Art Monday Archives - Page 55 of 58

ARTmonday: Connie Johnson

I’ve been on the Cape a week now, but other than a beach jaunt with the boys on Saturday, I’ve pretty much done nothing but work (and vacuum; not that that’s any fun). So while I wish I could show you the artistic highlights going on ’round these really artsy parts, no such luck. Instead, I’ve dug into my personal collection and came up with Connie Johnson, who does fun and fashiony collages. I discovered her at the “Small Works” show at the Copley Society of Art in December 2005. I checked out her blog, and though she hasn’t updated it since last September, I was able to learn a bit about her work and grab some other examples.

First, here’s the piece I purchased at CoSo, which pre-dates the pieces shown here. I keep it propped up on my bedroom bookshelf with my chicklit : )

“Wearable #13”

Johnson is self-taught, and makes many variations of whatever theme she’s focusing on. In 2003 she started doing monoprints with a vague idea of making skirts, which evolved into making collage figures with paper bag heads that she placed on the monoprints. Johnon works with found household papers such as sugar and flour bags, candy and pasta wrappers, torn scraps of wrapping paper, onion bags, and other trash, to create the outfits, complete with accessories. The backgrounds of many of these ladies are the short stories she wrote about them, which are posted in full on her blog.

Lady #3 “There Is No Prince Charming”

Lady #6 “Bride”

Lady #13

Lady #14 “All Dressed Up and No Place To Go

Lady #38

“All Dressed Up and No Place To Go”

This next set is from the group Johnson labels “The Ladies Part 2.” No paper bags over the heads of these dames, so some of them don’t have any faces. Many of them have much denser written backgrounds than the first group.

“Blending In”

“The Pearls”

“After He Left #2”

In early 2007 (I think), Johnson created interesting collages using roses made out tar paper, along with pieces found on walk, like garlic stems, birch bark and hickory seed pods.

“Icons 2”

The most recent work posted on the blog is a dress she found at a local clothing swap, that hung in her studio for a bit, before she transformed for a piece to submit for a show last fall at the Concord Art Association. As you can see, she’s incorporated tar paper rosesas well as mini artworks which she strung together as a necklace.

“Wedding Dress”

I wonder what she’s been up to lately. . .

ARTmonday: Debbie Krim’s Fusion Foto Blocs

Last year I finally made it to SoWa First Fridays at 450 Harrison in Boston. I went with a friend to see the work of of her friend, Fernando DeOliveira (more on him another Monday), but of course visited lots of studios. We wound up spending a bunch of time at Debbie Krim’s, playing around with her Fusion Foto Blocs.

Krim photographs elements in nature, often very close up, like flowers, rocks, water, as well as some architectural features, food, and other objects, in black and white and brilliant color. She mounts the prints on 4-inch square blocks (some sort of white laminate/MDF). The images are fun to mix and match, to create larger works of art. The studio is set up as a customer-friendly work room, with blank white walls that you can hang the blocks on in groupings to your liking. I think were were there for over an hour playing curator.

And the prices are very reasonable (about $25/each last year). I purchased a black and white peony that I have on my bedroom bookshelf, black and white eggs that are perched on a shelf in my kitchen, and three ocean vistas, which are lined up on a ledge one next to the other, at my house on the Cape. There is a pre-drilled hole in the back so you can easily hang them on a nail, but I like that they can stand up on their own.

Here are some examples of her work:

ARTmonday: Anne Beresford

installation from Entwined at Judi Rotenberg Gallery, Boston, 2006

A few years ago, I fell in love with a painting by Anne Beresford at the Judi Rotenberg Gallery in Boston. It was very pale, all ivory and robin’s egg blue, with gray and black architectural-like drawings on the canvas. It reminded me of sculpture in Paris, somehow. I didn’t have the funds to buy it at the time, though I had the gallery call it back in last year to consider it for our house on the Cape (which, by the way, is still devoid of all art). I brought my husband to see it and we decided, unfortunately, that its soft renderings would be lost in the space. I can’t find an image of that particular painting online (I’m sure somebody bought it by now), but I can at least show you these . . .

Homeward Bound 2
ink, acrylic & oil on paper on canvas
2005

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Rising World of Waters
ink, acrylic & oil with collage on canvas
2006

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Uprose (Hommage a Van Gogh)
ink, acrylic & oil with collage on canvas
2006

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Of a Feather
ink, acrylic & oil with collage on canvas
2004

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After Auden
ink, acrylic & oil with collage on canvas
2001-4

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Tempest, (from The Exeunt Series)
ink, oil, engraved aluminum

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Very Small Things
mixed media
2007
Artwork courtesy of Judi Rotenberg Gallery

ARTmonday: Jed Devine

When I lived in NYC, back in my twenties (no, not in the twenties, my twenties, in the nineties), my then boyfriend and I began to collect photography. A friend of ours, whose dad had (has?) an outrageous photography collection, which includes Arbus and Mapplethorpe, pointed us to the small, well-respected Bonni Benrubi Gallery on the Upper East Side, just blocks from our apartment. (Today the gallery is at 41 East 57th Street.)

We popped in often on the weekends, poring over print after print in the flat files. One of my favorite artists was Jed Devine. I loved the spare white on white still lifes printed on Japanese rice paper that seemed so delicate, but that Bonni assured us were quite strong. After much deliberating between bottles, colanders, and cups, we purchased Stacked Cups and had it framed in a simple semi-glossy white wood frame. I still own it; it now hangs in my Back Bay kitchen. And I still love it.

Stacked Cups

Pear and Colander (Bonni Benrubi Gallery)

Shaker House in Snow (Bonni Benrubi Gallery)

untitled 2000 – 2002 (Bonni Benrubi Gallery)

Untitled, Ca. 1985 (Bonni Benrubi Gallery)

Untitled 200 – 2002 (Bonni Benrubi Gallery)

Central Park series (Bonni Benrubi Gallery)

ARTmonday: Grace Hopkins

Grace Hopkins is one of many New England artists whose abstract artwork defies expected New England standards. Hopkins grew up in NYC and is now based in Portland, Maine, with her artist husband and sweet little girl Gigi. Grace shows her work in galleries all over the Northeast. I discovered her work in Cape Cod. Her father, artist Budd Hopkins, is a longtime friend of my in-laws. (I’ll do a post on Budd at some point too.)

Hopkins characterizes her work as abstract photo-paintings. I have included a sampling of her photos from 2005 to the present , so you can its progression. This is how she describes the evolution: ” In the past few years I have been getting closer to my subject matter and minimizing the number of objects in my pictures, essentially zeroing in on what really interests me and excluding everything else.”

2009 South Beach