Spring has arrived and that means the Dennos Museum Center’s second annual Spring Art Market is nearly here.
Museum Matters: Spring is here and so is the DMC Spring Art Market
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The ‘visual delights’ of The Floating World at Joe McCauley Gallery
Joe McCauley Gallery’s current exhibit highlights four artists with varying degrees of influence from Japanese art and culture, including a printmaker and textile artist working in central Illinois.
A Beginner’s Guide to Portrait Photography With One Light
If you look at the work of professional portrait photographers, it can be easy to be fooled into thinking that it is not possible to create high-level images with just a single light. This could not be further from the truth, though. If you are new to working with artificial light, check out this fantastic video tutorial that will show you how to shoot compelling portraits using just one light and a portable modifier.
Coming to you from Jiggie Alejandrino, this excellent video tutorial will show you how to shoot portraits using a single light. If you are just starting out with artificial light, it is better to start out with one light. Lighting really comes down to mastering a few technical concepts (such as source size or subject distance) and manipulating these to fit your creative vision. When you are learning, it is much easier to see the results of different changes and to build that knowledge if you are working with a single light. Once you master this, you will find your proficiency with multiple lights will come fairly naturally. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Alejandrino.
If you would like to continue learning about how to light a portrait, be sure to check out “Illuminating The Face: Lighting for Headshots and Portraits With Peter Hurley!”
cc-tapis Presents an Array of New Rug Collections at Milan Design Week
cc-tapis, Italian producer of contemporary handmade artisan rugs, continues to collaborate with some of the best talents in design. During Milan Design Week 2023, several groundbreaking techniques and design approaches were introduced that further expand possibilities within the industry. New collaborations with Formafantasma and Objects of Common Interest, alongside 2023 collections by Patricia Urquiola and Bethan Laura Wood made their debut. There was also a site-specific installation at Chiesa di San Celso that featured the Le Arcs collection by Charlotte Perriand, finally brought to life.
Moiré Collection
In Moiré, Objects of Common Interest – Eleni Petaloti and Leonidas Trampoukis – shares its take on the natural moiré-like patterns that can be found in the grain and rings of wood, erosion, and decomposition. The collection juxtaposes the contemporary, the traditional, and the experimental through the visuals the duo observed in nature. OoCI combined these studies with three unconventional monochromatic shapes that expand in all directions, acting as an ever-evolving pattern.
Moire, Objects of Common Interest Photo: Michele Foti Art Direction: Motel 409
In a first for cc-tapis, a complex two-century-old jacquard technique was brought into play that’s rarely used in rug making. The method was used to create three rug designs: Zig-zag, Splash, and Quadratic. “The three shapes are almost like cutouts of an endless landscape, frozen moments in time, samples extracted to be studied up close,” said Petaloti and Trampoukis.
The design reflects light, an effect achieved by combining wool and Tencel – a sustainable fiber which has a shine similar to silk. Jacquard weaving allows for designs which would be near impossible to create using cc-tapis’ Tibetan hand-knotting techniques, making Moiré a reality.
Moire, Objects of Common Interest Photo: Mattia Greghi
Telegram Collection, Formafantasma Photo: Michele Foti Art Direction: Motel 409
Telegram Collection
Formafantasma introduces its Telegram collection of rugs, woven with personal messages chosen by the rug makers themselves. Beyond the handmade aspect, these rugs call out the individual behind the creation.
“We wanted to remove the veil between us and the makers,” said Formafantasma’s Simone Farresin and Andrea Trimarchi. “It’s the beginning of a dialogue, instead of merely a finished product.”
Telegram Collection, Formafantasma Photo: Michele Foti Art Direction: Motel 409
Formafantasma posed several questions to the artisans: Where they come from, what they see out the window as they work, a favorite band, and more – which revealed personal aspects of each craft person’s life that became motifs. Using a restrained color palette, each rug represents names, places, and thoughts that each maker holds dear.
