photography Archives - Page 2 of 11

ARTmonday: Sneak Peek into the SMFA Art Sale 2014

The SMFA Art Sale 2014 starts this Thursday. It’s also known as the Museum School Art Sale—the art sale that takes place every year at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (SMFA), the renown art school adjacent to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston that has been influential part of the Boston art scene since it’s founding in 1876.

There are thousands of pieces of art for sale, hung throughout the galleries on the first floor, and shrink wrapped in bins in the central space. (It’s always fun to flip through and discover amazing finds, whether it’s and inexpensive piece by a student (I once scored tiny abstracts for $12; I often find photos I love for around $100) or additional work by artists whose work is hung in the galleries. Once a piece is sold, it comes off the wall and is immediately replaced by another piece, so the display is in constant rotation.

The Museum School Art Sale offers art in every price range and medium, including oil paintings, acrylic paintings, watercolor paintings, photography, textile art, sculpture, video art (I would love to buy a piece; I still think about one we passed up), ceramics, and jewelry. Pieces are done by SMFA students, alumni, faculty, and affiliated artists. Famous SFMA alums include Cy Twombly, William Barnett, Jim Dine, Ellsworth Kelly, Nan Goldin, and Doug and Mike Starn, many of which have pieces at the sale (and most of which are way out of my price range, obviously).

Each piece at the Museum School Art Sale is priced by the artists, with a fifty/fifty split between the artists and the School. Artwork sold to benefits student scholarships at the School of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The SMFA Art Sale 2014 takes place this Thursday to Sunday, November 20, 2014 to November 23, 2014. The hours are 10am-8pm the first three days and Sunday until five.

Here’s a sneak peek of 20 pieces for sale at this year’s Museum School Art Sale. At the end I included links to the posts I did about past years’ Museum School Art Sales. Also, if you’re interested, these are pieces that I’ve purchased at the SMFA Art Sales over the last few years.

Matthew Gamber

Adrienne Shishko

June August

John Guy Petruzzi

Chad Joiner

Dawn Southworth

Asia Kepka

Doug Starn + Mike Starn

Garrett Munski

Carol Daynard

Brian Burkhardt

Tess Atkinson

Beth Welsh

Warren Mather

Lee Essex Doyle

Marsha Perreault

Warren Mather

John Guy Petruzzi

Dawn Southworth

SMFA Art Sale 2014

Here are my posts from past year’s sales:
Artwork from SMFA Art Sale 2013
Artwork from SMFA Art Sale 2012
Artwork from SMFA Art Sale 2011
Artwork from SMFA Art Sale 2009

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ARTmonday: 18 Artworks From a Friend’s Collection

A friend of mine told me the other day that they sold their place around the corner and are moving to the suburbs. They feel like they’re ready to take on a house (she’s an interior designer after all) and that their two boys will really appreciate being able to run outside and play. Besides, their school is out there too.

So no more impromptu walks around the river or pizza in her front yard on Halloween (a big Back Bay event). No more calling over to see if my kids can shoot baskets in her courtyard. I hope the new owners keep up her gardens. The little front yards and window boxes are always well-planted.

Of course the interior is gorgeous. Comfortable, but very elegant and sophisticated, just what you’d expect of a Back Bay home of a designer with kids. My favorite part though, is her art collection. A mix of figurative and abstract, contemporary and more traditional, pieces by friends, local artists, and beyond. She has a great eye.

Erin Bisceglia

(not sure of artist)

(unsure of artist)

Barrel

• • •

Start your own art collection.

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ARTmonday: 36 Obscured Portraits of Women

If you follow the ARTmonday posts, you’ll know that as much as I love abstract art, I am especially drawn to artwork featuring female figures. Among my many posts highlighting specific female painters or more frequently, photographers, who create quirky or elusive images of women (Cig Harvey, Viviane Sassen, Natsumi Hayashi), I’ve also curated a number of roundups, including Women Thinking, Women In the Kitchen, Figures in the Landscape, Women In Water, and Girls At Play. (For more, you can also peruse my Pinterest boards Female Figures in Art, Portraits, Nudes.)

I have so many images of women turning their backs on the camera, that I thought for sure I did a post of those, but I can’t find it, so maybe not. Today’s post features 36 portraits of women whose faces are obscured in some way. The overall image might be blurry, her head could be wrapped in twigs (or a shower curtain!), perhaps her hair is in her face, or she’s wearing a blindfold. Or, the image might show what could have been a perfectly straightforward rendering, but then he or she dripped paint over the visage, or whited out all traces of personality.

Some of these obscured portraits of women are cloaked in mystery, others are silly, and still others, a tad subversive. I find them all appealing. (I left out the more disturbing of the finds this time around.)

Smooth #1 • Agnieszk Maria Zieba

Melodie Mousset

“Hunger” • Jovana Lakovic

unidentified

Julia Skopnik

Annija Muižule

Human Sculptures • Joakim Heltne

Jose Romussi

Wilkosz & Way

“Portrait with the Cat” • Chiara Elisa Ragghianti

Wool and the Gang

Yann Faucon

“Portrait with a Spectrum 3” • Chad Wys

unidentified

“Paper Butterflies” • Ping Homeric

Maia Harms

“Sky of Tears” • Tabitha Vevers

“Essäché” • Flora Borsi

Grace Coddington • Tim Walker

Face-Kinis • Peng Chen

“Ubearable” • Alessandro Passerini

“A Bundled Mass of Confusion” • Robert Flynn

Sarah Bodri

Urs Fischer

Lalla Essaydi

“Portrait of Petra Collins” • Neal Turner

Marianne Faithfull by David Redfern

ARTmonday: 12 Empty Beds

I’ve spent the last five days resting, mostly. In my bed, in the guest room bed, on the sofa bed outside my bedroom. I think I’m finally feeling better. (I caught a cold from my son, who brought it home from camp.) I thought images of beds would be fitting for my circumstances. Hoping to move my body to the beach tomorrow, in an effort to enjoy the last few days of summer. Here are 12 paintings and photographs of empty beds.

Robert Knight

Dan Linden

Brigitte Yoshiko Pruchnow

ARTmonday: My Instagram Pics

With all my Instagramming of late, there have been a few photos I’ve been thinking about getting printed. Experience tells me, though, that the prints won’t look great; they’ll either be too blurry, or too glossy, or just not a good enough image. I could go through a high end printing place, but I have another idea—canvas prints.

Recently Canvas Republic got in touch about its service of transferring one’s own photos to canvas. (They also sell ready made canvas print artwork, including abstracts, florals, and pop art prints. It got me thinking that maybe I should try it. I rifled through Instagram images I’ve saved over the past year.

Do you think any are worthy of transferring to canvas (or to a high end print)?