Local Designer Leads KMAC Fashion Camp

By: Ramona Lindsey, director of education

What’s the best way to spend a week out of school?   Is it sunbathing  on a white sandy beach?  What about watching hours of Neflix?  Maybe it’s hours of tormenting a brother or sister?  Well, KMAC thinks the best way to spend the week is creating wearable art with a locally recognized fashion designer. During the week of April 4^th-8^th, Frances Lewis, founder and lead designer of Ann De Evelyn, will work with campers (grades 4-8) at KMAC Camp Couture 2016.

KMAC Camp Couture is a weeklong opportunity to learn how to create like a KMAC Couture Designer.   KMAC Couture: Art Walks the Runway is a Louisville favorite event where local artists and designers create wearable art from the most unlikely materials.  Guests of this elaborate and unique fashion show have watched models dressed in high fashions made from dried fruit, broken dishes, birthday cards, and even garbage. Frances Lewis is a three year veteran of KMAC Couture.  Her dress made of hair extensions is featured on the KMAC Couture 2016 poster.

Camp Couture 2016 will be the first time that a veteran KMAC Couture artist will guide campers through the process of making a wearable piece of art. Campers will work in two-person design teams to make a complete look that will be showcased during KMAC Couture 2016.  Each team will have 5 days to transform a basic mannequin and muslin into something totally outrageous  yet glamorous.  Here’s what will happen each day:

Day 1:  Create A Fashion House with Your Partner.  You will come up with a logo, signature design style, & mood boards.

Day 2:  Learn Stitching Basics by Hand and Machine.   Use your stitches to design a custom bag with hand appliquéd screenprinted motifs.

Day 3: Meet Your Model and Follow a Pattern.  You will create the perfect model using a mannequin that will wear a circle skirt or shorts that you sew.

Day 4: Make It Couture.  KMAC Couture means adding the unthinkable to your skirt and mannequin to make it completely artsy.

Day 5:  Take it Over the Top.   Use the skills you learned to create textile jewelry that will rocket your look to the extreme.

Each camper will go home at the end of the week with items they created as individuals and a team.  In addition, they will have the opportunity to share ideas, stories, and challenges with other young people who are wild about fashion.  KMAC Camp Couture 2016 is sure to be an unforgettable experience where campers enjoy the ultimate combination of fashion and art.  Online registration is open but there is space for only 18 campers.  I hope to meet you at KMAC Camp Couture 2016.

 

For more information, or to register, click here. With questions or concerns, email Assistant Director of Education Sarah McCartt-Jackson at sarah@kmacmuseum.org.

Looming Large

KMAC has gone stark weaving mad.

Artists from 16 countries currently fill our two main galleries with over two-dozen loom woven works. Shown in conjunction with the traveling exhibit The New Art of the Loom: Contemporary International Tapestry, KMAC has organized Looming Local as a response to some of the issues raised by the international artists. The works on view range in size and content from the large 8 ½ x 11 foot tapestry Porter with Bicycle: Espagne et Portugal by South African artist William Kentridge to the small, intricate and colorful weavings by Kentucky artist Tori Kleinert.

William Kentridge, Porter Series: Espagne et Portugal, 2004, 99 x 130″ Stephens Tapestry Studio, Johannesburg. (Courtesy: Marian Goodman Gallery, New York)

Tori Kleinert, Hidden Semblance, 2004

The New Art of the Loom consists of contemporary tapestries that connect with the large, ambitious, narrative works that dominated artistic production in early Modern Europe. These early tapestries functioned as a decorative way to display a coat of arms, relay a familiar story or to illustrate scenes of victorious battles, but they also provided warmth, covering the walls of large drafty castles. After falling out of favor due to growing feminine and domestic undertones the tapestry was revived by British art activist William Morris in the late 19^th century, making weaving fundamental to a burgeoning international design movement that promoted artisanship and hand-made activity.

Looming Local takes a peek at the immediate surroundings of the museum to show how four artists are exploring similar issues as their international counterparts and taking the weaving tradition into the more creative, expressionistic contemporary art form that it is today. Both exhibits combined communicate a broad range of materials, methods and multiple weaving processes. The four artists represented in the local show, though rooted in a loom based practice, are markedly different from their peers in technique and composition.

