Interpretive Dance by Texas School Children at Cathy Breslaw's Exhibition: Color, Space and Beauty

Color, Space and Beauty : An Exhibition of the Work of Cathy Breslaw at the Patterson - Appleton Center for Visual Arts, Denton, Texas

Exhibition Director, Caroline Holley shared a video and photos. She explains below how the classes of school children participated in Cathy Breslaw's exhibition "Color Space Beauty" at the Patterson-Appleton Center for Visual Arts in Denton Texas....on view thru December 30th:

  See video here:

"Just a bit of insight into the tours... some of the docents have had the students walk through your show and sketch their interpretation of the individual pieces while listing descriptive words that come to their mind as they view each piece. From there, they created an interpretive dance based on the descriptive words, this is the video I included. Each docent has a different approach, for example, one docent had their group write a haiku about their favorite piece. I think it has been a great experience for everyone involved!

Finally, you’ll see some photos of the interactive work stations we created for the kids this year where they have a chance to create their own fiber creations which were inspired by your “Carousel” piece. Each class creates a base and the next group adds layers to it. A local furniture store donated thousands of left over swatches for us to use – the kids have loved it!" (Caroline Holley, Exhibition Director)

The Art of Music, a Multi-Media Exhibition at The San Diego Museum of Art

The Art of Music

San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego

Article by Cathy Breslaw

www.cathybreslaw.com

John Baldassari       "Beethoven's Trumpet(with Ear) Opus #127 "      2007  

Upon entering the exhibition The Art of Music  viewers are met with a huge wall sculpture by contemporary artist John Baldessari.  It consists of an enormous white-painted human ear with a large trumpet jutting out from it.  I took it as a sign that we should ‘listen carefully’, and pay as much attention to what we hear, as to what we see. At an art museum we are accustomed to focusing mostly on what we see – and The Art of Music challenges us to both listen and see simultaneously.  In the over 200 works of art presented, there are a combination of paintings, drawings, sculptures, videos, sound art, installations and musical instruments covering artists and music-makers over several hundred years of time.  This highly ambitious exhibition drawing from a variety of time periods, artists and musicians, is organized into three areas: Musician as Motif, Social Intersections of  Art and Music and Formal Connections of Art and Music. The Musician as Motif examines the motif of the musician and the symbolic nature of this figure in Greek terracotta figures, Chinese metalwork, and Western portraits of celebrated musicians. Through these we will present a visual history of the meanings associated with musicians, muses, and the individual artist at different moments and in different cultural contexts. The second section, Social Intersections of Art and Music, considers the social function of music and its public and private rituals. This spans depictions of musical performances at the court and in the theater, designs for the opera and ballet, and works portraying musical scenes of everyday life. Formal Connections of Art and Music, the third explores representations of the sounds, emotions, and sights of music, from Indian Ragamala paintings to modern and contemporary interpretations of the colors and forms evoked by music.

The works come from a combination of the museum’s permanent collection, loans from major museums and private collections. Art works from Pablo Picasso, Kandinsky, Chuck Close, Rufino Tamayo, and Henri Matisse are among the most prominent artists presented. On view is a harpsichord, lyre, violin, guitar, whistles, and Beethoven’s Fidelio from 1814, “Er Sterbel” manuscript with autograph. When viewers approach each musical instrument, there are sensors  causing music to ‘play’ a musical piece using the particular instrument viewed.  Throughout the many rooms of the exhibition, faint sounds of musical pieces can be heard adding a wonderful back-drop to the visual art pieces.  We become aware of how visual art pieces contain movement and conjure up unique sounds and that sounds from musical instruments initiate some natural visual symbols and colors.

The final art piece we experience in the last room of the exhibition is contemporary artist Tristan Perich’s “Microtonal Wall”. This wall work arranged on a 25 foot long grid, is comprised of 1500 tiny speakers, each playing its own microtonal frequency over four octaves. When a viewer gets very close to each speaker, you can hear sounds separately but when further away the sounds all seem to play at once.

The Art of Music educates, entertains and challenges us -  also reminding us of the interconnections of art and music and how each can inform the other, and stimulate our curiosity and creativity.  The show is on view through February 7^th.

Arthur Dove    Fog Horns    oil on canvas     1929

Fernando Botero   Dancing in Columbia   oil on canvas    1980

Jerusalem, The Film - The Next Best Thing To Being There - At The Reuben H. Fleet Museum, San Diego

