Yes, art can be fun as well as beautiful. art251?s December exhibit is almost here. We?ll be unveling new paintings by Marnie Vollenhals, a Keller based artist. The exhibit begins with an opening reception on December 11, 6-9pm, and runs until January 16, 2010.

Her playful works are collected by the young and the young at heart. So, bring your children or just your inner child ? come and revisit the world that you never really left behind, courtesy of Marnie Vollenhals.

Marnie Vollenhals is a natural born illustrator and a prolific artist ? she paints, paints and paints. Her most recent paintings of a group of animal friends, centered around Hawk, the Rocket Dog, a suburban dog with big dreams, is garnering a loyal following both locally and nationally.

Marnie comes from a family of artists, which goes back generations. From an early age she has been surrounded by rich visual arts. This has enabled her to establish a unique illustrative style, melding classic and modern influences, and diverse ideas and media. Marnie?s works balance a keen sense of design with her skills of artistic composition. And, shining through is an underlying sense of happiness and a playful spirit.

OK, OK, I admit it, I’m biased, I’m co-owner of art251, I’m a photographer. So, how do I summarize the first few days of our new show Man And Nature, showcasing photographs by Sean Fitzgerald? Well, let me try.

Sean Fitzgerald’s images stand by themselves – beautifully composed, technically adept, faithful and yet almost surreal renditions of our real world. Importantly, his images aren’t just excellent photographs, they are interwoven by an vivid narrative. It’s a multifaceted story – of pristine wilderness, of man’s coexistence with and encroachment upon nature, and of nature’s ability to adjust and ultimately prevail (sometimes with help, sometimes not).

His story takes us on a journey from the untouched, surreal natural landscapes of central African deserts, to the lush growths of Caddo Lake (the only natural lake in Texas) and the encroachment of man in the Guadalupe Mountains of Texas; it takes us to the rising and eerily beautiful Devil’s Lake in North Dakota, and on to decaying manmade structures in the Upper Midwest.

It takes us to the ruins of diamond mines in Namibia being subsumed by sand; and then the journey brings us back to wilderness being re-born in our very own Trinity River valley, in East Dallas.

So, if just one of the following questions perks your interest:

intrigued by images of faraway lands?

fascinated by man’s impact on the environment?

interested in nature’s delicate coexistence with humans?

don’t believe wilderness can be reborn on a former waste dumping ground?

like to learn more about your home state (Texas, in this case)?

appreciate technical craft?

sometimes wonder, “how did he do that?”, or “where on Earth is that?”

ever looked closely at the nature right beneath your feet or above your head?

… do this: set aside 25 minutes, drive or cycle or walk (or parachute if you must) to Keller Town Center, open the door to art251 (we’ll even open it for you), and breathe in Sean Fitzgerald’s gorgeous images of this fragile land, both near and far. Man And Nature runs until the end of November 2009.

The incredible Trinity River Audubon Center celebrates its 1-year anniversary on October 10-11 with our inaugural?Nature Fest and Art Show. We’ll focus on works of art from area artists in our Great Hall, seminars on sustainable living in our classrooms, and nature-related?activities on the trails. Admission is free… see you this weekend! Click here for the complete schedule.

What is there to do at Trinity River Audubon Center (TRAC) besides art? PLENTY! Here’s a taste:

???? Hike four miles of trails through restored prairie, wetland and bottomland forest habitats
???? Take a guided nature walk for visitors of all ages
???? Bird more than 100 resident and migrant species
???? Enjoy nature from scenic overlooks and bird blinds
???? Learn about the area’s habitats and history through hands-on exhibits
???? Attend workshops on conservation practices & outdoor skills
???? Join a cool nature club: Bug Club, Bird Club, Frog Club, or Adventure Club
???? Attend a field trip with field-based education programs for students
???? Complete your Eagle Scout or Gold Award project
???? Stretch and relax in a yoga class
???? Open young eyes to nature in the Children’s Discovery Garden
???? Participate in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology eBird tracking program
???? Relax and enjoy refreshments on the overview deck or picnic area by the Trinity River
???? Attend Free Third Thursday lectures and activities
???? Sign up for Summer Camp
???? Join an educational program: Birds of Play, Discover Together, Birding 101, Living Green
???? Become a TRAC Volunteer Naturalist

Where are we?

TRAC is 8 minutes from Downtown Dallas on South Loop 12

Far far south of Museum Mile in Manhattan, home of the Metropolitan Museum, Guggenheim and other venerable institutions, you’ll find a wonderful new venue showcasing bold contemporary art. It’s down on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, at 235 Bowery to be precise.

The New Museum has a very simple mission: new art, new ideas. Happily, my recent visit confirmed the existence of both. From the outset the museum is rather different, from the scrolling LED sign on the exterior to the industrial stairwell, to the somewhat clinical spaces. But on to it’s contents.

