Yes, you read the headline correctly. We plan to close the art251 gallery on May 31, 2011.

Kim and I have had a great experience building and operating the gallery over the last 3 hectic years. We thoroughly enjoyed designing the space; surrounding ourselves (and our customers) with beautiful works of art; meeting the many talented, local artists; hosting gallery events; and finding art collectors and fans of local art.

The local community has been very supportive in our quest to bring more color and creativity to Keller. We’ve exposed art to many new eyes, and hopefully inspired others to keep the creative spirit alive. We’ve successfully connected many new and existing art lovers to a trove of great new art, and uncovered a rich vein of local talent in the process, much of which remained previously mostly hidden to the local community.

For the time being, we plan to keep the art251 website and blog operating as we work on the next phase of our adventures in creativity.

I am a mere observer to the truly moving and historic events unfolding in Egypt. I’m many thousands of miles and many timezones away from the cataclysmic events happening in Tahrir Square, Cairo. But this day is no less remarkable. We’re seeing the seeds of democracy finally take root in a civilization that has 6,000 years of recorded history. And, all the more remarkably this is being done almost entirely peacefully.

The Egyptians were the first people to develop a rich iconography and sense of formal design, they invented paper and keyed-locks, brought us water clocks and sundials. They’re responsible for some of the first medicines and, more importantly to many in the West, they invented formal make-up. Egyptians have a rich and unique history of art and literature, and of course they brought us the pharoahs and their afterlives.

So. here’s a toast to the newly emerging Egypt, a democratic Egypt that we see unfolding before our very eyes. Today, February 11, 2011 may well be the last in the line of military pharaohs, ancient or modern. May your next 6,000 years be full of true freedom, dignity, respect, social justice and peace.

Image: Tuthankamen’s Burial Mask, Egyptian Museum, Cairo. Courtesy of Bjørn Christian Tørrissen.

Yes, Audrey Hepburn is here! That’s right, the Audrey Hepburn (you know, Roman Holiday, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, My Fair Lady) is here at art251 in Keller.

And, she has other celebrities with her. We’re not talking about other so-called “pseudo-celebs” that are “famous” because they once appeared on a reality TV and now tweet about health food or climate change. We mean Keller has been invaded by real celebrities with real talent. Oh, wait! There goes Martin Scorsese. And, and, here comes Harrison Ford!

Audrey Hepburn by Jonathon Kimbrell, Silk Screen Print and Acrylic on Canvas.

Keller hasn’t seen this many celebrities since, well, forever! (In fact, we’ve never seen any in Keller). What’s even more remarkable about this once in a lifetime, star-studded event is that many of the celebs visiting art251 actually departed planet earth quite some time ago. Whoa, my eyes are deceiving me, surely… Peter Sellers, Marilyn, James Dean? And, over there I can see Roy Orbison and Big Bill Broonzy jamming with Keith Richard – now of course in the case of Keiff (as his mates call him), the jury is still out as to whether he’s no longer with us or actually still alive, but, regardless, we have him captive here inside art251 as well. Unbelievable.

Please come and see for yourselves! Come quickly, our walls may not be able to contain so much talent and such vast egos (Audrey Hepburn excepted) for much longer!

Many of us make resolutions to usher in a new year. I’m no different. So my non-exhaustive list, in no particular order (until my family inserts several more) will signal some not insignificant life-changes for 2011:

