Pressed Prints

I am really into the pressed ferns...aside from green being my favorite color, I think the pressed prints, especially colorful plants and flowers, adds pizzazz to a room. And you don't have to worry about wilted flowers!

Albrecht Durer: Renaissance Man

While perusing through some old prints at an antique gallery in Denver a few weeks ago, I came across this little gem, which looks very much to be an Albrecht Durer engraving. Original or not, I don’t know, but it made me remember my early art history classes learning about woodblock prints and this famous German artist and theorist.

Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) wore many hats: he was a print-maker and painter as well as a mathematician and theorist. As a young man in school, he excelled academically and had simultaneously developed a skill and love of drawing. Durer continued to develop his engraving and printmaking skills as he grew from a young apprentice to specialized craftsman. He gained great notoriety in Europe for his ability to create finely detailed engravings full of symbolism and allegories, being considered one of the greatest artists of the Northern Renaissance. 

 

Some of Durer's most iconic works include his paintings Self-Portrait (1500) and  Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand (1508), as well as the woodblock engravings of Knight, Death and the Devil (1513) and Saint Jerome in his Study (1514). Although aesthetically pleasing, Durer, who was also a learned man, used his mathematical and theoretical ideas of proportion to execute his works. From his extensive traveling throughout Europe he was able to experience classical art and included those motifs and ideas into his works, which had not been done previously in Northern Europe. 

(You can see his monogrammed signature AD)

Mapping the Old and New

Jason LaFerrera is not a classically trained artist, but has been producing simply amazing and truly unique art. His works combine the concepts of historical maps, which he has been collectiong for 10+ years, with modern digital technology to create exquisite images of flora and fauna. His works are available on Esty and are as beautiful as they are complex. I am delighted that Jason allowed me to feature him on the blog!

California Grizzly Bear

Virginia Northern Cardinal

Aguis

The Artist's Touch

A Photograph of Mid-Manhattan with the Area between 

The Plaza, Ansonia, Biltmore and Carlyle Hotels Removed

Sol LeWitt

1978

Cut gelatin silver print

A wonderful gallery in San Francisco that celebrates photographic art, The Fraenkel Gallery, is currently running an exhibition of photography by Sol LeWitt. LeWitt was a pioneer of Minimalist and Conceptual Art in the post-war era, becoming world renowned for his white “structures” (his term for sculptures), and his large, colorful wall drawings and murals which played with the ideas of irregularity and sequences of line and color, bending and stretching the imagination with their size.

However, through another medium, photography, LeWitt was able to take his ideas of Minimalism one step further by cutting, cropping and manipulating many of his images. The Fraenkel Gallery’s exhibition titled: Sol LeWitt: Photographic Works 1968-2004, bring these images in an accessible way, for viewers to see the the artist’s influence at work. LeWitt’s body of photographic works incorporate his overall notion of striving to open the eyes and mind of the viewers to see more than the just the lines he created, but the process and the people whom helped him achieve these aesthetics.

 The exhibition at the Fraenkel Gallery is on display through April 30^th .

Spring is here!

...although it's still cold outside!