Sparkles the Bling Bling Birthday Cow

About 18 years ago there was a city wide public sculpture project in Chicago where all the artists were given life sized fiberglass cows to do artistic things to. As you can imagine they did just about anything you can imagine to those cows. It was a very big success.

The city of Dallas followed suite a few years later, except they used a fiberglass Pegasus. Personally I think the Pegasi supplied to the artists were over designed, with to much pre-built in creator, so most of the Pegasi I saw were not very good. Some of them can still be seen around town 10 years later. I was actually asked to do a conservation assessment on one. It was such a bad mix of badly mixed mediums that I pronounced it lame and suggested they shoot it.

Anyway, I started thinking about all of this because I spent today making a 2394 rhinestone incrusted bovine as a birthday present for a dear friend. She's having one of those landmark birthdays, the kind that includes a big California blow out built around a cowgirl theme.

I was kind of surprised to find that when my socially sophisticated friend moved to LA, she started cultivating her very, very slight association with cow culture into a Texas Cowgirl gone LA mystic.

Happy Birthday Cowgirl! Don't take your spurs off until the saloons close up and your horse falls asleep.

Behind The People Behind The Video Camera

One of the benefits of blogging for Art and Seek is the access it affords to people, places, and events. That's also one of the reasons I first got into doing art conservation. I get to handle and explore artwork that gives me a special understand of how the artist works. Of course with the blogging I don't get quite so physical.

One of the first events around the Dallas Art Fair was a press interview with the artist Jim Lambie, who is presently showing at the Goss-Michael Foundation. You may recall his colorful tape installation at the DMA a few years back.

The folks from Art This Week were there as well. And that is really what this post is about. Art This Week has been producing video interviews of artists and curators sense May 2009. Their latest interview with Jim was their 100th video posting!!! Congratulations ATW!

Unfortunately this honor falls on an interview with Jim, who is no Clark Gable when it comes to sophisticated silver screen personas.

Lauren Kennedy interviewed Jim, while Caroline Belanger snapped some pics, and Richard Serrano filmed the action. Hard to believe Richard shoots all the videos on a camera the size of a deck of playing cards. I don't know much about ATW. They appear to be a young, bootstrap organization that doesn't let the limitations of equipment and funding prevent them from pumping out one video after another, 8 in the just the last 30 days. Admittedly, the end product may not be up to the evening news standards, yet. But who knows, given some time and some cash, and Jerome Weeks may have some serious cultural coverage competition. Then it's onto tackle Art 21.

I've added them to my Links Page because ATW has a DIY attitude that is just what the Dallas art scene needs to see more of.

Posting About The Art Fairs In Dallas On Art and Seek

This is a quick post. Still have more art to see before it's all gone. I've been posting about the Dallas Art Fair and the Suite Art Fair on Art and Seek.net. Here's the link to all those pages, plus my older posts on art go by.

 I'll be blogging more about the art fairs on my blog soon.

A Suite Art Fair Just Up The Hill

Just posted a review about the Suite Art Fair on Art and Seek. Here's the link A Suite Art Fair Just Up The Hill

Eyeball Exercise Coming Soon At The Dallas Art Fair

The Dallas Art Fair opens to the public next Friday! I've been really jonesing for this event. This is the third year of the DAF. Each time it gets a little bigger with a few more galleries signing up. Plus there is the Suite Art Fair being held over at the Belmont Hotel. (I'll be stretching the corneas there as well)

The beautiful people at Art and Seek are once again indulging my rambling prose, so keep an eye out there for my latest misspellings. I'll post links here on my blog to any posts I make there.

Tonight, I'm doing some warm up exercises at the local art gallery openings.

Loading The Kiln At CAC

The sculptures from the workshop I led at the Creative Arts Center are finally dry enough to load into the kiln. Glo Coalson has been teaching me the delicate art of firing large lumps of solid clay, AKA sculpture.

Looking down into the kiln, it kind of looks like a relaxing day at the spa, except the girls in this sauna are going to get unbelievable hot.

Playing In The Mud At The Dallas Arboretum

Being involved with the Creative Arts Center has opened up several unexpected opportunities to push my studio centric self out into the public eye. The latest example was at the Dallas Arboretum's annual art fair, ArtScope. It focuses on artisans like potters, wood turners and glass fusing-ists(?) About 100 artisan booths nestled among the blooming trees and flowers.

Anyway, DA asked CAC to send over a few art teachers to do art demonstrations, so here I am standing under the trees working on a clay bas-relief sculpture of the cafe gardens. 

I was out there for about 4 hours. I don't think the sculpture is the best I have done, but it was fun talking about making art, having my photo taken a lot, and handing out little balls of clay to all the kids.  A casual observer might think they were watching a sun burned Van Gogh feeding dirt to young children...

Next week it's off to North Park Mall for some speed sculpting at ARTsPARK.