Archive Page 14
May 9th, 2018 by dave dorsey
David Gracie, “Cupcake” Oil on Maple Plywood, 21” x 26,” 2017
I love a cupcake as an intellectually weightless subject. Make of it what you will, the less I mess with it the better off I am, both the cupcake itself and its representation. Its pleats and creases and folds crumple and smear on the trip home if you hit a couple potholes. It pretends to be the perfect little stupa of pastries, but touch it the wrong way and you start to ruin it. Like paint itself sometimes. David Gracie’s inverted cupcake seems fraught and decadent. It could be growing from a seed or spore. It appears to be floating in a dank sylvan setting, like a skunk cabbage or an inside-out toadstool, wearing its gills as a cap, but with only the smallest of stems, holding it up or maybe down. Is it levitating? The surreal aura of the scene would seem to allow it. I doubt that it would prove fruitful to spoil the mystery by asking why. It is on view at Exeter Gallery in Baltimore, which opened its doors last fall and has begun showing the work of artists as different as Gideon Bok and Erin Raedeke. I wish I’d made the trip to see the show of Paul Manlove’s paintings. (Guys, build a website. If there is one, Google is not aware.)
In a time when art galleries seemed besieged by an economy that favors the very rich, and the very famous, who all seem to prefer to show, buy and sell at art fairs–rather than the humble and traditional gallery space–you have to admire anyone intrepid enough to open a new one for business. With all the shops that keep closing their doors, others continue to pop up. Like our already bruised cupcake rising backward toward the blue sky whose cool light it reflects toward the viewer. Matt Klos, a fellow exhibitor at Oxford Gallery here in Rochester, appears to be curating shows at Exeter, owned by Noe & Amanda Detore. He’s the right guy for the job. It’s sure to be another outlet for the “perceptual painters” and maybe others (too early to tell) who deserve more recognition. The work they’ve shown so far has been fascinating and a little strange, and this new show seems to fit right in.
Here is the emailed invitation to the opening on May 12, 6-9 p.m. from Matt:
David Gracie is a painter of slow meditative works. As mechanical as his process of painting may be it is tempered by his empathy, humor, and curiosity in looking. This exhibition of Gracie’s work from over the past fifteen years marks a homecoming for the artist who was born and raised in Baltimore.
David Gracie was born in Baltimore, MD in 1978. He received his MFA from Northwestern University in 2004 and his BFA from the Hartford Art School in 2000. He has been included in exhibitions at The Museum of Nebraska Art, NE (’17), Hartford Art School, CT (‘17 and ‘09), The Suburban, WI (‘16 and ‘15), Mt Airy Contemporary, PA (‘15), The University Club, IL (‘13), The University of Missouri, MO (‘12), The Hyde Park Art Center, IL (‘11), Colorado State, Pueblo, CO (‘10), The National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institution, DC (‘10), Bowery Gallery, NY (‘08), Mary and Leigh Block Museum, IL (‘06), and Fort Wayne Museum, IN (‘06). David was awarded a Nebraska Arts Council Merit Award and the Lincoln Mayor’s Kimmel Foundation Award in 2016. David is currently an Associate Professor of Art, Elder Gallery Director and Chair of the Art Department at Nebraska Wesleyan University.
Exeter Gallery is committed to the notion that a gallery is a meeting place for ideas and discourse. Please join us at the opening reception or email exeter.gallery@gmail.com to make an appointment to view this exhibition. Gallery open by appointment only.
May 8th, 2018 by dave dorsey
Good bad news: Gibson is filing for bankruptcy, but apparently Les Paul will survive.
May 3rd, 2018 by dave dorsey
Joan Mitchell’s Wood, Wind, No Tuba. 2 panels 9’2 1/4″ x 13 1 1/8″. At MOMA.
April 21st, 2018 by dave dorsey
Taffy #1, oil on linen, 46″ x 46″
From Hushed Reverberations, my two-person exhibition with Karl Heerdt at Oxford Gallery, Rochester, NY, from March 17 through April 21. Reception from 5:30 to 7:30 on March 24.
April 20th, 2018 by dave dorsey
Teal Bowl with Popcorn Popper, oil on linen, 18” x 26″
From Hushed Reverberations, my two-person exhibition with Karl Heerdt at Oxford Gallery, Rochester, NY, from March 17 through April 21. Reception from 5:30 to 7:30 on March 24.
April 18th, 2018 by dave dorsey
Summer Twilight, oil on linen, 12″ x 16″
From Hushed Reverberations, my two-person exhibition with Karl Heerdt at Oxford Gallery, Rochester, NY, from March 17 through April 21. Reception from 5:30 to 7:30 on March 24.
April 17th, 2018 by dave dorsey
Alyssa Monks from her Instagram
“White is by far the most important color. It’s what oil painting is about.” —John Currin
How is it the soap is what’s sexy? Like the indulgent curls and folds of icing on a cake or cornices of snow or seafoam and cream. All that white with incisions of hair like Gorky’s linear arabesques. Drawing with hair, the joy of the little serpentine whiplashes straightening into dark where they almost disappear, and that eye peering out like a mermaid’s cresting through the roof of her salty home to take a curious peek at the guy sans raft, going under, just before he’s gone.
April 16th, 2018 by dave dorsey
Sugar Bowl #2, oil on linen 10″ x 16″
From Hushed Reverberations, my two-person exhibition with Karl Heerdt at Oxford Gallery, Rochester, NY, from March 17 through April 21. Reception from 5:30 to 7:30 on March 24.
April 14th, 2018 by dave dorsey
Spiral Bowl with Flat Screen, oil on linen, 16” x 24”
From Hushed Reverberations, my two-person exhibition with Karl Heerdt at Oxford Gallery, Rochester, NY, from March 17 through April 21. Reception from 5:30 to 7:30 on March 24.
