13th April 2008 - Who's made a mark this week?

'Glory of the Snow' (Chionodoxa) at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I couldn't resist showing you two of the most striking images I saw this week - at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew.

The above image provides a major change from my picture of the snow last Sunday! 'Glory of the Snow', which is providing a carpet of light blue, is in fact a delicate alpine called Chionodoxa which comes into flower as the snows melt in Turkey, Crete and Cyprus. More information here

Reclining Figure, Arch Leg
LH 577 Bronze Edition of 6 + 1
Cast: Hermann Noack, Berlin
Length: 442cm approx.
Signature: Stamped Moore, 0/6

Just to the right of the Orangery (the white building in the top photo), we found a queue of Henry Moore sculptures waiting to go home after the immensely successful exhibition Moore at Kew which finished on 30th March.

Check out the fascinating sequence of photographs of the work involved with the arrival and installation of Moore's sculptures. Which is how I came to discover MOMART - who are experts in the specialised area of handling fine art.

Plus I also recommend taking a look at the fabulous final shortlist of photographs in the Moore at Kew Showcase winners.

I'm hoping to visit the Henry Moore Foundation at Perry Green soon - it's only a shortish trip in the car for me but I have to make an appointment.

As always, whenever I get interested in an artist I've started a lens to store my bookmarks and share these with others. More about this once I've been able to get to Perry Green - but if you want to take a peek now, you can find it at Henry Moore - Resources for Art Lovers

Art blogs

• I got interested in wood engraving this week while researching for my blog post about Japanese Art and ukiyo-e: How do you make a wood block print? Studio Diary is the blog of wood engraver Andy English who lives in Cambridgeshire. He does really lovely work - do take a look.
  
• Jerry Lebo has a blog called sixty minute artist which has a nice byline (see below) which has recently included
  
• a very informative blog post - Improve your studio lighting
  
• plus an equally interesting post all about Finding shadow colour
  

This blog is not about making art faster, it is about how to turn consistent effort into something worth looking at.
Jerry Lebo - sixtyminuteartist

• Lisa Call (Lisa Call - Contemporary Textile Art) has also embarked on podcasting - her first podcast I’d Rather Be In the Studio - Blog Book Tour is an interview with Alyson Stanfield.
• Rose Welty (Rose's Art Lines) posted about how Finishing a series is harder than it looks

Art business and marketing

• Read a salutary tale about a gallery which went bust with artists queuing up as creditors. Read Bill Gusky on Artblog comments for a view on this. If you're involved in arrangement like this, think on..........
• Art Vent is Carol Diehl's blog about the absurdities of the art market and some of that 'artspeak'. As somebody who finds quite a lot of artspeak totally impenetrable and suggestive only of somebody having their head in a place which is anatomically difficult I got such a sense of relief that somebody thinks the same way as I do about the worst excesses of it - and says so!
  
• here's a good example of one of her posts Impenetrable prose from the Whitney Biennial
• and this is her post which reproduces a comment from the TIME blog on the 'impenetrable prose' post The Decline and Fall of Western Civilization

• Martin Stankewitz (Edition Handdruck.de - in English - do check out his monotypes) in Germany has found a way to use a squidoo lens to highlight his print offering on Imagekind and is also exploring the scope of the new facility for offering cards as well as prints. See Carnations and lilies - Spring flowers monotype and Decorative fine art prints for interior design. [http://www.squidoo.com/decoeditionH] The trick here is probably about working out the right tags to use alongside 'squidoo'. I think Martin is absolutely right to look at the decorative art angle as a way of marketing his work.

Nelken und Lilien - Frühjahrsblumen -Monotypie
Martin Stankewitz - Edition handdruck

Art history

• The Guardian Art Blog had an article How modern art became history - it makes one pause for thought!
• There is an exhibition about Edward Hopper at the Art Insititute of Chicago (February 16–May 10, 2008 Regenstein Hall and Galleries 262–65). You can also find links to art videos about Hopper in the video section lower down.
  
