Immerse yourself in the vibrant and creative spirit of Whidbey Art Market’s holiday-opener event! This Thanksgiving weekend, Friday and Saturday, November 24 & 25 from 11 a.m.-4 p.m., pack your friends and relatives into the car and enjoy Thanksgiving weekend access to six private artist studios from Clinton to Greenbank. 

In total, fifteen professional Whidbey Island artists will be featured, with two or three at each of the six studios on the tour. A wide range of fine art mediums are represented, including sculpture, clay, wood, photography, basketry, glass, illustration, paintings, mixed media, digital collage, jewelry and fiber. This very special show offers a curated selection of each artist’s most recent and popular artwork. You’ll have the opportunity to meet each artist, learn about how their work is created, all in a holiday celebration atmosphere!

And if that weren’t enough, guests who visit all six studios and have their “show passports” validated at each location will be eligible for over $1000 in special prizes! Passport/punch cards will be available at each studio, and can also be downloaded in advance from the organization’s website. The grand prize is one night midweek at the Inn at Langley (a $500 value), first prize is dinner for two at Orchard Kitchen (a $350 value), and the runner-up will receive an artists’ surprise gift basket containing many artist-made small gifts, for yourself or for your own gift-giving (invaluable)!

The Whidbey Art Market tour route with studio addresses and an interactive online map can be found at the organization’s website www.whidbeyartmarket.com. The artists are looking forward to celebrating the season with you!

Whidbey Art Market  

Visit all six studios for a chance to win valuable prizes! Use our online interactive tour map at www.whidbeyartmarket.com or visit us at the following locations:

• 4311 Rollinghill Rd, Clinton
• 4683 Tompkins Rd, Langley
• 1804 Watkins Rd, Freeland
• 1461 Green Laurel Pl, Freeland
• 4721 Honeymoon Bay Rd, Freeland
• 3360 Old County Rd, Greenbank

Amid the commercial noise of the holiday season, a new initiative in Seattle offers a refreshing reminder of the power of intentional spending. Black Black Friday encourages residents to spend money at local, Black-owned small businesses, emphasizing the impact of every dollar spent in promoting a more equitable economy. The innovative movement leverages partnerships, community engagement, and creative marketing to build a program that could spread beyond Seattle, inspiring companies and individuals across the country to support Black business owners.

Black Black Friday is organized by Intentionalist, a company that helps people support local, diverse small businesses. Intentionalist partnered with Seattle-based creative agency DNA, and local credit union BECU to launch the Black Black Friday card and interactive directory of participating Black-owned businesses.

“From the beginning, Intentionalist has focused on closing the gap between our good intentions to support diverse local businesses and our ability to easily take action,” shared Laura Clise, CEO and founder of Intentionalist. “In the context of an American consumer culture focused on enabling us to swipe and click our way to immediate gratification, Black Black Friday reminds us that where we spend our money matters–that we can be intentional about who benefits from everyday decisions about where we eat, drink, and shop.”

To encourage and incentivize community members to “Spend Like It Matters”, the campaign offers the Black Black Friday Card, a digital or physical card featuring art by local Black artist Damon Brown. The card can be used exclusively at more than a hundred participating Black-owned businesses. Thanks to BECU’s support, card purchasers can enjoy a 20% discount, making it more accessible to shop at local, Black-owned businesses.

Alan Brown, the founder and chair of DNA, emphasized the importance of companies supporting diverse communities with more than just promises: “Black Black Friday is an opportunity for companies and brands to put their dollars where their promises have been, bringing more opportunities for growth and success to individuals and businesses that are the backbone of our community. And when they support Black Black Friday, it shows others in the community that they truly care about making an impact.”

One of the key stakeholders in the Seattle initiative is Douglas Baldwin Jr, former Seattle Seahawks Super Bowl champion and CEO of Vault89, who sees the potential for the initiative to grow beyond the Greater Seattle area: “As our country fights to change the cycle of excluding Black and Brown people from generational wealth creation, representation of that cycle being broken matters greatly. By shifting the spotlight to raise awareness that the American Dream is alive and well within the Black community, we are funneling vital investment and building a sense of belonging amongst a demographic that has been historically excluded from both.”

The response from Black small business owners has been strong. “The power of this exposure has been apparent,” shared Monika Matthews, Owner of QueenCare, who has already seen new customers and expanded sales through Black Black Friday. “This is the type of support that can pave the road to lift whole families out of poverty thru business ownership. We all know the statistics when it comes to the economic outlook within the Black community. Its bleak now, but by implementing solutions within key wealth building vehicles that affect bottom lines I believe we can slowly turn the page.”

