Arts Travel: A Glass-Filled Weekend

February 2011 | BY Jennifer Clary | Issue 75, Spring 2011 | NO COMMENTS

: Giles Bettison, whose piece “Vista 2010 #8” is shown, will demonstrate at GlassWeekend in Millville, N.J.

The Creative Glass Center of America at WheatonArts in Millville, N.J., and the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass are presenting the biennial GlassWeekend June 10-12. The event brings together some of the world’s leading glass artists, collectors, galleries and museum curators, and will include exhibitions, lectures, demonstrations and social events.

Beginning with a preview reception on June 10, the international symposium will feature guest artist demonstrations by Richard Royal and Giles Bettison, and artist-author Dan Dailey as keynote speaker. A gallery exhibition will show the most current work of 200 professional glass artists with pieces available for sale. Other programming includes discussion panels with artists and museum curators, slide presentations of artists’ work and an auction.

Part of the proceeds from GlassWeekend will benefit the Creative Glass Center of America’s fellowship program. Additional portions will help fund exhibitions at WheatonArt’s Museum of American Glass.

For details and information, visit www.wheatonarts.org.

Arts Travel: B&B Artfully

February 2011 | BY admin | Issue 75, Spring 2011 | NO COMMENTS

: The Hermosa Inn in Paradise Valley, Ariz., draws art lovers with an award-winning Artist-in-Residence Series. Credit: The Hermosa Inn

If you’re looking for the perfect desert hideaway this spring, we suggest the Hermosa Inn in Paradise Valley, Ariz. Located centrally between Phoenix and Scottsdale, the inn sits on more than 6 acres of lush desert with views of Camelback Mountain. Better yet, it is the former home and studio of cowboy artist Lon Megargee. Constructed in the 1930s, it recently underwent a $2 million renovation to enhance the 34 casitas that sit on the property.

We suggest you visit during one of the Hermosa’s award-winning Artist-in-Residence Series. Held at the four-star on-site restaurant Lon’s, the brunches or dinners involve mingling with the artist, and gourmet meals prepared by executive chef Jeremy Pacheco.

Split evenly between the written and visual arts, the lineup includes a brunch with wildlife painter Fred Krakowiak on March 13, a dinner with bronze sculptor Dave McGary on March 25, a brunch with novelist Marcia Fine on April 3 and a dinner with screenwriter Ken Rotcop on April 15.

Accommodations vary from 450-square-foot rancho rooms with patios, garden and desert views to 800-square-foot two-bedroom grande casitas that include two private patios.

Room rates range from $229-$459 per night depending on the month and the room choice. For more information, go to www.hermosainn.com.

Arts Travel: Never Ending Stick Work

February 2011 | BY admin | Issue 75, Spring 2011 | NO COMMENTS

: Patrick Dougherty’s “Easy Rider” sculpture contrasts with the static architecture surrounding the Dumbarton Oaks garden. Credit: Andy Lynch

Not all sculpture is built to last. “I believe that sculpture, like a good flowerbed, has its season,” explains Chapel Hill, N.C.-based sculptor Patrick Dougherty. That’s why he chooses saplings as his primary material. “When I turned to sculpture in the early ’80s, I had to rediscover what birds already knew: sticks have an infuriating tendency to entangle with each other. It is this simple tangle that holds my work together.”

His latest installation is “Easy Rider,” a 15-piece work that rises up and “coasts” along the inner face of the hedge that lines the Ellipse at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., transforming the gardens. “I was hoping to give a sense of motion to a very classical and stable situation,” Dougherty says.

The gardens were originally designed in the 1920s by landscape architect Beatrix Farrand, and were surrounded by a sprawling boxwood hedge. In 1956, architect Alden Hopkins removed the boxwood and added a double row of pleached hornbeams.

Through the spring season, Dougherty’s work will animate the space, evoking a contrast between the movement in the sculpture and the static architecture that surrounds it. “I think my work brings up positive associations with the natural world,” Dougherty explains. “Children are not the only lovers of sticks.”

