Joyce Lomax

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Every ceramic artist begins with inspiration, sometimes that inspiration is directly in the field in which the artist works, other times it is seemingly unrelated, but deeply inspired.

From early childhood I’ve dreamed of having black images (faces that look like me) on kitchen ceramics. Therefore, my ceramics and artwork reflect that dream. The images represent my heritage and culture. Each piece is hand-painted, therefore one-of-a-kind originals.
Joyce Lomax invites you to visit her Store.

Eunice LaFate

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Eunice LaFate was born on the island of Jamaica. Her creative vision finds its origin in the colors and tones of the island’s people, landscapes, and culture.
While her homeland has had a major effect on her art, so too have her many experiences here in the United States, where she has transitioned from her early career in education to human services administration. LaFate has immersed herself in teaching and helping people of all ages and races, which is why her creative spirit shows itself in art that emphasizes the beauty of human diversity and the importance of cultural heritage. She also brings to her art her appreciation of natural splendors —all in a universe that welcomes differences and celebrates rites of passage.
Influenced by the work of Grandma Moses and Bill Taylor, LaFate is an accomplished self-taught artist who has been painting for more than 20 years. Her varied use of abstract imagery, line, pattern, and color reflect this.
The winter season stimulates her creativity. In colder weather, her paints and brushes beckon her to spend more time at work indoors. And in the quiet warmth of these days and nights, as LaFate envisions her evolving worlds, she gives herself over to the process of rendering on paper and canvas what she sees, intuits, and imagines.
Eunice LaFate served on the Delaware Department of Education’s Curriculum Framework Commission for the Visual and Performing Arts. She is a member of the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts, and her works have been exhibited in Juried, One Person, and Group Shows. In 1993 she opened LaFate Gallery as an additional resource that provides greater access to her paintings.

Contemporary art shines at New York’s Armory Show

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New York’s annual Armory Show, the biggest window on contemporary art in the United States, has opened with hopes of injecting energy and cash into the city’s recession-hit art scene.
“This fair shows the vitality and internationalism of New York. All these exhibitions are part of what makes New York so exciting,” said Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
The Armory Show, which is partnered by MoMA, features 300 galleries exhibiting in the huge hangar-like buildings on two jetties on the Hudson River in Manhattan.

On Wednesday there were already thousands of visitors taking part in the invitation-only opening events, which are reserved for collectors, critics, galleries and museums. The show is open to the public until Sunday, and 60,000 people are expected.

Some 30 countries are represented in this year’s show, including 20 Berlin galleries.
“We wanted to celebrate the energy of Berlin. Every fair has to find ways to make it exciting for visitors,” Katelijne Debacker, executive director of the Armory Show.
In addition to the Armory Show there are 10 shows taking place at the same time around the city, including for the first time a Korean Art Show, with more than 20 Seoul galleries represented. There is also Dutch Art Now.
The Armory Show long has been a chance for collectors and dealers to find cutting-edge work, and this year’s batch brings something for everyone: from hyper-realism to abstract expressionism, from traditional oil painting to more experimental methods.

Time was up for Israeli burglar’s widow

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Nili Shamrat of Tarzana was caught after she sold clocks back to the Jerusalem museum that her late husband, Na’aman Diller, stole them from in 1983, investigators said.

When prolific Israeli burglar Na’aman Diller discovered he was dying of cancer in 2003, he decided to leave his widow a collection of some 100 artifacts of decidedly questionable origin.

They included rare clocks, manuscripts, paintings and an item billed as “the world’s most expensive watch”: a gold and rock crystal pocket watch made for Marie Antoinette in the 18th century.

All the items had allegedly been stolen during a storied heist at Jerusalem’s L.A. Mayer Museum for Islamic Art in 1983.
But that didn’t stop Diller’s widow, Nili Shamrat, 64, of Tarzana, from trying to sell dozens of the timepieces back to the museum no questions asked, authorities said.

Her effort set in motion a lengthy international investigation that ended a few weeks ago when Shamrat was sentenced in L.A. County Superior Court to five years’ probation and 300 hours of community service for receiving the stolen property.

The California insurance commissioner’s office announced the end of the case Tuesday, saying most of the valuables had been sent back to the museum.