Intentionalist designed Black Black Friday as not just a one-day holiday, but an ongoing economic justice call to action. The Black Black Friday Cards expire seven years after issuance, giving customers the opportunity to make every Friday a day to intentionally support local Black-owned businesses.

Authenticity is at the core of the initiative’s success, with the collaboration rooted in the community it seeks to engage. A Black Small Business Advisory Panel aided in the development of marketing and messaging strategies, ensuring that the benefits of the program reach the Black-owned brick-and-mortar small businesses at the heart of their neighborhoods. As Clise pointed out, “values-based, community-driven collaborations need to be rooted in the very community the partners seek to engage.”

The potential impact of Black Black Friday goes far beyond Seattle, as other communities may look to it as an example of how collaboration, authenticity, and creative marketing can support marginalized business owners. Encouraging intentional everyday decisions about where we spend our money can help advance racial equity and promote economic justice.

Many art shows were canceled in 2020 due to the pandemic, robbing a lot of artists of both community and income. In August 2020, a dedicated group of artists in central Illinois came together to put on their own shows. They call themselves Artists of the Corn.

Emily Bollinger

/

WGLT

Artists of the Corn just hosted its latest show Saturday and Sunday at Funk Farms Premium Beef in Shirley, called Shuckin’ Awesome Holiday Art Market, which is its 10th show overall.

“I love the idea that we are an artists-for-artists organizing group,” said co-organizer and artist Sarah Fleming.

After attending the Shuckin’ Awesome Holiday Art Market, Fleming said she wants young rural artists to be encouraged and see themselves in the art.

“We’re promoting Midwestern artists in a very Midwestern space,” Fleming said.

The market featured many different types of art, including glass blowing, ceramics, painting, and more. All 30-plus artists at the market were invite-only.

The artists

One of the artists, Kim Caisse, came all the way from Hannibal, Missouri, to showcase her artwork.

“For me, it’s nice that I can find some way to use the skills that I have to pay my bills,” said Caisse. “More important than that is that you find that your work touches people, and you get to see their reaction. You get to see that it’s important to them.”

Another artist at the market was Deana Bada Maloney, who hand-paints unique ceramic animals with ink. Maloney said artists are the purveyors of inspiration.

“I just think that it is such a gift to be able to inspire the community,” she said.

Emily Bollinger

/

WGLT

Maloney said she finds the act of making art to be very peaceful, despite the stress of preparing for a market like this.

“The challenge is always time, having enough time to make everything you want, and you never will,” said Maloney. “I’ve tried to let go of my anxiousness of wanting to have enough stuff.”

Caisse shares Maloney’s stress in preparing for an art market.

“It’s a lot of running around the house, scratching your head and going, ‘What am I doing?’” said Caisse, adding when she really gets herself parked in place, the process becomes fun and exciting.

Funky weekend

Co-organizer Fleming said the idea of this art market was to bring people together to enjoy a weekend of supporting local art and small businesses. The Shuckin’ Awesome Holiday Art Market was only one part of a larger weekend.

Ten locations spread out along historic Route 66 were part of the Artists of the Corn’s Have Yourself a Funky Little Weekend. From Shirley to Atlanta in Logan County, visitors could shop at local boutiques, wander museums, enjoy food, and support local artists.

Glassblower and co-organizer Brock Eddleman said their first art show at Funk Farms Premium Beef was so fantastic that the Artists of the Corn wanted to do more.

“[Fleming] had [her] idea to start to include local businesses out in the area and see if we could kind of synergize and turn it into something even bigger for the area,” said Eddleman.

The golden cob

Part of what makes the Shuckin’ Awesome Holiday Art Market unique, said Eddleman, is the notorious Golden Cob Award.

Emily Bollinger

/

WGLT

Eddleman said all the artists go around the art market and vote for the artist that moved them the most, had the most visual impact, was the most exciting, or just their favorite. The process is all very “hush-hush.”

On Saturday after all the patrons left, the artists gathered to see who won the Golden Cob Award. The winner from the previous year, Maloney, had been commissioned to make the Golden Cob Award trophy.

“The previous winner unveils their Golden Cob, and we announce who the winner is,” said Eddleman. The winner this year was ceramicist Cory McCrory of Sandwich.

“Everyone cries. Everyone cheers,” said Fleming.

Art markets

The artists and co-organizers said they love inspiring and taking inspiration from others at the art market.

