A young man once approached Jean Cocteau and asked the master what he should do to become a successful artist. Cocteau responded with three words: “Faites-moi étonner!” (“Amaze me!”) Looking at Jaume Plensa’s works, one gets the impression that he had been that young artist and had taken Cocteau’s recommendation to heart.
Patti Warashina: Personal and Political
Recent exhibitions in New York, Spokane, and Seattle confirm the growing achievements of veteran ceramic sculptor Patti Warashina. Beginning as the ultimate escapist/fantasist in the ’60s with her sculptures Moon Dog Dream (1969) and Ketchup Kiss (1966), by the 1980s Warashina had moved on to all-white porcelain statuettes of demonic, gleeful, and revenging female figure groups.
Kicking Out the Boundaries: A Conversation with Kiki Smith
We are in a living room filled with candelabras, sculpted birds, and female figures. Birdy, the 15-year-old dove, contentedly watches the rain through a back window. Kiki Smith is leaving for Italy tomorrow to open a show and then travels to San Francisco to install a 25-year retrospective, yet she calmly draws as she discusses
Stella Waitzkin: Idiosyncrasy’s Library
The libraries of the late Stella Waitzkin (1920–2003), contained in her home and studio at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City, suggest a robust, nearly obsessional relationship between Waitzkin and books, which she immortalized as emblems and symbols of an erudition whose importance is physical as much as it is spiritual.
Willie Cole: The Other Side
Willie Cole creates elegant artworks that challenge prevailing ideas of identity and perception. His combination of visually seductive materials and witty humor serves to temper his serious and sometimes difficult subject matter. In his deft hands, discarded domestic items are transformed into mythical figures and objects that carry poignant commentaries within their iconographic arrangements.
The 3rd World Ceramic Biennale Sydney: “Transformative”
Icheon, Gwangju, and Yeojo, South Korea The 3rd World Ceramic Biennale recently held in the cities of lcheon, Gwangju, and Yeojo, just outside of Seoul, is the largest and most ambitious ceramic exposition in the world. …
Kaoru Motomiya
Bangkok Kaoru Motomiya’s recent installation at the new art center of the lim Thomson House in Bangkok was titled White Book. …see the full review in January/February’s magazine.
Lucas Samaras
Athens Sponsored by the Costopoulos Foundation, Lucas Samaras’s first European retrospective was hosted at the NationaI Gallery of Athens and curated by Katerina Koskina, who also organized the Greek section at this year’s Venice Biennate. …see the full review in January/February’s magazine.
“None of the Above Contemporary Work by Puerto Rican Artists”
San Juan, Puerto Rico “None of the Above, Contemporary Work by Puerto Rican Artists” was organized by Real Art Ways, in Hartford, Connecticut, an urban center with a substantial Puerto Rican population. …see the full review in January/February’s magazine.
Matthew Ritchie
Philadelphia Matthew Ritchie’s lines, shapes, and symbolic personages spin themselves across the surfaces of walls, into space, down onto the ftoot and back onto the walls as diagrams and shadows….see the full review in January/February’s magazine.