For more information, call 202-339-6409 or visit www.doaks.org.

Editor’s Note

February 2011 | BY Hope Daniels | Issue 75, Spring 2011 | NO COMMENTS

I love lists. I love reading them. I love sharing them. I love arguing about them. I especially love running my pencil down each one to check off who I know or what I’ve experienced myself.

Which probably explains why it was such a thrill for me to get news from the advocacy organization United States Artists about the 2010 winners of its USA Fellowships. Not only were six eminently deserving craft artists among the 52 winners of the $50,000 unrestricted grants, but in one way or another I knew three of them really well.

In addition to ceramist Ehren Tool and traditional basket makers Jeremy Frey and Jennifer Heller Zurick, I was delighted to see the names of Michael Sherrill, Matthias Pliessnig and Joyce Scott on the list. All three of these talented artists have appeared in the pages of our magazine.

Michael Sherrill’s affiliation with AmericanStyle goes back a long way. A trio of his undulating ceramic bottles graced the cover of one of our earliest published issues in Spring 1996. In an extensive feature about his life and work in the Winter 2000-2001 issue, he shared his thoughts with readers on the dance between artists and galleries, and between galleries and collectors. And images of new work, including pieces from his Rhododendron Series, have popped up regularly in Style Spotlight and Datebook Previews.

Joyce Scott—bead artist, performance artist, painter and all-around envelope pusher—practically lives in AmericanStyle’s backyard, and, as I write this, has work currently on view at Baltimore’s Goya Contemporary gallery, one flight down from Rosen Media’s own third-floor headquarters.

Joyce, too, has appeared many times in AmericanStyle, first with her mother, fiber artist Elizabeth Talford Scott, in a Summer 1997 feature on crafts as a family tradition, then again most notably in a Spring 2000 article about her and the opening of “Kickin’ It with the Old Masters,” a 30-year retrospective of her work, at the Baltimore Museum of Art. In that piece, we described Joyce as “a woman who uses out-there beadwork and bawdy, go-for-the jugular performance art to tackle head-on stereotypes and prejudices.” Nothing, thankfully, has changed over the years, and we applaud her latest success.

We all knew Matthias Pliessnig was going places even before he completed his graduate studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was one of only 10 studio furniture artists we selected for inclusion in our April 2008 Art & Design issue, and of the 10, we chose his work specifically to grace that issue’s cover. This latest recognition confirms we were right.

To read more about the USA Fellowships, click here. For biographies on all 52 winners, go to www.unitedstatesartists.org.

Parting Shot: Walkabout

February 2011 | BY Hope Daniels | Issue 75, Spring 2011 | 8 COMMENTS

For some people, a house is just a house. For Houston metal artist Harold Siefert, it’s the takeoff for incredible flights of fancy. A walking-the-dog house? Yes. A hiking house? Yup. A house on a swing? Why not?

It all began in 2000 when Siefert was laid off from his job as a banker at JPMorgan Chase. Rather than looking immediately for another one, he took an art class, then another, and another, and eventually gravitated to making bronzes full time. Home Bodies, his witty series of small cast-bronze sculptures, started out as a tribute to his late father, who always had lots of bird houses and feeders in his Chicago backyard.

“Somehow one day arms and legs came into play,” Siefert remembers, “and the Home Bodies series was born.”

A Sublime Place to Make Art

February 2011 | BY Jennifer Eberbach | Issue 75, Spring 2011 | 1 COMMENT

: Chris Roberts-Antieau makes her home and her art in an airy four-story “Dr. Seuss house” in Manchester, Mich. Credit: David Lewinski.

Chris Roberts-Antieau’s friends joke that the towering two-story entrance and main living space of her Manchester, Mich., home looks like a chapel. Chris thinks calling it “a Dr. Seuss house” is more fun, but she agrees that its open design and pristine natural surroundings are inspirational.