“It’s a great group of people, and a great setting that I just find a lot of inspiration from,” Eddleman said.

Fleming added: “You feel it when you walk in the room. Everybody really appreciates each other, and are happy to be there.” Art is more than just what is in galleries, said Fleming. “Art is a job.”

The job of being an artist is important to both art patrons and artists themselves.

“I never would have guessed in a million years that my art would be so important to someone. So you just have to get out there and see what happens, and it’s exciting,” said Caisse.

Eddleman said Artists of the Corn have plans to continue art markets in the future, so art-lovers should be on the lookout for bad corn puns — and more art.

In 2018, when their portraits of former President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama were unveiled at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Kehinde Wiley and Amy Sherald were thrust into the spotlight. The portraits were formally installed in the White House in 2022, when filmmaker Christine Turner’s documentary short, “Paint & Pitchfork,” also debuted on The New Yorker.

Turner was approached by LACMA to profile the renowned American artists, giving them “the same reverence, dignity, and respect” that they afford their own sitters. In the short film, Sherald and Wiley discuss their first interactions with art and what compelled them to paint people.

Both artists have dedicated their practices to reframing Western European portraiture traditions that have historically excluded representations of Black people. For Sherald, this is a matter of portraying Black figures during pastimes and everyday scenes, expressing comfort, leisure, and joy (previously).

In the film, Sherald says, “A question that I’ve been asked often is, will you ever paint anybody other than Black people? And my answer is, no, I won’t. Because the image of whiteness has been perpetuated beautifully throughout history, so you don’t really need my help. Like I’m here to paint my own ideal and to represent that in the world. And if I can’t do that, then something is deeply wrong.”

For Wiley, painting involves examining the symbolism of power and prestige of Grand Manner portraiture (previously), positioning Black figures on horseback, wielding staffs, and standing in front of ornate decor. “Portraiture is about the resistance of death. But painting is also about the style of living that you want to live,” he says. In a later segment, he shares that his approach to painting is two things at the same time: “There’s the desire for acceptability. And then there’s the desire for revolution. I’m carrying both paint and pitchfork.”

Learn more about Christine Turner’s work on her website. And if you haven’t yet, check out our interview with Amy Sherald from earlier this year.

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 In a Documentary Short, Amy Sherald and Kehinde Wiley Wield ‘Paint & Pitchfork’ in the Studio appeared first on Colossal.

BURLINGTON, Vt. (WCAX) – Local artists are reckoning with selling art amid Burlington’s homeless crisis.

Burlington’s Winter Market kicked off over the weekend in City Hall Park. The annual market features two dozen vendors selling homemade crafts, food and drinks.

This is Holly Bahnsen’s third year selling jewelry at the market. She relies on holiday shoppers to make a living. But she can’t help but think of the unhoused frequenting City Hall Park on the outskirts of the market, who multiply each year.

“There’s the interesting duality of some people just recreating and then some people who don’t have a choice,” Bahnsen pointed out.

Bahnsen adds to a larger conversation about who gets to enjoy City Hall Park and who’s stuck there. This tension is particularly obvious in the winter when those with a home can enjoy the chill on their own terms.

The Winter Market runs every weekend until Dec. 23. Until then, Bahnsen hopes the homeless can enjoy the heaters and fires placed around the market, and perhaps use the vendor booths for shelter at night.

Copyright 2023 WCAX. All rights reserved.

TORONTO, Nov. 20, 2023 /CNW/ – CIBC today announced that it is now accepting submissions for its 2024 C² Art Program. The C² Art Program is an initiative designed to help emerging artists make their ambitions a reality with a unique paid opportunity to create and curate their art. The completed artwork will then be exhibited for three months at CIBC’s headquarters, CIBC SQUARE.

Program overview:

• Applications are open to Canadian artists with two to 10 years of experience.
• Selected artists will each be awarded a grant of $25,000 plus an additional $5,000 for material costs, over a of six-month period.
• During the six-month period, the artists will create a series of works which will be exhibited in a solo exhibition for each artist at CIBC SQUARE.
• Artists will receive an all-expenses paid trip to Toronto to attend the opening reception.
• Application due date: 11:59 am EST, January 3, 2024

“We are excited to announce the second year of our C² Art Program,” said Claudette Knight, Vice-President, Workplace Design and Experience, CIBC. “By investing in these artists and providing a space to exhibit their work, we continue to support our commitment to fostering the ambitions of the creative community.”

Last year’s winners were Toronto, ON-based interdisciplinary artist, curator and designer, Maya Skarzenski and London, ON-based artist and educator, Mike Pszczonak.

