Marketing Coordinator Bailey Teakell said the theme for FFAM will focus on their “Diversity on the Trail” theme.

Teakell said their first FFAM went really well with 109 people participating in the event.

During the first art day, families created Native American projects to go along with the “Diversity on the Trail” theme.

“Participants made Native American headdresses and necklaces, as well as a bison head project,” she said. “All the participants seemed so excited to be here and making art.”

Teakell said they loved to see all of the creative moments with the families.

“A few participants even rushed up to us after finishing their projects to show us what they made,” she said.

During the event, CTHC hosted a photo opportunity where those attending were able to take pictures and pretend they were in a canoe.

Teakell said the upcoming projects are inspired by the life on the Chisholm Trail.

FFAM is located outside at the Heritage Center. In case of weather, CTHC may move festivities inside.

The Free Family Art Monday program is sponsored by Edward Jones Investments.

For more information about FFAM, call 580-252-6692 or email bailey@onthechisholmtrail.com.

«< 2477 2478 2479 2480 2481 >»