Making Hawaii Even Better For Crafts

February 2006 | BY Wayne Countryman | Issue 48 | NO COMMENTS

How’s this for Paradise: living year-round as an artist in gorgeous weather amid breathtaking scenery in a land with a rich cultural history.

It might sound perfect, but what if the place is spread over islands far from any continent and other creative communities?

The Hawaii Craftsmen organization has helped artists since the early years of statehood by connecting them with each other and with distant mainlands. It is celebrating its 40th anniversary with major events. First, artists and the public are welcome at ‘Aha Hana Lima—the annual Gathering of the Crafts—where four guest artists will offer a free slide lecture March 23 at the Honolulu Academy of Art. Three-day workshops follow, March 25-27 in Honolulu, led by Janet Berg on jewelry, Hank Murta Adams on glass, David Marks on wood and Arthur Gonzalez on clay.

In late spring the Fiber Hawaii exhibition will encourage artists in all mediums to work in fiber.

May and June’s Raku Ho’olaule’a will include demonstrations, a slide lecture, workshops, a campout where raku ceramics will be fired on the beach, and a juried exhibition. Slide lectures and judging of entries will take place on each island, leading to the annual Statewide Juried Exhibition in October in Honolulu.

Information on programs, events and registration is available at www.hawaiicraftsmen.org.

Liztech Celebrates 20 Years

February 2006 | BY The AmericanStyle Staff | Issue 48 | NO COMMENTS

Jill Elizabeth collected her materials from “floor sweeps” when she first began as a jewelry designer 20 years ago. She would sweep the floors of New York City’s bead merchants for anything that may have fallen among the trash.

Today, her well-known company, Liztech, celebrates its first book. Liztech: 20 Years Reflecting is a scrapbook of sorts, tracking Elizabeth’s life and over 260 jewelry designs. It follows her from her first show at age 14 to the purchase of the building in East Stroudsburg, Pa., that houses the Liztech gallery.

Elizabeth uses aluminum and mirrored chrome laminate, colorful wire and beads to build pins, earrings and bracelets that have developed quite a following over the last two decades. Books or trips often become Elizabeth’s inspiration behind pieces, which include wizards, animals, musical instruments and Native American figures. Be sure to check out the complete catalog of her jewelry in the back of the book. For more information, visit www.liztech.com.

Give Artists A (Tax) Break

February 2006 | BY The AmericanStyle Staff | Issue 48 | NO COMMENTS

Artists are one step closer to a tax deduction for the fair market value of their donated works, thanks to a bill passed by the Senate in late November.

Arts organizations across the country are mobilizing their constituents to lobby members of Congress in an effort to get the measure passed by the House of Representatives. From Americans for the Arts to Art-exchange.com, petitions are being circulated on the Internet in support of the bill.

Currently, living artists who donate their work to museums or other non-profit organizations can deduct only the cost of materials on their taxes. A painting worth $15,000 on the open market is worth only the cost of the paint and canvas when the artist donates the work.

Works donated posthumously by an artist’s estate can be deducted for full market value.

The bill passed by the Senate was scheduled to move to a House-Senate conference committee, where supporters are hoping the House will accept the provision as part of a jointly-approved tax-relief bill.

According to the details of the bill, works will need to be appraised by a qualified appraiser and donated within 18 months of creation.
Americans for the Arts notes that “under the new provision, only gifts that are retained by the recipient for mission-related use would generate a full deduction. Gifts that are sold or auctioned, even in order to raise funds that are put to charitable use, would not qualify.”

Museum directors have long supported the measure in hopes that it would increase the number of acquisitions, allowing public access to works of art that might otherwise go to private collectors.

For more information on the current status of the bill, visit the Americans for the Arts website at www.artsusa.org.

Portfolio: Beth Weintraub

February 2006 | BY Margaret Lucke | Issue 48 | NO COMMENTS

: Beth Weintraub, pictured with her studiomate Sultan in the gallery/reception area, is inspired by modular furniture designs of the 1950s and ’60s. Photograhy by Charles Lucke

The paintbrush sweeps across the metal plate. A delicate curve appears. Beth Weintraub swirls the brush again and a flower emerges.

Like many artists, Weintraub uses metal plates to print intaglio etchings. A substance called a resist is applied to the plate, which is then immersed in an acid bath. The acid cuts into the areas where the metal is not protected by the resist. She inks the etched areas and presses the plate onto paper, transferring the ink and the design.

But the plate Weintraub is working on will never be used for printing. She finds beauty in the plates themselves, etching, polishing and mounting the metal on wood to create finished works of art.

