Profile of Brad Smith
Photographer Brad Austin Smith’s body of work contains a lot of bodies, including his own. One of his more iconic black-and-white images is of his unclothed body classically posed – reminiscent of a Michelangelo marble sculpture. He was in a bathtub that was for sale inside what now is the grand Cincinnatian Hotel, but then […]
Nature as the Soul’s Mirror
Last month, aeqai posted both a profile of area artist Kay Hurley, and a review of her new work (and that of sculptor Margot Gotoff). Interest in Hurley’s work is abundant, so aeqai is reprinting, with permission, a feature that aeqai editor Daniel Brown wrote for The Artist’s Magazine about Hurley in 2008 for our […]
Marlene Steele –Portrait and Landscape Artist in the West End
On Oliver Street, a road without a sign in the West End, lies a four-story brick building, which is the studio and home of divorced artist Marlene Steele, who has lived there since 1987. She often paints her neighborhood, which is inner city, urban and industrial. Steele chooses urbanscapes and people at work as her […]
The Huguenots
When we last left off, the fashion community was migrating eastward witnessing designers’ Spring 2016 collections. The month started in New York and then moved onward to London, Milan, and Paris. As is par for the course, the most intriguing fashion came from the City of Lights with Lanvin, Chanel, and Valentino among […]
Letter From Atlanta
An Atlanta visitor might easily miss Emory University’s Michael C. Carlos Museum, but as a frequent traveler there I’ve learned to stop by. Temporary shows are interesting and the permanent collection itself is fine. The building, designed by the late Michael Graves relatively early in his career, gives thoughtful attention to what it houses and […]
Randy Hage’s Lost but not Forgotten Storefronts
Los Angeles-based artist Randy Hage has been photographing New York City storefronts for nearly 20 years. Since the late 1990s, he’s amassed more than 700 photos from which he’s sourced the subject matter for his amazingly detailed photorealistic sculptures that depict mom & pop establishments, each of which retains an iconic symbolism representative of generations […]
"Texas Design Now” at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, through November 29
Despite featuring the work of 35 Texas designers, nothing feels jumbled about “Texas Design Now.” Impressively curated, these works satisfy on a thoroughly contemporary plane, elevating the pop appeal of the flashy images of our sound-bite assembly-line society. In truth—and I mean this as a compliment—entering the exhibition is like entering a lost dimension of […]
Lisaann Cohn, Nostalgia and Desire, Dendroica Gallery, October 8 – November 8, 2015
Lisaann Cohn’s recent small-format drawings in black and white inspire frequent comparisons to the work of illustrator Edward Gorey. However, at closer glance, her richly symbolic work shares a greater kinship with that of the Surrealists and other influences, such as Renaissance engraver Albrecht Dürer. The modest size of Cohn’s artworks (the largest pieces in […]
Letter from Chicago: “Charles Ray: Sculpture, 1997–2014"
Midwest-born, Los Angeles–based sculptor Charles Ray’s mid-career retrospective, “Charles Ray: Sculpture, 1997–2014,” is a significant and revelatory exhibition which opened at the Art Institute of Chicago May 15, 2015 and concluded on October 4. The exhibition was co-organized by the Art Institute, its only North American venue, and the Kunstmuseum, Basel. Six of Ray’s sculptures—including […]
Hard-Edged: Geometrical Abstraction and Beyond: An Important Show Featuring Works by Artists of African Descent Who Look to Abstraction as a Vehicle for Expression
It’s difficult to believe that our country’s canonized definition of art history continues to lack a comprehensive representation of the various contributions that African American artists have made to abstract painting. Yet, to this day, most anthologized collections claiming to comprise complete collections of contemporary art history still fail to feature more than a handful […]