Singer-songwriters Lera Lynn and Dylan LeBlanc will perform tomorrow evening at The Ark. Lynn and LeBlanc are talented as well as commercially-successful musicians. Lynn was recently featured on the critically-acclaimed television series, True Detective. Additionally, last year Lynn produced the album The Avenues, which The Rolling Stones featured on the “40 Best Country Albums of 2014.” Also, the 25-year-old LeBlanc produced the album Paupers Field (2010) as well as Cast the Same Old Shadow (2012).
Author Sarah Freligh will recite poems this evening at Literati Bookstore. The event will take place as part of the Poetry at Literati series. Sad Math, Freligh’s newly-released collection of poems, recently merited the Moon City Poetry Award. Freligh has also written Sort of Gone (2008) as well as A Brief History of an American Girl (2012).
I attended the opening reception for A Northern Refuge: Cherish, Protect at the Work Gallery this past Friday evening. Stamps lecturer Cathy VanVoorhis curated the exhibition and also contributed several paintings to the exhibition. Other contributing artists included the painter, Nora Venturelli, and the photographer, Lisa Steichmann.
A moderate amount of people attended the opening reception. A Northern Refuge: Cherish, Protect spotlights the natural environment. The natural environment has been a source of inspiration for artists for centuries and the exhibition highlights its ongoing utility to contemporary artists. Several of the pieces were old-school and impressionistic paintings rather than more contemporary installation or mixed-media pieces.
The following is an excerpt from Venturelli’s artist statement: “I find an overwhelming, therapeutic tranquility while painting outdoors, and a spontaneity that does not happen in the studio. The rush of the breeze, the heat of the sun, the sounds of the fields. It all adds freshness and vivacity to my work. I am usually drawn to long vistas, wide-open spaces. I’m attracted to subtle changes in textures and color, the overlapping and layering of planes.” The piece included in the exhibition was a sepia-toned and slightly melancholic landscape painting. Click here to visit Venturelli’s website.
Steichmann’s photographs were scattered between the paintings. The photographs were also shadowy and slightly melancholic. The photographs were the most contemporary and visually-surprising pieces of the selection. Click here to visit Steichmann’s website.
Here is an excerpt from VanVoorhis’s artist statement: “For me, a landscape painting is a portrait of a specific place with the plants and terrain of that location. All of the species together create a community of interdependence, with a life of its own.” She continues with the following couple of sentences: “There is great satisfaction for me in using the time-honored materials and craft of oil painting. I’m glad to get away from electricity and technology for a while, to simpler processes that feel very direct and immediate.” VanVoorhis’s pieces exhibited artistic talent yet were visually-predictable. The piece, Tamarack Lake, is displayed prominently. Click here to visit VanVoorhis’s website.
Artist Julian Schnabel spoke on Thursday evening at the Michigan Theater. Industrialist Peter Brant joined Schnabel onstage and the multi-millionaire duo discussed the Julian Schnabel exhibition on display from early July until mid-September of this year before formally answering questions from the numerous members of the audience.
The audience was unsurprisingly enormous. The organ music ended before someone introduced the speakers. Schnabel and Brant walked onstage and the audience burst out clapping. Audience members seemed excitable and were presumably star-struck. Schnabel wore sunglasses and a comfortable-looking jumpsuit. The audience silenced as Schnabel repeatedly asked the management to dim the stage lights. The majority of the event took place in darkness as we viewed the prepared slideshow presentation.
The event was surprisingly interactive. Audience members randomly shouted out their comments, questions, and clarification requests; they posed such comments, questions, and requests without microphones and, consequently, the speakers often misheard them. At the end of the event people lined up in front of microphones in order to pose questions to the speakers in a more formal manner. Schnabel seemed simultaneously up-front and self-righteous in his interactions with audience members. Sometimes his answers would be either “I don’t know that” or “you should know that;” other times the artist refused to answer questions and insisted that his interrogators “figure it out.”
Artists require financial benefactors in order to achieve financial success. Much of Schnabel’s success stems from his personal connections as well as from his artistic talent. Schnabel debuted his career with painted-over plate fragments such as “The Patients and The Doctors” pictured above. Multiple layers and textures often add visual complexity to his work. Interestingly, Schnabel makes films in addition to painting; during the event, however, he admitted that he prefers painting to filmmaking. Painter, sculptor, and filmmaker Julian Schnabel is unafraid to experiment with a wide range of mediums and techniques. Most artists can draw inspiration from his artistic flexibility and his unabashed nature insofar as self-doubt and narrow-mindedness harm creativity.
The opening reception for A Northern Refuge: Cherish, Protect will take place tomorrow evening at the Work Gallery. Stamps lecturer Cathy Van Voorhis curated the exhibition.
A Northern Refuge: Cherish, Protect spotlights the natural environment. The natural environment has been a well-established source of inspiration for artists for centuries and I’m interested in the ways in which it continues to inspire contemporary artists. The exhibition’s theme is timely with the ongoing discoveries of pollution in nearby Lake Erie.
Admission is free! Click here for more event information.
Artist Julian Schnabel will speak tomorrow evening at the historic Michigan Theater! The event was initially scheduled for mid-September to coincide with the Julian Schnabel exhibition yet was rescheduled to tomorrow due to unforeseen circumstances.
Admission is free! The artist is well-known internationally. Be sure to get there early!
Tomorrow there will also be a free screening of the Schnabel-directed film, Miral.
