Contemporary Art

Saturday at The Reading Room

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'Roman Candle,' digital c-print, 24 x 32
‘Roman Candle,’ digital c-print, 24 x 32

Photographer and performance artist Maury Gortemiller will present All-Time Lotion at The Reading Room February 9 through Feburary 23, 2013. The opening reception will be Saturday, February 9 from 6 to 9 pm and the closing/performance will be on Saturday, Feburary 23 at 5 pm. The exhibition is guest curated by Danielle Avram Morgan and photographer Kevin Todora.

Gortemiller lives and works in Atlanta. His practice includes photography, performance and artist books. He “mines the Janus faced elements of photography”, including alleged objectivity, context, and staged versus spontaneous events which leads to some very provocative and sometimes delightfully confusing images. The Feburary 23 performance/talk will focus on his Competitive Apnea series.

Gortemiller’s work has been shown at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Atlanta), Black Mountain Art Center (North Carolina) and Appalachian Photographers Project at the Reece Museum at ETSU (Tennessee) and Flash Forward Festival (Boston). Fall Line Press has published three books of his work. He received an MFA in photography from the University of Georgia.

Family

Meet the Twins

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Beulah at 20 weeks on the left and Brewster at 18 weeks on the right.
Beulah at 20 weeks on the left and Brewster at 18 weeks on the right.

These two joined our family at the first of January. Since losing Bubba, I had tried twice to adopt a frenchie, but was turned down both times. Why? I don’t know. I was encouraged to keep trying, but Bertha and I weren’t getting any younger. Filling out reams of paperwork for each dog and waiting up to two months for the rejection is not a positive experience. Besides, I am no masochist. So I looked up Bertha’s breeder, and lo and behold she had two litters ready to find families. Bingo!

Contemporary Art

Don’t Call, Just Come

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Kris Pierce’s 'Missed Calls'
Kris Pierce’s ‘Missed Calls’

Tonight at The Reading Room, Kris Pierce’s Missed Calls will open with a reception from 6:00 to 9:00 pm. The Reading Room is located at 3715 Parry Avenue.

Using three separate phone numbers which will be posted in diverse geographic locations of the city, Pierce will output the data from the calls into one continuous scrolling printout in the gallery. The data will then be compiled into a book. The exhibition, which continues his investigation of technology and information and its influence on human behavior and quotidian activities, continues through February 2.

Kris Pierce is an artist, designer and animator who lives and works in Fort Worth where he is co-founder of the experimental art collective Homecoming! He has recently shown at Conduit Gallery‘s Project Room, Fort Worth Contemporary Arts‘ where is the power and Eastfield College. He is a graduate of the University of North Texas and is currently Art Director of video content for Funimation Entertainment.

Fine Art

An Old Lady Who’s Traveled Far

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A newly acquired classical artifact now resides on the couch’s end table.
A newly acquired classical artifact now resides on the couch’s end table.

She’s an ancient Roman marble head dating from 100 — 200 AD which was found in Israel. Most of the Roman busts that I had researched to purchase had missing noses or diminished details. Not so with her. Her features are very beautiful still. I’m not sure that I like the display plinth. For one thing, the swivel pin is bent so that her head is tilted slightly back. So if you were to look at her at eye level, she looks like she’s purposely tilting her head back to gaze upwards. I don’t think this was the artist’s intention. Perhaps the gallery set her this way so that she’s best viewed from above while resting on a tabletop. For more photos of this beauty click the link below.

Contemporary Art

Saturday’s Visual Moments (part 2 of 2)

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Image: eteam, still from 'Track One' (2011), video, 1:37 min. 'Co- Re-Creating Spaces' will present eteam’s related, participatory project with live video, 100 meters behind the future, in its U.S. premier.
Image: eteam, still from ‘Track One’ (2011), video, 1:37 min. ‘Co- Re-Creating Spaces’ will present eteam’s related, participatory project with live video, 100 meters behind the future, in its U.S. premier.

Co- Re-Creating Spaces, a group exhibition curated by Carolyn Sortor and Michael A. Morris, will survey how artists are questioning and subverting existing contexts or spaces and contributing to their re-imagining and re-creation. The exhibit recognizes that “reality” itself can be both art medium and art object, and speculates how developments in the virtual and the actual might affect one another.

The opening reception is Saturday, November 17, 8-10 pm, at CentralTrak: The UT Dallas Artists Residency, 800 Exposition Avenue. The exhibition will run from November 17, 2012 to January 5, 2013.

The exhibition will feature videos, performances, installations, and other works by: Morehshin Allahyari; Nadav Assor; Amy Balkin; Aram Bartholl; Zanny Begg & Oliver Ressler; Linda Bilda; Irina Botea; Martha Colburn; Michael Corris; eteam; Cao Fei; Yevgeniy Fiks, Olga Kopenkina, & Alexandra Lerman; Institute for Wishful Thinking; Greg Metz, Kristin Cochran, & Cassandra Emswiler; Martha Rosler; Dread Scott; Yes Lab/Steve Lambert; Karen Weiner/Celia & Frank Eberle; The Yankee Doodles and more.

Contemporary Art

Saturday’s Visual Moments (part 1 of 2)

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Brandon Kennedy's 'Exit For Sale'
Brandon Kennedy’s ‘Exit For Sale’

At The Reading Room, Saturday, November 17 from 7pm to 9pm, is the opening of Brandon Kennedy’s Exit For Sale. This exhibition will include slightly absurd sculpture and confused signage and will continue through December 22. A conversation between Kennedy and Peter Simek, Arts Editor for D Magazine will take place on Sunday, December 9 at 3pm.

Kennedy received an MFA in Sculpture from Yale University and a BFA from the University of North Texas and is a DeGolyer/Kimbrough Award recipient from the Dallas Museum of Art. His work has been featured in The Art Foundation’s Fountainhead exhibition this spring, at And/Or Gallery, Plush, Dallas Center for Contemporary Art, McKinney Avenue Contemporary, University of Texas at Dallas as well as PAWNSHOP, an e-flux exhibition in New York City. He lives and works in Dallas with his wife and son.

For more reading, visit Peter Simek’s post on FrontRow.

The Reading Room is located at 3715 Parry Avenue between Exposition and Commerce.

Landscape & Gardening

What’s Blooming Now

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One of two blooming Japanese Aralias.
One of two blooming Japanese Aralias.

Oh my goodness! My Fatsia japonica (or Japanese Aralia) is blooming. If you look closely, you can see several bees buzzing around the flower heads. This was planted over a year ago during my backyard’s makeover, and I had no idea that it was a fall bloomer. From a little research, I have learned that these blooms will eventually become “fruiting bodies”—a very fancy phrase indeed. Nonetheless, I expect these fruiting bodies to provide me future Kodak moments.