JT Winik (BFA, BEd) is a Canadian visual artist whose figurative paintings explore themes of isolation, introspection and the fusion of contrary states of being. Her work has been exhibited in group and solo exhibitions in Canada, The Netherlands and Mexico and she is currently represented in galleries in Toronto, Prince Edward County, Montreal, and Amsterdam. Her paintings have been featured in national magazines, books and book covers in Canada, Holland, Turkey and England. She paints full time from her studio in Kingston and has spent extensive periods working at studios in Spain and Holland.
sunset on the beach
he shakes the cornucopia
no more coconuts
summer seeds raining
from the watermelon sky
she lets down her hair
bananafish dream
his hand is edging crabwise
towards her tanned skin
come and taste honey
any strange inflorescence
you want me to bee
Virginie Colline lives and writes in Paris. Her poems have appeared in The Scrambler, Prune Juice, The Mainichi, Frostwriting, Prick of the Spindle, Mouse Tales Press, StepAway Magazine, BRICKrhetoric, Overpass Books, Dagda Publishing, Poethead, Silver Birch Press, The Bangalore Review, and Yes, Poetry, among others.
These photographs were taken in a train cemetery on the outskirts of Uyuni, a small city in the south of Bolivia. This series is entitled “Asi Es La Vida,” from graffiti scrawled on one of the rusting locomotives.
Artist: Alessandro Ciapanna
I throw myself passionately at life. And life often smiles back. When that happens, I like to have my camera ready.
In what is a perennially ongoing process, I have developed a sense of what works, photographically. I can sometimes perceive when a situation has the quid I like to call the “wow factor”. I have honed my ear to the sound of a ball bouncing or a child laughing. Because these are telltale signs that something wonderful is taking place. It is a miracle, happening, unscripted. And sometimes – if you develop and trust your serendipity – it’s happening right around the corner. It’s something universal, and fleeting. Therefore all the more wonderful. All the more worth capturing. This is what I most like to photograph. Some call it life.
For more than four decades Maren Hassinger, a sculptor, performance artist, and the Director of the Rinehart School of Sculpture at the Maryland Institute and College of Art, has created work that examines the tenuous relationship between nature and industrialism. The Museum will organize and present the original exhibition Maren Hassinger . . . Dreaming. Throughout her distinguished career Hassinger has received awards from prestigious foundations including the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Anonymous Was a Woman, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Her work has recently been featured in several important nationally touring exhibitions including Now Dig This!: Art of Black Los Angeles 1960 –1980 (2011), Material Girls: Contemporary Black Women Artists (2011), and Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art (2012). Maren Hassinger . . . Dreaming will include installations made of newspapers, plastic bags, leaves, and other unconventional materials. This solo exhibition, curated by Andrea Barnwell Brownlee, Ph.D., Director, and Anne Collins Smith, the Curator of Collections, is a timely examination of her life and work. It brings a substantial body of Hassinger’s work to the southeast for the first time. http://museum.spelman.edu/current-exhibition/
The Spelman College Museum of Fine Art has consistently produced great exhibitions and this exhibition succeeds at exceeding those. This exhibition will be on view until May 16, 2015. Being Black History Month, one would expect to see a group exhibition that caters to the cathartic outcry of propaganda work in group exhibitions of African-American artists that now reference iconic images of black males with hands up in submission or the new trope hoodies. Spelman, under Dr. Brownlee’s guidance, does not fall into this practice of mongering. Spelman offers a true repute to base race icons by exhibiting artists that make great work–that have a dialogue that is more substantive than just mindless reactionary responses. Maren Hassinger’s work is an excellent rubric.
Hassinger is not absent of the spirit or cathartic experience; it is a more deliberate choice of praxis. When one first enters her Spelman exhibition, he/she is greeted by Hassinger’s Wrenching News 2010. The first impulse is to walk around the sphere on floor, not quite noticing the newspaper material circling the installation, building a narrative not yet revealed. Then you recognize the material newspaper, but it’s too voluminous and strong to be plain newspaper. That becomes irrelevant to the mirrored 6ft sphere on the wall that has now transcended physically and spiritually to a call and response dialogue between two installations, floor and wall, with one/collective unifying dialogue.
At times her work is dense and impenetrable while other times the work is stripped to its most vulnerable breaking point. Hassinger’s Consolation 1996 is one of those vulnerable pieces, where the material itself is unraveling. The strong wire rope here is as wispy and ephemeral as a field of wheat where each stem and seed may be examined. Each stem is a part of a larger collective fiber. These intimate nuances come from a mastery of material from a complex fiber perspective of the collective and the individual. Hassinger’s work moves beyond typical notions and stereotypes of fiber art. Her work investigates the absolute binary spectrum of a material, and through these inquiries she discovers the spirit.