Dobree Adams, Spring on the Mountain, 2008, 30 x 62″

Dobree Adams creates loom woven works that capture the landscape in a manner intended to evoke the intermediate or transitional states that are associated with Tibetan Buddhism. The spiritual and meditative qualities that imbue her work connect well with other artists on show in the museum who deal similarly with nature, particularly with the tapestry “Without Notice” by the Japanese artist Miyuki Tatsumi. Adams and Tatsumi are both drawn to the calmness of nature, but also to its power to change and dominate our lives in mysterious ways and without warning.

Miyuki Tatsumi, Without Notice, 2008
8’3″ x 3’10”

Tori Kleinert’s small format works, though diminutive in size, are big in meaning and content. They pack in loads of bold color and act as deeply personal explorations of ideas and emotions often connected to the history of female craft activity. She refers to the figures in her work as ancestors or semblances, an evocation of the spirits who live on informing the work of contemporary tapestry artists from around the world. Kleinert’s Terroristic Semblance from 2003/2004 commemorates the lives that were lost on September 11, 2001.

Tori Kleinert, Terroristic Semblance: Destruction of the Fold, 2003/2004

A sharp use of color adds intensity to her subject matter and relates to New Art of the Loom artist Christine Altona’s work, also from 2004. Based on an article in the Boston Globe about alleged child abuse, Altona created this particular tapestry as a tribute to the children who have been abused in the Roman Catholic Church. Several red cardinal hats are placed at the top of the work above a knotted red circle, suggesting the strong and powerful looking down on the weak bound together in struggle. The blue represents the earth and the prevalence of this transgression around the world.

Christine Altona,
Hallelujah-Boston Globe, 2004, 7’8″ x 7’3″

Arturo Sandoval is an art professor at the University of Kentucky and a well-known weaver from the region. His sole work in the show is part of a long running series that looks at American democracy and one of the most potent symbols of our culture, the American flag. Sandoval conceived the State of the Union series in order to work through personal issues related to his time serving in the Vietnam War. His desire to create a political art series was to commemorate the sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers who lost their lives in battle. The newspaper headlines and magazine images that are woven into this series were initially collected from 1980-1984. He has since continued the series as way to further express his feelings toward the recent war in Iraq.

Arturo Alonzo Sandoval,
State of the Union No. 5: Baptism by Fire, 1984, 41” x 47”

The most divergent work away from any form of traditional tapestry seen in either the local or international exhibit comes from Looming Local artist Philis Alvic from Lexington, KY. Her recent work consists of assembling remnants of older tapestries into fabric constructions, which she refers to as Portals. In this ongoing series of works, suggestive of windows, doors, and curtains, she intends to communicate the ideas of transition, passage, and change. Through the technique of fabric collage and drapery these works move into the more three-dimensional space of wall sculpture.

As Alvic digs through her own personal archive incorporating material from previous work she evokes the idea of the artist entering a metaphorical portal, passing from one era of creativity and production into another. In this particular series of works Alvic is weaving together remnants as well as personal histories. There are a number of transitional concepts related to creative growth and change that could be applied to this series. The idea of the portal as a signifier for moving from one period of life into another is an important factor in the life of every artist. It can often be a struggle to shift focus and enter new unknown territory, but it can also be a time when an individual artist develops greater clarity and confidence in their work.

Philis Alvic,
Dark Entry, 2013
74” x 52”

EXPO Chicago: A KMAC Donors’ Field Trip

KMAC ‘s Donors Circle brought a hale and hearty group of 14 to EXPO Chicago a week and a half ago. We spent our days cruising the contemporary art offerings out on the Navy Pier. In the afternoon, we enjoyed Kentucky hospitality in the form of tastings of Old Forester provided by Brown-Forman happening at the KMAC booth, which featured selections from recent museum exhibitions: Denise Burge, Matthew Ronay, Elijah Pierce and more.