• Yesterday I wrote about Art History and the History of Art - Resources for Artists - which is a new information site I published this week. A new link which I need to add into the section of the site which deals with 'online art history sites' is Museum Syndicate - which is about experiencing art and history. The mission statements starts with how the aims is (1) to provide an archive of the world's artistic works and historical artifacts in a single online environment and (2.) To provide that service free of charge. I'm intrigued by how on earth this site got material on so many artists so fast! The ability to search by country, museum (very biased towards the USA at present) or tag is most welcome. It has a very speedy response too given that response times is one of the issues which dogs sites like this - although in reality if is very far from being a comprehensive site as yet. But the structure is promising.
  
• An exhibition of Prints by Albrecht Durer (pdf file) organised by the National Gallery of Canada opens opens at the Art Gallery of Windsor in Ontario next Saturday 19th April
• This week I had a post about Winslow Homer - behind the scenes in Chicago.
  

Art Information

A little bit of shameless self-promotion! My information site about egg tempera painting Egg Tempera - Resources for Artists [ http://www.squidoo.com/eggtempera ] was selected as the Squidoo Lens of the Day this last week. All because Megan Casey was looking for some information about Andrew Wyeth - who is, of course, one of the most famous artists using egg tempera today.

As a result, my egg tempera lens got an awful lot of visitors, a huge increase in official fans and a plethora of positive comments. It very nearly even reached the top 100 - which out of half a million squidoo lens is going some! This came after some fairly tense days during which a bug manifested itself during the big transfer of the Squidoo Database to new servers - and caused a major hit (read 'dip') in traffic to most of the top lenses. Thankfully all is now sorted and I'm back to having five of my lenses in the top 1,000. However I do need to tell Megan that the Wyeth lens she also listed is actually by somebody else!

Art materials, equipment and supplies

• Jeff Hayes (State of the Art) discussed his palette in a long, informative and interesting post
• I had a couple pf very practical blog posts this week. Both attracted some very informative comments.
  
• Night and Day - lighting your subject
• Packaging and posting artwork
  
• I can also add that yesterday I found a new use for my executive combined overnight bag/laptop bag on wheels. It provides an excellent way of transporting small pictures wrapped in towels to galleries - but I forgot to take the illustrative photo before I shot out the door during a break in the rain!

Art videos

A number of NGA Washington videos this week - they look very classy. I've supplied the hi-res links but you can get low-res links and itunes links here.

• Turner - narrated by Jeremy Irons
  
• Edward Hopper - the man who painted the American experience - narrated by Steve Martin
• Alexander Nemerov on Edward Hopper
  

Websites and Blogs

The Webby Awards advertises as the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet including Websites, Interactive Advertising, Online Film & Video and Mobile content (see here for FAQs). They have announced the nominees for sites in the arts category as follows. You can vote for your favorite nominees at pv.webbyawards.com - but voting closes May 1st

ART

Nominees	Agency/Credited Organization
Artocracy http://www.artocracy.org	Artocracy
Edward Hopper http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/20...	National Gallery of Art
odd wall : gallery of the the streets http://www.oddwall.com	Stephen Ensminger
Richard Serra Sculpture: Forty Years http://moma.org/serra	The Museum of Modern Art
The Calligraphic World of Mi Fu's Art http://tech2.npm.gov.tw/mifu/	National Palace Museum

Stay away from this site if you have the slightest inclination to surf!!! Although you might pick up a few tips by checking out the rest of the nominees in the following categories:

• websites
  
• interactive advertising (including e-mail marketing),
  
• online film and video which includes
  
• animation and
  
• The New York Times/T: The New York TImes Style Magazine "Art Basel Miami Beach" Series http://nytimes.com/marketing/webb...
  
• the How to/DIY category which certainly gives some food for thought...........
• mobile