Telegram Collection, Formafantasma Photo: Mattia Greghi
Pipeline Collection, Patricia Urquiola Photo: Michele Foti Art Direction: Motel 409
Pipeline Collection
Patricia Urquiola reveals her Pipeline collection of digitally generated tubular artwork that has been transformed into artisan-made rugs and wall hangings. A series of connected tubes emerge from the surface of each rug, creating a maze of color with plenty of volume and depth. Circular shapes create movement, overlapping layers of Himalayan wool and highlighting the space outlined by the tubes.
Artisans rethought the original Pipeline designs for both horizontal and vertical applications, blurring the line between design and art. Some tubes all but grow from the surface of through pile heights!
Pipeline Collection, Patricia Urquiola Photo: Mattia Greghi
Pipeline Collection, Patricia Urquiola Photo: Mattia Greghi
Guadalupe Collection, Bethan Laura Wood Photo: Michele Foti Art Direction: Motel 409
Guadalupe Collection
Bethan Laura Wood debuts her Guadalupe collection, inspired by the 1974 stained-glass windows of the famed church of Our Lady of Guadalupe located in Mexico City. Using her own archive of “public patterns” collected during travels, Wood applies color, texture, symbols, and detail to capture the graphic shapes of the church’s stained-glass windows. Rhythmic and expressive, the patterns loosely resemble tradition Otomi embroidery on each hand-knotted piece made with Himalayan wool, linen, silk, and aloe.
Guadalupe Collection, Bethan Laura Wood Photo: Mattia Greghi
Guadalupe Collection, Bethan Laura Wood Photo: Mattia Greghi
Les Arcs Collection, Charlotte Perriand Photo: Alejandro Ramirez Orozco
Les Arcs Collection
Designed by Charlotte Perriand in 1972, this collection is finally having its moment. Created for the Les Arcs ski station in the French Alps, she intended to include textile panels in the interiors, but budgetary constraints nixed the plan. After 50+ years, cc-tapis worked with custodians of the Charlotte Perriand archive to give life to the designs.
Color is the central theme, and cc-tapis was challenged in reproducing Perriand’s 12-shade palette. Each color – with the exceptions of black and white – was created by hand using an abrash dying technique. The collection of five knotted rugs were made entirely by hand in Nepal by Tibetan artisans.
Les Arcs Collection, Charlotte Perriand Photo: Alejandro Ramirez Orozco
Presented in the San Celso church, Milan-based curator and set-designer Michela Croci, took advantage of the church inviting visitors to engage in the space from the floor to ceiling, introducing a new perspective on rugs. “My ambition was to work on a purely imaginative level, elevating the rugs from a purely domestic dimension,” Croci said.
To learn more about cc-tapis and the brand’s latest collections, visit cc-tapis.com.
Photographer’s Moody Landscapes Capture the Harsh Winter in Finland
A photographer has sought to celebrate the cold, harsh landscape of his native Finland in a series of ethereal photos.
Mikko Lagerstedt’s breathtaking photos capture the Nordic country’s bleakness, emphasizing the brisk conditions.
Lagerstedt calls his series In the Solitude, a project he shot over “the last couple of years” on a Nikon Z7 II with a Nikkor Z 14-24mm f/2.8 S and a Nikkor Z 24-70mm f/2.8.
“While capturing landscapes, I try to be open and look for elements that evoke a sense of curiosity in me,” Lagerstedt tells PetaPixel.
“I’m drawn to scenes with a strong visual impact, whether a single tree in a vast landscape or through the interplay of light and shadows, unique weather conditions, or compelling compositions.”
Lagerstedt says that most of his photos are “straight,” the only composite, called Infinite, features the aurora lights.
“My editing process primarily involves using Adobe Lightroom with my preset system and, occasionally, Photoshop,” he says.
“I focus on enhancing the atmosphere and mood with different colors. I aim to create visually and emotionally captivating photographs that follow my style in editing.”
Lagerstedt scouts locations in advance, and even traveled to Swedish Lapland for a few of the photos, but he allows for spontaneity.
“I also try to embrace unexpected opportunities. Being open to the moment often leads to the most captivating images,” he says.
“Recently I’ve been more open to allowing myself to be a complete beginner and seeing the sceneries in a different light.”
Finland is a country famous for winter, and Lagerstedt believes its unique landscapes are often overlooked in photography.
