artHound

studio update

September 29, 2012 in miscellany | No comments

Joan Colbert Studios at Summit Artspace has been open for a couple months . . . so far, so good! The walls are filled with relief prints and monotypes and the arthounds wheedled their way onto the postcard and signage.

Regular gallery hours are Friday and Saturday, 12:30 – 4:30 p.m., with additional hours during special events – like next Saturday’s Downtown Artwalk when the studio will be open until 9 p.m.

Cari Miller, artist and owner of Sunthing Special at Summit Artspace, took the following photo:

photo by Cari Miller

Akron Art Prize Finals

September 29, 2012 in artists, summit artspace | No comments

The first ever Akron Art Prize is now down to the top ~~ten~~ eleven! All of the finalists are now installed on the third floor of Summit Artspace, following a week of dismantling and rearranging artwork. The opening of the final round added to the Friday night festivities – around 360 people attended the gallery receptions.

Needless to say, voting for just one piece is going to be very, very difficult.

Mr. Midnight

Mr. Midnight, by Joseph Blue Sky, pondering the competition.

Artists of Rubber City Members Show

September 29, 2012 in artists of rubber city, hanging around town, summit artspace | No comments

An exhibit of work by members of Artists of Rubber City opened Friday, September 28, in the BOX gallery on the third floor of Summit Artspace. As expected from such an eclectic group, there is an incredible range of media and styles – artwork can be viewed in the album of exhibit photos on Facebook.

Artists of Rubber City Members Show
September 28 – November 4, 2012
the BOX gallery
Summit Artspace – 3rd floor
140 East Market Street
Akron, Ohio

37 days at Summit Artspace

September 29, 2012 in artists, hanging around town, summit artspace | No comments

. . . as of this writing it’s 35 days and counting . . .

37 Days
Ephemeral Sculpture
curated by Don Parsisson

September 28 – November 4, 2012
Summit Artspace

Fifteen artists are participating in the ephemeral sculpture show, best described by Don Parsisson: “Ephemeral sculpture is intended to have a short life span; in this case the duration of this exhibition. The pieces in this show are temporary in nature, some being created just for this gallery space, others self-destructing over time, and still others never to be assembled or exhibited again in exactly the same way. Check it out, day after day. . . ”

Items on the ingredients list include: feathers, paving bricks, brick gravel, yards of fine fabrics, tree roots, wood, newspapers (whole and cut), insects, a variety of electronic media, tea, muck, a tree and gelatin – lots and lots of gelatin.

photo by Diane Chambers

Don with the first day of his installation, 24-Hour News Cycle.

Akron Art Prize

September 17, 2012 in hanging around town, summit artspace | No comments

Akron Art Prize entries on the third floor of Summit Artspace

On September 1st the Akron Art Prize made its debut in downtown Akron. Modeled after similar events in other cities, notably Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Seattle, Washington, the Art Prize competition consists of 138 pieces displayed in five venues. The public is invited to vote for their favorites and determine the winners of cash prizes funded by The Margaret Clark Morgan Foundation. The Downtown Akron Partnership is presenting this event as part of the new Downtown Art Works Series.

Nearly half of the artwork is at Summit Artspace. Other sites include Millworks Gallery, Red Light Galleries, We Gallery and outside the Akron Art Museum. The final weekend of first round voting is coming up – all of the galleries will be open Friday and Saturday, 5 – 9 p.m. Additional information is available at the Downtown Akron Partnership site.

more vinyl

September 16, 2012 in artwork, miscellany, on page or screen | No comments

Years ago, while working on the Pictures at an Exhibition print series, the background music in the studio was often . . . Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Moussorgsky. There were many different versions to choose from including orchestral, piano and brass. The piece varied as different conductors added their personal style and interpretation to the music. Leopold Stokowski actually eliminated two of the pictures, Tuileries and The Market Place at Limoges, feeling that they were more French than Russian. Quite a few CDs of Pictures found their way onto my shelves.