Outside the art fair, we had the opportunity to visit some outstanding private collections including those of Paul and De Gray, Gary Metzner and Scott Johnson, Richard and Ellen Sandor, and Susan Goodman and Rod Lubeznik.

On Friday, September 19th, Richard and Ellen Sandor impressed us with their extensive body of photography and related objects (over 2,000 pieces from the 1840s to the present) and awed with their encyclopedic knowledge of the contexts in which their historical images were conceived. I especially admired a photo of poet Marianne Moore in her tricorn hat/George Washington getup. The couple’s “Outsider Café”features well-known naïve and intuitive artists Lee Godie, Martin Ramirez, Sharon Scott, and Bill Traylor.

 

Private Collection- The Sandor’s

Private Collector Tour

On Friday night, we attended gallery openings at Kavi Gupta’s two spaces. I particularly enjoyed watching a documentary that Mickalene Thomas created in memory of her mother, who many will recognize as the principal subject of her work. The film plays continuously in a family room setting, complete with wood paneling, a sofa, and coffee table. That night, Kavi Gupta graciously included us in a party at his place, where we mingled with art stars like Jessica Stockholder. Kavi put a picture of Martha Slaughter and Henry Heuser on Instagram!

On Saturday morning, we ventured to the Gold Coast—where we took in magnificent panoramic views of Lake Michigan at the home of Susan Goodman and Rod Lubeznik. Our group took note of a ceramic portrait bust by Klara Kristalova and a felt piece (resembling a Matisse paper cut-out) by William J. O’Brien. In the bathroom sits a humorous multi-media sculpture by Tokyo-based artist Ken Kagami.

On our final morning in Chicago, we stopped at the warehouse studio of Tony Tasset (husband of well-known Chicago painter Judy Ledgerwood) who manipulates quintessential American imagery in bold colors. He chooses to work in a vernacular of existing genres to communicate with simple signs. His egalitarian, open system of meaning resembles a love letter to 70s super graphic art (such as Robert Indiana).

We had an absolute blast in Chicago. And I am now rested enough to say that I enthusiastically anticipate the next Donors’ Circle trip—to New York City in March! I hope you can join us.

–Leslie Millar, KMAC Donor Circle Member

My Neighbor the Artist

Written by KMAC Donors’ Circle Member  Merrily Orsini

Denise Mucci Furnish used to be my neighbor across the street. Before she was a known artist, she was an innate artist. Apparently born as such, she was encouraged by life’s experiences to make art whenever possible. I have a vague memory of meeting Denise, or at least seeing her work, as far back as 1970, when, in Lexington, I saw some cloth dolls she had made. Occasionally, these dolls still haunt my mind. They were ethereal dolls with little bound cloth bodies and round sock faces— beautiful dolls, and dolls that seemed to scream, “Let me out!”

It was a few years later, in 1979, that I ended up on Everett Avenue, across the street from the Furnishes. In 1980, Denise started attending the Louisville School of Art. Her quilts morphed from folded,piles on the top floor of her one time elegant and gabled three-story house, to hanging on the wall, as art. It was a bit later, in 1984 that I purchased my very first original piece of art, Salute to the Sun (Eclipse), from a real gallery. It was the first official piece of art that Denise ever sold. This quilt, made lovingly by Denise Mucci Furnish, still hangs proudly and emphatically, at the entrance to our home. I still enjoy it daily, if not hourly, and it is still as poignant as it was that first time when I was drawn to purchase it, even though it was well beyond my means at the time. However, that quilt is priceless when it comes to the enjoyment and the memories it evokes.

The years between 1980 and 1985 were some of the most interesting years as I watched an artist come into her own. The Mount St. Helens’s eruption in 1980 somehow consumed the artist across the street. There were many variations in her artistic obsession with Mount St. Helens. One of the most interesting, and, a variation of which I have now framed in my office for daily viewing, is making little volcanoes out of dryer lint. The dryer lint is screen filtered into a circular doughnut shape with a small hole in the middle. When dissected into fourths, it makes perfect little volcanoes. A housewife might see dryer lint as something to be cleaned from the filer and tossed, but not the artist. The artist sees opportunity. The artist sees possibility. The artist sees.

