Slight Art Rant
My friend Grace and I were chatting (dishing and stabbing in the back, actually) about a recent bunch of shows we've seen juried and/or curated by "Friends of" groups or art guilds or whoever hung the current student show at the Evanston Art Center.

We hate the tendency to group like things together: herding the naked figures into one section (if allowed at all, they're generally farthest from the door so sight lines won't be offended) -- the portraits, the still life, the landscapes, the "abstracts", the photography, the animal paintings, the "other" (the lucky group)all neatly arranged for comparison.

So that one glance can clearly pick out who can paint and who is utterly clueless and thus dismiss the whole thing as hokey and amateur.

This trend must end. It creates shows you can get thru in a minute, but you will never get beyond subject matter and maybe see that something else is going on. It is needlessly cruel.

If the people hanging these shows can't figure out a better scheme, they should just hang them alphabetically or pull numbers from a hat. I realize it takes a long time to hang even a student show well, but it can be done.

Good morning, friends. Blogger seems to be working at the moment -- what a week it's been! I assume some of the problems are heat related in areas of rolling blackouts -- but a company with google-bucks behind it ought to spend a few occasionally and maybe move the status blog to a different server and have someone post info to it, even if they haven't fixed the problem yet.

Am bracing for a predicted week of misery here. I think I mentioned the print studio has no air conditioning, but it's in the basement of an old-fashioned former elementary school so it's not bad until after "school" hours.

And thank you to Maggie Weiss, a textile artist, for dropping off a box of lovely type for the letter press. It seems to be a good and complete small font. She said she found it in a case she bought at flea market. So there you go.
- posted by Cynthia @ 11:00 AM | | | Link |