Islamic gallery opens at Detroit art museum

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By Jeff Karoub, Associated Press Writer

DETROIT — In the heart of the largest concentration of Muslims in the U.S., the Detroit Institute of Arts this weekend is opening a new permanent gallery of Islamic art showcasing exhibits including a rare 15th-century Quran of a Mongol conqueror.

“The Arab and Islamic community is significant enough that it needs to see itself in the museum,” said director Graham W.J. Beal. “Their collection had not been shown very prominently in the previous recent decades.”
Sunday’s opening comes as several museums worldwide are broadening their collections. New York‘s Metropolitan Museum of Art is working on a suite of Islamic art galleries and The David Collection in Copenhagen is preparing to close its gallery for a reinstallation. The Louvre in Paris and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London also boast of major renovations to their collections. And Egyptian officials plan to reopen Cairo‘s Museum of Islamic Art.

Art Biennial Ikebana Show

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There might still be snow on the ground outside, but flowers are blooming in Alexandria at the Art League. The Torpedo Factory gallery is hosting its biennial ikebana show, in which a mix of orchids and lilies mingle with art. Twenty-two flower arrangers from the D.C.-based Sogetsu School show works from the Torpedo Factory to inspire Japanese-style floral arrangements, and the resulting installations will be shown alongside pieces that served as artistic muses. Curious how an ikebana springs to life? A flower-arranging demo takes place at 1 p.m. on Saturday.

If the blooming art isn’t enough to warm you up, there is also a mock Japanese tea ceremony on Sunday at 1:30 p.m., during which the Portrait Gallery’s Stephen di Girolamo discusses the art of tea preparation. To cap off the show’s five-day run, musicians from the Washington Toho Koto Society perform on traditional Japanese stringed instruments on Sunday at 3 p.m. \

Thursday through Sunday. The Art League at the Torpedo Factory, 105 N. Union St., Alexandria. 703-683-1780. http://www.theartleague.org/. Free.

A call for equal rights at Manifest Equality’s pop-up art gallery

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A battery of fluorescent lights blazes in an emptied retail space on Vine Street in Hollywood. Once home to the discount emporium Big Lots!, the cavernous building has been gutted of housewares and transformed into Manifest Equality, a temporary art show running through the weekend.

Orbiting themes of equality, justice, unity and love, the pop-up event intends to spotlight civil rights issues surrounding Proposition 8, which, since its 2008 passing, has prohibited marriage between homosexual partners in California. The large-scale show exhibits work from hundreds of well-known and emerging names, including street artists Robbie Conal, Swoon and Shepard Fairey, and illustrative painters Barry McGee, Gary Baseman and Elizabeth McGrath.

International Cultural Celebration At The Parrish

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The eclectic cultural complexion that is the modern East End is too rich and diverse to possibly represent in a single event, nonetheless, the Parrish Art Museum, in cooperation with the Rogers Memorial Library, presented a stellar afternoon celebrating the Native American, Mexican, Greek, Irish and African American elements of it with glorious music and dance.

Appropriately, the event opened with a celebration of the East End’s original inhabitants as Autumn Rose Williams and Mattah Wright, Miss Shinnecock Nation Teen and Junior Teen, respectively, represented the indigenous people and culture that against all the odds of occupation, immigration and development have preserved their way of life through the evolution of the Hamptons from unspoiled wilderness to affluent society playground. The next scheduled group was described in the program as “Scottish Bagpipers featuring Carol Price.”

Unfortunately, particularly for this son of Scotland, the bagpipers scheduled to participate had to cancel due to a “conflict” according to the event’s organizer Jennifer Duque, the Parrish Art Museum’s gracious Director of Family Programs. Well shame on the Scots and, truly, their loss! Thankfully, Grupo Folklorico Xochipilli from Mexico expanded their performance to two appearances filling the void left by my fellow Caledonians. The troupe gave an endearing performance, both in their scheduled time slot and later on in the show, which proudly celebrated their Mexican heritage in beautiful traditional costumes, music and dance.