Note the color of the lint? It differs according to what is being dried—reds,colors, or denim. The texture also differs, and that is what the artist saw. Try tossing feathers in the dryer and see what happens (not to the poor unsuspecting clothes, but to the lint filter art fodder residue?) What about glitter? It is really amazing how much art can come from a common household dryer when seen through the eyes of the artist. And, those volcanic lint quilts and collages got better and better, more colorful, and more textured, until the eventual end of that dryer. And, for the artist? Another medium to explore with one exhausted.

A life making art. A life enjoying art. Are these two so far apart? I think they are. The artist has a special way of looking at life, interpreting it, finding ways to use common items or common visuals as art. That interpretation, of course, is not what the viewer, or the art collector understands, even when articulated succinctly by the artist. Because, as everyone knows, art is in the eye of the beholder. But the joy, sorrow, jubilation, and emotion are resident as well in the viewer of the art, and, it is this emotion that moves one to enjoy art, to buy art.

Denise Furnish & Walter Early: Color Stories is on view through March 16.

Denise Furnish on KMAC Radio

Tune into ArtFm Louisville for the KMAC radio hour today at 11am to hear Denise Furnish discuss her work currently on display in the museum. She will talk about her ongoing series of painting experiments inspired  by the use of discarded quilts. The discussion will address artist Robert Rauschenberg’s own use of a quilt in the “combine” Bed from 1955 and how this work became a direct influence on Furnish’s work. 

Denise Furnish, Blue, 2005, 73″ x 68″ Discarded Catch Me If You Can Quilt, acrylic

The significance of the American quilt is bound to our nation’s pioneering history and is situated in a craft tradition that celebrates the ingenuity and collaborative spirit of early American women. After making new clothes for the family, quilting groups would convene to transform their remnants into uniquely patterned bedspreads and baby blankets. Furnish is inspired by this history and through her evolving process of reviving quilts that have been used as dog beds or thrown out due to being threadbare and worn she preserves the conversations that were had during the original communal construction of her fabric painting surfaces. The voices of the women and their care and concern for those around them is radiated and brought back into the foreground due to her use of bold, vibrant colors. Her process could be seen as a kind of repairing technique or decorative bandaging where the new surface becomes the focus and the craft is one of preservation and/or protection. The original fabric is covered forever, but it’s now safeguarded always there beneath the layers retaining its rich, storied past.

The current exhibition at KMAC called Color Stories combines Furnish’s work with a series of sculptures by Walter Early, who likewise fuses contemporary conceptual art practices that explore issues of consumption, waste, and identity with the challenges of modern art aesthetics surrounding form, color and production.

Listen in today for more info on this exhibit and enjoy some music selections inspired by the work.

KMAC Donors Tour Mayor Jim Gray’s Art Collection

In November, the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft Donor’s Circle visited the magnificent art collection of Lexington Mayor Jim Gray.  Mayor Gray’s home is situated in the Gratz Park Historic District, one of the most beautiful areas of Lexington, Kentucky.

Lexington Artist Louis Zoellar Bickett offered us a tour through Mayor Gray’s well-appointed rooms, several of which feature Bickett’s assemblages and containers.  In the entrance hall, we admired a large black-and-white piece entitled Welsh Oaks (#3) (1998) by Vancouver School photographer Rodney Graham.

Our group especially enjoyed becoming acquainted with the work of Lexington-area artist Mark Goodlett, who assembles ornate picture-boxes out of wadded paper while lying in bed.

Mayor Gray’s residence houses work by many world-renowned contemporary artists, such as Joseph Kosuth, Yinka Shonibare, Kara Walker, Richard Long, Vik Muniz , Claes Oldenburg, Yayoi Kusama, Robert Mapplethorpe, Gerhard Richter, and Fred Tomaselli.  Bickett informed us that Mayor Gray regularly rotates pieces in the house with others from his vast collection.

