Be sure to check out Southeastern Emerging Clay Artists, featuring Penland core student Jason Bige Burnett, in the Showcase Gallery at Blue Spiral 1 in Asheville, from January 6 to March 26. And don’t miss recent Penland resident artist Margaret Couch Cogswell’s solo show in the Small Format Gallery right across the hall.
The opening reception for both shows, as well as New x 3, a Main Gallery exhibit of artists new to Blue Spiral, will be this Thursday, January 6, from 5-8 pm.
The Arts & Culture blog of The Wall Street Journal recently featured a piece about frequent Penland instructor, former trustee and resident artist Christina Shmigel, whose sculptural installation, “A Foreigner’s Cabinet of Chinese Curiosities,” will be on display beginning January 21st at the Bruno David Gallery in Saint Louis, Missouri. Living in Shanghai since 2004, Christina has assembled an artful collection of objects she will forever associate with her time in China. The article discusses her process and inspirations for creating the work, and includes a slide show of treasures from the cabinet. Check it out:
In Shanghai, A Curious Cabinet
Sometimes what a visitor remembers best about China isn’t the Great Wall or the Palace of Heavenly Purity in the the Forbidden City, but something mundane, such as a politically incorrect toothpaste tube.
Enter American artist Christina Shmigel, who has lived in China since 2004. In her latest work, “A Foreigner’s Cabinet of Chinese Curiosities” Ms. Shmigel captures the everyday things that best portray Shanghai.
The work — which is displayed in an old curio cabinet with 67 drawers — features ordinary household items, some of which Ms. Shmigel thinks will become tomorrow’s castoffs: festival decorations sit next to a drawer of boxes of the White Cat brand of detergent and infamous tubes of Darlie toothpaste, which features an illustrated logo of a black man with white teeth…
“As with so much in Shanghai,” says Ms. Shmigel, “as soon as you form an attachment to something, it’s likely to disappear.”
A project billed as the first micro-philanthropy website dedicated to U.S. filmmakers, writers, musicians and visual artists was launched last week, aimed at attracting small public donations to bring artistic projects to life. Sponsored by the grant-making and advocacy organization United States Artists, USA Projects hopes to connect people with artists and raise tax-deductible contributions for original works.
Many of the participating artists have been winners of the organization’s USA Fellowships, but the sponsors have also created a group of “project partners” to help them identify and recruit artists. Along with Penland, these partners include organizations such as Creative Capital, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and the Andy Warhol Foundation. Through this aspect of the program, a group of current and former Penland resident artists have been invited to participate.
USA Projects invites artists to propose specific projects along with a budget for their completion. These are posted on the site and supporters are invited to pledge money toward projects that interest them. Each project has a time frame of 4-8 weeks in which to generate pledges, and the money is collected only if the entire amount is pledged. The artists also offer specific benefits to people who contribute.
The Penland artists who already have projects up for funding through the site are David Chatt, Jennifer Bueno, IlaSahai Prouty, Margaret Couch Cogswell, and Vivian Beer. Three other artists–Cristina Cordova, Gertrude Graham Smith, and Robert Levin–have created profiles on the site, but have not yet listed projects.