Dia Gallery Talk: Artist Sam Gilliam

 

The DIA Art Center is offering a free gallery talk today on the color field painter and lyrical abstractionist artist Sam Gilliam. The talk is Live on ZOOM at 12pm today and requires registration here. He works on stretched, draped and wrapped canvas, and adds sculptural 3D elements. He is recognized as the first artist to introduce the idea of a draped, painted canvas hanging without stretcher bars around 1965.

One of his notable works entitle Blue from 1991 (pictured below) can be found in the Jamaica train station here on Long Island (if you haven't been there yet odds are that you will one day).

at the age of 87 Gilliam is still creating work and "trying to express something that is contemporary" such as these new works from Pace gallery below.

Studio Art: Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) Masks

In studio art we are working on our 3d unit and this week we're going to be creating small masks inspired by Mexico's Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) holiday using celluclay.  Above are a few examples but each student will create their own design and color pattern and draw it out before you begin.  The video below shows you how celluclay works and we're going to mix it in groups then create our masks on wax paper so it can dry without sticking.



Once the mask drys you'll sand it then use acrylic and tempera paint to add you design.  The drawings will be due today and then you can begin molding you mask.  Next week, after the final, we'll be painting our masks when they are completely dry.

AP Art: Art from Books

Now that the AP Art test is over we are going to work on some creative things in class that we couldn't fit in before and our first assignment is to create a sculptural art piece from a book.  I passed out a number of 'decomissioned' books from the schools, titles from Shakespeare to Salinger, and each senior student should take a book and find a creative way to turn it into a sculpture.  It's better to have the sculpture relate to the book in some way so take a look and be open-minded.  The video above shows some amazing examples as well as Christine Antaya's book Book Art: Iconic Sculptures and Installations Made from Books but try to incorporate only parts of the books if possible (as well as glue, paint, and any other supplies you use).  The project will be due when we return from Memorial Day vacation so be creative and have fun!