Great favorites amongst this art loving group were two pieces by English artist and Turner Prize winner Rachel Whiteread.  While viewers may be familiar with Whiteread’s plaster casts of vacant/negative spaces, the sculpture Untitled (Trafalgar Square Plinth) (1999) surprises with its use of resin to create a ghostly double.

Another of Whiteread’s works, “Switch” (1994), creates a more subtle, playful effect.

On that perfect fall day, the group ventured on to galleries around town.  We are grateful to Mayor Gray and to Bickett for their hospitality.  Please join us on a future trip!

–Leslie Millar
KMAC Board Member
photos courtesy of Jody Howard

Bucking the Trend: Art Innovators on KMAC Radio

Tune in Mondays to KMAC Radio on ArtxFM from 11am to 12p where we use radio as a vehicle for exploring art, music, and social ideas. It’s simple to listen: Go to artxfm.com and click PLAY on the embedded player located in the upper left corner of the website. Monday’s show will be hosted by KMAC’s Communications Director Julie Gross and she’ll be discussing Bucking the Trend: Art Innovators.

On my recent trip to Rome and Florence Italy, I got more than the brain can handle in terms of sensory overload. Beauty lives in every corner and facet of these cities and I discovered more than just the art from the Renaissance masters.

“Portrait of the Dwarf Morgante” by Agnolo di Cosimo, called Bronzino. Uffizi Gallery, Florence

Marcel Duchamp, In advance of the broken arm, 1915. Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome.

Marcel Duchamp, Fountain, 1917. Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome

Duchamp, Re-Made in Italy Exhibition at the Galleria nazionale d’arte moderna, Rome

Urs Fischer, Bed/Horse 2013. Gagosian Gallery, Rome

Eero Saarinen, Tulip Chair blueprints, 1957

Photo as Document on KMAC Radio

Tune in Mondays to KMAC Radio on ArtxFM from 11am to 12p where we use radio as a vehicle for exploring art, music, and social ideas. It’s simple to listen: Go to artxfm.com and click PLAY on the embedded player located in the upper left corner of the website. Monday’s show will be hosted by KMAC’s Communications Director Julie Gross and she’ll be discussing Photo as Document. Documentary photography can serve as a historical marker in time or spur social and political change. The captured images are painstakingly raw and equally beautiful in their candor, which is testament to the artful eye of the photographer. Photographer Bob Hower and Artist Todd Smith will participate in an in-studio interview to talk further about this topic. They are both part of the Louisville Photo Biennial happening this month and are exhibiting at Swanson Contemporary (Hower) and Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest (Smith). This topic was derived from KMAC’s current exhibit of Gene Spatz photographs that document the celebrity social life of 70s New York. The artwork discussed on today’s radio hour will be:

Bob Hower, Couple with White Cadillac. Jefferson County 1977

Bob Hower, Family in Perry County KY, 1977.

See more images from Rough Road: The Kentucky Photographic Documentary Project

Bob Hower, Coal Miners

Bob Hower

Bob Hower, The Parklands of Floyds Fork

Todd Smith a la Daily Climb

Todd Smith, Great Prairie Weeping Beech. Photo: Natalie Biesel

Todd Smith. Lake Nevin Sycamore. Photo Natalie Biesel

Music Playlist:
Blue Moon of Kentucky – Ben Sollee
Red-Winged Blackbird – Kathy Mattea
Golden – My Morning Jacket
Hetch Hetchy – Father President
Drew – Goldfrapp

Art of Celebrity on KMAC Radio

Tune in Mondays to KMAC Radio on ArtxFM from 11am to 12p where we use radio as a vehicle for exploring art, music, and social ideas. Go to artxfm.com and click PLAY on the embedded player located in the upper left corner of the website.

