Mia Westerlund Roosen’s Heat (background) and Conical (foreground), both from 1981, on view at Nunu Fine Art. Photo: Martin Seck, courtesy the artist and Nunu Fine Art
Multidisciplinary artist Mia Westerlund Roosen’s early career unfolded against the backdrop of Minimalism’s heyday, but her work diverged sharply from the austere, industrial ethos of contemporaries like Donald Judd and Robert Morris, whose machine-informed processes and commitment to art for art’s sake. Where their work was polished, rigid and cold, hers, while similarly monumental, was organic, sensual, tactile and emotional, referencing or evoking geological forms, flesh and other earthly materials.
For another week, you can see some of her work at Nunu Fine Art in New York (including pieces first shown in 1982 at the Leo Castelli Gallery, where she was shown alongside Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Bruce Nauman). Most striking are the monumental horns arching up from the floor at the back of the gallery: Conical (1981), the smaller of the two, appears to have been excised, perhaps violently, from its source, and Heat (1981), which seems to protrude intact from the floor, as if heralding the arrival of some massive beast. Postminimalist to the extreme, both exude a viscerality that invites one to imagine where these objects have been and what their purpose might be now.
The same is true of Sac (2019), a smaller-scale piece that resembles nothing so much as a deflating penis on first glance, hinting at the fragility of humanity. Yet the sagging flannel and resin are only a conduit into a dense concrete cave-like core. What, one wonders, is this thing; why is it here and what is it for?
Mia Westerlund Roosen, Untitled Drawing 2, 1975. Oil stick, pastel, and charcoal on paper, 13 x 7 in. / 33 x 17.8 cm., Framed: 17 1/4 x 13 1/4 in. / 33.7 x 43.8 cm. Courtesy the artist and Nunu Fine Art
Westerlund Roosen’s practice, of course, encompasses more than sculpture. The exhibition includes rarely shown drawings that offer a glimpse into the artist’s ongoing exploration of materiality. Some of the most compelling appear at first to be preliminary sketches of her large-scale works but were actually rendered after the sculptures they reference were complete—portraits of the material properties of her three-dimensional pieces. Similarly, the drawings in her Gray Series I–V explore asphalt, concrete and fiber, capturing the physical realities of these materials in two dimensions with profound depth. “For her, it’s kind of like building something,” Nunu Hung of Nunu Fine Art told me during a tour of “Mia Westerlund Roosen: Then and Now.” “She has chalk or a pencil, and she just keeps putting layers on, and building out the work just like making a sculpture.”
Now in her 80s, Westerlund Roosen continues her material experimentation, splitting her time between a home upstate near the Massachusetts border and a studio in New York City that I was lucky enough to visit after walking through the exhibition. There, I was able to see more of her work: Column I and II and the vulvular Marble I from 2019 and pieces from her striking and unsettling Box series. Much like her creations, the artist is equal parts engaging and inscrutable, telling me she prefers to let her pieces do the communicating. “After all,” she said, “if you could talk about it, you wouldn’t make it.” But talk we did, and she was gracious enough to answer my questions about her early experimentation, her process and her newest work.
You emerged as a sculptor in a period dominated by Minimalism. What compelled you to resist the prevailing industrial, geometric norms to pursue a more organic, embodied visual language?
For me, rigid geometries and perfectly straight lines resist emotion, while I was in search of a more emotional response, albeit through reductive form. I felt that my process-based works were, in a way, antithetical to Minimalism, because they were more expressive. My work seeks to engage the senses directly, rather than the intellect.
Your pieces often evoke tension between presence and absence or weight and collapse. What is it about these contrasts in particular that fascinates you?
The paradoxes inherent in those pieces are always exciting to me. The interplay between the blatant and the poetic, or the aggressive and the humorous, sparks curiosity that keeps them continuously intriguing. For example, Heat is simultaneously aggressive and humorous; humor plays a huge role in my work, and it is the unexpected combination of those two qualities that I hope engages the viewer, as well.
Mia Westerlund Roosen, Maquette for Baritone, 1983. Concrete and lead, 12 x 15 x 6 in. / 30.5 x 38.1 x 15.2 cm. Photo: Martin Seck, courtesy the artist and Nunu Fine Art
Many of the drawings in the show aren’t preparatory studies but two-dimensional renderings of sculpture already brought to life. How do you approach the relationship between sculpture and drawing in your practice?
I think in three dimensions first. My preparatory studies are in clay, and those are often later translated into larger pieces, while my drawings are generally a separate yet related practice. Sculpture for me is the investigation of different densities in terms of material and perception, as well as trying to endow the material with a sense of aliveness or agency, and I often am looking for the same qualities in my drawing. Whether through encaustic, charcoal or pastel, I’m attempting to capture depth and layers beneath the surface.
You’ve sometimes resisted being overly explanatory when it comes to underlying themes in your work. Why?
My personal feeling is that over-explanation from the artist can come across as heavy-handed or didactic, and suppress the mystery and poetry of a work. I would rather the viewer feel what I’m trying to get across, rather than think it.
Looking back on your long career, what do you hope contemporary audiences take away from seeing works from different decades in dialogue with one another?
I feel that my practice is very generative in the sense that many works will come directly from the previous one. While I’m varying the forms, one idea will often come from another, and I hope that viewers can sense the common threads between those differing bodies of work.
Are there particular themes or materials you plan to explore more deeply in future work?
I’m working on new pieces that push the idea of absence and presence via process or chance-based expression, in a similar vein to my sculpture Sac from 2019, which is in the exhibition. I think the combination of the translucent skin of the resin-soaked flannel and the weighty concrete is an area where I can push scale further and bigger. This new series is large-scale and rooted in the earth, but it still utilizes translucent materials that play with light and allow light to penetrate the surface. I’m very inspired by Richard Serra, and often think of how I can use that method of engaging with the body and space, but make it a little bit softer.
At Donum Estate, art, wine, and land are conceived as a single living system shaped by stewardship, regeneration, and long-term vision. Photo Robert Berg | Courtesy Donum Estate
As California’s viticulture has matured—understood not merely as agricultural production but as a cultural, scientific and ecological practice—a generation of wineries in Sonoma and Napa began to reimagine the estate itself as a space where wine, hospitality and contemporary art could coexist, grounded in terroir-driven storytelling and aesthetic ambition. The Donum Estate was among the first to pioneer this convergence in a deeply intentional way, forging a sensory connection between land, wine and art.
The estate’s name—Donum, from the Latin for “gift”—reflects its ethos. Everything produced here is considered a gift of this extraordinarily fertile land that must be stewarded and protected. Its history traces back to Anne Moller-Racke, a German-born viticulturalist who came to California in 1981 and later led Buena Vista Winery, planting the estate’s original vines. When the family sold Buena Vista in 2001, they kept the Carneros vineyards and renamed the property the Donum Estate. In 2011, Danish entrepreneur Allan Warburg and his wife, Chinese-born art collector Mei Warburg, acquired the property and began transforming it into a site where contemporary sculpture and ecological stewardship would become inseparable from the wine experience.
While the estate’s viticulture has since earned acclaim—producing single-vineyard Pinot Noir and Chardonnay on over 200 hectares of regenerative organic land—what sets Donum apart is its world-class, open-air collection of monumental art. With more than 60 sculptures sited across its hills, it is now one of the largest accessible museum-grade private collections of outdoor sculpture in the world. These works are not static decor, but active participants in a living ecosystem, drawing on the land’s energy and shaping the visitor’s relationship to scale, time and movement.
That ethos of harmony extends beyond the vineyards. A regenerative organic-certified lavender field, olive grove, plum orchard and culinary garden compose a living laboratory of sensory and ecological exchange. Yet the art remains the emotional and spatial center of it all—quietly guiding the experience. What began as a vineyard has evolved into a rare cultural landscape, where sculpture and soil shape one another in real time. Donum is less a winery with art than an open-air museum embedded in the land, where every element—natural and made—serves the same purpose: to cultivate a deeper attunement to beauty.
A polyurethane fountain by Lynda Benglis. Photo Robert Berg | Courtesy Donum Estate
“It’s about the energy that emerges from the interplay between art and the land,” said Angelica de Vere Mabray, CEO of the Donum Estate, when Observer visited during FOG Design + Art. (Located just over an hour from San Francisco, the estate should be an essential stop for any art enthusiast visiting Fog City.) This year, for the first time, Donum officially partnered with the fair and SFAW, underscoring its commitment to supporting art and culture across the Bay Area.
De Vere Mabray welcomed us to the art-filled Donum Home, the estate’s hospitality center, which was redesigned and renovated by award-winning Danish architect David Thulstrup. Its light-filled interiors blend Scandinavian sensibilities with Eastern harmony, all rooted in California’s materials and natural beauty.
Greeting visitors at the entrance is a towering Yayoi Kusama Pumpkin. Inside, major works from the collection appear throughout the space: an expansive tapestry by El Anatsui flanks the wine display, while overhead, a floating “cloud ceiling” by Tomás Saraceno hovers beside Jeppe Hein’s colorfully playful balloons. A large canvas by Liu Xiaodong anchors a grouping of works by prominent Chinese artists from the post-Tiananmen generation, including Yue Minjun and Zhang Huan. In another room, a glass cylinder encases Ai Weiwei’s hand-painted Sunflower Seeds—originally created for his iconic Turbine Hall commission, in which he filled the space with more than 100 million individual porcelain seeds to draw attention to the artisanal labor behind mass production and the mythology of conformity in China.
Zhang Wang’s Artificial Rock. Chip Allen 2016
Beyond expansive glass doors, the estate’s lush greenery foregrounds California’s mountains and San Francisco Bay, in a landscape punctuated by monumental artworks. On the terrace, a pink-tinted polyurethane fountain by Lynda Benglis flows with shifting currents, its organic form constantly in motion. Farther down the path, a head by Jaume Plensa towers, while a more recent work by William Kentridge appears downhill in dialogue with Zhang Wang’s Artificial Rock No. 28.
Dated 2001, Zhang’s sculpture was the first installed at the Donum Estate. The artist used stainless steel to create a handmade, three-dimensional rubbing of natural Jiashan stone, embodying a tension between organic formations and human-made imitations. “That connection is really intentional. The ideas of healthy soils, regenerative agriculture, responsible stewardship and farming are core to our belief system. They’re deeply integrated into how we think about the art, the wine and everything else at Donum. All of it reinforces that bond between the land and the experience,” emphasized de Vere Mabray.
Allan and Mei Warburg now live full-time in Hong Kong, while maintaining homes in Beijing, Shanghai and San Francisco. Allan Warburg, born in Denmark, frequently traveled to Asia with his parents and studied Chinese in college before enrolling at Yunnan University. He began his career in the trading industry, ultimately settling in China, where he met Mei. The two shared a passion for both art and wine and began collecting early—particularly works by the emerging Chinese artists of the time. “When they purchased Donum, they brought that first work by Zhang Wang with them, without any concrete plan to build what would eventually become one of the world’s most significant contemporary sculpture collections,” de Vere Mabray said. “Everything else unfolded organically from there.”
The estate was originally founded in 2001 as a winery, with no plans for hosting visitors. It wasn’t until nearly a decade later, as artworks began to arrive, that the property began evolving in a new direction. The Warburgs started collecting large-scale sculpture in 2015, and soon after, they began intentionally dedicating works to the estate, collecting not just for themselves but for the land and its future. Still, it was only in 2019, with the arrival of de Vere Mabray as CEO, that art became strategically embedded in Donum’s identity. “We start thinking much more intentionally about programming and how people experience Donum not just through wine, but through the intersection of art, land and place,” de Vere Mabray explained. “At that point, the collection comprised around 40 works; today it has grown significantly, and continues to shape how the estate is experienced.”
Louise Bourgeois, Crouching Spider, 2003. Photo Robert Berg | Courtesy Donum Estate
Today, it’s home to nearly 60 artworks, with new additions installed at an irregular pace, depending on the artists’ schedules and production timelines. Nearly half the pieces are site-specific commissions by artists who’ve spent time on the property, engaging with its environment and responding to the land. The curatorial direction is guided not by an external consultant or brand identity, but by the Warburgs’ taste, affections and personal relationships with the artists.
Although they’ve kept a low profile and chosen not to brand the collection under their name, the Warburgs still make all key decisions. “In most cases, they’ve built real friendships with the artists, who are involved in choosing the precise location of each work,” de Vere Mabray said.
She gestures to a sculpture by William Kentridge as a clear example. “He came to Donum a few years ago with his wife while he was at Berkeley for a symposium. He walked the property, spent time here and chose this specific location for the work,” de Vere Mabray recounted. “That’s generally how it happens. When they acquire something, there’s a real conversation with the artist about where it belongs and where the energy is right.”
Before venturing deeper into the green hills of the estate, we stop at a pavilion dedicated to Louise Bourgeois’s iconic Crouching Spider. This particular work is one of the few the artist created using metal construction materials she gathered in New York before fusing and welding them by hand. Due to its sensitivity, the sculpture requires an indoor, climate-controlled environment for proper preservation. In the same room, her The Mirror presents a distorted reflective surface, seemingly devoured by the vital interplay of predator and prey, winner and victim—the very dynamics that shape every ecosystem.
In the Sensory Garden, Yang Bao’s site-specific installation reimagines land damaged by disease as a living soundscape shaped by wind, humidity and movement. Photo Robert Berg | Courtesy Donum Estate
Just outside, Mikado Tree by Pascale Marthine Tayou rises from the landscape. Another signature site on the property is the Vertical Panorama Pavilion, conceived by Olafur Eliasson’s studio in collaboration with architect Sebastian Behmann. An immersive architectural and emotional experience, the rainbow-hued structure functions as a multisensory instrument—inviting visitors to reconnect with nature and recalibrate to its rhythms. Its conical canopy acts as a kind of calendar, centered on a north-facing oculus and glazed with 832 laminated glass panels in varying hues. Each panel corresponds to data gathered at the estate by Eliasson’s design studio, representing annual averages of solar radiation, wind intensity, temperature and humidity.
