The taste of summer is…

fresh
I’ve been giving life to those whispery notes/sketches I often add to my Eco Ciak. I love that little recycled paper sketchbook. It’s always a fun process to go back to the notes/sketches and try to understand the where/what/how/why.

warm
To me there is nothing like a simple and open conversation about interests, ideas and life as artists. I had the opportunity to moderate the virtual panel Resource: Where Abstract Art is (From) with a great group of artists: Glen Cunningham, Mark Dagley, Laura Fayer, Molly Herman, Lori Kirkbride, Ben LaRocco and Rachael Wren. All artists were part of Source, an exhibition curated by Susan Ross and Melissa Staiger. Both, exhibition and virtual panel, were presented and sponsored by PowerHouse Projects. Source was on view at The Halls at Bowling Green from April 22nd through May 28th. Check out the virtual panel and take a look at their websites. It’s all good!

sweet
I finally signed up my family to a CSA. The fruit begins to arrive next week. I’m excited and so looking forward to it…

The upcoming weeks and months look exciting and enriching as well. This fall, I’ll be taking a course on advocacy for children at Citizens Committee for Children of New York. This is such a great organization and resource in the city.

More soon and I wish you all a great rest of the summer.

My first experiment with triangle pose was a couple of years ago. I created an installation with colored rubber bands entitled, Space Between. I didn’t set many rules while installing, I just knew I wanted to create a connection between triangles and colors. I began the installation — on what first felt as a huge wall space — slowly and carefully making triangles. But as I continued making triangles, the installation felt as a yoga practice — it began to flow naturally.

These days I continue to explore triangle pose — both — on my mat and in my home/studio. I’ll be posting images of this new set of triangles soon. I’m excited.

Oh, and how much I love google… While researching triangle pose, I found these great articles: Angle of Repose by Julie Gudmestad and Triangle Pose by Teri Leigh.

Enjoy!

Image:
Rossana Martinez
Space Between, 2007
Rubber bands

I’m happy to write that the site-specific installation, Crash into Me will be on view this summer at el Museo de Arte de Caguas (MUAC), Puerto Rico.

There is lots to see in Caguas. The city is called the heart of Puerto Rico. The community is so friendly — including my amazing sisters who live there. It’s truly an honor.

I thank artist and curator Elsa Melendez for inviting me to participate in the exhibition. And as always, it’s a pleasure to be in the company of great artists.

Gracias Elsa!

Image:
Rossana Martinez
Crash into Me, 2007-2010
Site-specific installation
Fluorescent orange and hot pink ribbons

Part of group exhibition, No fue un mal entendido, on view at MUAC from June 4-September 30, 2010.

Artists: Claudio Chea, Ricardo Hernández, Rossana Martínez, Néstor Millán, Omar Obdulio Peña, Brian Rivera, Miguel Angel Torres, Cristina Tufiño, Rafael Vargas Bernard y el grupo de teatro, Papel Machete.

Photo contest submission by Jennifer Day
From We Love Birds, a site for bird-lovers from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

Dorothea Tanning
Costume Design for Bayou, 1951
Graphite and gouache on green paper
12 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches
Collection of the artist

On view Dorothea Tanning: Early Designs for the Stage at the Drawing Center, April 23 – July 23, 2010.

I’m impressed and happy to know there are abstract paintings currently on view at the White House. But I admit I would have added other media, more works by women artists, and works by Latin and Asian American artists — there are none!?

A new discovery for me was the artist Alma Thomas. Holland Cotter writes:

“If the offer were made, which artist from the White House list would I choose for my New York City apartment? I knew the answer: Alma W. Thomas.”

I agree. I absolutely loved her work and story. She began to paint when she retired from teaching at 69. At 80, she had a one-person exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. An extremely important exhibition because it was the first one-person exhibition by a black woman at the Whitney.

My favorites: Thomas used her kitchen as a studio. And for her, color was life, and life was art. Ahh, so fresh!

Image:

Alma Thomas (1891–1978)

Watusi (Hard Edge), 1963

Acrylic on canvas, 47 5/8 x 44 1/4 inches

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

The collection has four tiny books perfect for little hands: Alligators All Around (an alphabet book), Chicken Soup with Rice (book of months), One Was Johnny (a counting book), and Pierre (a cautionary tale). The simplicity of the stories and illustrations make them enjoyable for both kids and adults alike.