Large windows overlooking a crooked pond suffuse the interior with natural light. Tall white walls open up to balconies and a fabric studio in the loft above the living room. The soaring four-level space is filled with art and antiques, many of which she’s collected during her frequent travels.

The self-taught textile artist designed the house, which sits on 11 acres of picturesque forest, to capture that sense of serenity, and she says she values the solitude she finds working in such an environment.

“When you’re an artist,” she explains, “you have to be constantly expanding your thoughts. There’s a lot of space here and I can let my mind go to a lot of different places.”

For more of “A Sublime Place to Make Art,” purchase the Spring 2011 issue of AmericanStyle!
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A World of Color

February 2011 | BY Claire Patterson Blome | Issue 75, Spring 2011 | 1 COMMENT

: Eye-catching rooflines and expansive windows in the living room define the exterior of Craigie Succop’s home in St. Michaels. Credit: Douglas Lee.

You won’t find the home of mosaic artist Craigie Succop tucked among the colorful houses on the streets of St. Michaels, Md.

In fact, even though visitors are welcome to her Turtle Cove Studios and Gallery, you may have to call for directions. Craigie lives off of a winding two-lane highway a few miles beyond the downtown proper, on a gravel lane lined with evergreens. Veer left at the Y in the road, and watch the property unfold.

Glittering outdoor mosaic sculptures greet you as you approach the barn. Larger-than-life salamanders crawl up its walls, and two faces stare at one another from the middle of a rock pile in a pond facing the river. A large blue bar on the patio—another one of Craigie’s creations—sits just outside the spacious window-lined living room, allowing a peek at the space inside.

For more of “A World of Color,” purchase the Spring 2011 issue of AmericanStyle!
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Born Again

February 2011 | BY Rosemary Carstens | Issue 75, Spring 2011 | NO COMMENTS

: The top of a church steeple peeks over the roof of the ivy-covered greenhouse at Tom and Jerri Morin’s Los Cerillos, N.M., home. Credit: Chris Corrie.

The Diamond T Hacienda, the double-adobe home of Tom and Jerri Morin in the village of Los Cerrillos, N.M., stands as a perfect reflection of the couple’s love of art, culture and history. Built more than a century ago as a residence and saloon, the property shape-shifted over the years into a dance hall, undertaker’s parlor, grocery store and movie theater. By the time the Morins discovered it in 1993, however, it had devolved into a sorry and abandoned wreck—the perfect starting point, they concluded, for what turned into an ambitious and highly imaginative 10-year renovation.

Innovative thinking comes as naturally to Tom as breathing. In addition to more than 30 years of teaching at prestigious art schools, he’s won a long list of awards for his sculpture. In the early years he used more traditional materials for his craft—aluminum, bronze and iron. But before long, he says, “I began looking for something outside the ordinary that could transcend its previous life.” About 27 years ago, he discovered a unique product that has been the backbone of his artwork ever since: used sanding belts and discs.

Each belt is a fresh discovery, its distinctive coloration or pattern inspiring a design. “I devised a method to cut apart and veneer pieces of these belts onto a kiln-dried wood armature,” he continues. “The belts, some as large as fifty-four inches wide, retain sanding patterns as well as the resin colors of the exotic woods, pewter or aluminum they’d been used on. They reflect the earth colors and meditative qualities of the high desert that particularly appeal to me.”

For more of “Born Again,” purchase the Spring 2011 issue of AmericanStyle!
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Arts Travel: From Paris, with Love

February 2011 | BY Jennifer Clary | Issue 75, Spring 2011 | NO COMMENTS

: “Paris Through the Window” by Marc Chagall was the inspiration for the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s exhibition of the same name during PIFA. Credit: © 2010 Artist Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

The City of Brotherly Love is putting its affection for the arts on display April 7-May 1 with the inaugural Philadelphia International Festival of the Arts (PIFA). Inspired by the city’s Kimmel Center, the festival will feature more than 30 specially commissioned works as well as the participation of nearly 140 regional arts and cultural partner organizations.

