DESTINATIONS: "Blossoms of Light " at the Denver Botanic Gardens

Lighting extravaganzas set in gracious gardens seem to

be all the rage these days. The spectacular glass

exhibition Chihuly Nights, set on the grounds of the New York

 Botanic Gardens, drew nearly a million awestruck 

visitors during its recent six-month run.

Coming up next month, the Denver Botanic Gardens

will pull out all the stops for its much-anticipated annual holiday 

lights show. The show, which is set on a 23-acre landscape,

 will run from Nov. 24-Jan. 1, 2018 (open Dec. 24, 25 & 31), 
and will include

• An interactive light display, featuring a large field of 
• sound-reactive, animated LED lights
• Holiday treats (warm drinks and a souvenir mug)
• Professional carolers

Below are some pics from past Denver celebrations,

for your viewing pleasure.
As the Rain Man would say, "Sparkly (yeah)!"

Note: admission is timed, and a limited number of visitors

are allowed in per day, to prevent overcrowding.

Advance tickets are highly recommended!

For more info, link here

WHIRLYGIGS: Calder's "Hypermobility" at Whitney in NYC closes on Monday, Oct. 23

"Rare and slightly wobbly motorized works form an exhibition at the 

Whitney Museum of American Art that recaptures 

Calder’s guile and joy."

                                                                                              ... NY Times review

 

Above: Hanging Spider

There are still three more days to see the whimsical mobiles of Alexander Calder, whirling to specially composed music, on the top floor of the Whitney Museum in NYC. This exhibition focuses on the striking richness of movement and sound in Calder's work. It brings together a wide-ranging sampling of key sculptures, and provides a rare opportunity to experience the works as the artist intended—in motion.

"Capturing motion in art was a Modernist obsession. Yet by treating dynamics itself as a means of expression, whether with a motor or by suspending elements in space, Calder negated the possibility of perceiving these sculptures in a single fashion. Where sculpture had once aspired to monumentality, 

Calder proposed an art in three dimensions that took infinite forms."  

...New York Times

Aluminum Leaves, Red Post, Calder, 1941

A selection of mobiles is activated regularly for visitors. There will also
be one-time displays of rarely seen works, as well as motorized sculptures 
that haven’t been viewed in motion for decades. 

Sea Scape,1947

This mobile reminds me of glass artist Dale Chihuly's 
Persian Ceiling at the Norton Museum in West Palm Beach, FL.
See "Jewel Boxes" feature here

untitled, Calder, 1947


See a bit of the exhibition, with motion and music, here.
The song "Turn, Turn, Turn" was written by Pete Seeger. 

~ oOo ~

EXHIBITION: Great women of 20th century design at MOMA

I've been thinking a lot about the fascinating MOMA/NY exhibition I saw two years ago: "Designing Modern Women 1890-1990". I was quite smitten with nearly everything I saw, and thought it would be fun to repost about it. Hurray for unsung design hero Margaret Knight, who came up with the idea of the flat-bottomed paper bag! 

Other special favorites were Art Nouveau designs by Margaret MacDonald (more on her later), silver work by Marianne Brandt, Eva Zeisel's elegant white ceramic bowls and whimsical tableware, Greta Von Nessen's "Anywhere Lamp", Eileen Gray's high gloss black lacquer room screen and round occasional table, and the whole section called "Kitchen Transformation". The latter demonstrated how sensible it was that women -- who were always concerned with esthetics, efficiency, and hygiene -- would rise to the forefront of design in this area. Charlotte Perriand's pod-like Unité kitchen is a standout in this department.

            Marianne Brandt coffee and tea service

   

     Eileen Gray screen and famed E1027 table

Von Nessen's "Anywhere Lamp"

Eva Zeisel's "Shmoo" salt & pepper shaker

A slightly puzzling feature of the show was its first item, a chair 
by iconic British designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh.

CRM was the husband of artist Margaret Macdonald; 

the two collaborated closely through the course of their careers.

He famously said of her "I have talent, but she has genius."

Margaret MacDonald's gesso

"The White Rose and the Red"

(To read an excellent BBC article entitled

Margaret MacDonald: the talented other half 
of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, link here .)

       Unité kitchen,  designed by Charlotte Perriand           Unité kitchen seen from the living room

with Le Corbusier 

A group of four humble paper bags was included in the show, because ...

... the flat-bottomed paper bag was Invented in 1871 by Margaret Knight,

one of the first female inventors ever to receive a US patent.

It replaced the flimsy envelope-style type and 

revolutionized grocery shopping forever. 

I was baffled by the omission of Art Deco ceramics maven Clarice Cliff. A phenomenally successful designer, entrepreneur and all around Zelda-esque bon vivant, she was best known for her Bizarreware line. Here's a touch of Clarice for you.

