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May 16, 2014, 4:19pm

Color Pollination: Leigh Anne Lester at grayDUCK Gallery

If your produce shopping is limited to sustainable farmers markets rather than the neighborhood big-box — or if you haven't followed decades of GMC developments — you may be unaware of genetically modified crops' tenacious pervasiveness in the global community. In Venomous Cabbage and other demands satisfied, the inaugural show at grayDUCK Gallery's new eastside location in Austin, Leigh Anne Lester wields graphite and rich color as her magnifying glass to this agricultural reality. — Brian Fee, Austin contributor


Leigh Anne Lester | Deviant Pollination, 2014, graphite and color pencil on drafting film, 29 x 24 inches. Image courtesy the artist and grayDUCK Gallery, Austin.

Listed under: Review

May 06, 2014, 4:16pm

Hip to Be Square: The Work of David X. Levine

Since the late-1990s, New York-based artist David X. Levine has produced an extraordinary body of work that has continuously evolved. On the eve of his solo booth presentation at the 2014 NADA New York art fair, writer and critic Michael Wilson takes a look at the artist’s influences and – increasingly large-scaled - output over the past five years.


David X. Levine | Mary Brown, 2014, colored pencil and collage on paper, 50 x 52 inches.

Listed under: Noteworthy

May 05, 2014, 9:24am

Personal Ties: Wura-Natasha Ogunji at MASS Gallery

Connectivity is a recurring theme in Wura-Natasha Ogunji's work, within personal space and interpersonal relationships — to family, to a homeland, to both hemispheres of one earth. In her solo exhibition Your heart is clean at MASS Gallery, Ogunji unveils a body of works on paper and video installation developed during return trips to her father's homeland of Nigeria and time shared between industrial metropolis Lagos and Austin, TX. — Brian Fee, Austin contributor


Your heart is clean
installation view, MASS Gallery, April 25 – May 31, 2014. Image courtesy the artist and MASS Gallery, Austin. Photos taken by Sandy Carson.

Listed under: Review

May 02, 2014, 9:18am

In the Studio: Process of a Painting with Chris Thorson

Thinking back to my senior year of college, I lived in a co-ed rental house with a bunch of guys and I remember the shocking and seemingly exponential amount of dirty socks that would congregate in the living room. In fact, there were so many that I christened a plastic laundry bin as a permanent dirty sock receptacle, living quietly behind one of the leather sofas.

Dirty socks are Chris Thorson’s (NAP #109) recent subject for her three-dimensional cast and painted works. These discarded, twisted forms carry a life of their own that tell a number of stories – where they were that day (mud from a hike or wetness from the rain), what kind of activities ensued (knee-high soccer socks or thin black dress socks), and what kind of mood the wearer might be in (sleeping sloth socks or whimsical polka-dots). For something so ugly, dirty, and potentially smelly, these worn socks carry a beauty that Thorson illuminates in her works.


Chris Thorson | detail from “Bro Series,” mixed media: hydrocal mixture, gouache, watercolor, colored pencil, oil paint, and dry pastel, 2014. Courtesy of the artist.

Listed under: In the Studio

April 25, 2014, 12:09pm

Lodi: Natalie Smith at SCA Contemporary

Nearing the end of her stint at the University of New Mexico, Illinois transplant, Natalie Smith (NAP #105) unveiled her most recent body of work, Lodi, at SCA Contemporary in Albuquerque. Heavily influenced by craft and design practices, Lodi references her affinity for everyday objects, images and forms and belief that paintings can be “arenas in which anything is possible.” – Claude Smith Albuquerque/Santa Fe Contributor


Natalie Smith | Victoria & Albert, 2014, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 inches; image courtesy of the artist

Listed under: Review

April 23, 2014, 10:24am

West Competition Deadline: April 30

New American Paintings West Competition Deadline is April 30th, 2014 (Midnight, EST)

Juror: Nora Burnett Abrams 

For Artists Residing In States: AZ, CO, ID, MT, NE, NV, KS, ND, NM, OK, SD, TX, UT, WY 

Listed under: Competition

April 22, 2014, 9:03am

Mountains Made of Paper: Saul Becker’s Dead Reckoning

Svalbard is an unincorporated Norwegian archipelago that resides in the Arctic Circle, between continental Norway and the North Pole.  While its indisputable date of discovery surrounds a Dutchman’s search for the Northern Sea Route, in 1596, Scandinavians may have found it as early as the twelfth century.  In either case, a human presence made its way into this distant, arctic land filled with fjords, mountains, polar bears and arctic foxes, through a history of interactions ranging from whaling, explorations and coal mining, to the last armed German military unit’s surrender, after World War II. Svalbard is also now the site of The Arctic Circle residency program, where Tacoma artist Saul Becker (NAP #49) took in the landscapes that became part of his new show, Dead Reckoning, while aboard a grand, 120-foot schooner. — Erin Langner, Seattle Contributor


Saul Becker | Folding Coastline, 2012, watercolor, ink and gouache on paper, 29.5 x 41.5 in. Image courtesy of Prole Drift.

Listed under: Review

April 21, 2014, 9:16am

The Art and Artifice of Hand-lettering

Is there a reason we’re so drawn to hand-lettering right now? Why are we craving handmade cards, signs, and posters in this moment? Why do we gravitate towards making hand-lettered flyers and signs and cards as opposed to designing on the computer? Maybe it’s just because we don’t know how to use Adobe InDesign and Illustrator… but we think there’s more to it than that. - Lauren Gallow & Ellen C. Caldwell


Gemma O’Brien | “
Better Left Unsaid” installation view at the Freemantle Arts Centre, 2013. Courtesy of the Jacky Winter Group.

Listed under: Art World

April 17, 2014, 9:58am

In the Studio: Process of a Painting with Cary Reeder

Cary Reeder (NAP #108) paints industrial sites in a very particular manner. These normally cold places are made to feel slightly warm because of her attention to precise details like shadow, color, tone, and hue. They are also compelling, as if Reeder is able to call our attention to details that we might have overlooked in our own neighborhoods and cities.

In this Process of a Painting, we join Reeder on her lengthy, complicated, and rather grueling process toward completing “They Still Work.” Follow along with Reeder’s thoughts and insight embedded throughout her equally important visual documentation of the process. – Ellen C. Caldwell


Cary Reeder | “They Still Work,” acrylic on canvas, 2014, 28”H x 36” W. Courtesy of the artist.

Listed under: In the Studio

April 15, 2014, 10:28am

In the Studio: Process of a Painting with Howard Sherman

In this Process of a Painting, painter and collagist Howard Sherman (NAP #60, #72, #90, #108) gives great insight into his process, which is based on experimentation, intuition, and action. Sherman does not have a formal approach to his works, which he feels out as he goes, much as many artists do. His approach is additive and subtractive though, and he finds the end result and the painting’s completion at unexpected moments during this experimental time.


Howard Sherman | "Edgy community of unconventional types", 70 x 60 inches, acrylic, canvas and marker, 2014. Courtesy of the artist.

In his own words, “I have had a long-standing interest in creating paintings that mix muscular abstraction with a playful cartoonist sensibility. The results have been commanding and humorous. My most recent work has included a disruption of my painting’s surfaces with collage in a raw and powerful way.”

What I love about Sherman’s process is that it is not necessarily what you expect, if you’ve only seen his finished works. It’s a fun, investigational journey, resulting in witty, playful, and wonderful painted finishes. – Ellen C. Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor

Listed under: In the Studio

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