“The title In the Solitude reflects the quiet, introspective nature of the landscapes I sometimes capture with a person to emphasize the feeling of scale,” he says.
“These scenes evoke a sense of peaceful solitude but also show how a storm can bring isolation—inviting viewers to pause and reflect on the beauty, stillness, and power of the surrounding world.”
More of Lagerstedt’s work can be found on his website, Facebook, and Instagram.
Image credits: All photos by Mikko Lagerstedt.
Southern Hotel to screen Covington filmmaker and photographer’s sugar cane film Sub hed: Ticket sale proceeds to benefit St. Tammany Art Association
As soon as Covington filmmaker and photographer Andrew Boyd met Joe Judice, he knew there was a story worth telling about the retired sugar cane farmer and his family.
It is a family that has farmed sugar cane in St. Martin Parish for seven generations, beginning in 1800.
“You spend a career meeting and filming and photographing people, and you know a good story when you see one. This looked like a great story,” said Boyd, a former Times-Picayune photographer who now runs his own photography and videography company, G. Andrew Boyd LLC.
Boyd has told that story in “Sugar in Their Blood,” a self-funded documentary.
Through interviews with both the Judice family and sugar cane experts, the hourlong film reflects both on the family’s farming history and the current challenges they — and the Louisiana sugar cane industry as a whole — consistently face to stay in business. It’s a story of pride and resilience in the face of constantly changing conditions, both in terms of business and climate, according to its promotional materials.
“One of the questions that gets asked early in the film and doesn’t get answered until the end is what the future holds. Will there be an eighth generation? And what the challenges are to farm sugar cane these days,” Boyd said.
“Sugar in Their Blood” debuted to a sold-out crowd earlier this year at the 18th Annual Cinema on the Bayou, a juried film festival in Lafayette, where it won the Best Louisiana Film award.
“It was so gratifying because my farmers were all at the opening, and I felt like I had done them justice, to have it seen and accepted and awarded that way,” Boyd said.
Northshore audiences will get a chance to see the film during two screenings May 6 and 7 at The Southern Hotel in Covington. Proceeds from the ticket sales will benefit the St. Tammany Art Association.
Boyd had not set out to create a film about sugar cane farming. But that changed after talking with his friend Chris Dautreuil about filming a sugar cane farm for another documentary filmmaker.
“Chris immediately said, ‘I’ve got a guy you need to meet’,” Boyd recounted.
Dautreuil, now a Covington resident, played high school baseball with Judice and connected the farmer and the filmmaker.
Judice and his brother, Robert, started Judice Brothers Farms, located in the country between Loreauville and New Iberia, in 1964. When Robert retired in 1993, his son Robert Jr., joined the operation. When Judice retired in 2011, his sons, Jim and Justin, joined Robert Jr. in running the farm, which totals more than 2,600 acres.
After their initial meeting, Judice gave Boyd permission to come back and film the farm’s operations.
“I went home, and I did a bunch of Google research and realized there really wasn’t a good story that showed what (modern-day) sugar cane farming is all about ….It was not something that had really been covered in the way this would allow me to cover it,” Boyd said. “From day one, this was a real passion project for me.”
Boyd’s passion for photography began as a young adult “through an interest in the outdoors,” he said, describing how on a hiking trip with a friend, he shot images with a point-and-shoot camera.
When they didn’t turn out how he hoped, the Jackson, Miss., native decided to invest in better camera equipment. He took journalism classes at Loyola University while attending Tulane University, which at the time did not have a journalism program.
Boyd joined the photography team at the newspaper in 1977 and began shooting videos along with still photography for the paper’s website, www.nola.com, around the time Hurricane Gustav hit Louisiana in 2008.
“I was just entranced with what you could do once sound became part of your toolbox and actual moving pictures became part of your toolbox. That all just fascinated me and seemed like a powerful new way to tell stories,” said Boyd, who left the Times-Picayune in 2018 to start his company that creates still photography and videos for clients.
To create “Sugar in Their Blood,” he spent from January 2019 to January 2020 filming a complete farming cycle. He visited the farm at least once a month, documenting the “downtime” in January and February when equipment is repaired, the planting of sugar cane and soybeans (the farm’s bumper crop) in spring, and the harvest in the late fall and early winter when the sugar cane stalks are cut. The film also shows the cane being processed in the local sugar mill.