April 12th, 2018 by dave dorsey
Snowcapped, oil on linen, 10” x 16”
From Hushed Reverberations, my two-person exhibition with Karl Heerdt at Oxford Gallery, Rochester, NY, from March 17 through April 21. Reception from 5:30 to 7:30 on March 24.
April 11th, 2018 by dave dorsey
Not bad, huh? I wouldn’t mind seeing a shot of the photographer as he snapped this one. Free of Instagram filters, too! Jason Kottke on Instagram: “This is an aerial photograph of Edinburgh taken by Alfred Buckham circa 1920. He stood in the open cockpit of a plane while working, one leg tied to the seat for safety.” Full story on kottke.org.
April 10th, 2018 by dave dorsey
Red Bartletts, oil on linen, 10″ x 18″
From Hushed Reverberations, my two-person exhibition with Karl Heerdt at Oxford Gallery, Rochester, NY, from March 17 through April 21. Reception from 5:30 to 7:30 on March 24.
April 8th, 2018 by dave dorsey
Plums with Milton Avery, oil on linen, 20” x 36”
From Hushed Reverberations, my two-person exhibition with Karl Heerdt at Oxford Gallery, Rochester, NY, from March 17 through April 21. Reception from 5:30 to 7:30 on March 24.
April 6th, 2018 by dave dorsey
Patterns, oil on linen, 10″ x 16″
From Hushed Reverberations, my two-person exhibition with Karl Heerdt at Oxford Gallery, Rochester, NY, from March 17 through April 21. Reception from 5:30 to 7:30 on March 24.
April 4th, 2018 by dave dorsey
Light North and South, oil on linen, 12” x 20”
From Hushed Reverberations, my two-person exhibition with Karl Heerdt at Oxford Gallery, Rochester, NY, from March 17 through April 21. Reception from 5:30 to 7:30 on March 24.
April 2nd, 2018 by dave dorsey
Kiwi in Bottle Stand, oil on linen, 20” x 36”
From Hushed Reverberations, my two-person exhibition with Karl Heerdt at Oxford Gallery, Rochester, NY, from March 17 through April 21. Reception from 5:30 to 7:30 on March 24.
March 30th, 2018 by dave dorsey
Everything Is Illuminated, oil on linen, 18″ x 20″
From Hushed Reverberations, my two-person exhibition with Karl Heerdt at Oxford Gallery, Rochester, NY, from March 17 through April 21. Reception from 5:30 to 7:30 on March 24.
March 29th, 2018 by dave dorsey
Nightfall Study, Karl Heerdt, oil on linen panel
When I called Karl Heerdt last week he’d been out in his garage working on some sheet metal for the ’65 Mustang fastback he’s been restoring. I had no idea he did this, and to hear him talk about it filled me with instant envy. He loves simply getting under a hood and replacing pistons and rocker arms and carburetors. Yet he also doesn’t mind reselling what amounts to a completely new classic American car he’s put together with a little help from his friends. He did this recently with a Shelby Cobra replica, which is about to make its way back into his garage for a few more tweaks before his buyer takes delivery.
“Oh you bastard,” I said, but I’m not sure he heard me, because he was laughing at the fact that he was glad to come inside to answer the phone and get warm again. An upstate New York March can be as cruel as April, both here in Pittsford and down the turnpike in Tonawanda as well. “I’d love to have the tools to tear down an old 70s car and rebuild it. You’re living my dream.”
“It doesn’t take all that many special tools,” he said. “We got sheet metal replaced, hood and doors and things. It’s way more work than I expected. We completely tore it apart and did a complete rebuild on the engine and transmission and drive train. So everything is new. We updated the suspension, and we lowered it.”
You can get a glimpse of the car on his Instagram feed, still a dull matte gray from the primer coat. It’s one of the earliest Mustangs, a few years before the rumbling Highland Green menace Steve McQueen made famous in Bullitt. It takes us a while to get around to talking about his painting, because I go off on a tangent about how Dave Hickey wrote an essay in which he extolled car customization as a form of three-dimensional art. I couldn’t agree more, partly on philosophical grounds but also because it would give me an excuse to spend a year in my own garage learning how to take a small block V-8 apart and put it back together in a way that wouldn’t turn it into a massive paper weight.
Heerdt is my co-exhibitor at Oxford Gallery right now, in a show entitled Hushed Reverberations (Jim Hall borrowed it from a Santayana quote), MORE
March 26th, 2018 by dave dorsey
Eros, oil on linen, 12 x 16
From Hushed Reverberations, my two-person exhibition with Karl Heerdt at Oxford Gallery, Rochester, NY, from March 17 through April 21. Reception from 5:30 to 7:30 on March 24.
March 25th, 2018 by dave dorsey
(Photo by: Ron Batzdorff/NBC)
Kristen Bell, recently deceased: So, who was right?
Ted Danson, afterlife engineer: Right?
About the afterlife?
Oh well, Hindus. They were about 5 percent right. Jews, Christians, Buddhists, all were about 5 percent right. Everybody was about 5 percent right, except for Doug Forcett.
Who’s Doug Forcett?
Doug was a stoner kid who lived in Calgary in the 1970s. One night he got really high on mushrooms and his best friend Randy said hey what do you think happens when you die and Doug launched into this long monologue where he got right 92 percent correct. We couldn’t believe what we were hearing. That’s him up there matter of fact. He’s pretty famous around here.
<He has his goofy portrait on the wall.>
Generally speaking there’s a good place and a bad place. You’re in the good place. You’re OK Eleanor.
Who’s in the bad place?
Every U.S. president ever except Lincoln. Mozart, Picasso, Elvis, basically every artist ever.