Today’s show is hosted by KMAC’s Communications Director Julie Gross and we’ll be discussing the Art of Celebrity (or art that is inspired by a person’s celebrity status). This topic was derived from KMAC’s current exhibit Gene Spatz: The Art of a Paparazzo. The artwork discussed on today’s radio hour will be:

Gene Spatz, A Little Night Music at Studio 54. 3/6/1978

Richard Hamilton, Swingeing London 67, 1968-69

Photo from the Daily Telegraph UK

Gene Spatz, Andy Warhol and Mick Jagger at the reopening of the Copacabana club.
10/14/76

Andy Warhol, LizaMinelli, 1979, polaroid and painting, courtesy Andy Warhol Museum

Elizabeth Peyton, Arsenal (Prince Harry), 1997

Special Guest Louisville Composer Daniel Gilliam will also be on the show discussing his newest work Jesse Stuart Songs that will be performed by bass-baritone Nathan Wilson and Andrew Fleischmann on Thursday, October 10, 2013 at 7pm at the Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft. This performance is free and open to the public.

Jesse Stuart, courtesy of Life Magazine 1954

Jesse Stuart was the 1954 Kentucky poet laureate and an American writer known for his short stories and poetry about Southern Appalachia. Jesse Stuart Songs consists of five sonnets from Stuart’s largest collection of poetry, Man with a Bull-Tongue Plow.

Songs and poems featured on the show:

Spring in Kentucky Hills

Spring in Kentucky hills will soon awaken;
The sap will run every vein of tree.
Green will come to the land bleak and forsaken;
Warm silver wind will catch the honey bee.
Blood-root will whiten on the barren hill;
Wind-flowers will grow beneath the oaks and nod
To silver April wind against their will.
Bitterns will break the silence of the hills
And meadow’s grass sup dew under the moons,
Pastures will green and bring back whippoorwills
And butterflies that break from stout cocoons.
Spring in Kentucky hills and I shall be
A free soil-man to walk beneath the trees
And listen to the wind among the leaves
And count the stars and do as I damn please.

Oh Don’t You See

Oh, don’t you see the willow leaves this Spring
And bright green finger needles on the fir?
Birds choose to light among their boughs and sing;
It’s where the summer jar-flies choose to churr.
And don’t you love the silver maple leaves
Upturned by silver winds to skies deep blue.
And don’t you love the leaves on white oak trees
And beech tree leaves when winds are blowing through?
And don’t you love green whispering corn blades
And wild fern leaf where placid waters lie
Beneath a tranquil lazy summer sky.
And don’t you love the smooth-fan poplar leaves
A-wavin’ in a silver summer breeze.
I ask these questions and I don’t know why.

Harlan Hubbard, Campbell County Hill Farm, 1933

Music Playlist:
Spring in Kentucky Hills – Dan Gilliam composer, Performed by Nathan Wilson (Jesse Stuart author)
Oh Don’t You See – Dan Gilliam composer, Performed by Nathan Wilson (Jesse Stuart author)
Itchin’ On A Photograph  – Grouplove
New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down – LCD Soundsystem
Sympathy for the Devil – The Rolling Stones
Fine Dining – Cube Head and Mr. Smiles

Donors Circle Preview of Creative Growth and StudioVisions

KMAC invited the Donor Circle to a special preview of two exhibitions that kick off the 2013 fall season, Creative Growth: Dan Miller and Judith Scott and Studio Visions. The entire show features work by artists with disabilities collected from three national art centers that offer support in exploring self-expression. Creative Growth: Dan Miller and Judith Scott curated by Matthew Higgs (White Columns NYC) brings together two artists who are closely associated with the Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, CA. Studio Visions organized by Aldy Milliken with Krista Gregory (Visionaries + Voices) and Al Gorman (StudioWorks) brings together seven regional artists: Robert Bolubasz, Julie Baldyga, Kathleen Brannigan, Courttney Cooper, Andrew Hostick, Romando Love, and Matthew Torstrick.

A few local exhibiting artists as well as the Director of StudioWorks were on hand to further dialogue about the work and answer questions about studio practice. KMAC Director, Aldy Milliken elaborated on how the show came to exhibit at the Museum. He first saw the work of Judith Scott at NADA Miami and was intrigued. After research, he found other art centers that were enabling the art making process among adults with physical and developmental disabilities including a few right in the region.

The documentary, Outsider: The Life and Art of Judith Scott by Betsy Bayha is also a part of the exhibition.

Aldy talks with artist Matthew Torstrick and Friend

Donors Circle Preview

Donors Circle Preview