Along the way, Boyd interviewed Judice, known as the family’s patriarch, and the younger generations about the family’s history and its future. He rode in tractor cabs during the cutting of the sugar cane and used drones (he is an FAA-licensed drone pilot) to film both the fields and the sugar mill.
“You got an up-close look at what’s involved, and these are great guys, too,” Boyd said.
Photographer’s decade-long, 600,000-mile journey shows Indigenous life in new book
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Professor emerita Henrietta Mann (Cheyenne), a pioneer in Native American studies, received a National Humanities Medal from President Biden in 2021. The White House citation honors Mann “for dedicating her life to strengthening and developing Native American education.”
Matika Wilbur
Photographer Matika Wilbur was tired of seeing one-dimensional, insipid, degrading depictions of Native Americans in mainstream media and popular culture. So in 2012, Wilbur, who is of Swinomish and Tulalip descent, decided to create her own catalog of images.
She sold everything in her Seattle apartment and, with Kickstarter backing, headed out on the road, cameras in hand. Her goal: To illustrate Native Americans’ diversity and complexity by photographing members of all of the then-562 federally-recognized U.S. tribes.
Sisters Isabella and Alyssa Klain of the Diné tribe, photographed outside Salt Lake City, Utah.
Matika Wilbur
Matika Wilbur, pictured here in a self portrait, describes her work as a narrative correction.
Matika Wilbur
Ten years, 600,000 miles, and several vehicles later, Wilbur has published her work – portraits and interviews – in a stunning new book: Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America. Over hundreds of pages, we meet Native elders, rappers, professors, artists, activists, linguists, dancers, ranchers, comedians, and more.
“In a lot of ways, this work is narrative correction work,” Wilbur said. “When I was talking to folks, I was aiming to understand, ‘What are some of the true stories about your people that you want people to know?'”
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Artist and filmmaker Holly Mititquq Nordlum (Iñupiaq) is helping to revitalize the tradition of Iñupiaq tattoos. A woman’s chin tattoos – tavlugun – “are markers of her life and the celebration of her milestones,” she told Wilbur. “I’m wearing my lineage on my face.”
Matika Wilbur
The sketch comedy troupe The 1491s “use slapstick and satire in performances that unpack stereotypes, debunk racism, raid contemporary culture,” Wilbur writes. Pictured left to right: Bobby Wilson (Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota), Ryan RedCorn (Wazhazhe), Sterlin Harjo (Seminole, Muscogee [Creek] Nation), and Migizi Pensoneau (Ponca, Ojibwe.) Not pictured: Dallas Goldtooth (Mdewakanton Dakota, Diné)
Matika Wilbur
Rapper Frank Waln (Sicangu Lakota) told Wilbur that personal sovereignty extends to his own body: “I grow my hair long and wear braids. It’s more about not fitting into the colonial gender binaries.”
Matika Wilbur
In her interviews with the people she photographed, they shared stories about the lasting effects of colonization and relocation; about environmental destruction done to Native lands; and about the traumatic experience of those who had been taken from their homes as children and sent to Indian boarding schools to be “assimilated,” forced to give up their language and Native identity.
But along with those painful conversations, Wilbur said, she also heard “the best parts: how we’ve healed from that, and what our people are doing to move forward, and to develop healthy and strong and thriving Indigenous nations.”
Matika Wilbur dedicates Project 562 to her daughter Alma Bee, who was one year old when this photo was taken. Alma Bee is standing along the coast of Washington State on traditional homelands of the Tulalip tribe, with Swinomish land in the background, both reflecting her ancestry.
Matika Wilbur
Wilbur dedicates Project 562 to her daughter Alma Bee, now three years old, with these words:
May your children hear and breathe the words of our Indigenous ancestors. May we all be so lucky to know an Indigenous future.
