Jessica Rankin "Mind and Language"

A clip from Jessica Rankin's Art21 interview "Mind & Language." Rankin uses text by running words together on embroidered organdy fabric to create mental maps, exploring ideas of memory, intuition and interpretation.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUtOVW8W6CY&feature=share

Dinner with Thomas Houseago in Edinburgh

Inverleith House in the Royal Botanic Garden hosted a dinner in celebration of Thomas Houseago's ongoing exhibition "The Beat of the Show" in Edinburgh, which I was honored to attend last Thursday. This marks the third venue for Thomas' sculptures this season.  He is now included in The Saatchi Gallery's show "The Shape of Things to Come" in London as well as being featured in Francois Pinault's Palazzo Grassi in Venice with a commissioned work of the striding figure outside titled "L'Homme Presse" (man in a hurry). See Venice blog July 12, 2011.  

Thomas, a Leeds-born, Los Angeles-based sculptor is one of the most original and compelling sculptors of his generation.  

His monumental figurative works are inspired by classical, primitive and modernist styles. His sculptures possess an urgent

brutal physicality that reveal the process of his own making, which is highly important in the work as seen in the use of tuf-cal, hemp, iron rebar, wood, charcoal and graphite, in addition to bronze.

Houseago's sculptures are charged with remarkable energy and vitality! 

Fabien Verschaere and U2's The Edge

Fabien was honored to draw on The Edge's guitar before U2 performed in Paris September 2010.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve71v4x7k4U

Visit to Fabien Verschaere's Studio in Paris

Visiting my friend Fabien Verschaere's studio in Paris was one of the highlights of my recent trip to Europe. His work is very personal and based on his  childhood. Because doctors thought he had an illness, he was often hospitalized. To keep him occupied, he was given art history books to read and markers to draw with. That's how it all began... He continued drawing everything around him and documenting the smallest things upon his return home. He also became interested in mythology in children's books. This has remained an important factor in his work. Fabien uses a repertoire of figures taken from cruel fairy tales and effigies combined with a legend of self and text. His unique language offers a world of opposites - angels and devils, life and death, princesses and skulls, happy and sad, clowns and ghosts.

He is equally versatile in drawings, paintings, sculpture, ceramics and video. Verschaere collaborated with Liquid Architecture on "Seven Day's Hotel", which composed the sound. 

Check out this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRrz6WpvETA

Fabien's many exhibition include A Novel for Life, Palais de Tokyo in 2003 and Seven Days Hotel, Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art in 2007.