1. I will get more exercise. OK, this one’s easy: I’ll hang, move, and re-arrange art around art251 more often (courtesy of my 10 ft ladder), and I’ll lift weights (thanks to James Johnson’s unique hand-forged steel sculptures).
2. I will continue not to smoke. I don’t smoke, never have and don’t plan to start. But I do have an old cigarette machine, now living out its life inside art251 as a beautiful blue art-o-mat machine, selling $5 works of art.
3. I will try to dress more stylishly. If not, I’ll just envelope myself in Trish Biddle’s beautiful paintings of glamorous women in fabulous places, and imagine myself in another place and time.
4. I will travel more (often vicariously). I’ll revisit Africa and other exotic locales (courtesy of Sean Fitzgerald’s photographs), NYC (thanks to photo-realistic paintings by Michael Longhofer), and quiet Texas hill country towns (Melinda Brown).
5. I will add more color to my life, thanks to Scott Young, David Gappa, and DJ Naehritz. And I’ll look for patterns for success (Fil Booth).
6. I will tune in to my inner child more often – I’ll dream of flying in space (Marnie Vollenhals) and invent some cool kids’ toys (Jay Garrison).
7. I will stop thinking in terms of black and white, but look at the world more in shades of grey (Kelly Berry).
8. I will slow down and take more time for tea (using Kim Norris’s unique ceramics).
9. I will enjoy both the little things and dramatic pleasures in life (Faith Jessup).
10. I will spend more time outdoors, enjoying nature’s wealth (Dana Blanchard).
11. I will build a relaxing and meditative environment (Aditi Samarth) by mixing soft color (Marie Maines), natural textures (Kris Wood), with light and music (Leigh Ann Williams).

Home, by Faith Jessup.

Many collectors of art are often looked upon as belonging to a very elite group — super-wealthy, well-connected, highly successful individuals. These collectors have made their “bucks” (millions) on Wall Street or in Silicon Valley, and they have the financial means to acquire a Picasso or a Koons or a Hirst without a second thought as to their bank balance. Of course, these individuals do exist. However, they are in the minority. Like most views of our world the image of art collector as “international jet-setting fashionista, yacht-owning playboy (or girl) or geeky IPO-gazillionaire” is not the norm.

Most art is collected by ordinary people; people like your and me, with ordinary day jobs, good kids at school and not insignificant mortgages on their homes. So while you may not be able to afford the $75 million tag for a “re-discovered” Monet at auction, you may be able to find a beautiful original oil painting at a fraction of a fraction of this cost. Or, if original canvases are beyond your means, you can find affordable drawings or limited edition prints and lithographs. You can find gorgeous new work made by artists who live and work near you — what could be better than discovering real, local art.

Collecting art is much more about vision and passion than it is about wealth. Herb and Dorothy Vogel lead the way in this respect. They are the epitome of “ordinary” art collectors. I say “ordinary” because they really are far from ordinary. Over many years they built one of the world’s leading collections of contemporary conceptual and minimalist art, and all on the salary of a postal clerk and librarian. Luckily for us, they have since made most of their extraordinary collection available to all.

Simon de Pury, chairman of Phillips de Pury, a global auction house echoes this sentiment below; quite rightly asserting that wealth is no substitute for vision and passion. You can even start collecting original art from our beautiful blue art-o-mat machine (for a mere $5). Happy collecting!

Psst!  It’s that time of year again. Time for our Annual Art Attack Sale. Once a year, from mid-December to late January we slash our prices. So, you’ll find many works from our favorite artists on sale at up to 50 percent off.

This is a once a year chance to purchase great art at unbelievable prices. Remember, we don’t negotiate prices or discount at other times of the year. So, now is the time.

And, even though we’re an art gallery we have a great selection of gifts for her, him and the teacher. We have gifts in all price ranges, starting at $5 for an art-o-mat, under $25, under $250, and over. We have gifts for young and not so young, stylish and eclectic. Best of all, none of our gifts require batteries or contain toxic chemicals from elsewhere.

We have beautiful glass vases and rondels. We have glass ornaments for your Christmas tree. We have fine jewelry from wearable glass, to contemporary and colorful polymer clay. We have functional pottery and unique, museum quality decorative ceramics. We have warm sculptures in exotic woods. We have flying machines. We have fluid abstracts and luminous landscapes and soft geometrics. We have detailed, imagined landscapes and lush verdant works of insects. We have subtly soft pastels and vibrant mixed media.

