March 23, 2016
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
March 23, 2016 Table of Contents Indio Hopes New Store Helps Spur Art Colony Downtown .................................................................................................... 2 The Human Body Has Always Inspired Art .............................................................................................................................. 3 Entrepreneurial Osage Couple Grows Online Art Education Business ................................................................................... 5 Friends of Art Offers Amnesty for Missing Artworks .............................................................................................................. 6 The Big Business Behind the Adult Coloring Book Craze ........................................................................................................ 8 These Watercolor Paintings Actually Include Climate Change Data ..................................................................................... 10 Lopez Artist Shares His Story From Cuban Art Trip ............................................................................................................... 12 Scientists Reveal Cause Of Red Spots Ruining Leonardo Da Vinci's Self‐Portrait ................................................................. 14 Mormon ‘Gospel Art’: Kitsch or Classic? ............................................................................................................................... 15 Museum Insider, Moldovans Arrested Over 17 Artworks Stolen in November ................................................................... 18 Staunton Art Supply Shop for Sale ........................................................................................................................................ 19 2 __________________________________________________________________________________________ Indio Hopes New Store Helps Spur Art Colony Downtown The independent "Pa and Pa" art store just opened its 4th location. INDIO, CA: When James Mancini and Michael Heath looked down Miles Avenue in Old Town Indio, they didn't see empty storefronts. They saw opportunity. The co‐owners of Jack Farley's Art Supplies, which already had locations in Palm Springs, Yucca Valley and Idyllwild, just opened its fourth store at 82‐769 Miles Ave. in Indio at the end of February. Selling art supplies at a more specialized and personal level than the big box stores since 2012, Heath and Mancini had long seen artists from Indio drive all the way to Palm Springs for the paints and canvasses they needed. They had found themselves in the same position before they opened Jack Farley's — traveling hours to find the right supplies they needed or risk paying exorbitant shipping fees. Opening Jack Farley's seemed like the best way to make sure artists like themselves were able to keep their business local. So when the city of Indio approached them with an offer to open a shop in the downtown area, they knew it would be a chance to make waves. "The simple answer is there's a huge artist community (in Indio) and it's underserved," Heath said. Indio is home to many renowned artists such as sculptor Joy Taylor as well as art coalitions like the Coachella Valley Art Center and S.C.R.A.P. Gallery, but the city's goal of creating a true artist colony in Old Town had yet to gain traction for years. At last week's Indio town hall meeting, Mayor Pro Tem Elaine Holmes told the crowd that Jack Farley's opening signaled the start of something new for downtown. "My hope and my dream, frankly, is that (downtown) fills in and we have other art stores," she said. "We're not the city of galleries, but we’re where things are made." Mancini and Heath ultimately picked a storefront on Miles Avenue that needed little renovation and will allow for them to use the back room as an area where art instructors can teach their classes at no cost. They hope to have an "old town" feeling where people can browse for hours finding things they need and things they hadn't realized they want all in the same place. "It's a lot of potential," Mancini said. "It's a risk like anything," Heath added. "But it just takes one person for something to get going." In an age of online shopping, having a brick‐and‐mortar location with knowledgeable employees and physical product is important to Jack Farley's owners. 3 __________________________________________________________________________________________ The new shop contains the same products as all the other locations so artists can stock up no matter where they are, and the special ordering system that employees can utilize for those with more particular tastes is still in place, they said. "Don't be afraid of the 'Ma and Pa' or the 'Pa and Pa' store," Heath said. "We're extremely competitive. We'll likely beat the price of any box store." At their official opening, the duo got overwhelming support from city and state officials. Several city council members showed up to celebrate with the owners and Mayor Glenn Miller even got a friendly greeting from the five‐year‐old terrier mix whose spunky personality inspired the store's name. Sen. Jeff Stone sent a placard of support to the new store and Mancini said their new neighbors have offered nothing but good vibes. "The energy is terrific," Mancini said. "Being a part of the community and the neighborhood and growing with them — what a privilege." All Jack Farley's locations are open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday. For more information, visit jackfarleysartsupplies.com or call (760) 424‐8438. The Desert Sun: http://desert.sn/1MjRPtM The Human Body Has Always Inspired Art Numerous venues to draw in northwest Ohio TOLEDO, OH: For as long as men and women have roamed the Earth, the human body has been seen as a work of art. In prehistoric times, the first figure drawers etched scraggy stick figures into cave rock to communicate. Ancient Greek and Roman drawings and sculptures told mythological tales. During the Renaissance period in the 1400s, drawings depicting the human form became more realistic, sparked by the discovery of perspective. Artists of the Impressionism and Realism periods moved away from studying only the privileged, and engaged in drawing the common man. Proportion. Romanticism. Realism. Impressionism. Expressionism. Modernism. Emotion. Study of form and movement. Communication. No matter the era or the goal, figure drawing tells a story. And ask an artist about its importance, and he or she will tell you it’s a foundation for everything. “If you can draw the human figure, you can draw anything,” says artist Mary Dunkin, 28, of Bowling Green, a painter and a nude figure drawing model. 4 __________________________________________________________________________________________ In northwest Ohio, both the experienced artist and novice can find numerous venues to draw the human figure, including the Art Supply Depo and the Toledo Museum of Art. Throughout time, artists have written about improving their craft through study of the human form on paper. Universities also teach figure drawing classes as a fundamental course for not just art majors, but medical students, prospective fashion designers, anyone who wants to understand how the brain interprets physical space and depth perspective, said Roy Schneider, 60, manager of medical and biological illustration and the Virtual Immersive Center at the University of Toledo. He wants students to first understand the human form as a solid foundation to even everyday life. “I want them to understand proportion, shape. Why do we have creases, bulges, bumps? We talk about the shapes of the muscles,” Schneider said. “If they understand the skeletal components they can put together the rest of it, and that’s extremely important. “The body is so complex, just turning it a little and it changes.” Mike Clink, 31, of Toledo, who teaches figure drawing, sculpture and painting classes at the Toledo Museum of Art and at Northwest Community College in Archbold, tells his students to know the importance of the human form by first getting them to see basic shapes in everyday objects — a bottle, a seashell — and then applying that observation to figure drawing. “If I put a bottle in front of you, there are geometric shapes — but a body has a lot of organic shapes that come out of that. Most of us have two eyes, a nose, and a mouth, but they don’t look the same,” he said. “You always want to draw what you see, not what you know. “Everyone has a different perspective, but none of them are invalid.” 20th Century artist Henri Matisse considered his figure drawings to be intimate; playing with contour through gestural lines that suggested form. In the nineteenth‐century, French painter Edgar Degas used nude‐figure drawing to strengthen his portraiture style, sometimes even drawing the nude form first before transforming that knowledge into one of his famous dancers on canvas. During one of Clink’s first classes as a fine arts student at Bowling Green State University, instructors used nude models to help students learn structure and proportion. But it was really the Renaissance period, he said, when artists discovered perspective through ancient Roman sculptures that they began using human models to draw. Leonardo da Vinci, who lived during that time, was famous for dissecting cadavers and producing anatomical drawings based on what he saw, Clink said. “Since the beginning of time, it’s what we’ve been doing. We are kind of fascinated with ourselves,” Clink