Tag Archives: drawing

Vija Celmins

Posted on January 13, 2020 by

Vija Celmins (pronounced VEE-ja SELL-mins) was born in 1938 in Riga, capital of Latvia. Fleeing the Soviet invasion of 1944, her family immigrated to the United States in 1948. She earned an undergraduate art degree in Indiana and an M.F.A … Continue reading →

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Drawing in Jail

Posted on October 22, 2019 by

Hilarie M. Sheets writes an article about how people have coped with incarceration by drawing (“For the Incarcerated, Drawing Is a Lifeline,” NYTimes, 9-20-19). What interests me on the margins of this interesting article is the innocent tell favoring depiction … Continue reading →

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“Storm With a Silent Mist”

Posted on September 5, 2019 by

Isabel Toledo died last week of breast cancer at the age of fifty-nine. Judith Thurman pays tribute to this “designer’s designer” who described couture as a language which she had learned “as a child does, by immersion.” Self-possession is usually … Continue reading →

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“She’s Got It Down”

Posted on September 5, 2019 by

The work of ninety-three-year-old artist Betye Saar will be shown concurrently this fall at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Her assemblages, illustrated in this article, are charming and compelling. … Continue reading →

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“Auntie Colours”

Posted on August 4, 2019 by

The influence of fashion and grooming on art (and vice versa?) is of great interest to me. The mention of Sonia Delaunay brings back pleasant memories of being thrilled at a receptive age by her work and that of her … Continue reading →

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“Like Meditation or Dancing”

Posted on August 4, 2019 by

This year-old piece from The Guardian has some charming, free-and-easy-seeming sketching that I would dearly love to be able to pull off myself. Earlier this month, London-based artist Joey Yu headed to Field Day, a two-day music festival held in … Continue reading →

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“Sagacious Show in a Handsome Shack”

Posted on July 3, 2019 by

Brice Marden’s artistic and cultural crossing of boundaries is exciting. In the mid-1980s, the abstract painter Brice Marden veered from his early monochromes and grids to calligraphic circuits, inspired by his reading of the… poet Hanshan, or Cold Mountain… Black … Continue reading →

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