    

See my article "Clarice Cliff: Jazz Hot Baby
of Art Deco Ceramics" (Modernism magazine, Spring 2007)
 here.

CC Bizarreware, Branch and Square pattern.

~ oOo ~
 

This posting was originally published on Mad for Mod on 8/8/15

ODD BITS: Pop-up shop offers felt veggies, newspapers, canned goods and just about everything else

British artist Lucy Sparrow, who handcrafts objects of all sorts from felt,
paint, yarn and thread, recently had a big success when a playful pop-up "convenience store" she set up near Manhattan's High Line last June sold out completely within a month. The shelves at "8 'Til Late" were quickly 
emptied of felt taco chips, snack cakes, assorted produce, laundry 
detergent, peanut butter, Heinz baked beans, pudding and cheese.

Left: The artist in her Manhattan pop-up shop/art installation before items started
flying off the shelves.

"The world of Feltism doesn’t assault one’s senses but instead it gently caresses them before making its point felt."

An array of awfully cute vegetables

                                                  Of course -- spam!

While the installation is about “fun and creating approachable art”, Sparrow said, "the works have a wider comment to make" about the loss of local shops in the face of superstores that have consumed 
high streets globally.

“I want the work to make people think about the loss of community spaces when these small corner shops disappear,” said Sparrow. “To remind them how valuable these corner shops really are and the colour they bring to our lives.”

Youthful candy memories ...

Bit-O-Honey, Jujyfruits, Sugar Babies and Reese's Pieces

"Lurking under the surface of Lucy’s art there is often a darker side. Whether 
it’s her felt AK-47s automatic weapons or her googly-eyed Prozac pills, her work offers commentary on the consumer world and the politics of modern life. Where others might see the harsh and ugly side of an object, Lucy will take the same thing and disarms its negative aspects with her mastery of felting 
technique and the juxtaposition of other quirky creations."
                                                           from http://www.sewyoursoul.co.uk/

Sparrow's other solo shows include ‘The Warmongery’, 2015, Boxpark, London and ‘Madame Roxy’s Erotic Emporium’, 2015, Soho, London. Her work has been shown alongside great street artists at the ‘Urban Take-Over’, the V&A’s touring Street Art exhibition and in the ‘Urban Art Show’ at the Louise T Blouin Foundation in London. Pieces of her art are held in both private and corporate collections throughout the EU and the US.

Made for each other

To see a brief video of the artist discussing her work, link here.

This posting is in fond remembrance of

Chris Cavallari, whose grandfather Joseph established 
Serio's Market in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1950.

~oOo~

ODD BITS: A floating museum in Chicago

Chicago, a city long-renowned for its great art museums, stellar architecture 
and river setting, is now finding ways to bring art to neighborhoods
long underserved by existing downtown venues.

This summer, a mobile museum featuring works by local artists traveled to communities throughout the city via a 100-foot floating barge, traversing 
the Chicago River. Dubbed the Chicago River Float, the platform 
hosted film screenings, exhibitions, roundtable discussions and 
performance art, part of the city's 
2017 Night Out in the Parks programming.

The barge began its route in southeast Chicago and made multiple 
stops, ending at the Navy Pier. Hopefully, this will become an annual event.

Above: Performance art and dance along the River Walk



Below: Hangin' by the water, watching all the art go by

For more information about the Chicago River float,
link here.

~ oOo ~

EXHIBITIONS: Making Room: Housing for a Changing America at National Building Museum

 The Great Hall of the National Building Museum in Washington, DC
Photo credit: Michael Schonbach

The National Building Museum, a venue I can't seem to get enough of, will soon open a timely exhibition, Making Room: Housing for a Changing America.  
Originally organized by the Museum of the City of NY, it will be sure 
to interest the baby boom generation, demonstrating ideas for adapting houses 
for aging in place, or for multigenerational families who 
want to share a household.

 Micro Unit living space featured in Making Room
 Photos courtesy of the Museum of the City of New York

 

To see a short video that demonstrates the transformation 

of this 325 square foot mini-apartment 

from living room to office to bedroom, link here.

 Built by Clei and Resource Furniture.

Laws that govern the size, shape, and occupancy of our housing have 

not kept pace with the changing needs of our population. 

Making Room will feature five proposals for new types of housing, 

including mini-studios for single adults, shared housing options, 

and accessory units for extended families. The proposals 

will be illustrated through models, 

drawings, and animated videos. 

A giant sized television slides to the right

to reveal barware. The chair near the window flips over 

at the middle and turns into a stepladder. Cubby boxes on the wall

provide display areas without taking up any floor space.

Photo courtesy of Museum of City of New York.