We have fun paintings for children and works for grown-ups who seek sophisticated style. We have vivid photographs of our beautiful local surroundings and far-away lands. We have hard forged steel candlesticks and soft fabric art. We have fine sculpture in metal and in wood. Phew! Did I miss anything?

So, make this season special. Give the gift of art. It’s unique, it’s lasting, it’s meaningful, and it’s local. And, it’s on sale right now.

The lengthy corridors of art history over the last five hundred years are decorated with numerous bold and monumental works. Just to name a handful of memorable favorites you’ll see a pattern emerge: Guernica (Pablo Picasso), The Persistence of Memory (Salvador Dali), The Dance (Henri Matisse), The Garden of Earthly Delights (Heironymous Bosch). Yes, these works are bold. They’re bold in the sense that they represented a fundamental shift from the artistic sensibilities and ideas of their times. These works stirred the salons and caused commotion among the “cognosenti” and the chattering classes. They implored (or decried) the establishment to take notice of new forms, new messages, new perspectives.

And, now here we are in the 21st century, floating in a bottomless bowl of a bold media soup; 24-hour opinion and hyperbole; oversized interactive billboards, explosive 3D movies, voyeuristic reality TV, garish commercials, sexually charged headlines and suggestive mainstream magazines. The provocative images, the loudness, the vividness, the anger – it’s all bold and it’s vying for your increasingly fragmented and desensitized attention. But, this contemporary boldness seems more aligned with surface brightness and bigness than it is with depth of meaning. The boldness of works by earlier artists such as Picasso, Dali, Bosch came from depth of meaning rather than use of neon paints or other bold visual noise.

So, what of contemporary art over the last couple of decades? Well, a pseudo-scientific tour of half-a-dozen art galleries featuring the in-the-moment works of art may well tell you the same story – it’s mostly bold as well. What’s been selling at the top art auction houses? Bold. What’s been making headlines in the art world? Bold.

The trend is and has been set for a while: it has to be brighter, louder, bigger. Indeed, a recent feature article in the New York Times on the 25th Paris Biennale seems to confirm this trend in Western art. (Background: The Biennale is home to around a hundred of the world’s most exclusive art galleries, those that purport to set the art world’s trends, make or break emerging artists and most importantly (for them) set “market” prices.) The article’s author, Souren Melikian, states:

Perception is changing. Interest in subtle nuances is receding as our attention span shortens. Awareness of this trend probably accounts for the recent art trade emphasis on clarity and monumentality and the striking progression of 20th-century modernity.

Well, I certainly take no issue with the observation that “commercial” art has become much more monumental and less subtle, especially over the last 40 years. By it’s very nature for most art to be successful in today’s market overflowing with noise, distraction and mediocrity it must draw someone’s fragmented and limited attention, and sadly, it does this by being bold, bright or big! However, I strongly disagree that “clarity” is a direct result of this new trend in boldness. I could recite a list as long as my arm of paintings and other art works that show remarkable clarity even though they are merely subtle.

Perhaps paradoxically, brokers and buyers of bold seem exclusively to associate boldness with a statement of modernity, compositional complexity, and layered meaning. The galleries at the Biennale seem to be confusing subtlety with dullness, simplicity and shallowness. Yet, the world is full of an equal number of works that exhibit just as much richness, depth and emotion as their bolder counterparts despite their surface subtlety. There is room for reflection and nuanced mood; there is room for complexity and depth in meaning from simple composition; there is room for pastels in this over-saturated, bold neon world.

As Bob Duggan eloquently states, at BigThink:

The meek, such as 2009 Turner Prize winner Richard Wright (reviewed recently by me here) may yet inherit the earth, but only in a characteristically quiet way. Hirst’s jewel-encrusted skulls will always grab headlines, but Wright’s simpler, pensive work can engage hearts and minds in a more fulfilling way. And why is it important that the right thing happens and the Wrights win out over the Hirsts? Because art remains one of the few havens for thought in our noise- and light-polluted world.

