Matchfield silver gelatin print 20×24

Caleb Charland is a fine photographer, who happens to work with my wife. From: Aperture Foundation | Caleb Charland

Using the laws of physics as a springboard, Caleb Charland puts elements such as fire, water, and man-made compounds to the artistic test in his series Demonstrations. In these alchemic images, he captures scientific phenomena in moments of still life as well as full-tilt action, calling to mind such forebears as Harold Edgerton and his freeze-frame milk droplets.

He uses a 4×5 camera, and the silver-gelatin print method, and painstakingly arranged compositions, to make his haunting, magical images.
More of his work can be seen at Susan Maasch Fine Art

Found Nathan Ota over on Juxtapoz. I really liked the print School’s Out –>
Which can be found at DVA Gallery

Wag
Collage on Masonite
approx 6×8 inches

Killian’s Irish Red Camel
12×9 inches
Mixed Media Collage on 140lb Watercolor Paper

Beatrice Wood, called the Mama of Dada, was a renowned ceramicist, lover of Marcel Duchamp, and a prime suspect in the Dada art movement of the early 1910’s. She died in 1998 at 105 years of age. Her ceramics were eccentric (like herself), with strange shapes, and iridescent glazes. She was quite a ticket, and beautiful, even as an older woman.
After Dada she became a follower of Jiddu Krishnamurti, and, in a circuitous way, this brought about her apprenticeship in ceramics.
This is a 5 minute clip from a 55 minute documentary from the Documentary Channel. I’ve seen the whole thing some time ago, and it’s a great documentary–well worth the $.99 that it costs to buy the whole thing from Google Video.
(As an aside, it’s a pain in the but to get it on a Linux machine–but not that big a one–you have to manually download the .gvp file (click the “Manually Download the Video” link) and open up that file with a text editor–gedit worked fine in Gnome–look for the line that starts “url:http://vp.video.google.com/videodownload?…” copy that minus the url: part, paste it in your browser, and it’ll download as an .avi file, which you can play in any media player on Linux. It’s much easier for Windows, and even Macs.) (Or, as I just found out because Firefox crashed while downloading it–close out your browser, and go back to the video, and click on the download for Windows/Mac link, and download it that way–as long as you’re still logged in to your Google account.)

New York Time article on Louise Nevelson’s show at the Jewish Museum.

Nevelson earned her place in art history, somewhere between the totemic structures of David Smith and the emotionalism of Eva Hesse, with mysterious abstract assemblages made from street-salvaged remnants of wood: baseball bats, milk crates, driftwood, picture frames, toolboxes, toilet seats, newel posts and gingerbread carvings. Her grand — even grandiose — oeuvre recycles themes of royalty, mortality, marriage, displacement and the tension between interior and exterior space.

Nevelson is one of my favorite artists, and there is a great collection of her work at The Farnsworth Museum, in Rockland, Me. (the second largest collection of her work in a public institution in the US, by the way), (and, which I blogged about here) if you’re ever up this way.

So there was an ad for Paul Matthews’ newest show, at Atea Ring Gallery (no website, sorry), in this months Art in America magazine (the May 2007 issue–the front page of the site changes every month). He’s a very fine figurative painter, who does mostly nudes, showing (among other things) pregnant women, child birth, old men’s fantasies, and a general view of modern life. Many of these paintings are on his site–paulmatthews.net (nudity, NSFW)–and there are links to his portraiture, and landscape, galleries, which, unfortunately, are not online yet. His paintings are lush, and well formed, with beautiful colors, and brushwork, some have background landscapes, seen through windows, that rival his figures. Really a must see as far as I’m concerned.

(Image: Sunlit Wife, Oil on Canvas, 10×15 inches, 1992–Paul Matthews)