“His studio flew from Berlin to install it. A concrete pad was poured here; the work was fabricated and assembled in Berlin, then brought to Donum and reconstructed on site,” de Vere Mabray shared. “Olafur was standing right here with Sebastian Berman, and he pointed out that when you stand here, you’re shoulder-width apart, fully grounded—literally planted in the earth. You have a 360-degree view, and while you’re standing here, you can smell the soil, hear the grasses moving, and hear the birds. It’s deeply immersive and completely rooted in this place.”
Doug Aitken’s Sonic Mountain (Sonoma) transforms the Carneros breeze into a resonant instrument. Photo Robert Berg | Courtesy Donum Estate
Indeed, much of the art is organically and symbiotically rooted within the land. A particularly moving example is the estate’s Sensory Garden, which has been completely reimagined through Yang Bao’s immersive multisensory installation HYPERSPACE. Designed to blend seamlessly with the natural environment, the work responds to and converses with its surroundings: encircling a central pyramid, nine sculptural elements generate a spatial soundscape—a site-specific composition by Bao that shifts with wind, temperature and humidity.
Donum grows three lavender varietals, and each summer, an entire hillside blooms into an ocean of purple. Originally, the estate’s lavender was planted on the very site where Bao’s installation now stands. But repeated failures led the Donum team to consult botanists who diagnosed Phytophthora—a soil-borne pathogen that attacks lavender roots coping with poor drainage. Instead of fighting the land, the team relocated the lavender to higher ground, where it now thrives. The cleared site became the foundation Bao—who is both a chemist and a composer—used to reimagine the terrain, helping it heal through art.
There’s a spiritual dimension running through many of the artists’ installations at Donum, according to de Vere Mabray. One such work is Doug AItken’s Sonic Mountain (Sonoma), located in the Eucalyptus Grove. Measuring 45 feet in diameter and composed of 365 chimes—one for each day of the year—the sculpture is a living instrument activated by the Carneros breeze, one of Donum’s most persistent natural forces. While Aitken has engaged environmental themes in recent projects—most notably in his 2025 exhibition at Regen Projects—this installation marks a subtle and unexpected shift. Rather than addressing ecological urgency through overt imagery or a conceptual framework rooted in institutional critique, the artist operates here in a more spiritual register, privileging sensation and attunement.
Anselm Kiefer, Mohn und Gedächtnis, 2017. Photo Robert Berg | Courtesy Donum Estate
The land speaks to the art just as the art speaks to the land—there’s a clear dialogue between the two. “It’s incredibly powerful, De Vere Mabray said. “That’s really what we hope people take away: an understanding of that possible exchange of energy between art and landscape.” Seen in person, sculptures feel embedded in their environment, not simply installed on it. Rather than functioning as a curated series of standalone works, the collection operates as part of a larger, site-specific system in which form, material and placement respond directly to the terrain.
This sense of integration runs throughout the estate. Sculptures are situated with intention—some echoing the contours of the land, others drawing attention to its shifts in light, texture or scale. The same attention applied to cultivating Pinot Noir and Chardonnay is visible in how artworks are commissioned and positioned. The result is not just aesthetic harmony, but a layered visitor experience that bridges visual art, agriculture and landscape. Here, art doesn’t compete with the landscape, and the landscape doesn’t merely serve as a backdrop. Each reinforces the other, creating a rhythm of encounter that feels designed to sharpen awareness—not just of the estate, but of the viewer’s own place within it.
Ai Weiwei, Circle of Animals Zodiac Heads, 2011. Photo Bob Berg | Courtesy Donum Estate
“Homecoming shows” might be a phrase more associated with Bruce Springsteen or Adele, but this time it’s the works of 20th-century sculptor and painter Alberto Giacometti returning to an area the artist rejected and inspired in equal measure. We use the expression only quite loosely, however. Giacometti was born in 1901 in Stampa, situated in the Bregaglia Valley, 20 miles from ultra-chic St. Moritz, itself around 35 kilometers from the Italian border. Seeing as “the village” (as it is referred to around these parts) has a Hauser & Wirth, it’s only apposite that it should be the venue for this most evocative of exhibitions.
Indeed, the gallery has made it a tradition to highlight the artists and works that have had a connection with St. Moritz and the local area, the Engadin Valley. In the past, it has shown Gerhard Richter’s overpainted vistas of the nearby Alps and displayed artworks by Jean-Michel Basquiat that he produced when he stayed at the hunting lodge of his agent Bruno Bischofberger.
This exhibition, curated by Giacometti authority Tobia Bezzola, is a neat encapsulation of the artist’s work that foregrounds the dichotomies that punctuated his life. On view is a display that manifests the contrasts and conflicts between the professional and the personal; the style and themes; form and execution; public and private; inspiration and influence; Paris and Stampa; and, most of all for Giacometti, the choice between sculptor and painter.
Amid such sturm und drang, though, are early paintings such as Silsersee (1921-1922) and Monte del Forno (1923), which instill a calming serenity with their deft post-Impressionist execution and pastoral vistas. These embody the fascination and awe-inspiring power of the natural beauty abundant in the area and have had a lasting impact on creatives over the years, from the historical reflections of Nietzsche (who vacationed in nearby Sils) to the contemporary output of Not Vital. These early pieces still exude a distinctly sculptural quality, and his Self-Portrait (1920) is a subtle signpost to his later fascination—not only with capturing form, but also with the inspiration that Stampa and his home provided throughout his career.
With Giacometti’s move to Paris in 1922 (turning his back on his family and his father’s influence as a former landscape painter), he embraced the panoply of philosophies and movements that were coalescing in the French capital. Here, he was not only speaking another language but also attempting to find his own artistic one, as Bezzola explains. “There, he learned to speak the language of the international avant-garde, and that of Surrealism fluently and eloquently. During his annual returns to his rural homeland, however, he reverted to the Italian dialect of the valley in which he had grown up, and his artistic forms of expression adjusted accordingly.”
One look at Tête de Diego (1947) on show bears this out: the sketch lines of his brother’s head fuse the painterly with the out-of-proportion oval shape of his later sculptural works. It’s what Bezzola terms “an increasing formal and methodological dissolution of this divide” between painter and sculptor. While Giacometti made the sketch in Paris, Diego was clearly still in the artist’s mind from an extended visit back to Stampa to see his family only the year before, which may have renewed his artistic fire. Just a year later, in 1948, came Giacometti’s celebrated solo exhibition in New York featuring his trademark elongated figures.
This period marked a particularly fruitful time for Giacometti, which this exhibition captures in paintings such as Bust (1948) and Seated Man (1950), as well as Head with Long Neck (c. 1949, cast 1965). It’s the juxtaposition of these works that, rather than showing division, actually emphasizes the unity in Giacometti’s oeuvre. His figures—whether sketched, painted, or sculpted—continue to intrigue and command attention with their subjects and execution.
Another unique facet of “Faces and Landscapes of Home” that serves to augment the works on show is the lesser-seen photographs of Giacometti by the photographer and trusted friend Ernst Scheidegger. Other photographers captured the artist in his Paris studios, but it was Scheidegger who was able to transgress into the more personal, behind-the-scenes aspects of his home life in Stampa, particularly in the 1950s when Giacometti returned to the valley to escape the Parisian bustle. “In his letters, he often complains that in Stampa he did not relax or recover at all, but was instead completely absorbed in his work the entire time,” Bezzola says of this period.
Scheidegger’s delightfully tender shot, Alberto with his mother Annetta (1959), is trumped only by Alberto Giacometti at his Worktable in Stampa (1965). Here, in the last year of his life, he can be seen sitting at his desk strewn with apples, some half-made miniatures beside him, as he remains immersed in fashioning a sculpture, while a cigarette burns louchely in an ashtray beside him. How rock’n’roll is that?
THE HONOR IS BOTH HOSTING THIS, BUT ALSO DOING A SCULPTURE THAT CAPTURES THAT MOMENT AS WELL. WELL, THE HIGHLIGHTS OF THE DESIGN WERE BASICALLY, YOU KNOW, THE FOUNDING FATHERS, YOU KNOW, SIGNING THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. MONTHS OF PLANNING, DAYS OF SCULPTING. MARIE PELTON AND JIM VICTOR MADE THE FARM SHOW BUTTER SCULPTURE, WEIGHING IN OVER 1,000 POUNDS OF BUTTER. IT IS QUITE THE FEAT. SO YOU SUBMIT THE DRAWINGS? WE DID THREE OF THEM, AND THIS WAS OUR FIRST DRAWING THAT WE SUBMITTED. AND SO, YOU KNOW, WE WERE GLAD THAT THEY ACTUALLY SELECTED THIS ONE. BRINGING YOU INSIDE OF THE BUTTER SCULPTURE. LET’S TAKE A LOOK. SET IN 1776 TO HONOR THE 250TH BIRTHDAY HERE OF THE UNITED STATES, AND CELEBRATING TWO 50 PA, WE HAVE THE FOUNDING FATHERS UP TOP WITH RED, WHITE AND BLUE ACCENTS. SIGNING THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. THERE’S A LITTLE TRIBUTE HERE TO BETSY ROSS OFF ON THE SIDE, CELEBRATING THE FARM SHOW HERE THIS YEAR. AND ON THE BOTTOM YOU SEE HIGHLIGHTS OF PENNSYLVANIA’S AGRICULTURAL EXPERTISE. SOME OF THOSE THINGS ARE THE THE DOCUMENT DEFINITELY IS A HIGHLIGHT. THE FIGURES OF COURSE, YOU KNOW, ARE VERY RECOGNIZABLE AS FOUNDING FATHERS SIGNING THE DECLARATION. THE BUTTER IS FROM ACROSS THE RIVER IN CUMBERLAND COUNTY FROM LAND O’LAKES. AND WHEN THE SCULPTURE REACHES ITS TIME TO MELT, IT WILL BE RECYCLED INTO RENEWABLE ENERGY. WE REALLY DO APPRECIATE THAT THAT THERE’S, YOU KNOW, A FAN BASE FOR THIS PARTICULAR THING. IT MEANS A LOT TO PEOPLE. AND SO WE WANT TO DO AS GOOD A JOB AS POSSIBLE. ALL THERE FOR YOU TO CHECK AT THE MACLAY STREET LOBBY ENTRANCE, ALL FAR
1,000-pound butter sculpture at Pennsylvania Farm Show honors America’s 250th anniversary
The 1,000-pound, 2026 Pennsylvania Farm Show butter sculpture has been unveiled. In keeping with this year’s theme of “Growing a Nation,” in honor of America’s 250th anniversary, this year’s butter sculpture features Benjamin Franklin, Betsy Ross and the Liberty Bell. You can see another view of the creamy creation below.Pennsylvania Secretary of Agriculture Russell Redding, Carolyn Matthews Eaglehouse of Milky Way Farm, Chester Springs, and butter sculptors Jim Victor and Marie Pelton, of Conshohocken, attended the unveiling in the main hall of the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex and Expo Center.The sculpture is crafted from butter donated by the Land O’Lakes plant in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.Video below: See the unveiling and get a closer look at the sculpture After the farm show, the butter will be recycled into biofuel. The Pennsylvania Farm Show takes place in the state’s capital of Harrisburg. It is held at the nation’s largest indoor agricultural expo, featuring more than 5,000 animals, 12,000+ competitive entries from over 4,600 competitors, 250+ commercial exhibits, and hundreds of educational and entertaining events.
The 1,000-pound, 2026 Pennsylvania Farm Show butter sculpture has been unveiled. In keeping with this year’s theme of “Growing a Nation,” in honor of America’s 250th anniversary, this year’s butter sculpture features Benjamin Franklin, Betsy Ross and the Liberty Bell. You can see another view of the creamy creation below.
Pennsylvania Secretary of Agriculture Russell Redding, Carolyn Matthews Eaglehouse of Milky Way Farm, Chester Springs, and butter sculptors Jim Victor and Marie Pelton, of Conshohocken, attended the unveiling in the main hall of the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex and Expo Center.
The sculpture is crafted from butter donated by the Land O’Lakes plant in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Video below: See the unveiling and get a closer look at the sculpture
After the farm show, the butter will be recycled into biofuel.
The Pennsylvania Farm Show takes place in the state’s capital of Harrisburg. It is held at the nation’s largest indoor agricultural expo, featuring more than 5,000 animals, 12,000+ competitive entries from over 4,600 competitors, 250+ commercial exhibits, and hundreds of educational and entertaining events.
Installation view: “Samuel Sarmiento: Relical Horn” at Andrew Edlin Gallery in New York. Courtesy of Andrew Edlin Gallery
The ability of a given artwork to resist being stripped of meaning over time is most often the result of its link with a continuous heritage of symbolic and archetypal materials that humans have shared across centuries and geographies to explain the complexities of existence. As J. M. Coetzee suggests in his 1991 essay “What is a Classic?,” the works we call classics endure not because institutions protect them, but because they speak across time, finding new interlocutors in each era. A classic has a living presence, retaining dense symbolic meaning and demanding response and re-interpretation even as society changes.
Engaging directly with the rich repertoire of symbols and myths of his native Venezuelan Caribbean and extending to cross-cultural resonances and similar narratives, artist Samuel Sarmiento engages with mythopoiesis directly using clay as a medium. A rich heritage of oral traditions and community storytelling is observable in his seductive kiln-fired ceramic sculptures: articulated, overlapping visual narratives and inscriptions like ancient tablets or natural fossilized traces. In the new works in his U.S. debut show at Andrew Edlin, “Relical Horn,” Sarmiento experiments with the elemental potential of clay, playing with the different transformations ceramics can undergo and embellishing his creations with patinas, glazes, pigments and even gold. His kiln’s searing heat yields kaleidoscopic, granular and liquid surfaces.
Samuel Sarmiento. Photo: Gabrielle Vega
Through these alchemical processes, artists and artisans have collaborated directly with the principle of entropy and the transformation of matter for thousands of years. Clay is fired at temperatures at which any organic substance would be pushed into extinction or fragmentation, but Sarmiento transforms ceramics into living cosmogonies that embody a rich reservoir of ancestral myth and cross-cultural archetypes, layering oral traditions, Caribbean cosmology and intuitive mark-making in fragile yet enduring vessels of memory.