International quilt show features local artists, quilts from inauguration

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Inspiration, stitch by stitch.
“The Journey of Hope in America: Quilts Inspired by President Barack Obama” explores the historic election of a black president with quilts from a wide range of styles: art quilts, folk art and traditional quilts. The exhibit at the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce illustrates a broad range of techniques and materials, including piecing, painting, appliqué, embroidery, dyeing, photography, beading and digital transfer.
The quilters are from around the world, representing China, Dubai, Jamaica and Mexico, in addition to artists from the United States, including several Butler County residents.
Internationally known quilt artist, author and historian Carolyn L. Mazloomi of West Chester Twp. curated the show. She’s brought together a diverse group of 95 fiber artists representing a variety of races, generations and religions. The exhibit will remain at the museum for a year before touring the country and different parts of the world.
“This particular exhibition is a traveling exhibition and it opened in Yokohama, Japan, in September,” Mazloomi said.
From Japan, the show moved to Wilberforce, with a final stop scheduled for South Africa.
West Chester Twp.’s Carol Gary Staples’ quilts “Inspired Change” and “Unparalleled Journey” can both be found hanging at the Wilberforce exhibit. Staples’ quilt “Inspired Change” was one of 44 quilts at President Obama’s inauguration.
“Being an African-American in my late 40’s, this is an unbelievable event for us,” Staples said. “We just didn’t think it’d happen in our lifetime, we didn’t know the country was there yet. It’s really personal for us.”

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Anatomy of an art exposition

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Cooperation and persistence made a Phila. festival possible despite tough times.
By Robert J. Brand.

The opening of Philagrafika 2010 put Philadelphia at the center of the art world. With more than 300 artists, exhibits at five major regional cultural institutions, and presentations and demonstrations at 88 area sites, Philagrafika explores the role of the printed image in modern society. It will continue to showcase Philadelphia’s cultural community and creative economy through next month.

In addition to drawing praise from critics and the arts community, the festival has raised the question, “How did they do that?”

This feat of collaboration and community is happening in a time of scarce funding and retrenchment for cultural organizations. Many in the national arts community have been amazed that this region’s major institutions cooperated with fringe arts collectives, galleries, and artists to bring it about.

Ten years ago, Teresa Jaynes (now Philagrafika’s executive director) and I wrote a short paper on how to create an economy friendly to printmaking and artists. My company hired Teresa, and we invited more than 15 museums, art schools, artists, galleries, and fine-arts print shops to a meeting. Nearly all of them showed up and never left.

We created the Philadelphia Print Collaborative on the spot, without a budget but with a clear sense that we could do more by working together. Within a few months, we had launched more than 50 exhibits to complement the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s groundbreaking 2001-02 exhibit “Dox Thrash: An African American Master Printmaker Rediscovered.”

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The divine art of the Kingdom of Ife

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Harmonious and humane, the sculptures of this lost African city have a greatness that any civilisation would recognise.
In his television series Civilisation, the great Kenneth Clark speaks of Raphael. Standing in the Raphael rooms in the Vatican, he admits that on first sight they can seem insipid, and quotes Sir Joshua Reynolds, who acknowleged the same problem. Reynolds warned his students that when they finally reached Rome they might find Raphael’s frescos disappointing, but urged them to persevere until they did find them beautiful and moving. It’s a lovely moment – you half expect Clark to say he finds Raphael a complete bore. But he doesn’t. “Well,” he says with a beatific smile, “I’ve spent a lifetime doing just that. And can I tell you it is worth it.”
Recently, in responding to other comments posted here, I wrote that art is soft stuff, demanding a subjective response. That is true, in part, but it is not the whole truth. The more correct statement would be: most art that we encounter demands a subjective response from us, which is very much a product of our reaction; but there is a type of art whose greatness pre-exists and survives us, and whose authority makes our like or dislike of it seem irrelevant.

This kind of art is classic art – classic because it seems to exemplify such clear values, to address such fundamental cognitive faculties, that its merit is absolute, and a failure to be moved by it is, essentially, our own failure.

Richard Wyatt’s reunion with his youthful art at UCLA Fowler Museum

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An exhibition allows the muralist to reconnect with a work he helped make at age 14.

All it took was one look.The artists behind a vibrant mural depicting community protection of black youth were a mystery to the folks at UCLA. An image of the work, part of the school’s archive, would eventually grace university publications, including an edition of the museum’s newsletter Fowler Now, but they didn’t know who had painted it.

