Michael Bell-Smith, Self Portrait NYC, 2006
Video Loop 2:00 min

Art Fag City has compiled a list of what they think are the best and worst exhibitions and talks of the year.  ”…The list obviously can only include those exhibitions we’ve seen, so if you are wondering why, for example, the Goya show at the Frick, Amy Sillman at Sikemma Jenkins or “Frederic Church, Winslow Homer, and Thomas Moran,
Tourism and the American Landscape”, Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum have been slighted, please bear in mind the inherent fallibility of a list put together by one person. You can only see so many shows, and sometimes you have to miss exhibitions you know you shouldn’t.

Check out the full list at: http://www.artfagcity.blogspot.com/

http://www.woostercollective.com/2006/
12/mecanismos_postit_jesus_christ_in_chile.html

This Post-It Sacred Heart Jesus Christ was done on a wall of the Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo in the Universidad de Chile.

Artist: mecanismo

From Michael’s “Optical Illusions & Visual Phenomena“

What to observe. Above, the tiles are moving left and right in alternating rows. In the ‘half-shifted condition’, the ‘mortar lines’ (the horizontal lines between the tiles) appear to slope alternately upward and downward. This gives the impression that the tiles are wedge-shaped. As seen when the tiles align or make up a chequerboard, the lines are actually parallel, and all tiles are perfectly square and of the same size. So during the movement, the illusion “comes and goes”.

From: http://howtobuyart.blogspot.com/

No, it’s not the title of a Tom Wolfe piece circa 1975. It’s the new travelling exhibit from the Museum of Art and Design.

If you still think knitting is for grannies and retro grrlz, check out the ways artists are now using knitting to make provocative, conceptual works. The MAD exhibit aims to show us that our distinctions between high art and lowly crafts are arbitrary, based on the materials used rather than on the power of the piece.

As regular blog readers know, this a subject dear to my heart. When chauvenist blowhards ask rhetorically where all the great women artists of the past are, I always invite them to see the textile halls at the Victoria and Albert. For centuries, women used fiber and fabric — the only materials available to them — to create expressive art. Women were grappling with abstraction centuries before the Cedar Tavern had a liquor license.

The Radical Lace and Subversive Knitting travelling exhibit will be available starting in July. For booking information, contact the museum.

Photo: Althea Merback’s art, Museum of Art and Design

http://www.microcompacthome.com/company/?con=do1

The micro compact home [m-ch] is a lightweight compact dwelling for one or two people. Its compact dimensions of 2.6m cube adapt it to a variety of sites and circumstances, and its functioning spaces of sleeping, working / dining, cooking and hygiene make it suitable for everyday use.

Adam Neate, self-portrait

Q: When I presented Marc Schiller of the Wooster Collective with your painting he immediately knew that it was your work. After visiting your Web site it became clear you’re a prolific and talented artist. What motivates you to create art and, even more intriguing, give it away by placing it on the street for people like me lucky enough to happen by?

Adam: I paint purely for the love and enjoyment I get from the feeling of creating something, be it a doodle on a piece of cardboard or a 6ft wall. After the process of creating something I lose interest in the final end product. I no longer want to see it. The egotist thrives on completing an acceptable painting. He will stand for hours looking at his own achievment. The egotist will call himself an “artist”… I just paint on stuff. The walls of my home are bare. For me art is not for hanging, but more for experiencing oneself. (more…)