“One of the primary purposes of ceramics is containment,” Sarmiento tells Observer. “Initially, ceramic objects held valuable resources such as water, food and currency.” He recounts an ancient tale about the medium’s origins. According to a Caribbean myth, in the earliest days of humanity, it was nearly impossible to store water because it was both difficult to contain and extremely scarce. “Humans attempted to make vessels from tree leaves or wood, but both materials deteriorated over time. They decided to speak with the Goddess of the Forest, who recommended they dig a large hole next to a river, where they would find a new kind of material.” When humans obeyed the Goddess and dug near the great river, they discovered clay. When they asked what to do with it, “she instructed them to shape the clay into vessels. By firing these vessels, they would be able to store water successfully.”
Samuel Sarmiento, The Origin of the Stars, 2025. Courtesy the artist and Andrew Edlin Gallery
For hundreds of years, ceramics have served as markers of the time they inhabit, Sarmiento reflects. “They have remained one of the principal mediums for deciphering a people’s ethnography because they can withstand the passage of time.” This idea of time—of encapsulating mythological and spiritual heritage in a vessel capable of preserving and carrying it across generations—is at the heart of his practice. His ceramic works function as artifacts of collective memory, shared wisdom and mythical imagination, helping humans better understand their place in the cosmos and within the relentless flow of time.
Sarmiento notes how French writer Roger Caillois, in The Writing of Stones (1970), argues that rocks and minerals, like landscapes themselves, have the capacity to harbor memory. “The artistic exercise of taking clay, which is part of the landscape, shaping it into forms like crowns, shells, nests, or ornaments and simultaneously using it to contain information creates a symbolic refuge,” Sarmiento explains. “Through this alchemy, an artwork can help humanity preserve what little wisdom we have left.”
Examining the dense narratives that adorn the surfaces of his sculptures, it’s almost impossible not to read his practice through a Jungian lens: his work is a conduit through which archetypes and ancestral symbologies—shared across cultures—reemerge from the collective unconscious. “I believe visual artists and writers alike are collectively searching to connect with the invisible,” Sarmiento says, pointing out that this urge becomes even more pressing in periods when truth is most difficult to discern.
“In my artistic practice, I utilize ancestral narratives from the Caribbean and South America, and sometimes Africa—not for exoticism, but simply to exalt the human condition,” he explains, noting that this often takes the form of rites of passage. “We are beings in constant movement.”
Born in 1987 and based in Aruba, Sarmiento investigates the fictional possibilities of history, the force of oral traditions,and the pliancy of time. Courtesy of Andrew Edlin Gallery
A recurring element in his work is the female figure. Whether mermaids or spirit guides, they guard the narratives that appear on the surface. In many cases, these figures can be associated with nature or feminine deities like Yemayá, who represents the sea, Sarmiento says. They are figures of healing, protection and renewal in a world that needs external intervention due to humanity’s inability to resolve itself to the present.
Across centuries and geographies, the female figure has been associated with birth, life and protection, mothering the world in a relentless cycle of generation, transformation, decay and renewal. And it is in times of great despair and chaos that these figures and the mythological world they inhabit can guide us into a metaphorical realm that helps us see beyond the present moment and reconnect with something deeper and universal.
A self-taught artist who has only recently begun to engage with the broader international art world, Sarmiento preserves a raw and primordial visual lexicon that appears to have escaped the influences of both art-historical tradition and contemporary art market trends. The apparent simplicity or naivety of his language results from a spontaneous and intuitive process of channeling, in which ancient symbols, myth and memories emerge from the collective unconscious and are translated into new forms through a contemporary practice.
As Michael Meade explains, to see with mythic imagination is to see metaphorically—referring to the old Greek word metaphor, which means not just to see beyond, but to be carried beyond the limits of linear time and literal thinking. “The new territory or new world only comes into view and becomes conscious to us when a new vision arises from the darkness around us and from the unseen depths of our own unconscious,” he said in a recent podcast, which profoundly resonates with what Sarmiento is pushing with his art: not a new world but a new vision in which past, present and future coexist.
Samuel Sarmiento, Transit (Heraclitus River), 2024. Courtesy the artist and Andrew Edlin Gallery
The sensibility of the work lies in synthesizing and connecting seemingly disparate references to create new poetics, Sarmiento explains, walking us through a richly layered ecosystem of references that idiosyncratically exist in his work, spanning from Jorge Luis Borges’ short story “The Circular Ruins” (1940) to Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970) and the movie Fitzcarraldo. As an exercise in argumentation, he takes these primary ideas and pairs them with Caribbean concepts and mythologies. Some of the show’s pieces reference the legend regarding the origin of the continents, which are said to have emerged from ruins and furrows located on the seabed.
Living for more than 13 years in the Dutch Caribbean has allowed Sarmiento to accumulate a vast library of oral narratives. Having been born in Venezuela, a country with a rich literary tradition and also multicultural connections, Sarmiento was motivated to approach art through universal stories. “All these references converge in a single object—whether a two- or three-dimensional sculpture—which often possesses geomorphic characteristics resembling sea coral or honeycombs,” he explains.
Sarmiento’s encyclopedic lexicon fluidly draws from ancient oral tales as well as more recent books. He mentions Guns, Germs, and Steel (1997) by Jared Diamond and The Invention of Nature (2015) by Andrea Wulf as part of his contemporary references. “One of the fundamental characteristics of oral narratives is their ability to explain complex processes through simple images or stories,” he elaborates. Tropes can be accessible at different levels—what Homer once expressed, Disney later embraced.
As in a geological process of sedimentation and development, found in both natural and cultural realms, “If we look at narratives ranging from the Homeric fables to South American legends, we see that archetypal symbols such as life, death, the journey, the encounter and exile are often repeated,” Sarmiento says. “Part of my artistic exercise is to recontextualize these archetypal and universal symbols in an era of anachronisms.” Although we have information from every time and geography at our fingertips, humans often lack the capacity to recognize historical coincidences or similarities in sociopolitical processes.
Samuel Sarmiento, Untitled (WB, 1973 – 1983 – 1993). Courtesy the artist and Andrew Edlin Gallery
He aims to demonstrate that while authors and languages vary across history, the story of humanity is the sum of a few core metaphors, in a continuous cycling of archetypal tropes. “This process is an exercise I have only been able to refine through reading and building visual archives,” Sarmiento says. Repetition plays a crucial role in his gestures, whether in clay or drawing. “As Hans-Georg Gadamer noted in The Relevance of the Beautiful, we tend to repeat what brings us pleasure,” he reflects. “In many cases, this repetition creates complex languages that lead us toward new interpretations and developments.”
Sarmiento’s process involves a tense yet generative exchange between intuition and control; he embraces the unexpected results that emerge from the interaction between energetic and psychic presence and the unpredictable reactions of clay and glaze. Despite the presence of figures or engravings, his narratives—which cover the entire surface as in a horror vacui without any precise order—form a kind of flow of thought-forms that defy any linguistic or visual codification. Like Surrealist automatic writing, these visual mythologies are the result of an intuitive reconnection with the language of a shared subconscious, to which the artist reconnects through his practice, finding new forms for the invisible. By bypassing rational control, the result is an epiphanic image—a strange revelation of forms carved and crystallized on the surface of the clay.
“Although I am self-taught with only brief experiences in guided workshops, the driving force behind my work is purely intuitive,” Sarmiento explains. “Still, the symbols and figures that emerge are resources drawn from years of researching oral histories, essays, and fantastical stories, driven by an intention to communicate with people from all walks of life.”
Samuel Sarmiento, The Hunt of the Unicorn, 1495 – 1505, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Andrew Edlin Gallery
At one point, Sarmiento shares how, feeling a spontaneous connection with Jung and his thinking, he applied some years ago to a post-academic program in Switzerland. “My goal was to further my artistic research, develop a broader vision of the symbols and archetypal figures in my work, visit Carl Jung’s house, and access the literature and resources offered by the program,” he says. Yet the jury’s response was that there was no reason he needed to visit that specific location, stating that any information I required about Jung could be found on the internet. “My practice was ultimately not considered part of a contemporary discourse,” he points out, noting how one of the greatest challenges for artists from the Caribbean and South America is finding spaces where their artistic languages are appreciated through horizontal dialogue—not as exotic elements meant to fill a program’s minority quota.
Sarmiento’s work is a message of universality, celebrating and protecting the cross-cultural patrimony of stories and myths that might still guide humans toward a better notion of the future. He offers something beyond the Western paradigm of knowledge—ancestral and primordial—that has been suppressed or mostly forgotten but still resonates in the subconscious as something understood by the entirety of humanity.
His symbolic language reminds us how much we share across cultures, and how this universal ancestral heritage can help guide us into the future. “Never before have we lived in an age with more imaginary borders,” Sarmiento concludes. It is art such as his that can help us see beyond them. Never before, he adds, has humanity seemed so fragile, unable to generate collective solutions. “Through my artwork, I am seeking to create classics and objects capable of holding solutions or information for future generations.”
Sarmiento taps into a historical record shared across cultures and communities. Courtesy of Andrew Edlin Gallery
Through her ceramic sculpture, the artist strikes world-weary sentiment into the eyes of nostalgically precious woodland creatures. Photos by Charles White. Courtesy of Josh Lilley.
Wilshire Boulevard—one of Los Angeles’ most storied and congested streets—yields glimpses of landmarks, billboards and an assortment of Angeleno ephemera, yet none are as faithful to the experience of L.A. driving as the 25-foot-high anthropomorphic bear that has been marooned at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and Glendon Avenue since October. Suspended in motion, the bubble-eyed bear hurtles forward in a dilapidated car, the tearful faces of daisies lining his path. The whimsically sardonic inflatable sculpture quartered just outside Westwood’s Hammer Museum, Buggy Bear Crashes Made in L.A. is the creation of Los Angeles-based artist Alake Shilling, who—despite her fascination with L.A.’s car culture—does not drive.
Growing up in Los Angeles, Shilling became attuned to the dissonant rhythms and modalities of her hometown—the abject anachronisms, the standardized vanity, the blurry distinction between imagined realities and lived ones. Baptized in the visual legacy of Hollywood, Shilling’s animistic characters—rendered through vivid paints and ceramic sculpture—teem with the wayward sentiment that slips through the cracks of pop culture. In this way, these mawkish woodland creatures are mascots of a new pop culture, conceived by Shilling’s own design. Cuddly, uncanny and wryly melancholic, Shilling’s world of sunshine and rainbows is not always one of smiles and sweet endings.
The Artist reimagined as Turtle Bug (2025) by Alake Shilling. Photo by Charles White. Courtesy of Josh Lilley.
“I think my art is a reflection of everything I experience in the real world,” Shilling told Observer. “It’s like I’m making my own alphabet and… the whole art piece is the sentence.” In this way, Shilling conjugates caricatures of kitsch—moon-eyed ladybugs, purple-furred panda bears, baby-blue bunnies—into totems of human emotion and conflict. Her characters evince depths of emotion and vulnerability that very few people are able to express in their everyday lives. Shilling’s candy-colored garden snakes and speckled-shelled turtles do not conform to any degree of respectability or regulation; they exist in a wonderland of relentless sentiment. Shilling, who confessed that at one point her biggest dream was to become a hermit, said she often struggles to find clarity in a city so caulked with rituals of attention. In many ways, her artistic practice is a coping mechanism.
“I feel like when I speak, people don’t listen, but in my art, I have a voice,” Shilling said. “It’s my world. My characters trust me. They believe in me. They have a conversation with who they are.”
Shilling’s artistry is, to some degree, a practice in magical thinking. Working from the floor of her cozy living-room studio, Shilling mixes unconventional materials—Styrofoam beads, glitter, cotton balls—into her paintings; she leaves her ceramic sculptures pitted with uneven ridges and scored by carving instruments, evidence of her creative provenance. Shilling’s preference for texture and tactility gives her work a certain vitality. Her ceramic sculptures are particularly spirited, appearing as though they have lived—many of them perch talismanically on sculpted landscapes. A pale ladybug and a purple panda sit on a grassy knoll; a blue bunny and a brown bear rest on a mountainous ridge. They present as contemporary parables, slightly discolored by wear and age, bearing titles such as I had a long day please bring me a snack (2025) and Fashion Is a Lifestyle Said the Purple Panda in Pucci (2025). Shilling explained that her characters are portals of empathy, simple and unmuddled by sociopolitical structures or interpretative metaphors; they are affable and candid.
Fashion is a lifestyle said the purple panda in Pucci (2025) by Alake Shilling. Photo by Charles White. Courtesy of Josh Lilley.
Shilling’s work—visually informed by pop culture, cartoons and middle-American kitsch—is in dialogue with the act of interpretation as it exists in the contemporary art world. Like kitsch, the artist relies on audience familiarity and immediate emotional comprehension. Yet Shilling’s work goes beyond the cheap thrills of kitsch by facilitating a sort of psychological transference between the audience and her morose, cartoonish ceramic sculptures.
“I’m still trying to understand why I’m so drawn to animated characters,” Shilling admitted. “I can sympathize and empathize with what they’re going through. It becomes less about me and more about what the actual overarching piece is like. I can separate myself from the issue and see all the moving parts, but I can only do that if it’s cute. The cuteness is what gives me the empathy I need.”
The artist’s practice purposely defies clarity, oscillating seamlessly through the spheres of high and low art. This quality, like much of Shilling’s work, is typified by equal parts reverence toward and friction with pop culture. Shilling playfully referred to Buggy Bear—a recurring character throughout her work and her artistic avatar—as her Mickey Mouse. “He’s my trinket!” Shilling proclaimed.
I followed my heart and it led me here (2025) by Alake Shilling. Photo by Charles White. Courtesy of Josh Lilley.
