In this day and age, what does an artist really need to know about copyright? What exactly can legally and ethically be claimed as one’s copyright—and as copyright infringement? And how to make sense of news reports in December 2008 of a demand sent to a 16-year-old collage artist in London for appropriating a photo
Darrell Petit: Mass and Matter
In Darrell Petit’s environmental sculptures, stone achieves a dialogue between order and chaos, a balance between mass and space. By preserving the ties between sculptural forms and their source in the earth, Petit acknowledges our place within the context of nature.
On the Track of BMW’s Art Cars: A Conversation with Thomas Girst
Marriages of brand-name artistic talent and luxury consumer goods don’t get much better than the partnership showcased on a recent summer day in southern Germany. At the Formula 1 Grand Prix racetrack, racing enthusiast Frank Stella was co-driving a 1975 BMW M1 ProCar hand-painted by Andy Warhol.
Can Sculpture Save New Orleans? Three Audacious Plans Make an Attempt at Recovery
In the weeks following Hurricane Katrina, it was hard to imagine that the Crescent City art world would ever re-emerge as remembered. But the New Orleans art community has proved to be unexpectedly tenacious. Less than two months after Katrina, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art resurrected its series of Thursday night roots music concerts,
Ice in the Whirlwind: Chris Drury’s Desert Journey from Antarctica to Nevada
In early 2006, the British Antarctic Survey publicized its Artists and Writers residency. Chris Drury, who had been looking for a way to visit one of the Earth’s most remote and extreme places, applied and was selected as one of two artists sent south that year.
Justin Randolph Thompson: Shrines and Found History
Justin Randolph Thompson’s large-scale sculptures and installations are rooted in cultural history. Using an idiosyncratic vocabulary, his work unfolds complex stories by means of carefully crafted organic and geometric metaphors. Juxtapositions of old materials and new techniques create a synthesis of multi-faceted meanings inspired by pain and destruction in times past, cultural rituals, and sacred
Fritz Haeg’s Alternative Possibilities
Fritz Haeg doesn’t like to make objects. He is a mover and shaker who parachutes into a locale and shows people what’s possible: “Working with local people, I’m a catalyst for something to happen.” He admits that his role isn’t clear.
Jaehyo Lee: The Possibilities of Nature
For a Western audience, Jaehyo Lee is easy to place; he makes good sense among sculptors who work closely with natural materials, such as David Nash and Andy Goldsworthy. At the same time, Lee’s extraordinary gift with sanded wood, as well as his penchant for charred wood covered with bent nails, seems oriented toward a
The Romance of Objects: A Conversation with Carol Bove
Carol Bove’s first installations, beginning around 2003, were hailed as resonant exhumations of the culture of the 1960s, filled with objects evocative of that era—books that helped define the zeitgeist, fragile drawings of pop icons like Twiggy and Mia Farrow, and artifacts that showed a preference for cottage-industry crafts over mass-produced goods.
Ernest Daetwyler: Bubbles and Bombs
For one busy week in August 2008, the Swiss/Canadian artist Ernest Daetwyler collected used furniture from all over Darmstadt, a German city famous for its Art Deco Buildings and the impressive Beuys Block. Darmstadt is also home to Ute Ritschel, a very active curator who organizes many community projects, among them “Vogelfrei,” international exhibitions in