A couple of weekends ago, we went to an art opening in Staten Island. It was rainy and cold — June has been very wet in New York. As we were traveling back home in the S.I. ferry, I couldn’t stop thinking about Chicken Soup with Rice. When we got home, I went straight to the kitchen and cooked a warm and delicious chicken soup with rice…still laughing!

I love books and these days I’m enjoying reading with Mateo. I take him to our local bookstore where I found another great book called Open House for Butterflies by Ruth Krauss. The book, also illustrated by Maurice Sendak has simple thoughts and illustrations like the books in the Nutshell Library. Some of my favorite thoughts are:

Look! I’m running away with my imagination.

There should be a parade when a baby is born.

Suppose old people grew down as young people grew up.

Easter eggs are all different outside but they’re alike inside.

A baby makes the mother and father — otherwise they’re just plain people.

Yesterday shows another day is here.

Everybody should be quiet near a little stream and listen.

A baby dances with its feet in the air.

I think a race looks prettier when everybody comes in even.

So always take some time to look, enjoy and imagine!

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand”. — Albert Einstein

I want to dedicate my art practice as well and wonder if there are other artists interested in dedicating their creativity to something larger than having exhibitions or selling work?

As artist Lygia Clark wrote to Mondrian: “If I exhibit it [sic] is to transmit to someone else this “moment” stopped within cosmological dynamics which the artist captures…Don’t you think that the work of art is the product of two polarities which are the dynamics of human life?”

Photo:

Rossana Martinez

Magical Movement, 2009

Colored pencil on journal

“…Recessions are hard on people, but they are not hard on art. The forties, seventies, and the nineties, when money was scarce, were great periods, when the art world retracted but it was also reborn. New generations took the stage; new communities spawned energy; things opened up; deadwood washed away. With luck, New Museum curator Laura Hoptman’s wish will come true: “Art will flower and triumph not as a hobby, an investment, or a career, but as what it is and was—a life.”

To read the complete article, go to Frieze After the Freeze

At London’s big art fair, signs of financial trouble abound. But maybe that’s okay.

By Jerry Saltz

Thank you all so much for your nice emails and updates. I’m happy to learn some of you began to run (awesome!), that bambinos will fill your homes this year (double awesome!), and news about your projects and exhibitions. Congratulations! What a great way to start the new year.

One of my new year’s resolutions is to immerse myself in all things healthy and creative. Here are my first two creative curiosities. Enjoy!

New Perspectives in Latin American Art, 1930–2006: Selections from a Decade of Acquisitions.
On view at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) thru February 25, 2008.

This exhibition is a must-see. The artists on view are some of my favorites, like Felix González-Torres, Ana Mendieta, Gabriel Orozco, Hélio Oiticica, Lygia Clark, Lygia Pape, Gego, and Mira Schendel. The works that spoke to me most were Mira Schendel’s works on paper. The works – monotypes on rice paper – felt free and powerful. Schendel used modest traces of lines and words to investigate the visualization of language. My favorite work was a delicate circle with the words Si al mundo (yes to the world) inside.

I’m also currently reading the book Like the Flowing River by the Brazilian author Paulo Coehlo. I found The Story of the Pencil beautiful, poetic, and just brilliant. Perfect for artists.

The Story of the Pencil

A boy was watching his grandmother write a letter. At one point, he asked: are you writing a story about what we’ve done? Is it a story about me? His grandmother stopped writing her letter and said to her grandson: I am writing about you, actually, but more important than the words is the pencil I’m using. I hope you will be like this pencil when you grow up.

Intrigued, the boy looked at the pencil. It didn’t seem very special.

But it’s just like any other pencil I’ve ever seen!

That depends on how you look at things. The pencil has five qualities which, if you manage to hang on to them, will make you a person who is always at peace with the world.

First quality: You are capable of great things, but you must never forget that there is a hand guiding your steps.

Second quality: Now and then, I have to stop writing and use a sharpener. That makes the pencil suffer a little, but afterwards, it’s much sharper. So you, too, must learn to bear certain pains and sorrows, because they will make you a better person.

Third quality: The pencil always allows us to use an eraser to rub out any mistakes. This means that correcting something we did is not necessarily a bad thing; it helps to keep us on the road to justice.

Fourth quality: What really matters in a pencil is not its wooden exterior, but the graphite inside. So always pay attention to what is happening inside you.

Fifth quality: The pencil always leaves a mark. In just the same way, you should know that everything you do in life will leave a mark, so try to be conscious of that in your every action.