To a certain degree, Shilling renders all of her characters with episodic intimacy. They embark on new adventures and experience new emotions in each appearance as though they are protagonists in a Saturday morning cartoon. When admitted to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the artist had ambitions of going into children’s animation, yet became quickly disenchanted upon learning of the strict rules and restrictions on character design and the intense competition within the industry. Taking inspiration from the grotesque and irreverent artwork of the Chicago Imagists as well as the various quaint, winsome forms of Afrodiasporic folk art, Shilling made the transition into fine art. She had the freedom to not only design as she pleased but to execute emotions and expressions that could have been diluted by animation censors.
Central to Shilling’s practice is the tender yet indelible belief that complexity can be etched into nostalgic analogs. “It’s like I am writing a really serious, emotional diary entry in Comic Sans,” Shilling joked. “The font is silly, but what I’m saying is real and genuine. And it comes from my heart.”
I’m a bunny and I carrot a lot (2023-2025) by Alake Shilling. Photo by Charles White. Courtesy of Josh Lilley.
new video loaded: A Haunted Tour of the Met Museum
Zachary Small, culture reporter, takes us on a tour of his four favorite spooky artworks at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. You’re in for a scare: they include a decapitation platter and a sculpture of a rumored cannibal.
By Zachary Small, Edward Vega, David Seekamp and Joey Sendaydiego
October 31, 2025
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Zachary Small, Edward Vega, David Seekamp and Joey Sendaydiego
In a brazen, seven-minute strike, thieves used a basket lift to reach the Louvre on Sunday morning and, as tourists were already inside, forced a window, smashed display cases and fled with jewels of “inestimable value,” France’s interior minister said.The world’s most visited museum closed for the day as police sealed gates and ushered visitors out during the investigation.“A robbery took place this morning at the opening of the Louvre Museum,” Culture Minister Rachida Dati wrote on X. The museum cited “exceptional reasons” for the closure. No injuries were reported.Around 9:30 a.m. several intruders forced open a window, stole jewels from vitrines and escaped on two-wheelers, according to the Interior Ministry. It said forensic work is underway and a precise inventory of the stolen objects is being compiled, adding that the items have “inestimable” historical value. Dati and Nuñez were on site with museum leadership.Video from the scene showed confused tourists being ushered out of the glass pyramid and surrounding courtyards as officers shut the iron gates and closed nearby streets along the Seine.Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez called it a “major robbery,” saying the intruders entered from the outside using a basket lift. He said on France Inter radio that the heist took seven minutes and the thieves used a disc cutter to slice through the panes. He said it was “manifestly a team that had done scouting.”The heist occurred in the Galerie d’Apollon, a vaulted hall in the Denon wing that displays part of the French Crown Jewels beneath a ceiling painted by King Louis XIV’s court artist, according to the ministry.French daily Le Parisien reported the thieves entered via the Seine-facing facade, where construction is underway, and used a freight elevator to reach the gallery. After breaking windows, they reportedly took nine pieces from the jewelry collection of Napoleon and the Empress. One stolen jewel was later found outside the museum, the paper reported, adding that the item was believed to be Empress Eugénie’s crown and that it had been broken.Security and staffing at the Louvre in the spotlightSecurity around marquee works remains tight. The Mona Lisa is protected by bulletproof glass and a custom high-tech display system as part of broader anti-theft measures across the museum.Staffing and protection have been flashpoints at the Louvre. The museum delayed opening during a June staff walkout over overcrowding and chronic understaffing. Unions have warned that mass tourism strains security and visitor management.It wasn’t immediately clear whether staffing levels played any role in Sunday’s theft.In January, President Emmanuel Macron announced a decadelong “Louvre New Renaissance” plan — roughly €700 million to modernize infrastructure, ease crowding and give the Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece its own dedicated gallery by 2031 — but workers say relief has been slow to reach the floor.Other European museums have been robbedThe theft, less than half an hour after doors opened, echoes other recent European museum raids.In 2019, thieves smashed vitrines in Dresden’s Green Vault and carried off diamond-studded royal jewels worth hundreds of millions of euros. In 2017, burglars at Berlin’s Bode Museum stole a 100-kilogram (220-pound) solid-gold coin. In 2010, a lone intruder slipped into Paris’s Museum of Modern Art and escaped with five paintings, including a Picasso.The Louvre has a long history of thefts and attempted robberies. The most famous came in 1911, when the Mona Lisa vanished from its frame, stolen by Vincenzo Peruggia, a former worker who hid inside the museum and walked out with the painting under his coat. It was recovered two years later in Florence — an episode that helped make Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait the world’s best-known artwork.Home to more than 33,000 works spanning antiquities, sculpture and painting — from Mesopotamia, Egypt and the classical world to European masters — the Louvre’s star attractions include the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. The museum can draw up to 30,000 visitors a day.
PARIS —
In a brazen, seven-minute strike, thieves used a basket lift to reach the Louvre on Sunday morning and, as tourists were already inside, forced a window, smashed display cases and fled with jewels of “inestimable value,” France’s interior minister said.
The world’s most visited museum closed for the day as police sealed gates and ushered visitors out during the investigation.
“A robbery took place this morning at the opening of the Louvre Museum,” Culture Minister Rachida Dati wrote on X. The museum cited “exceptional reasons” for the closure. No injuries were reported.
Around 9:30 a.m. several intruders forced open a window, stole jewels from vitrines and escaped on two-wheelers, according to the Interior Ministry. It said forensic work is underway and a precise inventory of the stolen objects is being compiled, adding that the items have “inestimable” historical value. Dati and Nuñez were on site with museum leadership.
Video from the scene showed confused tourists being ushered out of the glass pyramid and surrounding courtyards as officers shut the iron gates and closed nearby streets along the Seine.
Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez called it a “major robbery,” saying the intruders entered from the outside using a basket lift. He said on France Inter radio that the heist took seven minutes and the thieves used a disc cutter to slice through the panes. He said it was “manifestly a team that had done scouting.”
The heist occurred in the Galerie d’Apollon, a vaulted hall in the Denon wing that displays part of the French Crown Jewels beneath a ceiling painted by King Louis XIV’s court artist, according to the ministry.
French daily Le Parisien reported the thieves entered via the Seine-facing facade, where construction is underway, and used a freight elevator to reach the gallery. After breaking windows, they reportedly took nine pieces from the jewelry collection of Napoleon and the Empress. One stolen jewel was later found outside the museum, the paper reported, adding that the item was believed to be Empress Eugénie’s crown and that it had been broken.
Security and staffing at the Louvre in the spotlight
Security around marquee works remains tight. The Mona Lisa is protected by bulletproof glass and a custom high-tech display system as part of broader anti-theft measures across the museum.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether staffing levels played any role in Sunday’s theft.
In January, President Emmanuel Macron announced a decadelong “Louvre New Renaissance” plan — roughly €700 million to modernize infrastructure, ease crowding and give the Leonardo da Vinci masterpiece its own dedicated gallery by 2031 — but workers say relief has been slow to reach the floor.
Other European museums have been robbed
The theft, less than half an hour after doors opened, echoes other recent European museum raids.
In 2019, thieves smashed vitrines in Dresden’s Green Vault and carried off diamond-studded royal jewels worth hundreds of millions of euros. In 2017, burglars at Berlin’s Bode Museum stole a 100-kilogram (220-pound) solid-gold coin. In 2010, a lone intruder slipped into Paris’s Museum of Modern Art and escaped with five paintings, including a Picasso.
The Louvre has a long history of thefts and attempted robberies. The most famous came in 1911, when the Mona Lisa vanished from its frame, stolen by Vincenzo Peruggia, a former worker who hid inside the museum and walked out with the painting under his coat. It was recovered two years later in Florence — an episode that helped make Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait the world’s best-known artwork.
Home to more than 33,000 works spanning antiquities, sculpture and painting — from Mesopotamia, Egypt and the classical world to European masters — the Louvre’s star attractions include the Mona Lisa, the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace. The museum can draw up to 30,000 visitors a day.
An eggplant and a giant peach are sprouting controversy on the century-old Main Street in Ellicott City, Maryland. Business owners are being told the public art is too distracting for the historic area, but they feel the towering tributes to produce are fun and add character. Now, they’re fighting to keep the fruit.A massive Georgia peach sits outside Georgia Grace Cafe, where owner Paula Dwyer was happy to see it installed several months ago.”It was this big, beautiful orange peach. And, at first, honestly, I was like, ‘Wow, this is amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it,’” Dwyer said.Across the street sits an enormous eggplant known as the Aubergine. Both produce have been popularized over texting language as playful nods to body parts.David Carney, owner of The Wine Bin, said the Aubergine has brought in business for years.”I guess I don’t quite understand the innuendo because I have one of those body parts and it doesn’t look like that and it’s not purple, so I’m not sure really how that came about. It’s kind of weird. So, it’s kind of comical that people think that,” Carney said.Now, the merchants have since been told to take the art down. Both sculptures are supported through the Fund for Art in Ellicott City.Both pieces of art were also discussed at last week’s meeting of the Historic Preservation Commission, which expressed concern about the art “detracting from the historic buildings.””The Historic Preservation Commission approved the artwork of the aubergine for 12 months, as amended by the applicant. The peach was denied at the proposed location, but the applicant may submit an application for a different location. The established process allows for the petitioner to appeal the decision or propose an alternate location for the artwork,” officials said. “History is really important. So, this is great artwork, but I guess it’s not historic enough for them,” said Ken McNaughton, an Ellicott City resident.Don Reuwer, who manages numerous Main Street properties as president of the Waverly Real Estate Group, helped gather hundreds of signatures to keep the sculptures.”Unfortunately, the chairperson told me that they weren’t interested in the petitions that actually said that the merchants are only temporary, so they don’t matter. And frankly, that was just the straw that broke the camel’s back for me,” Reuwer said.People are far from giving up on the eye-catching produce. “I feel like they fit in with the town. I mean, everyone likes them. We’re a community of business owners and people, and all of them seem to like it. So, I feel like we are the town, also, not just the history. And we are now the history,” said Mark Johnston, an Ellicott City resident. Without approval, the statues must be taken down. Those in support of art plan to appeal the decision, and are even willing to take the issue to circuit court.
An eggplant and a giant peach are sprouting controversy on the century-old Main Street in Ellicott City, Maryland.
Business owners are being told the public art is too distracting for the historic area, but they feel the towering tributes to produce are fun and add character. Now, they’re fighting to keep the fruit.
A massive Georgia peach sits outside Georgia Grace Cafe, where owner Paula Dwyer was happy to see it installed several months ago.
“It was this big, beautiful orange peach. And, at first, honestly, I was like, ‘Wow, this is amazing. I’ve never seen anything like it,’” Dwyer said.
Across the street sits an enormous eggplant known as the Aubergine. Both produce have been popularized over texting language as playful nods to body parts.
David Carney, owner of The Wine Bin, said the Aubergine has brought in business for years.
“I guess I don’t quite understand the innuendo because I have one of those body parts and it doesn’t look like that and it’s not purple, so I’m not sure really how that came about. It’s kind of weird. So, it’s kind of comical that people think that,” Carney said.
Now, the merchants have since been told to take the art down. Both sculptures are supported through the Fund for Art in Ellicott City.
Both pieces of art were also discussed at last week’s meeting of the Historic Preservation Commission, which expressed concern about the art “detracting from the historic buildings.”
“The Historic Preservation Commission approved the artwork of the aubergine for 12 months, as amended by the applicant. The peach was denied at the proposed location, but the applicant may submit an application for a different location. The established process allows for the petitioner to appeal the decision or propose an alternate location for the artwork,” officials said.
“History is really important. So, this is great artwork, but I guess it’s not historic enough for them,” said Ken McNaughton, an Ellicott City resident.
“This is great artwork, but I guess it’s not historic enough for them.”
Don Reuwer, who manages numerous Main Street properties as president of the Waverly Real Estate Group, helped gather hundreds of signatures to keep the sculptures.
“Unfortunately, the chairperson told me that they weren’t interested in the petitions that actually said that the merchants are only temporary, so they don’t matter. And frankly, that was just the straw that broke the camel’s back for me,” Reuwer said.
People are far from giving up on the eye-catching produce.
“I feel like they fit in with the town. I mean, everyone likes them. We’re a community of business owners and people, and all of them seem to like it. So, I feel like we are the town, also, not just the history. And we are now the history,” said Mark Johnston, an Ellicott City resident.
Without approval, the statues must be taken down. Those in support of art plan to appeal the decision, and are even willing to take the issue to circuit court.
A view of the installation at the Centre des Monuments Nationaux–Hôtel de Sully. Photo: Tanguy Beurdeley. Courtesy of the Lynn Chadwick’s Estate and Perrotin.
British artist Lynn Chadwick was instrumental in liberating modern sculpture from its traditional figurative and celebratory forms, pushing it towards more abstract, innovative expressions. His market remains robust, largely due to the careful management of his estate by his family. Now, “Hypercircle,” a series of exhibitions split into three chapters across two venues, seeks to further cement Chadwick’s reputation and enhance his market standing.
Timed to coincide with Art Basel Paris, the first show, “Hypercircle – Chapter 1: Scalene,” opened at Galerie Perrotin alongside a display of works at the Centre des Monuments Nationaux–Hôtel de Sully. This exhibition focuses on Chadwick’s formative years, showcasing sixty pivotal works produced between 1947 and 1962—a period during which the artist defined his distinct style and gained international recognition. Observer spoke with curator and art historian Matthieu Poirier, who played a central role in orchestrating the show.
Poirier revealed that this exhibition is the culmination of years of dialogue with the Chadwick estate. He first connected with them during research for his groundbreaking “Suspension” exhibition and publication, which looked at artists who pioneered the idea of sculpture beyond the pedestal. Despite some of these pieces not being Chadwick’s most recognized works, the show highlights the artist’s exploration of “Mobiles” in the 1950s. “They are something deeply connected with the history of abstract art,” Poirier said. “It’s about losing boundaries and creating abstraction.”