Weintraub favors botanical forms in silhouette against the warm patina of the metal. They are created freehand, without the aid of photography, stencils or computers. “It’s just me, a paintbrush and the visuals in my head,” she says.

The simple, elegant designs remind viewers of Japanese art. Weintraub has visited Asia, but she finds more inspiration in Art Nouveau decor, antique wallpaper patterns and furniture by Eero Saarinen and Charles Eames. “I’m drawn to fluid things, where craftsmanship turns a hard, rigid object into something soft and flowing,” she explains.

For more of “Portfolio: Beth Weintraub,” pick up the June 2009 issue of AmericanStyle today!

Where More is Better

February 2006 | BY Hilary Nangle | Issue 48 | NO COMMENTS

: Photo by Steve Dunwell

I‘m a born collector,” says mixed-media artist Luann Udell. Enter the barn/studio, renovated by her husband, Jon, at the back of their mid-19th-century Keene, N.H., home and four things immediately come to mind: Udell loves fiber; she likes to play with color; she’s inspired by primitive design; and she thrives in clutter.

Shelves of fabric, sorted by color, line one wall. Beads in myriad shapes, colors and styles—trade beads, polymer beads, seed beads, glass beads, semi-precious stone beads—fill an antique printer’s desk and storage cabinets. And the flotsam and jetsam of a working artist spill out into every available space.

Udell credits the fiber collage class she took over a decade ago as the starting point for her present-day assemblages. Maine artist Susan Carlson, who taught the class, “loves that I took her techniques and used them to develop my own personal artwork,” Udell says.

For more Artists’ Spaces, pick up an April 2006 issue of AmericanStyle today!

Studio Without Walls

February 2006 | BY Charlotte Richardson | Issue 48 | NO COMMENTS

: Armored in protective gear, even in sweltering Florida heat, Tamanian wet-sands through layers of paint on aluminum, sealing each phase by spraying a clear coat. Photograhy by Raymond Stanyard

It’s a comfortable spring day in Tallahassee, not yet Florida’s steamy “velvet glove” weather. It also seems like the perfect climate for Paul Tamanian’s semi-enclosed studio—until the artist dons his impermeable-fiber jumpsuit, attaches a respirator, lowers his goggles, pops on heavy-duty earplugs, and warms up his air compressor. As he energetically orchestrates myriad treatments to the surface of his latest aluminum work, Tamanian is soon sweltering.

A brilliantly colored 8-foot tusk form stands among other recent work in the garden between Tamanian’s house and studio. It’s a commission awaiting a seaside installation. The tusk shape is a new direction for his work, which includes vessels, sculpture and paintings.

Tamanian’s complex surface patterns fascinate viewers. “The first appeal is tactile. People want to stroke the pieces, to analyze surfaces by hand,” says Peg Goldberg Longstreth of Longstreth-Goldberg Art in Naples, Fla. “His work is emotionally and intellectually accessible, but it appeals most to very sophisticated people, critics and serious collectors.”

For more Artists’ Spaces, pick up an April 2006 issue of AmericanStyle today!

Big! Bold! Bright!

February 2006 | BY Pat Worrell | Issue 48 | NO COMMENTS

: Photo by William Gullette

You don’t have to guess the favorite colors of internationally recognized art jeweler Arline Fisch. They’re evident as soon as you open the front door to her San Diego, Calif., home: purple and red. Fisch has lived in her urban bungalow, built in 1913 as a “honeymoon cottage” in the Mission Hills neighborhood, since 1966. Its brown wooden exterior gives no hint to the cacophony of colors—rich purple, bright red, burning orange, vibrant yellow—that surround the senses inside.

This Living Treasure of California (so named by the State Assembly in 1985) traces her affinities to craft and color to her childhood in Queens, N.Y. Fisch’s mother taught her to sew her own clothes and weave baskets. Her father loved the color red. “I love purple, and I like purple and red together,” she says. “Pastels don’t work for me. If I have color, I want it to be bright.”

In her living room, a once-undistinguished brown sofa from Goodwill is resplendent in orange plaid. An antique reclining barber’s chair is upholstered in purple. And Fisch re-caned her bentwood rocker with red. In the bathroom, shiny white tile accented with red fixtures surrounds a gray tub “only because I couldn’t find a red one,” she says, laughing. She succeeded in finding red double sinks and purple Formica for a fishtail countertop for the kitchen remodeling.

For more Artists’ Spaces, pick up an April 2006 issue of AmericanStyle today!

Arts Travel: The Year of the Museum, or Not?