Since then several vinyl versions have also joined the collection, enjoyed mainly for the album art:

1961 album with cover art by Josef Albers

1967 album, side one – Vladimir Ashkenazy, side two – Zubin Mehta

1971 Emerson, Lake and Palmer
plenty of info on Wikipedia here

and, saving the best for last:

1972 Vladimir Horowitz, piano version and Toscanini conducting Ravel’s orchestration of “Moussorgsky’s masterpiece that inspired Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s hit!”
It’s hard to decide which is most amusing, the groovy cover art or the album notes headlined by:
Keith Emerson
Modest Moussorgsky
Carl Palmer
Maurice Ravel
Greg Lake
Victor Hartmann. . .
It’s just a guess, but this is probably the only time you’ll ever read that combination.

More information on the print series, Pictures at an Exhibition, is available on my website.

the other arthound

September 16, 2012 in miscellany, on page or screen | No comments

There are actually two arthounds and Thurber has been sulking since he found out Dylan made the first post of artHound. Again.

Okay, not really – Thurber only pouts if he’s missing out on something a bit more tangible, like food or a walk or a ride in the car. Most of the time he’s as exuberant as the hounds created by his namesake, James Thurber. Born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1894, James Thurber, a prolific writer and illustrator, created stories and line drawings that could be found in the pages of the New Yorker and within the many books he wrote and illustrated.

Thurber’s work was adapted for other media, too. A Thurber Carnival opened at the ANTA Theatre in New York in 1960. This original cast recording came from Square Records, a local record shop. (Square Records’ specialty is new music from independent artists and labels, but their vinyl inventory covers a wide range of genres.) The album opens to a foldout of Thurber’s quirky drawings, including The Last Flower, A Parable in Pictures, a cautionary tale from his 1939 book, Alarms and Diversions.

The Postcard Show

September 7, 2012 in artwork, hanging around town, summit artspace | No comments

The Postcard Show has been a fun addition to the gallery – and at $10 each almost anyone can afford a small piece of original art!

Crows and trees were rainbow-rolled for the block print front of my postcard. A small envelope with the USPS crow stamp image was tied to the reverse side; a surprise awaits within the envelope: tucked inside is yet another blackbird mini-print.

The Postcard Show continues through September 15 at Summit Artspace.

summer shows at Summit Artspace

September 6, 2012 in artists, artists of rubber city, hanging around town, summit artspace | No comments

On a stifling hot weekend in late July artists took to the sidewalks, plazas and parks of downtown Akron to create works for the Streetscapes: Akron in Plein Air 2012 exhibit. Organized by guest curator Brian Shellito, the exhibit opened on August 10 and will remain in the gallery through Saturday, September 15, 2012. At the same time the tenth anniversary of Summit Artspace is being celebrated with The Postcard Show. Over sixty small artworks (4 x 6 inches) were created and generously donated by artists whose work has appeared at Summit Artspace during its first decade. Each postcard is available for sale for $10 with proceeds to benefit the gallery.

The BOX gallery, a project of Artists of Rubber City, features We the People: 2042, a sound installation by Don Parsisson and Martin Nielsen along with Nothing by Mouth, work by Emily Meister, in the ‘little box.’

All of the exhibits were recently reviewed by Beacon Journal art critic, Dottie Shinn, who wrote, “All of these are handsome shows, meticulously designed, installed and lighted. They demonstrate not only our American resourcefulness and spirit, but also that no matter the size of the venue or space, we can still create big ideas.”
The full review is available online here.

excuses, excuses

September 5, 2012 in miscellany | No comments

The error notices and undeliverable email were not my fault. And, no, the dogs did not commandeer the blog, nor did the cat decide to tweak the website programming.

In what should have been a theatrical moment the servers disappeared, the website, webmail and blog went down and poof! the webhosting company vanished into thin air! Following weeks of dealing with the good (fully backed up website files), the bad (corrupted, unusable blog database backup) and the ugly (a failing, scene-stealing laptop that attempted to add tension to the plot) the odds of an upbeat ending have improved:
– joancolbert.com is back online
– the arthound has embarked on a new beginning (oh, no, who wrote that?!) and
– the laptop has decided to cooperate now that there’s a new notebook vying for affection.

The artHound looks unchanged, but it’s really a new version of wordpress dressed the same as its predecessor. It’s also missing five years of posts, but sometimes you just have to tell yourself to get over it. C’est la vie!

Naming names: according to WebHostingTalk, Nexpoint Technologies was purchased by XibiGroup, after which all basic functions and communications ceased, effectively negating any memory of the preceding eight years of trouble free service. Techs at Hostgator, the new hosting company, actually answer their phones – really!