Photos reprinted with permission from Project 562: Changing The Way We See Native America by Matika Wilbur © 2023. Photographs by Matika Wilbur © 2023. Published by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
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Photographer Davailus to present at Weatherford Art Association
The Weatherford Art Association will showcase photographer Carmen Davailus May 22 for her presentation, “Rock Your Social Media by Being Yourself” from 6 to 7:45 p.m. at Barlow Hall, 125 S. Waco St. in Weatherford.
Carmen Davailus is a fine art/lifestyle photographer who learned the hard way about social media marketing and then helped many other entrepreneurs show up for themselves. As she puts it, “Social media marketing can be a scary thing. We need to show up when we really just want to make our art. It should be about our art and not ourselves, right? What can we do to make and sell more art without it being painful?”
Learn more about this artist at www.carmensfineart.com.
Weatherford Art Association is a non-profit 501© (3) corporation that promotes the growth of art appreciation among members and the public through community education, instructional demonstrations and lectures plus public display and sales of member artwork. The group welcomes students, single adult and family memberships and includes beginning and seasoned artists in all 2-D and 3-D media. Regular meetings are held every fourth Monday of each month except December. Learn more about Weatherford Art Association at weatherfordart.com.
The Aquarel Collection Interprets Watercolor Through Stone Surfaces
A material used in architecture for its strength and durability is unexpectedly paired with another that’s equally as delicate. In the new Aquarel Collection, designed by Patricia Urquiola for Budri, classic Roman travertine and Iranian white onyx are brought together to interpret watercolor “paintings.” Transparencies and pastel nuances are at play here, expressing a contemporary feel that helps to enhance the surfaces of the stone while contrasting with its porosity. A skillful combination of warm tones that fade to cool and back again becomes its own canvas.
“Every project born with Budri is the result of a four-handed research, a creative gymnasium that always leads us to new languages that I would never have imagined could be created with marble,” said architect and designer Patricia Urquiola. “With Aquarel, we started from the symbiosis between a widely used material in architecture, such as Travertine, and the delicate transparency of white Onyx. Exploring how these materials dialogue together, we have created a game of transparencies, contrasts, but also of chromatic nuances and harmonious coexistence.”
The Aquarel Collection was introduced at Salone del Mobile during Milan Design Week 2023 earlier this month, consisting of two dining tables, a low table, a screen, and a wall cladding, as well as the Aquarel artwork and accessories that pair well with the tables. Both dining tables feature a large sculptural, monumental base. The large Living Table Aquarel is made of open-pore, sandblasted, classic Roman travertine with a large rectangular top. Its base comprises four geometric elements in travertine that are perforated by delicate cylinders in pink onyx. The Pierce is a circular table, characterized by its extra-clear glass top on a travertine base perforated by a mint green Onyx cylinder. The Aquarel Low Table also features a circular top, made of Iranian Aquarel white onyx in shades of pink, peach, and green. A metal, light green tray acts as its base.
Aquarel Paravent is a screen formed by four slabs of Iranian Aquarel white onyx and four slabs of open-pore travertino classico Romano marble, supported by cylinders in Lasa Covelano marble. The volumes of this piece allow the marble and onyx to express their charming unpredictability. The large Tartan wall cladding is inspired by the traditional Scottish fabric, but this dynamic version has been reinterpreted in pastels on a background of Alba Chiara marble featuring green and brick-colored veins.
The installation for the Budri showroom in Milan included a large Aquarel artwork at the entrance to the space. Made using a travertine background, the exercise between using different materials is united by the watercolor shades created by Budri.
“My work is often based on observation. In fact, I am always careful to analyze the material we work with, not only from the point of view of the colors, but also of the emotions it manages to transmit. Observing the slabs of Iranian white onyx and placing my hand behind it, I realized how uneven the transparency of this material is,” shared Alessandra Malagoli Budri, Art Director of Budri. “This apparently negative aspect allowed me instead to experiment with the onyx, drawing inspiration from watercolor painting. In this way, incredible nuances of colors are created, which vary according to the natural cloudiness of this wonderful stone. Inspirations often arise by chance and the most beautiful thing in all of this is discovering the unpredictability of this fantastic material.”
To learn more about the Aquarel Collection, visit budri.com.
Campaign Trail: DoorDash proves McDonald’s food is iconic