So, I’m encouraged to see that I am not yet a lost and lone voice in this noisy wilderness of bold brashness. Oh, and in case you’re wondering what a meaningfully complex yet subtle painting looks like, gaze at Half Light by Dana Blanchard below. This painting will be on show at art251 in October.

Some incisive advice to young and emerging artists from one of the great graphic designers of our time – Milton Glaser. It may not come as much of a surprise, that it’s about hard work and dedication.

Milton Glaser is the most celebrated graphic designer in the United States. He’s to thank (or blame) for the ubiquitous “I ‘heart’ New York” logo amongst many other memorable items of iconography.

He has had one-man-shows at the Museum of Modern Art and the Georges Pompidou Center. In 2004 he was selected for the lifetime achievement award of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum. As a Fulbright scholar, Glaser studied with the painter, Giorgio Morandi in Bologna, and is an articulate spokesman for the ethical practice of design and for the value of ‘commercial art.’

Several eons ago (paleolithic era, according to my kids) I lived in a college dorm room, quite a nice one as dorm rooms go. This was in England, mind you, so I suspect dorm rooms in the U.S., are generally more spacious (and come complete with an ensuite Starbucks). While dorm rooms and dorm facilities have evolved since my days at college, see then and now examples below – I read somewhere that the Rockoff Dorm at Rutgers University features a Coldstone Creamery, 7-Eleven and an expansive gym – I believe most dorm rooms the world over share some common attributes: never enough space for clothes or hair care products, boring blank walls, dismal lighting, lousy curtains, beds made for pre-teens, shelves that hold no more than one book of dangerous ideas or bottle of something delicious … you get the idea.

Then

Image courtesy of Gettysburg College, Digital Center Art (yours truly not pictured)

Now

Image courtesy of Rutgers University, New Brunswick Development Corporation and Time Magazine, 2010

While a major remodeling project sponsored by the Home Depot via your parents’ credit card or being featured on one of the many “designer-star-remodel-color-challenge-on-a-dime-organization-remix-divine-curb-appeal-creative-closet” reality TV shows is likely to put you at odds with your dorm neighbors and the college “police”, there is indeed hope.

I’ve listed below 10 important, and simple, dos and don’ts that you should consider when making the space your own. After all, your dorm room will reflect you, your personality, your tastes, your likes, your style. You’ll want to make a winning impression with your new neighbors in the real world – think life outside of Facebook.

Don’ts

1. Don’t line your dorm room walls with empty (or full) beer bottles or cans, especially those “lite” beers. This is so 1980s.

2. Please avoid the once ubiquitous Warhol, Marilyn, Che posters. See art-related “dos” below.

3. On the subject of posters, don’t use any that include the following imagery: cars, trucks, El Caminos, parts of the human body below the neck, UFOs, Godzilla movies, wrestlers, footballers, motivational slogans with images of mountains in the background, periodic table (unless you don’t want any new friends), vegetables.

4. Don’t fashion a table from user pizza boxes. Enough said.

5. Don’t assume revamping your Facebook (or Myspace) pages counts. Hanging out on Facebook can only go so far (yes, eventually you’ll have to socialize in person!), so you’ll still need a cool room.

6. Don’t hang audio speakers (if you’re beyond ‘phones and buds) on shared walls. You will quickly spawn a rivalry with your neighbors; one that you will not win after they invest in a professional Marshall amp and speakers having a total wattage that exceeds your zipcode by a factor of 10.

7. Don’t display any dead animals or tools or pictures of your parents or your rock collection (as in pebbles) , anywhere, in your room.

8. Don’t accessorize with any of the following: glitter ball smaller than 36 inches in diameter; multi-colored floor lamps (save these for your first retro apartment or pass them down to your kids, eventually); “plug-in miniature rock garden water feature” thingy; toaster oven (its use with cause odors to permanently permeate your cool clothes).