The Lynn Chadwick exhibition at Perrotin Gallery in Paris was curated by Matthieu Poirer. Photo: Tanguy Beurdeley. Courtesy of the Lynn Chadwick’s Estate and Perrotin.
Chadwick’s fascination with suspension and his intuitive approach to working with unconventional materials were fueled by his diverse background as an architectural draftsman, furniture and textile designer, and later, a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm during World War II. According to Poirier, for the artist, “mobiles were an extension of architecture, moving parts of the architecture. He always had a fascination for flying objects, also for his past as a pilot.”
As Chadwick sought to liberate sculpture from mass and traditional support, his works evolved into more animal-like forms, often featuring angular bodies and delicate, spindly legs. Though deeply abstract and imaginative in their hybrid forms, these sculptures retained some references to the natural world. Poirier noted that Chadwick was fascinated by biology, particularly Darwin’s theory of evolution, with illustrations from those scientific texts inspiring his distinct biomorphic language.
For this reason, the sculptor’s creations often appear more like fossils suspended between present and past, between remoteness and presentness of their forms, evoking humanoid forms figures with anthropomorphic heads and limbs while maintaining their “otherness.” Many of Chadwick’s pieces also resemble insects, particularly referencing the exoskeleton—a concept that fascinated the artist as he explored the idea of a protective shell or carapace encasing the body structure.
These connections to natural forms and geometries became even more pronounced after Chadwick moved to Lypiatt Park, a neo-Gothic castle in the Cotswolds. From the late 1950s onward, he absorbed inspiration directly from the rich flora and fauna surrounding his new studio. Yet even as his biomorphic tendencies became more apparent, his work continued to blend elements of nature with the mechanical, industrial, and even futuristic, reflecting the aesthetic sensibilities of his time.
“Hypercycle” is a series of exhibitions at several sites, each tracing a part of the artist’s career. Photo: Tanguy Beurdeley. Courtesy of the Lynn Chadwick’s Estate and Perrotin.
Chadwick’s work was never tied to a specific narrative or political stance, which is why Poirier avoided categorizing his pieces by “type” in this exhibition. Instead, he wanted to highlight the artist’s abstract approach, allowing the sculptures to transcend direct references. By pairing the works organically and displaying them as if they were occasionally gathering on pedestals, Poirier emphasizes their fluidity. “They’re always highly stylized and maintain only the main lines of the real thing,” he said.
Some of Chadwick’s monumental sculptures are on display at the Monuments Nationaux–Hôtel de Sully. These pieces, which weigh up to 800 kg, are remarkable not only for their scale but also for the artist’s working method—Chadwick often worked alone and created his sculptures without preliminary sketches, relying on an intuitive and automatic process. Poirier likened this method to surrealist automatic writing, noting that his process had “no plan, leaving the materials leading the way.”
At the same time, Chadwick’s work is deeply rooted in the tradition of sculptural pioneers, from Russian Constructivists like Naum Gabo to Henry Moore, and even the existential sculptures of Alberto Giacometti, where bodies are reduced to their minimal forms. “I’ve always seen him as the missing link between Henry Moore, Giacometti and someone like Louise Bourgeois,” Poirier said, emphasizing the broader significance of Chadwick’s practice. “When you look at her spiders, it’s clear that she looked at Chadwick’s work, and she wasn’t the only one.”
Lynn Chadwick was one of the most significant sculptors of the twentieth century, alongside Alberto Giacometti, Henry Moore and Louise Bourgeois. Photo: Tanguy Beurdeley. Courtesy of the Lynn Chadwick’s Estate and Perrotin.
When compared to Moore and Giacometti, Chadwick’s works convey a similar sense of precariousness and fragility, reflecting the uncertainties of the postwar era. He minimized the base of his sculptures, creating a sense of imbalance and instability through the use of triangular shapes, a key element of his sculptural language. As Poirier explained, this instability wasn’t merely aesthetic but also a means to evoke movement: “The idea of the scalene triangle, this irregular triangle, is an unstable shape that is on the verge of collapsing, not symmetrical. It is not orthogonal. There is no symmetry. It’s just on the verge of falling or giving birth to another triangle or tetrahedron—these shapes imagined from this simple structure.”
The concept of the scalene triangle was so integral to Chadwick’s work that it inspired the title of the first chapter of his exhibition in Paris. Poirier added that this formal approach likely stems from his architectural background, where he learned to stabilize structures using diagonal lines, creating a dynamic interplay between gravitational forces. This architectural influence is evident in the way Chadwick balanced strength and instability within his sculptures.
Profoundly enigmatic, Chadwick’s hybrid sculptures seem to foreshadow new possibilities of symbiosis between nature and human creation. His concept of “organic growth” within sculpture offers a visionary anticipation of themes such as interspecies relationships and “alienness,” ideas that have become increasingly popular in today’s artistic and creative realms. As humanity is compelled to reconsider its place on the planet, this sculptor’s work feels more relevant than ever, whether viewed through dystopian or optimistic lenses.
“Hypercycle” will continue with a second chapter in New York focusing on Chadwick’s mature period from 1963 to 1979. The final chapter will be mounted in Asia. Complementing the exhibition series, a monograph set to be published in 2025 will provide a comprehensive overview of Chadwick’s career, offering diverse perspectives on his work and legacy.
The first chapter brings together sixty key works produced between 1947 and 1962, a time when the artist defined his unique approach and achieved international recognition. Photo: Tanguy Beurdeley. Courtesy of the Lynn Chadwick’s Estate and Perrotin.
SALEM — A life-sized bronze memorial honoring Salem State’s first African American graduate, Charlotte Forten Grimké, was unveiled this week at her namesake Charlotte Forten Park to celebrate the life of the historic abolitionist, educator, writer, poet, translator, and women’s right activist.
The statue, titled The Moving Spirit of Love, was created by artist Ai Qiu of Hopen of Humanity Memorial Inc., with input and assistance from the City’s Public Art Commission and the Charlotte Fortner Memorial Project Advisory Group. Over the last five years, the groups gathered community input on the process and determined what shape the memorial should take — ultimately deciding on Qiu’s design after a robust community review process.
“I’m so proud that Salem will soon unveil the sculpture of such a significant figure in our city and our nation’s history,” Mayor Dominick Pangallo said. “Celebrating Charlotte Forten Grimke’s legacy through this public art installation reflects our shared value of education, equity, and the diversity of voices, stories, and lived experiences in our community.
“Through this exciting moment and lasting monument, we’ll continue to tell the story of Salem and all of its chapters, including that of an important and influential woman who helped shape this community into the great place it is today. Our city must continue to be a leader in elevating Black histories and voices, including through our public spaces and public art.”
The project was initiated after the park site was redeveloped in 2017 and dedicated as Charlotte Forten Park in 2019. After years of engagement efforts around the park and proposals for a permanent memorial, a project advisory was formed in fall of 2022 to assist with drafting a Call for Artists.
The bronze statue of Forten is historic in many ways, said Regina Zaragoza Frey, Salem’s director of diversity, equity, and inclusion, and member of the Charlotte Forten Advisory Group.
“It marks Salem’s first statue of a Black woman, celebrating her life, legacy, and the hope she inspires for the future,” Frey said. “It is also the first statue in Salem created by a woman of color, artist Ai Qiu, of Asian descent. Her work, Moving Spirit of Love, symbolically embodies hope and justice.
“Seeing the clay model for the first time was breathtaking, and now witnessing its transformation into a permanent installation of a bronze sculpture is a significant moment in Salem’s journey toward racial equity.”
A dedication ceremony will be held at the park on Saturday, Nov. 16 at 1 p.m., with a rain date the following day.
Local theater company History Alive Inc. and actress Samanth Searles will be in attendance, in character as Forten, to present poems and stories from her time in Salem.
Some of Forten’s writings will also be on display in the park in November with a hand-printed banner created by artist Mitchel Ahern. A full schedule of events will be made available closer to the event.
Installation view of “Leonardo Drew” at Galerie Lelong & Co. JONATHON CANCRO, Courtesy Galerie Lelong & Co.
Entropy best captures the essence of Leonardo Drew’s work: the randomness that transforms into creation, a level of disorder that permeates all aspects of life but ultimately finds its measure, becoming a force that adds complexity to existence. Fragments of wood, painted in varying hues, overrun the gallery space, which resembles the aftermath of a hurricane. Yet, amidst the seeming chaos, there is a striking harmony in the way the colors interact and some poetry in the incursions of more personal elements in the comics that hint at Drew’s earlier talent in that field.
Drew’s soon-to-close show at Galerie Lelong & Co., “Leonardo Drew,” repurposes material fragments from his previous works and exhibitions into an immersive and explosive site-specific installation of monumental scale. The exhibition remains untitled, with the works represented only by numeric series and codes. The artist deliberately avoids assigning specific meanings to this material composition, leaving it open for viewers to interpret and engage with in a dialectic process of signification.
As Drew explained during our walkthrough, he views himself as a catalyst: his art is about receiving, transmitting and amplifying the flow of energies and particles that define the cosmos. “Within yourself, you have to have some idea of that there’s a synergy between us, and other bigger things in the cosmos, much bigger than ourselves,” he told Observer. By following the movement of particles and atoms on a macro scale, Drew allows these fragments to land and recombine into new material constellations. “Each of those works informs the incoming work. I’m usually working on like seven things, and I’m continuously rotating.”
As we delve into his artistic process, it becomes clear that Leonardo Drew’s work is more spiritual than rooted in physics or science. It aligns more closely with Eastern philosophies, which emphasize the continuous circulation of materials and forces that sustain existence and fuel its restless evolution. “The actual physics of creating these things is applied, but it’s not part of our material world,” is how he described it. “You need to have a base from which you’re operating, which is your philosophy, your spirituality, your way of receiving and walking this planet.”
During our conversation, Drew acknowledged the profound influence that Asia, particularly China, has had on his artistic direction. The distinct energy of different places comes through in his work and his attitudes toward it. “When I was in China, I started smashing the porcelain vases that I was creating there,” he said. The artisans there felt it was garbage, so they started throwing it away. I was like, this is not garbage, actually.”
At its core, his practice is about perceiving and listening to his materials, maintaining a heightened awareness of his position in space. It’s about “being in tune,” he said, which lets him focus on the piece in front of him. His process is one of intuitive composition, building with the materials at hand. He describes his work as sculptural abstraction. “I come off the wall,” he said, but his practice transcends that definition, pushing beyond boundaries. “People want to categorize and describe you, but all borders are broken through the process.”
For Drew, the moment of artistic awakening came in a library when he encountered Jackson Pollock’s work in a book. This revelation prompted him to abandon a promising career with Marvel or DC Comics. “It was something I was really considering growing up in the hood,” he recalled. “The poison came when I saw Jackson Pollock in a book in the library; from that point, I knew I had to pass the prettified surface. There’s something beyond that surface. So I started to experiment to understand what was all this about.”
The exhibition at Galerie Lelong & Co. also features some new works in which painted plaster blocks form grids, suggesting a return to human-controlled order amidst the chaotic flow of all things. Drew explained that the shift to blocks was born from the practical need to move his work more easily into and out of the studio. Yet these fragments, once seemingly useless and broken, find renewed meaning within the multiplicity of the ensemble, much like atoms, entities and humans do—gravitating toward purpose and significance.
A larger piece on the entrance wall resembles a code, almost like an alphabet, which Drew has developed over the years through various projects. It includes fragments from his Madison Park sculpture, his last show at the gallery and other works, making it a compendium of potential constellations that Drew refers to as “a catalog of materials that comes from a life of living with these actual words.” This work encapsulates a coded set of possible forms, illustrating how matter can find shape and meaning in space. By staging and playing with the rules of the cosmos, Drew’s exhibition demonstrates, both physically and experientially, how chaos can give birth to new forms and meanings. His work reflects the cyclical nature of life and decay, caught in an endless dance of creation and destruction—revealing the universe’s ultimate purpose in the beauty it continually generates.
On Friday, WTOP got a preview of the new World War I Memorial in D.C. ahead of its opening next weekend.
The finishing touches are being put on the new World War I Memorial in D.C. It’s a three-acre site sitting right along Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Freedom Plaza.
On Friday, WTOP got a preview of the new memorial ahead of its opening next weekend.
The centerpiece is a 60-foot wall of sculptures, 38 in total, which aims to tell a story from the start of the war all the way to the end. It took sculptor Sabin Howard about four and a half years to make it.
“The story is of a soldier, a dad, in an allegory for the United States where he leaves home, enters into battle,” said Howard. “From that horrible experience, he’s transformed, shellshocked, and then he returns home to hand his daughter, the next generation, the helmet. And she is World War II.”
What stands out the most is the vivid detail given to each soldier’s face. Anyone looking at it can see the emotion — whether it’s fear, despair or pain. The dirt, sweat and tears are all there to behold.
“We spent an average of 650 hours on each one of these figures, working from a life model. And a lot of those models from the middle to the end of the sculpture are veterans from the Marine Corps, Navy SEAL and Army Rangers, and so their faces had all seen PTSD,” said Howard.
“And that kind of changes the whole thing because, now all of a sudden, you’re sculpting real people … You’re actually learning from them what it’s like to go into war and then leave your family and come back completely changed,” he added.
Howard used words like energy and power to describe some of the sculptures, arguing that “emotion is movement” as he stood in front of the wall.
“This is (a) symphony happening behind me, where you go from quiet to like maximum animalistic energy, to a primal scream, and then all of a sudden quiet,” said Howard. “Where you go to cost of war, where it’s dead silent. It’s actually death. And then from that moment of being shell shocked, you go into a parade scene home, which is this sense of energy being turned on again. And then the final scene, the brakes get put on, where it’s really quiet, where the dad returns home, he’s changed. He’s awkward when he hands his daughter the helmet, she’s completely still, and the weight on her neck, it’s heavy.”
He added, “It’s not like a ‘Yahoo!’ moment. It’s like when you send people to war, they come back, they are not who they were when they left. And that needs to be recognized.”
Organizers behind the memorial spent the last 16 years getting to this day.