Jerusalem

IMAX film at the Reuben H. Fleet Museum, San Diego

Opens Friday, November 20th

Article by Cathy Breslaw
www.vanguardculture.com

Jerusalem is an IMAX film opening Friday, November 20^th at the Reuben H. Fleet Museum’s Heikoff Giant Dome Theater in San Diego. Five years in the making, this film is an immersive experience of intense sight and sound depicting the multi-cultural layers of this iconic and richly historical city.  Like all IMAX-style films, Jerusalem boards us on a 43 minute cinematic journey, taking us soaring in flight high above the Holy Land and then plunging into the marketplaces, religious sites and the geography of the area.  The film is portrayed through the eyes of three young women – one Muslim, one Jew and one Christian. Known as the center of civilization for thousands of years, the film highlights Jerusalem’s history and the religious practices of Islam, Judaism and Christianity. Audiences will be captivated by the first-ever large-format imagery of Jerusalem’s Old City and the entire Holy Land- including the iconic sites of the Western Wall, the church of the Holy Sepulchre and the Dome of the Rock. Rather than focusing on the familiar associated socio-political challenges of the region, Jerusalem amplifies the rich colorful heritage of three major religions and their people, living side by side and among one other.  We see the Easter procession replicating the journey of Jesus through the streets of the Old City on his way to execution, the Muslim religious rites of Ramadan and Jewish families as they celebrate the High Holy Days.  Also featured in the film is archaeologist, Dr. Jodi Magness as she tours people through the digging and discoveries of artifacts going back thousands of years, as well as visiting the underground tunnels of bedrock built by ancient peoples as they locate precious drinking water. This film is more than a documentary – it is a highly charged visceral experience of the history and daily lives of this diverse cultural melting pot called Jerusalem. If you’ve been there, it will likely stir your cherished memories, and if not, it will be the next best thing to being there in person!

 Jerusalem is an original production of Cosmic Picture and Arcane Pictures and distributed by National Geographic Studios. It was written and directed by Daniel Ferguson, and the executive producer was the late Jake Eberts who produced movies such as Ghandi, Dancing With Wolves, and Chariots of Fire. The film was produced by Taran Davies, George Duffield , Daniel Ferguson, and Reed Smoot of the American Society of Cinematographers.

A Labor of Love: Bhavna Mehta's "Gush" at Oceanside Museum of Art, Oceanside, CA

Gush

by Bhavna Meta

Oceanside Museum of Art, Oceanside, CA

through January 3rd

article by Cathy Breslaw

A Labor of Love

The Parker Gallery at the Oceanside Museum is a small contained space set apart from the other second floor spaces at the museum but when you arrive into Bhavna Meta’s exhibition Gush  you are rewarded and comfortably transported to a dazzling richly hued and joyful array of visual delights that take you to another space and time.  The genesis of this show was a set of 24 community workshops Mehta organized in North County San Diego where participants were asked to create patterns of all kinds and Mehta taught them skills in hand produced paper cutting with various tools provided. A large body of art created by the participants is on rotating view with a small video screen in the exhibition space.  Through her experiences with participants and their creations, Mehta developed the ‘story’ she wanted to tell in her exhibition. Gush, the title of the exhibition, directly interpreted in the dictionary as ‘free flow and an effusive display’ perfectly describes the multitude of bright, multi-colored cut-out patterned strands of varying lengths pouring out of gray geometrically formed cylinders hanging from the walls in various places within the room.  Also featured are four large rectangular works that serve as ‘windows’  that are then framed with brightly colored Indian patterns that capture within them in 3-D space, scenes of black cut-out figures doing various tasks and taking on differing perspectives and actions. These more representational forms of people and activities leave a lot up to the imagination to discern and describe. Reminiscent of Henri Matisse’s paper cuts he created in later life, Mehta’s exhibition is definitely a labor of love – as we can only imagine how long it took to create the multitude of paper-cut pieces included in this show. 

Mexican Artist Jose Hugo Sanchez Exhibits 'Transpoisis at Mesa College Art Gallery San Diego

Jose Hugo Sanchez:   Transpoiesis

San Diego Mesa College Art Gallery

October 13 – November 4, 2015

Article by Cathy Breslaw

Multi-disciplinary artist Jose Hugo Sanchez lives in Tijuana but moves back and forth across the San Diego/ U.S. border regularly to teach and work.  His art, combining printmaking, sculpture, painting, drawing and performance, is a mix of current and historical imagery and cultural iconography of both the Mexican and American cultures. His current exhibition, Transpoiesi,  is dominated by several monumental 16 foot by 6 foot works on brown paper combining block-printed woodcut engravings of indigenous characters from mythology and abstractly painted backgrounds. Works are loosely rolled out from the wall from high-hanging wooden rods unfurled onto the floor.  Portions of each work remain rolled at the floor because of the limited height of the gallery walls but enough is visible to reveal Sanchez’s powerful emotional images block-printed onto the simple brown paper and arranged in various configurations. Also included in the show are several works generated from engraved woodblocks previously used for creating works on paper. Sanchez has carved into them, shaping them into sculptural wall compositions transformed into art pieces. In some of these works, Mexican and American icons including the Virgin de Guadalupe, the Statue of Liberty and Mickey Mouse are visibly intertwined with mythological primitive-looking human and animal faces and figures.  Visible traces of the raw physicality of the process of carving of images into the wood reveals the artist’s intensity, energy, vitality and singularity of purpose.  We may surmise he is alluding to the conflictual and blending of cultures, as well as noting his own political views about them. With few exceptions, Sanchez limits his color palette to blacks, grays and earth tones.  Two sculptural works displayed on pedestals in the center of the gallery are carved from wood and cardboard and painted. One piece “El Quinto Sol” is composed of interlocking cardboard organic shapes painted with black and white figures and body parts. The other “Rayuela”, is a wood sculpture composed of many individual wooden parts pieced together including small animals, animal heads, and pieces resembling machine parts, all painted gold. Sanchez’s work follows in the tradition of Mexican printmaker Jose Guadalupe Posada and the Taller de Grafica Polular, as well as referencing German Expressionism and the primitive figurative works of Rufino Tomayo. Visiting this exhibition, viewers can’t help but feel the impact of Sanchez’s bold strong imagery of the Aztec

tradition and mythology, as he simultaneously explores both the tenuous and collaborative connections of cross border relationships.