SAGINAW, Mich. — At the beginning of my guided tour through the Blactiquing Space, collector and curator Kevin Jones asked me a provocative, challenging question: Can something be racist and also be beautiful? It was just the first of many moments that evoked conflicting thoughts and emotions during my experience of […]
The ethical conundrum of using live animals as art materials is not a new issue in the art world — a place where aesthetics are considered a cause worth dying (and killing) for. But this week, fine art photographer and trained bird and wildlife rehabber Sheida Soleimani voiced objections to […]
“I hope what the section does is show the complex nature of how each of us might envision the future,” says Wassan Al-Khudhairi, the curator of the Focus section at this year’s Armory Show. “The works are informed more by the idea of looking into the future as a place […]
DETROIT — One of the first points of discussion at the “HBB from the future” workshop, conducted by Armenian-American weaver Levon Kafafian and Lebanese-American poet and educator Kaymelya Omayma Youssef at Room Project, was the definition of the word “habibi”( حبيبي), often abbreviated as HBB. Translated literally from Arabic, it […]
Back in the day, I used to publish fiction! Including this piece of micro-fiction titled “Xanhaar” — which I guess has more or less always been kicking around at the back of my brain, because I just did these two portraits. I like to think of them as the anniversary […]
As early as the introduction of railroads and the telegraph system, the Western landscape has struggled with the aesthetics of convenience. From commercial interests like strip malls and billboards, to national systems like highways and telephone wires, to individual interventions like graffiti and public sculpture, the definition of “eyesore” is […]
One of the basic truisms of freelancing is: You can have time, or you can have resources, but you will almost never have both simultaneously. A foundational lesson of this workflow is doing the work when it’s available and saving as much as possible for the slow times. But its […]
I just finished work on a pretty large-scale piece, and actually managed to get it documented before it sold and flew out of my life. It’s on its way to its forever home now, but I thought I’d share the details here. I’m proud of it and think it is […]
Evidence of multimedia artist Judith Schaechter’s decades-long relationship with computer-assisted design tools might be hard to pinpoint. Her stained-glass compositions are ornate, wildly imaginative, and intricately hand-detailed. Where the physical ends and the digital begins only adds to the dreamlike, ethereal quality of her work—an update to the old-world conventions […]
With roots as old as the concept of art itself, it is difficult to imagine the medium of drawing as having much to offer in the way of innovation. But Telling Stories: Resilience and Struggle in Contemporary Narrative Drawing, a three-woman show at the Toledo Museum of Art, showcases the […]