Christopher Hutchinson is an accomplished Jamaican conceptual artist, professor and contributor to the art community as a writer, critic and founder of the nonprofit Smoke School of Art. He is a Professor of Art at Atlanta Metropolitan State College and has been featured as a lecturer including prestigious engagements at University of Alabama and the Auburn Avenue Research Library. For two decades, Chris has been a practicing artist. His works have been exhibited in internationally recognized institutions including City College New York (CUNY) and featured at the world’s leading international galleries such as Art Basel Miami. He has always had an innate passion for creating spaces where Africans and people of African descent contribute to an inclusive contemporary dialogue—ever evolving, not reflexive but pioneering. This requires challenging the rubric of the canon of art history, a systemic space of exclusion for the Other: women and non-Whites, and where necessary he rewrites it. He received his Master of Fine Arts Degree in Painting from Savannah College of Art & Design, Atlanta and his Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Alabama.
Last time I was in this space, I was complaining commenting about being an emerging artist. I made statements about getting over rejection and pushing to make more work instead of being such a procrastinator. I’m still a procrastinator actually but soon after, I began working two jobs and my tune has changed a bit transforming into something else. At this point, I’ve joined the American workforce as a middle school art educator while I work the retail slave ship on the weekends slinging slacks to 40-year old men that wish to look younger. It’s a heavy load to work seven days a week constantly but I’ve got a child that needs stability. I’m a parent, yo. An artist and a parent. Add in the fact that I’m a woman and you’ve got a black unicorn on your hands.
And how is this possible, you say?
Like this.
Art is my life but my son is bigger than art. Sometimes, art has to be put on the backburner staying warm for him to have a home to live in, proper clothes to wear and yummy food to eat. I’m not breaking up with art. I just have to take long pauses here and there. Recently, I came across an article that I actually agreed with on Hyperallergic. It was a weekend long-read titled The Problem of the Overlooked Female Artist: An Argument for Enlivening a Stale Model of Discussion written by Ashton Cooper. Hell of a title. I commend Cooper or the copyeditor for thinking of that.
I became enlivened by her perspective on the redundant language used to talk about women artists. Cooper sourced numerous articles released about women artists throughout 2014 in which the language used to speak about them was either truly stale and unimaginative or spoke about a woman artist in a rediscovered fashion as if she was a fly on the wall during big historical moments in art but really she was an active and vocal artist the entire time the big historical moment in art was going down. Check out this excerpt from the article about Phyllida Barlow in which the author quoted an article from The Guardian circa March 2014:
She’s taught everyone from Martin Creed to Rachel Whiteread, but it’s only now, at 70, that Barlow is getting her dues as an artist.
Barlow, who turns 70 this week, has spent her adult life making sculpture, enjoying her greatest success by far over the last 10 years.
She went on to the Slade until 1966, and then began teaching, and having children; she and Peake have five in all. […] In those days, she was working in total isolation.”
The part I highlighted in bold stood out quite strong to me. Especially the part that says she was working in total isolation. I guess when you have five children, everything is all about your children. Hell, I only have one! My guess is that art never went onto the backburner for Barlow as it has for me but I know it wasn’t always on the forefront either with her being a teacher and a wife. My other guesses include that she was never in isolation with five children and she eventually had to learn how to become an effective teacher. I may not know much about Barlow but I can relate to her story if those are the only tidbits I ever learn about her.
The article comes to an apex while speaking about Barbara Hepworth, her married life and her cavorting with the international art world and comes to close with fascinating information around Judy Chicago, Isa Genzken and Sarah Charlesworth’s careers with some strong questions: “What was she doing then? Where was she showing? Who was she in community with? How did her practice change? What forces of exclusion did she face?”
I don’t know. The information just isn’t there. What I do know is that if reality showed up at any of these women’s doors looking like maternity then it is my hopes they assumed their new roles as mother to a child (or more) and truly began a new adventure, chapter, section of their lives. We already know the art world is notoriously white, male and sexist as well as racist. We also already know that many people believe that when a woman gets pregnant, her life is automatically over. That’s not necessarily true. If the lives of the women outlined in this article were over I think we wouldn’t be talking about them. There wouldn’t be a Tate retrospective on Barlow or MoMA’s current exhibition on Sturtevant (who’s completely new to me).
In essence, I believe they sharpened their metaphorical swords in the hours after the children went to bed or over to grandma and grandpa’s house for the weekend because that’s the only time I get to do anything regarding art. Everything becomes a juggling act that you just work out over time. I hope to make work as profound as these women but I don’t want to be 70 years old to get my recognition for it. That’s that bullshit if I have spent a lifetime possibly struggling to support my family on teacher pay. I’d rather take the recognition money now and create a trust fund for my son because that’s my reality in addition to art.
