Beverly Buchanan

Born 1940 in Fuquay, NC; died 2015 in Ann Arbor, MI

Born in Fuquay, North Carolina, Beverly Buchanan grew up in South Carolina & subsequently earned several university degrees in the sciences before beginning her professional career in New York as a health-care educator. However, about two years later, in 1971, she enrolled at the Art Students League, where she studied with renowned painter Norman Lewis (1909-1979). From that time on, Buchanan devoted her time to making art, eventually moving back to the South. It was here that she developed her practice exploring Southern vernacular architecture. 

Buchanan used found wood scraps or sometimes foam core to build her “shacks,” a term she bestowed upon the sculptures. Whether inhabited or abandoned, her structures were meant to embody the spirit of those who lived there, what she referred to as “emotional groundings.

Ana Mendieta

The Silueta Series (1973–1980) involved Mendieta creating female silhouettes in nature—in mud, sand, and grass—with natural materials ranging from leaves and twigs to blood, and making body prints or painting her outline or silhouette onto a wall.^[23]

In a 1981 artist statement, Mendieta said: I have been carrying out a dialogue between the landscape & the female body (based on my own silhouette). I believe this has been a direct result of my having been torn from my homeland (Cuba) during my adolescence. I am overwhelmed by the feeling of having been cast from the womb (nature). My art is the way I re-establish the bonds that unite me to the universe. It is a return to the maternal source.^[24]

                           

  

Ana Mendieta died on September 8, 1985, in New York City, after falling from her 34th-floor apartment in Greenwich Village at 300 Mercer Street. She lived there with her husband of eight months, minimalist sculptor Carl Andre, who may have pushed her out the window.^[51] She fell 33 stories onto the roof of a deli.^[52] Just prior to her death, neighbors heard the couple arguing violently.^[34] The neighbors heard Mendieta scream out no and right before her death Andre had scratches all over his face. ^[53] There were no eyewitnesses to the events that led up to Mendieta's death.^[54] A recording of Andre's 911 call showed him saying: "My wife is an artist, and I'm an artist, and we had a quarrel about the fact that I was more, eh, exposed to the public than she was. And she went to the bedroom, and I went after her, and she went out the window."^[55] During three years of legal proceedings,^[54] Andre's lawyer described Mendieta's death as a possible accident or a suicide. After a nonjury trial, Andre was acquitted of second-degree murder in February 1988.^[55]The acquittal caused an uproar among feminists in the art world, and remains controversial to this day.

Do Not Be Dismayed

                                          Lake in the Bois de Boulogne, Henri Edmond Cross

 

“Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world.

All things break. And all things can be mended.

Not with time, as they say, but with intention. 

So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally.

The broken world waits in darkness for the light that is you.”

L.R. Knost

(I’m reading about the history of Paris & the Dictator Napoleon is mentioned. What a spiteful, inhumane little man. But, do you know what he loved? Green spaces, wide streets, flowers everywhere. He even finished the languishing Louvre. Acres of parks don’t cancel out horrific acts against protestors. However, they do co-exist in our historical record, with thousands of examples of this dichotomy.) 

Speaking of Black Lives Matter

Speaking of Black Lives Matter: 

Romare Bearden (1911–1988) 

Considered one of the most important American artists of the 20th century, Romare Bearden’s artwork depicted the African American culture experience in creative & thought provoking ways. Born in North Carolina, Bearden spent much of his career in New York City. Virtually self-taught, his early works were realistic images, often with religious themes. He later transitioned to abstract & Cubist style paintings in oil & watercolor. He is best known for his photomontage compositions made from torn images of popular magazines & assembled into visually powerful statements on African American life. 

The Worlds Most Expensive Photograph

Andreas Gursky’s photograph Rhein II sold at auction for a ground-breaking $4.3 million. The print is Plexiglas-mounted, signed & gigantic (it’s nearly 12 feet wide), but the price had many people scratching their heads. Thankfully, there has been no shortage of articles written since to explain things to uncultured folk who don’t understand the astronomical prices paid for fine art.

‘It is valuable because it is art, not just a photo. Rules are worthless. If he was just a photographer instead of an artist, he would have been crippled by the nonexistent “rule of thirds” myth, and put the horizon someplace else.’

 

Vincent Salvo Butterflies

 Vincent (“Vin”) Salvo is a self-taught painter and sculptor living on the outskirts of Austin, Texas. 

Olga Suvorova

Olga Suvorova is a very well-known & internationally acclaimed Russian Master.

Olga was born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1966. She studied monumental composition at the famous St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts. Her career has been greatly influenced by her parents, both highly praised artists in St. Petersburg.

Other sources of influence include Gustav Klimt, Piero Della Francesca, and traditional Russian icons. Olga's talent & overwhelming response to her work led & was rewarded with a unique solo exhibition in St. Petersburg Art Academy in the spring of 1990 where her paintings were received with great enthusiasm and praise; in 1993 she was awarded the first prize of the year. She also was honored with President’s Yeltsin's Artist prize from a competition among more than 3,000 artists. 

Nowadays Olga is an accomplished artist, a well recognized master, possessing her own inimitable, easily recognizable style, and a member of the Union of Artists of Russia. 

It is for her stirring portraits that Olga first gained her reputation in Russia, and then abroad. These paintings have a startling vitality. Filled with warmth and harmony, the paintings of Olga make the viewer’s soul kinder and more compassionate. Her paintings of the players in "Comedia dell’arte" have a lasting quality. Her style can be more realistic in the historical depictions but it is strongly impressionistic in other scenes. In her paintings Olga sometimes uses silk fabrics for costume details. Recently she has produced a series of magnificently detailed screens which have been widely praised and collected. 

She exhibits regularly in Paris and London. Olga has also exhibited in Italy, Germany, Sweden, Finland, France, Britain, Ireland, China, and the USA. Her work is highly regarded and acquired by galleries and serious art collectors around the globe.