9. Don’t lay down any rugs that have a pile deeper than an 1/8th of an inch (you’ll be surprised what may end up lurking there), and avoid any fabric colors from any Martha Stewart palette.

10. Don’t confuse a well-organized display of your personal toiletries with good interior design. So, hide your hair products, shavers, tweezers, eye-liner, deodorant, puffs etc far away from other humans.

Dos

1. Get some real art on your walls. Display a well-edited selection of quality prints and paintings that show who you are, and that engage others. My top recommendation, of course, is art251 – a great source for affordable originals, prints and art-o-mat art at an astounding $5 per pull.

2. Buy a decent set of desk and floor lamps. You may not have time or inclination to open a book (during your first 2 years), but you’ll need light to illuminate a path around and over the inevitable piles of clothes. Good lights will let you change the mood of your room quickly and cheaply.

3. Check out online design resources to help you plan your space, organize your furniture. A great one is: DesignYourDorm.

4. Visit IKEA and/or Craigslist – probably two of the best sources for affordable furniture and accessories and even room mates (the latter only for room mates).

5. If you must make pictures of your family visible, display these randomly intermingled with a vast assortment of other random photographs of random objects. This will ensure suitable anonymity and distance.

6. Invest in a good set of sheets, blankets, pillows and comforter, and, for that matter, bring your own bed. You’ll need to insulate yourself from what has gone before. Better still, find someone to give you a new futon as a gift.

7. Buy storage bins that fit under your bed, which will allow you to instantaneously hide all the clutter that you will find the need to hide from people who don’t yet wish to know all about you.

8. Find an interesting potted plant and challenge yourself to keep it alive for more than one semester.

9. Buy a couple of white boards, one for inside the room, one to post messages outside your door. Yes, this is like your Facebook wall, and will add color and creativity to your non-digital persona (yes, you do have one and you may be surprised to find that others will wish to meet it).

10. Do have fun (and learn) – you’ll discover that it will be one of the best times of your life!

Cortes Distortion, Oil on Canvas by Michael Longhofer.

If you’re like me then the heat of summer in Texas requires respite, or better still, an antidote. Well, an antidote to the heat we cannot offer but there’s plenty of respite here inside art251.

Recall when you’re on vacation, the weather turns miserable, it’s pouring with rain? You need something to do despite the inclement weather, right? It’s not uncommon for many of us to seek out a museum or an art gallery when the heavens open. Well, you can do the same when the sun is blazing as well. What could top a visit to a gorgeous gallery when the elements are conspiring to damage your hair, your skin, your clothes and your mind.

So, remember there’s no need to wait for it to rain for you to visit your cool, local gallery. We keep the thermostat reasonably low and the art on the walls will take your mind off the sizzling temperature. This summer we are pleased to welcome several new artists to the gallery. James Brandon a photographer based in Ft.Worth adds his stunning HDR photographs; Renee Hanson from Austin displays her new abstract works.

Also, three of our established artists – Melissa Ayr, Michael Longhofer and Marie Maines refresh our walls with some bold new paintings. Melissa Ayr displays a collection of 6 new vibrant abstract canvases that will enliven any wall; Michael Longhofer envelopes us in his ever-evolving style; Marie Maines takes a bold step with her cool pastels with 2 new works in subtle shades of grey. And, we have lots of shimmery new jewelry by Jean Storm, Katy Fenley, Diana Casabar and Noelle.

A battle royale is brewing between Keller and Dallas. Oh, and this is much bigger than the collegiate rivalry between Texas and Oklahoma; stronger than the cultural rivalry between Ft.Worth and Dallas; and even more deep-rooted than the historic rivalry between Dallas and Houston.

Make no mistake, the situaton unfolding between Keller and Dallas eclipses the legendary rivalries between Road Runner and Wile E Coyote, Mac versus PC, Federer versus Nadal, Man U versus Chelsea, Boston Red Sox versus New York Yankees. Yes, this battle is on a par with Batman versus The Joker, and Luke Skywalker versus Darth Vader.