The new World War I Memorial in D.C. is a 3-acre site sitting along Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Freedom Plaza. The centerpiece is a 60-foot wall of sculptures, which aims to tell a story from the start of the war to the end.
(WTOP/John Domen)
WTOP/John Domen
The new World War I Memorial in D.C. is a 3-acre site sitting along Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Freedom Plaza. The centerpiece is a 60-foot wall of sculptures, which aims to tell a story from the start of the war to the end.
(WTOP/John Domen)
WTOP/John Domen
The new World War I Memorial in D.C. is a 3-acre site sitting along Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Freedom Plaza. The centerpiece is a 60-foot wall of sculptures, which aims to tell a story from the start of the war to the end.
(WTOP/John Domen)
WTOP/John Domen
The new World War I Memorial in D.C. is a 3-acre site sitting along Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Freedom Plaza. The centerpiece is a 60-foot wall of sculptures, which aims to tell a story from the start of the war to the end.
(WTOP/John Domen)
WTOP/John Domen
The new World War I Memorial in D.C. is a 3-acre site sitting along Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and Freedom Plaza. The centerpiece is a 60-foot wall of sculptures, which aims to tell a story from the start of the war to the end.
(WTOP/John Domen)
WTOP/John Domen
“World War I is largely forgotten in our country, and it was the most consequential event of the 20th century that led to the other wars that are commemorated on the National Mall,” said Edwin Fountain, the vice chair of the World War I Centennial Commission.
“It’s also important because the scale of sacrifice in World War I of American forces is largely unknown. We lost more American soldiers in World War I than we lost in Korea and Vietnam combined. … And so the significance of that war, the character of American service and accomplishments … needs to be commemorated by a national memorial,” he added.
Those who are behind it feel that the location — between 14th and 15th streets Northwest, right across Pennsylvania Avenue from the Willard Hotel — actually provides a better home for the memorial than the National Mall does.
Besides the proximity to so many downtown hotels and attractions, the amount of space it provided to honor those who served in World War I is much bigger than what the National Mall can provide. The memorial site includes a seating area, a wall with a series of quotes and maps related to the war, and a rehabbed Gen. John J. Pershing Memorial.
It’s also where the World War I homecoming parade crossed in the 20th century.
“I just want people to leave and be interested in World War I, and want to ask questions and want to know more,” said Joe Weishaar, the lead designer for the entire memorial. “It’s the war that changed the world in so many ways, and it’s such a valuable piece of history to really wrap your head around.”
But anyone who visits will be drawn to the centerpiece sculpture, and many will find it hard to take their eyes off it.
“Oftentimes, war memorials aggrandize what happened to cover up tracks,” said Howard, the sculptor. “I didn’t do that. I made something to elevate human beings and bring them forward as the primary subject of a war memorial. It’s not about the governments or the elites. It’s about the ordinary people that are caught into the vortex of having to go to war.”
“If you look at this, this is a memorial to humanity, not to war. It is, yes, the national World War I Memorial, but humanity is what the primary concern and interest of this project is.”
The first illumination ceremony for the memorial will take place at 7:15 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 13. Several other activities are set to take place Sept. 14 and 15, including live musical performances and historical presentations, as well as authentic World War I vehicles from the National WWI Mobile Museum.
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Picture in Picture by Signe and Genna Grushovenko on display at this year’s Cherry Creek Arts Festival. Christa Terry
Ask locals where to see the best art in Denver and more than a few will point you toward the famously angular Denver Art Museum. Multiple Uber drivers will suggest you visit the trendy RiNo district. Both are good ideas, but keep pestering the nice people of Denver and the recommendations start to get more interesting. There’s the American Museum of Western Art. There’s Meow Wolf’s Convergence Station, though I leave it up to you to decide whether that’s really art. There are the eye-catching public installations, many rather horsey, like Donald Lipski’s The Yearling and the sculptor-killer, Blue Mustang (Observer correspondent Nick Hilden rightly pointed out some months back that Denver has a thing for big blue mammals). Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen’s monumental dustpan, Big Sweep, is certainly something. And Leo Tanguma’s murals in Denver International Airport are said to hide the secrets of the Illuminati.
But I’m not here to see any of that. I’ve traveled to Colorado’s capital with a friend for the sprawling Cherry Creek Arts Festival—an annual juried event that attracts applications from thousands of artists and supports arts initiatives across the state. This year’s festival was spread out over six short blocks with tent after tent of exhibiting artists plus at least four cross streets with more artists’ booths and food vendors, live music, a silent auction and a crafty area for kids, which is where we stopped for shade and shaved ice on Day 0.
The Cherry Creek Arts Festival attracts thousands of artist applicants each year. Christa Terry
It wasn’t just the heat that got to us. As Jason Horowitz—now Rome bureau chief of the New York Times but once staff writer for this publication—put it in 2008: “Even if you are not thirsty, the one thing everyone in Denver tells you to do is drink water. That headache you feel is not a headache, it’s dehydration. Don’t take Advil, Bayer or Tylenol. Drink water. Lots of water. Keep water on your bed stand and water in your car. Put water in your backpack.”
My friend put water in her bag; I did not, but I did pack sumatriptan, and she was kind enough to share her water with me during our whirlwind semi-self-guided tour of what’s on in Denver. We had two days and two nights to experience as much art as possible—like a pub crawl of culture. Our host and home base: Hotel Clio, one of several upscale hotels in Denver, home to Toro Latin Kitchen & Lounge (more on this later) and the site of one of the most well-appointed fitness centers I’ve ever encountered. Also, deep, deep bathtubs. I took two baths per day, just because I could, but beyond the baths, here’s what our 48 hours of art in Denver looked like.
Donald Lipski’s The Yearling. Christa Terry
Day 0
I pick up my friend at 4:45 a.m. for a 7:30 a.m. flight. Neither of us plans to check a bag, but I am naturally anxious and like to be in the terminal two hours before boarding to confirm that my gate actually exists. We breeze through security, our gate does in fact exist and we grab breakfast sandwiches that I can’t eat because who the hell is actually hungry before nine? I end up tucking into my gluey room-temperature egg and cheese on the plane while cringing through the new Mean Girls and then Jules, which I’d never heard of and am honestly still not sure I’d recommend. My friend graciously takes the middle seat and sleeps through almost the entire flight.
We land at Denver International Airport without incident and despite how much I’ve talked up the absolute weirdness of it—from the subterranean reptiles dwelling in the bunkers underneath to the Flat Earth propaganda in the murals to the resident ghosts—I’m too tired to even look for the famous gargoyles. I am, in fact, desperate for two things: to get more coffee and to get to the Uber that arrived roughly a minute and a half after I ordered it. Once on the road, we gaze unblinkingly out the windows, anxious for a glimpse of Blucifer, but we’re on the wrong side of the highway.
It’s too early to check in, and I don’t want to visit the Cherry Creek Art Festival until we talk to PR head Bryant Palmer, so we drop our bags at Hotel Clio—briefly admiring the art in the lobby on loan from Clayton Lane Fine Arts, which we’ll visit tomorrow—and head away from the long line of artists’ booths just around the corner. By now, we’re exceedingly hungry, but our first stop is Masters Gallery, which has a fun mix of bronzes and other sculptural works, paintings and glass art. We were particularly taken with Lawrence Feir’s fantastical metalwork wall sculptures that rendered the human form in something like chainmail (but make it sci-fi). Lunch is hand pies from the nearby Pasty Republic.
Artwork in the Hotel Clio lobby. Christa Terry
In the early afternoon, after checking in and refreshing ourselves—that’s bath number one—we have a quick meet and greet with festival PR head Bryant Palmer, who gives us the Media tags that will get us into the daily festival VIP lunch and hopefully make it less awkward when I ask artists if I can record them. During our brief chat, he tells us that last year’s participants sold $4.4 million worth of art, averaging out to about $18,000 per participating artist, which probably accounts for the popularity of this festival with artists.
Still, Palmer says, it’s a pretty accessible event, which is reassuring for us to hear, as our art buying budgets are relatively small. “You don’t have to spend fifteen thousand dollars to get something fantastic. You can if you want, it’s perfectly doable here, but you also can purchase original art for a lot less, too.”
Last year, the Cherry Creek Arts Festival drove $4.4 million in sales. Christa Terry
As we start down 2nd Avenue, the festival’s main thoroughfare, I am already grappling with how I will write about all this. There’s the by-the-numbers approach: the festival showcases the work of 250 artist exhibitors selected from among 1,942 artist applicants, with twenty returning award-winners from last year’s festival and five specially selected emerging artists, and so on. Booth 1 is a real eyecatcher, hung with the colorful, vintage-photo-inspired paintings of Signe and Genna Grushovenko. One large work, Picture in Picture, stands out: in it, two women browse artworks displayed on a city street. Very meta.
Darryl Cox’s “fusion frames” stood out. Christa Terry
From there, it’s a mad dash to see as much of the work of those 250 artists as we can while attempting to stay cool in the afternoon heat. My friend is immediately taken with the glass and ceramic art, and I can’t blame her. It’s not really my thing—I’m a painting person—but there are people here doing absolutely amazing stuff with glass and clay, from Amber Marshall’s modular pouffes to Randy O’Brien’s crackled wall pillows. Meanwhile, I gravitate toward the minimalist paintings of Ezra Siegel and similar works (I have a type) but nothing really has me overcome until I see Darryl Cox, Jr.’s striking amalgamations of frame and driftwood that are unlike anything I’ve seen before.
Amy Flynn creates robots sculptures made of vintage found objects. Christa Terry
Other booths that stand out on our first walkthrough of the festival include those of Amy Flynn, who builds whimsical robot sculptures out of found materials, Brice McCasland’s visually immersive collage paintings and Glory Day Loflin’s paintings inspired by fiber art and quiltmaking and based in her grandmother’s textile practice.
“Every festival is different,” she tells us when we ask about her Cherry Creek experience thus far. “One thing I’ve noticed about this one is I’m seeing a lot of traction with specifically what I’m creating: the color saturation and the high key colors. That’s really drawing people in.”
Artist Ezra Siegel discusses his art with a festival visitor. Christa Terry
All told, we spend about four hours roving from booth to booth, for both the artworks and the shade, but we have other places to be. First, the Toro Denver x Relevant Galleries kickoff cocktail event featuring drinks and small bites inspired by David Yarrow’s El Toro, during which I eat too much because everything is so damn good—including the company.
David Yarrow’s El Toro and a cocktail inspired by the work at Relevant Galleries. Christa Terry
“You really shouldn’t wait if there’s something you want to buy at the festival,” a gallerist warns us as we nibble. “I fell in love with this painting but decided to wait. When I went back, I got there just in time to see a couple walking away with it.” My friend and I briefly consider heading back out into the still-glaring sunshine to panic buy several things that had caught our eyes earlier in the afternoon, but by then the El Toro-inspired cocktails are working their magic and we strike up a conversation with a local art collector who, in one of those random coincidences, has friends who work at a distillery in my friend’s town.
Our next stop is Toro proper to make a late-ish dinner reservation that now feels a little too early given how much we’ve accidentally eaten. But I’m a completionist, so I gamely dig into scallops with pork belly and pepita rosemary butter and a plate of sweet corn empanadas. Let me tell you something: should you find yourself in the neighborhood of Hotel Clio, have dinner at Toro. And when you have dinner at Toro, order the sweet corn empanadas. And when you eat the sweet corn empanadas, do not—I repeat, do not—neglect the accompanying chimichurri.
For the rest of the night, I gush about the Toro chimichurri—to our waiter, to chef de cuisine Tracey Todd and to Hotel Clio concierge George Maresh when I need his help figuring out how to access our museum tickets. I’m a little tipsy, and I’ve got chimichurri on my mind as I enjoy bath number two.
Day 1
After exhausting all the coffee pods in my room, I persuade my friend to grab to-go coffees in the Hotel Clio lobby and join me on my morning stroll. While I wait, I browse the Hotel Clio art collection on my phone—I am trying to have as many art experiences as possible, after all. Artists whose work is scattered around the hotel include Hannah Ehrlich, Kim Knoll and Jared Rue, and the common curatorial thread, marketing manager Christopher Polys tells me later, is “an appreciation for Cherry Creek’s past at the confluence of the Cherry Creek and Platte River where gold mining was prevalent.” Something I’ve noticed about art in Denver is that a lot of it is very much geographically grounded. Folks in the West really like Western art.
The festival doesn’t open until 10 a.m., and I’m interested in seeing more of the neighborhood anyway. We knew Cherry Creek was a little tony—there’s the country club, the independent pasty shop, the lovely little store specializing in Versace kitchenware, the new Vespas everywhere—but I find out just how tony when I look up the asking price of the townhouses with For Sale signs in the yards.
A room in the Clyfford Still Museum. Brent Andeck, courtesy the Clyfford Still Museum
Thoroughly caffeinated with muscles warmed and ready, our first stop of the day is not the festival but the single-artist Clyfford Still Museum, which opened in 2011, the culmination of Still’s wish that his body of work (much of which he retained until his death) would remain in storage until an American city built a museum to house his art “exclusively.” That city turned out to be Denver, and that museum in its beautiful building designed by Brad Cloepfil now holds more than 3,000 paintings and works on paper—roughly 93 percent of his lifetime output—in 30,000 square feet. Still once said seeing his work in its entirety was akin to “a symphony,” and I can’t disagree. I was only passingly familiar with the artist before this trip, and I find myself moving from painting to painting in rapt fascination. As it turns out, I really like Still’s monumental canvases and how the Clyfford Still Museum preserves and presents them—particularly how it makes every effort to incorporate the stories of both the women who launched his career and the women who were creating art at the same time but were excluded from the Irascibles.
A view of East 2 West Source Point by Larry Kirkland. Christa Terry
(Please forgive this digression, but Denver is weird. It’s obviously a city, but where are all the people? It’s a beautiful Saturday and the streets and greenspaces around the museum are practically empty. Our Uber driver tells us there’s been a population boom that started with the legalization of recreational cannabis and has since attracted tech companies to the region, but I’m not seeing it.)