CIBC invites all artists interested in submitting their artwork for selection to learn more by visiting the CIBC C2 Art website.

About CIBC 

CIBC is a leading North American financial institution with 13 million personal banking, business, public sector and institutional clients. Across Personal and Business Banking, Commercial Banking and Wealth Management, and Capital Markets businesses, CIBC offers a full range of advice, solutions and services through its leading digital banking network and locations across Canada, with offices in the United States and around the world. Ongoing news releases and more information about CIBC can be found at www.cibc.com/ca/media-centre.

SOURCE CIBC

© Canada Newswire, source Canada Newswire English

Ohio Wesleyan Professors Weave Art and Science Together in Team-Taught Course

By Cole Hatcher

Two Ohio Wesleyan University professors have developed a unique way to weave learning into a class that combines their diverse areas of expertise – Mathematics & Computer Science and Fine Arts.

Professors Craig Jackson, Ph.D., and Jeff Nilan, MFA, have created a digitally controlled Jacquard loom. The customized, computerized device creates intricate fabrics by using up to 400 miniature “servo” motors to precisely control the warps and wefts of the weaving process. The loom allows the professors to expand their focus on textile processes in their team-taught Generative Art 200.4 course.

‘New and Exciting Area’

“We believe that using woven textiles as a medium for generative art is a new and exciting area for research, teaching, and artistic practice,” the professors say. “Very few artists are working at this intersection of generative design and textiles.”

When creating generative art, they explain, artists deliberately cede control over a significant aspect of their work to an external agent.

“Having access to a Jacquard loom greatly increases the control the weaver has over their design,” Jackson and Nilan state. “What we are interested in, however, is the ability a Jacquard loom gives an artist to relinquish control over their design. The artist still sits at the loom and weaves the textile, but the computer program dictates the design. So, we are exploring the use of generative design principles made possible by having a Jacquard loom that can be digitally controlled via a computer.”

In their class, OWU students work to create generative art across a range of 2-dimensional media, including textiles produced using the Jacquard loom. Housed in Haycock Hall, the loom also provides Fine Arts students with “a hands-on example of the use of digital microcontrollers in the production and installation of art,” the professors state, “an entire area of artistic practice (previously) unavailable to our students.”

A Successful Collaboration

Their collaboration already has resulted in Jackson and Nilan presenting at two professional conferences: In-person at Generative ART XXIV in Cagliari, Italy, and online at the 20th Annual STS Conference Graz, “Critical Issues in Science, Technology and Society Studies,” held in Graz, Austria. The OWU professors also have authored a peer-reviewed paper, “A Collaborative, Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Course on Generative Art,” published by the Graz University of Technology.

They earned an OWU Thomas E. Wenzlau Grant in 2022 to design and build the loom. The project, completed this fall, took longer than anticipated because of the time required to design and build a one-off device that incorporates hundreds of moving parts, said Jackson, who installed all the motors. They are a critical component of the loom, he explained, because they can be positioned at any rotational angle between 0 and 180 degrees via remote control, allowing creation of the intricate textiles.

The team-taught course furthers goals for both Fine Arts and Mathematics & Computer Science departments, Jackson and Nilan say, adding textile design opportunities for aspiring artists while enhancing the hands-on, applied offerings available to future mathematicians and computer scientists. The digital loom project already has led to the beginning of a small weaving studio in Haycock Hall with four looms and plans for dying yarn with natural dyes.

Exploring What’s Going to Happen

Elsa Hoam ’27 of Fredericktown, Ohio, is one of the students working with the Jacquard loom. Although she’s not enrolled in the generative art class, she learned about the project from Nilan when she toured campus as a prospective student. She asked about the project this fall, and Nilan invited her to help.

“I’d done some weaving by hand and on smaller looms, and just the idea of this new exploration with a large loom and hands-on experience with it really excited me,” said Hoam, a double major in Business Administration (Marketing concentration) and Studio Art.

“I think it’s kind of interesting because I don’t really have to think too hard about what’s happening,” she said. “It’s more I’m exploring what’s going to happen. It’s kind of like finding a new place. You just don’t know what’s going to come out of it, but it’s always exciting to see what’s going to happen.”

Tera Berko ’27 of Westerville, Ohio, also is working with the digitally controlled loom. “I’ve just always liked fabric, and I sew. So, I heard about the loom project and I was like, ‘close enough,’” said Berko, a double major in Pre-Medicine and Psychology. “It’s a huge learning experience and I’m thankful for what I learn through it.”