Too bad I wasn’t born with a dick because I wouldn’t have the ability to give birth and be weighed down with the overwhelming responsibilities of having child. Everything always falls on the mother whether a father is or isn’t present. While I care so much about art, I’ve learned that the art world doesn’t care about my child. Making the decision to sacrifice my love for art is constantly on and off the table. Every moment becomes a moment to create or think about art differently. I’m constantly sharpening my metaphorical sword as an art teacher to a group of students who could honestly give a fuck about art in the first place.
It’s hard out here for a pimp!
Based on that article and these words I’ve written, I guess I’ve got to pimp harder.
Artist: Carla Aaron-Lopez
woke up with my horns on. fell in love with a cadillac. born/raised in charlotte, nc. baptized in the dirty south also known as atlanta.
Since 20th December 2014, Ashley Lily Scarlett (in Sydney, Australia) and Richard Guest (in London, UK) have been having a conversation in pictures. They each take it in turn to post an image as a response to the other’s previous post. There is no set schedule; the blog follows the rhythm of a conversation. Some days there is nothing new, on others a flurry of questions, answers, jokes, and echoes, back and forth, on and on until…
Pinhole photography is, essentially, an in-depth study in exposure. The only thing you have control over is exposure time. A pinhole camera is simply a box with a tiny hole to let in light. It is photography in its very basic form. Since the aperture on pinhole cameras is so small it allows for very long exposures in daylight. These long exposures are what fascinates me about this type of photography. A lot can happen in the seconds that tick away while an exposure is being made.
blowin’ in the wind
I Am Amsterdam
Lemonade Nachos and Cold Drinks
Pinholers Enjoying Jenever
River Watching
Self Portrait In a Hotel Room Mirror
Self With Pears
The Truth Is Behind The Kale and Yogurt
The Witches Castle
During the day, Moni Smith is a Children’s Librarian who lives in the Pacific Northwest of the USA. When she is not wearing her librarian hat she likes to wander around with one of her many pinhole cameras to see what she can capture on film.
For more than two decades Lyle Ashton Harris has cultivated a diverse artistic practice ranging from photographic media, collage, installation and performance. His work explores intersections between the personal and the political, examining the impact of ethnicity, gender and desire on the contemporary social and cultural dynamic. Known for his self-portraits and use of pop culture icons (such as Billie Holiday and Michael Jackson), Harris teases the viewers’ perceptions and expectations, resignifying cultural cursors and recalibrating the familiar with the extraordinary. His work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and the 52nd Venice Biennale. His work has been acquired by major international museums, most recently by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His commissioned work has been featured in a wide range of publications, including The New York Times Magazine and the New Yorker. In 2014 Harris joined the board of trustees at the American Academy in Rome and was named the 10th recipient of the David C. Driskell Prize by the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Born in New York City, Harris spent his formative years in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. He received his Bachelor of Arts with Honors from Wesleyan University in 1988 and a Masters in Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts in 1990. He currently lives and works in New York City and is an Associate Professor at New York University.http://www.lyleashtonharris.com/about/
Lyle Ashton Harris is considered to be a pioneer in Postcolonial art, in which his collaboration with Renee Cox has a very important dialogue about blackness with the residue of Colonialism. One of the goals of Postcolonialism is to be aware of the far reaching effects of Colonialism and then ultimately to rewrite that history. To this end Lyle Ashton Harris has an important place in the legacy of art history. It was with this knowledge and hope that attendance to the HIGH museum lecture in Atlanta on January 15, 2015 became mandatory.
For the exhibition Mirage: Enigmas of Race, Difference and Desire (1995), Lyle Ashton Harris in collaboration with Renee Valerie Cox created the photograph, “Venus Hottentot 2000.” In this futuristic reinterpretation of the Hottentot Venus, Renee Valerie Cox directly inserts her own body into the historical matrix of Western representations that configured black female sexuality. In the photograph Cox’s body is transformed, recalling the Hottentot Venus, with the addition of protruding metallic breasts and an accompanying metal butt extension. The white strings that delicately hold these metallic body parts in place with bow, seem to emphasize the artists’ complex and ambivalent relationships to representations of black female sexuality. Cox wears the metallic appendages like a costume or disguise, but her own nude body is simultaneously revealed to the viewer. She stands in profile emphasizing her bodily dimensions, hands akimbo, and stares directly at the viewer.“Hottentot 2000″ is one photograph in a series by Harris called The Good Life, 1994. https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/postcolonialstudies/2014/06/21/postcolonial-performance-and-installation-art/
Harris then proceeded to deliver one of the most disappointing and disturbing lectures, a litany of name-dropping and external references to other famous artists and philosophers that was far from Postcolonial thoughts except for the engagement of the “Other”–the “Other” is not the only point of Postcolonialism. He bounced from topic to topic in flurry of art speak that was intended to connect conflicting concepts that did not really apply to his own praxis. Harris discussed his overall career as a photographer moving through collage, portraiture, and performance art. The audience suffered through an amateurish performance about Michael Jackson and the homeless that was poorly executed. The lecture ended with a slideshow of all his notable acquaintances over an amped up Grace Jones track with his voice competing with it. After suffering though, it became clear the one consistent in Harris’ methodology is appropriation of established Western thought. Postcolonialism is not interested in appropriating the West. Appropriating the West can only result in the promotion of the residual effects of colonialism, not ending them.
