One of many selected artworks from the Oil and Cotton Creative Exchange summer classes.
Should you be looking for a respite from the Tax-Free Weekend, consider coming to The Reading Room Sunday, August 19 from 4 to 6 pm. There will be a short musical program of American Revolutionary era songs and action rhymes at 4:30 performed by The Yankee Doodles featuring John Dufilho on drums and guitar.
This will be followed by a hands-on art activity, making your own personal flag or banner, by the Oil and Cotton Creative Exchange. Selected artwork from summer classes at the O&C will be on display also. Learning about art, history, and individual versus collective action and thinking underly these programs.
Come sing along and bring all tiny patriots and future revolutionaries for this one day only, back-to-school program.
‘The Rachel’s Wave,’ 2011, inlaid maps and acrylic on aluminum panel. Click on it for a larger version.
Matthew Cusick: Scenes Et Types. This summer exhibition at The Reading Room will feature Matthew Cusick’s collage work from his wave series comprised of map fragments as well as the sirens which use imagery derived from vintage travel postcards.
Cusick’s collage work has been written about in such diverse publications as The Surfers Journal and The Paris Review, indicating his range of references from diverse cultures and geographies. Cusick received a BFA from The Cooper Union and is currently pursuing graduate studies at SMU. His work has been shown internationally as well as in New York City at Andrew Kreps Gallery, Kent Fine Art, and most recently Pavel Zoubok Gallery where he has an exhibition this fall.
Please join us for the opening reception on Saturday, June 16 from 7 to 9 pm. The Reading Room will be open that day from noon until 9 pm in conjunction with East Dallas Gallery Day. There will be an artist talk on Saturday, July 14 at 3 pm.
The tiny black and white photo is Nic Nicosia’s film still from his ‘Middletown’ video (1997). If Nicosia happens to stumble on this site, I hope he won’t mind how I decided to hang this little piece. If you live in Dallas and want to see and know more about his work, visit the Talley Dunn Gallery.
The corner setup. For quite some time my new living room couch has been waiting for some company. I’m referring to the need of additional furniture. Well, now this corner is complete with the introduction of a tiered side table and a vintage lamp.
Tendered Currency, new work by Shane Mecklenburger, will open at The Reading Room on Saturday, April 14 from 7 to 9 pm with a reception for the artist followed by a reading on Sunday, April 15 at 4 pm. The exhibition will continue through May 12.
Mecklenburger’s work investigates American culture and various market functions and transactions, “our internal struggles and contradictions, our national self-perception and the way we are perceived, valued and devalued”. TRR will feature video, sculpture, prints and a live eBay auction. During an election year and while the Dallas Arts Fair is in progress, Mecklenburger will show how he sold The Future on eBay and made a diamond from the script of Superman III.
An intermedia artist working between installation, media art and performance, Mecklenburger holds an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently Assistant Professor of Art & Technology at Ohio State University’s Department of Art. His work has exhibited at Hoxton Gallery/London, The Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music/Amsterdam, Ubersee Museum/Bremen, Centro Cultural Paso del Norte/Juarez, The El Paso Museum of Art and Dallas Museum of Art.
The Reading Room is a project space dedicated to the intersection of visual and text based culture located at 3715 Parry Avenue, Dallas. For further information Karen Weiner 214 952 4109.
Let’s maintain loose posture. Today was suppose to have been my first blog post about the front garden’s makeover. With torrential rainfall predicted over the next three days, Hadden Landscaping decided to postpone the first phase, which is to pull out the unwanted plants and dig up additional bed space. Starting today would have been equivalent to creating a giant mud pie to wallow in when they return to resume work on Wednesday or Thursday. But in the meantime, I’m just getting older.
The image above is a wonderful little piece created by Andy Coolquitt that I picked up at the annual Five x Seven back in 2002. Five x Seven is an annual fundraiser, art sale and exhibition benefitting AMOA-Arthouse exhibitions and educational programs.
Andrea Goldman at The Reading Room.Madness Q & A: The Watery Part of the World, a video and related work by Andrea Goldman will open at The Reading Room on Saturday, February 11. You’re invited to join us for the reception with the artist from 7 to 9 pm. The exhibition will continue through March 10 and can be seen by appointment.
Goldman creates videos, drawings and songs that enact dialogues between brilliant animals, canonical authors, children’s choirs, ideological bodies and other doppelgangers. Her characters use humor and dialogue to investigate and upset dichotomies. TRR will present a work that engages Melville’s Moby Dick, Foucault’s History of Madness, and a family vacation. Reason, history, philosophy, politics, medicine, and otherness are examined in a playful manner.
An alternate title could be “what’s hanging (part three)”. This little marble shelf and bracket were installed today. Their purpose was to be a drop-off for my purse and sunglasses, but I’m now unsure about this. They’re just too precious to spoil with my scruffy everyday stuff. You can’t tell from this photo, but the marble top curves out in the front. In order to add depth—the antique bracket was too shallow to be useful as is—Charley McKenney, my architect, designed a way to push the bracket further out by mounting it to a thick wall-mounted board. Because the entrance to my bedroom is through that doorway on the right and the return vent is under the shelf, placing a piece of furniture larger than this shelf would not have worked. I’m thinking that this shelf needs a small sculpture. All in good time.
The two works of art above are by Lorraine Tady purchased through Barry Whistler Gallery back in 1995. They are both drypoint monotypes. The one on the left is Untitled, No. 117, and the one on the right is Untitled, No. 133. Hopefully someday I can get a better photo of these two. There’s just too much reflective glare during the afternoon, and the morning light would not have provided enough to show off this corner.
I forgot to mention that the table lamp on the right is one of a pair that were once my maternal grandmother’s. I love their art deco vibe.
The Index Cards: Vincent Falsetta will open at The Reading Room on Saturday, December 3 from 7 to 9 pm and continue through December 31. There will also be an artist talk on Saturday, December 10 at 4 pm.
“Process as content is for me a form of indexing the moment, “Falsetta says about his practice. The index cards date back to the 1980s. There is a format that he follows. First the work is described in detail: dimensions, materials, when the canvas was stretched, then title and any dedication. There is usually but not always a thumbnail of the work, sometimes a diagram or chart, and questions that he poses to the work and to himself. He writes, deliberately, with pen and ink, thus slowing the process down and making it more than just documentation or a journal entry. There are over 600 cards.
Warning: Don’t stare at the red dot too long, or you just might go blind.
Blue Yule 2011 at The MAC. This Saturday The MAC will be having their sixteenth annual fundraiser selling hand-crafted-one-of-a-kind ornaments. Come support your favorite blue building and savor the infamous Blue Mystery Punch! Make this your first stop of the evening, and then mosey on over to The Reading Room for more artistic fun.
Rebecca Carter’s ‘The Wrong Perspective,’ graphite and wood; ‘Dirty Rainbow,’ silk thread and electrical plugs
The Reading Room. Again I waited until the last day to see a show, Rebecca Carter’s Reading the Love Letter, but the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. While most folks were probably killing themselves with frantic Christmas shopping, I found a wonderful respite in Karen Weiner’s little space located far away from the holiday madness. It was a fun lazy afternoon reconnecting with old friends, chitchatting, listening to the haunting background music, and poking around in all the little spaces and hidden corners searching out Rebecca’s little surprises.