°     °     °     °     °     °     °      °

Making Room will be on view at the NBM from

November 18, 2017 through September 16, 2018.

For more info, visit nbm.org 

°     °     °     °     °     °     °      °

     Below: Currently on exhibit at the National Building Museum

HIVE

The Great Hall, all decked out for a glamorous dinner reception
(My invitation apparently got lost in the mail.) 

 

EXHIBITION: Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry at NYC's Jewish Museum

Athenaeum family portrait II, c.1915

The art of feisty and exuberant Florine Stettheimer is currently being 
featured in a delightful exhibition at The Jewish Museum in NYC.
 The exhibit comprises over 50 paintings and drawings, a selection of 
costume and theater designs, photographs and ephemera, as well as 
some of her critically acclaimed poems. 

 Although she's not a household name today, 
in her heyday Stettheimer was well-known as a prolific Jazz Age painter, 
costume designer, poet, saloniste and feminist. The strongest influences 
on her colorful, stylish artwork were the European Symbolist painters 
and the costume designers of Ballets Russes. Born in 1871 in Rochester, NY,
she was the daughter of refined German-Jewish parents.

Self-Portrait with Palette (Painter and Faun), undated. Oil on canvas

Above: Florine Stettheimer, photograph by Peter A. Juley & Son, c. 1917.

Florine enjoyed being seen as eccentric and avant garde.
Her salon, which met regularly on NY's Upper West Side or in
rented mansions on the New Jersey shore, was co-organized by Florine
and her two sisters, Ettie and Carrie. The Stettheimers were “an exotic if somewhat strange trio: Ettie in wig, brocades, and diamonds; Carrie, who dressed in the elegance of a past era; Florine in white satin pants. They were all extremely fashionable, though often they appeared as though they were of another age." 

Portrait of My Sister, Ettie Stettheimer (1923)

"The Stettheimer sisters typified the idea of the new woman of the 20th century, they declared men impossible but worthy of flirtation. They wore pants, smoked cigarettes, disdained marriage, romance and children, and were constantly surrounded by artists and writers who were drawn to their soigné gatherings.” 
           ...  from Extravagant Crowd: Carl Van Vechten's Portraits of Women

Their circle of friends, many of them luminaries of New York's artistic vanguard,  included Alfred Stieglitz, Georgia O’Keeffe, Elie Nadelman, 
Man Ray, Gaston Lachaise, and Marcel Duchamp.

°     °     °     °     °      °     °     °     °     °     °
NEW YORK  
At last grown young
with noise
and color
and light
and jazz
dance marathons and poultry shows
soulsavings and rodeos
gabfests and beauty contests
sky towers and bridal bowers
speakeasy bars and motor cars
columnists and movie stars
                                               —Florine Stettheimer

°     °     °     °     °      °     °     °     °     °     °

Asbury Park South, 1920. Oil on canvas


Birthday Bouquet (Flowers with Snake), 1932. Oil on canvas

Picnic at Bedford Hills, 1918

"It’s not that Stettheimer, who died in 1944, at the age of seventy-three, needs rediscovering. She is securely esteemed for her ebulliently faux-naïve paintings of party scenes and of her famous friends and for her four satirical allegories of Manhattan: symbol-packed phantasmagorias of Fifth Avenue, Broadway, Wall Street, and Art, in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum. She painted in blazing primary colors, plus white and some accenting black, with the odd insinuating purple. Even her blues smolder. ... Zealously urbane, Stettheimer wasn’t much for nature, except, surreally, for the glories of the outsized cut flowers that barge in on her indoor scenes. She painted grass yellow. She seemed an eccentric outlier to American modernism, and appreciations of her often run to the camp—it was likely in that spirit that Andy Warhol called her his favorite artist."

                                                                    ... New Yorker magazine   

Spring Sale at Bendel's (1921)

Florine Stettheimer: Painting Poetry runs through Sept. 24, 2017
 For more information, visit the Jewish Museum's website

BONUS:
If you walk about 10 blocks north from the Jewish Museum,
you'll come to the Museum of the City of New York -- another
favorite place of mine. On display there is a dollhouse
designed by Carrie Stettheimer over the course of 20 years.
The dollhouse is one of the Museum’s most popular artifacts. 

 Every detail of the house was created with meticulous authenticity, 
from the post WWI wallpaper, furniture and fixtures
to the miniaturized versions of actual art, which include a
3-inch version of Nude Descending a Staircase by Marcel Duchamp, Limoges vases in the chintz bedroom and crystal-trimmed candelabra in the salon. Stettheimer infused her artistic sensibility into every aspect of the house.

Hot tip: show your ticket to the MCNY 
at the Jewish Museum, and
you'll get in for free! 

~oOo~