As you prepare for summer classes to start next week, we’ve prepared a little quiz to see how well you know your Art League teachers. This time, it’s a portrait quiz. Can you match names to these faces? (Hint: One of these comes from the instructor teaching this weekend’s Jumpstart in Wood Engraving workshop.)
Click on the image to view it full size. Leave your answers in the comments, and we’ll recognize the winner in our next quiz!
See below for calls to artists and other announcements. You can click the banner above to view past opportunities posts. Good luck!
Quick Draw contest
Saturday, June 22, 8:00 am–1:00 pm (register by Thursday, June 20). Part of the Easels in Frederick plein air painting event, Quick Draw is a fast-paced, friendly plein-air contest open to all artists aged 16 and older—professional or amateur—who register and pay a $15 fee. Participating artists may use any two-dimensional medium. Artists are eligible for cash prizes and can sell their artwork to spectators. For more information and to register, click here.
ATTENTION: Tonight’s Reception Rescheduled for June 30
The Torpedo Factory is closing at 5pm tonight due to the severe weather predictions, and therefore, so is The Art League. Tonight’s opening reception for “(CON)text,” and “Yellowstone Abstracted” has been RESCHEDULED for Sunday, June 30, 2-4pm. Please stay dry and mark your calendars for the now closing reception!
The piece below, I Woke Up Crying, started as a charcoal drawing before being committed to an etching plate, and finally finding new life with stitched-on elements — an evolutionary process that artist Pamela Day says is part of what she enjoys about etching. The sad, yet whimsical collage won the Anne Banks Collage Award as part of “(CON)text,” our June exhibit.
Pamela, who will also be teaching etching on Tuesday evenings this summer, told us about the bad day that inspired this piece and why she’s a printmaker. Read about it in our Q&A, below.
I Woke Up Crying
Since the show this month is about work with a message, what does this piece mean to you?
This piece is very cathartic to me. It is not based on a dream at all, but an actual really bad day. Sometimes you just wake up feeling sad, you know? My mom had died a couple of months before this day, and I guess I was missing her. That day it seemed like all efforts to cheer me ended in something else making me even sadder. I even left out the part about the car crash on my street that blocked it off when we were coming home with the ice cream! Sometimes a bad day can make for good inspiration. read more…
Image by Shane Pope used under a Creative Commons license
Do you have an Art League story you want to share? A tale of rejection and redemption? Something you’re doing behind the scenes? Or maybe a new class you’re teaching (or taking)?
We’re inviting Art League members, students, teachers, volunteers, and friends to write guest blog posts in this space. They don’t have to be long — we just want to hear some different voices.
If you have an idea for a series, or a single post, please get in touch here. And thank you!
Among the stories, commentaries, and multi-layered messages in our June exhibit, “(CON)text,” one piece stood out to juror John James Anderson: A Common Thread, which tells its story through vintage photos, manuscripts documenting slave transactions, antique fabric, and clay and cotton. Anderson selected the piece for the Urquhart Award for best in show.
The artist, Kathlyn James Avila, told us more about her figure work, her influences, her love of mixed media, and the heritage and sacrifice represented in A Common Thread. It’s all in our Q&A, below.
Detail from A Common Thread.
Since the show this month is about work with a message, what does this sculpture mean to you?
Kathlyn James Avila: The message of A Common Thread is to give homage to the many African American children that had to work in cotton fields. Too often, those children were not recognized as being beautiful and having the opportunity to be dressed in fine laces and adornment. My figure was inspired by actual photos of children that had to work in cotton fields or on farms because of enslavement or the necessity in helping their families economically. As an African American, our common thread, for the most part, extends from our forefathers and mothers that had to make sacrifices during their childhood to empower our lives throughout each generation. read more…