Exterior

Interior

Contents

I visited during a recent show titled “The Generational: Younger Than Jesus“, the first exhibition devoted to artists born after 1976. (that is, under the age of 33, Christ?s age at his death).

Covering around 150 works and 25 artists from around the globe the exhibit looks at the output of the often-called Generation Y, sometimes called Generation Me. In countries as diverse as the U.S., China and India this generation represents the largest demographic group to emerge in the last 50 years. So, it’s particularly relevant to examine the diverse artistic output from the successors to the babyboom generation. As one of the exhibit’s curators, Massimiliano Gioni, states,

?The artists in ?Younger Than Jesus? reflect a preoccupation with our future, but also with history and tradition: Rather than foreswearing their parents, they seem interested in imagining new communities and alternative families… Their tactics range from role-playing to recycling, from identity tourism to technological archeology, from an hysterical form of realism to an intimate, micro-emotional art.?

And, as I walked the exhibit several times I was taken by the diversity of the work and the rich use of multiple forms of media. That said, while the media was extremely diverse I could see some common elements: a desire for the artist to express a (sometimes complex), outward looking narrative, an ease and familiarity with the digital tools of the last decade, and a tendency for the art to be derived from other objects rather than to be created from a blank canvas. Commendably, the New Museum, published an enormous exhibit catalog of all the art evaluated for the show, which covered a total of 500 artists. This provided a couple of wonderful peeks: first, into lots of great art that unfortunately did not get to see the light, and second, into that otherwise completely obscure process known as selecting and curating art.

Highlights for me included the following:

Choose, a video art piece, by Ciprian Muresan. Here a young boy from Romania, actually the artist’s son, untainted by the laws of global branding and societal norms, combines Pepsi and Coke in a glass, and drinks the mixture. Don’t try this at home, especially if you live in the northeastern U.S. (Pepsi) or America’s deep South (Coke).

Buying Everything On You (zhou shuping) by Liu Chuang. The artist approaches people on street and buys everything they are carrying and wearing. This is a great snapshot that shows us how much materiality we have in common with other cultures. This reminds me of the photographic project from the mid-1990s by photojournalist Peter Menzel, who coordinated an effort to capture images of entire families’ possessions from 3o different nations.

Interregnum Repetition Resolution (Upholstered) by Steven G. Rhodes. A diverse collection of media including aura portraits, reminiscent of “ghostly” images from Victorian photographers, and an assemblage of technological chaos in a chair.

It Doesn’t Matter by Katerina Seda. A “life catalog” consisting of drawings describing sentimental artifacts recalled by the artist’s grandmother over a period of 35 years.

All images are courtesy of the New Museum, and courtesy of New York city (my thoughts are with you on this day).

If you’re in New York, you’re in luck. If not, I recommend you fly to La Guardia, then jump in a cab and drive to the Metropolitan Museum of Art (The Met). Buy a ticket, leave the ancient Asian and European artifacts for another day. Climb the beautiful marble staircase, and head straight to the Francis Bacon retrospective.

You will not be disappointed, even if you do not like Francis Bacon’s work. Until the exhibit I had only seen a small fraction of Bacon’s output and was, at best, somewhat disturbed by it. Interestingly, The Met bills the exhibit as “a reevaluation of the artist’s work in light of a range of new interpretations and archival materials that have emerged since his death in 1992″. Regardless of whose interpretation you feel most inclined to accept, it’s clear that Bacon was very artistically erudite, drawing upon numerous classical references. Further, his personal experiences, especially becoming a young adult in war torn Britain of the 1940s, had tremendous impact on his vision of humanity (or lack thereof). I suspect also that a number of his significant works reflected his tongue-very-much-in-cheek attitude at the art establishment, British society and the church.

So, enough said. Check out the exhibit if you possibly can. It features over 60 of Bacon’s original works and lots more accompanying material. The exhibit, Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective end on August 16, 2009. So, be quick, you only have a week to go, and The Met is the only U.S. location for this vast exhibit of Bacon’s work.

Image above: Painting by Francis Bacon, 1946, courtesy of Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.?

It?s free, there?s food and wine and soda, and best of all there?s some gorgeously stylish art from nationally recognized, local artist Trish Biddle. She?ll be with us as well, painting live.

Just over a month ago I visited the Guggenheim museum in New York City. One of the most refreshing works of art on display was Ann Hamilton’s monumental piece, “Human Carriage”. It’s beyond the scope of my writings here to delve into this work in great detail – suffice to say that it is a beautifully engineered work of art – delicately intertwined around the entire inner spiral balustrade of the Guggenheim’s 6 levels. And, makes you think about the subtleties on how information is internalized within and transmitted without.

