Mandy Lee Studio

I’ve always enjoyed mixing art with other disciplines. I’m a full believer in interdisciplinary arts as a method of learning and comprehending the world and environment in which we live. Thus, I love reading, or seeing how other artists intertwine art with other areas of study such as science, math and music. Tom Shannon mixes art and science within his work in beautiful ways.

From the website:
About this talk

TED visits Tom Shannon in his Manhattan studio for an intimate look at his science-inspired art. An eye-opening, personal conversation with John Hockenberry reveals how nature’s forces — and the onset of Parkinson’s tremors — interact in his life and craft.
About Tom Shannon

Tom Shannon’s mixed-material sculpture seems to levitate — often it actually does — thanks to powerful magnets and clever arrangements of suspension wire. He designed the TED Prize trophy. Full bio and more links

http://www.ted.com/talks/tom_shannon_the_painter_and_the_pendulum.html

J.M.W. Turner's painting, "The Fifth Plague of Egypt"

A bit of hometown rivalry between New Orleans Museum of Art Director E. John Bullard and Indianapolis Museum of Art CEO Maxwell Anderson is causing waves in the art world as we get closer to the Super Bowl. Friendly teasing soon escalated to online trash talking through Twitter and a little wager over the outcome of the big game.  If the Colts win, NOMA will be sending “Ideal View of Tivoli,” a 1644 work by Claude Lorrain to Indianapolis for three months. If the Saints march it in, IMA will be forfeiting  “The Fifth Plague of Egypt”a landscape painted by J.M.W. Turner in 1800 for three months. Each painting encapsulates the best of each museusm’s collections, so lending them out will be h

Claude Lorrain's "Ideal View of Tivoli"

ard. We’ll find out on Sunday who will be eating crow!

http://www.indystar.com/article/20100128/SPORTS03/1280468/1112/NEWS10/Fifth-Plague-of-Egypt-Ideal-View-of-Tivoli-make-for-Super-bet

Picasso's "The Actor"

And sorry isn’t going to make it all better either.

A couple days ago, while on an arts-education class at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, a lady lost her footing and fell  into a Pablo Picasso painting.  Her trip left an approximately 6 inch long tear in Picasso’s The Actor, worth somewhere around $130 million. The woman, whom the Met is not identifying right now, is physically unharmed, but I’m wondering if the “you break it, you bought it” rule will be called.

Kiki Smith installing a piece from Sojourn

One of my favorite artists of all time, Kiki Smith, is installing a site-specific show at the Brooklyn Museum. This new work explores the cycle of life and creative inspiration from the feminine perspective. Kiki Smith: Sojourn draws on a variety of universal experiences, from the milestones of birth and death to quotidian experiences such as the daily chores of domestic life.

Kiki Smith: Sojourn
February 12–September 12, 2010
Brooklyn Museum

I finally go the phone call- I’m in! I’m now a member of Poudre Studio Artists (PSA). It’s a group of artists working above the Main Gallery at the Poudre River Arts Center.  Well, I’ll be a member when I sign the lease and move in. I’m so looking forward to this move forward.  So much to do and I have plenty of time!

The other news is that I’ve started a Mixed Media group, and have people signed up! If you are in the vicinity of Fort Collins and want to hang out and make art, feel free to join us over at http://www.meetup.com/Mixed-Media-Artists-Guild. We have two meetings a month, but for right now, the meetings cover the same topics, so come to one or the other, or both!

Many celebrities are beginning to show their multitude of talents in the arts; from singing and dancing, to writing and cooking. But not many can act and paint.

Stallone Next to his work.

To be honest, I kinda like the free expression of the splatters and drips. And, as I have been learning in my business class, value is an entirely subjective term. People are shocked that this painting sold for $50,000. Sometimes the value of a piece is not based on what the artist or gallery thinks it’s wort, but how much the buyer is willing to pay. I think this is a lesson for all emerging artists, for they are the ones who tend to undervalue their work the most.

Make the buyer want your work more than you want to keep it. Learn to sell your work the right way. Learn the words and phrases necessary to make the connection between buyer and art. It’s not selling out. It’s not being greedy or capitalistic. It’s getting your art- your message, voice, idea, thought, belief, soul- out there and doing its job. It’s making people happy, think, intrigued,changed,talking, looking, seeing, understanding. For bad or for worse.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1232958/Dont-day-job–Sylvester-Stallone-tries-hand-fine-art-mixed-results.html

If I’m going to write about Janice Lowry, I need to also commemorate Nancy Spero. She was one of the pioneering feminist artists of the last century. Her work explored the power of women in all areas and portrayed women almost exclusively in her later works with a primitive hand that often times borrowed from Greek, Egyptian, and African style in a way that was celebratory of life. Spero also addressed modern day issues women faced in the here and now, illustrating current events to remind us of the strength of the feminine in the face of male and societal oppressors such as the torture of women in Nicaragua, the Holocaust, and the atrocities of the Vietnam War. She was a master of painting, drawing, printmaking and collage, often using a variety of media in large scale scrolls she became known for. She passed away on October 18th, 2009 at the age of 83.

Spero was featured in the Season 4 (2007) episode Protest of the Art:21–Art in the Twenty-First Century television series on PBS.