As a child growing up in East Texas, James Surls spent a lot of time making things. He didn’t call it art; it was just stuff he made because he was passionate about it. As an adult, he’s been called “one of the most important sculptors working in America today,” recognition he’s proud of but embraces with a bit of humility.
Ida Kohlmeyer’s love for her native New Orleans and in some instances her Jewishness comes out in her abstract expressionist art. The New Orleans Museum of Art is honoring her memory with “Ida Kohlmeyer: 100th Anniversary Highlights.” The exhibit features significant pieces of hers from NOMA’s permanent collection in an exhibition running through April 14.
The El Paso Museum of Art announces Contemporary Texas Prints, an exhibition of contemporary printmaking in Texas. The exhibition includes woodcuts, etchings, aquatints, lithographs, linocuts, serigraphs and mono-prints by artists such as David Bates, Luis Jimenez, Donald Judd and James Surls. Contemporary Texas Prints opens Sunday, March 31, 2013, in the Gateway Gallery.
Troy Dugas’s exhibition “The Shape of Relics” at Arthur Roger Gallery featured in “12 Must See Painting Shows: March 2013,” by Steven Zevitas, Publisher, New American Paintings
Lesley Dill’s interdisciplinary practice combines sculpture, literature and, more recently, opera. She works with text, with the material of words, the way others carve rock. We had the pleasure of attending a Buddhist retreat together at Poets’ House in Tribeca during June 2012. We bonded over our mutual love for silent walking, and devotion. Since then, we have been meeting monthly to converse about deep practice, dreaming up future performative collaborations, which can only be described as gift giving. Dill has been on the road for the past six months with several major exhibition projects. I catch her as she returns from her show, Poetic Visions: Sister Gertrude Morgan & Shimmer at the Halsey Institute in Charleston, South Carolina. She is about to receive a lifetime achievement award in printmaking from the Southern Graphics Conference International, where she will also launch a new collaborative book, I Had A Blueprint of History.
In 2005, a 64-foot-tall billboard in Lower Manhattan showed a van driving down a mountain against a psychedelic sky. The display was a giant reproduction of the painting “Tie-Dye in the Wilderness” by artist Lisa Sanditz. The cosmic landscape, composed of real and synthetic elements, was a cuckoo complement to its urban environs in New York City, where, to my chagrin, tie-dye has fallen out of favor. Sanditz likes to travel, see faraway places, and then paint these places in far out ways.
The eight minutes video is a painful, shocking start to Stephanie Patton’s show Private Practice at the Arthur Roger Gallery in New Orleans. The Shape of Relics from Troy Dugas occupies the other side of the gallery and assembles a large number of pieces organized by themes, resulting in a colorful display.
Exhibition Dates: March 2 – April 20, 2013 Opening Reception: Saturday, March 2 from 6–8 pm Gallery Location: 432 Julia Street, New Orleans, LA 70130 Hours: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 am–5 pm…