December 2005 | BY The AmericanStyle Staff | Issue 47 | NO COMMENTS

Museums across the country will celebrate themselves in 2006, which has been declared the Year of the Museum by none other than the American Association of Museums (AAM). But 365 days of self-promotion may not be the prescription for what’s ailing the visual arts in the U.S.

According to a new study by the Rand Corporation, the future of the visual arts is not as certain as it may appear in this time of unprecedented museum expansion and growing attendance.

The AAM is marking its centennial with the Year of the Museum, encouraging member institutions to use the event as a way to bring in new visitors and to increase the public’s awareness of the value of museums.

The Rand Corp. study, “A Portrait of the Visual Arts: Meeting the Challenges of a New Era,” suggests that new growth in attendance will be hard to come by, as current social trends-such as population diversity and competition from other forms of entertainment-undermine museums’ efforts to bring in visitors. In fact, the report attributes the recent increase in attendance to population growth and higher education levels, not to museums’ marketing efforts.

Additional challenges face most museums as resources continue to concentrate in the hands of a small number of “superstar” museums, which will force many institutions to reexamine their goals and strategies as donors, artworks and members become more scarce.

Arts Travel: Small-Town Artists Think Big

December 2005 | BY The AmericanStyle Staff | Issue 47 | NO COMMENTS

First, eagles and antiques lovers flocked to Clarksville, Mo. Now, artists are joining them in this tiny town along the Mississippi River.

In addition to antiques shops, Clarksville (population 490) has galleries, potters, woodworkers, furniture and cabinet makers, jewelry makers, a blacksmith, a boat builder, photographers and two glass “hot shops.” Most arrived within the past few years, after Missouri and the community invited newcomers.
“Each one of us saw the potential for greatness here,” says glass-and-wire artist Robert Rothbard. When he and his wife, Michelle, a photographer, stopped in Clarksville for lunch last spring on their way to another town, artists raved about affordable work and living spaces. Within two months, Rothbard Gallery relocated there from northeast Texas.

Ken Russell moved to Clarksville from South Dakota in 2001. He set up Clarksville Pottery beside “a really cool three-story house across the street from the river.” His wife appreciates the milder winters and living only 80 miles from metropolitan St. Louis.

Like Russell, Gary Rice is a former Californian who’s now a Clarksville alderman. “I’ve never been anyplace where artists supported each other so eagerly,” Rice says. He and his wife, Judy, a jewelry and glass artist, set up Clarksville Glassworks in 2002.

“We’re still going,” Robert Rothbard says of recruiting artists and arts lovers to Clarksville. And space is available-at least for now.

Most studios in Clarksville welcome visitors. For
a more complete listing, go to www.clarksvillemo.com.

Arts Travel: Palm Reading

December 2005 | BY The AmericanStyle Staff | Issue 47 | NO COMMENTS

: Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ “Untitled” (for Jeff) at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., in 2003

A single black-and-white photograph of an outstretched palm may hold a viewer’s attention for a moment or two. But larger-than-life-sized images of that same hand on buildings and billboards throughout a city require greater consideration.

Does the hand signify assistance? Support? Kindness? Welcome? These are the questions artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres wanted viewers to contemplate with “Untitled” (for Jeff),
his 1992 photograph.

Gonzalez-Torres, who died in 1996, designed the work to be reproduced in large scale and presented in multiple locations wherever it is exhibited. The work, part of the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., has been shown in Scottsdale, Ariz., Evanston, Ill., and Hamilton, Ont., among other locations.

Until Jan. 29, visitors to Indianapolis will be able to view the image on the exterior of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, the Indianapolis Art Center and the Indianapolis Artsgarden, as well as on billboards throughout the city.

The exhibition coincides with the opening of the new contemporary art galleries at the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Arts Travel: Celebrating Mr. van Rijn

December 2005 | BY The AmericanStyle Staff | Issue 47 | NO COMMENTS

He’s better known by his first name, Rembrandt.

The Netherlands has launched a year-long celebration of the 400th anniversary of the artist’s birth, complete with exhibitions, festivals, walking tours and even “Rembrandt, the Musical.”

Activities are centered in two locations-Leiden, where the artist was born and first acquired fame, and Amsterdam, his home during the height of his career. Exhibitions will be mounted throughout 2006 at the Rijksmuseum, the Rembrandt House Museum, the Jewish Historical Museum and the Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal, among others.

Highlights of “Rembrandt 400″ include:

“Rembrandt & Caravaggio” at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, Feb. 24-June 18.
“Rembrandt, the Quest of a Genius” at the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam, April 1-June 25
Rembrandt Festival in Leiden, July 15-17.

For a complete schedule of events, visit www.rembrandt400.com.