What exactly is special to Harris’ art practice to be so well received?
Harris’s collages aren’t technically collages at all; a rebus picture puzzle would be more accurate. These “collages” don’t overlap, are relatively the same-sized images, with almost the exact same space around each image. All point to a lack of mastery of medium/process. It is a visual dumbing down of two-dimensional space while referencing Picasso and Duchamp. So what if the images were rephotographed. How does that knowledge add to the importance of the concept? During the lecture Harris went into great detail when it came to the medium and rambled when it came to the work, overcompensating with name-dropping and large scale. The lecture had all the earmarks of the student who has not taken the time to write out his artist statement.
Harris discussed his collage Blow Up IV and how the main image relates to Manet’s Olympia and how the drips in the middle are semen. Once again an external reference used to lend importance to a sloppily executed artwork.
Harris described this NY Times commission on which he was charged to go to Africa and document Africans with some form of technology to which the above image and others were taken. This is no different than Manet’s Olympia with the spectacle of Blackness. Something that was intended to prove Africans modernity actually promotes Otherness.
The Decisive Moment
Henri Cartier-Bresson is considered to be the father of modern photojournalism. His style of “street photography,” using small format cameras, still influences modern photojournalists to this day.
In the documentary above, Henri Cartier-Bresson describes the elusive decisive moment, which cannot be staged or faked. Once it’s happened, that’s it. Bresson allows for this moment to occur while paying attention to composition. His composition affirms the narrative of the decisive moment. Lyle Ashton Harris relies only upon shock and icon to force the viewer into a narrative that he has constructed. It’s a burden that shock and icon cannot satisfy.
Christopher Hutchinson is an accomplished Jamaican conceptual artist, professor and contributor to the art community as a writer, critic and founder of the nonprofit Smoke School of Art. He is a Professor of Art at Atlanta Metropolitan State College and has been featured as a lecturer including prestigious engagements at University of Alabama and the Auburn Avenue Research Library. For two decades, Chris has been a practicing artist. His works have been exhibited in internationally recognized institutions including City College New York (CUNY) and featured at the world’s leading international galleries such as Art Basel Miami. He has always had an innate passion for creating spaces where Africans and people of African descent contribute to an inclusive contemporary dialogue—ever evolving, not reflexive but pioneering. This requires challenging the rubric of the canon of art history, a systemic space of exclusion for the Other: women and non-Whites, and where necessary he rewrites it. He received his Master of Fine Arts Degree in Painting from Savannah College of Art & Design, Atlanta and his Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Alabama.
1. to fasten, join, or attach (usually followed by to):
to affix stamps to a letter.
2. to put or add on; append:
to affix a signature to a contract.
3. to impress (a seal or stamp).
4. to attach (blame, reproach, ridicule, etc.).
noun
5. something that is joined or attached.
6.
Grammar. a bound inflectional or derivational element, as a prefix, infix, or suffix, added to a base or stem to form a fresh stem or a word, as -ed added to want to form wanted, or im- added to possible to form impossible.
Big World
Blue Sky
Chance Meeting
Coleus
Every Time
Hope
Maplewood Drive
Morning Coffee
Morning Light
One
Queen
Signal
Slug Bug
Touchdown
Wake Me When It’s Over
Weather
Withered
Michael S Church
The urgent connection between creation and destruction are on display within the
pieces I’ve broken apart, then reconnected.
It is in this space that I speak of the world around me, and to the voice within
myself simultaneously.
“I have no desire to understand art. I do however have a strong desire to confront
CT explores the creative potential of borders, boundaries, difference, and limitation. It's a playground for multiple genres and diverse points of view. And like any good playground, it provides space for more than one person to have a good time. So I have friends here as well, contributing quirky, serious, playful, innovative, eclectic, and imaginative work.
Enjoy!
Melissa
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Creative Thresholds 