We drop back in at the hotel for tacos in the VIP lounge with plans to tour a few of the local art galleries in between visits to the festival. The forecast says the high will be roughly ninety degrees in the late afternoon and I gratefully grab two of the branded paper fans I’d seen people the day before. Thank you, CherryArts! For the rest of the day, my maniacal fanning will prompt my friend to ask repeatedly if I’m okay, but it’s just hot and I’m starting to think Jason Horowitz was right about Denver and dehydration. Luckily, there’s an afternoon Arnold Palmer station (with syrups!) in the Hotel Clio lobby, where we stop after more time at the festival and before heading back to Relevant, where we meet with consultant Melissa Batie.
RELEVANT PHOTO
It is, she tells us, one of a veritable fleet of galleries operating under the umbrella of AD Galleries, a mini empire of fine art dealers built by Paul Zueger. Two other AD Galleries are right here in Cherry Creek: Masters Gallery, which we’ve already visited, and Clayton Lane Fine Arts, which is our next stop. “Each gallery has a different vibe,” Batie says. “If you walk into Masters Gallery over, you’ll see lots of bronzework and glass. We’re representing a lot of photography right now.” And so they are, with large-scale works by Yarrow, along with pieces by photographer and printmaker Russell Young (who works with diamond dust left behind by Warhol—look it up). Their roster also includes the estate of modern American bronze master Gib Singleton, painters like Earl Biss and others, whose works are rotated through the various galleries. While Relevant doesn’t bill itself a gallery of Western art, the thread of inspiration is certainly there.
Clayton Lane Fine Arts, just three doors down Clayton Street, couldn’t be more different, with its focus on Pop Art and Surrealism along with works by Old Masters like Rembrandt and, surprisingly, limited edition lithographs and serigraphs of the art of Dr. Seuss. There are works by Salvador Dali and Joan Miró, as well as pieces by rising stars in an eclectic mix of works that gallery director Carrigan Sherlock rearranges depending on the season. “It’s summer now” she says, “and I wanted something kind of fun and fresh so I put the Hamilton Aguiar ocean pieces up in the front windows.” She’s worked in Aspen and Vail but tells us she likes Denver, and this spot in Cherry Creek more particularly, because of the international collectors who come through.
CLAYTON LANE PHOTO
There are still at least two short block’s worth of art festival we haven’t yet checked out. We do our best to take it all in from the relative quiet of the center of the street, but my friend and I are both suffering from acute art fatigue. Almost nothing stands out—imagine you’re at a wine tasting on your fifth vintage and you’re a little buzzed and suddenly it’s all just wine. I do stop and buy a bright Pop-y rooster print by Kenneth Kudulis. I almost buy a print by Tanya Doskova, who as far as I’m concerned dominated the festival with her deeply political and deeply weird works of magical Surrealism, and I’ll be forever sad I didn’t when I had the chance. We also pause and talk with painter Janina Tukarski Ellis, who tells us she landed on crowds as her primary subject because she likes the unity. “We may not know each other and we may not be interacting, but we’re all there for a similar purpose, whether that’s an adventure or an art show,” she tells us, and it feels like the perfect ending to our festival experience.
Works by Janina Tukarski Ellis. Christa Terry
I optimistically have two more gallery visits on the agenda, but Abend Gallery’s Cherry Creek outpost closed not fifteen minutes earlier. It’s small and has big windows, though, so I peer in and am taken with Patrick Nevins’ Playtime is Over, which I would buy in a heartbeat if I had the means. We briefly step inside Fascination St. Fine Art, which is worth a visit but much larger than it looks from the street—suddenly we’re traversing a Tardis-like maze of hallways and staircases that eventually dumps us back onto the sidewalk via a wholly different entrance.
Patrick Nevins’ Playtime is Over at Abend Gallery. Christa Terry
We hurry along to Cucina Colore, an Italian place founded by Venanzio Momo that is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. Though tempted by the pastas and mains, we opt for cocktails and a pair of pizzas—the Bergamo and the Carne—since Signor Momo’s first restaurant in Colorado was a pizzeria. The quality was top-notch; the quantity, too much. Unless you’re absolutely ravenous, one pizza and a shared app or salad will be plenty enough for two people. We do look at the dessert menu, but I order an after-dinner coffee as a balm for my uncomfortably overstuffed belly.
Back at Hotel Clio, George the concierge has sent two jars of Toro’s chimichurri to my room and the gesture has me feeling oddly emotional, which is how I know that this overtired art lover should probably go straight to bed. Instead, I go down to the hotel’s fitness center and do a mixed routine of strength, stretching and cardio, because I can’t resist the siren call of an on-site gym.
The Hotel Clio fitness center. Christa Terry
Day 2
After my morning bath, I spend some time gazing out my room’s window at the sun-kissed Rockies, which seem both loomingly close yet so far away. Striding along the squeaky clean and utterly empty sidewalks of Cherry Creek—yes, I have convinced my friend to go on another morning walk—you wouldn’t even know the mountains are out there. As we sip and stroll, we discuss our plans for our final half day in Denver.
Breakfast at Hotel Clio. Christa Terry
Do we want to go back to the festival after our final meal at Hotel Clio? Not really, we decide together. The Cherry Creek Arts Festival is great, but we’ve seen everything we wanted to see (in some cases more than once) and talked to everyone we wanted to talk to and bought everything we’re going to buy. And while there are other art galleries in Denver we could check out, it’s Sunday and some are closed and gallery hopping doesn’t sound particularly appealing after more than a day and a half of near-continuous art exposure.
We settle on a relaxed visit to the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, a 27,000-square foot, environmentally sustainable institution housed in a Sir David Adjaye-designed building (the first U.S. museum commission for the now disgraced architect). We bring our luggage, and the people at the admissions counter are super chill about storing my bag and my recently purchased art.
Gala Porras-Kim’s “A Hand in Nature” at MCA Denver. Courtesy MCA Denver, photo Wes Magyar
Currently on at MCA Denver are “Gala Porras-Kim: A Hand in Nature” and “Critical Landscapes: Selected Works from the Ella Fontanals-Cisneros Collection.” The latter gives me space to hold forth about Ana Mendieta and the controversy surrounding her death and how Carl Andre was a piece of shit. The former wows me and my friend both. My only previous exposure to the work of Colombian-Korean-American artist Gala Porras-Kim was in a brief Observer writeup about last year’s Liverpool Biennial of Contemporary Art, but I suggest you look her up. (In the words of my friend, Porras-Kim “is so smart and so driven to pursue fairness and justice for historically marginalized peoples.”)
The exhibition, which is focused primarily on climate change, is thought-provoking, but what stands out are the works in which Porras-Kim directly challenges the collecting practices of museums through letters and corresponding artworks. Leaving the institution through cremation is easier than as a result of a deaccession policy pairs a letter to Alexander Kellner, director of the National Museum of Brazil, which suffered a devastating fire in 2018 that destroyed much of a 12,000-year-old fossil nicknamed Luzia, and a tissue with a handprint rendered in ash from the fire that Porras-Kim calls the “closest thing to a cinerary urn” as she encourages Kellner to recognize Luzia’s personhood.
After seeing everything there was to see, we navigate MCA Denver’s narrow and echoing stairwell to the top floor where there is a small but engaging display of works by the museum’s staff. There’s also a rooftop garden cafe overlooking the quiet and strangely empty street, which is exactly what we need in that moment. I’m about to Uber back to the airport, which is sure to be busy given that this is the tail end of a holiday weekend. My friend tells me she’s thinking she’ll do a little more exploring before checking out the Denver Botanic Gardens, having dinner with a local acquaintance and finally returning to the east coast on a red eye. I order my usual latte. And my friend, because Denver is Denver and she is smarter than me, drinks more water.
Blucifer is much easier to photograph if you’re heading toward the airport. Christa Terry
One of the absolute highlights of the second edition of Tokyo’s art week was the Alexander Calder show, “Calder: Un effet du Japonais,” now on view through September 6 at Azubudai Hills Art Gallery in collaboration with Pace Gallery. The exhibition celebrates Pace’s new Japanese outpost, which had its soft opening and preview timed to coincide with Tokyo Gendai. The ambitious show marks the first extensive presentation of the artist’s work in the city, following a series of institutional shows in other parts of Japan. “It took us twenty years to do a Calder show in Tokyo,” Calder Foundation president and curator of the exhibition, Alexander S. C. Rower told Observer. We had the pleasure of walking through the exhibition with Rower (whom many might know as Sandy Rower, Calder’s grandson). “This is really a gift to Japan,” he said. “He could have had a big party, but Marc [Glimcher] decided on this multimillion-dollar show instead.”
Despite Calder never actually traveling to the country and never openly claiming any direct connection with Japanese culture, the show sheds new light on how much of his art had absorbed and inventively interpreted an approach to form and space typical of the Japanese aesthetic. As Rower explained, this was probably the result of Calder’s parents collecting many Japanese tools and prints that then surrounded the artist during his youth.
Featuring around 100 works from the Calder Foundation’s collection spanning the 1920s to the 1970s, the exhibition was not conceived as a retrospective but aims instead to explore the relationship Calder’s art had with Japan and how the country’s aesthetic influenced and nourished his endless inventiveness in poetically reimagining sculptural forms. According to Rower, it’s about looking at Calder’s work with fresh eyes. The line, of course, appears as a leading element throughout Alexander Calder’s career, shaping a formal journey into the rhythm of nature and natural circles. As masters of Japanese ink painting would do, Calder was able to suggest form, space, energy and movement with nothing more than a black line.
The exhibition, which is the artist’s first solo show in Tokyo in almost thirty-five years, draws its title from the enigmatic piece positioned right at the entrance of the show, Effect Japonaise, which mirrors the beauty of a tree’s floating leaves moving with the wind and the beauty of a star suspended in the sky, also recalling the dancing movement of the fans during the traditional Kabuki dance, which can be adjusted to evoke the wind, the water, the snow and other natural phenomena.
Calder’s oeuvre is deeply imbued with the Japanese “aesthetics of emptiness,” based on a necessary dialectic relation between emptiness and presence that allows a dynamic space of transformation—a place where processes can still flow and find a balance. His sculptures appear to translate the philosophical and construction concept of “MA,” namely the interchangeable relation that needs to exist between place, space and void. Yet his use of the line on canvas often follows the lesson of Japanese traditional ink paintings, and the haboku technique in particular, where a few very rapid monochrome ink strokes can suggest a landscape not explicitly identified and, more importantly, the air circulating in between the subjects, translating a simultaneous both sensory and spiritual engagement with the scene.
The first epiphany related to these crucial aspects of Calder’s practice comes with the first artworks we encounter in the exhibition: sketches of animals hanging on the first wall, just a few single linear traits quickly drawn on white paper to describe creatures and the dynamics between them. These works remind one of the Cirque Calder, one of his early works. Calder, in the 20s, was working as a toy designer, and in 1926 he made mechanical toys that led to the creation of his Circus, now on permanent view at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. However, the Azubudai Hills Art Gallery show purposely avoids presenting his wire sculptures, focusing instead on what Calder was sharing with the Japanese traditional aesthetic and philosophical approach to the line as space: “drawing in space,” as critics describe the artist’s practice.
On the first wall, we are also invited to examine two large paintings, which are very much not what Calder fans might regard as his most significant. They’re there, Rower explained, because they were the first two works by Calder shown in Japan in 1965 as part of an extensive show of Western art in, of all places, a department store. In one, we see a view of Calder’s studio in 1955.
As we move to the second cluster of works in this survey, a series of early abstract paintings from the ’30s show how Calder was absorbing and elaborating in a very personal way the lessons of the avant-garde and the sensibility of surrealism. The burgeoning surrealist movement naturally influenced Calder, and some of its most prominent voices, including Joan Miró, André Breton and Jean Arp, became his friends. Some of Calder’s abstract paintings show his closeness with Mirò, as they shared an interest in establishing rhythmic and dialectic relations between organic forms and flattened picture planes drawn together with sharp and interlacing lines into new “constellations.”
A significant contribution in translating this formal and narrative rhythm into the space in this extensive show is provided by thoughtful exhibition design conceived of by Japanese architect Stephanie Goto, a longtime Calder Foundation collaborator. Rooted in the proportion of the geometry of a 3:4:5 triangle, the design plays with traditional Japanese materials such as cherry wood and the mysterious blackboard black paper, which create a framework where Calder’s sculptures can differently emerge or be camouflaged to create a new tension between the elements and offer new suggestive allusions to their parallels in nature. The black paper background, in particular, allows for an entirely different experience of Calder’s use of color. The three red spheres suspended in space become the protagonists; there’s the structure, but like a trunk, it serves to elevate and connect with these suspended celestial presences.
In our walkthrough with Rower, we stopped to contemplate a curious story connected with one of the works on view that showcased the inventiveness of the American Modernist sculptor: one of the sculptures is kept together with both permanent rivets and removable screws, which let the sculpture to come apart and be reassembled. The piece is from 1945, right after the war, and Rower explained that at the time, due to the limited resources, Calder was repurposing everything he could find in the studio. Duchamp once visited him and, fascinated by the recent evolution of Calder’s work, now all made from scraps, he wanted to organize a show in Paris, suggesting they could send the sculptures by airmail. “Calder made demountable sculptures that could fit in a small package that could be in Paris the next day, where the work would be reassembled,” said Rower. “As with a teleport, you could collapse a work of art down and then send it, and then it reappears the same as what it was, which has something extremely pioneering both on a technical and conceptual level at the time.”
As we proceeded through the exhibition, we encountered the sculptures depicted in the two paintings at the entrance. One of those, in particular, seemed quite explicative of the idea of “drawing in space.” It stands in the extreme synthesis of its thin, linear sculptural body thanks to the specific inclination and angle that allows it to stand, counterbalancing the busy top part. Above, there is a strange mobile with a more symbolic appearance floating in space, reminding us of the iconography of the dragon in some ancient Asian mythology. Rower explained that this is the only piece that didn’t come directly from the Calder Foundation. In the corner, a towering black stabile is a meditation on the shape of the triangle; between compression, expansion and elevation, it eventually recalls a Pagoda, as its title suggests.