I’m talking about the battle of the Art-o-mats.

You see, almost two years ago art251, right here in Keller, installed the very first Art-o-mat in North Texas. Now, the Big D is imitating it smaller, cuter neighbor to the west and playing catch-up by unveiling a rival Art-o-mat in North Dallas. On Saturday, May 15, only the second Art-o-mat machine in North Texas premiers at the new Whole Foods Market on Park Lane.

To honor this event art251 is hosting Mr. Clark Whittington on May 13, 6-9 pm, during our monthly Keller Gallery Walk. Clark is artistic impresario, chief-innovation-officer, head (TPB) supervisor of Artists-in-Cellophane, and the all-round creative spark behind the Art-o-mat. Then on May 15, Clark heads east to officially unveil the “rival” machine in Dallas.

I’ll let you decide which of the 2 Art-o-mat machines is the classiest. By the way, ours has been on the Rachael Ray Show.

Art-o-mat, art251, Keller

Art-o-mat, Whole Foods Market, Dallas

In case you don’t know what an Art-o-mat is read on. Art-o-mat is a machine. It’s actually a retired and lovingly restored cigarette machine that’s been converted to vend art. In 1997, Clark Whittington used a recently-banned cigarette machine to create the first Art-o-mat. He used the machine to showcase his own black & white photographs which he sold for $1 each. The concept proved so popular with the host of the first machine and other artists that the project soon took on a life of its own. Art-o-mat, the organization, has now grown to around 90 Art-o-mat machines featuring over 400 contributing artists from 10 different countries.

I love art in all its guises. I’m also a computer geek and avid follower of big science. Strange, I know. Thus, when these 3 elements collide metaphorically, though better still literally, I sit up and take notice.

Over the last week the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) finally began its quest to refine our theories of the fundamental constituents of matter and energy. The machine began this journey, perhaps rather inelegantly, by smashing together tiny, innocent particles at unconscionably high velocities. Indeed as I write, there are hundreds of millions of such collisions taking place beneath Swiss and French soil (and despite the doomsayers, I’m still here).

From it’s inception at CERN, the LHC has taken around 20 years to plan, design, construct and test. So for the geeks among us, March 30, 2010 was a very special day. It signaled the start of years of record-breaking, high energy proton collisions and the dawn of a revolutionary era of fundamental research. Over the coming years, scientists aim to use the LHC to test, uncover, extend, validate or refute many of our fundamental theories on why things are the way they are. What makes up elementary particles? How forces behave as they do? Why the universe looks the way it does? Whether there are hidden dimensions? What conveys mass? Do undiscovered particles swim all around us? Is there dark matter and dark energy out there? What were conditions like just an instance after the Big Bang? Do I have a supersymmetric twin? You get the idea.

The LHC is a huge scientific and engineering effort. In fact, the superlatives seem never to end: a collaboration of 10,000 scientists and engineers from over 100 countries, and hundreds of international laboratories and educational institutions; the most complex and largest machine ever constructed; the fastest, the coldest, the hottest, the emptiest environment on the planet; the quickest and most sensitive detectors of energy and motion on earth; the most powerful collection of supercomputers collecting and analyzing the most data anywhere.

And, yet for all the mighty engineering, mind-boggling technology and extreme science, the LHC finds time to give us art as well. Artists Christian Skeel and Morten Skriver in collaboration with physicists Clive Ellegaard and Troels C. Petersen bring us the Colliderscope.

The Colliderscope is an interactive LED-light sculpture wrapped on the front of the Niels Bohr Institute building, in Copenhagen, Denmark. It’s directly connected to one of the LHC’s detectors, known as ATLAS, at CERN. So, as particles collide in the LHC, their tracks and collisions are choreographed on the Colliderscope. The colors, tones and speed of the LED flashes are tied to the events at CERN making the particle accelerator a kind of vast visual musical artwork. Who ever said science is dull and art useless.