The 25-day event will include a touch of Paris, circa 1910-1920, with programming featuring French artists in dance, music, drama and the visual arts. “It provides an extraordinary opportunity for Philadelphia,” explains Michael Scullin, consul of France in Philadelphia, “not only for our French and francophile communities, but for all art lovers and newcomers to experience the diversity of French artistry right in their backyard.”

The festival will highlight three key elements: paying homage to one of the greatest periods of prolific arts creation in history; honoring the late philanthropist Lenore Annenberg, whose $10 million grant made the festival possible; and emerging art forms that are expected to engage residents and promote the city.

Scheduled events include the exhibition “Paris Through the Window: Marc Chagall and His Circle” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a mural arts program featuring thousands of dancing Philadelphians and a symposium focusing on Parisian art from 1910-1920.

For the full slate of programs, visit www.pifa.org.

Arts Travel: A Month of Glass

February 2011 | BY admin | Issue 75, Spring 2011 | NO COMMENTS

: Louie Sanchez shapes a glass flower at the Glass Academy during Michigan Glass Month.

Michigan rolls out the red carpet for glass enthusiasts early this year. Michigan Glass Month officially kicks off in March and continues through April. Designed to promote statewide studios, schools, art centers, museums and galleries that contribute to the field of glass, the event calendar is filled with enticing events.

Here is a preview:

Billed as the event to attend for spring garden inspiration, the Glass Botanical Show and Exhibition at Planterra Conservatory in West Bloomfield on March 24-28 promises to wow with pairings of exotic and unusual botanicals and glass art from Furnace Design Studio.
Head to the West Michigan Glass Art Center in Kalamazoo for a Battle of the Glass Blowers April 1-2. Area artists will compete in categories that include the fastest goblet and the most unusual item.
Andrew Madvin of Axiom Glass Studio in Detroit will unveil a new line of work during his Annual Open House event in April.
GlassAct, the Southeastern Michigan Glass Beadmakers Guild, will hold a Glass Show and Sale along with live demonstrations in April at the Glass Academy in Dearborn.

For a complete list of events and updated dates, visit www.michiganglass.org.

Style Spotlight: Capital Art

February 2011 | BY Jennifer Clary | Issue 75, Spring 2011 | NO COMMENTS

: “Chair—887″ is by Garry Knox Bennet, who has been bestowed with the title “Master of the Medium” by the James Renwick Alliance for his work in wood. Credit: M. Lee Fatheree

This spring, Washington, D.C., will be America’s art capital with two must-see craft-filled weekends.

The James Renwick Alliance (JRA), an organization devoted to promoting public knowledge and appreciation of American craft art, will celebrate Spring Craft Weekend, March 24-27. Themed “Artful Pleasures and Landmark Treasures,” the events will be held in historic landmark locations, including “Craft Invitational 2011” at the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Renwick Gallery, along with panel discussions with featured artists, auctions and tours of private collections.

On March 27, the JRA will honor five artists as “Masters of the Medium” during an awards brunch at the Hay-Adams Hotel. Honorees include Garry Knox Bennett for his work in wood and furniture, Jun Kaneko for ceramics, Linda MacNeil for work in metal and jewelry, Jon Eric Riis for work in fiber and Lino Tagliapietra for his glass masterworks. Bernard and Sherley Koteen will also be honored with the “One-of-a-Kind Award” for their commitment and service to the craft community as long-time supporters of the arts in Washington, D.C.

All proceeds support the JRA’s educational, membership and scholarship programs and the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery.

Two weeks later, the annual Smithsonian Craft Show returns. Produced by the Smithsonian Women’s Committee, the juried exhibition will feature the work of 120 of the nation’s most prestigious artists at the National Building Museum April 14-17.

Find out more at www.jra.org and www.smithsoniancraftshow.org.