Learn more about these Ohio Wesleyan areas of study at owu.edu/FineArts and owu.edu/math.

From the mid-1800s to the 1930s, father-and-son artist duo Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka crafted thousands of glass models of flora and fauna (previously) in exquisite, scientific detail. Sea creatures were an area of particular fascination, as delicate spines, tentacles, and frills rendered in lifelike color extend from the bodies of squid and sea anemones. And at the Mystic Seaport Museum, a major exhibition of more than 40 of the remarkable specimens come to life in Spineless: A Glass Menagerie of Blaschka Marine Invertebrates.

Spineless dives into the history of the Blaschkas’ extraordinary contributions to scientific education, starting with the elder artist’s fascination with ocean life. Leopold was inspired to recreate specimens he saw in the wild and successfully completed a commission for a nearby natural history museum in the 1850s. He realized there was a demand for lifelike versions of creatures that scientists found challenging to preserve and document, and the glass variety required no special jars or chemical treatments to keep them looking as good as new.

Leopold found his audience in universities and museums around the world, establishing a mail-order business to ship the fragile pieces to institutions where they were used for teaching or put on display. Eventually joined by his son, the two “relied on their relationships with scientists, along with observations of live specimens held in aquariums, wet specimens, books, and scientific journals,” the Mystic Seaport Museum says in a statement.

The Blaschkas are also known for their fifty-year endeavor to make 4,300 models that represent 780 plant species, comprising the Ware Collection of Blaschka Glass Models of Plants, which you can visit at Harvard Museum. Spineless continues in Mystic, Connecticut, through September 2024. Plan your visit and discover more on the museum’s website.

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 Remarkably Realistic Marine Invertebrates Made of Glass Surface at the Mystic Seaport Museum appeared first on Colossal.

Photo: Tina Gallo Photography

Amanda Obering was five or six when she moved with her mother from Denver to Soho. She remembers feeling “a little disappointed” when she first walked into 69 Wooster Street “because it was sort of dilapidated.” The neighborhood, which in 1971 was still mostly industrial and mostly empty, struck her as spooky. (One of the nearby factories made sheets of dolls’ eyes.) But her mother, the abstract painter Mary Obering, only saw potential.

Mary, who moved to New York at the urging of minimalist sculptor Carl Andre and went on to show at Artists Space, the Whitney Biennale, and with gallerists Annina Nosei and Bortolami, bought the apartment for $10,000 and lived and worked there for 51 years. It listed for sale this month for $5.6 million.

Photo: Tina Gallo Photography

The space — an expanse of just under 4,600 square feet, with 11.5-foot ceilings — was divided into two halves, a studio and living quarters. Amanda learned to love it. The loft was a wonderful place to make art. And to grow up. “I used to skateboard in the apartment — that’s around the time skateboarding was really taking off,” she says. There was also a basketball hoop. “She drew the line at soccer, though, after the ball hit one of her paintings.”

Working artists’ lofts are rare in SoHo these days. “The neighborhood just boomed,” Amanda says. “By the late ’80s, it was really chic. Now there’s a Gucci next door.” And while Compass associate broker Nick Ferrone says that some creatives have looked at the apartment, which is in an artist-in-residence building, it’s almost certain to get an upscale overhaul in keeping with the neighborhood’s current demographic. “It’s an estate sale in estate condition.”

Photo: Tina Gallo Photography

True, the kitchen is a nook and half the apartment is still set up as a studio, but all the charm is there: pressed tin ceilings, hardwood floors, and ten large windows facing East. There’s also an elevator with keyed entry. “It’s beautifully done,” says Amanda. “My mother really had a sense of aesthetics. She tried to preserve the look of the factory it had been. In the 1990s, it was in Greek Vogue.”

Photo: Tina Gallo Photography

As a child, Amanda had the larger bedroom. “She gave me the biggest room so I would stay out of her studio,” she says. The room was pink, then purple, then beige. (“It was the ’80s.”) After she left for college, her mother painted it green and set it up as a library with built-in bookshelves.

”My mother didn’t buy it as an investment,” Amanda says. “She bought it as a place to do her work.” And yet it was. The apartment downstairs sold for $9.9 million in 2021 — it was renovated, albeit in a highly idiosyncratic fashion, with an all-gold bathroom. The penthouse is currently listed for $32 million. As for the A.I.R. designation, Ferrone says it’s mostly an issue when it comes to getting a mortgage, but that’s not often a sticking point here. “A lot of these sales in SoHo are all cash.”