That’s when Richard Wyatt came upon it.
“The winter newsletter came in the mail one day,” recounted Wyatt, 54. “And there it was. I was like ‘Whoa! Man, that’s our mural.’ “
The “our” refers to Wyatt and his then-“art-partner-in-crime” Guillermo Anderson. Both were commissioned — at age 14 — in 1971 to create the work as part of an outreach program at the school.
The oil-on-canvas work features an outstretched arm presiding over the youth in the image; in another corner is an oversized arm, acting as a shield. A pregnant woman hugging her belly is meant to represent the future.
UCLA Fowler Museum had planned to showcase the work in the exhibition “Art, Activism, Access: 40 Years of Ethnic Studies at UCLA,” on view through mid-June, and hang a sign requesting that anyone with information about the painting contact the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. But Wyatt was one step ahead.
“I called the school up, and now I’m getting ready to see it on display again. It’s great,” Wyatt said.
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Legs and Lenses

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Legs and Lenses

A PHOTO PARTY CELEBRATING YOU!!!!!!

Mike Pierce Photography will be hosting “LEGS and LENSES”. On March 5th, you are invited to come to Glamourville Studios and enjoy yourself in front of the Camera. Ever wanted to take some Hot Edgy photos, but couldn’t afford to pay for a full photoshoot? Well here is the perfect opportunity to do so at a fraction of the cost.

For only 75.00 you will:

Have your Make-up applied professionally
Be photgraphed in (2) two outfits
Experience a Professional Photoshoot in a Professional environment
Enjoy a socially festive atmosphere with food, drink, and music

You will Recieve:

(2) 8×10 prints (1 portrait and 1 full body)
access to a web gallery to see additional shots and share with friends.
And the most important thing…. A GREAT EXPERIENCE!!!!!

Friday, March 5, 2010 at 8:00pm
Saturday, March 6, 2010 at 12:00am
Glamourville Studios
1241 Carpenter Street
Philadelphia, PA

website

Gee’s Bend Quilts & Beyond

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The Flint Institute of Arts is definitely a diamond in the rough. Although Flint has a reputation for a number of things, both positive and negative, the FIA is a wonderful place to experience culture in the fine arts, yet it is often overlooked. It hosts a collection of exhibits, both temporary and permanent, and it is worth checking out regularly.

One of the current exhibits is “Gee’s Bend and Beyond,” which displays the quilts of a group of African American women from Gee’s Bend, Alabama. The art of quilt-making has existed since slavery, a tradition that has been passed down through the generations. The quilts featured in this exhibit were made by Mary Lee Bendolph, one of the best-known and most respected quilt-makers of Gee’s Bend, along with quilts by her mother and daughters. It also features art by two Alabama artists, who developed themselves as artists independently. Overall, the exhibit shows that even an old tradition can change and evolve in dynamic ways without necessarily losing its traditional meanings.

Quilt-making is all about variety and diversity. The style of the quilts varies greatly depending on the style, theme, material, and the quilter himself or herself. There are specific types of quilts such as housetop, which represents the roof a log cabin from an aerial view, or bricklayer, where the boxes are sown in a fashion resembling the way bricks are laid. However, improvisation is an essential part of the Gee’s Bend quilts. So while a quilt maker may start off with a style in mind, the finished product doesn’t necessarily reflect a particular style, rather it shows the creativity of its maker. There were several variations of the housetop quilts displayed, each unique and different from the rest. In most cases the patches varied in size, color, and positioning throughout the quilt.

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October Gallery Webinars-Art Seminars

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Conversation on Art #302 Collecting African American ArtA lively discussion on why the esthetic value of a work of art should be acollector’s primary motivation for acquiring art work.
Monday, March 1 – 8PM
Conversation on Art #303 Andrew Turner – In His Own WordsA look at the life and art of Philadelphia artist Andrew Turner.
Tuesday, March 2 – 8PM
Conversation on Art #304 Group ShowWe will take a look at a number of contemporary African American artists through video.Artists include: Cal Massey, Leroy Campbell, BUA, George O’Neil and others.
Wednesday, March 3 – 8PM
Conversation on Art #305 An Eye For ArtYou will learn first how to – Describe the Work of ArtThen you will learn how to – Analyze the Work of ArtNext you will learn how to – Interpret the Work of ArtAnd lastly you will learn how to – Evaluate the Work of Art
Thursday, March 4 – 8PM
These webinars will include video as well as text format.Webinars are FREE.