So, this work leads me to Jenny Holzer, and her recent exhibit at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Her work is similarly focused on the use of non-traditional media and public settings to convey content, but is much more direct and confrontational in execution.

For around 30 years Holzer has been transmitting information to us on tee-shirts, billboards, telephone booths, and immense projections (usually on public buildings). More recently, she has turned to large LED signs, akin to the dynamic ticker displays you might see in New York’s Time Square. And while the displays are themselves innovative and visually engaging, it’s really about the content rather than the medium.

Usually, she flings the content at us in short snippets, sometimes lyrical, sometimes banal, often prescient. Holzer’s commentary ranges from the intimate – describing thoughts of lost love and personal sacrific, to the political and cultural – warning of existential threats to freedom and growing militarism. Holzer is probably best known for her Truisms, which she began in the late-1970s. Several of her best known (and my favorites):

a little knowledge can go a long way…? a lot of professionals are crackpots…? a sense of timing is the mark of genius…? all things are delicately interconnected…? being sure of yourself means you’re a fool…? calm is more conductive to creativity than is anxiety…? children are the hope of the future…? don’t place to much trust in experts…? good deeds eventually are rewarded…? humor is a release…? it’s better to be a good person than a famous person…? it’s vital to live in harmony with nature…? just believing something can make it happen…? knowledge should be advanced at all costs…? people are nuts if they think they are important…? people are responsible for what they do unless they are insane…? selfishness is the most basic motivation…? selflessness is the highest achievement…? sin is a means of social control…? solitude is enriching…? technology will make or break us…? unique things must be the most valuable…? with perseverance you can discover any truth…? you can live on through your descendants…? you can’t expect people to be something they’re not…? you must disagree with authority figures…? you must have one grand passion…? you must know where you stop and the world begins…

The Whitney exhibit – Jenny Holzer: Protect Protect – displays Holzer’s work from the mid-1990s to the present. It focuses on two keys elements: first, the increasing visual complexity of her work now displayed on immense floor-mounted or curved, two-sided LEDs with complex dynamic programming; and second, her recent thrust to disseminating facts rather than thoughts, particularly with her silk-screen renditions (pun intended) of declassified material concerning U.S. government and military activity in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A very thought-provoking exhibit to say the least, and brings to mind one of Holzer’s aphorisms from 30 years ago: “abuse of power comes as no surprise”. Unfortunately, the exhibit just closed.

Our exhibit of Faith Scott Jessup’s landscapes of Texas is drawing to a close very soon. We also have a few of Faith’s remaining dark and detailed still-lifes on show. So, I encourage you to take a longer than usual lunch break, drive (or walk or bicycle or parachute or rollerblade) to downtown Keller, and soak in some bold and beautiful art from one of our signature artists.

Our solo show featuring the dramatic new landscapes of Faith Scott Jessup opened on May 8, 2009. We had a great turnout of art (and wine) lovers. So, thank you to both our regular customers and many new faces.And, congratulations to Faith on a great opening.

Faith’s new works are on display until June 13.

We’re unveiling a series of Faith Scott Jessup’s new landscapes today – dynamic and dramatic. Come and see for yourself. Opening Reception is Friday, May 8, 6-9pm. The exhibit continues until June 13.

Our new exhibit – Lightscapes – kicks off May 8. The Opening Reception is the same evening, May 8, from 6-9pm.

It?s free, there?s food and wine and soda, and best of all there?s some gorgeous new art from local artist Faith Scott Jessup. She?ll be with us as well. Faith?s work for this show features dramatic panoramas of the Texas landscape with its intense sky and endless horizon. The exhibit runs until June 13, 2009.

We encourage you to come and see these fine, original paintings in the art251 gallery and to meet Faith Scott Jessup in person.

Faith resides in Denton, where she teaches fine art. She has a B.A. from the University of Massachusetts and an M.F.A. from Cornell University. She has a growing base of collectors and is one of art251?s signature artists – having shown her unique works since the gallery opened in mid-2008.

Our March Exhibit – Temple of Flora – signaling the imminent arrival of spring kicks off today, March 6. The Opening Reception is today, March 6, from 6-9pm.

It’s free, there’s food and wine and soda, and best of all there’s some gorgeous new art from Dallas artist Bryan Wetz. He’ll be with us as well.

Bryan’s work for this show features panels and canvases of single flowers, each detailed in a subtle and unique way. You’ll see colorful irises, daffodils, roses, lilies and more (notice my limited botanical vocabulary!)

We encourage you to come and see these bright and bold new paintings in the art251 gallery that has now become a spring garden, and to meet Bryan Wetz in person. In addition to being a talented artist, he is also an interior and retail designer (he designed our space), a custom furniture maker and an ex-Keller resident. Bryan is a product of the Oklahoma Arts Institute at Quartz Mountain and an alumni of Oklahoma State University where he earned a degree in Interior Design.