To the other side, the exhibition’s second section presents much more of what one expects to see in a show of Calder’s work, with some beautiful examples of his stabiles and gouaches carefully selected for their resonances with Japanese aesthetics and sensibility. And in between, Rower opted to include a video by John Cage filming a selection of Calder’s sculptures from different perspectives with an accompanying score of dedicated music that enhances the rhythmicity in their perception. It’s almost hypnotic and does a fine job of translating on video the actual experience of Calder’s sculptures, as they dance in a sort of ritual, moving organically like leaves on a tree.
This video and certain other works in the exhibition particularly exemplify how Calder’s idea of sculpture is all about staging constellations of forms in space, often with the ambition to replicate broader cosmic orders and processes. As in the traditional Japanese ink paintings, Calder uses empty space as the climax of action: in the dialectic between complete and void, the free space allows the void to circulate between subjects, distinguishing them, amplifying and enhancing their action bringing to fruition the height of the representation/presentation. Viewers are drawn into these endless dynamics between the form and the space, in a similar dialectic tension that characterizes all the interrelational exchanges with the outside world. Calder’s sculptures invite us to experience art from multiple perspectives, drawing visual lines in the tridimensional space—something that anticipated the research of Minimalist artists just a few years later.
A group of paintings and gouaches toward the end of “Calder: Un effet du Japonais” highlights how his use of circular lines and forms resonates with “ensō,” another key concept in traditional Japanese calligraphy and ink painting. As one of the most potent symbols of Zen 禅, the circular shape becomes synonymous with the cosmic circle enclosing emptiness. It is a symbol of the absolute, of the totality of phenomena, and at the same time, of the extreme intuition and understanding of both the formal and philosophical role of emptiness, which the art of Calder attempts to reach.
Ironically, the show’s closing piece is a metal maquette for an outdoor sculpture that recalls in its shape and movement the Great Wave by Hokusai, playing with what is arguably one of the most iconic paintings of Japanese art known by the international public, while still moving beyond such art historical stereotypes. Ultimately, Rower’s unique Calder exhibition effectively reveals unexpected and largely unexplored connections between the art of the Modern American master and Japan, demonstrating how modern art is shaped by cultural exchanges between artists operating at the historical intersection of local/nationalist resistance and the unstoppable forces of globalization.
“Calder: Un effet du japonais” is on view through Friday, September 6, 2024 at Azubudai Hills Art Gallery in Tokyo.
On Thursday, March 28, from 4-5 p.m., Teens are invited to hang out with other teens who identify as LGBTQIA+ at the Peabody Institute Library, 82 Main St., Peabody. Like minded friends are also welcome to listen to music and enjoy snacks! We’ll provide different crafts and activities each month, and discuss how to create a more safe and inclusive environment. This event is open for all Teens, grades 6 to 12. This event is free, but registration is required at: https://peabodylibrary.assabetinteractive.com/calendar/lgbteen-hangout/ For more information, please call the Main Library at 978-531-0100, click the link below, or email AThomas@NobleNet.org.
Pop Up Art School: Plant Buddies
Peabody Institute Library South Branch, 78 Lynn St, Peabody, invites teens to create a clay plant buddy with free Pop Up Art School on Thursday, March 28, from 6-7:30 p.m.. A Plant Buddy is sure to add a touch of whimsy to any space. Learn a range of techniques in this hands-on art program to shape air dry clay to bring to life an adorable animal figurine that carries a miniature terra-cotta pot. Ages 16 and up welcome. Space is limited and registration is required at: peabodylibrary.org/calendar
Inside the Oscars
Peabody Institute Library, Danvers, invites you to get an insider’s insight on this years Oscars. Join Danvers-born film critic and author Charles Bramesco on Zoom for the inside scoop on this year at the movies. A film and TV critic, Bramesco writes for The Guardian, The New York Times, GQ, Forbes and many others. If you love the movies (and who doesn’t?) you’ll love this chance to learn how the nominations/selections are made, who should/will win, great films that have been overlooked. With a Q&A for all your burning question. Registration is required for your Zoom link at: https://danverslibrary.assabetinteractive.com/calendar/adult-program-pending-84/
Black History Month Community Read
The Salem Athenaeum, in conjunction with Grace Church, (Salem)’s Anti-Racism Committee, will hold a community discussion of Jon Meacham’s 2020 Pulitzer Prize winning non-fiction book about Civil Rights hero John Lewis entitled ‘His Truth Is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope.’ The discussion will take place at the Athenaeum, 337 Essex Street, Salem on Thursday, Feb. 29 from 7 to 8 p.m. For more information, please contact Maureen Bingham, chair of the Grace Church Anti-Racism Committee at mcbing@comcast.net.
On the eastern end of Long Island, New York, lies a trove of art venues and a rich cultural scene to explore at leisure. You can find works in lush gardens and meadows, on manicured lawns, around ponds with waterlilies, by marshy creeks, and in historic Hamptons buildings.
The list of galleries and arts centers has grown longer just in the last few years.
The area, a few hours east of New York City, has drawn artists since the 19th century. It thrives on summer tourism, so the art season kicks off in spring and peaks in late autumn. Indoor and outdoor exhibits change regularly, and some venues are open year-round.
Many also include the performing arts, as well as educational programs.
This 16-acre sculpture garden, museum and nature reserve was founded by the late textile designer and collector Jack Lenor Larsen. His house, inspired by a shrine in Japan and designed by Charles Fourberg, sits near the edge of a waterlily pond. Prominently displayed is Dale Chihuly’s “Cobalt Reeds,” of blue blown glass. At the entrance to a garden sanctuary, you can ring Toshiko Takaezu’s “The Gateway Bell,” of bronze and wood. The resonant sound creates a mindful state. Other works among the nearly 60 on display include Daniel Arsham’s “Bronze Eroded Venus de Milo”; Buckminster Fuller’s “Fly’s Eye Dome,” in fiberglass; Marko Remec’s “Would That I Wish For (Tall Totem),” in mixed media; Jun Kaneko’s glazed ceramic “Dango”; Ai Weiwei’s bronze “Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads”; and Sol Lewitt’s minimalist “Irregular Progression High #7.”
A National Historic Landmark in The Springs, a hamlet in East Hampton, the shingled house overlooking a salt marsh was home to Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock and his wife, artist Lee Krasner. Pollock’s jazz record collection and the artists’ library are intact. Visitors can reserve tickets for a docent-led tour. In the studio, you can walk, in protective slippers, on the paint-splattered floor that preserves Pollock’s footprints and evidence of his most famous poured paintings, created between 1946-52, such as “Autumn Rhythm,” “Blue Poles” and “Convergence.” Preserved and developed by the Stony Brook Foundation, this is immersive, artistic experience.
A Palladian-style building houses the collection of Hungarian-born handbag designer Judith Leiber. On display are elegant, couture handbags made with Swarovski crystals and semi-precious stones, and other accessories, as well as paintings by Leiber’s husband, Gerson Leiber, a modernist artist. An adjoining sculpture garden hosts exhibitions, currently featuring East End artists.
An interdisciplinary campus with studios for the arts and humanities, open year-round. It sits on 10 acres of Shinnecock ancestral territory with manicured lawns and gardens in Water Mill, New York. The center was founded in 1992 by theater director and visual artist Robert Wilson, and includes a curated art collection, artist residencies and educational programs. Works currently on view include Adam Parker Smith’s “Standing on the Moon,” with sarcophagi in the woods, and a Christopher Knowles exhibition, “Stand.”
The Peter Marino Collection includes contemporary and modern art and furniture; Old Master paintings and drawings; antiquities; Renaissance and Baroque bronzes; rare books and more. It opened to the public in Southampton in 2021. Marino, an architect, collected art for over 40 years. There are more than 150 works on display, including, recently, 10 by German artist Anselm Kiefer. Marino purchased the former Rogers Memorial Library, restoring its historical façade and redesigning the interior to showcase his collection. A guided tour is recommended.
The global auction house expanded its business in 2020 to move closer to its New York-based clientele after many wealthy people left New York City because of COVID. The gallery occupies the historic Southampton Town Hall. Works on view include furniture, jewelry, prints and photography, and are available for purchase. Special events and rotating exhibits support the work of local artists. On Sept. 9, the day after Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II died, the first art seen from the street here was Andy Warhol ’s “Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, from Reigning Queens (Royal Edition),” a screenprint finished with diamond dust.
Founded in 1898, this is the oldest cultural institution on the East End of Long Island. It’s more than 3,000 works range from early 19th century landscape paintings through American Impressionism and on into the present day. The museum sits on 14 acres of meadows; outdoor installations include tall sculptures by Roy Lichtenstein and Isa Genzken. Upcoming exhibits: “Mel Kendrick: Seeing Things in Things” opens Nov. 6, on view through Feb. 19, 2023, and “Frida Kahlo” opens Nov. 20, on view through March 2023.
Admission is free to this center, nestled among eateries, shops and galleries. A multimedia show, “A Celebration of Trees,” is open through Dec. 18. A recent show, “Figures Transformed,” included work inspired by the figure, and can still be seen on a 3-D tour in a Virtual Gallery presentation.
This arts center, in a former 19th century Methodist Church, was co-founded by artists Eric Fischl and April Gornik in Sag Harbor and opened in 2021. It’s a light-filled, flexible exhibition space, with artist residencies and a garden. Windows feature Fischl’s portraits of local architects, artists, writers, inventors and other creatives. Recently on display were works by Louise Bourgeois, Hank Willis Thomas, Laurie Lambrecht, Kiki Smith, and others, now available for viewing on the website. “Hand Made: Guitars, According to G.E. Smith and the American Artists’ Hand Archive,” an exhibit with 16 rare, classic guitars and a collection of bronze-cast sculptures of visual artists’ hands, is on display through Dec. 22.
A new indoor-outdoor exhibition space and gallery that sits on an active horse farm and showcases contemporary art. Horses, geese and other wildlife might be present while you view the art in a picturesque environment. The current “Frank Stella: Sculpture” show, which ends Nov. 1, comprises five monumental works made from 1993 to the present.
ArtVersion Creative Agency celebrates another renowned win in the 17th annual w3 Awards
Press Release –
Oct 14, 2022 06:00 CDT
CHICAGO, October 14, 2022 (Newswire.com)
– This year alone, the Chicago-based digital design agency was honored with three awards total, two of which commended their collaboration with the Virginia A. Groot Foundation. The team won one gold award for website design in the Art category and a silver award in the Cultural Institution category.
The Virginia A. Groot Foundation is a non-profit organization that provides annual grants to three-dimensional artists around the world. The Groot team engaged ArtVersion for a complete website refresh for a dynamic and highly interactive experience that shared their organization’s legacy and commemorated artists’ work.
“These awards by w3 are a great achievement for us collectively, and we are so proud to have worked with such an impactful organization like the Virginia A. Groot Foundation,” says Goran Paun, Principle and Creative Director of ArtVersion. “Their efforts have helped so many artists around the world and the opportunity to refresh and strengthen their online presence is something we’re honored to have created together.”
The w3 Awards celebrates interactive agencies and creators globally and the digital excellence their websites, apps, podcasts, and more exert. Endorsed and judged by the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts, the w3 Awards are a prestigious honor for innovators, and the two awards received are a testament to the experiences ArtVersion continues to design.
About ArtVersion
ArtVersion is a design consultancy from Chicago with clients around the world. Serving brands since 1999, the ArtVersion team consists of visual designers, branding strategists, and developers. Most known for their pioneering work in user experience design, ArtVersion has been a trusted partner for a number of non-profit organizations, Fortune 500 companies, and notable startups.
About w3 Awards
The w3 Awards celebrate digital excellence by honoring outstanding websites, marketing, video, mobile sites, apps, social and podcasts created by some of the best interactive agencies, designers, and creators worldwide. The w3 award nominees are carefully judged by a panel of professional experts in the Academy of Interactive and Visual Arts.
BATTLE GROUND, Wash., August 14, 2018 (Newswire.com)
– The Gatlinburg SkyLift, which initially opened in the 1950s, is one of the oldest continuously operated attractions in the Smoky Mountains. The popular attraction is located directly across the street from Ripley’s Believe It or Not in downtown Gatlinburg. This vintage chairlift transports visitors to the top of Crocket Mountain for an amazing panoramic view of the National Park and quaint town of Gatlinburg below. It is the number one scenic overlook in Gatlinburg.
Mark Russo, CEO of Treasure Investments Corporation (TIC), was contacted by one of the principles of Boyne, USA, owner of the SkyLift Resorts, and inquired about TIC’s ability to create the monument. “I received an email inquiry and quickly returned the call explaining that I have been involved with the creation of literally hundreds of monument projects, from 60’ bronze eagles to larger than life whales, animals, religious and historical themes and made installations for parks, zoos, casinos, hotels and incredible sites and locations around the world. After sending a few photos showing the world-class quality of our work, the quick time it takes us to complete a project, and our collaborative process we landed the contract. They sent over a great concept in a drawing, we made it much better and to their liking and now we are creating exactly what the customer wants,” says Russo.
We are creating exactly what the customer wants.
Mark Russo, CEO, Treasure Investments Corp
TIC starts with input from a client about subject, design, size, and medium. Once TIC thoroughly understands what the customer is looking for, a series of renderings are created and modified until it is precisely what is desired. Once agreed upon, a small scale version is created and cast in usually bronze, but other mediums can be requested including resin or precious metals. With the small image complete and accepted, TIC will then go to production on the heroic piece.
The larger than life-size bronze bears will be complete in about eight weeks and will be installed in the new SkyLift patio area in a recently renovated part of the resort.
TIC has a diverse business platform, creating and providing fine art in original sculptures from small desktop images and collectibles to larger than life heroic monuments. The company’s master mold collection contains hundreds of original molds from world-famous artists in the United States and Europe. For more information, visit Fineart1.com.
Media Contact:
Mark Russo Phone: 360.954.5453 Email: mark@fineart1.com
